November 21
Morix Law Offices
2:10 PM
Yuri Rinko
Deirdre was the one who started off the explanation of the case's events, something I have to admit that I naturally expected her to do given how she usually was about these sorts of things. She had always been the type to take charge, and that rang true even in this situation. "The victim was attacked in the lobby of the agency that we work at. We believe that the culprit was a man with white hair who followed the victim to the scene and used her key to follow her inside. The victim in question is widely believed to be Eileen Liyle," Deirdre began to explain.
Detective Umber's reaction was immediate, and it sent a shiver sprinting up my spine. Her eyes went wide with shock before she managed to cover it up. "I... I see," she forced herself to say, but I knew that there was something going on. It was as clear as could be given how pale she had been, even if the reaction had only lasted for a second.
"Is something the matter?" Victoria questioned, seemingly have picked up on the same thing that I had. "You look awfully nervous all of a sudden... If you know something about the case, then you can go on and tell us about it. We can use all of the help that we can get to find the truth, you know."
Detective Umber shook her head. "There's nothing to worry about. I promise. I guess it just surprised me to hear that there was somebody with white hair involved with all of this. You don't see many people with that hair color around here," she explained with a shrug that was trying to lighten the mood but instead only made her look more tense than ever before.
"That's true," I agreed. The only person that I knew with white hair and pale skin had been Cassidy, but she had been gone for a while now. She didn't fit the description of the victim's assailant either given that her hair wasn't even completely white; it had streaks of black in it before her death. Plus, she was far too small and frail to fit the description. She had supposedly gotten the white hair from our father, not that I would be able to confirm nor deny such a thing. After all, our mother had dark brown hair with pink highlights, something that she passed onto Venus but not me or Cassidy. Then again, who cared to think about my father much? He hadn't mattered for a long time as far as I was concerned, and he wouldn't be important until he crawled out of the hole he had disappeared into shortly after I was born.
I shook myself free of those thoughts as Detective Umber continued. "Is there anything else that you know about the culprit that might help to put the pieces together?" she questioned. She still seemed nervous, but she was doing a better job of hiding it this time around. She began to fiddle around with a piece of her hair, likely because she wanted something to occupy her hands while she was as anxious as she was.
"Hm... I can't think of anything," I remarked with a loose shrug. The fact that the culprit was likely on a tight timeframe was one fact, but that wasn't exactly going to do us much good in the long term. Detective Umber was clueless as to the facts of this case. It was why she was asking us about it all in the first place.
"Would you happen to know anything about the culprit of this case?" Victoria asked. I got the feeling that she was just as sure as I was that Detective Umber was involved with all of this somehow, not that I could blame her for jumping to such a conclusion. Detective Umber seemed so unnaturally anxious, and given how perky and upbeat we were used to her being, it offered a serious case of mood whiplash that didn't settle well with any of us.
Detective Umber was silent for a long moment, simply staring at us all. When she finally snapped out of her trance, she shook her head violently. "I don't... I don't know anything," she forced herself to say. "Why would I? It's not like I'm all that involved with the affairs of your agency, and if anybody I knew was acting strangely, then I would have noticed it by now. I promise that there's nothing that you should hear about that you aren't already aware of. Everything is just fine."
That was most certainly a lie. In fact, it was the easiest time I had ever had determining if something was a lie or not. She was so blatantly nervous that it was obvious something was wrong, and she had only gotten so much worse after hearing about the fact that the culprit most likely had white hair. Sure, she had been acting off before that, but the change was immediate and bothersome. She had to be aware of something involving the truth behind this case.
"You know... You were acting kind of strange during the previous case too," Victoria remarked. "The last one that our agency was on, I mean. I could see pretty clearly that something was bugging you, but I didn't want to press the matter in case that was something that I shouldn't have done... Are you sure that everything is alright? You do know that it's alright to say something when you're being bothered by the events of a case, right?"
"I'm not bothered at all!" Detective Umber exclaimed. "Besides, how would I know anything about this case? I wasn't here when it took place, and I had an alibi for the time of the crime too! Everything is peachy and perfect!" She glanced down at her wrist, almost as if she was checking for the time on a watch. Her ruse was easy to see through though because she wasn't wearing a watch, and my frown only grew heavier and darker as she continued in a panicked haze. "Look at the time! I had better get going. I'll see all of you guys later!"
