The Very Killer Caterpillar

by Samantha Silver

  “Absolutely not,” Chase said. “I don’t intend to have the case thrown out because I let a member of the public read the Miranda rights to a suspect.”

  “Fine, I was only kidding anyway,” I replied. Ok, so I was half-kidding. It really would have been awesome to get to say that line.

  “Let’s go, I’ll call for a warrant on the way.”

  I locked up the bookshop and followed Chase out to his waiting Jeep.

  He made a couple of calls on the way, and when he hung up the second time he turned to me. “Professor Little is in her office, according to the secretary at the college. We’re going to head over there now.”

  I nodded. “Ok.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for this?” Chase asked. “You don’t have to come.”

  “Trust me,” I replied. “I want to be there.” Regardless of his past, I noticed that Chase still walked with a limp, and if Professor Little tried to fight, I wanted to be able to help. I knew that if I didn’t come, Chase was going to go alone, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if he got even more injured because of the injury I’d given him.

  “Ok. Stay behind me. If things get rough, if she pulls out a weapon, anything, I want you to get out of there. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I nodded.

  Chase nodded as we pulled into the parking lot at the college campus. We made our way through the halls, both of us already knowing where Professor Little’s office was. When we got there, Chase knocked on the door.

  “Professor Little? Police.”

  There was no reply. He tried again.

  “Professor Little? It’s Chief Griffin. Open the door.”

  Again, nothing. Chase and I exchanged a look and he raised his eyebrows at me. He pressed on the door handle, but it was locked.

  “We have to go get a key from the secretaries,” Chase told me.

  “I can unlock it,” I replied, and Chase smiled grimly.

  “And then anything we’d find in her office would be thrown out of court since we don’t have a search warrant. Come on, let’s go do this the legal way.”

  I realized as I followed him toward the administration office that the way Cat and I did things was certainly a lot easier than following the law a lot of the time. We entered the secretary’s office and Chase held up his badge to a lady in her fifties with raven-black hair.

  “Police, we need to get into Professor Little’s office,” he said.

  “Of course,” the lady replied, her eyes widening when she saw the badge. “Although, if you’re looking for Professor Little, I saw her going up toward the roof about five minutes ago.”

  Chase and I looked at each other. “What’s the fastest way to get up there?” he asked.

  “Turn left when you leave this room, keep going down the hallway, and then up the stairs.”

  Without another word, Chase left and began limping down the hall as fast as he could. I followed easily.

  Chase made it up the stairs with surprising ease. The building was four stories tall, and we had already been on the second floor. When we reached the roof access, Chase slowed down and carefully opened the door.

  He passed through the entry and I followed after him. Professor Little was about thirty feet away, standing near the edge of the roof, which had a hip-high ledge on which her hands were resting. I could see the Fita do Bonfim ribbons still on her wrist. She was facing away from us, her blonde hair floating softly in the wind.

  “Professor Little, can you turn around, please?” Chase asked in a polite, calm voice. “I have a few more questions for you.”

  I took a step backward and then slowly began to walk toward the edge of the building as Professor Little did what Chase asked. Her eyes were wide and glistening, they were the very definition of ‘crazy eyes’ right now. A deranged smiled was on her face.

  “Yes?” she asked Chase, her voice an octave higher than when I’d last heard her speak. I reached the edge of the roof and the Professor seemed to notice me for the first time. She immediately pulled a small gun from inside the pocket of her jacket and pointed it at me. I held up my hands. She was about thirty feet away from me.

  “Don’t come any closer,” she said, her hands trembling.

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” I said, peering down over the ledge. We were facing the back of the building. From here, it was a straight drop, down four stories onto a patch of grass. About thirty feet behind the grass were a lot of large fir trees, making the area directly below almost like a little courtyard. I imagined it would have been quite adorable in different circumstances. I’d wanted to see what was on the other side of the roof because to be honest, my first impression when we stepped out here was that Professor Little wanted to commit suicide.

  I quickly stepped back and headed back to where Chase was. He put a protective arm behind me. “Go back down the stairs,” he told me.

  “Ok,” I said, reaching for the door to get back down. What I hadn’t realized was that it had locked automatically from the inside; there was no way to get back down without a key.

  Professor Little let out an almost hysterical laugh. “You’re trapped up here, with me!” she said.

  “Why don’t you put the gun down, Annette?” Chase asked calmly. “Let’s talk things through.”

  “What is there to talk about? You’re here to arrest me, aren’t you?”

  “I just came over to ask you a few questions. After all, have you heard that Kevin Lanscombe died yesterday? He was one of your students, wasn’t he?”

  “Of course he was,” Annette said, and she lowered the gun slightly, as if she was starting to believe Chase.

  “So, we wanted to ask you about him. Some of the other students we spoke to said that the two of you were close, and he doesn’t have any family in the area.”

  “That’s right, he doesn’t,” Annette said. “His parents died in a car crash when he was eight, and he was raised by his grandmother, who died last year. He has no siblings.”

  “Ok, that’s good. That’s the kind of information I’m after,” Chase said. “Now, why don’t you put the gun down, and tell me about his friends.”

