Walk Me Down The Hallway

Chapter 8- Gotta Be Starting Something

AN

Hey ! Shout out ChellyBell for the new cover.  It's pretty siick (: Anyways, ON WITH THE STORY!

Mal POV

My 'office' better known as the table and chair shoved into the small corner on the right side of the back room, was covered in papers.  I had spent the last five hours researching the O'Callahan case, I was coming up with zip.  I knew that O'Connor was guilty.  Obviously.  He was on trial for it.  But the amount of evidence that was piling up against him could be viewed as circumstantial, and I needed something positive to nail him down.  The fact that he was found with her blood all over his hands wasn't even enough.  His plea was non guilty, his excuse that he was trying to stump the bleeding, which could be proved.  Emergency responders arrived at the scene to see him pressing a cloth to her wounds, and pleading for help.  The murder weapon couldn't be found.  Officers believed that he had stashed it somewhere before returning to the scene, that is, if he was guilty.  Which he was.  It was my aunts case all over again, and this time, I wasn't letting the guilty off scott free again.

So far though, I was coming up empty.  Nothing that had been discovered could pin him, the oppostie actually.  Most of it could be used to prove him guilty, but it could also just as easily be flipped by the defense to prove his innocence.  This was getting impossible.  I was beginning to believe I knew how the prosecuters in my aunts case felt.  No matter which direction I turned, I came up blank.  It was beginning to get ridiculous.  I wish we could just say 'he's guilty' and be done with it.

The reports showed possibility of a different killer, using the reasoning that the real murderer could have gotten away long before O'Connor showed at the scene, taking the murder weapon with him, along with his identity, but there were no suspects.  And Ms. O'Callahan's ex boyfriend was found on the scene, covered in her blood, following a very difficult and somewhat violent break up.  It made perfect sense, and he was guilty. He had to be. 

I groaned, smacking my head off the desk like I had done for the past hour or so, when I realized it was almost hopeless.  Nothing was going my way.  Her autopsy got placed on hold because of her family's beliefs, or what was assumed to be her family's belief, according to her boss. 

No one really knew this O'Callahan.  She was very independant, to a T, going to work and returning home without any personal time.  She made no friends, and had no known family, so the Coronor was told to hold off until someone who was a relative could be contacted. The service didn't want to risk a lawsuit.

"You probably shouldn't do that Malcolm."  I turned my head sideways, resting it on the desk to peer up at an amused looking Marc.  "Case isn't going so well huh?"

"I've reached so many dead ends, I don't think I've moved two feet," I moaned, staring hopelessly at the piles of paper in front of me.  "O'Connor is guilty. I know he is."

"This isn't the O'Callahan case Malcolm, you can't treat it as though it is," he scolded, giving me a narrowed look before walking aimlessly out of the room. I scowled at his retreating back.  I wasn't trying to relive her case.  I just knew it was the same.  Cally brought me to this point, and I was going to prove O'Connor guilty because he was.  It was the same situation as back in Jersey all over again.  They can't blame me for seeing this when no one else did.

"I just saw Marc leaving your office.." I surpressed another angry groan and found myself staring straight into the clevage of a somewhat underdressed Linda.  The top two buttons of her dress shirt where undone, leaving little to my overactive imagination.  "I thought you could use some.. company."  If it was anytime but now, when I wasn't up to my eyeballs in paperwork and pissed off beyond belief...Ahh, who was I kidding.