The First Suspects

William's funeral was three days later, enough time for Mrs Diaz to get out of the hospital, but the trauma was still there.

Ella Sabe-Diaz stared at her fiancé's coffin, her bright green eyes glimmered like emeralds with unshed tears.

She felt broken, numb, unable to respond to anyone who walked up to say. "I'm so sorry."

Unable to look at the closed coffin without visualizing the gory image.

The headless body, a bloody sledgehammer, and lots of blood.

Unable to do anything but wonder who could have been so cruel, and why?

Outside the church, Paul and Camila were there, Paul being comforted by Giovani and his partner David.

"I think you'd like to know that David, Bruce and I have your step-father's case, we'll find his killer in no time." He said.

"Thank you." replied Paul.

"Whoever it is, we'll catch and bring him or her to justice."

"Are Alex and Larry coming?" asked Camila.

"No, and you know why they won't come." Paul answered.

"Who said we aren't coming?" Said a voice behind him.

Paul turned around to see Alex and Larry standing there. They hugged him.

"We're here for you and your mom, not that son of a bitch." said Larry. Alex glared at him.

Giovani was surprised. "What?, I thought you all got along with Mr Silko."

David eyed them both. "Yeah, I'd like an explanation too."

POLICE STATION

WHERE THE HELL ARE DIAZ AND GLAVAS?! I KNOW THEY'RE HIDING HERE!!"

A very angry, fat man walked into the station yelling, his round face red with anger.

Bruce Davenport sighed and got up after hearing him.

"Mr Clarke, for the umpteenth time, they're not here, please stop yelling and leave."

Daniel Clarke was a shady businessman, who ran a pub where Paul and Camila worked part time.

Alex and Larry used to work there but they quit on the grounds that Daniel Clarke always acted like a "Big, fat demon turd."

After that, Alex decided to start helping his mother at her diner 'Stark's'.

Camila was planning to quit too, but the pay was good, and medical school was anything but cheap, she also didn't want to leave Paul there alone so she had to stay.

"But where are they?" asked Clarke, relatively calm now. "I take a business trip and come back to find out that they haven't shown up to work for three days."

"Paul's step dad was murdered three days ago." informed Bruce. "They should be at his funeral."

Clark froze.

William Silko is dead?

Bruce looked up at Clarke who had been uncharacteristically quiet.

"Do you want the address?"

"No, I'll find it myself. Thank you, detective." He slowly made his way out.

Bruce Davenport gave him one last look before going back into his office, he wrote Clarke's name on a piece of paper.

*******************

"Its nothing, David." said Alex.

"Paul, Larry and I had a little argument with Will not so long ago, that's all."

David looked at him, not buying it at all.

"And when was this 'little' argument?"

Alex sighed. "Four days before he died."

"I don't think this is the time or place to talk about it." said Larry.

"Really? Well guess what? you are going to tell me everything, right now." said David, taking out his tiny notebook.

"Fine." said Larry, he cleared his throat.

"Silko wasn't a saint, he was involved in a lot of dealings, illegal dealings."

"Explain."

"He wasn't a businessman, his real job involved helping criminals smuggle drugs through this town and a few other towns actually."

"How do you know about this?"

Larry gestured vaguely towards Paul who sighed and spoke up.

"One day, I eavesdropped on a long conversation in my house between Silko and some guy and they spilled a lot, I told Larry and Alex and we confronted him, he got mad and threatened to hurt everyone we loved if we told Paul's mom, the police or any other person."

"Why didn't you just come straight to the police after you found out?"

Paul shrugged.

"He's still my mom's fiance, I wanted to at least have a conversation with him before I did anything."

"Ok, do you have any proof about this? What about the guy Silko was talking to?" Giovani asked.

"No proof, and I didn't actually see who he was talking to."

"Did you tell the girls about the threat?"

"Yes, and we made it pretty clear to them that they couldn't tell anyone."

said Alex.

"Alright." replied David, writing something in his notebook. "I think that's all I need."

Camila suddenly realized what he was saying.

