The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“But what if I did!” Kellan pleaded. As if they could tell him. His eyes held confusion, helplessness.

If he did it and didn’t remember, if he’d blacked it out of his memory somehow—what then? A murder always had at least one witness: the person who did the killing. But what if that witness was unreliable?

“I don’t believe you,” Teeg said accusingly. “This, whatever you’re doing here, is an act. Play crazy and no one will believe you. You expect us to just walk away?”

“But . . . I don’t think I did it . . .”

“You don’t think? But you’re not sure?”

Enid stepped in. “Teeg—”

“I don’t remember!” Kellan insisted. Kellan, huddling on the ground, was surrounded now, the others looming over him. The man was frozen; he wasn’t going to say a word.

Teeg was practically spitting. “I think you do remember, and it’ll go easier if you just tell us—”

Enid grabbed Teeg’s arm and hauled him back.

“Hey!” He tried to yank out of her grip, but she was ready for him. For a moment, he looked like he was going to take a swing at her. Part of her wanted him to, just to see what would happen next. Instead, she shoved him, putting some space between them, glaring.

“The man isn’t stable and you’re pressuring him,” she said. “You need to stop it.”

“But what if he did it? What if he’s a murderer?” Teeg pointed. So sure of himself.

“I don’t trust his testimony. We find evidence. Where’s the evidence?”

“We’ll never find any evidence; all we have is instinct!”

“And you trust your instincts, do you? Think it’s infallible, that gut feeling?”

“It’s all we have,” he said, but weakly now.

“I would rather walk away than punish someone who can confess only while sobbing on a hillside with two investigators looming over him!”

By the hard look in his eyes, the tension in his expression, Enid guessed that Teeg felt differently. Right, so they wouldn’t be able to walk away from this.

Mart was staring at them. Investigators were supposed to present a united front. So much for that.

Enid said, “Mart, we’re going to take a bit of a walk. See if you can calm him down. If he tells you anything, let us know, yeah?”

He nodded quickly, reaching for Kellan and urging him to his feet. The man was weak, shaking. His hair had fallen to cover his face. As Enid took a last glimpse of him, he seemed to stop crying. That was something, at least.

Meanwhile, she marched Teeg away, back toward the path. But he was insistent. “Kellan did it, I’m sure of it.”

“What’s your evidence?” she asked tiredly.

He counted off on his fingers. Didn’t take many of them. “He found the body. If she was scavenging, he might have seen her as competition. He might have been unhappy with how friendly the household was being toward her.”

“Then why not bring it up with the rest of the household?” Every single person within a fifty-mile radius might have done it, she thought. She could make up a story for any one of them.

“I didn’t say it would make sense. There’s something clearly wrong with the guy.”

That didn’t make him a murderer. “Teeg, all you have is speculation.”

“Speculation is all we have! Somebody killed her.”

“And Kellan’s the easiest one to point the finger at, isn’t he?”

“What if it’s easy because it’s true?”