Cold Case Set On Fire

Brian was looking for a cold case to use to train some of the new apprentices, just to process and to warm them up to deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. There was not a shortage of cold cases to choose from. The wizarding world never seemed to suffer a lack of weird things that just didn't seem resolvable. It wasn't that the aurors were incompetent. That wasn't the case. Sometimes the trail just went cold for any number of reasons.

He picked a few files and started to read them, disposing of a few for one random reason or another. He was still in the A's in the files when he found one that he felt would satisfy his needs. Augustine, Elizabeth, deceased. He opened the file and began to read it. A woman's body was found. She had been dead for a couple of hours, and she apparently died from blood loss from some severe lacerations. Lacerations? What sort of lacerations? The report didn't say. He looked for more documentation. The autopsy was not in the file, and he didn't know why. There was no mention if the woman was married, not married, had children, didn't have children. This was an unusual file. He was sure there had been more investigation done, surely. Where had the documentation gone, though?

Well, one thing was for sure. Having to find the missing evidence would be a challenge, and perhaps it would help them to resolve a cold case. Feeling that he had a sufficient example to work with, he checked out the file and went to the auror training room to meet with one of the apprentices to give her something to challenge herself with.

At sixteen years old, Anabelle Mulciber couldn't be sure of what her future was going to hold. She always had different ideas of jobs in her mind and though she couldn't try them all, she sure did study about them a lot. That was saying something for the girl who didn't really like studying. At first she had wanted to become a Healer, she always wanted to help people, but being a Healer was too boring for her. That was her thought on the job anyways.

Sure, there could have been times when she needed to jump into action for a patient. Maybe she'd have to leave St. Mungo's to help, but she didn't think there was anything else that was much more exciting that the place could offer her. Instead, the girl found herself as an apprentice at the Ministry of Magic. She had decided that she wanted to be like her friend, Ryo, who was a Spirit Specialist at the Ministry. But upon arriving and seeing that there were so many other options, she had asked if it was okay for her to not be in a specific spot yet so she could explore the different areas.

Of course, it hadn't been a problem as Apprentices were meant to see everything that went on, unless they were chosen for a specific department. She loved the Dept. of Magical Creatures and she loved the idea of being able to work with Ryo since she didn't see him often, but something stuck out more for her. Something that she never thought would interest her as much as it had.

Aurors.

That was the department she wanted to work in. The Dept. of Law Enforcement. Sure, magical creatures were her 'thing' but that sense of helping people had always been there within her, probably because she was so reserved and didn't exactly know how to just come out and offer her help. That was why magical creatures were so easy to handle for her, they were the only ones she could ever really approach because they were often scared to approach humans in fear of their reactions to them.

Today, she was supposed to be working on a case that had gone cold a while back but she didn't know anything about what the case could be. Her trainer, Brian Quinn, was supposed to meet her in the training room once he found something suitable, so she waited there for him to arrive. She would be lying is she said she wasn't nervous about the whole thing. Even though it was a cold case, she wondered if there was really something that they could do to help further it, and the thought of reopening a case made her nervous because of the potential outcomes.

He found the apprentice waiting for him. "Oh, hey! Good to see you," he smiled. "I'm sorry I'm a tad late. I wanted something we could sink our teeth into maybe. I think I have just the case.

"It's looks like its a bit over a year old, but we a young female who simply turned up dead, apparently. The file is oddly incomplete and missing a lot of the standard investigation pieces that I would expect to be here. There's a vague auror report by the auror on the scene who said she was found with 'multiple lacerations' and he stated that there was a great blood loss. It was his presumption that she died from bleeding out.

"What isn't here is any autopsy report, and that's weird. So I don't know what this guy means by multiple lacerations. It's also not noted if she had any sort of next of kin and whether or not they were spoken to. The file is just oddly empty of much of anything helpful."

