The Starling Saviour

Chapter 28

'So the Hood is... Helping us?' I proposed slowly. 'After all, he is targeting criminals. And succeeding.'

'He is not helping us,' Lance narrowed his eyes. 'He is going against the law to bring what he thinks is justice to this city. Whether he is or isn't, he's breaking the law in the process. He's no better then the guys he uses as target practise.'

But I disagreed with what Lance thought. After all, I had been a vigilante once; I understood the whole rationale behind the Hood's actions, whether they were legal or not.

'Anyway, Aria, we've got another house fire for you to investigate,' Lance changed the subject. 'We'll need you to come to the scene later today.'

There had been many fires through the Glades this past fortnight, each seeming to be in cheap or estate houses. Many families had died or had been left without a home to go back to, sending these deprived and poverty ridden families to the streets. Lance thought there might had been a connection between the fires, and so I had been called to the Glades for the first instance in a long time to analyse the cases.

The house we arrived at was pretty much destroyed, everything black with ash and rubble. As I darted past charred pieces of furniture and stepped on the burnt carpets, my eyes fell on a cracked picture frame with a family photo tucked inside of it. They looked so happy, so full of life; I guessed now that wouldn't be the case.

'What... Happened to them?' I asked Lance hastily, worried what the answer would be.

'They're alive,' Lance answered me hopefully. 'But the father got second degree burns over most of his body trying to save his wife and child.'

'That's awful,' I reflected on the incident.

'At least they got out in time,' Lance pointed out. 'Other families haven't been so lucky recently.'

How was it a coincidence, fires as terrible as these happening all across the Glades and leaving families devastated? Something wasn't right, and I was going to find out why.

---

'I think we found the reason why the fire escalated as badly as it did,' Lance told me as he passed me an evidence bag with a smoke detector stuffed inside of it, back at the lab. 'The smoke detector failed.'

'Doesn't that just... Happen?' I asked confusedly. 'People forget to change their smoke detectors when they need renewing. Or it could be just one faulty detector.'

'This isn't a coincidence,' Lance shook his head. 'The other fires that have been happening in the Glades recently, the houses have all had defected detectors.'

'But how are we supposed to help with this?' I asked impatiently.

'The smoke detectors were all supplied by one company,' Lance informed me. 'The Holder Group. And the CEO, James Holder, needs to answer for his company's actions.'

As I searched Holder in my computer, I found he already was in trouble. The headline HOLDER GROUP NOT LIABLE FOR NEGLIGENCE IN BLAZE plastered the top of the screen, some legal team already having looked into the situation.

'He's definitely up to something, this James Holder,' I narrowed my eyes in thought. 'Have you questioned him yet?'

'No,' Lance answered straightaway. 'But we are in an hour or so. Could you analyse the detector so we could take this case further?'

'Sure,' I nodded.

However, we were too late.

'We... Have a problem,' Hilton suddenly appeared next to us. 'James Holder's dead.'

Well this was an untimely murder.

'What's the matter?' I asked, but I had a feeling I knew the answer.

Had the Hood become a killer?

'We got a call from Holder's partner,' Hilton started to explain. 'And she found an arrow on the scene.'

So I was right.

To our surprise, we were met with a very peculiar incident. Instead of Holder's skin pierced with a small hole where the tip of an arrowhead could have been, he had two clean bullet wounds right in his heart.

'It doesn't make sense,' Lance said in a puzzled voice.

'Holder fits the profile, wealthy dirt bag,' Hilton remarked. 'Red meat for the Hood. And we recovered at least one arrow.'

'Yeah, only this time the cause of death was a double tap through the heart,' Lance reflected. 'And our perp doesn't use firearms.'

'Maybe he's figured out there's an easier ways to kill people than with a bow and arrow,' Hilton shrugged. 'I guess, like you said, they guy's a whack job.'

'It doesn't add up,' I shook my head, chipping in. 'Arrows and bullets? This isn't the Hood's style. And the arrows are facing the opposite way to where Holder was shot. It's as though he was aiming at... Someone else.'

'But who else would be interested in murdering this guy?' Lance pointed out. 'I think you're reading too much into this, Aria.'

But I knew I was right. I guess I was just going to have to keep quiet.

For now.