Maniai Case File 1: The Girl And The Blood Slide

Chapter 28

Zoe showered and spread on the bed as if was made of feathers. I let her have it all to herself, after that uncomfortable holding cell, so I sat on the chair.

She was looking at my notes, and I was filling in. I felt kinda anxious, to be honest. I was in training after all, and I barely had any.

"Uh huh. Nai. Not bad for a noob," she said in the end.

"I figured I could handle the interviews. Getting people informed should be done by you."

"Mmm, I'm not feeling it right now. I'm hungry. Let's go somewhere." She perched up her head and stood still. "You didn't spend all our money on booze and hookers, did you?"

"No!" I laughed out.

"Gawd, I'm so disappointed in you."

We drove around town until we found fast food. Thankfully there was a Goody's place, the Greek hamburger store chain. We ordered a couple of big meals and indulged like there was no tomorrow.

Zoe stole 10 packs of ketchup and lathered it all on the fries. Then she ate them by hand, moaning with delight each time.

"Here, have mine as well," I said and passed them on.

"You're such a gentleman," she said and added them to the pile.

"So, what do we do next?"

"Well," she said between bites, "we have only a day, so let's prioritise. The most important thing is to talk to the medical professionals. Get them aware, tell them what to expect, things like that. You've done the interviews, more than I would have done, you freak, so we just need to copy some medical reports and put them in our case file. Then we are done." She leaned back and stared at her swollen belly.

"OK. I guess we leave it to the locals then."

"Duh, yeah. It's not like we can monitor things across the country for months. The symptoms in humans and animals take months to show, you know. We could show up in 3 months if there really was a case, but the locals need to handle it personally."

I took a bite of my burger and pushed the rest of it away from me.

"You're not gonna eat that?"

"Ohi."

Zoe took my meal and gave it a coup de grace.

She looked at my face, trying to chew down in one gulp.

"What's bothering you?"

"See, there's something weird about this case. Not that I have any experience in these sort of things, but the symptoms are unusual. Emma had a maniacal obsession with examining her blood. Tens of times per day."

"Hey, I read the mom's interview. They had a few issues, they didn't know how to handle her."

I bit my lips and thought about it out loud. "Look, the way I saw it, is that Emma cutting herself wasn't the issue. I think that the mania was researching, no matter how silly that sounds for a nine-year-old girl, her blood in regular intervals. She was cutting herself to gain access to her blood."

Zoe stared at me for a while. "It's still freaky."

"It's freaky because it was a little girl. Try to think of her for a sec as a woman. Then it simply becomes methodical."

"Methodical until it turned her into a rabid, literally, animal that attacked a cop in the night and got her shot."

"Yeah, you're right, that doesn't add up."

She watched her hands for a while. They looked like she had just killed a man.

"What did they tell you about the cop?"

"Well, the poor man is a mess. He blames himself, he's gone crazy over the shooting. He is under investigation of course, which does not concern us. But it's why the police was so against us," I said, and gestured at her with my hand.

Zoe acted like something bitter was in her mouth. "I noticed."

"I explained to them that the positive rabies test on the poor girl helps the officer's case, so they eased up a little. But if you saw him, you'd know that legal troubles are the least of his worries."

"If we get called to testify in court, you are the one coming all the way back here. Not me."

I raised my hands. "Fine."

The manager started sweeping the floor next to us, politely urging us to leave. I picked up my stuff.

"What?" Zoe said. "It's not even 11 o'clock!"

I shrugged and picked up her coat.

"I hate this town," she said and went to wash her sticky hands.