I sprinted through the gardens toward the small patch of forest. My jaguar roared from pleasure now she was outside and free. I even had to tamp her down a little. We didn’t have time to explore the woods and have fun—we had a case to work on.
By the time I reached it, I was already tired enough to drag myself back to bed. Although I didn’t have the ability to shift, at least I did have a jaguar’s phenomenal running skills. With how lazy I was when it came to working out, my jaguar genes were the only thing that made me capable of running the three miles through rough up-and-down territory that Keira Sampson faced three times a week.
The birds chirped, leaves rustled in the wind, and if my mind hadn’t been working overtime trying to spot the location where Keira had discovered Elise’s body, I might have even enjoyed the morning jog.
The yellow tape showed up soon enough, and my appetite for running, whatever little I had of it, vanished like snow in the sun. A tiny corner of grass had been taped off from one tree to another, a miniscule rectangle that showed where Elise Felton had been slain or had been put on display postmortem.
I checked the road for any runners, and when I didn’t see or hear anyone approaching, I slipped underneath the yellow tape. Indra would probably hate me for going out investigating on my own, but I didn’t want her to tag along with every step I took. I wanted some peace and quiet to investigate the crime scene on my own. Besides, what were the odds of finding this spot deserted enough to properly investigate it at any other time during the day?
I bent my knees and checked the dirt, spotting a faint marking of the body that coincided with the pictures I had seen of the crime scene. Elise had fallen with her face up, arms bent at the elbows, next to her body. One of her legs had been lying straight, the other slightly bent at the knee.
My jaguar rolled her eyes impatiently and sent images of running into my mind, making it obvious she would rather continue our sprint than talk about dead bodies.
I ignored her and looked at the four trees marking the crime scene and then the empty patch of dirt in the middle. I closed my eyes for a second.
When I opened them again, Elise Felton’s body was occupying the empty patch. It was all in my imagination, of course, but to me it looked real, like a movie playing in front of my eyes. The pictures taken by the police had collided with the reality of the crime scene in my mind.
Elise Felton’s dead eyes stared at me, broken and gazing at infinity.
I swallowed hard. Looking at corpses, even ones that existed only in the palace of your mind, was never easy. Especially when the corpse belonged to a person about the same age as I was.
My hands started sweating. More than anything, Elise’s corpse reminded me of Amaranth’s. Her dead eyes resembled those of my dead cousin, all hope in them lost, all light in them forever vanished.
My jaguar whimpered and rubbed her nose against me, trying to offer me support.
I balled my hands into fists and pushed her away, back into the cage. My jaguar was linked to my emotions. Even if she tried to comfort me, I couldn’t let her too close. Not right now, not when I couldn’t use emotions. I needed logic instead, so I opened up my mind palace and entered Sherlock Mode.
I walked around the corpse and tried to imagine myself in Elise’s position. It was difficult, considering there were two possible scenarios.
Scenario one. Elise Felton was killed somewhere else and then dragged here. This would coincide with the lack of blood on the supposed crime scene.
Unfortunately, the other evidence didn’t support scenario one at all. I knelt next to her body and looked at her clothing. She wore a pink T-shirt with a bunny on and a pair of light-blue jeans and sneakers. The clothes had no rolls or folds, though, no indication at all she had been dragged here.
There were no drag marks up and down the path, either, and there had been a slightly steep hill leading up to the crime scene. If someone had dragged the body up to this spot, there would have to be drag marks. No question about it.
Bodies were surprisingly heavy, and even if they weren’t dragged, carrying them from one spot to another would also cause folds and rolls in clothing, or at least the clothing would’ve been bunched up in a particular direction, and that evidence just wasn’t here. With wounds this deep, if the body was moved, you’d expect a few blood drops at least.
There were only scarce amounts of blood, but whatever blood there was, it did follow the general rules of gravity, which meant the body wasn’t likely to have been moved.
I ruled out scenario one. Not completely, but at least for now. The only fact supporting the killed-somewhere-else-and-dragged-over-here theory was the lack of blood, and that alone was not sufficient, especially if the other evidence contradicted it.
Scenario two, the more plausible one. Elise had still been alive, and someone lured her here or was waiting for her here. She would’ve come from the road I’d just travelled—this small clearing was right next to the running path. It was secluded, so no one would’ve seen anything happening here. A perfect killing ground. The bushes around the trees provided enough coverage, and it was far enough away from the academy that no one would hear her scream.
No signs of a struggle. After being attacked, Elise had fallen down instantly. From the lack of disturbance in the dirt, she hadn’t writhed around on the ground with an assailant on top of her. She may have spasmed somewhat, but death had been swift. Swift, and hopefully for her, painless.
The position of the arms, the legs. It looked like she’d collapsed right on the spot. She hadn’t been thrown backward or slumped against one of the trees.
How peculiar.
Jaguars and leopards were powerful creatures. When they shifted and attacked, it came with an enormous force that would send their enemies backward.
I imagined Elise Felton, still alive and well in this movie playing in my mind, standing in the small clearing as a jaguar pounced on her. She stumbled back a few steps from the sheer force of the animal’s weight and then fell on the ground, struggling and pushing as she tried to get the animal off her. The jaguar pulled back, lifted his paw, and clawed at her across the chest, effectively killing her.
