AN: Here's the next chapter, read and enjoy.
Day 30, 1035 Hours, Broken Hall
John waited quietly as people dispersed from the scene of the crime. Barry and Chloe had stayed behind to guard the body, although it was doubtful that any of them could perform a proper inspection since both of the former detective-ly talented people were now dead. One a victim, one a culprit, slightly ironic, if John was using that word right which he doubted because he knew the average rate at which people correctly used the word 'ironic', or at least a good guess. Either way it wasn't extremely likely.
Anyways, John noted Paris's continued companionship before moving towards the body and waved to the guards of the scene. Chloe grunted in slight frustration while Barry just smiled and nodded. John rolled his eyes at the levels of response before leaning forward to inspect Billy's corpse.
The most notable thing beyond the surprised expression and of course, the rebar poking out of his chest, was nothing. He didn't look horribly injured, had no obvious defensive wounds, and had left no clues like Wilbur had even if the clue was misinformed. Deciding to move onto a more thorough inspection, John began trying to lift Billy's shirt to inspect his chest for bruises. The blood held the shirt in place against his lighter tugs, making him grimace as he was forced to exert more effort.
Once the shirt had come away with a slight sucking sound, lacking a better place to place the shirt, he folded it over Billy's head, wincing as the feeling that he was being a disrespectful douche to the deceased. Looking over Billy's chest, John saw what might have been bruises from Billy being shoved into the rebar, supporting the fact that this was in fact a full murder attempt, not attempt, success.
Not seeing anything else, John looked over to Paris who was looking at her ID, presumably reading the Monokuma File.
"What does it say?" John asked her, as he stood up straight from inspecting Billy's wounds, taking a moment to put the former behavioral analyst's shirt down, hopefully assuring his immunity from being haunted by Billy for being disrespectful to his corpse.
"Um, next to nothing really, he was found at around ten thirty, he was killed by a hole being punched through his heart and spine, and he had minor defensive wounds," the soccer player said, slipping her ID back into her pocket.
"Ok, that about matches what I found, or think I found," John said, sighing in slight frustration at his lack of expertise.
Paris patted his back as he rubbed his forward, bringing a snort of disgust from Chloe including the comment of get a room.
Turning to the survivalist he queried, "Do you have anything useful to add or just whiny comments?"
"How was that whiny?"
"You're jealous that your girlfriend isn't here to do the same thing."
"Pf, that was weak."
"That's beside the point, anything useful?"
"I was with you the entire time, so I know about the same amount you do," Chloe said rolling her eyes, "don't get too swept up in your budding relationship that you forget basic points."
"I knew you were with me; I was asking if you say anything useful! Oh, that goes for you too Barry," John said grumpily.
A chorus of negatives answered John prompting him to leave the scene shaking his head as Paris followed along behind, sticking her tongue out at Chloe, who responded by shouting a few obscenities after them.
John paused once they had passed from the others' line of sight, before turning to Paris and asking, "Did you catch where the others were heading to?"
"No, they didn't really say anything before they left," Paris said with a slight sigh of disappointment, "they all seemed slightly depressed, except Ferris."
"I'm not surprised, but there doesn't seem to be much more we can figure out with this one," John said with a sour grimace.
"What do you mean? I'm sure there is plenty more we can figure out," Paris said, giving John a slight smile in an attempt to give him encouragement.
"Not really, we've already found the murder weapon, a stationary pillar for fucks sake anyone could use it, I suppose we could cross check the people likely to be influenced by the motive with people strong enough to be able to force Billy onto the rebar to shatter his spine and puncture his heart and break his sternum, I think? Whatever, his chest, and break his chest open, that works."
"Okay, see? That's something to work on right?" Paris said with a smile.
"Not really, I already thought up a list of people who the motive would appeal to, and crossing it against the people strong enough to actually pull that feat off is fairly simple," John said, "another thing that would help is if we could remember what time the heat was put back to normal at so we actually have a time of death."
"Yeah, and get it based on who's in the area and could commit the murder," Paris said, nodding vigorously.
"We can clear the people who were too far away to be able to pull it off, me, you, Chloe, Ferris, and Atsuko," John said, finally beginning to walk forward to explore another section of the school.
"Alright, that leaves Alexander, Barry, Mary, and Jane," Paris said, "And Mary and Jane are too weak to have been able to actually impale him like that right?"
"Actually, Mary works with sculptures so she has to be strong enough to break rocks apart with her bare hands, unless she uses a jack hammer which would still require a lot of upper arm strength, and Jane…I'm not sure but it's still too early to rule her out yet."
"Can't give her any trust?" Paris said in slight distress.
"I can't risk everyone dying because I gave her the benefit of the doubt," John said.
"That's nice," came Jane's voice, slinking in from around the corner, causing Paris to jump in surprise, "I appreciate your friendship as well."
John looked towards the voice and saw Jane lurking, hiding partly behind a wall from them. He sighed before he tried approaching her, causing her to withdraw behind the wall more. He paused and stepped back, letting his arms fall to his sides hopefully sending a message to Jane that he wasn't going to try and reach her.
