Investigate Miguel

I decided that the best use of time would be to investigate Miguel. And, that meant that I had to go back to the Parkers’ house and search the body I left behind.

We didn't really have anyone who specialized in medicine on the team who could examine it, so I excused myself from the breakfast and took the SUV for the drive down the coast to Boca del Salado.

I swung up the broken gate and drove through. When I got to the Parkers’ house, I parked out front, hopefully in a position that would allow me to covertly move the body, should that be necessary. Though I hadn’t noticed anyone walking about the area, there were several other houses here and I didn’t want to take the chance that some nosy neighbor would call the local police, especially given that I didn’t even know what department would respond to this area.

When I got to the front door, I looked in the pot and found the poorly hidden key, which I slid in the lock and realized that it wasn’t locked in the first place. I asked myself if I’d remembered to lock it when I left and re-hid the key.

Unsure of the answer, I focused on the objective and I moved quickly through the house to the garage. When I got there, I paused to hold my breath, only just realizing that the body had been left in there since Saturday night and a five-day-old corpse was probably going to stink to high Heaven.

Rethinking my plan, I headed into the bedroom that I was supposed to share with Mira and began searching through {if investigateSailboat > 0}my vacation wear that I had left behind.{else}Mira’s stuff which still remained, a terrible testament to her lingering absence.{endif} I came up with a thin shirt that I could turn into a sort of mask and gave it a spritz of Mira’s perfume to cover any smell.

Ridiculous mask affixed to my face by tying the sleeves behind my neck, I swung open the door to the garage and stepped through into the scent of decay, which nearly made me wretch, and dried blood, which made me salivate, as much as I hated to admit it.

I walked around the motorcycles that I probably wouldn’t ever get the chance to ride{if investigateSailboat > 0}{else} and Miguel’s parked car{endif}.

And I stopped dead in my tracks.

When I left the house on Sunday, I had left Miguel’s body {if investigateSailboat > 0}propped up against the back wall{else}in the trunk of his car{endif}. Now, it lay sprawled on the floor, with a small splatter of blood at the severed neck. The head, however, was no longer in the garage.

“Oh, fuck!” I cursed and instinctively drew my gun, despite not seeing any other indication of someone else being there.

Now extremely concerned about some head stealer being in the house, I swept room by room, ready to shoot anyone I encountered. But, I didn’t find anyone.

Both relieved at the fact that I was alone and concerned by the fact that someone had taken a specific part of him and left to do who knows what, I tried to call David’s number and got a “No Service” notification. Frustrated by the interruption, I connected to the Parkers’ wifi and tried again on VOIP.

This time, it went through and he said, “Hey, Alexandra, you left quickly. Have you found anything?”

“David, is Katja there?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Please put her on.”

“Sure, but you should get her number as well.”

“I’ll do that, now put her on,” I said impatiently.

“Hello?” Katja’s small voice said.

“Katja, good. You’re a sorcerer, right?”

“It’s more accurate to call me a shaman. A sorcerer serves as their own conduit and either their own source, which is dangerous, or the focus for pulling in energy from other sources. Meanwhile, as a shaman, I serve as a conduit, but the sources that I can draw from are more limited. In fact, I only draw from one source, which, in turn, limits the scope of my abilities to my friends; specifically my dragonfly friends, not my people friends,” she rambled on, giving me information I didn’t care about at the time.

“So, you know about magic stuff, right?”

“Um, that’s pretty broad. I’d say that I know a lot about a little bit and a little bit about a little more.”

With a sigh, I just asked the question that was on my mind, “Can people talk to the dead?”

“Well, sure. Whether or not they listen is another matter.”

Stupid me for phrasing my question that way. I tried again, “Is it possible for some people to communicate with the dead?”

“Ah, well, getting them to communicate with you is a lot harder. Sometimes, I can get a bit when one of my friends dies, I mean when one of my dragonflies dies. It’s pretty rare and I don’t know how to make it more common, not that I would often want to, since the dead shouldn’t be lingering here any longer than necessary and it’s not as though I can call a departed dragonfly spirit.”

“Okay, but could someone do it with human corpses?”

“I don’t know anyone who can do that, but there are certainly a lot of stories about it happening. So, I would assume some of them are true.”

“Would it take the whole body or just a piece of it?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure you’d need at least part of the body and I would think that a finger or toe would be worse than if you had the actual talky bits.”

“I see. Thank you, Katja. Can you text me your number once I hang up?”

“Of course, but I don’t have your number.”

I sighed, “Okay, have David give you my number. Then, please, text me your number.”

“Okay, bye,” Katja said, hanging up on me.

I put my phone and gun away, realizing that I probably didn’t need either out any longer, and ran my fingers through my hair.

“Okay, so, someone took Miguel’s head and is, presumably, using it to get information. What that means, I don’t know, but I get the feeling I’m not going to like it.”

Finished talking to myself, at least for the moment, I locked the house and drove back to the hotel where the team was staying.