17.

Going to Matthew proved to be very unhelpful at best since nothing he gave them at this point could give them any clues of the murderer, what was used to kill him or any motive to why someone would kill Mr. Hawkes. Wait, that's not correct, she and Uriah had a few motives to why someone, namely Abigail Green, would want to kill the victim. Unfortunately they had no evidence that could tied to any of them and even with a flimsy alibi as the one Miss Green gave them it was definitely not enough to arrest her. So they were pretty much back to square one on the case. And seeing as they were at god knows how long stop in the case, Tris figured the best way to do it over again was to start completely fresh with everything they had got and continue from there. So she and Uriah returned to their desk, grabbing the whiteboard and everything that had something to do with the case and went to one of the empty meeting rooms so they could work on the case without being disturbed by annoying older brothers and protective boyfriend/girlfriend.

"Let's start with what we know for sure," Trish commented as she removed the last piece of information and cleaned the last few writings on the whiteboard before she took up the profile picture of the victim and hung it up on the board. "Our victim is Mr. Hawkes, who were killed in his apartment."

"As far as we know our victim were alone in his room prior to his murder," Uriah said, while reading his notes on the statements all the staff had given him. Though they had their suspicion on the staff members, they all had given statements that were similar and reasonable at the time of the murder, so for now they would take account on what the staff had given them. "The staff left around eleven o'clock like always and no one saw or heard anything suspicious."

Tris nodded, "Right. So based on the footprint evidence I found, the murderer used the secret entrance to get in, kill Mr. Hawkes and get out without anyone knowing about it. The crime techs still haven't found what exactly the metal particles are or the precise shoe size yet, so at this point it can be anyone not just Miss Green."

Uriah put away his notebook and folded his hands as he watched the whiteboard with a thoughtful expression. After a short while he leaned back in his seat before he said, "Okay, let's for now not think about suspects, but go with the evidence we have. According to you and Matthew our victim didn't have any defensive wounds, which indicates that he didn't fight back."

"Or was caught by surprise," Tris interrupted, as she sat down on the table moving her gaze between the whiteboard and her partner. "Either way whether the man was eccentric and paranoid or not, shouldn't he have been able to fight back?"

Uriah shrugged his shoulders, "If the guy was well-trained or responded on his natural reflexes he should have been able to fight back even though the lack of defensive wounds says otherwise. Still nothing about this guy says that he did either of those things, so most likely it is as you assume that he was taken by surprise thereby couldn't fight back even if he wanted too."

"So we can assume the killing was done in one quick action, which is supported by how the wound track appears. It was a single slice to the throat, no other injury, made by a weapon that we can still not determine other than it was a metal tool blade that you can find in any workshop," Tris continued thinking out loud. She placed her hands on the table, adding weight on her arms as she leaned forward to look more closely at the whiteboard. Then a thought popped into her head and almost immediately went out of her mouth, "I know it might not be the best time to ask this, especially since we have been over this before, but other than our victim's habit of having casual sexual liaisons did the guy have any other kind problems with anyone or anything for that matter?

Though it was reasonable if he felt insulted or annoyed by her question he reacted totally opposite from what she had expected. Uriah didn't answer instead pulled out his computer and began typing something on it before he replied seriously, "The guy had no financial problems as far as I could see and there was no criminal record on him other than a few unpaid parking tickets a few months ago."

That last part he said was kind of interesting, even though it could be perfectly nothing like it normally was, but still she was wondering if there might be something more. So when she turned to look at him she tilted her head slightly to the left before she said with slight sass, "Humor me and tell me where our victim received these parking tickets."

Clearly confused, Uriah asked with almost an incredulous voice, "Why?"

Tris stood up from her seat and began walking towards him and the computer to see the screen, "Just a hunch."

Without questioning her reason he did what she asked and shortly after that they learned that all the unpaid parking tickets were given out at the same location for the last three months and only stopped a couple of weeks before the victim died.

Uriah turned his gaze away from the screen to look at her, "So I guess you are going to say we have to check out this location and find out why our guy would go down there in the first place and stop coming later on, right?"
Tris gave him a grin that literally said it all. And he was definitely not in any position to deny her wishes seeing as she would only be very stubborn about it until he agreed or simply go by herself to check it out and if he had to choose between those two options then going along with her idea seemed both more reasonable and a lot safer for his own well being, since Four would most likely kill him if he ever allowed Tris to go by herself, and frankly he wasn't in the mood to be yelled by Four more than once today. Tris wrote down the address of the location before she and Uriah left the station track down what more their victim had been up to prior to his death.

Normally someone with an Abnegation background would naturally have a very low profile. It was pretty much a given thing, considering how they put others before themselves and all of that, hence why the Abnegation police department shut down shortly after he and Tris left due to the lack of criminal activity and also because the council decided to melt together all the police departments between the five cities and Dauntless PD became the main and only police department that was in charge of crime solving and crime fighting issues. However when Four was looking into the background of Natalie and Andrew Priors, everything turned out to be unnaturally clean. Not that he expected something wrong about it, but it just rubbed him off in the wrong way. And it certainly didn't help that his mother's words kept slipping in, making him question everything about the Priors.

There was little to no information about either of their pasts and from the few reports made about them it was relatively noted that they lived a quiet life in the background despite their position in supporting Marcus and Abnegation. Beside the many charity works, they were hardly worth anyone's interest and according to their friends and co-workers the couple generally kept to themselves as did their children later on.

Four didn't like the whole anonymity situation and was determined to unfold the secrets that were buried away, even though it would definitely take more than a couple of hours to gather everything and then actually get to the unfolding part. As he continued clicking on his computer, looking through the different news articles about the Prior couple, he was suddenly interrupted by a familiar and obnoxious voice.

"Four, just the man I wanted to see," Lieutenant Coulter walked straight up to his desk, meanwhile he remained perfectly still and didn't remove his gaze from the screen. Hoping that if he didn't acknowledge him that the man would just go away, unfortunately that didn't seem to be the case. So he sighed wearily before he responded, "Lieutenant, just the man I did not want to see, but I guess the universe decided to be a bitch. So tell me why you are so that I can quickly deny your request and get back to work."

Eric didn't seem to take the comment lightly and with ease since he scoffed at him, and thankfully didn't respond back with the same rudeness, even though he dropped the fake pleasantness, which were more or less a blessing since Four liked better to handle the real Eric than the fake one.

"Look, this is not coming from me, but the guys upstairs are on my ass about this," Eric replied annoyed and honestly looked like he resisted the urge to roll his eyes, which by normal circumstances were odd for the man. "There is going to be gala event in two days. Important people are going to be there, people who is sponsoring or perhaps are considering sponsoring, and it is a priority to get sponsorship in order for the police department to gain the funding it needs. In other words I need you and the Stiff at that gala to smooth talk sponsors."

This made him turn his gaze away from the computer screen with his eyebrow raised, "Excuse me? You want us to pretend that we are what…sales people? We are homicide detectives, what we do is gory and horrible to talk about, especially in public, and you actually suggest we go around talking about it casually with sponsors?"

Eric just shrugged his shoulders, indicating that it really wasn't his problem how it looked or what he thought, since the point was that is was an order, not a suggestion. Then he folded his arms and answered, "That's the way of life. People give us funding in exchange for information in what exactly we use the funding for, whether they like it or not does not matter. Either way you two are going since you are, as much as I hate to admit it, two of my best detectives and besides it would only be foolish to send Zeke and Uriah. The two of them would most likely burn the place to the ground if they were left unattended at a party like this."

Four almost wanted to smirk about the part regarding Zeke and Uriah at the gala, because what Eric assumed was most likely to be true based on the brothers' personalities and wild party habits, which was definitely not suitable for a stuffy gala, but either way he kept his mask of indifference in check. In honest opinion, he didn't want to go for several reasons; one of them was the fact of facing his father again shortly after seeing his mother. The other reason were the whole facing the old home and community he had left behind when he was eighteen, which nobody would forget or pretend they had forgotten about. Still the gala might present itself as a perfect opportunity to talk and get information about his case, seeing as all the important people are going to be there, including the council members like Jeanine Matthews.

"Fine," Four said begrudgingly, even though he was more or less pleased with the fact that Eric of all people had given him this opportunity. "We'll do it, but don't expect us to be all happy about it."

Eric just carelessly waved his hand, like he couldn't careless what they thought or felt about the matter as long as they did their designated duty and the higher ups weren't on his ass then he was happy as a clam. He left shortly after that and returned back to his office, leaving Four to return back to the case.

