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Justice

Jay's POV:

I saw Voight coming up the stairs with my children in tow. I knew that Erin was supposed to be coming back to work so she must have decided to take the kids with her because of Henry's injury. As soon as Nadia and Henry entered the bullpen they were ambushed with the adoration of the unit. Henry clearly enjoyed it and reveled in it, but Nadia shied away from the attention clinging on to my leg. She eventually warmed up to the unit and started talking to everyone along with her brother. A few minutes later though, Erin entered the bullpen. We all knew that she was coming back today as Voight had cleared it with us earlier but none of us knew how to react to seeing her. It was silent for an awkward few seconds until Kim broke the silence.

"Welcome back Erin!" Kim enthused.

Everyone else quickly followed suit, trying to diffuse the earlier awkwardness. The new member of the unit, Vanessa Rojas, introduced herself to Erin and I simply nodded in Erin's general direction before retreating back to my desk. 

"When are you going to let her off the hook?" Adam whispered.

I shrugged in response.

"You need to cut her some slack man, she's apologized for leaving without telling anyone what more is there for her to do?"

"It's not so much that, it's more the kids," I eyed the twins who were hanging out in the break room.

"What about them?"

"The fact that I didn't know they existed until a month ago and you know the fact that Erin abandoned her kids for six months while doing who knows what," I muttered angrily.

Adam pushed away in his rolling chair with his hands raised, the universal sign of surrender. I went back to shuffling the paperwork on my desk. The morning was pretty quiet, that was until Voight came out of his office and slapped a picture of a guy up on the whiteboard.

"This is Brian Camdyn, 46 years old," then he placed another picture presumably of the same guy next to the original picture "This, is Brian as of two hours ago. Stabbed fifteen times, we need to figure out why and by whom."

"Hey, I recognize that name, didn't we arrest him for child endangerment like six months ago?" Hailey asked.

Upon closer inspection, I realized I did recognize the man in the picture "Yes, but we didn't have enough evidence so the charges were dropped," I remembered.

Voight nodded. "Rojas, Atwater, I want you two to go check out Camdyn's brother. He just got out of Statesville, and apparently, he and his brother didn't get along too well. Halstead,  Upton go talk to the kids see what you can find out. Everyone else, look into anything and everything relating to Camdyn."

I grabbed my jacket and Hailey and I went out to the car. We arrived at the house according to our files Camdyn's wife had died three years back leaving him the sole-caretaker of his five children. The kids were staying with officers at the house until we could come and get their statements. We pushed our way past all the tape and patrol officers and saw all five kids huddled together under blankets in the living room. None of them could have been older than ten.

"Hey guys, I'm Hailey and this is Jay. We were wondering if you could tell us what happened to your dad?" Hailey asked gently.

"We were all asleep and I heard a loud noise, so I woke up and saw Uncle Victor breaking into the house. Then he went over to my dad and took a knife from the kitchen and killed him," The eldest daughter explained matter-of-factly.

"You're sure it was your uncle?" I questioned.

The girl nodded.

"What about the rest of you, did you see anything?" Hailey probed.

They shook their heads, "We were asleep, Tiana was the only one who saw anything" one of the younger kids reminded us.

After writing down what Tiana had said we left the kids with DCFS and made our way back to the district.

"So only Tiana saw anything the rest of them slept right through it. You don't think that's kind of strange? I mean, you'd think someone getting stabbed to death wouldn't have been very quiet," I asked Hailey.

"You don't believe her?"

"I don't know, I just found it strange."

We entered the precinct just after Vanessa and Kevin. As soon as we got back to the rest of the unit Voight ambushed us with questions.

"What do you got?" He asked.

"Well, Tiana said that she saw Victor Camdyn break into the house and kill her father, with a kitchen knife" Hailey explained.

"The thing is, we just checked out Victor and he's got an airtight alibi. Besides, there weren't any signs of anyone breaking into the house. The only part that makes sense is the kitchen knife part the ME said it was definitely a serrated blade," Rojas looked at the medical examiner's report.

"They never recovered the murder weapon though," Antonio acknowledged.

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach as I realized what they were saying "So Tiana and the rest of them lied. We just need to find out why."

"We need to get Tiana down here so we can figure out what actually happened to her father," Voight ordered.

"That's going to be an issue because I just got a call from Jackie Winston at DCFS saying, Tiana disappeared," Erin put the phone down.

------------------------

It had taken us a while to find Tiana, but when we did she immediately launched into a confession. 

"My dad was mean, like really really mean. That's why I have this," Tiana pulled up her sleeve and showed us a nasty bruise "This morning he was hurting my little brother Cason, he's only four so I needed to protect him. I grabbed the knife and put it in his leg. I didn't mean for him to die I was just tired of him being a bully," she sobbed.

It was quickly ruled as self-defense as she was only nine and the story matched up with Tiana and her sibling's medical history. With there being numerous hospital visits from burns, broken bones, and cuts from all of the children. Erin and I had decided that Nadia and Henry could spend some time with me after shift, so I proceeded to the breakroom to collect them. 

As we left the precinct Antonio started walking next to me "Tough case today huh?"

"Yeah, I do have to say I don't feel too bad for Camdyn he got what he deserved," I replied.

"I'm just glad justice was served and his kids don't have to worry about him anymore."

I nodded in agreement and buckled my kids into their car seats.