He handed her the think file. "I don't usually see any case that is as empty as this one. I don't know whether the information just got misfiled or what the devil happened to it. It strikes me that perhaps what needs to happen is that we look into it again. Why don't you take a moment and read through it. While you're doing that, do you want some tea? I can send a paper bird down to the cafe in the Atrium and ask them to send a couple cups up to us, if you like."

"Tea sounds good, thank you." The girl answered as she took the file from him as he handed it over.

There wasn't much to look through, the file was indeed lacking many helpful aspects, as Brian had stated. It was odd, Hit might have been new to the whole Auror thing, but she knew enough about them to know that files weren't usually left the way this one had been. Even if the case had reached a dead end, they would have done some type of research on what had happened to the woman. But there was nothing more than her name and the small description she had already been told.

"It's unlikely that it was just left like this, right?" She asked, her eyes still on the papers that were in the file. She looked as though she wanted to find something, but there was really nothing to find from the little information in there. "Maybe someone took those things out of the file?" Hit finally looked up from the file, pondering the thought that someone could have actually messed with the information in the file in her hands.

"Could that even happen?" She didn't seem so sure of what she'd just said but it was an idea to think about. There was definitely something odd, and even a rookie like herself could see it.

"Weirder things have happened here than that," Brian shrugged. "Papers get misplaced easily, so that's entirely possible. If, though, someone took it out of the file deliberately, then someone wanted the situation dropped quietly. And that makes me wonder why."

He wrote a quick note on a piece of paper, flicked his wand at it to make it a paper bird and sent it to the atrium for the tea. He got out a couple of pads of paper and a couple of pens. Making notes was always helpful, or at least Brian had found it helped him. How she decided she would work was certainly up to her.

"We could go through every file we have, but that would take several lifetimes, and we still might not find the paperwork that should be here. It makes sense to me that we re-investigate it. So, Oh Wise One, if you were leading this investigation, what are your questions? What do you think you need to know?"

Hitame watched as Brian made the paper bird and saw it leave the room to make its way to the atrium. She glanced at the notepads and pens he had pulled out for both of them and as she picked up one of the pens, she made a comment to herself about using it and the pad to take notes. It wasn't something she usually did but in this case it would probably be useful for things they might need to investigate.

Reopening a case was scary, she thought, but she couldn't let a small fear of the unexpected get in her way right now. She usually wasn't scared about those things anyways, but this was something really serious.

She tapped the pen against her lower lip lightly, glancing from the file to Brian, then to the notepad. "Well," she started, choosing to ignore the phrase he chose to use for her as she thought it was meant with sarcasm, "For one thing, I would want to see the corpse to make decisions about the 'lacerations' that were made to the woman that would've caused her to bleed out." she stated.

"I'd want to head back to the scene of the crime, check out any evidence that could have been left behind by whoever killed her. I'd ask if she had any enemies who could have wanted something to happen to her. Or maybe, if she was connected to anyone and she was just a victim to get back at that other person." She'd begun to write down her questions as she said them, thinking that maybe they could be useful later on.

"You said there was no mention of her having any children or being married, but with her name we could at least track down some family member and ask them questions about her. That might get us those answers." she added, beginning to tap the pen on the pad of paper per her habit of tapping things. "I'd say we would have to start with what kind of lacerations were on her, though." she said softly, scribbling the word 'LACERATIONS' in capital letters at the bottom of the page she had been writing on and underlining it.

The tea came promptly, and he set one of the cups in front of her and took the lid off his own.

"Nice," he said. "Well done. You've covered the bases nicely. Now, procedurally, we'd have to do one of two things to get more information on her lacerations. We've got to uncover enough evidence to support getting St. Mungo's to release a copy of the autopsy. Or, we have to uncover enough evidence to have her exhumed. That can put us right back to where we started from.

"So, we're going to have to start elsewhere, but you already mentioned it. You just said it was worthwhile to find out more about her, if she has family, children, anything. Now, that we can do. We've got birth, marriage, and death certificates on file here. That might be a good place to at least find out who she was and if she has any family at all. That will all be on file in the records department. They might even be willing to give us copies of what we find to put back into the case file.

