RoseBlood

Cold Case

I don't feel like doing anything when I get back to the Tyrels' home, even though the thoughts that have built up over these days are swarming around in my head, needing to be pinned down neatly, like they usually are, so that I can make sense of everything. But by the time the car pulls up in the driveway and I'm heading through the double doors of their house, I want to collapse back into bed from exhaustion. It's not tiredness from a lack of sleep or wearing myself out physically, but it's everything that's building up in my mind. Confusion, frustration, annoyance, scrapped ideas, new ideas, bad endings to this case, good endings to this case...

No endings to this case.

Elias goes straight upstairs while Emerson and Edith carry on talking about a plan of action now, and Emerson's gaze snaps to his brother's form rushing off.

"Elias," he calls, but Elias ignores him. Edith makes a move to go after him, but I beat her to it.

"It's okay," I mutter, "I'll go."

Edith nods with a small, grateful smile, a smile that's somehow still on her face, with only small signs of bewilderment and tiredness on her features. Emerson is as indifferent as always, but his brows are furrowed an inch deeper than usual.

Elias is sitting on the edge of his bed when I make it up, his door ajar, curtains pulled shut harshly, only a sliver of light showing signs of the late afternoon's light outside. I push the door open and go in, sitting beside him. Elias makes no move to stop me, his hands clasped between his legs, shoulders hunched, a calm but resentful look in his eyes that stare at the ground.

He stays quiet for a long while, and so I take in the bedroom around me silently. Elias' room gives little insights about his personality, and it's an interesting distraction; survival game posters tacked up on a feature wall, with codes and glitches written surprisingly neatly and surrounding the images on post-its. He has multiple game systems on the shelf under his desk, dozens of game cartridge boxes stacked up on either side of it, and a wide computer gracing the centre of it all.

"Didn't take you as a gamer," I comment quietly to myself, and Elias hears, his eyes raising to look at the setup too.

"It's a good escape," he mutters roughly, his gaze lingering on the posters before he looks back down at the floor again with a scoff. "Emerson thinks it's a waste of time. But there's good stuff in survival games... I don't know, I like it."

I nod, looking out of his window to another view of the woods beyond the building thoughtfully. "So. What's the plan now?"

Elias' face twists into a scowl, though he seems more fed up than angry. "There is no plan. You know what'll happen."

I stay quiet for a moment, coaxing him to go on with another nod, and he huffs, glancing up at me.

"Know what a cold case is?"

"Yes," I respond slowly. "An unsolved investigation that stays open in case new evidence is found."

"But it's not about the evidence, is it? You've got all those weird, stupid love letters, roses, the methods and all. It's about who did it, damn it. This whole thing is just so ridiculous and... and unfair. We're gonna spend weeks of staying up all night, going over and over what we know, but getting nowhere. Going around in circles until we run out of ideas. Instead, this time, the last victim will probably die and..."

I frown, and his words trail off, Elias immediately looking up at me with a guilty, tired expression on his face.

"I- sorry, Holly, I didn't mean-"

"I know you didn't," I reply with a small shrug. "I'm not dying on anyone, Elias, you should know that."

"How do you know?"

"I just do," I say. "I'm not dead yet, and it's me they're after, isn't it? Eventually, they'll come to me, or I'll find them first, and then it's a twisted mystery solved."

Elias lets out a heavy breath, running his fingers through dark brown locks before rubbing hands against his face defeatedly. "You're so sure of everything. Just like my brother."

I roll my eyes to myself, though I don't find myself aggravated by being compared to him as much now. Elias mumbles something under his breath that I don't quite catch, and my interest is perked again.

"Sorry?"

Elias shifts uncomfortably before speaking up.

"Dad. He used to call Emerson 'Sonny.' Got on his nerves, it did."

I manage a half-smile at that, mildly surprised to hear anything about the Tyrels' past from Elias. "What did he call you?"

"Just Elias. You can't do much with my name, or Edith's, I guess." He pauses, deflating significantly at the thought of his father, and I keep quiet, letting him speak. "I know you've got a way of dealing with this stuff that works for you, but... well, I didn't. I still don't. This is the first time you're going through it all, just like we did. Getting your parent murdered and not being able to do anything about it, being hopeless in finding and connecting leads that went with what we saw, letting those days of searching turn into weeks, months. Until even Brunsley started giving up. Four years, it's been. And no one ever gets over something like that, but... we were just getting into a routine that was less painful, and a little easier to live through. Now it's like a sick joke. Having it go again."

I don't know what to say for several moments. Beneath that typically casual, teasing attitude of Elias Tyrel's is just a boy who's a couple of years older than me who's hurting. Who walked in on a crime scene, his father as the victim. It must be ten times as much frustrating for him as it is for me, missing the killer so many times, getting attacked in the garden, and now this. It must feel as if he's losing his dad all over again.

"Well... I'm sorry my parents got killed," I end up saying with a slight smile, and Elias snorts with amused laughter.

"Same to you. I've said already, we've got different ways of handling this mess, but... well, we get it. So if you feel like, I don't know, talking about it, I'm up for it. That's all."

My smile softens. "I'll keep that in mind."

We retreat back into silence until Edith comes up to announce food downstairs, and for the rest of the long, long evening, I think of my parents' bodies, cold and dead and wilting, just like how the roses will end up, just like how Clarissa and Daniel are. And slowly but surely, these cases are joined together and pushed aside to make room for a new crime, and we'll have to go through what their dad's death was labelled.

A cold case.