- But you still have not told me why you think you are getting worse now.
James Locker:
- Well as effective as Xenopropsyche is at improving my work performance it has once great disadvantage for me as well. It shuts me down completely emotionally. I don’t want to live the rest of my life like that, so that’s why I am trying to stop it. But when I don’t I take it I get severe anxiety and insomnia.
Samantha Robinson:
- Well, I see where you are coming from, but you should not make decisions like that without consulting with your physician. Resume taking them as prescribed, and you'll be okay.
James Locker:
- Well, reason says you are right. But the pills have seemed different recently. I can't put my finger on it, but something has changed. And the effect has changed as well, you see I took several pills last night, and the entire day today has been like a dream.
Samantha Robinson:
- Well, maybe your pills were replaced by whoever broke into your house Sunday night?
- Tell you what, hand me some of your pills and some of your hair. I know a guy in the forensics lab that owes me a few favours. We can do it all anonymously, and with your locks taken, we can do a toxicological screening as well.
James Locker:
- Can’t argue with what you are saying. Here you go.
Samantha Robinson:
- Great. I’ll get back to you with the results as soon as possible.
- Oh and another thing, are you sure I should drive you home, maybe overnight observation at the hospital would be a better choice?
James Locker:
- Yes, I am sure.
- Thank you for the offer though.
A while later Samantha Robinson dropped James Locker off at his house. She would have preferred dropping him off at the hospital but he did not want to, and she could see no reason to force him to go. It was strange though as he seemed very unconfident and insecure most of the drive, but on the question whether he wanted to go home or to the hospital he seemed very sure about his choice. For the 15 minutes that passed rejecting to go to the hospital, he spoke very casually about the AFL game he saw last night and the upcoming finals for the Swans. Samantha Robinson had never witnessed anyone switching from broken to normal in that short time before and she was unsure how to perceive it. She checked her watch. Samantha would still be able to make it back to the Lasertag championship before the semi-finals, and it seemed likely that Adam Smith and Thomas Anderson would make it that far without her. But now she was more interested in following up on this lead than playing child games. Her reason for getting the hair from James Locker had never been to do a toxicological screening but to compare the blood from his bathroom mirror with the DNA of his hair. Of course, she would make toxicological testing as well, but that was so she would have something to show James Locker if he asked her about it at a later stage. Samantha Robinson called her contact, and after some intense persuasion, she managed to get him to meet her at his laboratory at the University of New South Wales in two hours.
5.26 Samantha Robinson meets with Gerry Livingstone at the UNSW forensic labs.
SAMANTHA ROBINSON ARRIVED at The University of New South Wales and was observing Gerry Livingstone, her former professor in forensic criminology and also the man she had a short affair with a couple of years ago. Physically he was a lot older than her and not very appealing, but she remembered that he had fascinated her a lot as a person back then when she was 20, and he was 40. Being a descendant of the legendary explorer David Livingstone mostly known as Dr Livingstone Gerry Livingstone had been quite an adventurer himself in his younger years although apparently not even close to reaching the fame of his famous ancestor. There had been a lot of thrilling meetings and the concept of seeing a married man had been an extra spice at the time for Samantha Robinson. Sexually, however, he had never been much of an adventure though; Samantha Robinson's real sexual experiences had come later when she met Rebecca. She approached him with the classic phrase they always used.
Samantha Robinson:
- Dr Livingstone, I presume?
Gerry Livingstone:
- Hey, Samantha, great to see you too. Although it was tough to explain to my wife why I had urgent work at 10 pm a Saturday night!
Samantha Robinson:
- Well, at least you are honest with her this time.
- No, but seriously your help is much appreciated.
- I am working on a lead that would pose a significant security breach of the entire police force. But I can't proceed without knowing the facts; otherwise, I might be seen as a crazy bitch and ruin my whole career.
Gerry Livingstone:
- I see. I assume you don’t want to share the details with me?
Samantha Robinson:
- That is correct. But that’s for your best as well; you are not supposed to work outside the official channels either.
Gerry Livingstone:
- That's true. So tell me, Sammy, what is that you need from me?
Samantha Robinson:
- Well it’s three things basically
- I need you to run a DNA matching test on this blood and this hair.
- I also need you to run a toxicological test on this piece of hair.
- Finally, I need to know if this pill is actual Xenopropsyche or if it's something else.
Gerry Livingstone:
- I see. Since you only need an indication, I can do the quick sample test which is invalid for court since it has a significant margin of error. For a hint, however, it's more than enough. It should take about two hours. I will also run a standard drug test on the hair you provided
- As for the pill, I can't help you for now with the chemical analysis as I am not a pharmacologist. But I have a friend at the university who is, and I can ask him as soon as I see him
Samantha Robinson:
- Great thank you. It's a bummer that I will have to wait to know about the contents of the pill, but I appreciate that you are helping me out nonetheless.
