Vicious Memories

Chapter 57

"Ollie."

Felix picked his way around a tree trunk, stepping on the flowers blooming between its roots. Most bounced back up after his passing. A few - their delicate necks broken - stayed unmoving in the dirt.

"What's going on?"

I raised my eyebrows, feigning surprise. "I thought you knew."

"No," he said, "I don't. I got this note—" he held a crumpled piece of paper in the air, pinched lightly between two fingers, "—asking how I could stomach killing so many of my friends. Then it said to meet you in the hard forest."

I had left the note on top of a paperback in his cave, knowing that he always went back there to read a bit before eating.

"So you do know what's going on."

"No." He shook his head stubbornly, his face quite bizarre without its signature smile.

"Then why'd you come?"

"To clear up any misunderstanding, obviously. You can't honestly think I had anything to do with all this."

I examined him sadly, the one man who had wept at every funeral since I had arrived here, who was always open to helping others, who spent his free time happily making life on the island more bearable for everyone else. I wondered what had gone wrong.

"You didn't just have something to do with it. You did it. How could you?"

Felix's eyes flashed. "How could you? How could you say something so awful? I hope you have a good reason for making these accusations. I want nothing more than to kill the murderer myself."

"Then I'd have to watch you kill yourself."

I moved forward and Felix flinched, but I pivoted left and began walking around him in a circle, taking slow, methodical steps. I wanted to force him to constantly turn in order to face me, to keep him off balance, uncomfortable.

"You see," I said, trying to temper the anger in my voice, "we knew from the start that the killer was one of the villagers. Gabriel and Arun didn't pull me into the investigation at first, but even without seeing Jessica's body I could have told you that. Location, opportunity, motive, it didn't make sense for one of the Strangers to kill her in the caves. The same was true for Sirus and Shana. Mads was a different story, but a lot of the factors were the same.

"From there it was simple. I should have figured it out sooner. A round of applause to you for avoiding detection for so long. You see, I knew the killer had easy access to a knife. The cuts on Sirus and Shana's throats were too deep and clean to be from a piece of stone or wood. Not without professional sharpening. A scrap of the ship, maybe, but again that would require the tools to create a smooth edge."

My eyes flicked down to Felix's waistband. "Hey. I'm glad you're still carrying your knife around. It can get dangerous out here."

Felix glanced at his knife, then back at me, his face guilt-ridden, as if he shouldn't have looked.

"It's not easy to make me mad," he said, "but you're coming awfully close. I have a knife. So what? Over a dozen people have knives. It was Gabriel who suggested we carry them around for protection in the first place."

"He did," I agreed, "I'm just saying that you happen to have one. The thing about the cuts, though, is that they weren't well done - a tear through the jugular, not aiming for the carotid artery. I would imagine that you've never killed someone before, have you? Or maybe you have, who knows? Not with a knife, though. Nobody taught you how to do that properly.