Detective Umber didn't give any of us a chance to respond, and she ran off in the direction of her car before we could come up with anything to say that would make her stop. She vanished from sight in the blink of an eye, and I realized after she had started to run away that trying to reason with her when she was like this wasn't going to have much of a point. Something was bothering her, and as far as I could tell, it was something that she was going to have to take care of on her own time without the interference of our defense team.
Deirdre crossed her arms and glanced at me first before she shifted her gaze to Victoria. That was her way of saying that she was fully aware of something being wrong, and I knew that look well after all of the years that we had spent working together. Deirdre shook her head. "I believe that we've all come to the same conclusion," she said simply, not bothering to elaborate. It wasn't as if she had to in the first place; I was frowning to show that I understood as well, and Victoria looked as transparently worried as a person possibly could have.
"What are we even supposed to do to work around something like this?" I questioned. "It's not like we can just force her to talk. She made it pretty clear a moment ago that if we try to corner her, she's just going to run away. I don't think that we'll be able to do anything to force her away from hiding all of this..."
"If we want to find the truth, we might have to ask an outside party," Victoria pointed out. "Her brother is always an option, though I don't know where we would start to make him talk to us. It's not like we know him all that well, and he's not going to want to talk to us if he thinks that Detective Umber is in the right for keeping all of this a secret from us, you know?"
"We'll consider it a bit later," Deirdre said firmly. "For the time being, I think that we should focus our attention on other matters. To be more specific, I believe that we should try to get Ms. Lesa to talk to us. I can't imagine that she's far from here. If she's the only witness to this case like we've been led to believe, then that means that she has to be in a place that's easy for anyone to access at a given moment."
"Perfect," I agreed with a nod. She was right when she said that we were going to have to talk to Ms. Lesa sooner or later about everything that was going on, but I still didn't exactly want to. If I could have had my way, I would have made sure that we pressed Detective Umber until she revealed the truth about everything that had been bothering her, but that wasn't exactly an option. She was just going to keep running away until she was comfortable with talking. Besides, if this was really connected to the case like we thought it was, then we would probably wind up hearing about it sooner or later anyways. That was usually how these sorts of things worked out when it came to cases of this nature.
The search for Ms. Lesa didn't take as long as I had been expecting. She was standing around the back of the building, and she was looking down at her phone with a distant expression. Her eyes had gone glassy, but she didn't seem to notice in the slightest. At first, she didn't even see us, too busy staring down at the phone.
However, there was one thing about the situation that struck me as odd. Even though she was watching the phone intently, there was nothing that resembled shock or confusion in her gaze. Given the fact that she had amnesia, one would have expected her to use a phone to try and figure out who she had been before she lost her memory. Instead, all she seemed to want to do was stare at it, and that certainly didn't sit well with me at all.
In fact, there was more to it than that. If Ms. Lesa had amnesia but also had her phone on her, then she could have used it to get into contact with people who would have been able to tell her who she was. Why did she choose to not do that? It wouldn't exactly do much to restore her lost memories, but it would at least offer an explanation as to her true identity, and that was a good place to start when it came to uncovering the truth behind something of this nature.
Ms. Lesa didn't notice that we were there until after we had come to a stop about three feet away. When Ms. Lesa glanced up to see us, her eyes went wide with shock, and she frantically turned off her phone and shoved it away and out of sight. "I didn't expect to see you here," she commented, her voice oddly even and blunt. In fact, her voice had gotten a bit lower since the last time that we had spoken. Ms. Lesa's voice wasn't particularly high in the first place, but it sounded far more grounded all of a sudden.
"We came by to talk to you," I explained simply, glancing down at the pocket where she had shoved her phone away. She didn't seem to be eager to offer an explanation for that, and if she noticed that I was staring, she chose to ignore it. In fact, I was positive that she was aware of how I was watching her. Everything about her gaze had suddenly grown sharp and hardened. She was trying to hide something deliberately, and she wasn't going to stand for any of us getting in the way of such an endeavor.
