THE CRIMINAL FILES ~ Tragedy at its Finest

S E V E N

/I was left to my own devices. Many days fell away, with nothing to show. And the walls kept tumbling down, in the city that we love. Great clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above. But if you close your eyes.../

"What if...we can't figure this out?" Jack asked me.

I was standing up, glancing over the crime scene photos for the hundredth time. "Why wouldn't we?" I asked back. He was quiet, and so was I.

"Maybe we could, you know, take a break."

"Are you suggesting we give up?!" I spun around, clutching a brown folder in my hand.

"Well what other choice do we have?!"

"We figure it out! That's what we've done for every single case that has been brought in and plopped down our desks for the past eight years!"

"You think your so special, don't you?"

"What...?" I choked.

"You. Acting all high and mighty. I know that the superiors wanted you to be the team leader, but maybe it wasn't the best idea after all."

"I don't understa-"

"Of course you don't! You choose to never understand unless it's you making the decisions. Other people are trying to help you while you push them away thinking you can do it all by yourself. You aren't perfect."

"Yeah! I know I'm not! Especially in mom and dad's damn eyes!" I shouted back with so much anger and fuel raging inside of me, my muscles felt temporarily weak. The two of us were standing across from each other, eye to eye. "Your telling me I'm not perfect. I know I'm not. But at least I don't act like a child when I need to grow up." I growled. Jackson looked at me, and for a second I saw a tinge of sadness. He picked up his coffee cup and left the room.

Sighing, I sat down and put my head between my knees. Everything right now was going to shit. The thought of the fact that we might not ever solve this case upset me. "You can't save everybody." I looked up to see the Sheriff walk in and pull up a chair in front of me. "Believe me, when I first started the job - I wanted to save every single person on this damn planet. But the world doesn't work that way."

I wiped away a few tears exiting my eyes as I smiled at how stupid I must've looked. I know my mom would scold me if she saw her daughter now. "I feel like a hypocrite, sometimes," the Sheriff didn't respond, waiting for me to finish. "I mean, I do this job. I want to save everyone, when in reality, I can't do my job without people being in pain."

"Yeah, I feel that way sometimes too." I smiled, glad that somebody was in here helping me get out everything. "I do this job for my daughter, though. She helps me see the beauty in what I do. And oddly enough, she's only seven years old." He sighed. "She has a sort of childish optimism to her. When I get home from work, she'll look up at me, and she'll say: 'how many people did you save today, daddy?'...she always makes me feel better about myself."

I looked down, thinking of the night before when Owen brought me to Daisy's home. Where I met her daughter, Kristen, that she named after me. "We see so much negativity every day, we start to have a hard time telling the difference between good and bad. Because we're designed and trained to figure out the lies and quirks to everything. So when something good comes along, we see it, but we don't acknowledge it. It's just there. And yes, we can't save everybody. But the people we do save have a place in our hearts that we may hide under multiple scars - but it's still there. The beauty, of the fact that we helped someone." He took a breath. "I've only known you for, what? Six days now?" I nodded, and he continued with, "but I can tell that you hide all the good, and replace it with memories of the bad because its a way of protecting yourself. And yes, it is a sufficient way of hiding your mind from everything and hoping that you don't become so attached to something that'll be ripped away from your grasp. But cherish the good that you do have. Because, not all of us cherish it. And not all of us find it in the first place."

It was quiet afterwards, the only sound of the swinging of the door echoing through the room. I took a breath, pushed my hair out of my face, grabbed my coat and walked out of the glass encased room.

I shoved the double doors open, took out the keys, unlocked the car and got in the drivers seat. I took out of phone, went to iMessage and texted May.

I left for a little while. Gonna interview Maria's parents. Just myself. See if anything new came up from the time when you and Jack went to see them.

Shutting it off, I put the car into 'Drive' and worked my way out of the parking lot.

*****

"You have a lovely home, Mrs. Scott." I told her as she shut the door behind me.

"Thank you. I like reading all the home magazines. I like changing up the scenery once in a while." I smiled. I readied myself and took a breath allowing my most gentle and sympathetic voice to show through.

"Mrs. Scott, I know that my two teammates interviewed you and your husband, but I just wanted to go through everything...see if maybe there was something that slipped your mind."

She nodded. "Did you catch the person who did this to my Maria, yet?" Tears formed. On both of our faces.

"No, not yet." Her face fell, and it looked as if she was sinking and becoming a part of the chair.

"Well, I told the detectives everything, Maria was supposed to walk home from school, and when she didn't come back a little over thirty minutes then her normal time, I got worried..." She sniffed. "They found her body in the woods two hours later."

I sighed and felt bad for having to squish the last ounce of hope she has left. "Mrs. Scott, were you aware of...the fact that your daughter was a victim of...other, circumstances?"

She stopped crying and looked at me with sad and confused eyes. "Other circumstances? What do you mean?"

"Do you know Mr. Harris, well?"

She nodded before she spoke. "Yes. Everybody did. His wife and I are friends." I nodded.

"I hate to tell you this, Mrs. Scott. Especially of all the other pain you've had to deal with over the past week. But..." I took a breath and masked the tears. Which, I was really good at. I have had eight years practice. "Mr. Harris, Jensen, has been molesting the children at the high-school -" I was cut off by sobbing.

She was crying uncontrollably, already knowing what I was going to say before I even said it. "My baby." She said through tears. "She told me it was his."

My attention was caught. "Um, excuse me? What did you say?"

She snapped. "Maria told me it was her boyfriend's. I didn't believe her, since the two never seemed like they were intimate. I should've known sooner."

My eyes widened and my breathing hitched. I let myself out. I pulled out my phone, and pressed call while running to my car. "Hello?"

"Joan! I need you to pull up Maria's financial background. What did she pay for in the past month?"

"Um, um, hold on..." she said. The tapping of the keyboard was audible, as I lunged my body inside the car. "Nothing really out of the blue, I mean she ordered a few pain medications...and she made a few trips to the ice cream bar in town but that's it."

I was now on the road, heading back to the precinct. "Okay, Danny told me she looked as if she was putting on a little weight, try three months prior."

It was quiet. "Joan?"

"Oh! Oh, Maria Scott brought a pregnancy test with her credit card six weeks ago."

"Okay, fax that to Owen, tell him to print out."

I hung up and focused on the road ahead of me.

This is the exact lead that we needed to move forward with the case. All we had to do, is figure out who it was.