  Annette’s eyes flickered between Chase and me. Finally, she nodded and bent over, putting the gun on the ground. “I can tell you about his friends. I can definitely do that. Sorry about the gun, it’s been a pretty stressful week. I think I panicked a little bit.”

  “No kidding,” I muttered to myself as Chase made his way toward Annette Little. He moved toward her slowly, and I could see that his eye was still on the gun.

  “Who was Kevin’s best friend, Annette? Let’s start with that.”

  “Adam York, definitely,” Annette said. “I know the two of them spent a lot of time together.”

  “Good,” Chase said. He reached to where the gun was, and kicked it back toward me with his foot. My heart rate suddenly began to drop. The gun was away from Professor Little, and she was acting a lot more sanely now. “All right, now how about we head back to the station, and we can keep talking there?” Chase suggested. “I need to know everything I can about Kevin.”

  “No!” Annette screamed. “It’s a trap! You’re going to arrest me for killing Kevin!” she shouted. Chase held her arm firmly.

  “Did you kill Kevin?” he asked her. I moved toward them; if she tried anything I wanted to be able to help, even though I was pretty scared of her right now.

  “Of course I killed Kevin,” she replied hysterically. “He was feeling guilty about breaking into Alexander’s place and leaving the caterpillar on him while he was sleeping. He was going to come to you and tell you everything, and I couldn’t let him do that. So, I put some concentrated fish oil in the macaroni and cheese I gave him, and took the epinephrine out of the pen he always carried with him when I was at his place.”

  “Ok, Annette. Thank you for telling me,” Chase told her. “It’s time to go down to the police station now, where I can take a full statement.”

  “So, you can arre
st me and throw me in jail forever? Not a chance!” she shouted. Chase began to pull her toward him, but she lashed out and kicked him, getting him right in the injured knee. He shouted and let go of her hand, but Annette didn’t run away. Instead, she grabbed Chase and pulled him toward her, her momentum launching both of them over the side as I ran toward them, too late to do anything.

  Chapter 18

  “Nooo!” I screamed as I reached the ledge, watching Chase and Annette falling toward the ground below. Oh God, why couldn’t there be a row of hedges there? My heart leapt into my chest as I watched him fall. I couldn’t let Chase die. No, he couldn’t die!

  I reached out toward Chase, that thought running through my head, when suddenly I felt the energy of my magic building up inside of me. Of course! I quickly released it and a second before they hit the ground, a row of hedges appeared just below Chase. He landed in the bushes, sinking straight through, but Annette wasn’t so lucky, hitting the ground next to them. Her body was splayed out; she was obviously dead.

  I stared in horror, hoping Chase was all right. “Chase!” I called out. He still hadn’t moved.

  A minute later he groaned and started rustling around in the hedges.

  “Oh thank God!” I called out. “Wait there, let me call an ambulance!”

  I ran back to the door, and pulled it again, forgetting it was locked. I pointed at it to unlock it; I figured if Chase asked any questions I could think of a reasonable answer to that later. I sprinted down the stairs as fast as I could, barely noticing how out-of-shape I felt by the time I reached the ground floor. I looked around and followed the signs in the hallway that led outside, and found myself standing only a few feet away from Chase, who was standing now, and gingerly trying to put weight on his leg.

  “Are you ok?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “Yeah. That was incredibly lucky,” he said. I had to admit, he seemed incredibly calm for someone who had come extremely close to death. I supposed after his life with the marines, this probably wasn’t the first time he’d had to face his own mortality.

  I, on the other hand, was not so used to it, and was inwardly freaking out a little bit.

  “So you’re fine?”

  “I think so. My knee hurts a bit though. She got me good with that kick.”

  “Well, she won’t be kicking anyone anymore,” I said, looking toward the hedge. I knew Annette’s body was on the other side of it; she definitely hadn’t survived.

  “This is a weird place to put a hedge, though,” Chase said.

  “Well, weird or not, it came in handy,” I replied, hoping that no one would ask too many questions about it.

  “Sure did. Thanks, Mr. Hedge,” Chase said, patting the leaves.

  “You should go see a doctor, you’ve got small scrapes all over you. The hedge would have probably been more useful if it had been a bunch of pillows.”

  Chase laughed. “More useful, but probably even less likely. I can get myself checked out later; right now I have to call in the coroner again, and probably a few other cops. There’s going to be some paperwork to do over this case, and there’s no way I can be in charge of it. Someone will have to come take your statement.”

  “I feel like I’m getting used to that sentence,” I replied. Chase laughed.

  “Maybe there is something to this idea that you brought all the crime here from the big city.”

  “I sure hope not. But at least we solved this case.”

  “We did. Well, you did.”

  I shook my head. “I never would have been able to get that confession out of her. She probably would have shot me if I’d tried.”

  “Fine. It was a team effort, then,” Chase said with a smile.

  “Team effort it is,” I replied. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to the bookstore and lie down for a bit.”

  “Of course,” Chase nodded. “I’ll send someone by in a few hours to take your statement.”

