The Death Thief

Timeline

"He...he knew," I said, my fingers reaching up to brush my lips as the electricity of the epiphany sizzled off my tongue. "If he knew she was dead, or, I guess, that she was going to be dead, then he must have done it." My brow furrowed as I turned back to the board. "He must have, right?"

"No, he has an alibi. Those tapes aren't a lie. He was at the bar well before Bungee turned himself in with you in his arms and Calista sobbing beside him."

"He-he carried me?" I asked, suddenly feeling a rock of guilt weighing down my stomach. "He turned himself in?"

"He knew he couldn't get around maiming Calista and somebody had to get you out of those woods. We don't really do cell phones around here. Involves too much external interference. It's hard enough to deal with our internet providers."

"I'd never really considered how I got to the station. So no one alerted you to what happened, prior to Bungee showing up?"

"Nope," said Everett, scratching the back of his neck. "Whoever intended to kill Calista also intended her to be lost for awhile. It would probably take a couple days to notice her absence. Bodies tend to have odd and ever changing schedules depending on who's trying to woo or win their attention. It's not unheard of for Bodies to be gone from housing for days at a time. If her killer intended for Calista's disappearance to go unnoticed for a few days, then they may have planned to retrieve her body after the deed was done and when they had more flexibility to make a move. Or maybe they intended to just leave her out there to rot."

"I wonder if having her decompose for awhile would mask how she died."

"I don't know, I suppose it depends. It's already obvious that she wasn't murdered in a very apparent manner. We'd have to rely on our town doctors for an autopsy and that isn't necessarily their skill set."

"Wait," I muttered. "We really don't know how she died. Which means we also don't know when she died."

"She couldn't have died too long before you found her and Bungee. There's a very small window for a zombie's poison to be viable. There's maybe thirty minutes, tops, after death for a zombie bite to be able to convert a dead body."

"That's not what I mean," I said with a shake of my head. My palms went to my temples and rubbed them in circles as I tried to wrap my mind around the ever more defined picture forming in my head. "I mean, perhaps it's something that kills you slowly. Like a poison or something."

"If that's true," said Everett as he started pacing the floor, "then that would explain your appearance. Everything you told me about how you arrived here, added to the fact that you were suicidal, it sounded like the workings of the mages' call."

I grimaced at his nonchalant observation about my reasons for finding myself in those woods that night, but he was too busy watching his feet to have noticed the pain contorting my face.

"I took my concerns to the town's archmage, but when I asked him if it was possible that the spell could be triggered if a person was doomed before death, he said he didn't know. The mages work with very ancient magic. The power they are using to call out to Bodies is not emanating from our mages, but really harnessed by our mages. They're still struggling to understand it even though it's been a century since we first began the Body program. He told me it could very well happen, often once the tides of fate are set, a call will go out. I just didn't know what to do with that information and frankly I still don't."

"What do you mean? Poison seems completely reasonable. You say that Bodies get offered food as gifts all the time, seems it would be real easy to get Calista to consume something she shouldn't have."

"That's the thing," he said with a sigh. "I considered poison or something along those lines after I talked to the archmage, but I don't know where that really gets me. That opens the door to anyone killing her. The problem is, the majority of the prime suspects, Bernadette, Matias, and even Dragan, are all vampires. Considering when you would have started to let your feet drive, it would have been too early in the day. They'd be waiting out the sun."

"What about the Nightshade Lounge? Couldn't they have met her there?"

"I don't think they would have been open early enough, but I suppose we also don't know which of your actions that night were truly you and which was due to the spell." His large hand reached up and rubbed his bristled jawline. He stared at his murky reflection in the table, whose surface seemed to have seen a few pounds of an angry fist in its days. Then, with a flare of his nostrils, he expelled his uncertainty and gave the table one last hit. "I'll go to the lounge, see what their tapes show. I asked everyone in town to hold on to footage from that night until the investigation was over. Maybe I'll find something there."

"Maybe," I said, hopeful it would be that easy. "Will there be anyone there? Do we have to wait until tonight to get the tapes?" I walked over to where Everett was heading for the door, he stopped just before he grabbed the handle to leave.

"If they're not open, they will be open once I come knocking," he said, turning around and standing between me and the doorway. "But, just me. You've been a great help Delilah, but it's time you leave this to Kyra and me." He took a deep breath and after some hesitation, he raised his hands up and rested them on my shoulders. Then he leaned in, his eyes warm and his face soft as his hair fell forward and framed his cheekbones. "Really, thank you. You've offered me some valuable information, that would have taken a lot of questioning and a lot of running in circles to find. You've saved us precious time and I feel like we have made one big step forward in this investigation, but this is something you really shouldn't get yourself involved in. Kyra and I do our best for human rights, but not everyone here is as accommodating to humans as those you've met so far. It's better you just keep to the hotel until we've sorted this out."

"Oh, right, okay," I said, my words stumbling over both my disappointment and my confusion over how my skin prickled beneath the weight of his strong hands.

"Thank you Delilah." He smiled down at me and though I managed to reflect it in an awkward grin, I couldn't hold his gaze and instead turned for the floor. He then gave my shoulders a light squeeze and left before I could offer any protest.

However, I agreed with him. I wasn't a trained officer, I wasn't some supernatural creature, and I wasn't at all familiar with the inner workings of the town. Yet, I still wandered back over to the board and gave the names another scan. Calista, Matias, Derosiers, Antonov, Bungee, Gregory, and myself. Someone on there knew what happened that night. Really there were two people that would know, the killer and Calista herself.

Except Calista can't remember the few hours before her death. Yet...

I jumped and felt the tickle of realization prickling my skin. Calista didn't remember the few hours before her death, but now that we suspected that she was essentially murdered well before her death, she could very well remember her killer and not even know it. She'd remember what food and drink she had, and possibly who could have tampered with it. Everett shouldn't have been looking for those tapes, he should have been looking for Calista.