ROBIN THOUGHT SHE HAD TO DEAL with the autopsy report fiasco in the foreseeable future.

She did not expect for the foreseeable future to be an hour later when she ran into Andrew Hayes at the nurses' station.

She had been in the middle of stretching her neck from side to side, the stethoscope around her becoming a slight weight against her exhausted shoulders, when she caught sight of him. She slowed down, eyes scanning her surroundings for a swift escape.

"How was your surgery, Doctor Jenkins?"

Her full attention zoomed back on him, realizing he had looked up from the document in his hand to address her. She tucked her hands in her uniform's pockets, nodding her head once.

"Not bad."

He offered a smile, putting his pen down and angling his body to fully face her. Now, that got her uneasy. She narrowed her eyes, refusing to move a muscle, not until she was released from his scrutinizing gaze.

"You didn't answer my earlier question, Doctor."

Her fingers curled into tight fists underneath the material of her trousers to stop herself from fidgeting.

"Oh." If it were anyone else, she wouldn't have answered. She would have let it go there and maybe turned to leave without much else to spare. But his presence was oddly intimidating, and it made her stand straighter before him. That unconscious reaction her body did irritated her - because it was the same reaction it would succumb to whenever she used to be around someone else, someone she desperately wanted to be wiped out of her memory. "I might've tuned out."

His chin tipped up, and he offered a brief nod. He took a step forward, and Robin was quick to look down to assess the distance between them. Two feet away.

"Was it Violet's autopsy file you were requesting?"

His question rang through her ears and wrapped around her gut, squeezing. She met his gaze, unable to hide the intense feeling gripping her throat, and he stared back, unrelenting.

"Yes," she forced out, body rigid.

"I thought so." He exhaled a steady breath. "I have a form in my office, you can fill it out and I'll approve it directly. You can pick it up from the office right away."

Shock prickled her senses, and her jaw hung at his words. She blinked, sensing that the first words she was about to utter would be a sputtering mess, and instead, she chose silence for a few seconds to gather her composure.

She felt the tautness of her nerves when she rasped a simple, "Okay." She felt it in her bones, the hesitation that paralyzed her legs for a moment, watching Andrew Hayes's tilt in his head, ushering her to follow him, and his disappearing body.

She couldn't tell what awaited her, but slowly, she followed.

His office wasn't one out of the ordinary; a small, enclosed space with a desk in the middle and a computer on top, a window behind it with the blinds shut, a scale, an examination table in the corner, and filing cabinets. The examination table didn't surprise her; it was further proof that he did specialize in emergency medicine and forensic pathology as she had heard, dedicating his entire life to his work.

"Have a seat." He ushered at the chair facing his.

She complied, looking around again while he took a seat opposite hers, his desk between them. Usually, doctors with kids would have pictures of their families up, of drawings and doodling scattered randomly at every corner. His was empty. Not even a picture of Violet, not even one of Joe. It did bring up so many questions, mainly about his current relationship with Joe, seeing as she was in Darwin, and he was here. Were they on good terms? Did they still see each other?

She didn't have the answers. And this setting certainly brought more to her confusion.

Nothing stuck out, nothing was familiar. It was only clean.

Robin wondered at that moment if Violet got her obsessive cleaning habits from him. OCD might partly run through genetics and developed depending on one's environment. Seeing as she wasn't his blood, he could have ingrained it in her through her childhood.

He took out a form from the drawer beside him, placing a pen before her. Robin frowned when she caught her initials, realizing that was her pen, the one she left at the coroner's office before she made a run for it.

"Thought you might need it back." His lips curled in a smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. He was right, she did want it back, it completely escaped her that this was the pen her dad gifted her when she graduated medical school.

She never thought she was one to find sentimental value in objects. But it was becoming clearer to her that maybe she did. From her dad's pen to Violet's whistle that rusted away around her neck as she never used it.

"Thanks."

She looked back down at the form. She was about to fill it as fast as she could, wait for his approval and dash out of there the soonest as possible and get this thing over with. Christina owed her big time for the trouble.

"I imagine you need it for closure."