  “Thanks,” I smiled. I headed back to the bookstore, and as soon as I walked into the room I burst into tears. They weren’t tears representing a single emotion; rather they were more a culmination of the myriad of emotions that had rushed through me over the previous hour or so.

  To be totally honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what those emotions represented, myself.

  For one thing, I knew what I’d felt as soon as Chase had gone over the ledge with Annette, and it wasn’t simply the fear that someone I knew was going to die.

  It was the fear that someone I liked was going to die.

  And there was a big difference, there, at least for me. I knew, in that moment, that I cared for Chase. I cared about what happened to him. I cared that he was going to make it through. And I’d used my magic to save his life, instinctively.

  Maybe it was time for me to learn to trust again. Just maybe.

  That afternoon one of the other police officers came by and took my statement. I explained what had happened, and then asked what was going to happen to Chase.

  “There’s going to have to be an investigation,” the officer replied. “After all, a murder suspect did die. But don’t worry. There’s your testimony, there’s Chief Griffin’s record as a marine and as a police officer, and there’s the fact that he’s never done anything remotely similar before. He’s going to be fine.”

  Sure enough, I heard through the all-knowing Sapphire Village grapevine a few days later–the police receptionist, Andi, was the cousin of the manager of the sandwich store I frequented for lunch, who told me–Chase had officially been cleared of any wrongdoing in the death of Annette Little, and was free to resume his ordinary duties as normal.

  And sure enough, things did go back to normal pretty quickly in Sapphire Village.

  I was at Cat’s cupcake shop the following Monday morning; it was my day off, and I decided to spend the morning people-watching by sitting at one of the windows and enjoying a s’mores cupcake along with a hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Cat was in the kitchen, I could occasionally see a flash of purple hair moving past the window in the door that led to the back room.

  It was the perfect kind of morning for this little treat, too. After a couple of weeks of great weather, Mother Nature decided we needed to remember that we lived in the Pacific Northwest, and today the sky was overcast, with the occasional drizzle of rain darkening the brickwork that made up the pedestrian street in front of the café. A few dedicated skiers still made their way up the gondola, dressed from head to toe in Gore-Tex, but mostly it was just locals rushing to and from either work or errands, or locals casually strolling past, often holding up umbrellas, even when it wasn’t raining.

  I took a sip of my hot chocolate, savouring the cool whipped cream and warm chocolate mixture and closed my eyes. This was exactly the kind of morning I needed after the last week or so.

  When I re-opened my eyes, however, I noticed a group of people making their way up the square. I squinted, and noticed the person at the head of the group looked pretty familiar: it was Denise Williams. This was certainly going to be interesting.

  I got up off my chair and made my way to the back room, where Cat was busily frosting the tops of some cupcakes that had come out of the oven a while and cooled. The aroma of freshly cooked cakes wafted up through the air and I felt my mouth water, even though I’d been eating some only minutes earlier.

  “Hey, come out and have a look at this, Denise is marching through town and coming this way. I don’t know what it’s all about though.”

  “This could be an awesome train wreck,” Cat said with glee, rubbing her hands together then grabbing a cupcake and taking a bite out of it as she followed me out. We left the café and stood under the awning at the front of the shop, where we were joined by a few other patrons and locals from nearby shops as the crowd got closer. Denise was at the front, flanked by two large men–presumably her bodyguards–and followed by about a dozen residents. The average age seemed to be at least seventy, and I w
asn’t sure if the slow pace at which they were moving was a deliberate attempt to get as many eyes on their procession as possible, or if it was a necessity based on the maximum speed of the group.

  Some of them were holding signs–Denise for Mayor, Time for Denise, Let the Renaissance Happen–that sort of thing.

  At the front of the line, Denise was grinning broadly and waving to anyone who came out to have a look. Going by the looks on the faces of people as she passed, they weren’t exactly impressed. Denise’s outburst at the debate had been on the front page of the weekly paper, and given the murmurings around town, I had to admit, it didn’t sound like she had much of a chance when the polls opened in a couple of weeks.

  “Vote for me, Denise Williams!” she shouted to the crowd, the same smile still plastered on her face. She was acting like there was an audience of thousands out here for her, rather than a dozen octogenarians and a handful of curious passers-by.

  “I’m twelve years old and even I know not to vote for her,” a little girl next to Cat and I said. “She yelled at me once because she said I shouldn’t be playing baseball, because sports were for boys and it wasn’t feminine enough, and said that my parents were raising me wrong.”

  Cat and I shared a look. “Did she really?” Cat asked.

  “Yup,” the girl replied, nodding. “I only live a block from that playground, and because I play baseball, I’m a pitcher, I was practicing my pitch into the fence so I can be better.”

  “Well that doesn’t sound right to me at all. I played baseball growing up, and I played soccer, too. Just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean you can’t play sports. You can do whatever you want.”

  “That’s what my mom and dad told me. My mom said she would go have a talk with Denise, and now she doesn’t yell at me, but she gives me the stink-eye whenever she walks past when I’m practicing.”

  “You should pitch this cupcake at her,” Cat suggested, offering the girl the cupcake from which she’d taken one bite. “Then she’ll see how good you’ve gotten.”