Jane stopped retreating but stayed behind the wall, instead choosing to say, "Does that mean you won't take any testimony I have?"
"I am going to operate under the assumption that you may have done it but I'm not going to discount anything you have to say, Perdita did end up helping us by handing us that note when we found her trying to cover her tracks," John said, letting out a small laugh, "funny that she didn't make up a lie or anything, maybe she did feel a bit of regret or trepidation at killing so many people."
Jane snorted slightly moving back around the corner a bit as too interact with them better, still hiding the majority of her body behind the wall as a shield against attacks.
She hesitated for a moment considering what she was going to say before saying, "I saw Barry moving around this wing shortly before Billy bit the dust."
"Yeah? And where were you when the murder occurred?" John asked her.
"I was hiding in the physics lab as it seemed to be the place with the least amount of weapons at the present," Jane said, gritting her teeth, before she darted away behind the corner to hide somewhere else.
"…it's good to see she's trying to reconnect with the group," Paris said, with a weak smile.
"I suppose, it's an improvement on not interacting with anyone at least," John said.
They stood in silence a moment longer until in a silent unspoken agreement they left the hall in silence, taking a different route than Jane had. As they were walking, silence reigned over the school. It was everywhere they looked, and they didn't care to speak aloud and break the heavy void of noise over them. It seemed to suck the hope right out of the air, like a big annoying vacuum cleaner, probably sponsored by Monokuma the little weirdo.
It probably would have gone on indefinitely if they hadn't run into Ferris and Atsuko. The chemist and the lucky student were having a quiet conversation when they walked up and stopped speaking once the other two were within hearing distance.
"What did you guys find out?" John inquired.
"A whole lot of nothing," Ferris said with a bit of bitterness in his voice, conflicting with his ever present grin.
"We found out that Alexander and Mary say they weren't at the scene of the crime when it was committed so, that's basically useless knowledge without anything to back it up," Atsuko added with frustration evident in her voice.
"Of course, then I would like to review my previous statement, we have diddly squat, which is better than nothing but not as useful as squat," Ferris said, snickering a little at his own joke.
Atsuko rolled her eyes but waved at them in a gesture to get them to spill their knowledge as well. Paris began telling them what she and John had come up with, while John did his best to focus on where the hell to go next.
If they were to be believed, Ferris and Atsuko that is, then Alexander and Mary were exactly zero help in providing any useful evidence towards solving Billy's murder. That meant they had most of the evidence already. Which was not fucking helpful since it was stupid ass evidence like Billy got shoved into it from the front and that it could have been any of four people which meant there was a seventy-five percent chance for each of them to choose the wrong person if it came down to a random vote.
Oh this was looking good, and it would really give Monokuma a kick to see them despair at the fact they had zilch on which of them was actually murderer out of the group.
"Hey, John!" Paris suddenly said, shaking his shoulder to bring his mind back from the dark valley of thought he had been trapped in.
"What?" he said blankly.
"I was asking if you wanted to go check out Billy's room now that you're out of la-la land, or is it your mind palace?" she asked.
"Let's just go check out the room," John said, "giving her a flat look."
He turned around and realized he had lost all orientation to the rest of the school and had no idea where he actually was. Had they moved? Or had he just not been paying attention at all during this entire time?
Paris sighed, grabbed his shoulder and spun him around before dragging him in what was assumedly the proper direction towards the dorms. He allowed her to guide him around the halls, ignoring the comments that Atsuko said that just failed to reach his hearing and Ferris's braying laughter that followed after.
The walk of silence resumed, John eventually shifting out of Paris's grasp once he figured out where he was. He nodded to her in thanks for assisting him in his small moment of disorientation to the world. They finally worked up the courage to shatter the silence with conversation as they approached the dorms, reaching Billy's room and opening the door to inspect what was a tribute to classic rock, at least Billy's definition of it.
Ignoring the extreme amount of posters and other music memorabilia scattered about the now unoccupied room for anything useful to the trial. The room was fairly bare in that aspect. They found a journal and it had a few interesting entries that were composed of his observations on people's behavior, with specific notes on when behavior began to deviate from the norm.
Recently marked was Barry and Alexander, although why had been left off. On the surface it could be useful, but then again it could also be utterly useless. John pocketed it as best he could, before moving on. It wasn't much longer before the announcement calling them to the elevator sounded and they collapsed to the central hall, everyone assembling within a few minutes.
As they waited, john couldn't help but notice that Shi-ru hadn't been present for the entire time they had investigated, they hadn't even seen him at the start when Monokuma had showed up. He hoped nothing bad had happened to him. But they had bigger problems at the present, such as Billy, the slightly cynical behavioral analyst who had still taken a positive outlook on the end result of this whole situation, and now he would never see it.
It's time to bring whoever killed him to light, and knowing Monokuma they would probably be cooked alive in it.