The mansion loomed over them as they approached it. Her heart sank with a foreboding that ran like rivers through her entire body. Suddenly she wasn't sure if it was such a great idea to be part of this investigation. I mean it was her son and his friends murder she was investigating. "There has to be some conflict of interest," she muttered shakily to herself. But it was her that insisted on being involved in the investigation after the funeral. She thought it would help the grieving process. "Coraline, how are you holding up?" Her chief asked her, visibly concerned. He had been very supportive through this nightmare. "Uh, I'm good Jimbo," she replied. She was lying of course. Actually she was visibly shaking. Had she not been holding onto a shelf she would've bounced all over the room like a wind up toy. "Actually Jimbo, I'm going to step outside for a bit maybe take my lunch a bit early." The chief a big teddy bear smiled with concern all over his face and replied, "of course Coraline, you don't even need to be here we have this under control." The concern in his voice was evident. Coraline had to fight to get on this job and even though Chief Jimbo Jones had buckled he made sure to do so with the famous last words: "if I see you breaking down or losing your grip in any way I will remove you from the case no questions asked." "I know Jim,"she replied quickly. "You know I appreciate the opportunity and I am A-OK. She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and gave a weak smile as she turned away heading to her Jeep.

Coraline brought the huge file she had been given. A copy obviously, since every detective on the case got one. Most cases have one set of detectives assigned to it. Two partners but in the station they count that as one detective. So when most cases only have one detective assigned to it, at the most two, for bigger cases. This case, her son's case, had four! Four detectives, eight separate brains, opinions, and ways of doing their job. "Ugggghh," she groaned aloud seeing the list of detectives and coming across his name. "I can't believe he got put on MY case!" Coraline exclaimed while slamming her coffee cup down on the table splashing hot coffee all over. "Jesus Martin, this is your fault too," she said angrily cleaning herself up with about a hundred napkins. "As long as you breathe, bazaars, you'll give me a new and improved reason to despise you." Coraline was as dry as she was going to get only now her mind was off the case and on her hatred for Martin Solesbee. Martin was the scumbag mayor's son and he used daddy's pull and money to be made detective instead of putting in the work like everyone else had. She was pretty positive he was dirty, working for his dad, or something sinister of the sort. His dad, the Mayor, had been brought up on some embezzlement charges earlier that year but they never stuck. Ever since any time his dads name came up in any kind of report the job went straight to Martin. "So why this case?" Coraline circled his gruesome precinct picture in red and put a big, red '?' around it. "This kind of case is nothing like any of your other cases, past and present," she muttered to herself softly. The mayor had most of the townspeople fooled and they supported him like rich rednecks supported Donald Trump when he was president. Suddenly something hit her and she was flipping through the case file furiously. After coming to the end, flipping through it backwards then starting over again she came down with her finger, hard. "HA I knew it!" She had found a connection that she had previously missed. Though it made her feel like a bad mother she suddenly felt like a great detective. "Only real detective on the level of batman," she boasted to herself. What she found was a link in fact it was more than a link since it was Martin's great-grandfather's mansion the brutal murders took place in. Even if it had been abandoned by the family for years they still went there and oversaw the different weekly, monthly, and yearly upkeep jobs to keep the mansion looking presentable from the outside. She herself never saw the inside of the mansion before today but in such a small town you hear things. Now, suddenly you have 5 teenagers missing without a trace and the last place their phones pinged a location was the front steps of the Solesbee mansion. “Five teens,” Coraline said aloud, “including my son Chaz and Nicole Solesbee.”

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