A Veil Between Worlds

Chapter 11: The Fourth Body

Josephine, Kyu, and Tom's POV

*November 8th, 2022*

Kyu walked into the station a bit later than he normally would like, but besides that, he was ready to work. He wasn't exactly working the case at the moment, his main concern was to have any answers his sister may have when Josephine tells Anastasia about her and Maeve being related. "Fraser, have you finished the report for the accident last night?" His desk neighbor asked, Kyu grabbed a file from the top of his pile of done files. He checked to make sure it was the right file and then handed it to the officer. "Great, thanks man," the officer said.

"No problem," Kyu said and he began to type the surname 'Hale' to see if there would be anything else he could find. He found Jason Hale, which is Maeve and Anastasia's biological father's name. Kyu started to dig deeper into Jason's life and started to uncover some interesting facts about the man.

So far Kyu knew that Jason is currently a 49-year-old man who is working as a mechanic at an auto shop in Reno, Nevada. He was the one who reported Maeve missing, the story goes, that he went inside the house and left Maeve out there with Mrs. Hale and he came back and Maeve was gone. Mrs. Hale was nowhere to be seen either. Jason called the police to report his three-month-old baby has stolen and when police were searching the place they found Mrs. Hale hanging from a tree near the house. The police ruled it out as suicide.

As Kyu was reading it he realized how many inconsistencies the story had. How could anyone steal a baby if someone was present? That is unless they killed the witness and then took the baby, but even if that did happen there should've been some sign to lead the police in that direction. No one is ever that clean when you have to kidnap a baby in under a minute. Either the police didn't look that hard or they disregarded anything that could've been evidence.

Kyu had his heart set on the fact that Maeve and Anastasia's mother was murdered. He could just feel it. He rarely had gut feelings like this and when he did they were almost always right. Tom walked up to Kyu's desk, "do you have the Thompson case file?" Tom asked and Kyu handed Tom the file. "Yeah, that's a weird case. Did they cross it off as a home invasion?" Kyu asked.

"Does it look like a home invasion to you?" Tom asked trying to see what Kyu's take on the case before giving him the answer. "No. It looks too personal for me and there was nothing stolen from the house. Most home invasions have the main motive of stealing valuables, then leaving, but with this one there were scratch marks on the floor. The victim's nails were torn out of her hand, she had multiple fractured bones, then the shot to the head. This looks like she got into some bad business and had to pay for it," Kyu said and Tom nodded impressed by Kyu's observation.

"Well done. Your observation is right on. We concluded that Eliza had gotten into something or saw something she wasn't supposed to and in return they killed her," Tom said and Kyu leaned back in his chair. "So are we working this as a murder case?" Kyu asked and Tom nodded. "Yeah, but some officers believe it might be the same person as the animalistic murders," Tom said.

"But they don't even have the same MO. There's nothing connecting them," Kyu said and Tom nodded. "I know, it's just what some officers think," Tom said and he walked away from the desk. Kyu went back to his research and started to dig deeper into Jason's past. Turns out he worked as a guard at Saint Joseph's Mental Health Institution, before he quit after three years of working. Before that, he was arrested multiple times for drug use and distribution.

Overall, this Jason dude didn't look very stable to Kyu. He then tried to find information about Maeve and Anastasia's mother, but there was almost nothing. Which made him feel better that their mother wasn't a felon. As far as he could tell she had a clean record.