Sarah had been in Jane’s basement many times before.

But it had never seemed like this.

The brightness unnerved her the most, even if she had always gone down there with lights on and sun through the window. But now that the lightbulbs were bright above her and the afternoon sun was coming in through the windows, every corner of the basement full of light and the scene of Jane’s near execution in full illumination, it felt different, like she should have been seeing this drowned in darkness, through the lens of a flashlight in her hand. But the light was everywhere, and the details were so fine, so mundane, it felt worse.

Boxes of old toys were scattered over the rough wooden floor, plastic cars and dusty books pushed aside in the paths where Jane and whoever had attacked her had moved through. Several faded and worn stuffed animals, fur missing from their cloth bodies and limbs detached, were spilling out from a crushed cardboard box underneath a window, something vaguely like a footprint in the center of the indentation. It just looked like somebody had slipped when reaching for the top of a stack of boxes. A sharp juxtaposition with the bloodstains soaking into the floor several feet away from the window.

It was a rough scattering of smaller stains leading towards one large puddle, the handful of droplets connecting an upturned box of old sporting equipment. The lacrosse stick that Jane had used was sitting next to the largest stain, replaced to where she remembered it being dropped when her attacker had fled. She was upstairs then, waiting for Michael to arrive. He’d needed to stop at his house first, but Jane was so close to the school that he would have to double back, so Sarah had gone ahead. It was just her at the crime scene now.

She didn’t want to be there, looking at blood that had been spilling from her friend’s throat only hours ago. The magic circle had already been broken, she was familiar with how real death could be in Ravenville, but to see it so close to her friend felt wrong. When she was just investigating an attempt on her own life, it was self-contained, something defensive, but when her friend was involved and she saw the wheels turning, saw the violence not as a blur in the dark but for what it was, tied to everything here, it was foul. She didn’t like that. She didn’t want to be near that.

But Jane was trusting her. Jane, who knew how much she hated this town. Jane, her friend. She was trusting her to find out who had tried to kill her and to somehow keep her safe.

Sarah knelt down, eyes fixed on the biggest stain of all. It was faded and smelled faintly of vinegar, from where it had been partially scrubbed away, and she knew that it would be gone by tomorrow. It wasn’t a lethal amount, and it was something she could recover from. Yet it was still blood ripped from her friend’s throat, inches away from being lethal, and luck and good timing had saved her life.

Jane had almost died here. And after surviving, she was trusting Sarah to find out who did it.

Sarah didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be roped into a hunt for payback. But she wanted to stand besides her friend. And Jane was right. Investigating this was a good use of time. Maybe it would even give her a lead.

If she was going to find out the truth about what was wrong with this town, then she’d need practice, and if she had to go even deeper into that very subject than she already was, then so be it, she supposed. Blood was evidence no matter where you found it.

Right now, though, she had to focus on Jane’s attack. Find some bit of evidence in this basement.

The large stain she was staring at seemed to be as far as the fight had gone from the window. No other boxes were knocked over beyond there, and there wasn’t much blood past it. Jane had said that her attacker had ran off after slicing her throat, which made the question, why.

Two possibilities were obvious: either her parents had come down, or they somehow weren’t able to finish the job. The first only would have worked if her parents had been aware of the attack, and she had been clear that they hadn’t been. They had helped bandage her up and get her to the doctor, but they still believed the raccoon story. That was a possibility that could be ruled out.

The remaining option was something with a lot of flexibility. Any number of things could have prevented whoever it was from killing her, but pinning one down would take clear evidence. Jane landing that hit might have had something to do with it, hurting him in a way that stopped him from finishing the job, but there wasn’t enough blood for that.

Sarah stood up, looking around the room. There was a small line of bloodstains that began a short distance away from Jane’s wound and trailed towards the window, far enough away from her blood to be distinct. If she had to guess, this was from the attacker, but that didn’t make sense. The lacrosse stick had been blunt, it wouldn’t have broken the skin.

But maybe something else would have.

Sarah dropped back down onto one knee, looking around for other small changes. Maybe Jane hadn’t broken the skin, but broken a bone. That could have made somebody stop finishing the job. And based on the bloodstains, they might have hurt themselves on their own weapon. If there was some kind of other disturbance, she’d find the evidence of it.

It took several minutes of focus, looking through the boxes and for anything that was out of place, but there was a gap in a stack of plastic tubs by the stairs that didn’t seem normal. Sarah crept over to it, carefully peering through the gap to the unfinished area under the stairs, her eyes going wide at the discovery.

A minute of slowly moving plastic tubs out of the way later, and she reached into the small gap under the stairs, returning with her prize.

A handful of long wooden slivers, free of dust, and clearly not from the stairs or the floor lay in her hand. Some were longer than the others, the smallest may as well having been splinters stuck in one’s hand, but it was definitely something strange. Like some wood had cracked from landing hard on the floor. The area under the stairs was unfinished concrete, after all. Maybe that was enough.

The door at the top of the stairs opened, and Sarah looked up to see Michael descending the steps, notepad and pencil already in his hand. His gaze was focused, swinging over the room and the pencil already twitching, and a strange question entered her brain.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Are you doing a sketch?” She asked, incredulous.

Michael blinked and focused on her, shocked out of his concentration. “No,” he replied, “I was just taking in the scope of the room. Why would you assume I was drawing something?”

“I thought you were already doing something with the pencil, and I know that police do crime scene sketches. I thought you did that.”

