Charlotte Gaspel: Demons and Ghosts

XX: Alpha

If we step back a bit from the dark side of the moon, we can observe two detectives working at their desks. While our protagonists were still on the road, Quickley and Allard were trying to pick up the Gaspel case, and it wasn't going very well.

Leonard Quickley was feeling a little stressed, but he didn't have much reason to be; I mean, he had to cover up a case of questionable morality; he came face to face with an explicitly deadly killer on the job; and he was manipulated by more than one person, but it all worked out in the end, right?

"How's it going?" asks Detective Allard, surprisingly appearing, placing a picture of Steven G. Ledger on his desk and flashing a big smile.

"Ah!" he exclaims, scared. "You scared me." (See?)

"How did yesterday's judging go?"

"You saw the news, the little witcher didn't even defend himself, so it was very easy to be his lawyer" he said, leaning his face in the palms of his hands.

"Hey, don't get mad about what I said before. You know I tend to be very moralistic sometimes. You did what you had to do. At least it ended well for everyone."

"I'm not worried about that, it was just a very weird case; I mean, all of a sudden here comes a strange street magician hurt by a fellow and I have to get the idea that he's a criminal who controls the paranormal."

"You know, that's the life of a cop in France. And as rotten as society is, at the end of the day, it's not that big of a deal."

Quickley was about to tell her that it really was, because he knows what Steven did to end up in that jail. He knew that his supposed magical powers were not rumors. But then he remembered that if he let anyone else know about the horrible crime scene, surely everything around him would collapse somehow, so he just said:

"Yeah, no big deal."

"Hey," exclaimed Detective Allard, "I know what will cheer you up: we're going to close the Gaspel case."

"Really?" she asked reluctantly. We've already assumed that whoever made them disappear escaped out the window. No fingerprints, no witnesses. And putting up posters all over town looking for the victims doesn't work, maybe because they must be dead by now."

"You know, we've never considered that the killer didn't kill all three."

"What are you saying?"

"I mean, all this time we've assumed that the killer stayed in the room the night before the child disappeared. We know the boy escaped from the hospital and went to the motel. What we don't know is whether the killer escaped that day, or the night before, which is why the child was able to save himself."

"Now that you say that..., it makes sense, but... Why would the child escape through the window? And more importantly, how?"

"That's another thing we don't know, but we didn't consider the theory that the child is still alive. We know he escaped from the hospital without being seen, so maybe he could have escaped from the motel the same way."

"Yes, and on the night before that, the killer could have escaped more easily. Of course! It's all based on the time of day. How did we not think of that before?"

"We were more concerned with how the killer escaped with two bodies. It's still a very concrete question, and unless the Gaspel kidnapping/murder/escape was planned years ago, there's no logical way to solve it. Maybe the kid and the killer worked together, I don't know."

Ironically, it was the words "logical way" that turned on Quickley's light bulb. For two whole seconds, the detective managed to tie up all the loose ends. He took Steven's picture, his partner's hand and told her to follow him to the car. They had one last visit to make to the crime scene.