Harboring A Criminal

Officer Grant sat inside the small video room of the police station and reviewed video after video from the night of Anqing Qu's death. 

Inside the club where Anqing Qu and Lucas met, he clearly saw the two sit down for a drink and eventually wave goodbye. There were no cameras in the alleyway, but they had reviewed the same footage the previous year to see if there were any suspicious characters looking at them, especially at Anqing Qu, and whether anyone followed her out. Eventually, based on Lucas' suspicions, they spotted a blond-haired woman sitting in the corner of the club, who did glance over several times. The club was dark and the cameras weren't of the highest quality, so they couldn't see her face, but she did match the description of Nova Thomas, and it gave them enough suspicion to continue down that lead. They even saw her leaving the club, not long after Anqing Qu and turning towards the same direction. She could have easily got her accomplice to capture the woman and drag her into the alleyway where they raped and killed her.

However, now that they had another suspect, he had a new target to look out for. Could he place Noel/Noah at the scene of the crime too? Did he also leave after Anqing Qu? Was he really Nova's accomplice? Or was he the mastermind?

Officer Grant rewound the footage from the night and looked carefully around the club. As it was in the middle of LA, blond-haired men were common and it was hard to determine if any of them were Noah. However, he did remember that Lucas mentioned Noah was his driver, so he quickly checked the footage from the front of the club which pointed at the drop-off zone. Sure enough, he saw Noah drop Lucas outside the club and drive off. He then fast-forwarded to the moment when Lucas left and saw that Ryan had picked him up instead. Judging by this footage, it would appear as though Noah had never returned to the scene of the crime. But as an experienced detective, Officer Grant knew that this also meant the man had no alibi. He could have stayed around the vicinity and waited for his sister to call him, or watched for the moment that Anqing Qu left the club. He knew who she was so this could have been a premeditated attack. 

So, he logged into the traffic department's database and searched through their surveillance archives for that particular date. He then tried his best to follow Noah's car and see where he went after he dropped Lucas at the bar.

But to his surprise, the man did not do anything suspicious. From the club, he took the highway, turned off towards West Los Angeles, and drove straight home to his apartment. For the rest of the night, that car did not leave the apartment again...

Officer Grant leaned back and massaged his temples. It was already 2am in the morning. Could Noel/Noah really be innocent. Had he hit a dead end — again?!

But why were his instincts telling him that something wasn't right?

Officer Grant scratched his head. Normally in situations like this, he would ask the apartment security to show him their footage from the night. But...it had already been a year since Anqing Qu's death... No apartment kept footage for more than 90 days... What was he to do? Was he really letting the man free?

Officer Grant stared at the name of the apartment and frowned. All of a sudden, his eyes opened wide and he jumped out of his seat. He quickly flipped through the research he did on Nova Thomas from the previous year and stopped on one particular page.

"Bingo!" he yelled. "Of course! Why didn't I think of this earlier?!"

Back when they were trying to locate Nova Thomas, they had traced the woman from the club in a similar way. They saw that she was dropped outside by a taxi, so they traced that taxi back to the point where she had been picked up, and she was picked up outside a convenience store. That convenience store was on the ground floor of an apartment building...

The same apartment building where Noah lived!

Back then, they had no idea that Noah Thompson was actually Noel Thomas, so they made no connections between the two, but now that he looked at it again, he was sure that Noah was aware of Nova's whereabouts. In fact...he had a feeling that she had been living with him...all along!!!

He now had enough evidence to apply for a search warrant. Nova Thomas was wanted by the police; she was the number one suspect in an ongoing murder investigation. If Noah had been hiding her, then he was harboring a criminal. Officer Grant was confident that he could get a warrant to search the man's apartment.

And he quickly did just that...

By midday the next day, Officer Grant had a search warrant in his hands, and he arrived at Noah's apartment with a small team of officers. First, they knocked on the door to see if anyone was inside, but there was no response nor signs of movement, so they broke the lock and forced their way inside. At first, the apartment looked just like a typical single man's apartment. However, when they started looking in detail...they discovered something that they never expected...