AN: Bringing you this after being buried under college applications from the Kalos region where I am still not a champion yet, sadly! Also updates for this will be changed to once a month for now unless I can squeeze in two chapters. Expect them around the end of the month!
Also thank you for everyone who's commented and stuff on this so far I'M REALLY GOING TO TRY AND GET OFF MY ASS AND REPLY FROM NOW ON BUT I READ EVERY SINGLE ONE AND JUST. HUGS FOR YOU ALLLLLL
Tumblr url is also changed for the holiday, therefore I am now spook-tape
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Downtown Trost
F.B.I. Main Building
12:20, October 2013
Special Agent Levi
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"There you are." Hanji was digging around in the pile of papers on the lab's desk. "I was wondering if you died out there."
Levi snorted, sitting down on the stool left open for him. The DNA specialist's laptop was sitting on top of a mass of cords and wires with a projector next to it. The continuation of the piles of folders and papers were spread out in front of everyone else, and the bulletin board from the office was brought in too. Pictures of the victims were pinned to it, along with notecards and highlighted locations on a local map.
Good, it seemed like everyone was doing their job.
He looked around the table while Hanji put a flash drive into her computer and unscrewed the cap to the projector. Gunter was there, same with Luke Cis, Erd, Auruo, Petra and Irwin. Two from forensics, two from medical, and four - counting himself - officers on the case. It was a decent match.
"Now that you're here," she continued, clicking on the flash drive's symbol on her desktop. It opened to a bunch of folders, and she clicked on the powerpoint hidden in the corner. "We can start. It's just a quick run through; we didn't find much, actually."
The first slide opened up to the familiar list of everything they had found and the addresses of the locations. There was a spider web style map on the side of the screen, showing the blood relations and evidence they had found. Levi could barely make sense of it. Hanji made it confusing as fuck.
"Right, so to begin with," she cleared her throat. "We have Gunter and myself from forensics, Erd and Luke with the medical team, and you four on this case. Evenly split, we've gotten a lot of stuff figured out."
"Figured out." Levi echoed sarcastically.
Hanji sighed and hit the spacebar on her laptop. It made the slide go to the next one, zooming in on one section of it. He recognized the two notes automatically.
"Well, just bits and pieces, but we have more than enough, and that's enough to know what's happening."
"What, besides murders?" Auruo decided to chip in while the screen zoomed in on another section of the slide. The french was easy to translate, but the other note was up there now. That one had an arrow pointing to the opposite side of the screen. Levi heard the officer grunt when Petra elbowed him.
"Of course!" Hanji wasn't fazed. "Let's see… here we go. Note number two, Mister Bossard, was found with our second victim along with a pair of contacts and shoes. All three have value here, along with site lines and stuff, but that comes later."
She took a laser pointer off one of the piles on her desk, using it to underline the second note as she read it off. "Nio. Kommer Hita Mig." she paused. "Miss Ral managed to translate it for us; it means 'nine. Come find me.' or so we believe."
So our killer is treating this as a game, Levi frowned. His fingers started tapping against the top of the table. Another click, and the slide switched to the next one. There were the pictures of both victims, along with two other men.
"So here we are now; two victims and two potentials." Hanji continued. The laser pointer was back, pointing at the balding man.
He looked like he was in his late forties, a little on the heavy side with a blonde mustache and matching hair on the sides, right behind his ears. He had near grey eyes, and a frown on his face. Anyone who knew the guy would know that he was successful; he was a wine connoisseur in Stohess, known for acting more like a noble than anything else. Farther outside of Stohess, heading more towards the coast, there was a winery - extremely successful - and this man owned it.
"Peter Balto?" Irwin's turn to chip in. There was a shuffle of papers. "But he rarely leaves Stohess."
"Exactly. But Balto and Verman both visit the same place on a regular basis. Any guesses as to where? No? Well you're in luck becauuseee," a picture of the front of the Garrison Pub showed up on the screen in between Balto and the other's face. "I have it right here. The Garrison is a familiar place for everyone, after all."
"How do you know this? What if it's just a coincidence they both happened to go there for one night?"
"Hannes told us." the answer was completely simple, shoving Auruo's question back in his face. "He was pretty cooperative. Having a crime scene behind your bar isn't exactly good for business, right?
"Anyways, Kitts Verman is the second potential. Why though is the question. It's best to just guess with this one. We got his DNA off the shoes, but also Balto's, so you can see where the confusion is. Maybe one of them spit on the ground or something and then stepped in it."
