Detective Crawford

10

Megan returned from the depths of the park. Alex was talking to Anderson.

"So, should I go home? I think two detectives should be enough," Anderson asked thoughtfully.

"If you want," Megan teased him. Despite the conversation with Lewis, after a few minutes with Alex, her mood improved. "I didn't come empty-handed, by the way." The two detectives looked at each other in surprise.

"I was over at Whitney's yesterday and couldn't resist turning Stella's room upside down. Well, there was nothing suspicious or anything that would help our investigation, except for her laptop. I dug up a lot of interesting information on it. So to begin with, in her messages with her friend Bella, Stella said that she was being chased in the same park by a person, but Stella managed to get away from them by running into a crowd of people. The message was sent a month and a half ago. I decided to search the chat room for similar messages, so I found them by keyword searching. And I found that Stella thought that someone was following her six months ago.3 months ago, she saw the same person in the same places she was, but the person wasn't close to her, about 100 meters away."

"A stalker?" Anderson asked thoughtfully.

"You could call it that."

-"Something prompted him to attack a month and a half ago, and when he failed, he did it again two days ago. So where was he for a month and a half?"

"I think he was thinking about how and where to attack, so that he wouldn't have to do it again," Alex suggested.

"Listen to the end. I have something more intriguing. Let's move away from the correspondence and move on to the photos. I was looking through her photos and among the teenage delirium I found the most useful photos. When Stella was taking pictures on the street, you can see a man in a black hoodie with a hood on his head behind her. With each photo, he stood closer and closer. The last recording was made 2 days ago. It was a video of 2 minutes. The man, as you can see from the body, was burying something in a dark place. I think everyone understood what I want to say with this. So when I watched this video, I had one huge question. "Where is Stella's phone now?"

"It wasn't found when the body was examined."

"Are you saying that the killer took him with him?" Alex asked, wary.

"I think so."

"I want to see that video."

"I brought my laptop with me. Hang on, I'll go get it."

Five minutes later, Megan returned with a laptop. The three of them sat down on a nearby bench and stared at the screen. Going to Stella's ICloud and opening the photos, Megan's brow furrowed, her eyes grew wide with surprise. The gallery was empty. Completely empty.

"Wait, I was here yesterday, there were at most 5000 photos," Megan cried out in a panic.

"That's the confirmation of the phone's location," Alex replied.

"Why did he wait two days to delete the photos? If I were the killer, I would have deleted all the evidence as soon as I got my hands on the phone."

"Anderson, not everyone is like you. I think we need to dig deeper here."

-"He deleted everything," Megan said, looking for all the messages and social media she'd been looking at last night. "Just everything."

"He wanted us to see who he was, to get an idea. One hundred percent. Megan, have you told anyone about the laptop?"

"No... No, you know I don't share things like that. God, all the evidence is gone. I'm the only one who knows what he looks like. So what do we do now?"

"We work. Have you got any other new stuff?" Anderson asked sarcastically.

"Hey, watch your mouth!" Alex replied in an indignant tone.

"She has an appointment with a psychologist today at 1:30 p.m. I also have a suspicion that someone she knows who saw the code on her phone did it. She never took it off."

"Could she have had a fingerprint on the phone's security?"

"No, she never used it. It was because her hands were always sweating. She told me about it herself. I think we should contact her psychologist and her friends."

"I know it's impossible to argue with you, but I didn't want you hanging around the body or working with it. You should take over talking to her friends. It'll be easier on your psyche."

"Yeah, Alex's right. You don't need to work with the body, you don't need to see it, and we'll bring you up to speed."

"Okay. I guess you're right."

"Oh, my God. How can Megan take me up on my offer? Meg, is that you?"

"Alex, that's not funny." She tried to make a joke, but before she could get it out, she was distracted by the honking of a car parked next to Megan's. It was Lewis.

"Damn it... Listen, you guys better get back to work, I'm going to be a little late, and then I'm going to Stella's therapist."

"Megan, do you need my help with him?" He nodded his head at Lewis's car.

"No, I don't, I can handle him."

""If you need anything, holler." Alex stood up and called Anderson with him, and they walked to the scene of the investigation.

Megan stood up and walked to Lewis's car, her anger growing with each step. The question in her mind was: "How did he find her?"