Ch. 4 Boxed In

"I hate it when they run." Geoff started, followed by Bridgette who was stopped.

"Bridge, go through the kitchen and cut him off by the door." She nodded and ran back in.

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For a guy who had a hard time climbing over into a window, he ran fast. Turning a corner, he skidded to an abrupt halt when Bridgette came through the kitchen door. Waving a vegetable knife she snatched from the counter, she said, 'Stop! Or I'll….do something really bad to you…with this knife!" Clearly, she was prepared in case the man was armed… and that she was very bad at impromptu threats.

Geoff finally caught up, gasping slightly as he took out a pair of handcuffs.

The man raised both his hands in surrender, "Whoa! I didn't do anything wrong here man! I was trying to find my sister, Catherine, but the hotel staff kept booting me out because of my dirty clothes."

"So that entitled you to break in?" Bridgette paused, "Wait, Catherine? So you're Ryan?"

Ryan nodded, "Yeah, how'd you know who I was?"

Geoff hesitated in putting go the cuffs, "Yeah, we had a chat with her and your uncle and aunt, regarding Bianca's disappearance. You know anything about it?"

Ryan straightened out his jacket and responded, wide-eyed, "No, of course not. I only heard about it after I picked up Cat from the pageant. Listen, can we kept this little incident to ourselves? I'm already in enough trouble usually and I promise I won't break in again."

Geoff stared at Bridgette, who merely stared at him in return, not quite sure what to do. He sighed and released him, "Sure, but why are you so muddy?"

"Oh I volunteer in local community gardens and stuff like that."

"Well…that's good, we need more people like that. Come on Bridge, I'll drive you to the lab and then I'll question Heather." He saw that she was about to protest, and thus quickly added, "We don't want what happened earlier to happen again right?"

Bridgette agreed, albeit reluctantly.

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"So Geoff made you sit this one out huh?" Peyton joked as he walked across the platform.

"Is there anything important you wanted to show me or are you just clowning around," bite back Bridgette testily.

Deciding not to aggravate her even more, he got serious, "Unfortunately most of the insects and soil found on the clothes were from the pumpkin patch. However, upon closer examination I found traces of carpet on the clothes."

"Brand and colour?" interrupted Bridgette.

"I haven't found the brand or type yet, however I can tell you that it's between algae green and light blue."

"That's the same colour as the carpet back stage. So she was dragged then?"

"That could be true, however there seems to be some flaws. If she was dragged from the Wonder Falls Hotel and transported to the patch then she should have traces of asphalt or cement from the parking lot, assuming Bianca had to be dragged outside which most likely she had to. Even if the killer picked the body up and carried her once outside then that doesn't make sense as then why would Bianca had to be dragged out of back stage?"

Bridgette thought for a while, she still wasn't sure she was killed back stage in the first place but something kept nagging at her in her head.

"Hey Doc," Maurecia came up, clipboard in hand, "I think I solved the problem regarding the random fractures."

Bridgette turned around, impressed, "You did?"

"Yeah, I took your measurements and ran them through the simulator. I think I have the scenario pretty made out." She walked towards the computer room, followed swiftly by Bridgette and Peyton.

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"And what I am doing in here?" Heather asked coldly, staring across the table in the FBI interrogation room towards Geoff. Sitting beside her was, unsurprisingly, a greasy looking lawyer.

"Aren't you supposed to be looking for whoever killed my daughter?" The lawyer whispered something in her ear and Heather remained silent.

"Agent Murdock, if you have no evidence tying my client to the disappearance and subsequent murder of Bianca Mills-Lambton, then we can sue you for police brutality."

Geoff did not like the slick way the lawyer jabbed at him. He pulled out a file, and spread the contents across the table; high resolution screenshots from the surveillance tape.

"Miss. Mills, care to explain these?" He pointed repeatedly at the photos of the argument between mother and daughter.

Heather stiffened; her brain and her lawyer's brain stifled by the turn of events.

"We just had a tiny argument about her wardrobe. I wanted her to wear a nice, modest but still stylish sequined dress for the talent segment. She wanted to wear a red cocktail dress with feather head gear. That argument seems so silly now."

"And what happened after?" Geoff leaned back on his chair, tapping his hands together.

"We split up, I had no idea where she went but I went to the hotel bar for vodka on the rocks. You can ask the bartender and I can give you a list of all the other parents there."

"So there were other parents getting drunk while their kids were off doing who knows what?" Geoff couldn't stop himself and cursed Bridgette slightly for influencing him so much.

