9 Interrogating the campsite

At the break of dawn, Delion the great detective sneaked out of Chief Amber's house with an intent to return back to hunter Jingo's campsite, 8 Kilometers away from the village.

Also since no one panicked and shouted about one of their family members dying, Delion figures that there are no new deaths which is a good thing of course. Because he can put the first puzzling case to a pause and figure out who killed old William.

The traces of William's death are far too scarce, and letting them rest for more than a day is a bad idea.

After all he can go check what's to be found at the camp and return here to pick up the first bigger case. Obviously it is a lot more to comprehend, but he is the only detective here.

...

Finally reaching the camp two hours later, one thing is for sure, he absolutely had enough of the cold brutal november weather across these lands which is even harder to comprehend this early in the morning.

Plus it has been snowing again, for half an hour actually after Delion left the village so it is easy to determine how rugged travelling all the way here was.

But he had to come here for the sake of succeeding at least in this case.

Tracing footprints obviously isn't an option since there was ankle deep snow around here yesterday and today it's an inch deeper, but he can look for major traces that can link to this... different murder, such as poison.

Delion and chief Ambers went up to Jingo's camp 5 minutes after William fell flat on the ground, at such short notice chances are Jingo had slipped somewhere, and I don't mean on snow.

One good thing about this brutal cold, is that William's corpse is well preserved. In other terms, it won't smell absolutely horrible. Bodies deteriorate after death, and as fancy as that word sounds the result it represents holler a frozen corpse.

The situation has turned for the worst, thankfully no one's attacking Delion at this semi-remote spot but what he has considered as a minimalistic risk, has come to bite him on the ass!

The body is missing! They concealed it well enough yesterday but apparently it didn't meet the required criteria to prevent the body from being snatched.

"Oh for fuck's sake!" Delion cursed, almost out loud. But if there actually is an animal nearby it would prove stupid to spook it.

After a minute of Interrogation he figured out that it wasn't any animal who snatched old William's Corpse, but a human instead. How did he know this? Well there are some key characteristics.

For a start, if there was an animal strong enough to drag a whole human corpse from this spot, it would surely have a bite strong enough to break out blood from the corpse and force it to drip all over the place.

There is no blood here, not even a single drop. Secondly, regardless of the ankle deep snow around here it just didn't pour enough last night to cover the traces of a whole fucking human body being dragged.

An animal would obviously not carry the corpse on its arms, so the odds of a human carrying this are far bigger.

Third, there are actual human tracks leading not towards but away from the village! The traces escaped being covered by last night's snow and if there was a load on a human's back it is most likely for each step to sink deeper.

The tracks look at least a few hours old, so even if Delion runs his way after the tracks it won't be enough to catch whoever took the body. But yet again if he follows them it might lead to a better clue, like another village for example.

Delion will follow the tracks, but it is obvious that there is no rush to it so first things first he has to walk all the way above Jack's peek and into Jingo's camp.

...

"There is nothing here, this place is clean!" Delion murmured, complaining about this staggering situation.

One thing he found are bloody arrows! In any other case this would look very bad, and would raise a shit ton of suspicion.

But Jingo is a hunter and considering what blacksmiths sell, doesn't come in cheap. It does make sense for non broken arrows to be recycled after bagging game. This also can't link to William, because he had no stab or cut wounds, no blood.

Furthermore he also found some torn fur clothes, these likely belong to Jingo and got torn by excessive use. Fur clothing has a span of a year or so before it rips apart, so this doesn't look like anything suspicious either.

There is also a bit of meat that has gone bad, but it is still edible kinda. Hunters commonly take the best loot back in the village or to another place where they can sell it, they won't leave sellable meat at a camp since any scavenging animal can take it if not a human.

What does this mean exactly? There is nothing else to analyze, that's the harsh fact to comprehend. Delion really hoped to find some poison but no there is nothing here.

He walked for 8 Kilometers today yet he did not find anything that points out towards the murderer, to make it worse William's body is missing so Delion's idea to leave the body here yesterday proves nothing but faulty.

Where did it lead to? No corpse, no clue of what happened! This investigation is close to an end sadly, Delion himself is losing hope! Never in his career has he witnessed a case who is so trackles.

He only has two options now, follow the tracks and go to question Jingo later although now the best piece of information could be following the tracks, no murderer would ever admit to what he or she did especially here where there is no dirt on them.

...

Following the tracks became troublesome, since at some parts there were other human walk prints who've led to the east or to the west. But he managed to remember how the specific prints he followed looked like.

That's how he managed to keep track but an hour later this portion of the investigation was as well forced towards a bitter end, as if this weather wasn't punishing enough.

How? It's because the tracks led towards a river... and that's where most traces are forced to end up cold and I'm not saying that because the river waters are colder.

A River forces the case to an end, because if a body was dropped here an hour ago for example, it could require at least 6 hours to track it by following the river down... if the corpse didn't sink underwater that is. But the tracks were at least a few hours old, so tracking this body has become impossible.

In summer, he wouldn't mind taking his clothes off and taking a swim for a deeper Interrogation. Chances are, the body was tied with a rock from who ever wanted to hide it.

But at such temperatures it is impossible to take a swim and return to Blenar after, the living human body doesn't have what it takes to withstand such torture from mother nature.

If Blenar is lucky, the corpse will be found by some villager since a lot of domains are close to the river. It would prove useful to grant old William a proper funeral, but it wouldn't be of aid to this case.

The only option left now is to head back and talk to Jingo, even if he has to put a dagger on the Hunter's neck to grasp upon the truth.

avataravatar
Next chapter