Gerry Livingstone started all the tests, and while the lab equipment performed the tests, they had some downtime which they spent talking about old memories. Samantha Robinson was fascinated by the fact that attraction felt so different with different people. When it came to be an exciting character Gerry Livingstone was probably one of the most attractive individuals in the world to her. She loved his stories and his intellect and the charismatic way he had of speaking which transformed the banalities of life into the most extraordinary adventures. Physically, however, she had never been attracted to him and the sex they had back in the day was just her way of keeping him seeing her. After all, every human relation was about giving and taking, and she knew his main reason for meeting with her was the sex even though he somehow must enjoy her personality as well, otherwise he would never be able to be as entertaining and charming as he was back then and also tonight. Physically things had been the best with Rebecca, but they had been and still were best friends primarily. She had never experienced emotions like jealousy or overwhelming love with Rebecca and the fact that they both dreamt about families and kids in the future made them a poor long-term match. Most of all, however, she shunned the concept that she was expected to join the entire gay subculture just because she was attracted to Rebecca. The gay culture had never been her cup of tea, and she could not understand the peer pressure on bisexual people to be perceived as one group. Heterosexual people for sure had a lot more freedom in that sense, and that freedom was something she loved. She thought about Thomas Anderson. Could he be the man for her life? It had started off right, and he was the most balanced choice even though he would never be as charismatic and intelligent as Gerry Livingstone and never as sexy as Rebecca. Since Samantha Robinson knew that one could never get everything one wants in one person she was still excited to see how things would turn out with Thomas Anderson. Once the tests finished, Gerry Livingstone gave his report.
Gerry Livingstone:
- Well, I have run the DNA tests now, and there is a 90 per cent probability that the hair and the blood are different persons.
Samantha Robinson:
- Okay, that's a relief! I was suspecting a friend of mine to be crazy and lie about a break in that supposedly occurred. But this proves that it did happen, so even if I feel a bit ashamed over not trusting my friend, I am still happy that he's okay.
Gerry Livingstone:
- Okay. A close friend of yours?
Samantha Robinson:
- No, not in that way. I am seeing a guy now though.
Gerry Livingstone:
- Well, congratulations Sammy! But about your other friend, I do have some bad news. From the toxicological screening, I made it seems like he has a pretty bad drug habit, specifically towards cocaine.
Samantha Robinson:
- Okay, I did not see that one coming!
- But can you take the hair to the pharmacologist nonetheless? I need to know what else they can detect in a full scan.
Gerry Livingstone:
- Sure I'll get onto it.
Samantha Robinson:
- Thank you, Gerry, for everything, you are a good friend. I will not forget this.
Samantha Robinson left the University of New South Wales more confused than she got there. She had suspected James Locker for being crazy but never for cocaine addiction. Hell, she had nailed the “How to identify a drug user” course at the University and still she had not seen any symptoms of either cocaine intoxication or cocaine withdrawal in James Locker. Maybe the tests were wrong or gave an unclear indication? After all James Locker might be a casual drug user without her noticing it as cocaine was a drug that was possible to use casually without showing any massive withdrawal symptoms as the addiction was mainly psychological and thus easier to hide.
In either case, Samantha Robinson now knew that her boss was a cocaine user, which was a felony in New South Wales. But what would she do with this knowledge? If James Locker indeed were crazy, it would have been a natural choice as it would have been in everybody's best interest that he had received proper help, and someone else had been in charge of the team. But with cocaine addiction, it was different. Michael Fuller had been an alcoholic and had been forced to quit due to this in the end. But had that been the right leadership choice? After all Michael Fuller was the best detective the city had ever seen, or at least, so it was said, and thus getting rid of him for something that had not affected his work performance seemed like an unfair move against Michael Fuller and a lousy choice for the team. Samantha Robinson also found it highly ironic that Barry Itch in his eagerness to get rid of the alcoholic Michael Fuller had replaced him with the cocaine-addicted James Locker.
Samantha Robinson decided to not make anything of her knowledge about James Locker's cocaine usage. One reason for not making a move against him was that she liked him. A more accurate reason was that Samantha had nothing to gain and everything to lose from turning James Locker in. If they indeed believed her and James Locker later got caught in the drug test, she was unlikely to get rewarded anyway as it seemed unlikely that they would promote her after her short tenure with the police. But if a drug test cleared James of her allegations Samantha had made a lot of effort and all she had made was a fool of herself and a personal enemy in James Locker. Indeed there was a significant risk that he would get cleared if she forced a drug test upon him. James Locker could go free because cocaine was detectable for up to three months in hair tissue but only up to three days in urine or blood tests. Since the only legally applicable tests were blood tests, James Locker was highly likely to be cleared anyway.
