[𝟐] 𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐞 - 𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙨

𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐒𝐄 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐆

"That's ridiculous. Everyone knows that-" Rossi started to say. I can't do this today.

"No, no. We're not getting into that again." I stopped him and gave him the death glare. He just raised his eyebrows and looked out the window.

"Go ahead, Luke." Emily urged.

Luke shifted his eyes between Rossi and I before continuing. "My point is that if you thought the government could do that, then you're likely to believe they brought down the towers on 9/11. Pretty soon you're down that rabbit hole and you see everything as a plot."

"So maybe these guys weren't into anything. Maybe they just talked themselves into some group delusion." JJ spoke.

"Okay, we should investigate that when we land. And since the police are mentioned so prominently on the texts, they might know what the victims were looking into." Emily replied.

"The Chicago mob killed JFK." Matt let out after a moment of silence. Oh, my god.

"He gets it." Rossi said. I rolled my eyes.

"No, don't get him started, Matt. Next he'll be showing you YouTube clips." Emily replied.

—

When we landed, we didn't waste time. We had two bodies and who knows how many more.

We found out Carl Lee filed multiple police reports about someone watching him. The police concluded there wasn't enough evidence to prove anything.

Luke and JJ went to Bryan's crime scene. He was cleaning his fish tank so there was a bleach solution in the water. That could be his cause of death.

Matt and the sheriff went to Carl's crime scene. The only evidence there was there was a small bullet hole in the wall. The unsub dug out the bullet, took the casing and the gun, and left the scene.

Whoever this guy is, he sure knows how to clean up and get in and out of houses without detection. There were no signs of forced entry at either place. Usually, there's something. Some indicator at the crime scene. There was nothing.

Something we did find particularly interesting at Carl's house was an array of hidden guns. One of the guns was missing.

Matt met us back at the station to tell us all about it. He held up a picture of where the missing gun should be. "So we went through Carl's meticulous log of his hardware, and the missing gun should be here. It is a bodyguard 380. Now, if the unsub found this in a secret compartment, then he knows Carl. Probably very well. And based on the fortress that Carl lived in, it'd probably be another truther. No one else could get that close."

That narrows it down a little.

"And that would explain why there was no forced entry at Bryan's either." JJ let out.

"So when Carl said, 'I'm close to finding out who it is', he wasn't talking about some secret cabal, he was talking about a friend." Luke spoke.

"Someone he was willing to call the cops on. We should bring in all the truthers for questioning." Emily replied.

"No. No, that won't work. They won't cooperate under coercion. Look, I say we lay all our cards out on the table. Let's deliver our profile to them." Tara suggested.

"That's risky." I let out.

"But worth it. Either one of the truthers points us to the unsub...or he shows up himself." Tara said.

I looked at Emily and we just nodded. There's no easy way to go about this case.

—

Knowing what we do so far, this will either make this case easier or harder. It's just a matter of what happens here.