"Hey, these pageants can be tough not only on the children but on us too," Heather stood up and leaned forward.

"Agent Murdock, your comment had nothing important to do with the investigation and I can claim it as harassment against her parenting." The lawyer stood also, but only to calm his client down.

However, the calm train had left the station permanently, "I only did what my girl wanted to be happy. She was popular and on the top of the world! You have no idea what it's like to be unpopular do you? Well I did, and I didn't want her to suffer the same way I did before I became pretty. If that's bad parenting then you can go and stuff that cowboy hat of your up your-"

"Miss Mills is not in the state of mind to talk right now and she has a solid alibi. So unless you want to make an unlawful arrest we will be going now." The lawyer dragged Heather out of the room, before she said or did something that could have her rightfully thrown in jail.

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The scientists were all standing, including Maurecia who was setting up the hologram projector. She typed something quick into her computer and proceeded to walk around, remote in hand.

"Okay, so I've created a 3D reenactment of what may have happened," she pressed a button on the remote and millions of pixels started to form, solidifying into a neck and skull covered with translucent flesh.

"Now, we know that she was pushed from the standing position, fell and hit her head on a hard surface," the holographic skull fell onto a vague looking table, fracturing in various places, "crack goes the cranium and snap goes the neck. We're not exactly sure what killed her, the crack or the snap but most likely the crack. As we only have a rough estimate of the range of height the surface is, we can't ascertain correctly how far she was from the surface." Maurecia pushed another button, and the image shattered and reformed into the complete skeleton.

"Due to the whole contradicting dragging versus carrying scenario I'll skip that part; however, I added in the measurements and markers for the random fractures on the skeleton." Another button and fractures appeared.

"So with these arrangements I simply configured the skeleton digitally the fractures lined up or showed a pattern. What I found was this:"

The skeleton started to move, twist and bend, until it formed a shape.

"A box?" Sarah asked squinting.

Maurecia nodded, "A box, or more specifically, a rectangular box of approximately one meter by fifty centimeters."

"Bianca was at least one meter fifty centimeters tall, so the killer had to…uh, stuff her body in there…"

Bridgette's eyes widened, "which explains the fractures! I have to call Geoff, more likely than not, the killer would have tried to get rid of the truck box nearby the farm to get rid of evidence."

Geoff stared at the door where the two had gone out, then at the picture. He dropped his head, hard, onto the table; it was still there when he felt his phone vibrate. Sitting up, he took it out.

"Agent Murdock."

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It was dark by the time all the technicians returned to Phillips Pharms with all the equipment and search dogs.

"Ugh, damn mosquitoes," Geoff quickly slapped his neck, surprisingly envious of the blue Jeffersonian jumpsuit clad Bridgette. Of all the things he could be doing, he was back in the farm being insect food, and to make matters worse, there was a game on tonight.

"Phillips said that they usually use local volunteers and the occasional employees to supervise and tend the fields all year round, especially in the spring and summer season." She continued walking around the forested edge of the field, flashlight in hand as the others set up the big search lights.

Geoff huffed, breath showing due to the cool summer air, "and even though there's a schedule anyone can still come and go as they please-no cameras and the only barrier is that chain in the entrance. Face it Bridge, we have nothing."

A young intern came up to the two, obviously intimidated (although a ruffled kitten could've spooked him) "Uh, Agent Murdock, no signs of anything strange in the sheds." He pointed to the line of small wooden shacks, their red paint clearly peeling.

"That's fine," Geoff waved a hand, signaling the intern to go away. He turned to face his partner when he heard the rustling coming from Bridgette moving through the bushes.

"Whoa, Bridge, careful in there. It's pretty dark, even with the flashlight," He continued speaking while blindly pushing low lying branches out of his way. He finally stopped when he bumped into Bridgette, who was bent over looking a something.

"My flashlight shined on something," she explained as Geoff balanced himself again. She moved over to the tangled mess of exposed roots, grasses and bushes. Flashlight in mouth while Geoff held his over her for lighting, her hands grasped onto something that was forced into the soil and natural wooden crevices of the tree with considerable amount of strength.

"Here, let me," Geoff, clearly relishing the chance to show off his strength, gently pushed her aside and pulled.

Bridgette gasped, 'I think we found it."

There, like something that came back from the dead, was a large metallic box with a ridged external pattern.

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I believe that I have one or two more chapters to go, so better start looking for the clues Ileft lying here! There's also one that actually pretty vital in the previous chap, but I have a feeling most of you guys won't remember it.