Path Of Shadows: The Awakening

Chapter 10

Detective Anders locks the door behind him then flips on his lights. He closes his curtains before allowing me into the house all the way.

"Want some coffee? Tea maybe?" He asks me.

"No thank you. I'm okay." I say.

"Come in here and have a seat." He says as he gestures to his living room couch.

"I'm okay." I say nervously.

"You have nothing to be nervous about. Once I show you, you'll understand." He says as he walks up his stairs.

"Where are you going?" I shout up after him.

"Have a seat. I just gotta get something." He shouts down from a room upstairs.

I go over and sit down on the couch and wait. When he comes back downstairs he is carrying a box. Like the ones you see in evidence rooms.

"What is that?" I ask him. He sets the box on the coffee table in front of me.

"All the evidence that goes against you." He says as he pulls the lid off of it.

"You stole evidence? For me?" I ask him.

"If I thought you were guilty I wouldn't have." He says.

"How do you know I'm not?" I ask him.

"After the first incident with Vanessa, the blood on her shirt came back as yours. I could have arrested you then and there once I got the results back but I had a gut feeling that something was off. Instead I tailed you and watched. Where you went, I went. Vanessa claimed you assaulted her once again this morning after the restraining order and turned over this." He says as he holds up a disk then looks at it. "I know, you never even left the house this morning. How? I watched your house all night. You didn't leave since I talked to you so there is no way possible you attacked her but she has a video saying otherwise. This video." He says as he pops the DVD into his laptop and hits play.

At first it shows Vanessa standing there alone when someone comes up to her with a hood up. They look as though they were arguing, the hooded person pulls their hood down, looks directly at the camera and attacks Vanessa. I can't really make out who it is because it happens so fast but it kind of looks like me so I can understand the case of mistaken identity.

"Okay, so that just proves she was attacked by someone. Doesn't mean it's me." I say.

"That is what I thought too. Until.." He says as he zooms in and pauses it on the hooded girls face.

"Woah. She looks just like me. How? She had to have edited the video to make that look like me." I say.

"That is what I thought too until I took it to forensics before I stole everything. It's untouched. Unedited." He says.

"So what? She got a look alike to pose as me? Why go through all that trouble?" I ask.

"That is what I'm trying to figure out." He says.

"Is there any way she could have gotten your blood? Because that is another thing going against you. A positive blood match." Detective Anders says.

"No. Not that I know of." I say.

"I also suspect that there is someone in the PD working with Vanessa. That is why it wasn't safe to talk there." Detective Anders says.

"Okay so if they, the cops, get ahold of this stuff then I'm basically fucked." I ask.

"IF, being the keyword here." Detective Anders says. "You hungry? I'm thinking a BBQ for lunch." He says.

"Food is the last thing on my mind right now to be honest." I say.