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I stared at the girl before me in scrutiny. Her story seemed too good to be true. My silence kept her rambling on and on about who knew what. Although listening to my suspect's crazy ramblings wasn't in my job description, it's gotten to the point that I no longer had a choice. I ran an exhausted hand through my thick short cropped hair as I tried to decipher what exactly the woman was saying.
"Miss, I'm going to ask you to slow down and explain to me again why you tried to kill yourself and your fiancé," I asked. The whole problem seemed more complex than I've made it out to be but recently it's just been giving me a headache.
"It wasn't me!" the woman cried out across the wooden table. She had stopped muttering and was now staring at me with a wild, crazed expression. Her hair was a mess, if medusa could be a blonde she would look like her.
"I understand," I lied. "But you have to understand if it wasn't you, who else would it be? You know there were people at the scene of the crime."
She whimpered as if she knew I didn't believe her, which I didn't. "It was her," she finally said. When she saw she had caught my attention, she continued. "She made me do it! She's a monster! If she can't have him no one can!"
I suspected by 'him' she meant her fiancé but the other female she was talking about puzzled me.
"Who's 'she'?"
Her lips trembled and her eyes darted around the room with fear clearly identified in each of them. Still, she remained silent.
"Who is the woman you're talking about, Vera?" I asked, addressing her by her first name.
She leaned forward and kept her voice below a whisper although we were the only ones in the room.
"Melanie."
§ℳ§
My partner, Kyle, laughed besides me as we drove to where it all happened. I had explained to him what Vera had told me about the woman named Melanie.
"Are you trying to tell me that this Melanie girl was the man's ex-wife who died years ago and is haunting his #life?" He broke into a chuckle. "This woman is crazy. First trying to kill herself and her fiancé then coming up with this crazy excuse!"
"There's more," I said.
"Oh, and that Melanie took control of her body to try to kill herself so the fiancé would be forever alone."
"And if that failed, she would use Vera's body to kill her husband so that they would both be together," I finished for him.
"That's crazy, James," he said as we pulled up to the house of Vera's fiancé. His name was Hector if I remembered right.
"I guess we'll find out," I said as we stepped out of the car and met the other police officers surrounded around the house. Being the only one who talked to Vera, I was asked about her. I tried to explain about her and Melanie, ignoring Kyle's ridiculous grin.
"So what are we going to do about Vera?" a female cop asked. A fierce expression occupied her eyes. "She has performed outrageous crimes and deserves severe punishment. We should keep her as far from Hector as possible."
The knowledge and determination she had surprised me. A prickling inside my head warned me something was off.
"I'm planning to set Vera free and have her talk things over with Hector," I said calmly. I earned a variety of incredulous gazes and outbursts.
"You can't do that!" the female cried out.
I met her gaze steadily. "What I say goes."
Kyle stared at me, puzzled. "James—"
A bullet shot interrupted whatever he was going to say. The female cop held her gun in her hand. Her blood began to stain her shirt and she fell, gun skidding across the sidewalk. I lowered my hand and put my own gun away as I stepped towards her body. She saw my face and began to laugh uncontrollably.
"He's mine. . .," she whispered.
I smiled back at Melanie then turned away from her and walked through the crowd of amazed officers. "Someone call an ambulance," I said, pulling out a cigarette. "And an exorcist too."