VAGUE

CHAPTER 5 (PART 1)

CHAPTER 5

-PART ONE-

Convinced they had cracked the case; the detectives drove to the forest where they found lost familiar things. They asked sheriff to lead them to the last site the man has been saw. To their dismay, they found the lifeless body, even come closer they recognize that its him. On returning to the police station, he announced: "Knight-drain Pendelton Chase is dead" During at least 10 subsequent interrogations in the following days, Chase refused to repeat his answers. The night after the interrogation, Chase ran away and hide but his fate wasn't that good. Police officers found his body on the woods, full of scars, bathing with his own blood. Hearing the news, his friends do nothing but to mourn and cry. The mayor of the town, raise thousand dollars just to find the culprit behind the death of his son.

By the summer of 1901, after all the incidents happened, Richardson's trying to move on from Copper's death, the media feasting Drain's last testimony. The lead detective Sheriff Castillo who found young Chase's body was replaced, and being a suspect behind the murder, as the private investigators of the mayor saw a bullet from Chase's head same with Castillo's.

The new police team found more evidence of the Serial killer's methods, including a wire that they had strung through the trees along the lakeside path to serve as an alert system during the abduction. But investigations of other suspects that Castillo mentioned came to nothing. By the end of the month the investigation had wound down.

Across town, most people still remembered the shocking unsolved case. Prosecutors hoped that the development of DNA profiling over the previous weeks might help crack the case. The mass of evidence from the original investigation, including the threats and calls even the recovered things such as clothes, towels and others, was painstakingly re-examined. Numerous hairs were found, from which the forensic experts were able to build the DNA profiles of several different people. Now they just needed a match.

After a week they got one.

A genetic sample recovered from Copper's jacket matched with the sample found through the grass in the forest where Pendelton found but the police excitement about a breakthrough was short-lived. On trial for the Blade Chase murder also known as Copper Richardson, the victim's twin brother, who was only a few weeks revealed was being murdered. After extensive forensic investigations, the judges ruled that no link could be established between the two criminal cases, and Pendelton was convicted for Copper's murder. How the match with the sample from the both sides case occurred remains a mystery though very rare, in genetic profiling.

The prosecutors looking at the case, time was running out. The death of Richardson and Chase had not been deemed a murder, but rather set-up sort of kidnapping with deadly consequences, yet the million-dollar question is "WHO" and "WHY". A crime that carried a 2-year statute of limitations. The authority can stop the statute clock any time as a person is proven guilty towards it. In five years, the people responsible would be in the clear.

The state prosecutors went back to other case files, to look at the possible main suspects. The siblings' case seems to be a raging fire, though the superior authority is slowly resolving it yet the case keeps burning, no matter who investigator holds the result always be "Pendelton who killed his brother". It seems that the law is not equal. Pendelton needs justice but how come the law didn't review his side. There is no proper evidence saying that Pendelton actually committed the atrocious and terrible murder of Copper yet he is blamed by the law though like Copper, Pendelton is also a victim of careless murder and mourns for justice.

At the start of the trial, few people in court had taken much notice of Sheldon Chase. Despite his distinctive appearance, the man wears his grey hair in a ponytail and at the time also sported sideburns down to his jaw serves as a battle scars, he is unassuming, not the kind of man who draws attention to himself. After all, he does not like to show his face and identity in front of people, usually only his right hands do his job in public. People who knew what happened to Chase Twins sometimes asked if it made Sheldon anxious about his own fostered kids on the other town, but for some reason it didn't. Nor did he ever think about looking for the perpetrators himself, that was the job of the police. Though he felt at peace in his life, grandsons' death still felt to him like an "unclosed circle". The trial, and his status as a co-plaintiff, playing the role of person bringing lawsuit to court, by filing a plea or motion offered an opportunity to close it. While most authority are passive observers in court, Sheldon decided to take his role far more seriously. He would not allow the family to be victims a third or more time. Before the trial started, to the surprise of his state-assigned lawyer, Sheldon had requested full access to the case files both Richardson's and Chase', which ran into a thousands of scanned pages. In the first few weeks of the trial he got through hundred pages, locking himself in the study at home at night, unable to stop reading.