“Not if the murderer has anything to say about it,” Rune interjected.
“That brings up an interesting point,” I said. “We haven’t established motive, so we don’t know why Gamma was killed. Without that, there’s no guarantee that the murderer will strike again.”
Endow looked at me with a curious expression. “Are you suggesting that we just do nothing?”
“Not at all,” I assured her. “It’s just that I’ve been operating under the assumption that the killer will be looking for his next victim, and that may not be the case. Gamma may have been the only person he wanted out of the way.”
“So you’re saying that, after blowing up the room where Gamma was killed, we may never hear from him again,” Rune summed up.
“It’s possible,” I acknowledged, and then frowned. “Speaking of that room, why can’t you guys recreate it?”
“What do you mean?” Endow asked.
“Well, the murderer destroyed that place because he didn’t want us seeing what ultimately happened,” I said. “But just like Mariner repaired everything in here” — I made a gesture encompassing our current environs — “why can’t you guys put the room back the way it was so we can finish seeing what occurred?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than it appears at first blush,” Rune stated. “What Mariner did here was basically just a repair job. You can liken it to a handyman coming to your house to fix a hole someone knocked in the wall. Say he puts a drywall patch over the hole, slaps some joint compound on it, sands it down and then paints it. When he’s done, the wall looks the same as it did before, but it’s not exactly the same because now there’s a covered-up hole in it, for one thing. Likewise, we can repair the room so that it looks the same as before, but it won’t be the exact same room.”
“And because it’s not the same room, you can’t reconstruct the crime scene again,” I concluded.
“Precisely,” Endow confirmed. “Maybe if we had our full sivrrut, but not with our current limitations.”
“Okay, but you guys still have all kinds of abilities,” I countered. “Can’t one of you read some tea leaves or look into a crystal ball and see what happens in the future — see if there’s another murder?”
“Again, we’re outside of space and time,” Rune reminded me. “There’s no ‘future’ here, as you understand it, for us to see.”
I sighed in exasperation. “You know, for a group of near-omnipotent beings, you guys have made helping you impossibly hard.”
“Of course,” Rune chirped. “Do you know how boring life is when everything is easy?”
Chapter 22
Since revisiting Gamma’s last moments was now out of the question, I really only had one clue to follow up on: her last words.
“She was shouting ‘No’ and ‘Cerek,’” I said to Rune and Endow. “I didn’t see anyone else during the reconstruction, but it implies that her laamuffal was in the vicinity.”
“It sounds plausible,” Endow conceded. “Do you think he was involved in the attack on her?”
“I think you guys likened it to fleas murdering a human,” I replied. “Seems unlikely.”
“I don’t think Endow was suggesting that Cerek killed Gamma,” Rune clarified. “I believe she was implying that he might have assisted the murderer.”
I let that roll around in my head for a second. “Seems more probable than him doing the deed himself. Was he unhappy working for Gamma?”
“Like all laamuffals, he was dedicated to her,” Endow said.
“Spoken like a typical boss,” I declared, then uttered in a mocking tone, “‘My employees all love me.’”
“But in this case it was true,” Rune insisted.
“How do you know?” I asked. “Did he give her a ‘World’s Greatest Boss’ mug or something? Because they only give those out to people who deserve them.”
Rune crossed his arms in agitation. “Okay, wise guy, here’s the skinny on laamuffals: they have incredibly long lifespans, during which they look how they want to look. They dress how they want to dress. They eat what they want to eat. They get to see the wonders of the universe. And if they don’t like it, they can quit at any time. On our part, if they don’t have the loyalty and commitment an Incarnate requires — and we’ll know, because we can sense it — we’ll simply release them from service with no hard feelings.”
“Wow,” I muttered, impressed. “For a guy who doesn’t have a laamuffal of his own, you knocked it out of the park on the job description.”
“Thanks,” Rune said, looking smug.
“Although you left out the part about working side-by-side with an omnipotent killer,” I added. “Guess any applicants will need to read the small print.”
Rune shook his head in disgust. “Anyway, what’s your next step?”
“Trying to find out what I can about Cerek,” I replied. “Despite what you said, maybe he wasn’t getting along with Gamma.”
“But who would know that besides him and Gamma?” asked Endow.
“His colleagues,” I answered.
Endow looked pensive for a moment. “You mean the other laamuffals?”
“Of course,” I remarked with a nod. “Employees always commiserate and complain about the boss.”
Chapter 23
Endow and Rune asked for a little time to arrange for me to see the laamuffals. That was fine with me; I felt the need to unwind anyway. Telling them to come get me when they were ready, I teleported to my bedroom.
I popped up next to the bed and essentially collapsed onto it. As before, I felt fine physically, but mentally it seemed like the walls were closing in. This situation had a lot of moving parts, and in an effort to get my arms around things, I decided to take a quick tally of what I was working with.
Seven suspects (if you counted Cerek).
Six nigh-omnipotent beings.
Five laamuffals.
One killer.
No alibis.
No body.
No motive.
I groaned aloud. This was way more than I signed up for when I agreed to help Rune, more than I felt capable of dealing with. The one silver lining was that it kept me so preoccupied that I didn’t have