When Tris and Uriah arrived at the location it was pretty much silent and empty as a grave. It was around the outskirts of Dauntless, surrounded by empty warehouses and storage lockers. The only place that seemed to have some or little people around were the closed bar around the corner from where the victim had received his parking tickets. Deciding between whether they should check area where he received the tickets or gather up some information beforehand, they came to the conclusion talking the owners of the bar might give them some indication what they were up against. Neither of them was in the mood to be caught off guard or anything that went along that line.

So when she and Uriah stepped into the bar they found it as expected almost and with slow rock music was playing in the background. The bar was a typical Irish bar and suited for people like Four, intimidating loners, to hang out after work to drink, not exactly what described the victim the slightest, but nevertheless the bartender came out from the back room and when he saw them he responded with a tired yet automatic tone, "Sorry. We're closed, come back in a couple of hours."

"Yeah, we are not customers," Uriah said with a light, almost teasing, tone and held up his police badge. " Dauntless PD. I'm detective Pedrad and this is my partner Prior. We were hoping to ask you a couple of questions if you don't mind."

The bartender were obviously flustered over the fact that cops had showed up, whether it was because he was guilty over something or not weren't cleared, but Tris took it astride since many people get weird when they are in the company of police and normally it didn't have to do with them doing something wrong. So why would she suspect a bartender of killing a rich guy, especially since she didn't have any proof or motives that would say otherwise?

"Of course, anything to help the police, " the bartender reached out his hand, which Uriah shook meanwhile she nodded her head to acknowledge him. "I'm Mick O'Rourke. Tell me what this is about."

Tris pulled out a small picture of the victim from the inner pocket of her jacket and held it up to O'Rourke and asked straightforwardly, "Do you recognize this man?"

O'Rourke stared into the picture for a quick moment before he replied easily, "Yeah, I seen him around here, never came in, normally came here at night before the big rush come in here. Why? Who is he?"

She placed the picture back in her jacket, meanwhile Uriah stepped in and answered the question, "He's dead, murdered in fact and we were hoping you could tell us why exactly he would come down here. Seeing as this is not exactly the most populated place for a guy to hang around alone."

O'Rourke shook his head and placed his big meaty hand over his forehead, confused and slightly shaken up about the whole thing. "I don't know what he was doing around here. I only saw him a couple of times and it didn't last very long either, but I can tell you that he was very odd about whatever he was doing."

"Why do you think that?" Tris asked curiously. The victim had been described as eccentric and paranoid, but the way the older man described it the question became whether there was something more behind it than what was laid in front of them.

The man sat down on the closest chair he could find and answered with a low and wary voice, "He kept looking around like he was expecting someone to spy or jump on him and then he went inside that warehouse and wouldn't come out for hours. And what was even weirder was that more people like him kept showing up around the same time and wouldn't leave before around closing time."

Both she and Uriah nodded, it did seem very suspicious and even more so than what they had first expected. If the victim weren't the only one who came and went to the warehouse and acted suspiciously about it then something fishy had to be up and was definitely worth investigating. So they asked which warehouse he had seen the victim enter and O'Rourke pointed out the exact warehouse where the victim had received his many parking tickets, which meant that they definitely had to check out that warehouse and discover what was so damn important for the victim to show up in the first place.

"Thank you," Tris said grateful to the man before she pulled out her card and handed it over to him. "Please call us if you can think of anything else, doesn't matter how big or small it might be important either way."

O'Rourke nodded and promised to do so, and shortly after that she and Uriah left the bar and headed in the direction of the warehouse. Hoping that there might be a shot for them to look around without having to ask for a warrant to search the premises, because court orders were such a hassle and could sometimes work against them, especially in cases where everything is put on hold because of the necessary requirement for getting the warrant in the first place. But the chances was that they wouldn't need a warrant, seeing as it was one of them abandoned warehouses, but still she would have to make sure so that them entering the warehouse wouldn't come back and bite them in the ass since it was definitely not fun to be yelled at by Lieutenant Coulter and be placed to cataloging evidence for undetermined time.

"This is getting ridiculous," Four muttered angrily to himself as he hung up the phone, which had basically gotten him nowhere. "How is it possible that no one remembered what happened the day when Natalie and Andrew Prior had been murdered?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure that it is hard to remember something that happened over twelve years ago," Zeke answered as he stepped inside and sat down on the empty chair next to his desk. "Which is what I found out when I went to look deeper into Jeanine Matthews and the other council members."
Four rested his chin on the palm of his hand, "Really? Nobody remembered or told you anything useful."

