Wasted Quirk

Chapter 9

At this point, I was shocked that I hadn't given in and forced my head through a window. I had broken several things. The skills I learned in my anger management class were becoming useless as my frustration grew. It was everything I could do to not crush the phone in my hand while talking to the detective.

"I'm sure you're disappointed," he said. I scoffed.

"Yeah, no shit."

He had just sent me the files concerning the recent crime at the old lady's corner store. I was so sure. So sure. Tetsuro had raised an eyebrow and a lot of the officers working on our now many months-long case laughed at me. Which was ballsy, to say the least. Anger management class helped in that situation. They kept their limbs.

I had poured through the documents and toxicology results from that case, and nothing connected it to our villain. I mean, aside from the fact that the criminal's aesthetic matched our guy, but otherwise? The substance on the floor? Jewelry cleaner. According to the official ruling on this case, it was deemed an act of property defacement, probably by some dumb wannabe villain hoping to get some hag to piss herself. Open and shut case. Not really worth anyone's time. But my gut just kept pushing me to keep digging.

"Will you send me the crime scene photos?" I asked, surprisingly calm, "and any surveillance footage you got?"

"I understand your desperation, Ground Zero, I really do—"

"That's not what this is about!" I shouted into the phone, no longer calm. "Those extras didn't do enough! There is nothing in these reports about the footage or the photos, so how the hell is anyone supposed to know that they even looked at it??"

"Okay, okay," Tetsuro exclaimed to appease me. "I'll send it to you now. Do what you like with it, but I don't know how willing anyone will be to reopen this case. But you can let me know if you find anything new."

We had that conversation over an hour ago. When the evidence showed up in my inbox, I abandoned my food and opened the attachments to start looking over it. My eyes were now tired and burning from staring at my computer screen for so long, straining to see every single detail of each piece of evidence. I wouldn't admit it, but I was exhausted. And after watching the same clip of footage for what felt like an eternity, I was pretty damn close to giving it up and going to bed.

I had replayed the footage yet again but wasn't paying attention to it. Instead, I was entertaining myself by moving the cursor on my computer screen back and forth across the screen or circling random things. Looking back, I probably looked like an idiot as I stupidly laughed while drooling. My chin, once resting in the palm of my hand, was drifting ever closer to the wooden surface of my desk...

"What the..."

My cursor was put to actual use as I rewound the footage again, but this time looking for something specific. It was fleeting but still weird. After watching the same video for so long, I felt like I had every customer's movements memorized, along with the old lady's. This one guy was standing in front of the instant ramen for ages while he tried to decide on which flavor he wanted more before abandoning both and choosing yaki soba instead. A lady with obnoxious clothes came in for a single bottle of bleach and left without paying. There was a mom there the whole time with her three brats trying to keep them from getting into anything and failing. Miserably.

The guy in question came in, did everything the store owner had described, then left. You could see him as he created his pop-up contraption and connected it to a trip wire, which would undoubtedly be activated by the small remote he handed over to the woman. He wasn't all that discreet about it. I could see the moment he threatened her when the lady's face went from rosy pink to pale as a ghost. She didn't move after that until the contraption was triggered and the bottle of jewelry cleaner shattered on the floor.