Truths Unravel

Chapter #6

I wake to find myself on the ground with a white and purple blanket over me. I turn to face the ceiling and I encounter Emory's arm hanging over the bed. I get up, put Emory's dangling arm back on the bed, and look around. It's dark; no sunlight ever enters. I turn on one of my lamps, and go over what happened last night; it was a strange night. Out of the blue, I remember school. I rush to Emory and shake her, all the while yelling, "Wake up! Late for school!"

"Go away," Emory sleepily says and pushes my hand away.

"It's time for school. We're already late, Emory!" I try to yank her out of bed, but she resists. "Emory. Get. Up."

"It's Saturday. Now, let me sleep." Emory's head falls down onto the pillow, and her black hair is a mess that falls onto her face.

I let her arm go, and realize she's right; it is Saturday. But, that just means that we have more time to search for my parent's closest friends. Once again, I grab Emory's arm and start yelling at her to get up. "We have to find people that can tell us more about my parents. Emory stop being lazy." I'm finally able to push her off my bed and onto her feet.

"It's only 9. Do we actually have to go so early?" She whines. "No one will tell us anything, because they're sleeping." Emory adds some attitude to that.

"No, you know adults. They wake up at 6 or 7 so they can yell at their kids to wake up earlier on weekends. Trust me, the adults we ask will be wide awake."

Emory mutters something to herself that I don't hear, and gradually gets ready to leave. She borrows my clothes, and, within minutes, we're good to go. I creep down the stairs first, to make sure Isaac isn't there, but it's not likely for him to be up so early. Once I'm sure, I signal Emory to come down, quietly. Isaac usually isn't up before 1, but considering that his party lasted until 4am, he'll wake up by 5pm. That gives us loads of time to investigate.

Once we're out the door, Emory's face scrunches up, along with mine, and she covers her nose. "It smells horrible here. It smells like..." Emory looks to the sky; that's how she thinks, by looking up. I don't know how, but when she looks up and thinks, it gives her some pretty creative ideas at times. "I can't even find a word that describes this smell," she says as she looks back at me.

I chuckle, and say, "Why're we still here then. We need to get going." Emory and I briskly get out of Andale Street, and 20 minutes later, we reach the police station. Along with being a police station, it's also a place where files of citizens of Senrol are kept. I thought we might need files on my parents to find out who they were associated with, so we came here first. As we hike up the small hill the building is located on, I joke around and say, "I guarantee no officer will notice us enter, go through the classified files, and get out of there. If we told them we are going to go through their files, they would not care at all."

Emory laughs, and adds, "No wonder nobody calls the police here. They can't even find the person who robbed a box of donuts, right in front of their eyes." Emory continues to laugh until we approach the entrance. We both enter and go over to the front desk. Emory speaks in a polite voice, "Hello, we were wondering if we could borrow some files." Emory smiles at the male officer, whose badge reads the name Tevari.

"Sure, ladies. Whose files should I bring?" Tevari seems like he doesn't know that he can't give files away to anyone. However, that's an advantage for us.

Emory speaks in her polite and high pitched voice again and says, "We were wanting Cara Coltrane and Ryker Coltrane's files. Uh, and Galvos Aldrich's files." Emory turns and whispers to me, "Maybe Galvos's files have something useful, so let's just take them."

"I'll be back in a few minutes with your files." Tevari takes a huge bite out of his donut and sluggishly walks out of the room.

Once Tevari is out of sight, Emory and I smirk at each other. I laugh and whisper, "That was so easy. Someone really needs to read these officers the laws of Alabama."

"It helped us, though. Sometimes, it's good to have useless police around." She laughs, and we try to control it by the time Tevari gets back.

Tevari lifts up 3 black boxes full of paper, and smiles down at us. "Here you go. All the files on the people you've asked for." He pushes the boxes towards us and walks away without asking if we needed help carrying them.

"What a big help," I say sarcastically as I pick up one box. I let Emory take 2 boxes since she's stronger than me.

We walk out and find a bench to sit on. We start looking through Galvos's files, and we find a big stack of papers that reads "friends/family" at the top of each paper. We look at the first paper, and it's for a girl named Mia. As we read on, we find out that she was killed 5 months ago. We guess that Mia went to school with Galvos and my parents, since she's the same age as them.

Over the next couple of minutes, any paper we read declares that the person was slaughtered brutally; and of course, the killer was never found for any of them.

"How is it possible that anyone Galvos has associated with, is dead?" Emory inquires. "It's like it was on purpose; like someone is getting rid of their tracks."

I think the same, but we still have to look through my parent's files. I grab my mom's file and find the stack of papers of friends and family. "Maybe, these will be different."

We look through the papers, and everyone was killed here, too. Yet, when it came to my dad's friends and family, 2 people were still alive; someone named Inder Gosal and Amia Floris. "We need to get to these two. NOW!" I say in a panicked tone.

Inder and Amia are my last chance to get answers, and if they are killed, I have nothing. I messily stuff everything into a box and I decide that we'll come back for these later. I just take Inder and Amia's papers, grab Emory's hand, and run to Consolas Street, where Amia lives.

10 minutes later, we reach a grey and white house, with a stunning garden leading up to the front door. Emory rings the doorbell; we wait a while and ring over and over again. I look through the huge window by the door and see a figure on the ground. At that second, I know we're too late. "Stop," I whisper to Emory. "We can't get help from her."

I try opening the door and it's unlocked; once inside Emory runs for help. I stand there, alone, over Amia's body, and spot a note held in her hand. I quickly snatch it and stuff it in my pocket before anyone comes.

A few minutes pass and finally an adult enters and calls the police. The police keep Emory and me until the body is gone, so they can interrogate us. We lie about why we were at her house and they believe us like total fools.

At 4pm, when we're allowed to leave the site, Emory and I fetch the boxes and head back to my house. It's really silent; Emory and I just exchange looks, but never talk. Once we're 5 minutes away from Andale Street, Emory breaks the silence by saying, "We need to warn Inder, fast."

I nod my head at first, but then add, "What if the killer already got to him, or is going to him tomorrow?" I say that, but then hope enters me and I say, "What if we get to him first? We can get answers and save him!" As I say that, I recall the note I found; I never read it, yet. "There was a note," I say as I dig in my pocket for the paper. "In Amia's hand. I need to read it still."

I finally reach the note, pull it out, and open it up. It reads, "To: Inder From: Amia- I know who it is. The killer is..." The note ends there. I look up at Emory and say, "Amia knew the killer."

"How? How could the killer know that Amia found out who they were?" Emory looks up at the sky to think. "We need to find Inder first thing tomorrow. The killer leaves a time gap before killing the next person. We have some time."

I nod my head in agreement. I slowly walk towards my house and Emory follows. I need Inder alive. Or else, I have no way of helping my parents. This killer really wants to get rid of traces of my parents and Galvos. I will not let that happen; I've not done 3 years of investigating to be held back by some killer. At that thought, I feel a bit more confident and make my way back home.