Zeke shook his head to answer the question before he said, "Well, everybody I talked to gave me the same explanation that they either didn't know the victims that well or they don't really know or remembered what happened, but what was interesting was that when I tried to contact both Miss Matthews and the other council member, Mr. Marcus Eaton, neither of them seemed that willing to comment and pretty much directed me to the door and not before they told me that the next time I tried to talk to them again a lawyer would have to be present during the meeting."
Hearing that made Four sigh frustrated over the whole situation and run his hands through his hair. Jeanine Matthews reaction over detectives stopping by and trying to talk to her about an old cold case were not surprising, since she didn't seem to be interested in being involved in something of the past that could potentially ruin her political as her financial career. Marcus' reaction on the other hand were suspicious since as long as he had known his father the older man hated lawyers and even more he hated people who were snooping into his life. And if he was desperate enough to hire a lawyer to keep his secrets secret then he was bound to hide something or at least know more than he was letting on. Besides he was more than aware what Marcus had to hide about his life, since should his secrets get out then it was not only his life that would be caught in the crossfire.

"Okay, if they told you that they didn't want to talk to you without a lawyer present then we will just have to do that then," Four reasoned as an idea popped into his head that could actually work in their favor. Zeke asked of course how that was possible, so Four began telling him about the interesting conversation he had had with Lieutenant Coulter earlier about the whole gala part where he and Tris had been invited to. Once he was done with his story Zeke looked like he was going to pee his pants because he was laughing so hard that he wrapped his arms around his stomach to ease the pain.

"I'm glad I'm not you two…hahaha," Zeke still laughed before the laughter began to choke up and slowly went back to its normal condition. "I can't wait to see how you are going to present this to Tris, because I have a hard time imagining her wanting to go to these sort of things. She is you know kind of a badass, not a prissy princess."

Four just sighed, not because Zeke were wrong because he was actually spot on about that part, it was just that along telling her about the gala he might have to tell her soon about the case. Which is why he was actually dreading to tell her in the first place. Anyways Zeke must have noticed to his body language or something since he asked, this time more quietly and sincere, "Are you going to tell her soon about the case? How we have reopened the old cold cases, including the unsolved murder on her parents."

He sighed once again and ran his hand through hair before he just shook his head and replied, "I don't know when or even if I should tell her in the first place."

"What do you mean if you should tell her?" Zeke looked definitely surprised about that admission. "You have to tell her about this. This is not exactly something you can dust under rug and expect it to go away on its own."

"But not matter how I handle it this whole thing is going to hurt her and I don't want her to slip into that dark place that is the road to self destruction," Four tried to ease his reasoning and making it seem both right and reasonable. However Zeke didn't feel at ease with his reasoning at all, and he could tell that when his partner just shook his head before turned look at him again with pure disbelief.

"It doesn't matter if she might stray on to a destructive path or not," Zeke exclaimed frustrated. "She is literally going to kill you, both for keeping it a secret from her for this long and for trying to shut her out of it. And honestly, I weighting whether I'm going to let her do it or not since you, my friend, is way over your head to even consider doing this to the woman that you love."

Four tried to argue back, but Zeke wouldn't let him and continued on ranting about it, "Look, if you want a friendly advice or rather the best solution to your problem, well I'm going to give it to you any way whether you want it or not, but anyways tell her the truth now before it is too late and the damage is still fixable. Otherwise you might end up losing your relationship or worst her complete trust in you and from what I have learned from the past about you two she might not be able to overlook or forgive you this time."

When they opened the warehouse doors the first thing that met them were darkness, to be more exact the warehouse were pitch black and they couldn't even see what was right in front of them including themselves. So it had been a great idea to bring along their flashlights as they ventured further into warehouse. Tris moved her flashlight around, looking for anything that could point out why the victim would come to this place, but it was pretty much nothing even though she wouldn't say it was clean either. Old boxes, dust and her personal favorite a few dead rats here and there.

"Nice place, can't imagine why our victim would come here," Uriah said teasingly. Then his demeanor changed into a more serious or at least as serious as he could be and he continued saying, "Do you have any ideas why he would come here and then suddenly stop after a while?"

