Chapter 11

"Hey Soul Sister, Drops of Jupiter, Drive by, 50 Ways to Say Goodbye, Meet Virginia, Bruises. These are all songs by the same band, Train." Maria thought as she looked through the mp3 player playlist FAVORITES "seems like you were fond of them Jess."

"Wait, there's another song, I don't know that one, but the title seems familiar though 'Locker Out Of Heaven.'." She clicked play

'Cause you make me feel like I've been locked out of heaven.....'

"Oh, I know that song, it's Bruno Mars. Jessica must have accidentally misnamed it with an R instead of a D. But what about all of these Train songs? Maybe they're related to the train we took from Veronaville to Sunset? Maybe I should go check out the train station, oh my God, THE TRAIN STATION! Sure there's something over there that would lead me to the truth; I need to go now, fast, before Detective James gets home and grounds me like my parents never did, this over protection is getting on my nerves, but he's kind though, letting me stay at his place."
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Maria left the building and took a cab to the station "thank you God, I feel so smart right now."

As soon as she reached the station, she started walking around searching everywhere like a crazy person till she lost hope and sat down on a bench thinking 'What the hell I'm doing here? What am I even searching for? I have nothing on my mind, I couldn't find anything and I won't find anything cause I don't know what to look for.'

"Nate where are you going?" She heard a woman's voice shouting

"To the lockers Mum, I need to get my things." A teenage boy said from behind her.

Maria turned to him "where are you going?" She said with widely open sparkly eyes creeping out the guy.

"To the lockers?"

"Yeah, I heard, I didn't mean it as an actual question though."

"Okay, whatever, can I leave now?"

"No wait, can you take me there with you?"

"It that a new way of flirting or asking me out? Cause I'm pretty sure you're like at least 5 years older than me."

"I am not..... Asking you out or flirting, I actually have a boyfriend who has finished high school and is actually a lawyer, he's very handsome too, but we're sort of in a fight now. Anyways, don't get me distracted, I need to go to the lockers!"

"If that will make you shut up, yeah sure."

They walked to the stairs and went to down to the -2 floor; the lockers hall was right in front the rails where the underground passes, so it was very loud and noisy down there.

'I finally feel so close to the truth, it mustn't be a coincidence LOCKER out of heaven inside the TRAIN playlist, she purposely did it, maybe that notebook was meant for someone specifically to lead them to the truth, because Jessica knew she was in danger!' Maria said to herself

"Here we are, the lockers room." The boy said "but I think most of these lockers are already rented though."

"No problem and thanks." She smiled at him

The platform on the right side of the railways had two sets of lockers, each set containing fifty lockers, overall hundred lockers numbered from #1 to #100.

'What now Jessica' Thought Maria

Maria decided to go home again and try to find more clues regarding the lockers she turned around and walked back to the entrance of the station, but she noticed detective Ethan at the tickets kiosk which only made her suspect Liam even more.
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Maria arrived at the apartment only to find James waiting angrily. 'Here we go' she said to herself

"Where have you been?"

"I went to have a walk." She lied

"All I asked was for you to keep out of it for today, you keep getting yourself involved in this and you'll get hurt. I'm trying to keep you safe, but you keep running into danger again and again. Now Jackson, Liam, Andrew, Eve, Miranda and who knows who else knows about you."

"I told you before and I'm telling you again, I want to help you Detective and I know things that might be useful to the case. Stop worrying about me like I'm just a baby, I'm an adult. By the way, instead of worrying about me, you should be worrying about yourself, because your partner detective Ethan and his son Liam are getting more and more suspicious."

"Detective Ethan is my boss, he's a highly respectable man and he didn't even know Sierra."

"He's covering his son's dirty traces."

"This is nonsense. Yesterday you told me you suspected Miranda and so I went today to her clinic, but since you were there, I wasn't able to go in and talk to her trying to keep you safe. Maria you're making my job even harder, cause now I don't only have to focus on the case, but also on keeping you safe."

"Well, don't worry about me then and if you want me to leave,..."

"No, don't. I didn't mean it like that you know you're welcomed to stay here anytime. I just can't not worry about you Maria, I would hate it if something bad happened to you like what happened to my wife and my daughter, I just can't carry any more guilt."

"Okay, I'll try to keep away from danger, for you."

"I'd be grateful, so what did Miranda tell you yesterday?"

She told him everything Miranda said, but didn't tell him about her trip to the train station until she knew more, she didn't want to tell him any more half-info.

The next morning, James went to the station early cause Ethan called him to meet up.

"Guess what? Sierra's bank account has been zeroed out just a few days before her murder." Ethan said

"What? How? I heard she's rich, plus the money from the house, where did all of that money go?"

