Insanity Bites |z.m| |h.s|

Chapter 47: Facade

My eyes narrowed on each article that spread out from the picture in the center. Each one seemed to be about a murder, suicide or missing person and I noticed about five of the articles were cases similar to that of Sally.

Suicides cases where the victim acted irrational before ending their own lives, but none of these articles explained Harry's fathers disappearance.  I decided to go over each one carefully now. I squinted my eyes as I skimmed through each article. 

The ones nearest to his father were about two missing people who claimed they saw aliens before they went missing, their bodies were found soon after in a dumpster outside some bar in the city. A homicide investigation had been carried out and their bodies were brought to the state crime lab for autopsies and further investigations.

There was one about a break in that same crime lab in the city. I was about to move on to the next one when I saw the name Dr. Edward Styles somewhere in the middle of the article.

I leaned in and read on as my heart thumped incessantly in my chest. He was apparently the head medical examiner in the state crime lab at the time of the break in. 

I moved on to the next article on it's side. This one wasn't a newspaper cut out, it was a printed out snippet from an online article and it said Dr. Edward Styles had quit his job as head medical examiner. I crossed checked the dates with the previous article and realized that he had quit one month after the break in at the lab.

There was another article about the break in saying a dead persons body parts were stolen but the motive was unclear. The perpetrators were never caught and the case remained unsolved. 

There were a few online theories that were printed out and stuck around this article. One of these articles exposed that the stolen body parts belonged to a person named Rebecca Langston. She was a missing person in one of the articles I had read just now. 

I sucked in a breath and bit my lip as I read on. There were so many of them. At least ten unsolved missing persons cases that ended up as suicides.

With the way things were going in our state and the constant media attention, ten people wouldn't make people bat an eyelid. Which was why no one was talking about them in detail. Ten people didn't seem as much as what the media constantly worried on about. With the constant talk about depression and suicides.

If you didn't suffer from it already, hearing it everyday would definitely make you question if you did. I knew for a fact that therapists in our country were one of the highest earners last year because I read it in an article that popped up while I googled Dr. Lecter. Sometimes I wondered if it was all some twisted form of advertising.

I rubbed my chin as I tried to piece everything together. The mind map honestly made it easier. After reading through most of them I could deduce that Harry's father had most probably examined the dead body whose parts were stolen.

Something must have happened that lead to his resignation. What I didn't know is whether he left his family after quitting but it would seem likely since these articles had caught Harry's attention.

There were multiple unsolved murders and suspicious suicides that were similar to each other. People claiming they saw things like aliens before they were either murdered or they took their own lives. Some of them were conspiracy articles not news.

And then there was me. I looked at my picture that sat a few rows below Sally's. There was no name or address just a small question mark at the bottom. A lump formed in my throat as I realized Harry had placed me among st all these other dead people and then my blood boiled in anger.

All this time I had thought he was my friend but instead he had been using me to his benefit. I sank to the floor and hugged my knees as the realization slowly sunk in that I had no one to turn to. No one I could trust.