"Wait! you can't put them down as suspects, they both have alibis, right, guys? We were in class at the time of the murder."

Alex looked down. "Well..."

"We skipped class too, Cami." Larry explained.

"We thought it'd be fun since we didn't have class with you and the girls so we wouldn't have to deal with your nagging. We just chilled at the back of the school."

"Seriously? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

Larry shrugged.

"We didn't need a lecture on our bad behavior."

"Unbelievable, you literally said you would never skip Mrs Tickens' class right after you skipped her class."

"Life is funny."

David rolled his eyes at them.

"Did anyone see you? Can anyone besides you and your delinquent bestie confirm that you were there?"

"No." said Alex.

"What about the girls?"

Giovani directed the question at Camila

"I had AP Calculus, Mia and Macy were in Arts class. You can check with the school."

Camila answered.

Giovani nodded and turned back to Alex and Larry.

"So you two are the only ones with no solid alibis."

Camila groaned.

"Great. Now you could be arrested for murder!"

"You know we didn't do it!"

Alex yelled back.

"Yeah, but still, you don't have an alibi, and you have a motive."

Larry rolled his eyes.

"Thank you, Detective Glavas."

Miffed by his sarcasm, Camila turned to Larry and they started bickering about the situation.

David was busy skimming through everything he'd heard so far and zeroed in on four words.

"Both of you shut it! Now I want you to back up and explain." He focused his intimidating gaze on Larry.

"What do you mean 'We skipped class too'?"

Larry looked perplexed. "What?"

"You said 'We skipped class too'. That means someone apart from you, Mr Stark and the girls skipped, who was it?"

Paul looked down sheepishly.

Camila sighed.

"It was Paul."

Paul looked at his girlfriend in shock. "REALLY?!"

"What? They were gonna find out eventually!"

"You don't need to argue about this." David interrupted, "I'm not going to arrest any of you, but I will be keeping my eye on all of you."

Paul cocked his head.

"At the same time? Sir, I don't think that's physically pos-"

David walked away, not eager to hear the end of Paul's dim-witted observation.

"Rude."

Giovani looked at Larry, his eyes crinkling in amusement.

"How'd you guys escape class?"

"Mrs Tickens turned around and we just leaped straight out the window, Kofi Kingston style."

Larry shared a fist bump with Giovani as they snickered about it until the detective caught his partner's unamused stare.

Giovani cleared his throat.

"Obviously, it's nothing to be proud of, you boys should never do that again."

They laughed again.

"You guys are in serious trouble now." Giovani said, facing the kids. "But I believe you."

"Thanks." replied Larry.

Giovani smiled "Just be careful, okay?"

They nodded and he left to catch up with his partner.

"You're being way too soft with them." David said as they entered Giovani's car.

"And you're being way too hard. We've known these kids since they were babies, troublemakers? Sure, but killers? Come on, Dave, we both know they're innocent."

David fixed an intense stare on Giovani.

"Anybody is capable of murder, G, we both know that."

Giovani sighed.

"Yes, but—"

"But nothing, I like those kids as much as you do, but one or two or even all three of them could be murderers."

*******************

Daniel Clarke saw the closed casket, and then looked at Mrs Diaz. She was staring at nothing, just sat there looking numb.

Whatever, things between him and William were never nice. But as the saying goes; Business is business.

And there are some things that have to happen in order to save your business from the power of the law.

Dead men don't talk, so as long as no one found out about his deals with the dead man, everything was OK.

Fully assured that his 'business partner' was truly gone, Daniel Clarke smirked and left the church.

POLICE STATION

David walked into Bruce Davenport's office.

"Hey"

Davenport looked up. "Oh, hey David, you'll be surprised by what I'm about to tell you, Daniel Clarke was here, he got really weird when I informed him that William Silko was dead."

"Really? I just came from the church and did a little questioning.....Guess we have our first suspects."

"No way, who?" questioned Davenport

"Macy Westwood, Mia Larsson, Alex Stark, Paul Diaz and Larry Brighton....and Daniel Clarke too, I guess."