PIVOT

We've got it all wrong: Continue

She nodded, as if she had no clue what Alex was talking about but believed her nonetheless. "What made you want to become a doctor?"

"Grey's anatomy."

Bevett laughed like it was the funniest thing she had ever heard, and while the sound of her laughter was unflattering, her face lit up and she looked exactly like her sister. "At least that show did something right."

"It changed lives." Alex said as she took a few bold steps forward, hands hidden in her coat pockets that had gotten moist with sweat. "Doctor, you look oddly familiar, do you have a sister perchance?"

"That's it babe, just ask her questions."

There weren't any cameras in Bevett's office so tanner didn't see when the laughter drained from her face like breath leaving the body of a fallen soldier. Her face hardened and her jaw clenched at the question before she stood up.

"You must be one of Anderson's students that Sheela told me about. I'm not sure if I'm impressed or annoyed at this point, but honestly, you're doing way too much for a case that has solved itself."

"What the actual–"

"Tanner shut up." Alex didn't whisper her dismissal which gave Bevett the chance to put two and two together.

"You and your friends aren't the first set of students to come here. I admit you are the most creative but you will be the last."

"What do you mean we'll be the last?"

"I'm not going to report you if that's what you're asking, but I am going to hope you are smarter than the ones who came before you. What is it that you want to know?"

The moment was tantamount to a window opening in Heaven and an over-pouring of goodness and favor being received. Was it this easy?

"We've read the case file and since we know half of Carrie's deeds weren't portrayed in it, we are trying to figure out why Carrie would leave her ten-year-old son to work on the other side of the country. Out of the blue."

Bevett lifted both her feet and rested them crossed at the edge of her desk. "Have a seat."

"I'm not sure what Sheela told you, but she wasn't always at the house so she doesn't know everything. Carrie might have started out with good intentions but in the end, she wasn't a good person. I don't know how she got the money, I don't know what Nella made her do, but she disappeared for two days at a time and came back loaded.

I remember she would come late at night and she wasn't drunk or anything, but she would always smell like burnt rubber or paper. As much as she hated to, Carrie cleaned on the days when she didn't go away and she wasn't always at the house during the nine years she lived with us.

I remember at one point she went back to school and was doing a Bachelor's Degree in social work. It didn't work out though."

"What? Why wasn't that mentioned in the case file." Bevett ignored her and continued.

"Just before she graduated, I remember she got really sick and couldn't help herself. She wasn't able to do any of her final exams and it took a toll on her body. She went away for a few months; I think she had cancer because her hair was falling out and she got really pale and skinny. Nella took her someplace and we didn't really hear much about her until she came back.

She came back maybe three months after like she had never left and started working with Nella again. She'd disappear two days at a time and come back loaded..." She trailed off, looking at the blank space on the wall behind Alex as though the memory was being played before her.

"Little girl, take three points from this. One, Carrie's killer either worked at the university, is her son, or Nella herself."

Alex looked at her confused. "But Nella died a year before Carrie."

"It's funny isn't it? You'd be surprised at what the dead can do." They hadn't even considered Nella to be a suspect because of her current state. It wasn't improbable, the probability was just significantly lower than the others and, to be frank, not very logical.

"Why do you think her son would have had something to do with her death?"

"I may not know where she got all that money from, but she sent him money every week. I followed her to the bank once when she updated the joint account that she had with him and she put money in that account every time she received a payout."

That didn't seem suspicious....

"Okay what's the second thing?"

"Stop digging into the corner of this case and think about it. I'm pretty sure everything you need is in the case file. Although the investigation wasn't done properly, they did a few interviews and have enough information on everyone who would have been in contact with Carrie."

Alex wanted to remind her that both she and her sister refused to be questioned and that the information in the case file was inconclusive, but she kept quiet.

"Third thing, don't believe anything anybody tells you, only what you see. Carrie was involved with a lot of people, someone killed her, but I don't think they meant to. We couldn't tell the police that because there'd be questions we couldn't answer, so we denied participation in the investigation."

Bevett's eyes were weary with regret. This, Alex was able to discern because she knew the look all too well. Bevett shook her head and stood up.

"I hope this helps."

"It does, thank you so much for your honesty and I'm sorry we had to infringe on your work."

Right before Bevett sat back down, Alex had placed the hard drive on her phone that was on the edge of the table behind an untouched file of papers.

"You have to do what you have to do, but next time don't rob students of the chance of actually learning something. You didn't need to do all this but I admire the dedication."

Bevett shooed Alex out of her office and she met Vera and Davina in the hall.

Davina was the first to attack her with a slap at the back of her head. "All this time you and Tanner have been dating?" She had forgotten that they could all simultaneously hear what Tanner was saying.

"Yea."

She didn't say anything else, not because she didn't want to, but she felt like deep down they already knew.

"Where's Conor?" Alex quickly changed the subject to keep Davina from asking her any questions and it for sure shut her up.

"I'm right here." He joined them from an adjacent hallway as though he was waiting for them the entire time. They had completed a mission impossible and were on their way to join the rest of the interns in the break room.

"I've never seen you guys before; you're not from our campus." A chubby, redheaded boy said and the two other girls who sat with them agreed.

"Never seen you guys at mine either."

"Neither have I."

"That's because we aren't med students, we're undercover Lawyers." Conor said nonchalantly, stuffing a spoonful of yogurt into his mouth.

"Ha ha very funny. If that were true you wouldn't have told us like that." The redhead said as he bit into a protein bar with no semblance in his voice that he actually cared.

"Why wouldn't we? We got everything we needed."

Jason was on his way to give Davina a key ring with a tiny football that Daniel had asked him to give her. But when he overheard Conor's confession at the door's entrance, his faced hardened as he placed it back in his pocket and walked away.