Traces Of Truth: A Psychometric Thriller

Chapter 5: First Murder Case

Assemblyman Garcia’s case ends with a police station squabble and a disappointed Jared. His dreams of returning to his city through political connections are dashed away by Claire who recovers the donor list from her grandpa’s room and places it back to its original location. Since nothing was technically stolen, the case is dismissed, and Jared moves onto his next big break: a string of missing fish finders.

However, before Jared can use Claire’s powers to find the culprit, she strikes a deal with him to help her solve a case of her own. Recently, Shaman John Ponce saved a puppy buried alive in the mountains, and Claire wants to catch the cruel owner. Using this opportunity to leech off Jared, she has him “upgrade” her powers (e.g., a manicure, jewelry, and vitamins), and the pampering pays off. They find the owner’s location, and Jared arrests him after Claire gives him a piece of her mind.

Now that Jared kept his end of the deal, he expects the same level of dedication from Claire and forces her to learn Arabic in order to figure out the prime suspect’s memory.

After a few sleepless nights, she manages to catch a few words, and with Lance's help (what can’t this man do?) she figures out the motive and passes it along to Jared.

Armed with this new knowledge, Jared approaches the suspect who turns out to be a pawn within a larger operation, and with Claire's powers, they find the criminals’ hideout. Unfortunately, Jared underestimated the size of the organization, and our duo ends up captured and bound. Though Jared boasts about being trained to escape situations like this, he flounders on the ground hopelessly as the criminals come back to finish them off.

The thieves throw Claire and Jared into the ocean, and as our heroes sink to their doom, the original suspect jumps in and saves them. Rather than call for backup, Jared sees red and marches into the criminals’ den to beat them all up. This time, without Claire there to distract him, he makes quick work of the thieves. Afterwards, Jared arrests the original suspect as well, even though Claire pleads with him to reconsider, and our hardheaded detective sticks by his code that a criminal is a criminal no matter what.

Another crime disrupts the peace in this supposedly quiet town as the neighborhood ladies get into an uproar about their missing underwear. While the rest of his team busies themselves with this case, Jared receives a call from his old colleague in his city about Chairman Mendoza: a notorious drug dealer and the reason for Jared’s demotion.

On his way to the city, Jared offers Claire a ride to her destination, but unbeknownst to her, he drags her along to his business first. Using the gum-on-butt trick, Jared has Claire touch the chairman’s rear end, and then needles the chairman about his recent endeavors. Irked by Jared’s goading, the chairman decides to get rid of the annoying detective for good.

Back in town, the number of stolen underwear continues to grow, so Detective Emman Han orders everyone to devote their attention to this case. Though Jared complains at first, his passion is lit when he runs into the thief on a stakeout and gets beaten rather embarrassingly by him twice. Word soon spreads about Jared’s mishap, and our feisty detective is dead set on catching the thief, even if it means letting Claire touch his butt.

Hoping that she can see something he missed, he allows her to peek into his memories, but instead of finding the thief, Claire gets thrown further into his past. She sees Jared taking care of a young ruffian named Paul Jordan — the same one who Jared saw during his failed raid — and it becomes clear why this betrayal hit him so hard.

With her upgraded powers, Claire finds the underwear thief’s face from Jared’s memory, and they go out to catch him. Much like their previous encounters, the thief outruns Jared, but right when it seems like another bust, Ashley's brother (the lone male from Hannah's crew) bursts onto the scene and runs after the culprit. Heh.

While Ashley’s brother catches the thief, Jared takes a different path to cut them off, and a shadowy figure follows after him. Noticing his tail, Jared gets ready for a confrontation, but he stands in shock when Paul steps into view. Before Jared can react, Paul stabs him and runs off.

Chasing after Jared, Claire happens to witness the entire exchange, but as she calls for help, he tells her not to tell anyone.

At the hospital, the others ask Claire if she saw anything, but she keeps her promise to Jared and lies to the detectives.

Later that night, Claire comes by the hospital to bring Jared some comics (unwillingly of course) and runs into Assemblyman Garcia who is also here to see the detective. On their way to the elevators, they meet up with the group leaving Jared’s room, and Lance looks tense as he watches the assemblyman. (possible parentage mystery?)

As Claire and the others ride the elevators, another passenger gets on at the last second, and Claire instantly recognizes Paul. She calls Emman for backup, and though he advises her to stay away, she follows after him just in case. Distracted by her phone call, she bumps into Paul in the stairwell, but to her surprise, he seems more worried about Jared than anything else.

While Claire tries to escape, she gets into a scuffle with Paul and touches his butt. She sees the same memories but from Paul’s perspective, and she realizes that the young man was threatened by Chairman Mendoza and only wanted to save the nun who raised him. Realizing the truth, Claire tells Paul to share everything with Jared, but Paul runs away when Emman calls after her.

Claire takes it upon herself to clear the air between the two of them and tells Jared that Paul stabbed him in order to save him. It was not a coincidence that he survived the attack, but Jared reminds her that a criminal is still a criminal. However, when Paul walks into his room covered in blood, Jared rushes to his side and cradles him in his arms as Paul apologizes for what he did.

In that moment, Claire reaches out to see who did this and witnesses someone wearing a poncho stab Paul.