Free The Monster Within by Jeremy Laszlo

here that she would kill herself, especially leaving something so cryptic and vague. Why wouldn’t she apologize to whoever it was that she felt she’d offended. Also, where are her friends and family?”
    “We have notified her family and I’ve sent uniforms to their homes to speak with them,” Waters looks at me with a growing sense of doubt. “People don’t always leave suicide notes when they go and get themselves killed, King.”
    “She didn’t ‘get herself killed’,” I proclaim. “She intentionally stabbed two pins into her wrists and jumped out a window after tying together a rope of scarves and sex toys. If you put that much thought into your mode of execution, you’re not going to leave two vague sentences.”
    “Maybe it means more to her family,” Waters argues.
    “Bullshit.” I shake my head. “Are you declaring this a suicide, Waters?”
    “It seems cut and dry to me.” She shakes her head.
    “So you’re not going to investigate the losers she brought home with her?” I press her, not willing to let her hide from this.
    “There’s nothing here to point to a homicide,” Waters argues.
    “It’s everything that’s not here that points to homicide,” I argue. She looks at me and has her doubts, I know it, but something about this makes her too scared to call it what it is.
    “You’ve been talking to Owens,” she mutters to me, shooting a look at the uniforms around us. Is she scared of them? Or is she scared that they might report back to Owens and tell him that we’re talking about him and the conspiracy? She looks at me with those big green eyes of hers and I nod silently to her. “It’s a fucked up conspiracy, King.”
    “I know,” I say. Part of me wants to go explode all over Owens that I wasn’t his first choice to come to with this insanity, but I already suspected as much. I can’t hold it against him. I’m retiring in less than a month now, so why get me involved if I couldn’t commit entirely to the cause? Waters looks back at the rope of scarves. They’ve erected a screen outside to keep others who aren’t a part of the investigation from gawking and getting pictures of her. I want to go outside and get a look at her. I want to commandeer this whole operation. “If you’re too afraid to declare it, I’ll take over from here, Waters,” I say to her with all seriousness. “I’ve looked at the files and they have a compelling argument. I think it’s compelling enough to have another look at it.”
    “The Chief is going to rip you apart if you waste resources on a suicide case.” Waters shakes her head. I know that she’s right. This is the kind of shit that ruins detectives. It’s the kind of mistake that sends them to the archives with all the other screw-ups to rot and turn into dust before everyone forgets that they even exist. She looks at me for a moment. I know that she wants to hand it over, but she’s scared that Mendez is going to rip her apart if he hears that I’ve taken over and am declaring a cut and dry suicide as a homicide.
    “I’ll take full responsibility,” I tell her, trying to convince her to come out into the light of all of this. She is, after all, one of the evidence junkies like all the other young academics. “Evans will back you up, saying I hijacked the entire operation.”
    “Sounds like a plan to me,” one of the uniforms says. Clearly he’s working for Owens and the other conspirators.
    I look at Waters and she looks at me with those dull green eyes of hers and she slowly nods. I nod back to her and look at the two uniforms in the room who immediately set to work. This is now a homicide. It doesn’t even need to be said.

 
7
    I’ve known of Courtney for most of my life, but I can’t say that I’ve ever actually known her. Truth be told, I can’t think of a reason why I never spent the time to get to know her, or at least be a sort of guardian angel for her. After all this time, I wish that I could just go