Robin's jaw tightened. He certainly wasn't going to make it easy on her. He lured her in with the proposal that it was going to be quick, that he would approve it on the spot for her to pick it up today when it could usually take days - all so he could question her about it, know her reasons.

"Something like that," she offered lamely, scribbling on the paper fast.

When she was done, she slid it back to him with her pen. He took it, filled his part, and stamped on it, then handed her the pen back along with the paper.

"Thanks." She looked up, forcing a smile on her lips.

She swallowed when she met his cold gaze, and she noticed the expectant look he gave her like there were hung questions in the air, not ones he wanted to ask, but ones he was willing to answer. A look that meant, are you sure you want to leave now? She swallowed. She could end it here - take the form and go. But there was an unanswered question that pulled at her gut.

"I didn't know autopsy reports were public. I thought those documents are undisclosed."

"In some countries, yes. In Fairford - no. Except for crime scene images of a victim of a homicide and certain other cases. You can look up the laws online, they're easy to find."

Robin only took his words as an eloquent form of 'google it'.

She frowned at the information. "Crime scene images are undisclosed?"

His head tilted, the crease between his brows deepening. "Do you need them?"

She was quiet, thinking it through. She remembered that night vividly, but some details could have been missed - ones that might prove to be vital.

"If you do," he added. "Violet did request for any document relating to her death to be made public."

Robin's head shot up, his words coming to her in shockwaves.

"Huh?" Her brain tried to register what that information implied, but all it did was blare in her head like an alarm. "She did?"

"She did," he confirmed, "in her will."

"Will?"

"So, you're telling me, she didn't have a permit?" Christina fathomed a conclusion from the piece of information Finn revealed to her after he texted her to come straight to his apartment after work.

He nodded, showing her the result on his larger screen.

"It... doesn't make sense." She frowned, sitting down on the armchair of the couch. "How can a person cross the borders without a permit? Why wouldn't it be in the database?" She scrambled her mind for a possible explanation, none logical enough to be considered plausible.

"I know. I've been thinking about it and all it did was raise more questions. I mean, she had been adopted from Darwin. Joe is her adoptive sister, yet she spends all her time there since she's got a job. But... Joe should have Fairfordian residency, right?"

Christina nodded. "Yes, she would have Fairford citizenship, even if she doesn't live in Fairford."

"But... why?"

"What do you mean, why?" Christina frowned; she wasn't catching up to his line of thinking.

"I mean, it means she has something in Darwin to go back to, despite having a family here now. She found a home in Fairford and a decent life, yet she leaves it to live in Darwin. Violet has Darwinites origins too but is making a life here, instead of going back. I just find it interesting, the difference in choices and why the two ended up in different places..."

She hummed in agreement. It did mean that Joe had something to go back to in Darwin, and it also meant that Violet either chose to let Darwin go or found something here to stay in Fairford.

From what she had seen in Burlington, things were better than she had heard of them to be. But the district still had a mediocre standard of living; it was its people who seemed to adapt to what they had. She noticed the sense of community they created, but that was only the center of Burlington - she knew they were shadier areas around its periphery. And that was only Burlington - Darwin had five other districts, one of them exiled.

"Do you think she visited her often?" She wondered out loud. "Now that we can't see permits, we won't know if she'd been in Darwin more than once and when. But do you think she went there often to see her, and because it wasn't a legal reason, she didn't apply for a permit?"

"Yeah, possibly. But how did she get there, then?"

"She might've snuck around. I'm not sure how. Every foot of the border is guarded. It's impossible she got there by car or by train-unless... it is by train, and she managed to sneak in."

"Or by foot."

"But it's miles away. How did she get back on the same day?"

"Joe has a place there for sure. From the looks of it she's pretty well known there too..." he commented, recalling the three faces that sat on either side of the bar; they all seemed familiar with one another. Not to mention the support she had of the customers too.

"Yeah." She heaved a sigh, so many questions yet so many dead ends. She thought she could benefit from finding the permit, but it only caused a slump. But it was a good find regardless. She snuck a look at Finn, finding him deep in thought with a pen trapped between his lips. "Good thing you thought of hacking into the database, but that can get you in trouble, don't you think?"

