Chapter 22
When the sun set, Arthur felt like he was finally exhaling a breath he’d been holding all day.
Not that it did anything to lessen his anxiety about Brody Young and the possible killer still on the loose.
The edge of alertness nighttime gave vampires wouldn’t do him any good in jail.
It was the vampiric equivalent of drinking just enough caffeine to make one’s heart race without any of the positive side effects of the drug.
The police station was nearly empty now. Even McMartin had gone home. Only one deputy remained, the one who’d been very absorbed in her phone. Now she was clearly sleeping, arms pillowing her head on her desk. Arthur envied her that. He couldn’t sleep. There was no time.
He needed to solve this case before the sun rose. He needed to think. And he needed to think about more than the fact that he needed to think.
It was easier said than done. Each time he felt on the cusp of a breakthrough, he was jarred from his thoughts by a noise.
It sounded like someone was sharpening a pencil in the distance or scratching on a very quiet chalkboard.
He glanced up at the deputy, who was still slumbering silently.
Perhaps it was an overactive imagination or a raccoon in the alley behind the station making a meal of someone’s rubbish bins.
Closing his eyes, Arthur massaged his temples and tried to focus on the facts.
George Roth was dead, and Brody Young was in critical condition.
He’d solved the first case, but the second…
Unless…the cases were connected…but perhaps not in the way he’d originally thought.
He’d believed Brody Young had murdered the mayor, that whoever hurt Brody was out for revenge or else had some unrelated motive, but there was another option.
Maybe Brody hadn’t killed the mayor at all.
Maybe the same person had committed both crimes.
Jumping to his feet, Arthur raised his hand in triumph…and let it fall to his side with a soft smack. Now he had two unsolved cases instead of one.
“One step forward, two steps back,” he lamented, leaning against the bars with a sigh.
Silence punctuated by the odd scratching noise was his only reply.
He wished terribly that he had someone to talk it through with.
He was better at deductive reasoning when he could puzzle through things aloud.
All the fictional detectives had a sidekick for this very reason.
Even Rumble would be a better conversation partner than the empty jail cell.
If he couldn’t talk, at least he could walk—back and forth along the short length of the jail cell. On the third turn of the small square, his shoe met something soft and he nearly tripped.
There was a squeak, and Arthur found the source of the noise. A little gray mouse scurried away, through the bars, leaving a trail of crumbs from Arthur’s half-eaten dinner in its wake.
“Must be nice to be so small,” he said, rather alarmed to find he envied a mouse. Despite it all, Arthur smiled. The mouse was cute, though he probably wouldn’t have thought so if it had been in his kitchen. “Don’t suppose you have any idea who killed the mayor?”
Though he’d spoken quietly, the mouse paused and turned its beady eyes on Arthur.
“Don’t run off, little friend, I won’t hurt you. You’re lucky Rumble isn’t here, though.” That sent another spike of pain through Arthur’s chest. He missed Rumble already. It was silly. She was only a cat.
The mouse’s nose twitched, but it didn’t return to the crust of bread it had stolen. Instead, it turned to fully face Arthur, paws clasped together in front of it as though it were a child settling in for story time.
Arthur sat on the floor. From this vantage point he could still see the mouse. “You want to hear what I’ve got so far?”
He didn’t wait for a response. Not that he expected to get one from a mouse.
“Here’s the thing, I thought Brody had to be the one who killed the mayor, but what if he didn’t?
Motive, means, and opportunity…” He ticked them off on his fingers.
“He just doesn’t have all three. He didn’t seem to have any dealings with him directly, and it’s not like Brody was interested in local politics.
Yes, his friends were vandals, but that’s not exactly the slippery slope to real crime people seem to think it is.
So why would he kill the mayor? There’s no good reason for that. ”
The mouse blinked a few times and dragged its crust around to nibble while Arthur carried on.
“Yes, of course, you’re right. There is no good reason to murder someone, I suppose.” Arthur shrugged and scooted closer to the bars. “I just can’t figure out who would want to attack Brody. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The mouse, finished with the small scrap of bread it had stolen, began to look around the office—probably for its next snack—tiny nose twitching furiously.
