Forgiveness and Punishment

25

Timothy is less than pleased at how the detective is looking at Melissa's legs. Melissa turns her attention from Travis Mason and looks at Timothy wide eyed. She places her hand on his leg, "It's okay Timothy, the detective is just here to talk."

Timothy takes a deep breath. He's never been like this before, he's feeling very protective towards her. It's almost like he's being territorial even jealous of the attention the detective is giving her. He has no right to be so, as much as he wishes it were otherwise. 

That pulls him up sharply. He's never wanted that with any person before.

Melissa gives him a confused look before turning back to the detective, "So, detective why don't you tell us why you are here so early in the morning?"

"Last night the office of your lawyer,  Trevor Lister, there were gunshots heard, shortly after that the office was started on fire. Only one person left the office, the witnesses were unable to identify the person that left. I was given your name as one of the clients that came to see him earlier that day. It was suggested that you were the last client of the day."

Melissa snorts, "Actually, he very politely excused us after we talked for a bit and told us that he had another client and our time was up."

"What are you willing to tell me about your visit?"

"We talked about my name change, about how he understood it. He had been getting harassed by my adopted mother and sister. He said something about being threatened." Melissa gets up and leaves the room.

"If you had given us a call we could have gotten dressed properly for when you showed up." Timothy does his best to keep the anger out of his voice, but knows that he failed when the detective looks at him.

"Just who are you?" The detective says belatedly. He should have requested that information sooner.

"My name is Timothy McGavity, I was Pimpernel's boss before...well, if she wishes she'll tell you her story."

By then Melissa comes back into the room holding a laptop. "He gave me his password for his cloud account. He had the security footage of his office sent to the cloud account and to an off site location. Due to the threats he had extra cameras added to his office and the footage is automatically saved to the cloud account."

Melissa pulls up the footage of the time they were in the office. She sets down the laptop and sets the recording to play. The footage shows them leaving the office and Lister waiting for them to leave before sitting down. Not more than five minutes pass before Lister gets up and opens the door. Mason wishes that there was sound, but since it was a lawyers office he's thankful to even have the footage he does.

Lister moves and allows someone to enter. The face is obscured so the detective can't see who it is. Not too long after that there is a gun shown and the lawyer jerks back into his seat and blood starts soaking the shirt.

Melissa gasps in disbelief. She knows that wouldn't kill him, but it doesn't stop the reaction she feels at seeing her lawyer being shot. Timothy had explained how to kill their kind, snapping the neck would immobilize long enough for the head to be removed from the body or the heart to be removed and destroyed. Those are the only ways to kill a vampire. Well that and fire.

Then the video ends as the man gets up and goes around the desk.

Looking at Timothy, Melissa can feel his satisfaction. She is confused. "He's not dead, Melissa. The person that died is the one that tried to kill him. The fire was used to hide the death of the killer. He's using this to start over, like he said, he was needing to leave soon." Timothy reassures her mentally.