Inciting Investigations

Chapter 14

“Okay, okay! I have something big to tell you guys!” She wasn’t sure why she was being so loud.

Both boys turned their heads to her and waited for her to continue on with what she was going to say. She was practically burning up with energy that just bounced all throughout her body, only becoming stronger the longer that she kept her words in her mouth.

“Have you guys ever heard of a guy named Jacob Richard Hensen?” She waited for a response.

“No, not that I can think of. What about you, Badger?” Julian looked over at the other boy.

“Nah, not off the top of my head anyways.” He shrugged and still looked at her with confusion in his eyes. “Why?”

“Okay, so, I was doing some more research for our little side project when I was alone and…I may have come across something saying that the disappearance of one Jacob Richard Hensen was somehow connected to the disappearance of one Cyrus Latido de Corazon Anders.”

Both of them looked at her with wide eyes as they processed the information that she had just unloaded on both of them. They hadn’t gotten very much knowledge that could lead anywhere regarding the case yet and now suddenly they had a huge breakthrough that could tell all three of them so much that they needed to know to find him.

One name, it didn’t seem like a whole lot, but they knew that it actually was one of the best things ever. Sure, it might lead to a dead end and tons of wasted time, but if it didn’t? If it didn’t then they could probably find tons of other people connected to that name and get stuff from them on what could’ve happened so many years ago. This was exactly what they needed.

“Are you sure about this, like, one hundred percent sure?” Badger asked before celebrating.

“I can show you the report that I found it on right now.” Birdy pulled out her computer.

Juneau, Alaska…Police Department Report

9/28/19

- Anders Case (Cyrus Latido de Corazon)

Detective On Case (Writing Report) - Paul Smith

There aren’t many leads on the Anders case at the moment. We haven’t been able to find any evidence that points towards anyone in particular having done it. There are a couple of people who may be connected, but any of those leads are still doubtful. The first assumption that was made when Mr and Mrs. Anders first called in, saying their son was missing and that he had just run away. He was a teenage boy, so it wouldn’t have been surprising if he simply got upset by something and left. There are thousands of cases like that every year, so this was brushed aside in favor of paying attention to other crimes happening at the time. That, however, would prove to be a grave mistake when later on, a body was found at an old railroad. Some of the blood was tested for DNA, and it came back as Cyrus’s. Now, instead of just having a missing kid on our hands, we have a dead kid. When I was first put on the case, I thought that it would maybe be a classmate of his. Bullying happens a lot, especially at his age. There was always a possibility that situations between him and his peers had escalated further than they were ever supposed to. I don’t think that anymore, though. There were previous times when he reported bullying, but those were all dealt with. There’s not much else to go off of. There are some other names to consider, though. Deaths like this one have happened before, which opens up the possibility that this isn’t an isolated incident. The similarity to other deaths is the brutal manner with which the body was handled, completely mutilated. Similar messy crime scenes, yet no actual evidence left behind to identify a killer. One of these actually happened very close to where Cyrus’s body was dumped. Jacob Richard Hensen was a nineteen year old male found outside the gas station that he worked at ten years ago. The thing that still confuses me is that Cyrus and Jacob don’t seem like they had very much in common. I can’t figure out why one person would go after them so similarly, and especially with such a long pause between the cases. This might be a copycat situation, though, I don’t know why, but I just don’t think that that’s what’s happening right now. Either way, there's one certainty in my mind, and that is that the disappearance of Cyrus Latido de Corazon Anders seems to be somehow connected to the disappearance of Jacob Richard Hensen.

Julian and Badger both sat back with wide eyes and unreadable expressions on their faces as they took in what they had just read. Birdy understood. She had also been left a bit shocked when she first came across it, and also a bit heartbroken by it. But that didn’t matter.

Slowly, very slowly, Badger and Julian seemed to have begun to come back to their senses and be able to process the situation at hand. She waited with her leg, bouncing up and down for either of them to talk to her. She didn’t even care what they said at that point.

“So…where do we go with this?” Julian asked.

“I don’t really know if I’m being honest. Maybe google the name or something.” Badger shrugged.

Birdy wasn’t sure how they were being so calm about this. She was through the roof with happiness that they had finally found something to keep them going. Sure, of course she was sad that someone else had died. That really sucked, but were they even sure he was dead.

Really Cyrus’s death had seemed set in stone, but then he walked through her door four years later with the explanation that his death had been faked and he had been alive the whole damn time. What if this Tempest guy had just pulled the same maneuver for Jacob Hensen. Maybe he was still out there somewhere just waiting to tell someone his story about what happened to him. Maybe he would want to help them take down Tempest once and for all.

She knew that these were all highly hypothetical situations and that he could really just be dead and buried, but maybe he wasn’t. This was one of the very very few and limited situations where she would be good for once and look on the bright side of things.

She wasn’t exactly sure why she was so insistent in her mind that he just had to be alive. It wasn’t like she even knew him or anyone he was close to. Maybe she just didn’t want someone to have gone through what her brother went through. But thinking about that made her think for just a moment that maybe he really was better off dead than living.

She wasn’t sure where Jacob Richard Hensen was out there in the world.

She wasn’t sure where Tempest was out there in the world.

She didn’t know a lot of things at that moment, and there was so much for her to still discover. Both in this case and outside of it, but she knew one thing for sure. Just one thing.

She was going to find both of them no matter what it took.

(Spanish Translations:

¡Hola, Juli! ¿Qué tal? = Hi Juli! What's up?

No mucho…¿Y tú? = Not a lot...and you?

¡Mucho! = Lots!

Hope you enjoyed! Bye!)