In this scenario, the jaguar had been standing right in front of her when he turned and pounced on her—I decided to refer to the murderer as a “he” for now, for simplicity’s sake. Even then, from such close range, she’d stumbled backward under the weight. If the jaguar had approached her from afar, which was more consistent with her not holding up her arms in defense—perhaps he had been hiding in the bushes, ran and pounced on her, and she hadn’t seen him until he was already upon her—she would’ve collided with the tree first.
The force was lacking. There hadn’t been any force used to slam Elise Felton’s body to the ground. It almost seemed as if she’d been standing one moment, completely fine, and had collapsed into a heap the next.
Kind of like what you saw with people who died from heart failure or brain hemorrhage or something else that could kill people instantly.
Not consistent with an attack by an animal, neither if it was a jaguar or a leopard, or any other catlike beast.
Based on the position of her body, and if you removed the gashes disfiguring her torso, if you’d asked me to pinpoint a cause of death for Elise Felton, I’d say she had died of natural causes. But that couldn’t be true, could it?
There was something about the case that I didn’t understand at all. I couldn’t put my finger on it. My jaguar whined, obviously trying to tell me something, but I didn’t have the faintest clue what.
Chapter Eleven
“What are you doing?”
I almost jumped out of my skin. I’d been so mesmerized by trying to figure out Elise Felton’s crime scene that I hadn’t paid any attention to the running path.
Luckily, Indra was the one who had interrupted my little solo adventure, not an unsuspecting student who would probably find it more than a little suspicious that I was hanging out in crime sce
nes on my own.
“Good, you’re here.” I got up and dusted off my pants. “I need you to keep an eye on the track there, so I can focus on the scene here.”
Indra’s glare shot daggers at me. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I woke up, and you were gone. You’re not supposed to do that, Marisol. I’m your supervisor for a reason.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Can you look at the path or not? If someone catches us, it’ll look extremely suspicious.”
Indra put her hands on her hips and hissed at me. “Didn’t you hear me? I said you shouldn’t be here. Not on your own. Not without consulting with me first.”
“I heard you. Now, can I continue?”
Indra stared at me, her mouth open in indignation. Then, she waved a hand at me dismissively. “Fine. Continue whatever you think you’re doing, but I want to know all your findings. Got it?”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
She rolled her eyes at me, but then did as I asked and turned toward the road.
Glad I could work again in silence, I focused on the body once more. I was almost done with my preliminary examination of the corpse itself. Looking at it from all sides like a photographer taking countless of pictures of his model, I searched for more clues that the body could give me, starting at the head. “Open eyes,” I said, stating my findings out loud. “Nothing stuck in the hair—no insects, no bugs. The color of the skin is pale already, but not yet the sickly green that comes from being outside, exposed to the elements for too long.”
I bent my knees to take a closer look.
Elise’s mouth was slightly open, saliva dangling from the corner of her mouth, travelling down her right cheek. Not straight down. So, it had appeared while she was already on the ground, maybe right before she died, maybe directly postmortem. No maggot activity yet because she hadn’t been dead for long enough.
Indra cleared her throat. “What else? Come on, keep talking.”
“Her clothes show no stains or marks, except for the bloodstains right below the gashes and a few dirt stains on the side of her clothing where she fell down. Her body reveals no bruises, cuts, or marks I can make out.”
I moved lower, to Elise’s wrists. “One of her wrists has a color disfiguration—the skin there is obviously paler than the rest of her arm. She wore something around it, as indicated by the tan mark. Maybe a watch or a bracelet.” I looked up at my supposed supervisor. “I vaguely remember seeing something around her wrist on the pictures you showed me on the Eurostar.”
“Hm.” Indra scratched her chin. “I don’t remember that. I’ll look into it when we get back to the Academy. Anything else?”
“She’s wearing three rings, and no additional tan marks, so at least no rings are missing.” I shook my head. “I don’t see any other bodily fluids besides the blood, what scarce amount of it there is, and the saliva from her mouth.”
Having sufficiently examined the body I’d conjured up from my mind palace, I got up and followed an outward spiral to search the immediate area around the body.
First, I looked on the ground, searching perhaps for the missing bracelet or watch that had caused the tan mark. I grabbed the flashlight I’d put into my coat pocket and flipped it on. Sometimes illuminating the crime scene with a flashlight at various angles created shadows that could uncover evidence.
I enjoyed being back in Sherlock Mode, and I embraced the tranquility that came with letting the analytical part of my brain take over. This was what I was born for, this was what—weird as it sounds—made me feel at peace.
Investigative work. Uncovering clues. Analyzing cases.
“What are you doing?” Indra dutifully stayed in her spot to keep an eye on the road, but she glanced over her shoulder a few times to look at me.
“Shh,” I waved her off. “Just let me think for a second.”
My flashlight search didn’t uncover anything, but that didn’t surprise me—I hadn’t expected to find the bracelet here if the police hadn’t. Something small they might’ve missed, but if they were halfway competent, they wouldn’t miss a bracelet or watch. They hadn’t mentioned it in their report, so they clearly hadn’t found it.
