Chapter 3: At the station
It was 8:02 am when Daniel arrived at the bottom landing of the stairs, and he saw Ben talking on the phone.
"Really," Ben said, a brief pause, "OK, I'll tell him," another brief pause, "Sure, I will," Ben then turned and saw Daniel, "speak of the devil," Ben continued, another brief pause, "OK, well bye." Ben finished, took a brief pause then put the phone down, hanging it up.
"What was that about?" Asked Daniel, standing beside the staircase on the side where the phone was.
"Oh, that was Jordan," Ben replied, "He said that chief investigator David Lancer wanted to talk to you at the scene of the crime."
"Maybe you should come too; he might want to question you as well, because you may not have an alibi."
"I do, I was with my wife, and she'll swear to it, but you do have a point, you always do, after all, I saw that dead body as well, I doubt that they wouldn't ask me questions when are there."
"Ben, you do realise that David Lancer may be the only one questioning us."
"I guess you don't realise that there may be others, and you know how scared I get around police officers." Said Ben, shaking nervously, which Daniel saw, he was looking at Ben.
"It's time to go, and let me drive; I can see that you're in a fit of nervousness." Daniel finished the conversation and dragged the still shaking Ben into the car.
When Daniel was about to turn into the garage at Xavier's house, Ben awakened from his shaky fit of nervousness and said: "You know Daniel, if that criminal killed Xavier at a later time I would have had a slice of the cake they served for Simon's celebration. Simon said 'it was the best cake ever tasted', and you ruined my experience, and my wife's experience and my daughters experience." Ben finished by the time Daniel had gotten the car on the garage driveway.
Daniel and Ben left the car and went up to the porch, Daniel knocked on the door, and guess who opened it, it wasn't Simon if you thought that it was him, Simon was at Xavier's house, but he was sitting on the weird couch in the section facing the TV. But in fact, the person who opened the door was Henry Zachroy.
"Come in, Dan, we were expecting you," Henry said with the door wide open.
At this moment Ben pulled Dan down to him and whispered in Dan's now throbbing ear: "I told you there could be more."
"Ow!" Daniel replied in a whisper, "was that payback for last night? Besides we don't know if Mr Zachroy will be questioning us."
"I bet my $20,000 wedding ring on it," Ben whispered back
"There's no point betting; besides I don't think that Mr Zachroy will kindly hold the door open much longer," Dan replied, still whispering.
"Ok let's go." Ben finished the conversation this time not whispering. So, they went inside the house and saw a white Caucasian male was sitting down, his hair was Brown, and his investigator coat was of a bronze colour, and shined in the library light. In his left hand a cigarette, and on his right side was his umbrella, it had on its left plane: D.J. Lancer. He was wearing a white T-shirt with a black tie; he was wearing leather jeans, of a bronze-black colour, it was him, everyone in the room knew it the instant they saw him. There was a deadly silence as Dan walked across the room with his brother Ben following nervously from behind. The men, no one needed to know him by repartition, it was simple to understand who he was, it was David Lancer, it was the look that he gave you, that stare, why did his last name have to be Lancer? His stare felt like someone was driving a lance through your soul.
Dan walked ordinarily towards the library like he wasn't afraid at all, but Ben, he quaked in his shoes, his white shoes, he was struck pale with dizziness, now and then Dan would have to pick Ben up and put him back, so he was walking again.
It took three or four minutes, but they made it, they were both standing in front of David. Daniel was as still as a statue, but Ben was still shaking, he was so pale that there his skin was pure white, and it looked like there was a shiver crawling up and down his spine.
"Henry, Simon, get some chairs," Said David, Simon and Henry obeyed, so they moved over to the glass table and took one red-brown glass chair each and took them to the library, Simon put his chair behind Daniel, and Henry put his chair behind Ben, who was still shaking.
Daniel helped Ben sit down, and then Dan sat on his chair, which Simon provided him.
"OK, let's get started," Said David, "Your Daniel Smith, and that's your brother." He said pointing to Dan.
"That's correct sir, why did you ask us here?" Replied Dan, who was curious, and he was still sitting correctly, while Ben was still suffering from shock.
"Did you know Xavier had a will?"
"No sir."
"Well according to the will, you get all of the mystery books in this library, and the signature proves that Xavier's will was sealed, and it can't be changed anymore because he's dead, but your mention in the will gives you motive to kill Xavier."
"That's absurd, I have an alibi, I was sitting on the weird couch looking at the pool, a lot of people passed me, and they would tell you I was sitting there when he died."
"I'm afraid that's a problem."
"Why?"
"Because a lot of people saw you sitting there when you said you were there."
"Oh, so you say it's a problem on your side."
"Exactly, well I guess that's all I'll get from you."
"If you don't mind, I would like to launch an investigation of my own, because Xavier was my friend and I would like to find out who killed him."
"OK fine, come with me and leave the nervous wreck here." David finished.
All of a sudden all Ben's colour came back to his body, and his face turned red, and then he got up and burst out: "I AM NOT A NERVOUS WRECK!" Then David did his distinctive stare and Ben retrieved his whiteness back and slumped dizzily back into his seat, David smiled and took Daniels, hand, and David led Dan to the office.
When Dan went into the office, the office had two filing cabinets in it, one on the left one on the right. There were two switches on the wall; both were in the off position, there was some stuff on the table, evidence, there was a blood stain on the chair and under the evidence, both were dry. Somehow, the window got entirely shattered, and there was no blood on any of the glass.
