by Amelia Esla
“Depending on the mood of the second murderer, the way he kills gets more gruesome.” Elijah said. “The burn marks aren’t on some of the recent murders but then there’s that one guy who exploded, so...”
Harley looked over the pictures again. She missed the burn marks. She didn’t even know they were there. And if she did see them at first, she didn’t think it was important. The burns weren’t big enough so she overlooked them. However, the guy that exploded, that was a big detail.
“The guy that exploded, the criminal justice lawyer, who did he represent?” Harley asked.
“Just some shady people, really.” Elijah looked through one of the folders. “One guy that stood out was some restaurant owner in Georgia. He just popped in out of nowhere, got arrested for embezzlement, but got away with it.”
“He’s dead right?” Harley asked as she pulled out her laptop and searched for the man.
“Yeah, that was a few months ago. He...”
Elijah didn’t have to finish. When Harley pulled it up, there were a few articles about a man who burned to death. His restaurant burned down too. This man had nothing to his name the second he exploded into flames.
“But that’s...” Elijah saw the connection but it just seemed farfetched.
“Our killer has a temper. I can tell you that.” Harley said.
“But how did you know?”
“The same guy that’s killing all these people now is the same murderer from up north. He just brought someone with him.” Harley got up quickly, packing her stuff. “I have a lot of things to get for you. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” she rushed out of the room.
Elijah wasn’t confused but he looked like he was. Did Harley already know who was doing this? She even knew the second killer, right? She wouldn’t have been in a rush to leave if she didn’t. What was she going to get for him?
She came back, though.
“Uh, did you want to...” she didn’t want to come off as forward but she went for it anyway “...come over? I feel bad for making you buy all this food.” she said and smiled, breathing hard from rushing out.
Elijah could spend all night talking about the case with her, though he had a feeling they wouldn’t be talking much. He knew better. But with how things have been going for these few weeks, he needed more time to get himself together and not have a moment of weakness.
It was just for one night, then it was back to solving the murder case.
Chapter Ten
Elijah said that colleagues were off limits but he didn’t hold up to it.
He did spend the night with Harley at her hotel and as much as he wanted to be a gentleman and stay, he chose not to. She should understand, right? He would see her later in the day.
“Hey...” Natasha came over to Elijah when he got to work. “Your girl wanted me to crossmatch the two explosion victims. Turns out it’s the same.” She said.
“Harley knows- Did you just say ‘your girl?’” Elijah stopped in front of her.
Natasha moved her hand to the collar of Elijah’s shirt and pulled it down to expose the dark hickey on his skin. That was enough proof for her.
“This is unprofessional.” She said.
“What-”
“This is from the same guy that shouted the murderers were fucking each other in front of everyone.” she laughed to herself, but it just got so much louder as Elijah tried to explain.
“Natasha, I’m not going to say anything about what happened.” Elijah stated just so she would know.
Though, Natasha was pretty sure there was something going on. She just rolled her eyes and moved her jacket to put her hands on her hips.
“Anyway, Harley said she had a lot of files to get. Something about knowing everything.” Natasha continued.
“Well that was easy. I don’t understand why May didn’t call her first.” Elijah shoved his hands in his pockets.
He was sure that Harley could’ve taken care of the problem if May had got her first. Unless, Harley didn’t know this was going on. Murders were murders. She had to come down here to find out what she needed to know. That’s what it was.
Natasha shrugged.
“Maybe it’s...complicated.” she said.
Though Elijah didn’t think it could get so complicated. Unless there was something that made it difficult.
He saw Harley walking in, her hands full of manila folders. She held her bag at her arm and her laptop was under the stack of folders. There was so much that she had and Elijah wasn’t up for going through all that just to find the answer.
“I’ll see you later.” Natasha made a knowing face as she walked past Elijah. And as much as Elijah wanted to correct her about any thing she might think, he didn’t get the chance to.
So now he had to face Harley. He didn’t want to make it awkward. Lucky for him though, Harley didn’t care enough, not when she found the answers to everything that’s caused her problems.
“Hey, this is everything.” She said as they walked together to an unoccupied room.
He opened the door for her to let her in. “What’s all this...?” Elijah said as he took a seat at the small table.
It looked like a lot of unnecessary papers to look at. Elijah just didn’t know. Harley took a deep breath and began dropping a few folders on the table.
“This is everything you need to know about this entire murder case you’re working.” The sound in her voice had a toxic disdain.
Elijah opened up the top folder, seeing a few images of someone. He immediately recognized his face, but there were so many different pictures and aliases.
“Jaymin Rose, your main murderer.” Harley said.
The problems that’s been caused by one person was immense.
“This psycho single handedly ruined the reputation of a prestigious school and slaughtered an entire family, not to mention a dozen others on the side.” she kept dropping folders, all filled with information about Jaymin Rose. “He pretty much had the entire city riled up, whether it was for him or against him, we don’t know, but he had a lot of friends.” she threw the last folder down.
“This is a lot just for one person.” Elijah opened a few folders to see what was in them.
There were different identities, pictures of the young man in the streets, people he was associated with, and then there were files on everyone he killed. Those were the ones that Elijah focused on, he could care less about surveillance pictures and false identities at the moment.
“There’s more.” Harley took out a flash drive from her pocket. “This has the...more explicit information.”
Elijah didn’t know where to start.
“So how come he’s so hard to catch. It’s not like he really does hide himself.” Elijah said.
“Apparently, he fell off the map, which isn’t surprising.” She said. “I thought he fled the country but I guess not.”
Elijah looked through the folders. He stared at the different photos of his appearances. There was one thing that didn’t change in any of these pictures, the wild look in his eyes. Even if he was wearing contacts, that didn’t matter. Elijah could see all the murders he’s committed just through his eyes.
“Jaymin has a record of changing identities in the blink of an eye. Apparently, he could make these identities disappear like nothing. So we guessed he knew a lot of people.” Harley said as she pulled out another flash drive. “These are all the people we arrested as accomplices.”
“What the hell is wrong with him?” Elijah had too much to go through.
“He used to work in the...uh, entertainment industry, if you know what I mean, so I can guess he was blackmailing them to get what he wanted.”
It wasn’t till then that Elijah knew how manipulative Jaymin could be. It was making sense. That facade he had, Jaymin just uses it to get on to other people. Then he starts to mess around.
Is that what happened to James?
Elijah was staring off into the distance as he realized that truth about what wa
s going on. Harley knew that kind of look.
“He’s been fucking around with you, hasn’t he?” Harley wasn’t surprised. “Last time he messed with a detective, he got him to burn down an entire station and kill around forty people at once.”
“What the hell...”
That was definitely out there. He knew Jaymin was scary, but to mess with someone enough to commit a homicide was a lot. That took skill.
Jaymin is a real piece of work.
“I can get him for all this.” Elijah didn’t believe it. He was sitting on gold. He could literally get the promotion of a lifetime if he could take down Jaymin Rose.
“He’s murdered a lot of people, and is an accomplice to much more.” Harley had more folders to give Elijah but they were the ones she got yesterday. “We know he’s a part of these. But so is this person.”
Harley went in her bag to pull out one single folder, but it was thick. There were a lot of papers inside.
He opened up the folder but paused when he recognized the photo. “Wait-”
“Morgan Caverly." she said, almost a biting tone to her voice. There was a lot of bitterness she was holding on to and it showed. "A former FBI agent that was in charge of the gruesome murder cases. He was my old partner.” she said and sighed. “Jaymin really ruined him.” she shook her head, remembering everything that has happened between them.
Elijah continued to read through everything.
“The night Morgan was fired, he snapped and shot every person at the police station and burned the place to the ground. That was the first and last time I’ve seen Morgan get pissed off, and I mean extremely pissed off.” she said. “However, looks like Jaymin awakened a true psychopath.”
“None of this makes sense.” Elijah was in denial.
“That’s what I said. Imagine how I felt when I saw Morgan kill all those people.” She said sadly. Elijah turned to her again, his eyes wide. “Oh yeah, there’s a surveillance video that got the entire thing.” She remembered that night. She was lucky she wasn’t there. “The two of them together are not to be taken lightly.”
“Morgan just about snapped now, didn’t he?”
“Oh no, you’ll know when he’s snapped. I promise.” Harley said, not wanting to confused Elijah with everything that he’s seen already. “All of these are just stepping stones.” she was referring to all the recent murders.
How scary was he then?
“You’ll have no problem getting Morgan. It’s Jaymin you have to watch out for; he’s...got friends that look out for him.” She warned. “And you’d be a fool to think he won’t have Morgan protected.”
“But he...are you sure?” Was Elijah really underestimating him?
“Well, there’s still a warrant out for Morgan’s arrest. Anyone that finds him can bring him in, but I would prefer to get FBI involved.” She thought to herself. “Jaymin...it’s hard to get him. We can arrest him, but we don’t have a strong case against him even if we know he’s doing it.” she said.
“Right, manipulative.” Elijah wasn’t going to forget that huge detail.
That’s why Harley was being careful.
“What did he do to Morgan?” he was curious to know how he truly broke him.
“Let’s see.” Harley thought back. “Jaymin broke Morgan’s leg, stabbed him multiple times at his arm, and he carved a J on to Morgan's collarbone.” She said and added, “those are the things I know about, I’m sure there’s more.”
Elijah didn’t know what to say. That explains why he was limping and why he tends to wear long sleeved clothes even in the hot weather. Everything was beginning to make sense.
It just all made sense.
“Listen...” Harley sat down next to him. “In no way am I condoning anything Morgan has done...” she started slowly as she thought of how she wanted to say what she was thinking, “Morgan just...go easy on him. I mean...I know this isn’t what he thought would happen to him.”
Elijah could tell. The way Morgan looks when he sees him, it’s just pure sadness and hopelessness.
“And he’s gone through so much. I literally watched him crumble for months until his breaking point.”
“Harley...”
“I’m not saying don’t do your job.” Harley didn’t want Elijah to misunderstand. “However, don’t think Jaymin won’t interfere. The best time to get to Morgan is when he doesn’t have Jaymin’s influence.” she said.
“I’m pretty sure he can think for himself.”
“I’m warning you, if for a second Jaymin thinks you’re an immediate threat, he will skin you alive.” Harley was being completely serious.
“Damn-”
“I’m not joking. Be strategic about this.”
“Strategic? I barely have anything on him besides him being a total psychopath. And he’s going to fight like hell to say I’ve been harassing him.” Elijah wouldn’t be able to defend himself.
“And that’s why you have Morgan.” Harley said. “Deep down, he knows what it means to get justice.” she said as she got up.
Would Morgan really be that helpful to Elijah?
There was so much he didn’t know. There was so much he had to learn and he only had a short amount of time to do it.
Harley was done here. There was no reason for her to stay any longer when she already exposed who the killers were. She had thought they would have gotten away further but she guessed not. She was going to send people down here to get them. That was the deal.
If she found a trace of him, she would get him arrested for his crimes.
“You’re leaving?” Elijah looked a little disappointed.
“Well, yeah.” She said. “I thought this was going to be different but it wasn’t anything new. I kept all of Morgan’s work on the case so I just...” she shrugged.
“You don’t want to arrest them?”
“Um, no.” she scoffed. “Jaymin’s like a rabid dog. He’ll snap if he knows I’m here.” she laughed to herself. She was threatened multiple times. She knew he really didn’t like her. The last thing she needed was a death wish.
Elijah thought to himself as she packed up her stuff. How was he going to go about this? How was the legal way to do this? Could he be brutal or should he show empathy? Then again, empathy for killers was a bit of a stretch. Though, he thought that Morgan didn’t deserve.
Every time Elijah thought of a pro to the situation, there was a con.
It was difficult to get it together.
He forgot that Harley was still here. She waited while he got lost in thought. She was sure that he was trying to come up with a plan. She planned to send help, but she knew she did her job here. She should leave and let Elijah take care of the rest.
“Tell Morgan I said hello.” she picked up her bag off of the chair. “I believe he goes by James Blair, now.” she said before walking out.
Right.
James Blair.
Elijah shook his head and took a deep breath. He ran his hands through his hair and did his best to try and calm down. All this was so sudden. He was staring at a pile of evidence and information and he didn’t know what to do with it.
After a few minutes, May walked into the room. She didn’t want to interrupt Elijah. It was only his second day back and he was already lost in thought.
“She’s actually leaving?” Elijah turned slowly to look at May. “I mean...”
“I can’t just keep pulling people from their units, Elijah. You’ve gotta go back at some time, too.” May laughed quietly. “But she did say she was leaving tomorrow afternoon, there was just one thing she had to take care of in the city.” she shrugged before Elijah turned around in his seat.
He was so lost in all this evidence.
He had it all.
“What did she give you?” May asked, standing behind him.
“...Everything.” Elijah was still amazed.
Now he wondered how he was going to put all this together.
However, Elijah knew that he had to ta
ke a break. He didn’t want to ruin himself on a case that was as complicated as it gets.
He needed to clear his mind.
He needed to think.
But he also needed answers.
Later in the evening, Elijah went to pay a visit to his friend. Well the person he thought was his friend. He wasn’t really concerned that whatever they had was built on lies, it was just a simple friendship. He really should’ve known and he felt stupid for not knowing. Elijah had to hear it come out of his mouth. He had to hear what he had to say.
But would Elijah get what he wanted? Was he justified in knowing? He thought he was entitled to the answers. He was literally sitting on a man’s life at the moment. He deserved everything.
Elijah didn’t walk into the office. He stayed by the door, keeping his distance. This wasn’t supposed to be a friendly meeting. Elijah didn’t want to get lost in the fake innocence.
“Hey, um...” Elijah didn’t know what he wanted to say or how he would say it if he figured it out. It was a lot. He knew the truth but what should he say?
James was sitting at his desk. He looked up to find Elijah standing at his door, but he didn’t say anything. He was worried that there was something wrong. Elijah doesn’t really stumble to say something so maybe something happened.
That wasn’t it at all.
Elijah was thinking about the best approach.
He was looking a killer in the eyes.
Maybe he should be forward and blunt.
Elijah moved his hands into his pockets and took a deep breath before talking. “Your friend Harley was here for two days. She said hello.” he said, waiting to see James’ expression. There was nothing as James looked back.
He didn’t try to look confused or anything. His expression was plain as he looked at Elijah.
What was he thinking about?
Was he going to do something?
He didn’t even move.
Elijah didn’t know that he was good at keeping to himself. He was good at holding it in. Whatever he was feeling, Elijah wouldn’t be able to find out, at least not easily. Elijah should provoke him. He didn’t want him to think this was a bluff.