"How did you get both of their DNA from it?" Petra's turn to chime in. She was scribbling down notes into the same notepad she had earlier. "Prints? Hair?"
"Hair. One of Balto's was stuck in the fabric inside of it, and Verman's was on the bottom. So it's an either or scenario still."
"It's still a nightmare." Levi sighed. At least they were finally making progress, though. He couldn't even deny that. This was better than nothing. "So besides meeting at the Garrison often, do we have anything else on these guys?"
Hanji shook her head and sighed herself. "Nope. Actually, your job for today is to find them. Sorry for the late notice, but I'm pretty sure you guys are our best bet at actually locating them. No one knows where they are. They were last seen leaving the Garrison. Verman got on the bus back to Shinganshina, I believe, and Balto took a cab back to Stohess."
There were collective sighs from around the table. Levi pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back more on the stool. He wasn't expecting there to be any good news today anyways. Not when it came to this case. But now they had two potential victims… or suspects. Levi realized that then; these two could very well be the killer. This could be a slip, but that seemed too off. The murderer was pretty haphazard to begin with, using different methods, but slipping up this early?
"They've been cleared for being suspects?" Auruo asked. He was watching Hanji flip through more slides, looking for a certain one.
"No, they haven't." she replied, finally stopping on one. It was a picture of the first crime scene, one that was cropped from the video footage. It was sort of blurry around the edges, but Levi could clearly see none other than the brat from earlier. He was near center focus with Mikasa right next to him.
Why this slide?
"They haven't been cleared, but it wouldn't make any sense for them to be making a slip this early, right? I mean, the notes are counting backwards from ten. What happens when it hits zero? One? There's two new potentials as victims, and I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they are. Our killer has two new people set in his sights, and these guys are them."
It makes sense, Levi frowned, staring at the slide up on the screen. Staring right at Eren. One is successful. Really, they both are. Perfect for this...
But why was the slide of the kid up there? Why was this damn brat so involved in this? Levi couldn't escape him. It was official that he couldn't, because if it wasn't having to stare at him on the screen, it was having to see him again in two days to check out the apartment. There better be something extremely wrong about the place, and the story about break-ins better be true too. If not, then the kid was getting his ass kicked for fucking around in the middle of a murder case-
Someone shook his arm. He saw Erd's hand move away from his sleeve. "Are you done zoning out?"
Shit.
"Sorry, what?"
"Irwin asked if you would tell us about this kid. Most of the people here don't have a clue about him."
"Eren Jaeger." Levi cleared his throat, waving his hand in front of his face dismissively while he talked. "He was there for his friend, stuck around for whatever damn reason he had, but left when Petra started screaming and freaking everyone out. Managed to find him later, asked him a few questions, brought him in earlier today to get his prints and his picture. He's too damn curious for his own good, and wants someone to check out his apartment. He's been getting break-ins around his place, which might actually be useful to us now."
"Where does he live?"
"Shinganshina."
"Same place that Verman went back to." Hanji grinned. "That's perfect! Levi, you can go check it out and see if you can find anything on our guy!"
No.
"Can't you send someone else? What about reviewing the crime scenes?"
Irwin stood up and pushed his chair in. "I'll have Zakarius do that with me today. You don't have to worry about that."
Levi watched him walk up towards Hanji, towering over her. He didn't even bother with the laser pointer, and pointed to the small mop of blonde hair that was by Eren's side in the picture.
"We have another person that may help us on this case. Whoever this is left the scene too, and we have a feeling it may be Annie Leonhardt. She's another trainee at the base who went missing around the same time as the murder. No one knows where she is, so we have a strong possibility that this could be her."
Levi knew where this was leading to already. No one had to say a damn thing for that to be clear. If that was Annie, then Eren would know. Taking food to Bertholdt meant knowing who people were around the base, especially fellow trainees. And by the way Bertholdt acted when Irwin pulled out her name, Fubar was close to her.
Which means Eren might be too.
"We could really use this, Levi." Hanji was begging now, the grin fading into a smile. "You've had the most interaction with him, so he'll trust you more than us. Just think! This can really help us!"
He wanted to leave and refuse. But Hanji was right, as much as he didn't want to listen to the shitty glasses and her endless tirades - this could be what they need.
"Fine. I'll call him and I'll meet him somewhere. If nothing checks out to what we need, I won't bother to look at his apartment."
