Morana Barnes: Murderous Love

10. Morana Barnes

September 7th, 2022 8:30 am

Tips And Another Dead End:

I walked into the semi-dark room and looked at the young boy who sat there fidgeting nervously with his parents on either side of him. His mom had her hand on his back comfortingly as she looked up at her. I sat down in the chair across from them and set my notepad and pen down on the metal table.

"So, you said you might've seen something?" I questioned. I wanted to get straight to it because two people have already died and we had nothing. It seemed like Sydney's case might go cold and Jason's was gonna be right behind hers. We needed something that might help us progress these two cases.

"Yeah, um..." his nerves were getting to him. The longer I looked at him the more I examined him. He didn't look over the age of 18, he had a medium build, little to no facial hair, erratic brown eyes-probably has Nystagmus- and his breathing was loud and uneven.

"What's your name kid?" I asked. I wanted to calm him down a little bit. I knew for him this probably seemed like an interrogation and he might be in trouble for not saying something sooner but honestly, he didn't know what he saw. He just knows he saw something and his parents are the ones who pointed out how serious it was. "Lake," he said taking a deep breath.

"What grade are you in Lake?"

"10th,"

"I know this may seem intimidating Lake but I assure you, you aren't in any trouble. I just wanna know what you saw,"

"I'm sorry detective. He hasn't had a good night's rest, none of us have actually since yesterday. Lake says he saw the whole thing happen and we're on edge because it was in our neighborhood. Lake could've been next had the killer seen him looking out the window," Lake's mom, Mrs. Hartford said.

"Wait he saw the entire attack?" I thought maybe he had only seen the killer but not the full thing. This could be what we needed.

"Yeah, that's what he told us but he didn't tell us right away. When he did tell us that's when we had him call,"

"Ok, Lake, I need you to tell me everything you saw okay? Try and be as detailed as possible for me please," I picked my pen up as Lake took another deep breath to get ready to speak.

"I-I was doing my homework and texting one of my friends on the phone. They said they'd be coming over in about thirty minutes. Time went by and when I checked it'd been about twenty-five minutes but my friend didn't live that far away. I looked out the window to see if his mom's car was outside and that's when I saw it," he paused.

"Ok, did your friend ever come?"

"No, I told him not to because of what I saw. I was scared that if he came he and his mom might get hurt. He stabbed him so many times," he said clearly unable to get it out of his mind. "Once he was done it seemed like he was robbing Jason,"

"Explains why Jason's things were missing," I muttered mostly to myself.

"After he went inside Jason's house. I was stuck. I couldn't move, I-I was frozen in fear,"

I paused and stopped writing. The evidence was connecting. I knew that if Lang's story collided with this one we'd for sure have some kind of evidence. Maybe not physical but something at least. "Keep going," I said.

"After a while, I don't know how long, it seemed like it'd been hours but it was probably only a couple of minutes, he came back out and he was wearing different clothes,"

"What did he have on at first?"

"He had on all black; a black jacket, black pants, black shoes. His hoodie was on as well,"