"Hello, Special Agent Maldonado."
"Hello, Director Koop."
"I've got a case, it's pretty easy."
"Do tell."
"Convenience store robbed in a bad part of LA, there's security cameras and everything."
"Police couldn't handle it?"
"Rather do this or paperwork?"
"I'll tell the guys."
---
Esther walks out of my office and back to hers while I walk out to Scott, Mitch, Kevin, and Avi, who's deep in conversation with Kevin.
"We've got a case, but don't stress yourself out over it," I announce.
"And it is?"
"Convenience store robbed in some bad part of LA. Es says there's security cameras and witnesses and stuff."
"Great," Avi comments, "I was getting tired of paperwork."
"We all were," Mitch agrees while grabbing his gun from his desk drawer.
"I'll come as your favorite field agent," Kevin mutters, standing up as well.
"And we're off," Scott says while throwing keys at me.
---
We pull up to the convenience store to see a couple police officers roaming the area. I head up to one, who seems like the chief, and Avi, Scott, Mitch, and Kevin follow me. We really didn't need 5 people inspecting a small robbery, but we were bored.
The police officer ends up directing us to the owner of the store, who shows us the security tapes. There's a clear shot of the man's face, so this should be easy.
Kevin is able to use his work phone to run the guy's face and immediately gets a match.
Eric Edison, complete with this address and everything.
"Not too far from here, we could always pick him up," Scott suggests.
Suddenly my phone begins to ring with Special Agent Stephenson's name labeling it.
"Who is it?" Mitch asks.
"Stephenson, must need help with a case or something," I reply while simultaneously pressing the answer button.
"Hey, Mal, where are you? I checked your office?"
"Hello to you, too."
"Sorry, Hi, how are you doing, Mal?"
"I'm great, how's my favorite team leader?"
"Spectacular and confused, now where are you?"
"Uh, convenience store robbery. Nothing special, we already know who the guy is."
"Oh, I'm dealing with a hard case and it won't take long, but when you get back you think you could swing by my team?"
"Sure. See ya, Steph."
"Mmhm."
I end the call and turn back to the guys who are all waiting to see what Stephenson needed.
"Just needed advice on a case, how about two of you guys get Eric and the other two come with me back to the building?"
"Mitch and I can take Eric," Scott replies.
"Sounds good," Avi smiles, clearly happy about getting to be with me.
I can see Kevin internally rolling his eyes, knowing he'll be forced to deal with us.
We go our separate ways to the two cars, Scott and Mitch seemingly having the address already pulled up.
"Do you want us to interrogate him if you're not done?" Scott and Mitch ask.
"Nah, wait for me."
Kevin, Avi, and I get into the car, Avi and I in the front with Kevin in the back.
"Great, I'm stuck with the lovebirds over here," Kevin laughs. Just to spite him, Avi and I hold hands.
---
After we get back to the building, I head over to see Stephenson. He ended up being stuck with a particularly tricky murder, but I simply pointed out a few facts and he figured it out.
Apparently I'm the only smart person in this office he can tolerate. We've high key become best friends.
I head back to find Avi sitting in Kevin's desk, still talking to Kevin. He roles his chair over to face me.
"Hi, Love."
"What did Steph need?" Kevin asks.
"Just a weird murder case. Needed a different set of eyes."
"Fun," Kevin replies.
"Very fun," Avi agrees, pulling me to his lap. I laugh at him and Kevin walks away.
"I cannot believe you two," he mutters to himself.
"You look great today," Avi laughs.
"Thanks, babe. Are Scott and Mitch here yet?"
"Yeah, they got here like ten minutes after we did. They're out getting lunch, I think. I told them you'd probably be done after they got back.
I nod and get up off of Avi's lap only to see Scott and Mitch walking in the door with all of our usual orders from McDonald's.
"Hi," Scott greets, walking in with a cup from McDonald's and Mitch following behind him.
"Hi, where's our robber?"
"Uh, I told him to just wait in the interrogation room. There's a security guard outside the door but otherwise I figure it's fine."
"You left a criminal alone with a single security guard while you went and got lunch?"
"I got you lunch, too."
I sigh and roll my eyes as I take the bag he hands me.
"We can eat later, we need to interview the robber," I say, eating a fry out of the bag and then closing it again.
"Kirst," Avi groans, elongating the r.
I glance over at him to see him practically begging, and I give in.
"You all have ten minutes to eat," I sigh.
---
After a fast ten minutes, we all head to the interrogation room. Considering Scott and Mitch brought him in, I let them go in the room.