"Levi-"
"Hanji, really. If there was a murderer like this, do you really expect them to do that? To just break into places that have no damn worth to anything?"
She just laughed and flipped through the last slides that weren't anything important. "You can't say. You don't know who the murderer is, so all possibilities must be accounted for."
"Well I think this meeting should be over." Auruo grunted, kicking his feet off the table to push himself away. "I'll tag along with Irwin to the scenes to see what we can find."
"Great." The glasses clad woman was back to grinning, now shoving papers into folders, and folders into folders.
Levi was the first one to actually leave the room. Fine, if he had to do this, then he'd call the kid and see when he could meet. The sooner he got this over with, the better. He could focus on finishing this case then, and without any interference.
The walk back to his desk was too fast for his liking, but Eren's number was on a sticky note right under the phone on the corner of his desk when he got there. The handwriting wasn't his, and Irwin's instead. Bertholdt's file along with the one that got started on Mikasa and Eren were sitting in the center of the dark wood. Levi sighed and sat down in his chair. He punched the number into his phone, listened to it ring twice before a hesitant voice answered.
"Hello?"
"This is Special Agent Levi with the F.B.I. Is this Eren Jaeger?"
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It was about two hours later that he was back at the small coffee shop in the center of the store. Lawson's was usually busy in the middle of the day, but - looking around at the amount of people who passed the section of the store where the caffeine supplier was kept - there wasn't much business. Levi wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not the longer he waited for the damn brat to show up.
"Sorry, sorry."
The chair across from the table he had grabbed was pulled out, the legs of it scraping against the floor. It made Levi frown, and his hands curled into fists on the table's top. Eren dropped the bags he'd been carrying down next to him, giving a sheepish, nervous smile as he pulled himself closer to the table.
"My sister had me pick some things up since I was meeting you here." He nodded down towards the bags, sighing. "So what did you need?"
Levi flipped the folder he had brought to the first page. It was the picture of Eren, with the blonde mop of hair circled in red. He flipped it around so it was right side up to the brunette and slid it across the table.
Levi tapped his finger on the edge of the circle. "I need you to remember anything you can about the scene you were at, and anyone who was around you." He looked up to see Eren staring down at the picture, concentrating.
Good, Levi breathed in relief. They might make progress today.
But that thought was cut short when Eren shook his head. "Is it supposed to be someone familiar?"
"We were hoping it would be Annie Leonhardt."
"Annie?" Eren echoed. It took a second for the name to click apparently, because after it finally registered, the green eyes went wide.
"So now she's involved?"
Levi's eyes narrowed. "Is this her?"
"No! She wasn't there; I didn't see her that day." a pause, and then quieter, "why is she part of this now?"
Levi took the picture back and shook his head. "Can't exactly say why, kid. You said it's not her, then that's that. Why she's involved is essentially classified, and I'm not risking my ass to tell you the reason."
Eren's eyes narrowed and he looked upset. "But she's my friend!"
"And you're working your way up the potential suspects list. You don't have any room to talk." He sneered back. Eren opened his mouth, but closed it, slumping back down into his chair in defeat.
"Can't you tell me anything?"
"No."
"But what if I can help?"
"If that's not Annie and you don't know who it is, then you're out of luck."
"Then tell me about the guy in the folder."
Levi looked down. The picture of Kitts Verman he had stuck in there just incase they went to Shinganshina today fell out and onto the table. It slid until it stopped directly in between his hand and Eren's.
Pieces seemed like they fell into place when the kid picked it up and stared at it. He turned it a little, looked back up at Levi, then back at the picture.
Asking is worth a shot, Levi put the other picture back into the folder and took the one Eren was holding out of his hands. "Do you recognize him?"
"I don't remember his name, but he lives around us. He's in charge of some branch at the military base from what I heard from Bertholdt. I've seen him around a couple of times too."
"Kitts Verman." Levi felt his shoulders relax. They were getting places now. "Have you ever talked to him?"
"Once or twice. I've heard him talk a lot. He's not entirely the nicest guy. I haven't actually had to talk to him for a long time, though. Just to get in and out of the gates at the military base to visit Bertholdt."
"And Annie?"
Pen. He needed a pen and a description of her. Eren seemed to pick up on Levi's searching in his jacket pockets, because he was smiling again and pushing his chair out. The brunette stood, and those too bright green eyes looked over at the front counter where Marco was waiting for the next customer.
"If she's there." he answered. "She likes to keep to herself. Think of whatever questions you have now and I'll answer them, okay? I'm gonna grab something to drink."
