Criminal Case: Grimsborough

Chapter 35: At the End of the Rope-Part 3

While they were trying to figure out what they were gonna do next for the case, Jones and Marie were approached by an unexpected visitor; the @rtist. Once she approached them, the @rtist told the two officers that she knew the person who was harassing their victim online and that person was Penelope Rivera. Shocked and surprised by what they heard, Jones exclaimed, "But that doesn't make any sense! Why would her best friend treat her that way?!"

"I guess that's up to her to tell you. When I saw those messages on Lisa's Friendnet wall, I set out to find out who was bullying her. And when I got the name, I contacted Lisa to let her know," the @rtist said with a shrug.

After hearing that Lisa knew that Penelope was the one sending her messages, Marie suggested that they have to bring Penelope to the station and to get to the bottom of this mystery. After the @rtist left, Jones suggested that they should also take a look at her hangout to see what else she was hiding from them. Before they could go to the hacker's hideout, Marie and Jones decided to talk to Penelope first. As soon as she got to the station and was put in the interrogation room, Marie looked at the girl and said, "Ms. Rivera, we got a tip that you were the one sending those incriminating messages to Lisa on her Friendnet page."

Hesitant at first, Penelope confessed, "Okay I confess, I was the one sent Lisa those horrible messages on Friendnet! I was being stupid okay?! It's just that we go to this big university and we've always been together and I got scared that she would go and make new friends and she would forget about me! She was already getting chummy with that Tess girl who was in our movie history class and they were always taking the subway together! And believe me, that girl is just plain weird! So anyway, I decided to make Lisa afraid of the other students. I would drink ten cups of coffee in one evening just to make sure I awake to post those messages in the dead of night. Look, I know how horrible it makes me sound and I'm not really proud of what I did, bug it worked!"

Jones crossed his eyes and said, "How could it have ever worked Penelope?! We know that Lisa learned that you were her tormentor!"

Penelope then looked down and folded her hands together and said, "She did and she was very angry. But we talked about it and we put everything out on the table and the two of us decided to put this in the past and move on. I would've never harmed Lisa physically! Why would I ever hurt her when she already forgave me for my biggest blunder?! We got out of this closer than we ever had been!"

After they were done talking to Penelope, Marie crossed her eyes and said, "What kind of friend would put someone through hell like that just to "strengthen their friendship?"

Jones shook his head in disappointment and said, "I really don't understand kids these days. And you won't me believe that Lisa was all fine and dandy with this either! And I'm sure that you noticed this too Marie, but Penelope mentioned Luke's movie history class. Which means she probably saw 'The Hangman Murders' too!"

Jones suggested that they have another look at the subway station once they were done checking the @rtist's hideout and Marie agreed. Once they got there, Jones looked around it and thought, I'm glad the @rtist didn't change hideouts before she came to see us. Marie looked around and saw that the @rtist left one of her laptops on and her email box was open and it was asking for a password. Marie then got to work cracker the hacker's password. After a few seconds, Marie cracked the password and got into the @rtist's inbox.

But when she looked at it closely, Marie saw that it wasn't the @rtist's mailbox she got into, but Caroline Fitzgerald's, the woman in charge of the Anti-Bullying association. Jones also looked at the inbox and thought that the @rtist was probably looking into Caroline's life and he thought, what if it's linked to Lisa's problems? Marie then suggested that they should let Alex look at Caroline's emails and Jones highly agreed.