“Sent down here on a murder charge, never caught or convicted in the human world, it’s a long sentence you’re facing,” Linda told the man frankly. She always felt it was best to tell people upfront what kind of condition they were in. “By insisting on an appeal you are risking an even longer sentence if proven guilty. You can still back out and serve your original sentence now rather then continue with this.”
“I keep saying, I didn’t kill the old lady,” said Mathias. “I didn’t do it. Can’t you guys just tell if I have sinned or not? Especially with something this serious, can’t you just look at me and tell.”
“I wish it was that easy,” Linda said wistfully. She could remember a time when she was a kind when she had thought that the supernatural solved everything, that was of course before she had become a part of the supernatural herself and found out that it was just like everything else in life. It had things that it could do and things that it couldn’t. “We can see some things but not everything. And we can look at evidence; the evidence shows that one Margaret Thatcher, age seventy four at time of death, was killed in a violent manor. When her spirit was questioned she told us that you were the one who killed her.”
“She was lying then,” said Mathias, vehemently. “I never killed anyone. The old lady had it in for me.”
“The dead have no reason to lie, it’s all the same to them at that point,” Linda said, shrugging.
“You never met the old lady, she was crazy vindictive and she hated me. I worked for her for three years, I know. She had it in for me but she wouldn’t fire me because she couldn’t find someone else who could work for as cheap as I would and I couldn’t leave. There aren’t a lot of jobs open to people with no references, connections, experience or high school diploma.”
“What did you do for her while you were working?” Linda asked.
“I did odd jobs, stuff on her house, worked in the garden. She had plenty of money so she could afford the just under living wage that she paid me to break my back for her every day,” he sounded bitter and Linda didn’t blame him. She could see where getting paid almost nothing for doing a job that most people could have earned a fortune on would turn anyone bitter. His bitterness didn’t help his case any however.
“Did you ever get into actual fights?” Linda asked. She could see Mathias’s face contort as he tried to think of an answer and then it smoothed out again.
“Of course we fought. I told you she had it in for me. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that even after death she had found a way to try and mess up my life. We were always yelling at each other, and once or twice she even threw stuff at me, but I never hurt her back. No matter how angry she made me she was still an old lady and I don’t hurt old ladies,” there was a note of pride in Mathias’s voice that made him seem more honest in that statement then Linda would normally believe. She had been doing this job long enough to know that there were good liars in the world but she had never heard them lie with such conviction and pride before, which made her more inclined to believe him.
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment