“I’m a total loss.” Zach turned to Dane. “Tess said she felt nothing here, but did you?”
Dane considered that, a thoughtful expression rose to his face before he said, “I don’t feel any presence of a ghost here. I’m not qualified to make assumptions on Hector, but if you asked me personally, I’d say he isn’t lying.”
“If you’re not qualified, how can you assume that?” I countered.
“I get a sense around people,” Dane answered, all but staring right through me. “As in, I can see their auras, and if you knew more this wouldn’t be such a shock.”
Oh, I had just about enough! “I’m getting really irritated how you continue to insinuate that I’m somehow stupid because I don’t know these things.” I glared at him. “I haven’t met anyone to teach me, so cut me a damn break.”
“Yes,” Kipp practically growled. “Fuck off.”
“Calm down, ghost.” Dane heaved a sigh. “When people are being untruthful, or even if darkness surrounds them, it looks like the glow around them pulses. I didn’t see that off him.”
I scrunched up my nose. Maybe I should’ve been more focused on what that meant for the case, but instead a thought formed. “Do you see my aura?”
“Yes, I can see the golden hue around you.”
Never had anyone living admitted to that before. “Okay, well, clearly you know your stuff.” I regarded him. “Explain why I have this aura, then?”
“You have the gift.”
“No shit.” I rolled my eyes. “I could’ve said as much, but do you know why?”
He shrugged. “Everyone has auras. It’s your soul portraying its energy outward. Yours is unique and golden because that’s who you are. It’s nothing more than that.”
“Oh.” I gave my head a good hard shake trying to accept that he could see such a thing, but had trouble. “Can you tell me more about this aura stuff later? Like at a more appropriate time than sitting in a prison.”
“Of course.” He inclined his head. “That’s why I’m here, right?”
I once again ignored the curtness in his tone, and now done with him, I moved onto more pressing matters. “So what do we do now on the case? I mean, he didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know. And in fact, confirmed that Anna had been right about Lizbeth committing suicide.”
“As much as it pains me to say so,” Zach murmured. “I think we have to accept that the case is a simple suicide, and move on to the next one.”
“Rewind there big boy,” I snapped. “Shouldn’t we ask more people or do something else? We’ve barely done an investigation. I think, only because I have no idea really what is involved in an investigation, and we’ve only be at it for two days.”
“We have zilch to go on. We went to the location to find her ghost. She wasn’t there. We came to Hector in hopes he’d give up details and he knew jack shit. This case had no evidence at the time of the murder. That hasn’t changed.”
“But…but…but…” I reigned in my incoherent mumbling. “We still don’t know if she was murdered or if it was a suicide. We’re making assumptions. Shouldn’t we look into that more?”
“Who are we going to ask, Tess?” Kipp arched an eyebrow. “There are no more witnesses and the two that were there confirmed the original story. We cannot—”
“We can’t,” Zach interjected, but I raised my hand cutting him off to let Kipp finish.
“…solve every case,” Kipp continued. “I told you before that real life was nothing like television. We don’t solve many cold case files, especially old ones, such as these.”
I folded my arms. “That just seems so wrong.”
Zach nodded, and his gloomy expression matched my mood. “It is wrong, but what can we do? If all the leads are a dead end showing the crime happened as the detectives said it did, with no other leads to go on, then we’re shit out of luck.”
“Besides maybe you’re right,” Kipp added. “Maybe Lizbeth committed suicide and was content with that. It seems the most viable possibility.”
Why did I doubt that theory?
Zach stood, and headed for the door, missing Kipp’s words. “Anna said she committed suicide. Hector confirmed it. I think it’s best to leave it at that.” He knocked on the door and the guard on the other side opened it.
I approached Zach, with Dane and Kipp following in behind, not half as settled as they all were. Something nagged at me. But I did agree on one thing. We had nothing to go on. No matter how much that sucked.
Lizbeth’s murder, if it was that, would remain unsolved.