“Dante, is this old woman part of hell? Can she be brought in for questioning?” Linda asked, turning to where her second in command was standing at attention.
“She has already passed on,” Dante said, with more curtness then usual. It was obvious that he thought that Linda was spending far more effort on this case then it was worth.
“So we can’t check what he says against what she says? In that case I am closing this case,” Dante looked relieved and Mathias looked scared. “We really can’t prove this one either way with no information so I’m just going to pretend that this never happened. I can’t call you innocent with no proof of innocence but since there wasn’t really an appeal I’m not going to raise your sentence.”
“Wait,” Mathias said, struggling against the demons who led him out of the throne room. “This isn’t fair, investigate, find out the truth, I’m innocent I tell you.”
“You were far too nice to him,” Dante said, once they were alone and the door was closed. If he ever did decide to chide her it was always when they were alone, to make sure that he wasn’t undermining her authority. “If this gets around we are going to be swamped with appeals from people who think they might get lucky too.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t do it often, I don’t know what came over me,” Linda admitted. She knew as much as anyone that there was no place for humanity in a devil. No one would complain if she was unjust to the spirits under her control, or was needlessly cruel, but being fair and kind had no place in her business life.
The rest of the day Linda got on with her life as normal, well as normal as her life ever got. Still the whole day she had the case from that morning floating around in the back of her brain. She even kept Mathias’s file sitting on her desk even though she had declared it closed. He was facing a very long sentence, as she had already told him, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like if he wasn’t actually guilty.
Since she could only work in her office during the hours her double was working in the fast food place Linda was able to stop working around five in the evening and got home. She got the report from her double about what had happened at work so she could say what work had been like if her parents asked. Just because she was no longer at work though didn’t mean that her job was done. Once dinner was over she was able to run up to her room with the files that she had brought to look at from hell in preparation for the next day. There was another file that she had brought though, one that Dante didn’t know she had brought. She sat there and flipped through Mathias’s file once again. He just didn’t seem like the sort to kill an old woman the more that she read; though she knew that wasn’t proof anything. She suddenly came to a decision and stood up from her desk again.
“I’m going over to a friend’s house, I’ll have my cell phone with me,” she called around the doorframe to her parents where they were watching TV, before running out of the house. If she stopped to think she knew she would stop herself, this was being stupid, she wasn’t supposed to do things like this. You weren’t supposed to take interest in individual spirits. Nonetheless she dove into an alley and snapped her fingers, and she was instantly standing right outside the scene where the old lady was murdered.
To be continued...
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