Midnight Angel [Jenlisa FF]

~'~'~ Chapter 15 ~'~'~

Picking up the folder again, Lisa tapped on her leg. "I don't plan on him finding out she's alive. At least not until he has seen the evidence, and he tells me what he thinks."

"What? You're just going to ask him to take a look at some random case?" Jin questioned doubtfully.

"I haven't figured out yet how I'll bring it up to him," Lisa responded, still trying to work that one out in her head. "But I can almost guarantee that once he reads everything, he'll agree that something isn't right."

"Not that I'm disagreeing with you," Jackson spoke up. "But what makes you think that?"

"Because the facts don't add up at all," Lisa said simply.

"What are you talking about?" Jisoo wondered, her brow furrowing in confusion.

Opening the folder, Lisa gazed down at her notes. She was silent for a moment, then explained. "When you and Jin first told me everything, I had a hard time believing Jennie could have killed her family. And then after meeting her and talking to her the few times she has visited, it seemed even more impossible. But I read over everything available and now, I'm positive. The few facts that I came across make it almost obvious that she couldn't have done it."

Lisa waited for someone to say something, but her audience was silent. She looked up to see them all staring at her intently, waiting for her to go on. Jisoo was the only one who showed any outward sign of emotion with her hands clenching and unclenching in her lap. Jin appeared to be thinking mutely while Jackson gazed at Lisa with a frown on her face.

Since they were waiting for her explanation, she obliged. "Okay, first off, there's Jennie herself. You three probably knew her the best then, and none of you thought she'd done it, right?" Lisa asked for confirmation. All three nodded in one form or another.

"I never thought she did it, but...," Jackson trailed off, not sure if he should finish saying what was on his mind.

"Yeah," Lisa nodded in agreement. "At the time, she wasn't quite-" She searched for the right word, and winced at the only one he could come up with. "Stable. But taking into account her emotional problems, that still didn't make her likely to be violent."

Lisa looked straight at Jisoo and Jin whose attention she had fully. "You told me about that incident when you guys went out once, the one where she supposedly attacked some guys without provocation."

"But they were Cameron's friends, and Jennie had said they were the ones attacking her," Jisoo interjected.

"Exactly," Lisa agreed completely. "So that can't really be counted. Other than that, was Jennie ever violent?"

"No!" Jin denied hotly and glared at Lisa. "And it's stupid of you to even ask."

"Sorry." Lisa held up her hands in supplication. "I'm just trying to lay all the facts out first."

"Sorry," grumbled Jin, knowing he'd jumped the gun a bit.

Lisa nodded her acceptance of the apology and shifted back to the original topic. "So it's safe to say Jennie had her problems, understandable ones at that, but she wasn't violent. That says a lot. It makes it much harder to believe that one night she just up and stabbed her family while watching movies and eating ice cream."

"There's no previous behavior to lead to it," Jisoo concluded and then added some of her own thoughts. "Especially towards her family. They meant the world to her. She would never have hurt them."

"Yeah," Jackson seconded.

Jin settled back on the couch, pulling Jisoo closer to her and eyed Lisa steadily. "What else have you got? I can tell you're not done yet."

Taking out one of her pages of notes, Lisa set it on her lap, tapped her fingers on the sheet. "There's not a lot of details about the murders in the newspaper articles I could find, but enough that two things stood out to me."

"All three bodies were found in the same room of the house," she began reciting the first of her theories. "The family room where they had been watching TV. Does anything strike you as strange about that?"

All three thought about her question. Jackson scratched his chin, Jisoo narrowed eyes and Jin tapped his hand on his knee. But none appeared to come up with anything. Lisa gave them another few seconds before giving her reasoning.

"They weren't all killed at the same exact moment, for obvious logistical reasons. So how did Jennie, a fairly petite, single person, manage to kill the three of them without at least one of them getting away?" she posed for her listeners.

Jisoo gaped at her while Jin muttered "Fucking hell," under his breath, then said more loudly, "You're damn right."

"There's no way she could have killed all three of them like that. They would have all just had to stand there and let her," Jackson said in one of his rare insightful outbursts.

"And that makes no sense," Lisa replied in agreement. "You'd have to think that at least one of them would have been able to get out of the room. But none of them did. They were all found where they'd originally been, as if, like Jackson said, they'd just stood there and let Jennie attack them, doing absolutely nothing at all to defend themselves."

"I don't understand," Jisoo said quietly, her face pensive. The others looked at her oddly. "Oh, not that. I get what you're saying. But shouldn't the police have realized this? Why didn't they take that into account?"

"And that," Lisa responded, "Is the sixty-four thousand dollar question." Lisa could see the wheels turning in Jin's head, but she held her off from saying anything yet. "Let me throw this out there, too."

She took another sheet of paper out of the folder; one she'd written more notes on. "Donna and Owen were killed with fatal wounds, the throat and heart. They both died fairly quickly. That's not the case with Michelle."

"Her wrists were slit," Jisoo cut in, and a light began to Donna in her eyes about where Lisa was heading.

"Which is not necessary a fatal injury," Lisa continued on. "It can be, but it's not incapacitating. So how did she manage to die from that? There's no mention of any other injuries, like being knocked out, that would have hindered her or aided her death. So logically, she should have been able to do something, like call for an ambulance, to save herself. She didn't though. She just supposedly laid there on the ground and let herself bleed to death"

"I never thought about that before," whispered Jisoo softly, hating herself for never coming to the conclusions Lisa had. If she had, maybe she could have helped Jennie.

"I read a lot of crime novels," Lisa said by way of explanation of how she'd picked out the conflicting details. "It's possible there's a way to justify how Michelle died of her wounds without getting away, but there's no way to tell without more information on the crime scene. And that," she turned to Jisoo and posed, "is how I'm hoping you can help."

"Me?" Jisoo squeaked.

"Yeah. You're good with computers, right?" Lisa asked her.

"Well, yeah. Sort of," she answered shyly.

Lisa nodded, tucked her notes back into the folder. "I was hoping you could try breaking into the police department's computer files and retrieve anything related to Jennie. The more information I have to take to my friend, the better chance we have of clearing Jennie."

Before Jisoo could respond, a noise caught the group's attention. Each and every pair of eyes whipped toward the doorway. Standing half in the shadows was Jennie. Lisa could see enough of her face to be able to detect the tears streaking down her cheek. Lisa mentally cursed herself for not being more careful knowing she was in the house. Before she could stand and go to her, Jennie stepped into the room.