“Here you go, buddy.” Arthur ripped another corner of bread from his sandwich. He couldn’t bring himself to eat more than a few bites, though he had availed himself of the chips, finding comfort in the simple combination of salt and potatoes. “Someone may as well eat it.”
The mouse scurried forward to take the bread from Arthur’s hand and went to town, nibbling at the crust with renewed vigor.
“While I have you here,” Arthur began, hooking his fingers around the bars and leaning in close toward the mouse before continuing on.
“What if I’m making a mistake in considering both attacks as independent incidents?
What if—and hear me out on this—Brody and the mayor were attacked by the same person? ”
The mouse didn’t dignify that with a response. Probably because it was a mouse, rather than any qualitative judgment of Arthur’s theory.
“Yes, yes, you’re right, of course. Go back to the basics. Motive, means, and opportunity.”
The mouse had said no such thing, but in this moment, on the floor of a jail cell, without his husband or his cat or even a friend in sight, Arthur found it easier to pretend his subconscious was a hungry rodent than to face the fact that he was talking to himself.
“Motive is a dead end, really—pun not intended.”
The mouse looked at him expectantly.
“Okay, fine. Pun intended. No one’s perfect.” He wished Sal was there to appreciate it. “But really, motive doesn’t get me very far. If Brody didn’t kill the mayor, maybe he knows who did, so they might have tried to kill him to keep him from ratting them out.”
The mouse stared unblinkingly.
“Really? You’re a mouse, not a rat. Don’t tell me you take offense.” Arthur shrugged and tore another piece of bread from the remains of his sandwich. “Noted.”
He rocked back and crossed his legs beneath him as he pondered this new thread of inquiry. If he took motive out of the equation and instead focused on means and opportunity…
“Someone attacked Brody Young with the intent of framing me. Someone faked a vampire bite and made it match my teeth. I know what you’re thinking—evil vampire twin—but no, I was an only child, and the attack on Brody couldn’t have been done by a real vampire, or he’d be turning by now.
” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, yes, I know you’re not thinking that. You’re only thinking about bread.”
It was what Sal would think, though. It was what Sal would say.
Arthur pushed away the hurt and pulled the food tray forward for easier access. Feeding the mouse was about all he was good for right now anyway, so he may as well do a decent job of it.
“Let’s assume whoever framed me did so with plain old-fashioned science, shall we?
So they had to have access to my dental records.
That narrows the list significantly.” Arthur began ticking names off on his fingers.
He would have rather written them in his notebook, but alas, McMartin had taken it from him.
“The sheriff, of course—though I suppose I have to concede his innocence now that I’ve seen his alibi.
Lore could have falsified the report to point to me, though I doubt it.
She seemed awfully sorry to implicate me at all. ”
The mouse stared with wide black eyes.
Arthur stared back, and even though Sal wasn’t there to say it, the thought drop-kicked him right in the brain.
It was the dentist.
“He was far too distraught about the attack on his son, no, no. I shouldn’t even think it.”
But think it he did, the idea festering and flourishing in his mind.
Trip Young would have been able to use Arthur’s mold to create the appearance of a vampire bite on Brody’s neck—one that would implicate Arthur.
And he knew Arthur and Sal were out looking for his son.
He had the means and the opportunity and the information to set Arthur up to take the fall.
He just didn’t have a motive.
“Why, though?” Arthur asked aloud. “Why would the dentist want his own son dead?”
The mouse had no comment on that either, just greedy eyes that followed the path of Arthur’s hand as he pulled a slice of pepper jack free from the sandwich and passed it through the bars.
“It could be he was upset that Brody killed the mayor, but…” Arthur shook his head.
The idea that Brody had actually killed the mayor seemed less and less plausible the more he thought about it.
Even though people assumed Brody was anti-paranormal, his actions spoke otherwise.
But that assumption had to come from somewhere.
“They disagreed about paranormals…so that’s something, I guess.
