Inner And Outer Demons

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Tris's POV

The thin white linen drapes blow in the wind coming in through the open hotel window. They twist and twirl as if dancing, as I glance down out the window. The officers I passed on the way into the building look small from all these feet up, and the yellow tarp covering the man's body stands out amongst all the cop cars and police officers.

"Did he jump?" I ask Nita, pulling my head back in and turn to look her way.

"We aren't sure yet, but there was a witness."

"Really? What's the witness saying happened?"

Nita shakes her head as she jots something down on her clipboard, "She hasn't said a word. She didn't say anything to the officers first up here, and she didn't say anything to the medics who took her to the hospital."

"Hospital?"

Nita nods, and looks up at me as she clicks her pen closed. "The first officers on the scene found her standing by the window, shaking like a leaf. They took her there to get her checked out."

"So it's sounding like maybe another possible account could be that the council man tried to push her out the window, but fell before she could go over?"

Nita shrugs her shoulders, "Could be. I'm sure it would be a hell of a lot easier if the girl decided to talk, though. And if this case wasn't so deep in the public eye. Good luck."

I nod my thanks as she makes her way to the hotel room door, and I move to look back down at the body laying under a bright yellow tarp on the cement feet below. There's a perimeter set up down there on the street where his body lays, but even from up here I can see the news vans and the reporters with cameras. Captain was right when he said that this case was under a lot of scrutiny. A council man found dead after falling out of a hotel room window on the nineteenth floor; a lot of questions are going to be asked.

Did he jump?
Did someone push him?
Was this a premeditated act?

Pulling my head back in as the height is starting to get to me, I know that some of these questions might get answered if I go speak with the witness at the hospital.

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"Hey Tobias, it's Tris." I say, as my cell phone rests between my ear and my shoulder. I carry a file with me down the white fluorescent lit hallway in the hospital, as I try to focus on leaving a message and trying to stay out of other people's way as I walk.

"You never showed up at the crime scene, and it's been a couple hours now, so I just wanted to call to see if you were okay? I hope whatever that woman wanted went well, although the extra few hours tells me otherwise. But um, anyway, I'm at the hospital now. I'm here checking up on the only witness who was at the crime scene with council man Henry."

Pausing as I enter the ward I was looking for, I move to the side to finish up my voice message. "So if you want to meet me here or I can give you a call when I'm on my way back to the station, either one works. Again, I hope everything went okay."

"Alright, bye."

Putting my phone back in my pocket, I can feel in my gut that whatever that woman wanted... wasn't something good. But I take a deep breath, push the worry to the back of my mind, and knock on the door leading to the hospital room Amy Lewis occupies.

Walking in, for the door is left open for easy access from nurses and doctors, I stand in the doorway.

"Miss. Lewis?" I ask gently, and the young woman who sits in the uncomfortable looking hospital bed looks over at me.

Her skin is pale like snow, and her hair falls in loose windblown brunette tangles. Her cheeks looks sunken inward, and there are dark circles beneath her eyes. I would say she looks ghostly, but I suppose anyone would look this way if they had just witnessed a man fall to his death from a building nineteen feet up.

"Are you a cop?" She asks, and her voice is raspy and low. I detect some faint accent in her voice, New York perhaps, but it's very faint.

"I am," I nod, lifting my badge up for her to see. "Chicago P.D, I'm Detective Prior. But you can call me Tris if you want."

I take a small step into her room, and the lights in here are much more dim compared to the ones out in the hospital hallways.

"Cops have been trying to talk to me for hours, and I didn't tell them a thing. You're no different." She tells me, and she sounds very tired. Irritable and stubborn... but exhausted.

"You know you aren't in any trouble, right?" I ask walking closer, and I stop a few feet from her bedside.

"We're just trying to figure out what happened to council man Henry."

"I've dealt with your kind before," Amy snaps at me, playing aimlessly with the hospital band around her right wrist. "Always saying that they want one thing but in the end, they just want someone behind bars. You say I'm not in any trouble, but at the end of the day you may think differently. Wouldn't be the first time."

I swallow and the twenty two year old girl looks away from me. "You've been arrested before?"

"I have, and the cop that put the cuffs on my wrists told me the same thing. That I wasn't in any trouble, as long as I helped him. Later that night, I was in the back of his car on my way to the slammer. So sorry if I don't trust you right off the bat."

"I don't blame you," I tell her, shaking my head. "and I understand how you may have a hard time trusting me. Especially when I'm about to say that I need your help and that you aren't in any trouble. But I really mean it. I just want to find out what happened in that hotel room, why and how a man fell to his death out a nineteenth floor window."

Amy shakes her head, and looks down at her hands. Hiding her face away from me, but I see the way her hand raises and swipes across her right cheek. A tear is my assumption.

"You're just like everyone else on this planet, you know that?"

"How's that?" I ask and I feel my phone buzz in my back pocket. But I ignore it and stay focused on the girl in front of me.

"A nobody in need just fades to the background, but a somebody in need... they've got the spotlight."

Amy looks over at me, and I can see the tears and pain in her red rimmed eyes. "I'm tired, I think it's time you left."

Nodding, I take one more glance back at her before I leave. This girl, she knows what happened. She has the answers I'm looking for, but she's afraid to trust me. Walking out the way I came, I'll just have to think up a way to earn that trust from her.

Pulling my phone from my back pocket as I reach the parking lot, I stop by the car as I read the text message sent from Tobias only a couple minutes ago. Asking me to meet him at an address I've never been before.

Taking a deep breath, I start the car, and I'm off to find Tobias at an unknown location... once again.

A/N: Hey all! Hopefully this chapter isn't as bad as I think it is. It introduces the case, but I promise the next chapter will pick up where we left Tobias off at!