12:40
Mariana, White, Jay, and two other officers entered the Campot apartment complex with a search warrant.
The ten-story building was old, but its exterior was still well maintained.
After a few brief questions, the building manager gave them the information they needed:
Andrea Emily Garvic, Unit 17, third floor.
The elevator stopped with a dry ting.
Mariana stepped out first and knocked three times on the gray door.
“Police.
Please cooperate with us.”
The door cracked open.
Andrea appeared, her face filled with confusion.
She was wearing a white T-shirt and pink shorts.
“I… what can I do for you, officers?”
Mariana showed her the search warrant and stepped inside before Andrea could retreat.
“I’m Mariana from Police Headquarter.
sWe have reason to suspect that you may be connected to The series of school murders.
We need your cooperation while we search the apartment
Andrea’s voice rose, trembling with disbelief.
“What?!
How—how could you suspect me?!”
White made a quick sweep of the apartment.
It had a small living room, one bedroom, and trash scattered everywhere.
Takeout bags, empty cans, wrappers everything lay around like a battlefield no one had bothered to clean.
White asked evenly, without hesitation:
“Are there any rooms without surveillance cameras?”
Andrea lowered her voice.
“The bedroom… and the bathroom… But wait!
You can’t just go through my personal things!”
She hadn’t even finished speaking before the officers put on their gloves and spread out, each taking a section of the apartment.
The search began.
Bedroom White’s section.
The door opened, and a damp smell hit her nose.
To the left was a small bathroom.
Clothes were piled all over the bed.
When White pulled open the closet door, the entire pile inside came tumbling down like an avalanche, burying her.
“…Seriously?”
White sighed and pushed the clothes aside.
She looked around.
There was a desk with a laptop, a jar, and a fountain pen on it.
Beside the desk stood a bookshelf.
Something about the way the books were arranged caught her attention.
They had all been turned around, their front covers facing inward, as if they were hiding something.
White pulled one out.
The cover was covered in colorful yaoi artwork.
“…So those movies about messy Fujoshi aren’t exaggerating after all.”
She didn’t waste any more time.
If Steven wanted to hide a murder weapon, he would put it somewhere Andrea rarely bothered to touch, but somewhere the police could easily find.
White crouched beside the desk and began opening the drawers one by one.
Third drawer: school documents.
Fourth: receipts, scraps of paper, old report cards.
Fifth: a chaotic pile of documents spilled out like a second avalanche.
White frowned and went through the papers and old notebooks one by one.
Then a small notebook with no name on it was wedged among the documents.
She opened it.
The first page was blank.
The paper was fairly new.
The middle pages were the same.
Then she reached the last page.
A surgical blade slipped into her palm.
Dried blood still clung to it.
The air in the room seemed to turn cold.
White stared at the blade without blinking.
“Found it.”
She placed the surgical blade inside an evidence bag.
When she stepped back into the living room, Andrea’s eyes immediately locked onto her face.
She looked so worried that even breathing too hard seemed like it might make everything worse.
“…I found a surgical blade,”
White said evenly.
“The fifth drawer.
Your desk.”
Jay raised an eyebrow as he looked at White.
“Looks like your prediction came true.”
Andrea blinked rapidly, unable to keep up.
“What the hell…?”