Scott opens the door first, letting Mitch go in before him. I tell the security guard he's good to go considering there's probably not much he could do during an interrogation.
"Wh- Kirst?"
I step into the room to see an unexpected sight.
Eric is sitting there, dead.
"Kev?" I ask, and he comes into the room.
"Wh- wow. Was he alive when y'all brought him in?"
"No Kevin, we brought in a dead body without telling you guys he was dead," Mitch says, rolling his eyes.
"The real question is, why is he dead?"
"And what from?"
---
After inspecting the body in his lab, Kevin concludes Eric committed suicide, as predicted. The next question is how.
"Did he just, like, not breathe for a minute?" Mitch asks out of boredom. "I was sure he didn't have anything in his pocket."
"Uh, not possible."
"Are you sure?"
"I have an Masters Degree, Mitch."
"And?"
"It's not possible. After you'd hold your breath for so long, a reflex would happen so as to get new air and stuff, so yeah. Not possible. Anyways," Kevin mutters to himself as he removes Eric's stomach.
"Once I open this I should have some idea of what happened. Maybe?"
"You sound very sure of yourself," Avi laughs.
Kevin ignores him and goes back to his work, only to inform me he'll find out the substance as soon as he can once he figures out what's in the stomach.
---
Once in my office upstairs, I begin to research Eric Edison more.
"Any criminal history?" Avi asks, strolling into my office.
"Not that I can find. All I've found is his driver's license."
"Suspicious?"
"Relatively."
"Interesting," he mumbles, plopping in his chair across from me.
"What are you doing to help further this case?" I ask skeptically.
"Waiting for Kevin to finish. I'll work on the stomach while you three find more on him, if that's fine?"
"Okay, that works, I guess," I reply, focusing more so on my research than him.
Avi sits for a little longer in the chair before I notice he's still there.
"What're you doing?"
"I dunno, I'm bored."
"Have we talked to relatives?"
"Well, it hasn't even been like an hour and a half. I figure we should find more information before finding his parents. I'm assuming you haven't found a wife?"
"Nope."
"Kids?"
"Nope."
"Great," Avi sighs, getting up from his seat to begin to pace around my office.
"Robs a convenience store, only to be caught on the camera. That would mean he's not experienced in robbery... although he does clearly have something to hide. Once he's caught, he kills himself when he has a second," he mutters to himself while fiddling with a ring on his finger from his grandma or mother or some family member he's once told me.
"Quick, give me random crimes that are worse than robbery?"
"Uh, I don't know, ask Scott."
"Sorry, I'll leave," he smiles, obviously picking up the fact that I'd rather not be interrupted.
After a little while longer of finding nothing, I get a call from Kevin. I don't bother to answer it, already knowing what he'll say. I quickly jog down the stairs to the basement considering there was a wait for the elevator.
And, to be honest, I need exercise.
"What do you have?" I ask, coming up behind Kevin while he's staring at his computer with a wikipedia page up.
"Wh- oh. Sorry, you startled m- anyways! Suicide pill."
"Okay, so yes he committed suicide, can I have more information?"
"Okay, this is high key interesting, I love it."
"Wh-"
"Not suicide. I don't love suicide."
"Continue."
"Alright, Mr. Edison here committed suicide using the Suicide Pill, as it is widely known, or it's also known as the Cyanide Pill, Kill Pill, Death Pill, Lethal Pill, or L-Pill."
"Fascinating," I say sarcastically.
"Okay, anyways. Back in like World War 1 Britain- and eventually the US- gave some parts of the military suicide pills in case they were captured. A suicide pill is basically made up of potassium cyanide, a lot of it, so as to kill the taker quickly. It's almost an instant death. The person that ingests it will suffer both a heart attack and brain death."
"How did Scott and Mitch not find it?"
"I'm getting to that. Most of the time, they're covered in a thick rubber material. Back in World War 1, this was useful so it wouldn't be squashed in the middle of military bags and all of that stuff. It could be easily disguised as a tooth if the person was captured and can pass through the digestion system easily as long as you don't bite it. So, say, if you were in the army in World War 1, and you get captured, and you have this as a fake tooth, you might swallow it on accident. That's totally fine, as long as it isn't purposefully torn or crunched."
"Crunched as in bitten?" I ask, moving over to look at the computer from behind Kevin's shoulder.
"Exactly. After World War 1, it was mainly used for the same purpose. It was also used in the Sri Lankan Civil War by suicide bombers. As they're plane was crashing, they'd bite into this necklace they have."
"Except the necklace is actually a rubber suicide pill."