"What is it?" Ms. Lesa questioned. Her voice returned to its previous airy form, and I found myself frowning even more than before. Something was wrong. Why had her voice shifted for such a brief period of time? It simply didn't make sense in the slightest.
"We would like to hear more about what you saw at the time of the crime," Victoria replied. "Would you be able to take us to the spot where you saw the man with white hair enter the building alongside the victim? Any details that you can offer us will be helpful. That much I can promise you."
Ms. Lesa watched us for a long time, simply allowing the silence to set in, before she nodded and started to walk away. I could see the lightness one of her feet now, but it didn't match the way that I would have anticipated someone to treat a sprain in the slightest. She was doing her best to keep from putting weight on it, but if it brought her any pain, she was choosing to mask it. Part of me was starting to wonder if she had even sprained her ankle in the first place, though I knew that calling her out on such would be pointless given how cagey and defensive she was by nature.
Ms. Lesa was silent as she took us across the parking lot in front of the agency. The agency was the only building that faced in its specific direction in the lot, and all of the other buildings chose to keep a wide berth from it while facing away. The nearest apartment complex, one that rested on the other side of the parking lot, faced the opposite direction while all back doors and balconies were in the direction of the agency's entrance. It was almost entertaining how everyone and everything in the area, including the structures themselves, appeared to be ignoring the agency's existence.
I had heard of the reason for that in the past from Chrysalis, as a matter of fact. The buildings looking away was a funny coincidence, but most people chose to ignore the agency because of the rumors that it was haunted. When I asked her about it further, Chrysalis confirmed that the building was, as a matter of fact, haunted by some sort of spirit that she could sense due to being a medium, albeit an inexperienced one. That was the reason that the building had come relatively cheap; the rumors kept everyone from even wanting to get close to it. I cringed at the reminder of Chrysalis, and I wondered what it was that she was doing that kept her so far away from the rest of us investigating the case. I was desperate to talk to her, and her absence was really starting to bug me.
Ms. Lesa stopped walking while I was lost in thought over Chrysalis and Mr. Morix's strange and avoidant behavior. She had taken us to about the same spot that I expected her to, and she stood behind a sidewalk near a small cluster of bushes hiding among a green expanse of grass that surrounded the nearby apartment complex. Ms. Lesa turned towards the agency, and she motioned to the parking lot leading up to the entrance. I tried my best to imagine that woman with red hair and the man with white hair following that path and entering the building. I found it difficult given the fact that I still didn't know the appearance of the woman all that well aside from the fact that she had red hair, so I just allowed myself to let go of the idea.
"This is about where I was at the time," Ms. Lesa answered. "I don't believe that anybody involved with the case noticed me as they were entering the building. I hope that this paints a fine enough picture of what happened as I watched the entrance."
I nodded my understanding, but I was barely paying attention to what she was saying. Instead, I walked around the back of the bushes and looked down to the place where the plants met the ground. I didn't know why Ms. Lesa would have wanted to hide behind the bush if she was just watching everything that happened. I couldn't see anything that stuck out to me as notable among the branches. I assumed silently that the supposed sprain of her ankle had likely happened when her foot wound up caught among the branches in the aftermath of her time hiding there. That was what I was choosing to believe, at the very least. I didn't have any evidence, but that was why she was there. We could take this chance to ask her.
"What did you do precisely when you were in this area?" Deirdre questioned, pulling me away from my thoughts seamlessly. I glanced up to see that she was watching Ms. Lesa with an intense gaze, almost as if she was trying to pin the woman in place with her eyes.
If Ms. Lesa noticed the fire in Deidre's eyes, she chose to not acknowledge it, and she forced her gaze down to the ground. "I was walking on the sidewalk, and then I saw the man and woman walking towards the agency. Something about them struck me as odd, so I decided to hide behind the bush. When I got up some time later, my ankle got caught in the branches, and I pulled on it," she explained. "That was how I wound up with the sprain. I was sitting outside of the agency like this for quite some time, but I'm sure you were able to figure that much out."