Then I looked up to the clouds overhead and the tree branches, the dimension that police officers, the competent and incompetent ones alike, often tended to overlook. Crime scenes were three dimensional, and looking up could provide a lot of evidence otherwise discarded.
And it did.
“Indra.” I called out her name and waited for her to approach.
“What is it? The road is still clear.” She appeared from behind one of the trees, her face flushed from the cold.
“Look at this.” I shone the flashlight on the trees for a better view. Although it was already light out, with the sun slowly making its way to the top of the horizon, the flashlight was still helpful.
“What am I looking at?” Indra asked, putting her hands on her hips. “I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly.” I smiled at her. “Help me while I climb those trees. I want to make sure I’m right.”
“Uhm…” Indra blinked at me. “Why—All right, fine.” She put her hands together and helped lift me up as I clambered on top of the tree branch.
Inch by inch, I investigated the tree branches, then the tree trunks. For the millionth time, I missed not being able to shift, as that would make this a whole lot easier.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?” Indra said exasperatedly. “We have half an hour left before class starts, and I’d like to be on time.” She glanced over her shoulder to the running track. “At least no one caught us yet.”
“Don’t jinx it.” I jumped down from the last tree branch. “And what I’m doing? Simple. Like you said, there is nothing. Nothing…” I pressed, waiting until she added one and one in her mind.
When she kept staring at me blankly, I groaned. “There’s nothing on the trees, Indra. Nothing. Not on the ground, not on the trees.”
“So…” Indra held her head to the left, thinking. “She wasn’t killed here?”
“Wrong. She was definitely killed here. I no longer have any doubts about that whatsoever. There are no drag marks on the ground, nor on her clothing, and I didn’t spot a single blood drop all the way from the Academy to this spot. You can’t have your chest ripped open and then not bleed.”
Indra took a deep breath. “What then? If she hasn’t been killed here, what does it mean then that there’s nothing on the trees?”
“That she wasn’t killed by a jaguar shifter at all.” A weight lifted off my shoulders as I said those words out loud. Thank God, it wasn’t a jaguar. Although that did pose the question: what was it then?
I put the flashlight back into my coat and ducked underneath the crime scene tape, holding it up so Indra could crawl under it too.
“Explain,” Indra said as we walked back toward the school. “You’re jumping to conclusions, and I’m three steps behind. Tell me your thought process.”
“It’s simple, Indra, don’t you see?” I sighed. “Have you ever watched National Geographic? Those animal shows?”
She nodded.
“When a jaguar pounces on its prey, it uses a lot of strength. Tremendous force. That doesn’t coincide with the crime scene. First of all, Elise Felton wasn’t pushed backward by any kind of force—she collapsed right where she stood. Secondly, there’s no blood on the trees, or on the ground. Nothing. Nada. That’s simply impossible, if a jaguar shifter attacked her.”
I stopped and moved in front of Indra. “I’m a jaguar attacking you. I lift my claw and smash into you from above, unsheathing my claws and then ripping open your chest. The force of the attack is gigantic, and blood spatters everywhere, on me, on you, on the ground, on the trees. I lift my claws back up to pull them away from you, and again, we have blood spatters dancing around.”
“So, you’re concluding a jaguar didn’t kill her based on…lack of blood spatters?”
“Absolutel
y.” I grinned and patted her on the back. “Crime scenes don’t lie. There’s no way a jaguar was responsible for the attack on Elise Felton. And that’s not the only suspect ruled out. Leopards, tigers, lions, any animal that attacks with tremendous force and power doesn’t kill like that. From any of those, you’d see blood splattered all around.”
My jaguar nodded, agreeing with me.
“You’re not making any sense whatsoever. What else could’ve killed her in such a way? I don’t know any other animals that can leave claw marks like that.”
“Exactly. Great question.” As excitement took hold of me over finally solving at least one piece of this puzzle, I almost felt thrilled about heading over to my first class in Waynard Academy. Now I’d investigated the crime scene, the best way to uncover more pieces of the puzzle was to get to know the pawns present in the game—Elise’s classmates and friends.
“Doesn’t it make more sense that she would’ve been dragged there?” Indra suggested. “What you’re saying is really… It’s impossible.”
“It is. It’s impossible and yet it’s true. And no, she couldn’t have been dragged there. Elise Felton was murdered right there, on that spot,” I said, pointing to the secluded area. “By someone or something who tried very hard to make it look like a jaguar shifter committed the murder.”
Chapter Twelve
Class started, and I was still so buzzed over my latest discovery that I could barely focus. The teacher, a bat shifter judging by her smell, her beady eyes, and the shrill, high pitch of her voice, had introduced herself as Mrs. Woods. She was greying, hair tied back into a bun, and wore a pencil skirt and white blouse, looking as old-fashioned as a governess in a Gothic novel.
She taught history, unsurprisingly. The subject matter for the day was Henry VIII and his impressive line of wives. I knew quite a lot about the subject, and the story Mrs. Woods spun was boring and dull and didn’t provide me with new information. She just rattled off facts like reading a textbook out loud.
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