Part IV, Chapter III - Too much

We sat in my car, infront of the Rutherfords, or what was used to be plural. The silence was broken by her.

"This kind of shit usually only happens in movies" said she.

"Either Cupcake is clever or watched too many movies" I responded, the thoughts of everything happening at once washing over my head.

"I don't think that's the case"

"I really don't remember doing anything bad to anyone in the past. It's been too long and I don't remember having friends or enemies back when I was at the orphanage. The only person I talked to, other than the nuns, was my sister"

"I wish I could remember what happened to me, i'd tell you everything. Say, would you still accept me as your friend even if I turned out to have been bad?"

"Well, you're my best friend"

"So, what have you deduced?"

I told her everything until her emergency call.

"Too many things are happening at once" My voice cracked "But I need to focus. Everything is spinning! The stupid key to unlocking the fucking cage we are in now is to search my memories!"

"I wish I knew what happened to me"

"You told me your former psychiatrist told you you had an accident involving a run-and-gun"

"Yes, and I scared him the fuck away to hell by threatening him uncontrollably. You've seen how crazy I can be, I think. What?"

She asked upon noticing I stared at her for too long with a face that showed a light bulb had lit.

"What if your missing memories were a piece of the stupid key?" I suggested "What are the chances i'd end up having you as my companion on my first case?"

"Well, I was the only one not interested in the available idiot's karaoke when you called"

"I think we need to go to your office"

Without a second thought or confirmation from my friend I revv'd up the engine and drove to the precinct. There were not many officers yet as early was the hour when we arrived.

"What was the very first thing you remember doing?" I asked Jane, in her office.

"I sat down" she spoke as she sat down "And waited for a case"

"No no no, you need to remember more"

She nodded in agreement and started looking around trying to see what can trigger her memories. Everything was silent as she did so, until she pointed at multiple security cameras that captured every office in the same floor. We rushed to the security room to ask the guard if we could see footage from years ago.

"It's gonna take a long while to get there" said the guard "But they are not lost"

It took us half the day to find the footage we needed. To our astonishment, there was a man, I asummed was her psychiatrist, who assisted in taking her to her office. She walked slowly and slightly limp. We rewinded the footage to a day earlier and the same situation occured, so we rewinded to a week which turned to a month, to a year, and another. To our shock, there were many dead officers which lied on the floor. Two people wearing baggy rainbow colored clothes and a mask to cover their face shot their sub-machine guns at the ceiling.

"That time cop-haters barged in with weapons" said the guard "And started blasting. They didn't even take anything, they just wanted to kill and were trigger happy as fuck. If the cameras could record audio you'd hear their sinister laugh. I stayed in this room and locked the door, they didn't even bother to try to take my life away, though"

A third gunner emerged from under the video, running with the other two while shooting three officers. The other two got shot back and died while the last one tripped and got their head injured by the impact. Jane screamed and her voice echoed through the walls in the room. She cried

"Fuck! Turn it off!"

We did as she demanded. She sat down on the floor, he back against the wall, and her head sunk on her legs wrapped around her arms.

"I remember!" Her voice heavy and cracking.

"Not every shitty little thing, but only the things I don't want to fucking remember!"

"Jane?" called I. The security guard watched but did not seem to want to see any of it.

"Well shit! shit shit!" she looked up with reddish eyes "I know who kidnapped your sister!"

"Tell me"

"You said you'd still accept me even if I turned out to be bad, right?"

"Yes"

"I wanna make sure nobody else hears it"

I assisted her up slowly and back into my car. Her arms crossed as a comforting mechanism. I drove back to my home to listen to her story inside. We sat next to each other on the dining room table.

"Was the third gunner who tripped and had their head injured you?"

"I will tell you everything, until then save your questions for later. Yes, it was me! My new-found memories go as far as a month before the event we saw on the footage. My new-found memories go back only until the night I kidnapped your sister. There were three of us, the same people from the footage, one of them provided a corpse that closely resembled your sister and waited for his cue to deliver it. I waited, with one of my partners, in her cabinet before you two got home. I waited for the right moment, she was too anxious to sleep so it took a while, I watched her cry in bed at night through the ajarr'd cabinet door. I texted my other partner and got to her bedroom with the corpse, and I carefully approached but she had her eyes closed and we thought she was asleep. It was supposed to be a silent mission until she looked up and screamed upon my sight. That was when I had to shut her up and covered her mouth as my partner injected her with a sleeping formula from a syringe because it was quicker than smothering. We heard your fast, heavy tapping of footsteps so we acted fast and placed the corpse in time and when you barged her bedroom door open we were behind it and, you got distracted enough for us to sneak away and escape through your front door"

I sank my head on my hands and my tears fell.

"I'm so sorry" apologized Jane.

"Give me some time" I said, finally filling out the missing pieces "Then you went to jail after injuring your head but you didn't remember what you did, so you got confused about why you were behind bars. You were then taken to your cousin's house in hope of becoming a better person but your mind was still recovering. Your cousin hired a psychiatrist, and you knew you needed a job, so you tried becoming a detective and got hired, the cops, of course, knew who you were but also knew you had forgotten"

"Yes"

"The mission to kidnap my sister means you've worked for Cupcake. Do you remember what he looked like and did you wear one of those slave collars?"

"We didn't wear any of those. The reason is a blur. As for Cupcake's appearance. We never actually met in person"

"Shit" I whispered, then I yelled in agony "SHIT! MY SISTER NEVER DID ANYTHING BAD! JUST WHY WHY WHY?!" I flipped the chair I sat on.

"You faked her fucking death and she was kept hidden from me for years! Her real corpse was the one we found underneath my bloody fucking house and she was killed a day before I discovered the stupid little secret room! Had I not been convinced about her death I would've found her!"

"I'm sorry!" cried Jane, her voice cracking. She kneeled down and hammered the floor with her fists.

"So that's how it happened" I inhaled heavily "Cupcake just had to"

My grief was interrupted by the notification sound of my phone which. I checked to see that it was a text from a strange number. It said "Pick up the telephone and hear my voice"

The telephone on my wall rang and I picked it up as quickly as I could.

"Hello, William" said the unfamaliar voice of a young man.

"Is this Cupcake?"

"Obviously. Anyway, congratulations! You have solved the case, now you can meet me face to face! Oh my, that rhymed"