Levi just nodded dismissively. Eren moved up and away from the table.
So what now? He wasn't entirely sure what to do. This kid was officially involved, that's for sure, but just with how he knew everyone in question. The blonde kid in the picture might still be someone he knew, but could be protecting. That was an option too. But the more Levi put things together, the more he was confused as to how he was supposed to solve this case. All of the agents assigned to this case and the local officers needed to help find Balto and Verman, and they all knew that. That was their primary job right now.
Which means a fieldtrip to Shinganshina is in order.
That's what would have to happen. Levi would have to actually go to this kid's apartment if not to do anything but snoop around. His house, the surrounding areas, and find out where Verman's was. When he got there, he'd call Irwin and have him head over to help. They should be able to find something then about where their potentials went…
A cup of coffee was stuck in front of him along with a pen and one of the company notepads. The name 'Roast' was shoved in the corner of it, and the pen click seemed all too loud. Levi scribbled the date at the top of it, though, along with Annie's name.
"About five feet tall, roman nose, blonde hair that's usually tied up, blue eyes. Most of the time she looks like she's mad, and she doesn't talk unless she has to. Even then she sometimes doesn't."
Levi's pen flew trying to keep up with Eren's description. "You've done this before?"
Green eyes flashed. "Crime shows."
"Figures." he sat the pen down, looking at the list. "Does she have a car?"
"Not sure."
'Car' with a question mark after it was written down in the corner. He put Auruo's name there too. He could go and check.
"People she's usually seen around?"
"Bertholdt and Reiner. No one else; they're the only people she talks to. She grew up with them."
Their names went down on the paper too. "And your friends that work here?" his pen made a circle in the air, motioning to Marco and whoever else. "Do they know her?"
"Not really. Everyone just really knows Reiner and Bertholdt, since they're the ones that come here usually."
One more to talk to. Levi underlined Reiner's name.
"I'm not about her home address, but I know she stays at the base." Eren continued. He played with the end of his sleeve, pulling at the threads. "You should be able to find out more about her if you look there."
"And what about Kitts?"
Eren shook his head. "Like I said, I'm not sure about him. He lives around me, and you're more than welcome to check the apartments and see if his name is registered to any of them. It could be, but who knows. He takes the later bus back to Shinganshina most of the time during the week, I can tell you that."
That matches up with what Hanji said. Or at least for this time.
"Do you know why?"
Another head shake. Whatever, everything Levi got would have to work for now. But the apartment directory would be helpful, too. He was stuck with making a choice now: going back to the station and immediately looking for them, or going with Eren back to his apartment. He assumed that was an option in this case, at least it was seeming like it.
Maybe there's something in Eren's apartment that would help with this too. Maybe a hint as to who the blonde person is. Levi clicked the pen one last time before setting it in the middle of the table. Well, he was supposed to by friday, wasn't he?
"Eren."
Green eyes snapped up to look at him. Levi couldn't tell what the kid was thinking. Unsettling.
"How are you getting home?"
A blink. Eren looked around like he was looking for someone, but didn't find them. It was a quick motion, one that the agent would have missed if he wasn't paying attention.
"Bus." was the short answer he got in return. "My sister doesn't get off of work until late tonight."
Perfect.
"I can give you a ride back to your apartment. It'll be easier than the bus, especially since you have food with you."
The kid looked next to him, remembering that he actually bought shit before this meeting. There wasn't exactly a reason to turn the offer down, and that's exactly what was going through Eren's mind by the look on his face.
"I'll check the apartment out while I'm there too. Saves me another trip a few days later. Does that work?"
It better work. Eren took a few seconds longer before talking. "Are you sure? You won't get in trouble, will you?"
"The cruiser's mine. I don't even pay for the gas in it, I think a trip to Shinganshina will be fine."
A few more moments of complete silence while Eren thought. Levi frowned in annoyance. It was a simple question, just a yes or no. In the time it took Eren to think, he was able to finish his damn coffee.
"Alright." Eren finally replied. The grin was back on his face. "The apartment is a bit of a mess, though. I hope that's not an issue."
Oh good. With his luck, the brat would end up being a packrat. Levi pushed himself out of the chair, throwing his empty coffee cup away. He shoved the folder back inside his jacket and zipped it up. Two bags were held out to him in a silent question for help, and he - sadly - took them both in one hand.
Whatever got them there and towards the answers faster.