"No idea yet. However, if the motive for her killing was the money, then Nina and Ricky would be my number one suspects; I saw Nina's house yesterday, it's not in a good state at all, they're like ten or so living in a two bedroom house plus Ricky is not in a good financial state either. My theory right now is that they agreed to kill her together and split the money. Remember they also had the immune suppressive drugs."

"They're also dating, Miranda claims they've been dating ever since she was his student and Sierra knew so she was going to out them at the party and he'd go to jail for dating his student, so they killed her to hide their secret and take the money."

"That would make sense. Anyways, let's go to the hospital, I'm going to doctor Samuel to see the results for the prints on the immune suppressive drugs bottle and the baby daddy results. You should go talk to Keira."
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"I tested the prints on the bottle against all the suspects' prints, Ricky and Nina were the only match which means either they're telling the truth, someone wiped the prints and put the bottle for Nina and Ricky to find or they're lying and the bottle belongs to them." Doctor Samuel said

"What about the father then?" Detective Ethan asked

"Well, the results were as I suspected, the father is Andrew. His looks when I was taking his blood sample made me suspect he knew that the baby was his and the test proved it."

"Thank you doctor."
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Meanwhile, detective James went up to Keira's room.

"Hope you're feeling better by now. You probably don't remember me, detective James."

"Thank you, detective, yes I'm better now, but it's still awful the whole situation. It's hard enough that my best friend is killed, but what's worse is that actually, the murderer is one of our friends."

"I understand, but you need to talk now cause that friend is now a loose murderer and once someone crosses that line and kills once, they can kill again. Who did you see kissing at the party?"

"How did you know?" She said as tear start forming in her eyes

"Doesn't matter how, just tell me what you know."

"I was drinking and talking to Wes walking around the house when we saw Sierra and Andrew kissing. Wes went to talk to Andrew and I stayed with Sierra talking things out, she was cheating on Jackson her boyfriend who loved her so much with Andrew one of our best friends whom we didn't want to get hurt either. I told her she was wrong, she told me it was none of my business eventually we started fighting." She started crying and her voice broke

"Do you know how awful it is that you're last words with you're best friend, almost sister, is your fight together. I wish our last memory was a lot better than that, she died with bad blood between us and this hurts a lot detective."

"So what did your husband tell Andrew?"

"I really have no idea, all I know is that, before the lights went off, I saw Wes fighting with Sierra. Back then I thought it was because he and Andrew are close friends and he didn't want Jessica to hurt Andrew's feeling, but when the lights came back on and I saw Sierra drowning in her blood, I couldn't handle it because.." She lowered her voice " I thought he did it."

"I know this was hard for you, but you did the right thing by telling me. Thank you for sharing that information and don't worry, if you're husband is innocent, the investigations will prove it."

"I really hope he is, I don't wanna lose both my best friend and my husband."
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Maria was at home searching for the notebook everywhere "where the hell did I put you? I've been searching for hours! What if I lost you at the station or worse what if someone snuck in last night and stole you? Oh my God, what if James took it to stop me from searching."

Maria turned her bag upside down and found the small wooden box that she found in the wardrobe which contained the noted from Eve and the mp3 player. "Oh, I remember now, I put you inside the box." She opened the box and found the notebook inside, but this time, she noticed something else in the box that she didn't notice in the darkness inside the wardrobe, there was 3 carvings inside the box "SB", "#XLVIII" and "#L"

"These are Roman numerals, I studied them in high school, but I don't remember now what they mean, I'll google them. #48 and #50. Maybe these are her locker numbers, I remember at the station the first lockers set was all odd numbers and the second one was all even numbers, but how the hell am I gonna know her passwords? The mp3 player's favorites playlist lead me to the station and the lockers, the box lead me to the locker numbers, I think the notebook favorites playlist will lead me to the password combination!" She thought

She opened the notebook "Favorites, here we go. Focus Maria" she said to herself "12 songs by different people from different ages and different genres, wow that's not gonna be easy, there's nothing in common. Is Jessica trying to make an IQ test for me or something?"

After a whole hour of rereading the names of the songs in the playlist, Maria finally realized the clue that Jessica left behind "why are some of these letter capitalized even though they're in the middle of the sentence? Oh that's it! I read before about using numbers for writing a word instead of letter, maybe Jess did the reverse, maybe these capital letters can translate into numbers. A B E A F and B D F A F these are 12516 and 24616. "

Maria realized she now knew where the lockers are, she knew their numbers and their combinations, so she went to the station again "I'm sure these lockers are hiding the whole truth, I'm finally gonna know the whole truth and prove everyone wrong and I can go to Twinbrook to David and then things between us will get back to normal." She thought

As she reached the station, she walked to the lockers hall, the place was deserted which made Maria a little terrified. She walked to lockers #48 and #50 which where right next to each other at the top " really? Do I have to be humiliated for being short?" She tried the first combination on Locker #48 and it worked. "Yes I'm smart!"