He looked up, offering a noncommittal shrug. "Not really, I have my VPN on," was all he said as an answer. In reality, he did go to lengths to secure his online presence for extra precaution.

"Ah." She nodded. Something irked the back of her mind, and she didn't hold her tongue when she said, "I have to ask." Finn hummed, toying with the pen still. "You wanted in, but you never said your reason."

He blinked, looking up to meet her gaze then. She offered a brief shrug and a tight smile. "It's only natural for me to wonder."

"No, it's fair." He sighed, fingers running through his hair. "I actually wanted to tell you about it, anyway."

She frowned. That piqued her interest. She expected his reasoning to be the same as the one they got from him the last time. "About?"

"I caught something the night she died."

Her eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean?"

"I have an... alarm system that I set up in my house." Her quizzical expression pushed him to further explain, "something I was testing, it wasn't anything advanced."

"Why would you need an alarm system?"

"Why wouldn't I? After Hunter's death, it's been scary. Haven't you considered keeping a gun in the house for example?"

"Robin suggested the idea... I just didn't feel easy about it."

"Don't you think that gun would've saved Violet's life had it been there?"

Christina grew quiet. Maybe. After all, Violet had been inside their apartment when they found her. If she had known a gun was within reach, she could have used it in self-defense.

"Anyway, I also started keeping cash in the house, what with the inflation and all - don't want to risk going bankrupt."

She arched an eyebrow. "You're talking like you have millions in the bank."

He rolled his eyes. "It's a camera system I had kept in my old apartment, right on the front door, inside the house." He pointed at the door, and Christina followed. She noticed the small device planted on the wall perpendicular to it. "I moved it here, too. An advanced version of it. I turn it on at night or when I leave the house. It detects if something is moving in the doorway. Back then it was only a prototype I was testing, so it didn't ring an alarm or anything. It's a bit crappy. I didn't expect for it to come in handy this soon."

Christina felt her heart skip a beat at the implication of what this device could have caught. "And?" She felt the tightness in her throat, the tautness of her nerves every second that passed with him thinking his words through.

"The night Violet died, I checked it out," he said. He sensed Christina's sudden rush of adrenaline when she stood, so he was quick to add, "there's nothing to it."

"I'll be the judge of that. Show me."

"I will. But listen. Nothing opened my door, no one got inside my house-but it did detect sound."

Finn turned around in his chair, opening a folder that contained multiple video files, all labeled with the date. He opened another folder, one that had only one video file labeled '20211024-Vi'. Christina forced her emotions down, fingers digging into the skin of her palm as adrenaline rushed through her veins. She inhaled deeply, exhaling a shaky breath when he double-clicked on the file, the media player window popping open.

It was twenty seconds long. He pressed play. The quality of the video was awfully pixelized, and it was dark. Five solid seconds later, a flashlight that looked like it was produced from the device went on.

"It turns on a light when it detects sound," Finn was quick to explain.

The quality was bad, but there was nothing to see other than the faint sight of the door to the left and the blue wall ahead. Finn increased the volume and Christina stepped closer, straining her ears to hear.

There was the sudden sound of the bell ringing, consecutive quick bursts. Then, a sharp sound of someone rapping the door. She held her breath. The knocking stopped and was replaced by loud consecutive banging. Christina counted. Five times. Five rowdy palm-against-the-wood blows.

And then nothing.

The video went on for five more seconds before the light turned back off.

"Holy shit..." She breathed out.

"I know," Finn mumbled.

"What time was it?" She squeezed her eyes, checking the timestamp engraved on the clip.

"Seven fifteen." He turned back to face her.

She took a step back, sitting down on the couch. She leaned forward, elbows resting against her knees. That was little material, but it spoke volumes, nonetheless. There was something haunting about the way she desperately knocked on the door. Violet knew those could have possibly been her last moments.

"The door is somewhat soundproof," Finn commented gently, noticing she was still taking it all in. "I couldn't hear anything else. It didn't even occur to me to look at it until after her funeral."

