All your dreams will come to life. So will all your nightmares. ― After narrowly surviving the car crash that killed his best friend, Andrew King is left to grapple with his loss and nurse a traumatic brain injury. With his injury comes a crippl...
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MICHAEL PUSHED THE classroom door open, shaking droplets of rain out of his shaggy mass of hair. He held a dense folder in his hand.
"My guy came through." He plopped the file down on the table where the others were seated. "Gage's autopsy and official police report."
Sam perked up in anticipation. "What does it say?"
He shrugged. "Haven't looked at it."
Rim pulled the file closer, flipping it open. The cover page bore the insignia of the Blacksburg Police Department.
She turned to look at Andrew, her eyes troubled. "We can get in a lot of trouble for this."
"Too late," Andrew said. "We've gone through the hassle of getting our hands on this. We're already in a lot of trouble."
They split the 23 page report amongst themselves, getting to reading.
"Official cause of death: blunt cardiac trauma caused by fall from height, self-inflicted." Michael raised his eyebrows, leafing through his portion of the file. "I'm glad this shit isn't like how it is on TV and they left out the gore."
"Okay... so there were no toxins, drugs, or alcohol in his system when he passed. He was otherwise of good health." Andrew leaned back in his chair, twirling a pen through his fingers. "The autopsy looks really clean. Textbook suicide."
"The police report doesn't," Rim climbed to her feet, pacing in front of them as her eyes scanned the sheet in her hand. "This is insane."
"What?"
"The alarm system went off, I mean, that's how the cops were alerted. The part in the obituary about a neighbor finding his body is bullshit."
Sam frowned. "Maybe he just wanted his body to be found right away, and he set it off himself."
"Except there are so many other signs of a struggle. A toppled over and broken chair, scratches on his hardwood floor." Rim sank back down into a nearby seat. "This is crazy."
"Why would they include all of that in the official report, and then determine the official cause of death as suicide?" Andrew asked.
"Oh, I forgot to mention," Michael interjected. "There were two reports. I told my plug to just get us the earlier one."
"It was doctored," Rim murmured.
"Or maybe they just don't have enough evidence to point at anyone else's involvement, so they cut this out."
"No, it was doctored, and I know why," Sam said as she looked up from her portion of the report. "They found a piece of fabric stuck in the balcony sliding door, not matching anything in Gage's apartment. Here," she slid the page across the table, and they looked at the image of the small tear of fabric.
It nagged at Andrew, a tickle in his brain as the material yelled out at him. "It looks like it's from a hospital gown," he said.
He had seen it, and he felt his head pulsate as he did his best to place the pattern somewhere, but as usual, the brain fog got in the way, overshadowing whatever memory was there.
