Forever and a Half || Michael Jackson

Chapter Thirty-Seven - Found

Chapter thirty-seven – Found

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"Marco?" Michael gasps, an expression of surprise spreading across his face. His eyes snap up from the floor, to my face, his eyes widening slightly.

"We've got to tell the police this," I answer, my expression beginning to match his.

He nods, taking the piece of paper from my grasp, examining it himself. "Do you really think this means Marco has been behind this all?" he asks doubtfully.

"You've told me what Marco's like; I'm beginning to think so!" I cry, taking his hand and dragging him down the stairs. "Now come on; we have to go tell the police about this!"

Because our shoes are still on our feet from when we got home a few minutes ago, we have no need to worry about rushing around to put them back on before we go out again. It takes about ten, perhaps fifteen minutes to get to the police station, and once we're there, we head straight for the officer we spoke to earlier.

"Where is he? He can't be that hard to find, surely?" Michael frowns, frantically moving his head side to side in search of the officer.

Suddenly spotting him, I grab Michael's arm again. "There he is," I announce, before raising my voice. "Officer!"

The officer turns around to see me. "Miss Espinosa; Mr Jackson. What's the problem?"

"We found something that pretty much clarifies who's behind the entire thing," Michael tells him. "It's this." He pulls out the corner of paper with Marco's name on, handing it to the officer. "Here."

The officer takes a hold of the paper, examining it carefully. "Hm. And where did you find this, may I ask?"

"It was in my pocket, sir. We think that it fell out the box, and somehow got in there," Michael answers, as politely as possible.

The officer gives a suspicious glance. "How did it get in your pocket, from the box?"

"Oh ... I got angry, and I pretty much threw the box across the room. All the paper came out, and ... yeah," he responds, perhaps a little embarrassed about admitting he got angry.

"Right." The officer then leads us to the room where all the evidence is. "But the thing is, although I personally don't have you down as fakes, people who have never met you might. They could claim this is false evidence, so we're going to have to run a few brief checks with all the evidence, to see if it's legitimate. Is that okay?"

"Go ahead," Michael smiles, raising his arms in surrender. "When will it be done?"

"It should be done by tomorrow, providing all goes well," the officer informs him. He then grabs an evidence bag, slipping the paper inside to protect it. "It's had your finger prints on, but we can't exactly reverse that now, can we?"

"Sorry," Michael apologises. "I didn't really think anything through earlier because I was ... kind of still in shock from finding out about some stuff."

"It'll be okay; might be a bit difficult to work with, but I guess we got no choice," the officer smiles. "Anyway, we'll keep in touch. Thanks for dropping by again. With some luck, we'll speak to you again tomorrow."

"Thanks officer," I call over my shoulder as we begin to leave the premises.

Once we're out the building, Michael stops us both in our tracks by standing in front of me, and resting his hands against my forearms. His expression gives away that something is troubling him. "What if Marco was really behind all this?" he finally breathes.

In initial reaction, I shrug, but then I answer properly. "Well ... then we've solved the case. They've got to track him down first, and interview him, I guess."