"I see it now. Your reason."

"She knocked on my door. She was looking for help and no one was here... I barely leave the house. And on the night that I do, this happens."

She was quick to shake her head, looking at him squarely. "It's not your fault."

"I know it isn't. It's just... frustrating. She knocked. And I wasn't here."

The sudden sound of knocking on the door jolted the both of them. Christina put a hand to her chest, and Finn stood to reach the door.

"Christina in here?" was the first thing Robin asked the moment he opened the door. He didn't have a chance to answer when she pushed past him, taking notice of her sitting on the couch.

"Come in, I guess." He rolled his eyes.

Robin lifted her hand, showing Christina the report she was holding, tightly clutched between her fingers. The latter exhaled a sigh of relief, shooting off her seat to close the distance between them. She trapped her cheeks with her palms, planting a loud kiss between her brows. Robin grimaced but didn't move away.

"You're the best." She took the report from her hold. "We have new info."

"Yeah?" Robin heaved a sigh, plopping on the couch and leaning back. "So do I."

"Finn hacked into the City Hall database, Violet doesn't have a permit," Christina rambled. "He also has a small footage of the night she died. It caught her knocking at his door for help at around seven-fifteen."

Robin frowned, taking it all in. "No permit. Knock on the door."

"More like desperate banging on the door," Finn elaborated.

"So, we're sure of the time now," she noted. "What's that about the no-permit?"

"None."

"So, she was trespassing..." Her eyes narrowed as she thought about the distance. "Is that even possible? The live location ended at 6." Her chin tipped up to meet Finn's gaze. "Can you look up train itineraries that date back to that night?"

Christina clicked her fingers. "Oh. Good thinking."

Finn was already on his desk chair, fingers on his keyboard and mouse. "Checking... Alright so not on the official website since I can't see trains before today's date. I'm checking if I can access it some other way."

"Is it possible she went through another way?" Christina wondered aloud.

"Definitely not by car. They shoot if a car doesn't stop."

"Right." She nodded in agreement. It had happened a few times before, enough to get headlines in newspapers.

"It would take her time to get here by foot. Unless she ran." Robin massaged her temple as she thought. "It's not a far possibility. There might be a gap in border security. Have we seen her the night before anyway?"

"Yes, for sure." Christina was quick to nod. "I remember because it was Saturday night and we both dragged Spencer inside the house after we found her passed out in the hallway. She didn't spend the night in Darwin, then."

"I'll have to hack into their database, but it'll take me time and there's a chance I might not get in at all," Finn spoke up, a frustrated sigh escaping his lips. "But I did find that the trains leaving for Darwin have set timetables. There's one every three hours, starting from eight a.m. In that case, eight p.m. would've been the one she would've caught to come here, if by train."

"By foot, it is, then," Christina concluded. "It's odd."

Robin hummed. "You'd think but listen to this." Christina snapped her head up to meet her gaze, her attention zeroing in on her as she awaited new clues. "Autopsy reports are disclosed to the public, but pictures of the crime aren't. That's what Andrew Hayes told me. He's the one who approved my request to get the autopsy report."

"Really?" Christina grimaced. "That must've been painful."

"Yeah." She was quick to agree. "But he said I can have access to the crime scene pictures if I need-"

"Really-"

"-because Violet requested anything related to her death be made public. In her will."

"What?" Christina rasped, shock entrapping her entire body at the knowledge of that piece of information. "What?"

"How would she..." Finn frowned, shaking his head at the thought of it. "How would she even know there would be anything to her death? Why would she want it made public-what? This doesn't even make sense."

"I know." Robin agreed.

"My head," Christina breathed, "hold on let me get a spreadsheet." She reached for her bag, taking out her laptop. She opened Excel, quick to type in each of the clues they had up until now to organize her thoughts. "So many things... let me know if I'm missing something," she said as she typed. "Live location, the autopsy report, lack of permit, the approximate time of death from Finn's footage, and...?"

"That email you once asked me about," Finn reminded.

