Chapter 13 - The Aquarium

While Halia was deep in thought, Isaac returned with a tray of drinks.

Lily cheered and quickly grabbed her Margarita. She then handed Halia her gin and tonic. "Welcome Halia," Lily cheered as she raised her glass.

Halia smiled, "Thank you."

The four doctors and Halia clinked glasses and each took a sip of their drinks. As it was still relatively early, the bar wasn't full yet, so it was still possible to chat. Halia quickly took this opportunity to start her interrogation.

"So, what do you guys normally do on your days off?" she asked, trying to see if the doctors had an alibi for the day of Sara's death.

"I do kickboxing," Dr. Tang quickly replied. "I actually came third in a tournament 2 days ago," he boasted as he pulled out his phone and showed some photos.

"Wow, was that a whole day event?" Halia asked, pretending to be interested.

"Yes, it started in the morning and went all the way into the evening, but it was all worth it in the end.'

What a coincidence!

If Dr. Tang was telling the truth, then he definitely had an alibi.

"That must have been a long day," Lily said as she looked at the photos. Dr. Tang smiled and moved in closer to show her some of his videos from the day.

Halia sighed when she saw this. Sometimes, an outsider could read a situation better than the people in it, so in this case, Halia was certain that Dr. Tang was interested in Lily. But Lily looked completely clueless.

Isaac noticed Halia looking at the two, so he smiled at her and winked, gesturing for her not to expose Dr. Tang. Halia smiled back, but she felt her heart skip a beat because of the wink. Why was this man so charming?

"What about you Dr. Su, do you have any hobbies?" Halia quickly changed her focus.

"I like to read. I generally spend my days off, reading at home with a nice glass of wine," he smiled as he finished the glass of wine in his hand. "Let me go get the second round," he quickly offered as he headed for the bar.

Halia finished her gin and tonic and sighed. Luckily, she was a good drinker. At the rate they were going, she had a feeling this was going to be a long night.

"I like to read too," Lily chimed in while Dr. Su was gone. "But I also love shopping," she giggled.

"Isaac, do you still volunteer at the orphanage on your days off?" Lily asked.

Halia looked at Isaac in surprise. Volunteer at an orphanage? Could this man be any more perfect? He was good looking, he was talented, he was kind and he volunteered on his day off?

Was he really one of her suspects?

"I don't go as often anymore. As you know, I moved homes a couple months ago and now I live further from the orphanage. It's a bit harder to get there," Isaac shook his head.

"Did you go recently?" Halia asked.

"The most recent would have been two weeks ago," Isaac replied. "Are you interested?" he asked.

"It sounds like a nice thing to do," Halia smiled.

"Do you want to come with me next time?" Isaac quickly offered with a hopeful expression.

"I'll think about it," Halia replied politely.

"Round two is here," Dr. Su said as he arrived with more drinks.

...

By the time the fourth round of drinks came around, the bar was beginning to fill up and live music had started playing. Halia struggled to ask any more questions over the noise, but she had gathered a decent amount of information. At least, she knew that she could remove Dr. Tang from the suspect list and now only five names remained.

At that moment, Halia's phone suddenly rang.

It was an unknown number.

Suspecting that it could be Dr. Ren or the police chief, Halia quickly excused herself and went to pick up her phone.

"Halia, I had a look at your suspect list. Because of Sara's death, you definitely got a much smaller list of suspects than she did. If you don't discover anything else, we will bring these 6 doctors in for questioning on the 1st of April. We need to catch the killer before he kills again," a familiar voice said over the phone.

It was the police chief.

"Well, you can cut the list to five. Dr. Tang has an alibi for the entire day. He was at a kickboxing tournament."

"You're doing great, Halia. By the way, Dr. Ren said you had a flashback of an aquarium, am I right? Sara didn't visit any aquariums recently. She's been working almost every single day. Maybe the memory you had was from a long time ago..."

As the police chief spoke, Halia's eyes suddenly fell on the wall behind her and she froze. She didn't realize at first...but there was a projection that covered the entire wall behind her. It was amazing and looked almost real.

"It's just like an aquarium," Halia whispered to herself as she looked at the glistening water, the seaweed, the coral, the fish...and the shark swimming in the middle...

"I think I found the aquarium," Halia said over the phone.