A Heaven for Toasters

CHAPTER 12: Captain

3:48 p.m.

I followed Leo's voice and stepped into the dark living room. "Lights!"

A single lamp flickered on, barely casting enough light to see. An immobile body, back turned to me, was lying on the floor. Leo was kneeling next to it. A dark pool of blood had soiled the brown carpet.

I rushed to Leo. "Is it Sergeant?"

"It's the captain." Leo had a finger on the man's throat. "He's alive. Barely."

"Guide," I shouted. "Get in here."

"Is everything all right?" Guide asked as he stepped into the room. He froze when he noticed the body at our feet.

"It's Captain. He needs medical attention. Our hololenses don't work. Take him to the hospital. Now!" I said all this in one quick breath, then turned my attention back to Leo. "What can you do until they get here?"

"He has a puncture wound in the chest. Probably a knife. I need to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Get me a towel or something."

"Have you secured the area?"

Leo shook his head, his fingers pressing against the wound.

Once again, I wished I had a weapon. "Stay with him. I'll see what I can find."

My gaze darted around. Sergeant's house was the kind of place a monk would abandon, finding it too spartan. The dark room with the empty walls, save for a framed photograph, was as plain as the front yard, revealing a profound lack of imagination. A single brown recliner was set up against an old-fashioned television set, making the room resemble a museum. No dining table meant no friends to eat with. I stepped into the kitchen. Another pool of blood lay on the floor, a bloodied knife beside it. A crimson streak led to the living room and to Captain. This was the original crime scene.

I grabbed a clean tea towel from a rack and ran back to Leo.

He had torn off Captain's shirt and was using it to press against an angry wound. When I handed him the towel, he threw away the bloodied rags and used the fresh towel instead.

A clang outside made me jump. Sergeant!

I rushed outside and crashed into Guide. We both landed on our faces on the ground.

"Sorry," I said, dusting off my clothes. "I thought you were Sergeant."

"Paramedics will be here in a few minutes. As for Sarge, I think I saw him running toward the Manor."

"Show me," I ordered him. I took a step into the garden, then turned back. "Leo," I shouted through the open entrance, "stay with the captain. Find out what happened. I'm going with Guide to the Manor."

"Be careful," Leo shouted back.

"Come on," Guide cried out and slipped into an alleyway so narrow, I would have missed it, were not my eyes plastered on him. He snaked through the tight space with surprising agility. As I followed him, I played back the events of the last minutes, trying to piece the puzzle together.

Sergeant's house confirmed he was a man with a sea cucumber's imagination and a hedgehog's charming personality. Guide had mentioned smuggling. But if Sergeant was involved in smuggling—or anything else—it was because he was following someone's orders. Had Captain stumbled onto something? Did he see something he wasn't supposed to? A suspicion tugged at the edge of my consciousness, only to coyly disappear every time I tried to grasp it.

I toyed with various alternative theories, from the possibility Captain and Sergeant were working together and had a falling out, to the idea of someone attacking them both. But my gut kept tugging me back to my original thought. Captain was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. He must have come to fetch Sergeant after the man failed to show up for duty. But what did he stumble on? Was Sergeant running away? There were no bags to suggest so. Unless he took them with him when he fled to the Manor. And why did he run there? Did he have an accomplice there? Someone who worked for Doctor Morgan, perhaps?