“Police don’t take crime scene sketches. They just take photos.” “Maybe it’s suspect sketches, I don’t remember. I just assumed you would do that.”

He blinked at her again, slower, like he was having trouble understanding what she was saying. “Do you honestly think that I would be drawing pictures whenever I need to find evidence? What good would that do?”

“I don’t know! That’s why you’re the expert!” Sarah threw her arms up. “It was an honest question, it just seemed weird that you’d draw something.”

“If it was weird then why did you assume that was what it was?” “Because I just said you’re the expert and I assumed you knew what you were doing.”

Michael was just looking at her in total confusion, mouth hanging open and gears visibly turning in his head before seeming to decide that engaging with her on this wouldn’t be worth it for whatever reason. “I–whatever. I’m not going to do a sketch of this place. Have you disturbed anything in here?”

“Um, only this stack of boxes. I absolutely found something here though!” She held out the handful of splinters to him. “I think this is from the handle.”

The look of confusion on Michael’s face deepened. “The handle?”

“Of the weapon, you know? Okay, my theory is that the hit that Jane landed, with the lacrosse stick? That broke their arm, and they dropped their weapon.”

“And it broke on wood?”

“No, on the concrete back here.” She gestured towards the area under the stairs. “The boxes looked like somebody had thrown something at them, there was this weird gap between them, and I think when they were attacked they accidentally threw the weapon through there.”

He didn’t say anything, and she was beginning to get a little worried, until he reached up to scratch his hair with the pencil eraser and actually spoke. “So you think that the weapon breaking was the reason for them not finishing the job, along with the arm.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “That’s it, yeah.”

Michael scribbled something down on his notepad, and snapped his mouth shut with a flourish of the pencil. “Okay. Then where do we go now?”

Sarah didn’t have an answer for that. Michael was looking at her in a way that felt like it went beyond inquisitive, a scalpel aimed at her next words, but she didn’t have an answer. She wasn’t even sure of her own theory, it felt more like a guess.

She swallowed, and decided to just press on regardless, going for the core right off the start and holding out the splinters to him. “Try to identify these?”

Surprisingly, he nodded. “A good idea. You’re not going to succeed, but it’s a solid start. If you are assuming that Jane was attacked with a knife or something similar to that, then it would be unreasonable. Those kinds of knives have specific treatments applied to the handle, you wouldn’t see chipping like this. These are from something that doesn’t have a finish on it, something that is just plain wood.”

“Like a hardware tool.” Something clicked for Sarah, and she finished his sentence. “So whoever attacked her used something like a hardware tool, a chisel or something. And when they broke their arm and the tool went flying, the handle broke, so they just tried to use half the weapon and ran away.”

She looked at the bloodstain, and then back to Michael. “Actually, what weapon do you think?”

“I’m not in this.” “You just gave me some advice, you’re clearly enjoying this. What do you think?”

Michael paused a section in confusion, and stepped off the stairs, slowly pacing the trail of bloodstains as he spoke. “I don’t know if it would be a chisel, as you suggest, because they are fairly heavy and difficult to wield in the manner that you’re suggesting. The balance makes them bad cutting weapons, like one would use a knife. But whoever did this was trying to be incredibly subtle about the murder weapon, so we need to think unconventionally. Not a chisel, but perhaps an awl.”

“An awl?”

“An awl, it’s a leatherworking tool. A short piece of metal sharpened to a point attached to a small handle, usually round and wooden. It’s an unconventional weapon that could be used to create the wounds that Jane has, and the fact it’s a workshop tool would make the handle splintering like that make sense.”

“Any other strange tools?” Sarah asked.

“None that are coming to mind. Most screwdrivers are plastic, and a handsaw would have caused massively more damage to Jane. I don’t think she would have survived in that case.” He stopped pacing. “Yes, it’s probably an awl. I could be wrong, but that seems like a very solid lead.”

“That’s really good.” Sarah checked her pockets with her free hand, searching for something to put the splinters in, before letting out a sigh of disappointment. “Do you have anything I could put these splinters in?”

“No, but you can drop them. We won’t really be needing them anymore.” Michael froze in place and took one more look around the room, gaze focusing in on the window. “Did you see anything strange about the window?”

“No, should I have?”

He shook his head, jotting something down on the notepad before sliding the pencil into one pocket on his pants and the notepad into another. “No. I only wanted to take in all the possible evidence. I think that’s everything that we’ll find here, unless you found something else.”

“No, just the wood.”

“Then that’s that.”

Michael stretched his shoulders, pivoting on one foot and heading back up the stairs. “I know a few spots that are good for dumping evidence between here and the woods,” he called back down. “I’ll go check them for anything and let you know of any discoveries. You already gave me your number, I’ll call you.” And with that, he was gone.

Sarah stood alone in the basement, splinters in her hands and thinking about Michael’s parting words. She would just be waiting for him to find anything, and trying to craft new leads out of what he would find. He hadn’t disagreed with her theory, and he had seemingly encouraged her to keep looking for leads and answers.

It was easier than she had thought it would be, looking for answers.

That didn’t mean it would stay this easy. This was an investigation for one person’s identity, not a pursuit of the truth of Ravenville.

But it was so easy to fall right into the look for evidence, like looking for a pen to sign a death warrant in a cluttered desk.

She didn’t know if she liked how easy it was. But she was glad with results.