Adventure in the World of Crimes

1.8 His Deduction Skills

"What happened to you?" Laura looked up from staring at the ceiling, actually not thinking of anything in particular to Blake who towered her and blocked her view. He was sweating, his whole practice shirt, even his hair was drenched, a white towel dangling on his broad shoulder and a branded bottled water was in his hand.

Laura scrunched up her nose while eyeing him in disgust, she kicked him on the leg a little forceful that made him grunt and moved backward, "Don't come closer unless you're clean. You remind me of those unhygienic criminals I beat up."

"What? I still look good even when I'm sweaty!" He argued and sulked but didn't move forward and just wiped off his sweat, afraid of getting beat up like those criminals he reminded her of.

He was surprised upon seeing her entered their indoor practice field, with disheveled hair, and looked very bothered so he excused himself from the practice but managed only to hear the start of it as the coach called him back immediately. He rested himself on the rail, plopping his elbow on it as he lightly bent himself backward, "Tell me why you're here."

Laura sighed again, she slipped her hand in the pocket of her pants and silently handed to him the folded orange sticky notes which he instantly unfolded and read the note. His eyes widen, "Don't tell me.."

"I saw that on the rooftop, hidden inside the mount of sand and only the end of it was shown, when I read the note, I immediately ran back to the dorm to check up on Eloise but was too late as I saw our room left disorder like someone was looking for something as all of the papers inside were scattered on the floor, surrounding a bleeding Eloise." She explained, gritting her teeth in anger as her supposed to be two sources of information has been attacked only on her first day of staying in the university.

"Wait here. I'll just change quickly." He just said then jumped on the railings of the benches and ran to their locker room. She could sense the urgency in him if because of worry or excitement or both or other reasons than that, she didn't know, but she was sure that he was rushing.

Laura was still in a daze by the quick turn of events happening right now, she realized that she had no idea even the grasp of what was happening, she was just asked to come back to school to spot the erroneous activities this school had and that's it, she still had no idea how to start and who were they against with, the sender, however, was too busy to fill her in with the information she needed and looked like he didn't know everything so she was slightly annoyed by that.

"Let's go. Where is Eloise? Clinic?" He asked, now clad with a green shirt with the university's symbol above the chest and black jogging pants, his hair was also wet as Laura supposed he took a quick shower.

She nodded, jumping over the railings as well then landed next to him. "I called for the emergency on the telephone, two sentinels came and brought her in the clinic."

The soccer guy nodded, he fell silent and became lost in his thought, making Laura more annoyed in the process as she did not know what to think at the moment. After a while of silence, he looked at the agent, "Let's go to your room first before visiting Eloise, have you cleaned the place before you went to me?"

"No, I had no time. I trailed behind the sentinels to make sure that Eloise will be admitted safely to the clinic. Why?" She asked cluelessly, they walked to the right-wing of the university, taking a different route instead of the other where the clinic was.

"Tell me which part of her body was bleeding?" She asked instead, not answering Laura's question of confusion.

Nevertheless, Laura answered, "At the back of her head, there's a pool of blood on the carpet."

Blake nodded slowly, he fixed the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder and vocalized the thought lingering on his mind, "If the room was left with a mess, then we can assume a few scenarios, I'll give you the three most possible scenarios."

He looked at Laura and raised his forefinger, "First, Eloise gone wild by the thought of Earl's death that she hit her head on something sharp because of too much movement. Second, she was searching for something that she couldn't find so she had to search thoroughly resulting in papers thrown all over the room then slipped on the papers, what was she searching for? No one knows. Third, someone had barged in and needed something from Eloise's things so this human needed to knock her out first by hitting her with something hard."

Laura looked at him in awe, now that he showed off his detective mind skill, he was now reminded of her co-agent, Sean, he was also like that when she came to work with him, though much more strict and snob, and would not share it with her immediately but would let her figured those out first before completely telling her his thoughts, they were both goods in a deduction for Laura.

"We'll confirm one or neither of those now." She just said as the elevator dinged indicating that they reached her room floor.

She opened the door and once again welcomed by the messy room and the blood tainted carpet. Blake pulled out his phone from his pocket and took a picture of the room, he also got something inside his duffel bag. When she saw what it was, her eyebrow raised, reaching over the pair of gloves he was handing him out.

"Do not hold anything with your bare hands especially in a crime scene, they could blame you even with how innocent you are." He stated then started picking up the scattered papers on the floor.

"Why did you take Law? You should've taken Criminology." She commented, taking into consideration his readiness in this kind of thing more than any police she met.

"That's too low for me, Miss Laura. They couldn't defend the innocent but could only point a finger and jailed anyone they deemed as the culprit without proper investigation and enough evidence, however, lawyer or prosecutor could do both." He put the pile of papers in the box, "And you? why did you take nursing?"

Laura didn't know if this guy wanted to be killed for messing around with her or he was just plain stupid for asking back that question, "We're not having a casual conversation or not even a getting-to-know each other talk here, stupid! You know why I'm here."

Blake laughed but then stopped suddenly, he crouched down near the window and traced something there. Laura walked to him as her eyes widen upon seeing what he was looking at, "It's the same scratch as the one I saw at the rooftop except that there was just a small taint of blood there."

Blake again fell into his deep thoughts, confused as he was sure earlier that Earl committed suicide as he listed some points that led him to that notion, "What else did you see?"

She shook her head, "Nothing else." then when she remembered something, she crossed her arm and creased her forehead at him, "I thought you were so sure that it was suicide?"

"It was." He whispered, not as positive as he was earlier. He took his phone out again and captured the scratch, "We should visit Eloise and see how she is. She holds a lot of information now."

"Aren't you going to tell me everything yet? I feel like a fool following you behind without even knowing what's happening. I didn't agree to this task just to be your assistant, Mister." Laura snapped, glaring at Blake.

"Patience, Miss Laura. I will drop everything on Sunday, just make sure your mind is ready as this will be a little complex. I will also tell you this school's possible fault and the reason why all of these are all happening." He replied, he took off his gloves and also asked Laura to do the same as he put them back into his bag,

"Just a day of being here and a lot of things have already happened." She muttered, closing the door of their room after putting everything back and now ready to visit Eloise.

"To tell you honestly, suicide is not new to this school anymore. Some people said it was from the pressure, some in depression, and more other assumptions. I never doubted it before, this school is cruel to the scholars so suicide is a common occurrence. Until this year, those that I reported to you, these circle of friends' death. It was purely strange, I tried investigating it but the crime scene was immediately cleaned out." He said, slightly irked by this.

Laura remained silent until they reached the clinic. Several things were running through her mind, the lack of information was taking a toll on her, and she couldn't wait on Sunday to know everything.

"Who are you visiting, please?" The nurse seemingly in his forties seated at the front desk asked, busy looking through her computer and not even sparing them a look.

"Good evening, Miss Hera! We're looking for Eloise Nore." Blake friendly replied, leaning to the table as if trying to appeal to the nurse.

"Go away, Mister Foster. She's no longer here, the councils moved her to the tunnel's clinic." She replied uninterestedly.

"What? Why?" Laura asked in surprise. As she saw earlier, there were plenty of rooms to accommodate Eloise, and need not move to the other clinic, so what are they thinking and they took her away from them?

"I don't know, Miss. We have no right to counter their decision even if we were older than them." The nurse just answered then she waved her hand shoo-ing them away. "I'm busy. Shoo!"

Laura anxiously looked at Blake, who has an unreadable expression. Their last source of information, if not dead, was also taken away from them.

"This is bad."