"OK, Dan here's the scoop and what I think happened. 1: the murderer comes in here and shoots Xavier, 2: the murder moves a heavy object out of the way of the window with a sack trolley, possibly one that was already on the scene, and 3: the victim got thrown out the window, which means our killer was powerful."
Dan looked around first at a spot on the carpet that was deeper than the carpet around it, four flat spots, each was several centimetres away from each other, and then he looked underneath another cabinet. "Wheels," Daniel exclaimed.
"I beg your pardon?" David said looking at Dan.
"That's why there four small squares over there and not one big square," Daniel said, pointing where the missing cabinet used to be.
"Well thank you Mr Obvious," David Replied sarcastically. Dan saw a flat rectangle on the floor.
"Looks like part of your second theory is true if I'm right, this flat rectangle belonged to a sack trolley," Daniel said, there were also other rectangles, one on the left and one on the right. "The other rectangles must belong to the wheels."
"That's what I was thinking Mr."
"It's Smith not Obvious," Dan replied cutting David off.
"Fine, I call you Mr Smith, happy?"
"Yes." Then Dan moved to the table and saw the zipper, "What are these anyway?"
"There are Xavier's personal effects; I'm still waiting for forensics to pick that stuff up.'
"This is odd."
"What?"
"Well, I think that I saw that Xavier had picked this zipper up, it may be a big clue."
"Maybe, but we have to wait for forensics to come here, and then we can have further look into things," David finished, and there was a knock on the front door.
Henry walked from the library to the front door and opened it. It was the forensic team.
"Well," said David as the forensic people came in and started picking up all the bits and pieces. "Let me take you to the police station; we can talk there."
Then Daniel and David left the room; Daniel said in my ear: "Make sure Ben gets home safe." Then Daniel and David walked out the house as Simon and Henry lifted up the still pale white Ben Smith.
Daniel hopped into David's car; David had run ahead and was already buckled up.
As Daniel slipped the restraint over his body, David started the police car off, and by the time they were out of the carpool, Daniel had finished putting his seatbelt on, the next thing that happened was that they were at the police walking through a hallway.
"This is the evidence room," David said waving his hand gentlemanly to signal to Daniel to go in first.
"After you," he finished, as Daniel entered the room.
There were filing cabinets almost everywhere, and labelled objects lay neatly on a table in the centre of the room.
"Why are there so many filing cabinets?" asked Daniel, with an awed look on his face.
"There's been a lot of crimes since this station has been built, therefore more evidence, and since we record what we find out about the evidence, we put the recorded knowledge into files. The more files we had, the more filing cabinets we need, we are in the process of reducing space to just one table because of the way computers work these days."
"So, you're going to store all of that into a computer system, that's going to take a very long time."
"Not really, we've already converted two cabinets into digital files, since we got our system up and running, and that was three months ago."
"So, I guess that's fast, you mind?" Daniel said, pointing to the table.
"Go ahead, but only look at the tagged objects, because you don't have gloves on, the tagged objects have been dusted by a forensic expert."
Daniel looked at the zipper; it had a tag on it, it said: "Dusted, no prints" Daniel was puzzled, 'how come this has no fingerprints?' he thought, stroking his chin gently.
Then a ringing noise came from David's pocket, Dan instantly looked around, and saw David reaching into his pocket and take the phone out of it.
"Hello," David said. "Really," Brief pause, "OK, Bye," He hung the phone up and slipped it back into his pocket, "Daniel, guess what!"
"They got the bullet?" Daniel replied.
"Yes," David said, "Diana!" He shouted.
"Yes, Lancer?" said a girl who came ten seconds later.
"Daniel, this is Cynthia Diana, but she likes to be called Diana, she will show you where the bullet is going." He said.
"I'll be happy to show you around." she finished smiles and approaches Daniel, and holds her hand out.
"Nice to meet you, Diana," Daniel replied, blushing and shaking her hand.
"Come on, this way," she said dragging him out into the corridor with her hand tugging his gently, he smiled a bit, but his smile went into an o shape has he turned to see David head the opposite way.
"You like me, don't you?" She said as she saw him smiling a bit with that blush on his face.
"What? No," he said as she dragged him into a room that was further down the corridor than an area that they just past, there was one room in between the evidence room, and the space they were going in.
"It's okay, I think you're cute too," she said, blushing and still dragged him in. "Here we are," she continued when they both were in the room, "this is the examination room; it's where we examine the evidence, that is Joseph Kints. He's our best examiner in this police station."
Joseph held out his hand. "Nice to meet you, uh..."
"Daniel," Dan replied, "But you can call me..."
"Dan right," Joseph replied, cutting Dan off, still with his hand held out.
"Diana wasn't kidding when she said you were the best man here," Daniel replied shaking Joseph's hand.
"Well here's the bullet," he said with it in his gloved left hand, he put it under the microscope and examined it closely. Then his look changed like he was onto something. "Of course, I think I know what kind of gun this came from, and which gun, I have to check the used ammo room."
"Used ammo room?"
"Yes, Dan, the room between here and the evidence room." He said, leaving.
"Bye." Replied Dan as he left.
A few seconds later a gun shoot happened outside. Daniel left and saw a man fully dressed in black, his jumper had its zipper missing, and he ran away as Daniel caught Joseph's dead body.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone