Tracker Option Ab: Reinvestigate the Scene
Tracker Option Ab: Reinvestigate the Scene
“See the suitors if you want,” you say, “but I’m headed back to the lake. I want to make more sense of the tracks now that I know more of the story.”
The girl, definitely Cora’s younger sister, looks at you with a horrified expression but the Inquisitor simply nods. “Makes sense.” He gestures for you to lead the way.
The fog’s cleared by now, leaving dew on every branch and leaf. The small bits of water sparkle in the weak sunlight. It’d be beautiful if you weren’t searching for a killer but the day’s cold and you can’t keep a shudder from running your spine.
The girl hurries to keep close to you. “He’s kind of scary,” she whispers.
You glance back at the dark man in his Inquisitor clothing. The expression on his face stays bland, almost expressionless, but you catch his eyes and there’s a hint of worry there. Perhaps he’s concerned for his boy.
“He’s just doing his duty,” you reply. “It can’t be an easy job.”
The girl gives you a wide-eyed stare like the concept of the Inquisitor being human never occurred to her.
When you reach the shore of the lake again, you find nothing disturbed. Thankfully, the Inquisitor’s boy hasn’t arrived yet to gather the body. You gesture for the girl and Inquisitor to stand back while you look at the scene again.
So much of it has already been muffled by others walking around the scene that you can’t find where Cora and the Inquisitor’s boy spoke to each other. For all you know, that spot could be directly beneath the body.
It’s easy, however, to locate where the girl knelt to help Cora. Tracing those tracks backwards, you find they come from the same direction as Cora’s prints. That makes sense. She followed her sister from home. You follow them to find where the girl hid to watch the encounter. Just within the tree line you find the spot, clearly outlined by the fact that she sat on a bush to keep from sitting on the damp earth.
You look for her prints when she headed back and then heard the scream. The incoming tracks speak loud and clear. The outgoing tracks—you look carefully to make sure they aren’t mixed with the incoming—but even taking that possibility into account, you don’t see where the girl left her hiding spot to head home. You do see where she rushed toward the lake and Cora though.
You start looking again to make sure you’re not missing something. Before you’re finished, you hear voices back by the lake.
“I was only here for a few minutes,” says a voice you’re not familiar with. You peek out of the trees to see another man with the Inquisitor. Due to his blacks, you know it’s his boy in training. “I wanted to give her the necklace I made.”
Necklace? Although you didn’t look closely at the body, you’re pretty sure she wasn’t wearing a necklace.
The boy jumps when you appear out of the trees. “What necklace?” you ask.
He looks to the Inquisitor before answering.
“Made it out of cord, three strands of different colors. Nothing fancy but I wanted to give her something unique.”
The girl stands behind them with her face down, chin and nose tucked tight into the collar of your cloak that she’s still wearing. Even with her head down, though, you catch the upturn of her eyes. She’s watching the Inquisitor’s boy through her lashes but you can’t quite tell if he fascinates her or scares her.
You return to the body and actually look at Cora this time. No necklace hangs around her neck but you can see where something was drawn tight around her throat.
“Could this necklace have cut her?” you ask.
Tears well in the boy’s eyes. He nods. “I made it sturdy. Wanted it to last awhile.”
The tracks you pointed to earlier as maybe being the killer’s catch your eye. You look at the boy’s feet and, sure enough, he’s wearing soft soled shoes, not the boots he must have worn earlier when he and the Inquisitor came to investigate.
The girl’s story doesn’t fully add up. There are no more tracks, so there wasn’t a second man who came to kill Cora.
A sinking sensation makes your stomach roll.
The Inquisitor asks the boy another question but you don’t focus on it while you’re reexamining the scene. You’re sure of your conclusion, however. The only people who came to see Cora are standing on the shore with you right now, except the fisherman who found her. You disregard his prints though, because they’re clear and the fisherman had no reason to kill Cora. He’s mostly a hermit.
The killer’s right here but who is it? Where’s the necklace? You glance at the others from the corner of your eye. You could pull the Inquisitor aside and tell him but there’s the possibility he’s trying to cover for his boy. If that’s the case, you and the girl could be in danger.
Or it could be the girl. In which case, it’d be advantageous to clue the Inquisitor in so he can catch her in her lie.
Do you…
Ab1: Speak with the Inquisitor?
Or
Ab2: Protect the Girl?
Blessings and see you Thursday,
Jennifer
