Family Drama

Chapter 12

Detective Arlick's steel blue eyes raised sharply to encounter the fiery brown ones of the dark and debonair Egan, before falling again to the long knife in the other's outstretched hands.

"Where did you find this again?" the detective asked as he gingerly took the blade from the open hands.

"His name was Atticus Boyd. The man who was killed in the stable. And he was killed with this knife." Egan tightened his jaw and folded his thick forearms.

Arlick examined the blade slowly, turning it this way and that as it flashed in the dim candle light of the windowless room.

"And who was Atticus Boyd?" his steel slits of eyes watched Egan closely.

"An American, or at least a man who came from there. I have no idea why he was here though. I was led to believe he did not have any connections here. And no desire to ever visit."

"And how do you know about this Atticus Boyd?" Arlick's eyes turned suspicious.

"I don't really. The coroners have identified him." Egan muttered deeply as he glowered unblinkingly at the detective.

The blue eyes widened in curiosity, "Oh?"

Egan raised his eyebrows, but didn't respond.

"What do you mean by that you don't know him?"

"I'd heard of him before."

Arlick set the knife on a side table and slowly lowered himself onto a settee, "Exactly how much do you know of this man? You realize anything you may know may help us in discovering who murdered him."

Egan turned his eyes away, which up to that point had been set fearlessly on the shrewd countenance of the detective. Even though the two worked together there was a hostility between them. Arlick was shifty and underhanded, while Egan was blunt and cruel, both strong personalties, but neither necessarily complimentary of the other.

"I knew little of him, and it was a long time ago. A cleric or something. Not the kind of person you would think would be on anyone's blacklist. In my travels before settling here, I spent some time in America. I heard of him there. He founded a home for orphaned children, the profits from which, I heard rumored he used for his own sinister purposes. It intrigued me at the time, but I didn't look into it. Given his death now, I would think some of those rumors must have been accurate."

Arlick felt Egan was holding back something. Wasn't it rather coincidental that Egan had known the deceased? And how had Egan come upon the murder weapon? He dared not suggest what he was thinking, but he did find it all rather suspicious.

Arlick picked the knife back up and looked along the length of it, "Well, I will tell you what I know of our murderer."

Egan grunted.

Arlick laid the blade back down, "Whoever he was, this murderer, he tracked this Boyd fellow to the stables where it would seem Boyd was hiding or waiting. The killer stabbed Boyd in the chest, with this knife supposedly, and then took the time to mark the body the same way he did Beckett. What is really unusual however, was what was found in the carriage house. Apparently our killer returned to the scene a few days later, indeed but a few hours before we got there, and left us a message."

Egan's brow furrowed, "That's odd. What was it?"

"A wild rose."

A strange look washed over Egan, almost like that of fear.

"A rose?" he asked absently in low gravelly tones.

"Aye. Do you know something of it?" Arlick narrowed his gaze.

"Yes," Egan responded quickly, suddenly back in the moment, "but I need to look into something first before I explain. Do you still have the flower?"

Arlick nodded, "But not with me. However if you know something you'd best speak up. It reflects badly on you to not be completely transparent about what you know."

But Egan wasn't stunned or afraid anymore, "I will tell you where I found the knife, but I do not fully understand the flower. There is an old sea tale about a deep ocean curse that would leave wild roses at murder scenes as a warning. I suppose the killer's message might be linked to that story."

Arlick suddenly felt lighter. Egan was crazy. Maybe not his theory about the message behind the wild rose, but his first response to hearing about the flower made it look like he actually believed the curse itself had left it for them.

"And the knife?" he moved on confidently.

"Whisper found the knife in an unlikely place, a housetop. The man dropped it when he fled from Whisper, abandoning whatever evil purpose he had being there. Whisper and I had tracked the man from a tavern after witnessing some unusual behavior and a good thing too. The man was incredibly acrobatic, and climbed up the side of the house like an insect. Whisper followed him up, being the more small and agile of the two of us. He tells me that when the man saw him, he lunged at Whisper with the knife drawn. Whisper is quite quick himself and dodged the attack and struck out at the man. He must have nicked him too, because the killer stumbled back and dropped the knife before lighting off into the night. Whisper took the knife and came back to me. When I saw it I immediately became suspicious that the man we'd been following was more than a common criminal. As you can see, it is an unusual blade and at the time I received it, it was spotted with dried blood. I did a little ground work and discovered there was quite an event going on that night in the residence below and I can only imagine that the man had something terrible planned. At the time I didn't think to connect it to the Beckett case. However, as soon as I heard about Boyd's stabbing, I went to see if the blood on the knife could be matched to Boyd's, and it did."

Arlick stared absently at the opposite wall for several moments before slowly sliding his gaze back towards the other's face. "So the knife leads to Boyd, and the mark on Boyd leads to Beckett, meaning the knife belongs to our killer."

Egan didn't respond.

"A killer who uses riddles from old wives tales to warn us." he couldn't help the slight sneer.

Egan didn't take the bait.

Arlick had to let it go. Besides, he had a lot of new leads to work with. How was Felix Beckett connected to Atticus Boyd? If they were connected personally, could they trace the killer to a list of common acquaintances? And if they weren't connected personally, was there a way to find the killer's pattern or motive and so prevent anymore death?