"Nobody questioned you on why you were here either?" I asked, looking over to the nearby apartment complex. I certainly would have expected somebody to notice given the time of morning when the crime took place. Most people who worked would have been getting up and preparing to set out for a day on the job. The idea that nobody saw Ms. Lesa while she was keeping an eye on the agency's door sat strangely in my stomach. There was no way that something like that was possible as far as I was concerned, but I wasn't going to call her out on that for that sort of thing quite yet. I wanted evidence first, and agitating her wasn't going to be the best way for us to find the truth.
Ms. Lesa hesitated before shaking her head. "No... Nobody saw me," she explained. "I suppose that nobody wanted to look out their window the day of the crime. The building faces the opposite direction, and it wasn't as if everyone was ready to check out their balconies. I guess that they were busy with other subjects."
That was most certainly suspicious. I frowned and crossed my arms over my chest. "That's..." I began to say, but I did my best to shove my worries out of my voice to keep from freaking her out. "Are you absolutely positive that nobody saw you? You have no doubts on the subject?"
Ms. Lesa nodded. "I'm sure of it. Nobody saw me the day of the crime," she replied. There was a strange wavering quality that her voice had taken on, and I could see that she suddenly looked a lot dizzier than before. She avoided my gaze to look down to the ground where the bush was, and her eyes narrowed once again, almost as if she was trying to will herself into focusing.
I looked over to Deirdre and waited for her to say something. She crossed her arms before offering a response to Ms. Lesa. "Thank you for your explanation of what happened," she said simply. She was doing a way better job of hiding her concern and suspicion, and I silently thanked her for being better when it came to acting than I was.
"Is there anything else you need of me?" Ms. Lesa questioned. I saw her lean back and forth between her feet, and she winced when she accidentally put too much weight on her bad foot. She looked back over to the apartment complex once again, and I saw her eyes narrow at something positioned on the side of the building. She snapped out of it soon afterwards, but she kept on glancing over at the subject of her worries despite the shift of focus.
"I don't believe so," Victoria answered, providing a smile in Ms. Lesa's direction. "Thank you for speaking with us. We have a few other matters to investigate at the moment, so we'll leave you to the rest of your day. Thank you again for everything. We'll see you once again in the courtroom."
Ms. Lesa nodded before taking a step back and walking away. I watched as she limped into the crowd, and I sighed when she completely disappeared from view. I looked up to Deirdre and Victoria before letting out a small scoff. "That whole interaction was... Incredibly suspicious," I said offhandedly.
Deirdre crouched down once again beside the bush, and she brushed her fingers along the surface of the greenery. "There are no branches that stick out from this plant," she commented softly. "In fact, everything seems rather compact on this bush. I wonder how she got her ankle caught on a branch to sprain it in the first place... I find it rather odd."
"Maybe there was a branch here that we simply aren't seeing now," Victoria offered, but I could still hear the doubt in her voice. "I mean, if she got her ankle stuck, then she could have pulled the branch off the plant when she tried to get free. That would certainly explain the lack of a branch on the outside of the plant..."
"But that would leave behind a twig to show that it had happened. There would be a sign of breakage in the plant as well, and yet, there's nothing," Deirdre pointed out. "If you ask me, Ms. Lesa's injury came from something else entirely, and she didn't want to tell us about it."
"If she got the sprain before she lost her memory, then she would have simply said that there was something that happened out of her reach," I murmured. "Instead, she said something that was false to try and keep us from finding out the truth. She wanted to excuse it because she's aware of what happened and doesn't want anybody to be aware of it. I bet that it has unfortunate implications that would work against her."
"But what could she be trying to hide?" Victoria questioned. "I just don't get it. I mean, there has to be something if what you guys think is to be believed, but at the same time... I don't know. It just bothers me that she could want to hide something like this. We've been trying to find the truth, but it's awfully hard to do something like that when she's actively fighting against our efforts to find the truth."
"What was she even looking at during our conversation?" I asked, looking up to the nearby apartment building. I flicked my gaze desperately across the outside walls to try and identify the source of her random distress, and a gasp left my lips when I finally figured it out. At long last, we had something that we would be able to use to figure out the truth behind this case!
It was small because of how high it was, but I could see a camera positioned around the backside of the building in the upper corner of someone's balcony. It was pointed down directly at the surrounding grounds, and if I had to guess, I would have said that it was a security measure of some kind. The people who owned the building were trying to keep others from causing problems.