"Right." She typed them all in as quickly as she could. "And that weird motorcade in Darwin too. What would James be doing in Darwin in the first place?" She placed both her hands on either side of her head, looking at the words she typed. A will. She straightened. "I have an insane theory," she breathed.

"I might be with you on it," Robin said, her body angled on the couch to face her.

Christina looked at her. "You think he did it?"

"Huh?" Finn blinked. "You're implying Andrew Hayes killed her?" He frowned. "But... she's his daughter. He adopted her. Why would he do this now? Why not years before? Why ever?"

"He did perform the autopsy on her," Christina added. "How can a parent do that?"

"He could be investigating it just as we are. It's murder in the end."

Robin sighed. "Freddie has a point."

"Finn."

"Right." She gestured at Christina's laptop. "But put it down - we never know."

She typed it on another tab in the sheet. She'd keep one tab for clues and the other for theories. Her thoughts whirled as she did, scattered at every corner with nothing coherent formed.

"For someone our age to think about writing a will..." Christina mumbled. "I don't even have a will."

"Me neither."

"Yeah, not even me..." Finn trailed. Maybe he should, it was odd the thought never occurred to him.

"There's something else." Christina put her laptop on the coffee table, turning to face Robin. The latter gave her a look, wary of what was going to come out of her mouth next. "I heard today at work that Olivia Winters is hosting a charity dinner. Apparently, it's going to be newsworthy - nothing I'm sure of - but Viviane Dallas is going to be there."

She left a small pause after her words, and Robin merely looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to reach a point. When she didn't continue, Robin sighed and prompted, "And?"

"I want you to come with me."

Finn felt a little excluded in this conversation, but he regretted the lack of snacks as he watched Robin's features morph into one of mortification. Well, one her rigid features could muster, anyway.

"Me?"

"To be honest, that's a deal I made with the reporter covering it so they can let me attend with their team." Christina offered a sheepish expression.

"...if it's a date you need, take Frederick." Robin gestured at him.

Finn sighed, turning around to face the laptop on his desk, popping open Notepad++ and typing in the list of names she had given him the moment she met him until today.

"Not really... Bree, you know Bree, right?" Her question was met with silence. "They're interested in you... so... yeah. Got you a hot date in return."

"Ooh." Finn grinned at the thought of how torturous that sounded to Robin. The latter narrowed her eyes at him, and he pursed his lips, going back to type his list. He was grateful she at least knew his first name started with an F.

"Am I supposed to talk to people?" Robin grimaced.

"Not unless you're being talked to," she was quick to assure.

"Am I going to be talked to?" She countered.

"Bree, maybe. But they're cool. If you're not interested, they'll move on."

"Can I come?" Finn piped in from the back, wanting to be included. "There will be food, right?"

"I don't think I can let you in." Christina arched an eyebrow.

"Don't worry. I'll let myself in." He smiled to himself.

Christina frowned. What was that supposed to mean?

"And why is it you want to go?" Robin tried to remember her reasoning but couldn't. "I don't see how this helps with Violet's case."

"Viviane Dallas is going to be there. Not only scandal follows wherever she goes, but I get to meet her." There was a glint in her eyes. "I could present my case to her. Besides, I have so many questions about freelance investigative journalism. I want to know how she does it."

Finn dropped his head on his palm.

"What?" Christina twisted her head to face him, shooting him a glare.

"She's not going to tell you." At this point, Finn was convinced her entitlement was inherently ingrained in her blood.

"It's worth a shot. How would you know."

He chuckled. "Trust me, I would know."

She rolled her eyes, turning back to Robin. "So?"

Robin sighed, shaking her head. "I'll wear a suit," she announced, expecting resistance.

"Alright." She huffed, fighting back the smile. "We'll be that lesbian couple."

A sly smirk curved her lips. "Cool."

______

Notes:

Sooooo 👀 what do you think is going to happen next? 👀

Btw i'm running low on chapters in stock but i'm having writer's block 😭 it's probably cause i know what's coming i just have the imposter syndrome kicking in...

Let me know what you think of this chapter!