"Exactly! One other case, that is pertinent to this, is in 1985 a serial killer was captured and had these sewn into the inside of his clothing. He simply popped one and, bam, he was dead."
"Good to know," I mumble, beginning to think.
"Serial Killer!" I shout at Kevin, both of us suddenly wide-eyed. "A serial killer is worse than robbery!" I exclaim while sprinting to the steps again and running up to the office.
"Eric Freaking Edison!" I yell once more, mainly to myself.
When I get up to the offices, out of breath and slightly sweaty, I burst into Avi's office.
"Serial killer!" I say excitedly.
"What?"
"A serial killer is worse than a robber," I hint on.
"A serial killer is worse than a robber!" He repeats, starting to catch on.
"Eric Edison. Think about the name for a really long time and don't try and relate it to this case."
"Eric Edison.. uh.. nothing."
"Just think really deep in the back of your mind. Does any Eric Edison ring a bell?"
"Eric Edison Eric Edison Eric Edison Eric Edison," he mutters, pacing around his office some more.
"Eric Edison!" he finally shouts with hands in the air and wide-eyes looking at me.
"Eric Edison!"
"We have to tell Scott and Mitch!"
Both of us run out to the cubicle area where Scott and Mitch are seated, both scrolling on their computers intently.
"Eric Edison, guys." I say, snapping them both out of their trance.
"Is the guy who killed himself," Mitch finishes.
"No, use your brains. Think really far back, Eric Edison. Don't even relate it to this case. Just, at some point in time has this name rung a bell?"
"Eric Edison and serial killers," Avi continues.
Mitch closes his eyes with his head tilted down, while Scott's eyes are up to the ceiling with is head only tilted slightly.
"Can I have a c-" Scott begins before Mitch cuts him off.
"Sh!"
"It's not our team. Think of suspects," I say quietly.
"Oh my gosh, Eric Edison! We're such idiots!" Mitch shouts, managing to draw attention from everyone in a ten foot radius.
I glance over at Scott, who's still deep in thought.
"Scotty, do you remember Agent Speilding's case that one day? It was a long time, just before Avi started with us? He came in the middle of the investigation and got the tail end of it?"
"Yeah, I already got that, we're missing something.. why wasn't he in a database of some sort? Don't suspects usually get sorted into some files unless they're totally innocent?"
"I remember the case, it was.. a death obviously."
"Kevin wasn't really involved on much of it, he only knew what was happening. I doubt he remembers," I mutter.
"Okay, guys, let's think," Avi say, bringing everyone back to the world instead of off in our thoughts.
"Eric Edison with Agent Speilding's case and her team. Her team is on vacation because of a loss of one of their team members, Angie, which is incredibly sad but not relevant at the moment. I doubt anyone else at the FBI remembers the case, or that Speilding's team even rememebers," I start off while sitting on Kevin's desk, who has joined us in the middle of the chaos.
"He was a suspect for a death, it was ruled.. that's where I get stuck. So many cases have gone by that I can't even remember," Mitch continues.
"Suicide," Scott adds. "Ironically enough."
"Cause of death was gunshot to the head and the victim was homeless, as far as we knew. A John Doe. It almost looked a little sketchy, but what evidence we did have was so far from hard that it was beyond circumstantial." Kevin reads off his computer.
"We found a death note that said he couldn't go on, and it made sense, I remember, because he was homeless. Who would want to be homeless," Scott says.
"One of the big questions was, where did he get this gun? The guy was beyond poor." Avi mutters.
"It was concluded that he robbed it from someone or found it somewhere. No serial number, it had been scratched off," Mitch added, the case also pulled off his computer.
"Which was also weird," I reply.
"Either way, everything about the case was weird. Although, it was a homeless person, so the government didn't care. It was written off as suicide."
"The evidence also wasn't exactly building against any one suspect."
"Which, of course, there were quite a few of."
After a bit more talking about it, we all reach a sound conclusion, using all of our memory and the information on the case to figure out a pretty solid answer. With only one question left:
Why wasn't Eric in a database of some sort?
We all head off to our separate desks to find out more and decide to regroup in twenty minutes.
In that time I manage to find the answer to our question. It was a simple skip of procedure, which literally everyone at the FBI does. Why bother adding Eric as a suspect if he had almost the least amount of evidence against him? I would've done the same thing, and I'm sure Avi would have as well.
After a little bit more of searching, I can't seem to find anything important. It's been twenty minutes, so I leave my office to head back into where we were before, expecting someone else to have found something important.
"What'd everyone find?" Avi asks, seating himself in the same chair.
"First off, and probably least important, it was a minor skip of procedure for the database thing. He didn't have much evidence so they just wrote him off so as to save time," I reply.