Samantha Robinson was considering if she was going to share her thoughts and concerns with Thomas Anderson. She decided that she would but not tonight. Samantha knew him well enough to realise that he was not as involved in work as she was and if she brought up work a Saturday night he would only annoy him, that she ruined the evening for him. Instead, she decided just to send him a text message wishing him a good night. Her Message in full was. "Hi Neo. I got James home safe and sound. Sorry for not returning to the Lasertag arena afterwards but I got obsessed with a lead that I wanted to follow-up. I won't bore you with the details now, but I'll tell you all about it tomorrow when we play bowling. I hope you won the championship without me and had a great night of boozing with Adam. XOXO Sammy”
5.27 A revelation of the Killers ultimate plan.
THE KILLER WOKE UP. The sun was shining outside his window, and he felt great satisfaction with his life. All of his plans had worked great this far: James Locker was a broken man, and soon it would be the time to strike. His plan involving the replacing James Locker's antipsychotics with psychedelic drugs seemed to be working just fine. It had been a great pleasure for the Killer to make up the fictional profile of Vanessa Ward and then to trick James Locker into going to that deserted beach for a "date." The fool had been sitting around there for hours believing he had found his soul mate when he apparently was only speaking to the thin air or more accurately a manifestation of his subconscious. The most ironic of it all was that the pictures of "Vanessa Ward" were pictures of Emily Luong that the Killer had image edited to be unrecognisable. The killer had also made the profile to match Emily Luong personality and interests as far as possible. The idiotic James Locker had thus been on an imaginary date with his ex-girlfriend utterly oblivious of this ruse.
The Killer had a theory of his own that the mental problems of James Locker were because he was living in denial about what happened to Emily Luong that fateful night nine months ago. The killer, on the other hand, had not forgotten! He had been passive for far too long before he had decided to act approximately one and a half month ago. Unfortunately, James Locker had gone on a holiday just the day after the Killer had put his plans into motion, which was a frustrating drawback at the time but it did not matter in the long run. Now he experienced another delay with Michael Fuller hospitalised, but hopefully, he would be better soon
The Killer was reflecting over how he felt about Michael Fuller. To summarise it he had never liked the man. But Michael Fuller was not a primary target in any way, but it was just necessary to frame someone for the killings otherwise the Killer would never be able to sleep sound at night always fearing that his past would somehow catch up on him. After all, there was no shame in setting Michael Fuller up. The Killer perceived him as an arrogant and selfish piece of shit who had always neglected the needs of others especially those of his daughter Rebecca in his pursuit of glory and "justice." Michael Fuller's drinking problem most likely attributed to the hole inside him that all addicts had by the nature of things and by sending him to jail at least he got the mercy of sorting out his priorities in life.
The Killer looked at the file he had made on his next victim, Emily Luong. Obviously not the Emily Luong he once knew and loved that would be impossible, but another one. The two Emily Luongs had very little in common except for their names, but the Killer reckoned that the name would be everything that was required to tip James Locker's mind over the edge so he would finally understand. What if James did not know? Well, the killer could not possibly be more transparent after that, so in that case, he would have to kill the oblivious James Locker anyway which would be a very unsatisfying but still acceptable outcome.
Since the Killer could not proceed with his plans today, he decided that it would be awesome to see Rebecca instead. They usually did not meet in the daytime due to various reasons, but he felt that he was willing to take the risk to look at her eyes glitter in the sun with the wind in her hair. After witnessing the "date" between James Locker and Vanessa Ward the day before; the Killer felt that a real meeting with Rebecca at the same beach would be so awesome, so it was worth the risk of detection. He called her up, and she accepted his invitation. Feeling happy the killer bought the best picnic basket money could buy and picked up Rebecca for an awesome day at the beach.
5.28 An excellent day at the beach
/> THE KILLER AND REBECCA went to the same secluded beach in the Royal National Park where he had witnessed James Locker's "date" with Vanessa Ward the day before. Even though this Sunday did not feature the excitement of breaking his enemy down it had some features which the Killer valued even higher. It offered the feeling of tranquillity, belonging and love. The Killer admired the features of Rebecca in the sunlight. She had a beautiful face with her blonde hair glittering in the sun with blue eyes matching the colour of the sky and slim and very feminine body. The Killer reflected that if she would make it as police in the future, she would probably have to build some muscle so she would be less frail; nonetheless, a slim and very feminine woman was what he had in front of him now, and that's what he wanted. All in all, they both had a perfect time when they spoke, kissed and enjoyed the variety of flavours and drinks in the picnic basket. For the sake of this story, the following dialogue is the most important.
Rebecca Bell:
- Oh JP this has been such a beautiful day, you were indeed at your best today.
The Killer:
- Well as one should be when wooing a woman as unique as you are to me. And you have not experienced my best yet; the night is yet to come!
Rebecca Bell:
- Oh... you are such a teaser.
- Another good thing is that my father has left the hospital. Apparently, he was not as injured as they first thought so they reckoned it would be easier if he just rested at home for a few days
The Killer:
James Locker- The Duality of Fate Page 16