"I don't know if we'll find anything or not, but if we do, maybe it'll give us our next lead. Its worth a try. If we can still find the auror who was the first on the scene, he might be able to tell us directly what he saw that night or who else was involved in working the case with him--if he's still around, that is.

"And, you're right. We can certainly check the scene. I don't know if there's anything left there after this long or not, but it never hurts to check. So, you want to check the scene first, is that right?"

Good, so her studying had done some good after all. Hit was new to all of this, but aurora had interested her a while back and she had decided she would try to learn as much as she could about them. A few days ago she had been researching, studying about them again and she found that she still remembered a lot of what she'd learned before. So it was just a matter of actually putting the knowledge that lay dormant in her mind to use.

"Yes." She nodded at his question. "Even if there isn't much left, I feel like there could still be something there that could be of some use." She said. "Has the place been used since the death? Or has it been vacant since?" She assumed that the place hadn't been used since Elizabeth Augustine died, at least she doubted anyone would really want to live in a place where someone had died or had been murdered. It would just give strange vibes, to live in a place like that. To her it would, at the very least.

They needed to make sure that no one had moved in since, as it would make it easier to find clues. But maybe, even if there were new tenants, something might have been missed when they were moving in and whatever it was would seem out of place. Hit wasn't sure of what they'd be able to find, but the thought that something could have been left behind floated in her head as she placed a finger on her lip in thought.

She hadn't touched her tea since it had been brought up and she reached for the cup. It was still warm, but not as much as it had been which prompted the girl to scold herself mentally. It had been a waste, though she would still drink it.

"I mean, there has to be something we can use somewhere. It's as good a place as any to start."

"Let me look at that location again," he said, slipping one of the forms out of the file she was looking at. He read the address and the description and groaned. "Really?" he sighed sarcastically. "Of all the places in London we'd have to go. Great. Well, if we're going to go there, I suggest you gear up. Its not the nicest place to go. That, and I hope you're good with spiders, cobwebs, and dark--because that's where we're going."

"There is an entire network of catacombs deep under Diagon Alley and Knockturn. Its not a safe place for you to ever, ever go alone. Nasty things go there and nastier things happen down there. And--one of the biggest illegal potions labs in England used to be down there. It has popped back up from time to time under different ownership but not to the scale it used to be. If we go there, you stay right with me, and you follow every single instruction I give you, you got that? Even if I tell you to get out and leave me behind. He went over to a cabinet in the room and opened a drawer of just ordinary office supplies. He picked up a small piece of chalk and handed it to her.

"Here. Make a mark on the stone wall every so often, every time you make a turn. So if you have to find your way back up by yourself, you'll be able to get back up the street level. Keep your wand at the ready. Any questions?"

She didn't like the sound of that.

No, not one bit. The idea that she might have to leave someone behind is not one that Anabelle Mulciber liked to think of. It wasn't like her to just leave other's behind to save her own hide. Sometimes she wondered if she had been born to the correct family, her thought process bring far different from the rest of the Mulcibers. But just because everyone else on her family acted one way didn't mean she had to. Her actions were her own and she didn't want to have to live up to anything.

Hit shook her head at him as he turned his back to grab the chalk and immediately stopped when he gave her the piece of chalk. She took it with both hands, holding it and staring down at it.

"Will I really have to leave you if it comes to it?" She asked softly. She wasn't sure she would be able to live with herself if something happened and she was told to leave him behind. But she knew that she couldn't disobey orders, if she had to run she had to run and that was the end of the story. Maybe. Anything was possible with the rebellious Gryffindor girl.

She just had to make sure no one knew she would do it.

She reached into her pocket when he mentioned keeping her wand ready. When they got she'd make sure she had it out. Hit didn't think she would have problems with most of the things he described were down there, she was an outdoorsy type of person and didn't have fears of many things like spiders or anything, and she usually liked the dark so that wouldn't be a problem for her.

"I think I'm ready to go, though."