Page 127 of Thief of Night
Detective Vitolo raised her eyebrows consideringly. “There was an attack on your workplace a few months ago. A murder in your rental house. You seem to have the devil’s own luck, being in all those places and somehow avoiding getting hurt.”
“I have shit luck,” Charlie said. “Or I wouldn’t have been there.”
“We have enough to charge you for the drifter,” Detective Rudden said.
Charlie was sure that was an invitation, but not what she was being invited to do. “You know I didn’t do it.”
“Do I?” The man leaned forward. “Then tell me who did.”
“There was a Blight,” she started.
Detective Vitolo’s eyebrows rose again. Detective Rudden smirked. Blights were discounted by a lot of people outside of the gloamist community. Considered to be stories, like the one about the girl who had a lump in her cheek that hatched spiders. “Okay, let’s say I believe you,” said Detective Vitolo. “What happened to the Blight?”
I killed itwas on the tip of Charlie’s tongue. But that seemed easy to twist into a murder confession. “I don’t know,” she said instead. “It attacked me. That’s why I was bleeding at Walgreens.”
“And who was responsible in Solaluna?” asked Detective Rudden.
“Mark Lord,” Charlie said. “You must know that. Someone must have said.”
The detective flipped a few more papers. “According to our records, he’s in prison.”
“He should be,” Charlie said. “That’s on you, not me.”
“Reports have you leaving Solaluna with him.”
“Don’t remember, due to being unconscious.”
Detective Vitolo shook her head. “And you got away. Just like you got away from the Blight?”
Charlie felt the weight of despair press down on her. They might not be sure what she’d done, but they were sure she’d donesomething. “Not the same way. But it’s true that I got away from both.”
Detective Rudden shifted his chair. “What if I said that your DNA was found at another murder scene?”
The place outside Solaluna where Mark brought her. Charlie’s DNA would be there. Would be on the French fries she dipped in tartar sauce. Would bein the bathroom, where she touched the counter as she looked into the mirror. Would be on the zip ties that bound her legs and wrists.
“Where do you think I got away from?” Charlie asked.
“And, again, you didn’t contact the police,” Vitolo said.
“No,” said Charlie. “I went to the Cabals. After all, you don’t even believe in Blights.”
Detective Rudden snorted. “You think they’re your friends?”
“What?” Charlie said, making it a challenge.
“Who do you think gave us your location? One of them.”
That fucker.
Mr. Punch managed to get his revenge after all.
“I guess I should have come to you,” Charlie admitted. “And now I’m here.”
She and the detectives went around and around like that.
They didn’t fingerprint her. Didn’t charge her. Eventually they stuck her in a holding cell with half a dozen tired-looking women, a bench, and a steel toilet clogged with paper.
Charlie sat on the cold floor of the cell and contemplated how, of all the things she had done, it was perhaps fitting that the crime she got picked up for was one she didn’t commit. She thought of the footage of her walking into that Walgreens, the blood dripping across her forehead as she walked through the aisles, picking up Steri-Strips and Twizzlers.