"It was the security camera," Victoria realized, and I could tell that everything was coming together for her too. "But why would she be so freaked out by something like that? It would be able to verify her story, and it would keep us from getting so suspicious of what she was up to at the time."
"I think that it's because what she claimed happened is actually false," Deirdre replied. "And that camera unravels everything that she's been trying to tell us about. It's not true, and she knows that we're going to figure that out as soon as we're made aware of the camera. Her getting nervous at the sight of it only proves such a point as far as I'm concerned, and it leaves you to wonder... Just what exactly did happen at the time of the crime? Why is she trying to hide it from us?"
"And who is Ms. Lesa behind that false name?" I questioned. "You guys must have seen the way that she was messing with her phone earlier, right? She was tapping through things and looking at it until we showed up, and then she seemed pretty excited to hide it and act like she hadn't been messing around with anything in the first place."
"If she has her phone, then you would expect her to at least be vaguely aware of who she is as a person, but instead, she's just hiding everything from us," Victoria muttered. "I mean, you could use something like that as a way to figure out who she actually is, but she decided to hide it instead. That doesn't sit well with me at all, and I wish that I knew how we were supposed to force her to start talking about what happened at the time of the crime. I'm starting to think that she's been lying a lot more than we were originally expecting."
"She's the only witness for this case," Deirdre pointed out. "All of our assumptions about the crime up to this point have been because of her words about what she believed happened at the time. There's nothing else for us to rely on because of the lack of evidence... I don't know why she would want to lie. She has no stake in this as far as I can tell. How is she tied in with the culprit or victim? It doesn't make any sense."
"There's something going on here, and we have to get to the bottom of it," I said confidently before turning my attention up to the nearby camera once again. "I'm going to call Chief Prosecutor Bespoke and see if I can get him to figure out what that camera saw at the time of the crime. We're going to need that sort of evidence if we want to pin down what Ms. Lesa has been lying about. As far as I can tell, she's been hiding a lot from us, and the sooner that we can figure out the extent of her lies, the sooner we'll be able to put together the other pieces behind this case."
Deirdre and Victoria both nodded to themselves, and I let out a sigh as I dug my phone out of my pocket. None of this made any sense to me. Just who was Ms. Lesa, and why was she involved with this case at all? Her track record with keeping secrets was starting to bug me, and I was starting to think that perhaps she was the reason that we couldn't figure out anything else where this case was concerned. She was the padlock that kept the truth from coming to light, and I absolutely hated that idea.
Deirdre looked back up to the camera with a thoughtful look on her face. I got the feeling that she was thinking something similar to what I was. "I think that the better question behind this case involves why she would feel the need to lie in the first place. It's clear that she did, but we still don't understand her motive for that. If we can find out why she has such a personal stake in this, then we'll be able to unfold other secrets behind everything that's going on," she commented.
"I agree," Victoria nodded. "We're going to need to figure out what's going on with her thought process though... I have to wonder if she has amnesia like she's been claiming. Everyone has been more than happy to accept that as an explanation, and the prosecution seemed very quick to go on with the idea that the victim was this Eileen Liyle person. I don't know... It just bothers me."
"At the very least, Ms. Lesa's claims about Ms. Liyle being the victim make sense... Unless she was the one who sent in the anonymous tip... Ugh, this is all so complicated!" I cried out, letting my hands fly up to my temples to start massaging frantically. This case was definitely bothering me, and I wanted nothing more than to just find the truth and move on with my life.
"Let's go and see Lily for now," Deirdre suggested. "I think that leaving this place behind will do us some good, and for all we know, Sky and Felicity could have figured something else out. We can worry about the camera tomorrow. Yuri, go on and make the call."
I nodded and began to tap around on my phone until the ringing began, and I pressed the device to my ear. While I waited for Chief Prosecutor Bespoke to pick up, I frowned bitterly. I didn't like the direction that this case was going in the slightest, and I wanted it to be over as son as possible.
"Ms. Lesa had better start telling the truth soon, because I don't know how much more of this I can take," I muttered with a shake of my head. "I hate this."
School bad update good
-Digital