"That's what I figured," Mitch continues.
"Anyone else find anything?" I inquire.
"I found a lot, yes," Scott mumbles, still rapidly typing away on his computer.
"Do tell," I prompt.
"Okay, well," He begins, clicking on the giant monitor we have to present things with, "In the time of that case to now there have been two murders, both of which are the exact same. Before the case, there were three. All of them are the same. A homeless person of some sort shows up dead with a gunshot to the head. The only fingerprints on the gun are the victim, and each time the serial number is scraped off," he says quickly, standing up and standing to the left of the monitor. Each time he clicks the remote, a new picture and case file pop up.
"It's always a different gun, a different location of LA, nothing special, honestly. It'd be hard to tie them together unless you're starting point is Eric Edison. Each time, he hasn't had any occasion of any sort."
"Very circumstantial, Scott," I say.
"I'm not done," He smirks, clicking once more to reveal a collection of all the death notes. "What do you notice?"
"They all say the exact same thing, and none of them have a signature." Mitch points out.
"They're all the same piece of paper," Avi says.
"Handwriting is eerily similar," Kevin concludes.
"Yeah, I'm going off pure speculation here because I'm not an expert, Kevin is, but my guess is he wrote each death note with his left hand. Eric was also purposely trying to not make it neat and trying to make it different so no one would be able to trace the handwriting. I mean, it'd be so easy. Kill someone no one knows with a mystery gun. Write the death note using no signature and a commonly used saying with weird handwriting. The only thing is similar is.." he theorizes, leaving the sentence open ended.
"Paper," I reply.
"Which, notebook paper is so common that I'm guessing lots of suicide notes are made of it."
"So if we're running with this, that would mean Eric is behind all of these murders, which makes sense. When he's arrested for robbery, he knows we'll figure it out somehow. Another question is: why homeless people?" I say to recap.
"Also, we should probably get the suicide notes. Maybe there'd be finger prints? I doubt it considering that a whole team handled this, but whatever. I can still try," Kevin comments.
"Great. So, it's kind of late. You all can go home, sleep on it, then we can come back tomorrow with the death notes and figure this out," I reply. Everyone seems to agree and we all head in our separate directions to our cars.
---
Everyone comes back in the morning seemingly ready to solve this case. We have the death notes now, and Kevin brings them down right away to attempt to find any fingerprints. He comes back about an hour later, telling us all he has news.
Everyone seems to magically congregate in my office, all awaiting what he has to say.
"So basically, I ran all of these notes. I found only a few fingerprints. The majority was the victims' fingers. Then, I found one partial. It was the most recent one. He could have been getting sloppy. Basically, it matched to Eric Edison when I ran it. The reason they didn't catch this is Eric wasn't a suspect for the last murder. Can I call it murder now? Whatever, I am. Anyways, they also wouldn't have been able to match it to anyone because it was such a small snippet of a print. I was able to get a match because I ran it directly against Eric's, so it worked. This is the hard proof we needed to get him officially convicted, although he is dead."
"So, what was the motive?"
"I found this thing," Mitch begins, "right before Kevin came up. Eric was spotted at a protest against the homeless outside of a homeless shelter. His sign says they're, and I quote, waists of human beings and that they all should die."
"Okay then," Scott comments, "I guess we've got it?"
"We do, that was easy this morning," I laugh. "Good job everyone."
Everyone glances at each other, happy that we finally solved the case. I run up to tell Esther everything we found. Last night I updated her on the whole case, so she says she'll deal with it from their. She must be bored, considering we usually deal with that kind of stuff.
The rest of the day is pretty boring, nothing eventful happens and it's filled with paperwork. We all disperse that night, ready for our day off.
---
"You killed it today, as always," Avi comments to me when we get home.
"Nope! I don't wanna hear it!" Kevin laughs, quickly heading to the shower. He gets pretty sick of Avi and I.
"Thanks, babe," I laugh.
Considering all five of us decided to get dinner at Olive Garden on our way home, it's pretty late. After both Avi and I shower, we both head to bed.
"You're beautiful," Avi smiles as he holds me against him.
"Thanks," I smile in return. "What caused you to say that?"
"I just always notice you look beautiful."
"What did I ever do to deserve you?"
OOPS SORRY THIS IS SO LONG AND SO BAD
I SWEAR IT WASNT GOING TO BE THIS LONG WHEN I ORIGINALLY THOUGHT OF IT
Also, do you guys enjoy the long chapters (not necessarily this long) or the shorter ones? I wanna get a feel for what you all like
3.30.18