The mayor was anti-paranormal, so I suppose Brody might have been trying to take a stand, but then why try to frame me and Sal? It’s inconsistent.”
If only Nora could have stayed to chat, maybe he could have worked it out. A mouse wasn’t exactly the best conversation partner, and no amount of back-and-forth would tell him why the Youngs were so tangled up in the death of George Roth.
“Brody killing him doesn’t make sense. None of this does. But he was there, at the park that night, moving something that certainly looked like a body. Dr. Young told us—”
Arthur paused. If Dr. Young was an attempted murderer, that put everything he’d told them into question.
“Brody was out past curfew—we know that’s true because of the security footage—but his friends said Brody had to leave early because of his curfew.
So why didn’t he go home?” Arthur didn’t bother looking to the mouse for an answer.
“He just…stopped randomly in the park to commit murder? How would he have even known the mayor was there?”
Arthur got to his feet and began pacing again, much to the chagrin of the mouse, who darted forward to continue its meal while weaving in and out of Arthur’s legs.
“The Youngs only have the one car, so…” Arthur stopped in his tracks. So did the mouse. “What if Dr. Young didn’t call his son to tell him to come home? What if he called him to meet him at the park? If he wanted to move a body, he’d need the truck.”
The implications were chilling to say the least, and it was hard to make a vampire feel cold.
“Do you think Trip Young killed George Roth?” Arthur whispered to his mouse friend.
It turned to him and shrugged.
Arthur blinked. “Can you understand me?” It couldn’t possibly. Arthur must’ve imagined the motion.
But then the mouse nodded. A distinct up-and-down movement of its head.
“What? But that’s impossible—I…” Arthur trailed off.
Mice were nocturnal. Creatures of the night.
Perhaps the incident with the raccoons hadn’t been a fluke after all.
And if Arthur’s powers really were beginning to activate, that meant he had a lot more in his arsenal than his confidence in his own innocence and a hazy understanding of the facts of the case.
“Can you do me a favor?” Arthur lowered himself back to the mouse’s level. “If you can understand me, maybe you can help me get out of here. Please?”
The mouse looked longingly at the sandwich and, more pointedly, at the empty bag of chips beside it.
“I’ll buy you an entire bag from the vending machine on my way out. I promise.”
With a happy squeak, the mouse scurried away.
Arthur sat in silence for a long moment.
Maybe the mouse couldn’t understand him at all and he was just losing his grip.
At least Sal wasn’t here to witness his failure.
But after a few minutes, a light jangling sound filled the quiet station.
The mouse returned, dragging a ring of keys. Arthur stood up.
“Are those the keys to the cell?” Arthur whispered.
The mouse gave him a cutting look as if to say Obviously. It dragged them between the bars of the cell easily. Arthur picked them up, and a smile—a real one—spread slowly across his lips.
“Thanks, little friend. Just a moment and I’ll get you those chips.”
Slowly, so as not to make too much noise, Arthur found the right key and turned the lock. The cell door creaked open.
The sleeping deputy stirred. Arthur froze. Even the mouse didn’t move. The deputy exhaled a breath, then seemed to settle.
With careful steps, Arthur made it to the vending machine.
They’d taken his wallet when he’d been arrested, so he cast his gaze about for an alternative.
Next to the coffee station were two plastic cups labeled Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, both filled with loose change, probably for some office poll.
Arthur scoffed and whispered, “Not on my watch,” before emptying the latter into his hand. He slid the coins into the vending machine and selected the chips.
Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to account for how loud vending machines could be.
The mouse squeaked a warning, but it was too late.
The machine whirred to life and the bag of chips dropped and slid through the door at the bottom.
The deputy’s even breaths stopped. “Hey, what?” She lifted her head and blinked, bleary-eyed.
Arthur popped the bag open, tossed it on the ground, and said, “I do believe you have a vermin problem.” Then he bolted for the front door, the deputy swearing at the empty jail cell he’d left behind.
Arthur didn’t pause to look back. He didn’t have time to spare. Because he had a pretty good idea of why Dr. Young might have tried to kill his son…and if Arthur was right, the dentist was going to finish the job tonight.