"It could be the usual stuff, drugs, sexual encounters with a prostitute or something like that," Tris replied as they moved to the stairs that led to the basement, which was surprising that it even had considering that it was a warehouse meant for storage keeping. "But I don't think that is the case, seeing as O'Rourke mentioned that several others showed up here as well. And drug deals don't happen in huge company and prostitutes don't hang around here due to the lack of activity here, so I'm going on a limb here and assume that there is something totally different going on here and it might definitely going to be something unexpected."

Uriah shrugged, "Nothing is as unexpected as that organization that worked against lesbians, black people and etc."

They came to the bottom of the basement she noticed a light switch. She turned it on, hoping that it might work since the basement was even darker than the ground floor and their flashlights couldn't exactly cover everything and make it out as an entire picture. Fortunately the light worked down here since seconds later the light was on and they saw everything in the basement, but as soon as Uriah's words left his mouth they both knew how dead wrong he was about unexpected occurrences because they found themselves in basement that was set up in way that seemed like it had been taken away from a horror movie. There were candles, chalk-drawn circle on the floor and a huge decorated alter on one side of the room. What really took the cake was the small see-through bowl on the top of it and was half-filled with red liquid that was without a doubt blood.

"I think you have to rethink that whole unexpected thing," Tris said as she walked closer to the bowl and the alter itself. "Because I don't think our victim was definitely not just eccentric in normal standards. Apparently he had grown an interest in some kind of exorcism ritual cult thing. It might be the real reason why he got killed."

Uriah just stared at the scene with huge eyes before he said dejected, "I guess I'm going to call back up and CSU to check the scene and find out who was using this place and what exactly they were using it for, but I'm pretty sure whatever this is it is not something good."

Tris didn't say anything, but she had to agree on his notion on the matter and she definitely didn't' like this case anymore than what she did before.

Zeke had left to meet up with Christina and look at how things were going on her end on the case, leaving him to his own devices, but it was fine really because it gave him the time too thinking over his options regarding informing Tris about the on-going investigation or not. Four knew that the right thing to do was to be honest and tell her the truth about what he and everyone else were working on that involved her parents' murder. However his concern that she might not be able to handle it and would stray her back on the dark path she had been on before they broke up and it had literally destroyed her to be unable to solve that case, and he couldn't handle seeing her go through that again even if she would hate him for it. Still Zeke did have a point that if he didn't tell her then the consequences could blow up and be beyond fixable once it was all over. And though he feared nothing more than to lose her, he couldn't take the risk of losing her without being able to make her understand his reasons. She might scream, punch and yell at him for doing this and trying to keep her safe, but his feelings for her was stronger than anything else and he was definitely not going to give her up without a fight, even when she would give up.

So he had reached the conclusion to tell her about it once she came back to the station, seeing as this was definitely not a conversation that should be done over the phone. He continued working on Natalie's background, which was surprisingly lacking since there were no records on her before she met Andrew Prior and they moved and got married in Abnegation. Then he began typing and looking through the many databases on her maiden name Wright to see if anything would pop up. And it didn't take long before he indeed got a match, but the thing was that according to the database Natalie Wright was an elderly woman who died of lung cancer around the same time as Tris's mother, who were seventeen years old at the time, suddenly appeared in Dauntless.

"Oh my god," Four muttered as he continued to look at the screen with huge and shocked eyes. As much as he hated to admit it, his mother had been right. Natalie Prior did indeed have something to hide, but what his mother didn't know was that she wasn't hiding a piece of information. She had been hiding her real identity and lived her life under an assumed name. Natalie Prior was not the woman who she claimed to be.

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Thanks again for the amazing response I have been receiving, hope you guys like this chapter.

Like I stated in my previous author's notes, I'm not sure how often or when I will be able to update on the story due to school and such. However I will continue writing on it when I have time to spare and release it when I can. So please be patient and understanding about the matter.

And it is not long before this story is a year old. Time as flown by since I first released this story and I'm happy to see how many of you who loves and enjoys my work. I can't promise that a chapter will be released in time for the anniversary, simply because I have an assignment around the same time and I normally release my chapters on a certain day now, but I promise that I will continue writing and in the meantime continue show your support, because I really appreciate it.

Anyways keep giving me reviews, favorite and/or followings, and the next chapter will be out as soon as its done.

xXrebelgirl07Xx