Book Eight, Chapter 73: The Detective

At first, I thought the plot was going to move by the crime scene of Isaac’s disappearance. After all, we already knew he was gone. This could have been a simple flyby plot point, but that wasn’t how it turned out.

The cops had been there for a while when we arrived. They had already searched the scene and had forensics out. I didn’t know what further information we could gain because, for a long while, we weren’t allowed into the house. I did my best to look around the scene, listen to the NPCs, and look for any information that might help us.

The culprits had rammed the gate on both the way in and the way out. It was silly that such a simple plan could be used to get into a gated community with security like this. My camera guy, Mike, was getting all the footage he could of the smashed entrance and the police going about talking to neighbors.

But the scene didn’t end. It didn’t focus on us either. Even Cassie and Roxy, who both had links to Isaac, were largely left out of things, being babysat by one police detective whose name was Patsy, a terrible name for a detective, while the other police did their job.

“The lead detective will finish up inside soon,” Patsy was saying. “I will warn you that it’s unlikely you’ll be able to stay the night,” he said to Cassie, which implied to me that Cassie lived with Isaac.

After seeing how enthusiastically she was playing into her supposed insanity, that made some level of sense. Maybe she couldn’t take care of herself.

We didn’t get a lot of Off-Screen time to discuss things, but in the little time we did get, Cassie confirmed that she had woken up in her room thirty minutes before the police arrived, and not much had happened to her.

We stood while the police detective continued to hold us up and prevent us from entering the crime scene. Carousel must have gotten so much redundant footage from that. I was wondering what the holdup was. My theory was that something was going on elsewhere that was distracting Carousel’s attention. With few exceptions, only one scene could be On-Screen at once. Something was forcing Carousel to stall our part.

Eventually, Camden and I took to sitting on the curb and waiting, while Roxy and Cassie continued to harass the police detective.

“What do you think’s going on here?” Camden asked.

I looked up into the sky, where a helicopter was circling overhead. It was a police helicopter. I wondered whether there would be an early scene with Isaac’s kidnappers on the run. It would have surprised me. To my understanding, Isaac should already have been in a cage. I doubted the helicopter was for him. It wasn’t focusing on the crime scene.

Suddenly, there was a commotion at the front door as a group of police officers began to exit, and a tall man in a dark suit, dark hat, and dark hair walked outside.

His name was Detective Marcus Blackwood, but he was not just any detective; he was the paragon himself.

I exchanged glances with Camden. We were both in disbelief. That meant there were three advanced archetypes at play in this storyline. We didn’t understand why that would be.

Amidst our confusion, the plot finally decided to move forward.

“Miss Hughes,” Detective Blackwood called out.

“It’s missus,” Roxy snapped.

Detective Blackwood walked forward and got close to her, and Camden and I moved in on the group, too.

“But I’m asking for Miss Hughes, Miss Cassie Hughes, the sister.”

If I wasn’t dreaming, that seemed like an inside joke between paragons. She rolled her eyes, of course, still in character.

“I’m here,” Cassie said.

“Miss Hughes,” Detective Blackwood said, turning to her and bowing his head slightly, “this is a terrible thing to have befallen you. I pledge to you that I will not rest until your brother’s kidnappers are brought to justice.”

A cheap promise, considering it was going to be the players that ended up doing it. He glanced over at Camden and me shortly after he made that vow, but only for a moment.

“I don’t understand,” Cassie said. “What would they want with Isaac? He’s paid off all his debts. He doesn’t know anything about anything. Why would they take him?”

“It’s too early to say,” Detective Blackwood said. “There could be a variety of reasons. Your brother did live quite an extravagant life. There’s no telling which of his dalliances might have led to this, if any of them led to this at all.”

“You don’t believe it was his fault?” Cassie asked reluctantly, almost as if she wanted to suck those words back into her mouth. She was reading him and seemed nervous about it.

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“I couldn’t say,” the detective said, “although many in Mr. Hughes’s extended circle have gone missing recently. We will be investigating any links to those disappearances. I thought you should hear it from me first before some sleazy journalist decides to run with that theory on the evening news.”

He glanced directly into the camera that my guy was holding.

Cassie nodded.

“He’s missing like how my husband went missing,” Roxy said, “and you all did nothing. Forgive me if I don’t have full faith in the international police.”

Detective Blackwood looked at her, and there was a moment of silence between them. “Your husband decided to go adventuring into unfriendly territory that is off-limits even to rich men, and as we have established, the tracking device that you yourself gave us puts him nowhere near the ruins where you say he died. Yes, we have checked into your story, and short of sending armed men into the jungle, we have done everything we can to find your husband.”

Roxy pursed her lips and glared at him.