She opened the locker and found many small packages of white powder "Oh my God, is that heroin, that so much. Jessica must have been a dealer or in a gang or something, that's definitely what got her killed." She shut the door "I need to tell James! But I'll check first the other locker."

The combination also worked for the other locker, but unlike the fist locker, that one was relatively empty; there were some money inside, not much though , a gun, a ticket to Twinbrook and 3 passports and IDs of 3 different identities "Jessica Monroe, Cassidy Jones and Sierra Brook." Maria read "what? Which one is her real name? They three passports have her photo on them. They box had SB carved on it, so is Sierra Brook her real name? Oh God, that's messed up."

"Where's the heroin, Maria?" Maria heard an unfamiliar woman's voice from behind, so she shut the locked and turned around

It was a woman with tanned skin, hazel eyes and black curly hair "I don't know what you're talking about. Who are you?"

"Doesn't matter who I am, what matters is I know who you are; the bitch who had to stick her nose in everyone else's business. Our plan was going alright till you got here and decided to play little detective."

"Are you stoned? I don't know how stoned people look like but I guess they look the way you're looking right now."

"The heroin is in the lockers, isn't it? Give me the combination now or you'll die." She raised her arm and Maria noticed her holding a knife

"You can't kill me like you killed her cause if you do you'll never know the combination, I already burned the notebook and nobody knows it but me."

"Maybe I can't kill you, but I can torture you till you give up."

Maria pushed her arm away so that the knife fell on the rails then ran.

"You can't run away from me. Believe me, I don't wanna kill you exactly like I didn't wanna her, but Ben and Lucy forced me to, they used me."

"Who are Ben and Lucy?"

"Hahahahah" the woman laughed hysterically "the 2 who sent that guy to the hotel to kill you and they sent me now to kill you too." She kept laughing

"Why did you stab your friend?"

"She wanted a way out, but the thing is once you're in, you can not get out, so we had to kill her before HE knew."

"Who's HE?!!"

"That's not an interview little girl, no more questions hun." She said as she pushed Maria against the wall and wrapped her hands around Maria's neck "tell me the freaking combination now."

"No" Maria pushed her off of her

"Hahahaha." She laughed hysterically again "you're already doomed, you know too much, so just tell me the combination so I wouldn't get into more trouble. Soon the police are gonna know I did it anyways and you know what frustrates me, there's gonna be no proof against the either Ben or Lucy, but still the police would be so much easier on me than our boss's punishment, it's a tough business." She jumped down to the rails to pick up the knife

"No" Maria shouted "get up here, the underground is near I can hear it approaching." She knelt on her knees giving the woman her hand to help pull her up "get up here please, if you tell the police they'd give you a less punishment and you'd be safe from your boss and most importantly alive."

"No, you need to die or they'd kill me! Because of you, the police is close to figuring out everything." She bent down to pick up the knife

"No come back, no the train is coming." Maria shouted "get up here." "Please" "now" "nooooooo" Maria broke down crying, shouting and screaming as she saw the train squashing the woman's body

As she screamed a few people started coming they saw Maria sitting on the platform crying and screaming then they looked down to she the pulverised dead body of the woman "call 911" Maria shouted
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Soon enough the police and the ambulance arrived, detective James ran to Maria who was shaking and still sobbing "are you okay? That's why I didn't want you involved."

"I really am not able to listen to that right now, I'm freaking out James, they'll keep on sending people to kill me, she said I know too much. She said Ben and Lucy will get to me. The three of them murdered Jessica."

"Who are those?"

"I-I don't know."

"Hold on Maria, you'll be okay, but now I need to go to detective Ethan over there."

James walked to Ethan and said "Maria says the woman admitted to killing Sierra."

"That woman was Lily. However, we can not take any of Maria's words, she's now considered a murderer, she murdered Lily."

"She was defending herself."

"Yeah, but until we prove this, we need to lock her. What if she's related to Sierra's murder?"

"She's not."

"How could you be so sure?"

James couldn't answer because he didn't want to say anything that would worsen Maria's situation

"She just doesn't look like a murderer."

"So did Lily."

Maria was taken to the police station and locked in a jail cell and Lily's body was taken to the hospital to the autopsy.
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Maria sat in the jail cell thinking through everything that just happened, trying to make sense of everything "excuse me sir." She told the officer watching her "I have the right to a phone call, I want to make mine now please."

"Sure"

Maria dialled the familiar number of her boyfriend/lawyer "David" she said crying

"Are you okay" he said

"Not at all, I'm really sorry I should have listened to you earlier. I messed up real bad. I need you, please come to Sunset, I need you both as my boyfriend and my lawyer. I need your help, I'm at the police station, locked in a jail cell; they think I'm a murderer." She sobbed
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David left his work and went immediately to the train station and took the first train to Sunset "I'm coming to you Maria." He said to himself