Body Swappers 18
A murderer is murdered.
Maya stood.
Robert said, “You may as well sit.”
“Why?”
Wood answered. “Lockdown.”
Maya sat.
The alarm wailed on for a minute. Then, muffled through the door, they heard a voice ask, “Where’s Wood?”
“In here,” said a second, closer voice.
“Let me in.”
“But, the lockdown.”
A third voice, more distant yelled, “There he is!”
The door opened to two guards grappling. The one facing the door had reached around the other to reach the door handle. The one facing away from the door said in a strained voice, “What are you doing, Mike?”
The other guard, supposedly Mike, shifted his weight suddenly, and they each took a step into the room. He was trying to shove his way past. But the other guard wasn’t giving up. He adjusted and set his feet against Mike’s progress, and one step was all the progress he made. Down the hall, boots were slapping against the ground as people ran their way.
Robert moved toward the tangle, making the sign of the cross as he did so, and crying out, “Jesus Christ!” That’s when Maya got it. It wasn’t Mike trying to barge past his coworker against lockdown protocol. It was whoever was riding him. He was possessed. And now that she was looking for it, she saw that the faint traces of gray and orange that wrapped his whole body were swamped around the solar plexus by a spiky ball of red, orange, and purple.
Mike—or whoever was in Mike’s body—looked at Robert. Robert’s aura was brighter than Maya had seen it before, and made of a perfectly-balanced rainbow. He drew his hand back, and Maya knew what was coming. Knew he was going to sock Mike’s body in the solar plexus. Before he could, the aura around Mike changed. The spiky ball fled, and the faint base of gray and orange grew. The other colors faded and were replaced by pink as his face changed to a look of confusion.
Another two guards tackled Mike from behind him, and all four of them fell sprawled in a pile on the ground. Robert barely managed to side-step in time to keep from being caught in it.
“Hold still!”
“What the hell is happening?”
“Get off me!”
“I said hold still!”
Eventually the pile resolved itself into one guard holding Mike while another clicked handcuffs onto his wrists, while the guard who had been on the bottom winced and touched each of his ribs in turn.
“Why did you kill Patterson, Mike?” asked the guard holding him still. “I saw the tape. He didn’t attack you.”
“I didn’t kill anyone!”
The first guard snarled, but before he could retort, Robert interjected. “He was possessed!”
Mike and the other guard looked at Robert like he’d just grown an extra head.
Maya said, “He’s saying that someone else took control of Mike’s body in order to kill Patterson and Wood. Patterson was the next person we wanted to speak to.” The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Jeff had been right. The murderer had noticed their investigation. But it wasn’t Maya they were coming after. It was the people whose bodies they’d used. They didn’t want their puppets to talk.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” the guard holding Mike asked. “Mike, are you putting on a farce with these assholes to help get murderers like him off?” He jerked his finger at Wood, who was busy looking non threatening with his hands on top of his head.
Mike said, “No! Look, I don’t know who killed Patterson, but it wasn’t me, and I don’t need the magic defense to prove it.”
The other guard was shaking his head. “Like I said, I saw the footage. It was you, we know it was, so you can stop lying.”
“I’m not lying!”
“Listen,” Robert said. “Whoever possessed him is going to try again. If you suddenly find yourself in a dark place, jab yourself here.” He pointed to his solar plexus. “Or if another guard is acting suspicious—”
“Oh come off it!” shouted the guard holding Mike. “Drew! Detain that man for conspiracy to commit murder. I’ll take Mike. I’ll send someone else to escort our other guests out. Unless either of you want to insist someone possessed Mike to murder Patterson, too?”
Min Taylor said, “I am not making a statement about that at this time.”
Maya pressed her lips together. Robert was going to be charged with a crime now? He gave her a tiny shrug. His aura had gone back to being so close to his skin that she could barely make it out. How can he be so cool, in a time like this? Shouldn’t he be outraged, or at least a little mad?
The angry guard stomped off with Mike in tow, and Drew cuffed Robert.
“The solar plexus is the key,” he said. “Tell them at Airway Heights, even if they don’t believe.”
Maya nodded, and watched the guard march him out the door, a lump of something stuck in her throat.