14 PM

Suddenly Klancy’s transmitter resounded.

“Klancy, are the other detectives with you?” said a familiar voice.

It was head detective of Squad L5, Kyong Jintel.

“Yes, they are. What of it?” asked Klancy.

“Right…umm, you should bring your team here. We have…interesting findings regarding the evidence you sent us. I think we shouldn’t say it through the transmitter.” said inspector Kyong.

Raising an eyebrow Klancy ordered his men to get in the car and they drove off.

They soon arrived at the central police station. Head Detective Kyong was with four of his men.

“Down to the basement. There are some reports we would like to show you” said Kyong.

They went downstairs and into the basement of the police station. Kyong’s team was tailing Klancy’s team. The eeriness was definitely felt by Hellen but she couldn’t do anything about it. When they reached the bottom floor suddenly four other cops arrived in front of them. The detectives realized that they were surrounded.

“What’s going on here?” grumbled Klancy.

“Don’t worry. I’m not trying to do something malicious. On the opposite. I was just trying to trap the culprit of the case you were working on, mister Klancy” said Kyong with a smirk.

“You weren’t there to investigate the crime scene with us. What did you find?” asked Klancy.

“The evidence you gave us was quite revealing. Our team examined the bullets and the case shells you gave us and found out that bullets marked B,C E and the case shells marked D E,H,I match the ballistic marking of the glock one of you detectives hold.” said Kyong dramatically.

“Whose?” asked Juniper.

“Yours!” said Kyong blatantly as he pointed his finger towards her.

“What?!” yelled Juniper frantically.

“Yes, Juniper Lawson, you’re under arrest for contributing to the killing of the Matilda family.” said Kyong.

“B-but, that’s ridiculous. I didn’t do anything!” yelled Juniper intensely.

“Well, can you prove that? We are detectives, so naturally if you wanna claim to be innocent you need to provide evidence saying that you didn’t do it.” said Kyong sarcastically.

“I..I” said Juniper, tears starting to appear in her eyes. Her legs were starting to shake.

Hellen looked at her with somberness. Galtomor and Fushichin were definitely more serious than ever.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Calm down. The killings had to have happened between 12:30 to 2:30 AM. Joey said they got a call from Layla at 1:40 AM. So likely the killing did happen between 1:40 - 2:30 AM today. Do you have an alibi for this time period?” asked Klancy.

“It’s no use, Mister Klancy. She is still an accomplice if she helped the culprits by lending her gun to them.” said Kyong.

“That’s cruel. She could have unknowingly lended her gun.” yelled Hellen.

“I didn’t lend anyone my gun. But…I did lose it.” said Juniper.

“Lose it?” gasped Galtomor.

“When?” asked Hellen.

“And why didn’t you tell us that!” grumbled Klancy.

“Cause I know you would make a fuss about it. And I thought it was a lost cause anyway. It was during when we visited that resort with the hot springs. After I arrived home from the visit I realized that the gun in my holster was exchanged with a decoy that looks and weighs the same as a police glock.” said Juniper with depression.

“Huh, stuff like that does exist?” asked Fushichin.

“I saw some toy guns having similar weight and feel to real guns.” said Galtomor.

“You can talk about your silly excuses in the interrogation room. Take her away” ordered Kyong.

The cops rushed towards Juniper and cuffed her.

“H-Hey, I’m telling you the truth, you assholes.” yelled Juniper with a frown.

The cops held her tightly from her arms and dragged her out of the room.

“Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun a little bit?” asked Fushichin .

“We’re certainly not. The ballistic marking alone is solid enough evidence. You can meet the firearms examiners if you don’t believe me.” said Kyong.

“And I believe our squad was in charge of this case, not yours, Head detective Kyong.” commented Klancy.

“The case is quite large in terms of its importance and scale. I believe it’s not the matter of a single squad. Which is why our squad got the evidence from the medical and firearm examiners.” said Kyong brightly.

Kyong continued saying “In total we found the bullets and casings to have come from 4 different guns. 1 magnum, 3 glocks. The magnum is registered on the victim Klied. He worked as a bodyguard and had legal rights to use it. One of the glocks was registered on Juniper. The other belonged to a person named Herald Huragway. The final glock, we failed to identify unfortunately. It most likely was made illegally or shipped from abroad. We're gonna head over and meet Herald if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Yeah, go for it. We’ll try to clear Juniper’s name if we can.” said Klancy..

“Oh, I almost forgot, the medical examiners found DNA under the nail from the right hand of the victim Claire. They have yet to connect it to an actual person tho.” said Kyong.

“What?! That’s means that Claire must have scratched the culprit while struggling against them.” said Galtomor.

“Don’t we have a database of fingerprints and DNA? We found the clue to crack the case, what are you doing?” asked Fushichin.

“Don’t take us for a fool! We searched the database and didn’t find matches. It certainly isn’t the DNA of your friend Juniper, but we all know there likely are multiple attackers, so she may still be one of the culprits. And we only have DNA and fingerprints of people who registered for state related jobs such as policemen, detectives, nurses, teachers, firefighters etc. If it’s someone who is unemployed, we wouldn’t know. So make sure you take the DNA of the suspects.” explained Kyong.

Hellen nodded at the statement and Kyong went away with two of the cops who were standing behind him.

The five detectives now looked at one another in awe.

“So, what do we do now?” asked Fushichin eagerly.

“We have lots to do. We need to track down the IP address, location of the uploader of the malicious program. And we also need to interrogate Juniper.” said Klancy.

“I…I wanna interrogate Juniper. If we have a say in this.” said Hellen.

“Yeah, I hope they don’t think this is a conflict of interest.” said Galtomor.

“They won’t. If anything it’s us who knows what type of a person Juniper is so we should be fit to interrogate her. Since Hui Ying and Manish are experts at computer and cyber security related work, I’ll take those two with me to the website hoster. Salim, you’ll go with me?” asked Klancy.

“Yes, of course.” said Salim and nodded.

“Great. We’ll leave Juniper to you.” said Klancy.

*******