Tracker Option Ab1: Speak with the Inquisitor

Welcome to the end of the adventure! Let’s see if you catch the killer.

Tracker Option Ab1: Speak with the Inquisitor?

In the past, the Inquisitor’s shown he puts his duty above personal attachments. He obviously cares for his boy in training, but you doubt he’d put the boy above justice. Plus, you’ve got to trust someone.

“Can I show you something?” you ask him.

The boy and girl try to follow when you move to show him where the girl hid within the trees.

“Just the Inquisitor,” you tell them. “This won’t take long.”

They glance at each other but don’t argue and you lead the Inquisitor away.

“Something doesn’t add up,” you tell the Inquisitor softly. “Can you confirm the existence of this necklace?”

“Saw him working on it over the last week,” the Inquisitor confirms.

“There’s no necklace on her body,” you tell him. “And there are no tracks from the girl heading towards town.” You point out the bush she sat on. “She never left her spot, so she either saw Cora’s death or she did it. Also, I’ve identified all the tracks around the body. There wasn’t another man here last night. It was your boy, Cora and her younger sister. The only others belong to the fisherman.”

“If my boy did this,” the Inquisitor says, “why would the girl cover for him?”

You tilt your head back toward the other two. Since you’ve left them alone together, they’ve struck up a stilted conversation.

The girl’s dark head remains down through most of the conversation but she keeps glancing up through her lashes. At this distance, you can just make out the faint tint of a blush across her cheeks.

“She likes him,” you say.

“Enough to cover for him?” the Inquisitor’s voice for once isn’t monotone. You hear the pain in the words.

But you don’t respond immediately. The girl stuffs her hands in her pockets and fiddles with whatever she’s carrying. It’s a nervous gesture. Something she’s not even aware she’s doing judging by how focused she is on her conversation with the boy.

“What colors were the necklace?” you ask.

“Blue, green, and purple,” the Inquisitor’s watching you, waiting. He seems to have gotten to the point where he trusts your observations.

“She’s not covering for him,” you say and look away from the boy and girl just as she glances toward you. “She’s got the necklace in her pocket.”

You saw it, just for a moment, before she realized she was fiddling with it and pulled her hands from her pockets.

“You’re sure?” the Inquisitor asks.

You simply nod. All the pieces fit except the why. Why would she kill her sister? For the boy, perhaps. She did keep the necklace instead of destroying it.

“What’s the world coming to?” the Inquisitor mutters but it’s a rhetorical question and he walks away before you can answer.

“Miss Straight,” the Inquisitor addresses her for the first time.

She jumps and hugs your cloak tight around her like she can hide within it.

“Yes?”

“Tell me your story again. What happened last night?”

She starts to tell it but instead of letting her tell it uninterrupted, the Inquisitor stops her again and again, asking questions at each small detail. His skill in the questioning unnerves you but you see the purpose in it. Within moments, her story starts to fall apart.

“I started to head home—“

“The tracks don’t support that. You saw the murder,” the Inquisitor interrupts.

“I looked away, I saw nothing, I—“

“Was the necklace on her when you rushed to help?”

“No—“

“Then how did you come by it?”

The boy gasps at this and Miss Straight goes completely silent as her hand sneaks into her pocket. She shakes her head as though to deny his question but then spins to run. Her feet catch in your cloak and she falls.

The Inquisitor moves to tie her up.

“Why?” he asks. “Why did you kill her?”

“She had everything,” the girl mutters with enough venom in her tone that it doesn’t sound like her. “I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted something pretty. Something small.”

***

After more investigation, you and the Inquisitor find out that Miss Straight has always been a bit unstable, tending to steal things she finds pretty. The Straight family kept her cloistered due to it, but on the night of Cora’s death, her younger sister snuck out to follow her.

All she wanted was the necklace but Cora fought her when she tried to take it. Things went downhill from there.

You develop a professional friendship with the Inquisitor and he calls on you for any case in which your skills might be useful but you rarely speak of that first case. Something about it always haunts you.

The End

Blessings and have a wonderful weekend!

Jennifer