Trevor Prier.
According to some of the other, older students at the school – he had only joined the faculty in the past year. He put on a convincing persona as a harmless and somewhat eccentric biology Professor. His qualifications were the real deal, but everything else about him stunk to high heaven. He was the man who I believed had fired on us after our magic lesson. He would have access to the clocktower, and our schedules, and now he had even arranged for me to walk into an ambush. I kept my eye out for him the next day but he was nowhere to be seen.
Professor Prier could often be seen heading into the greenhouse to tend to the exotic plants that lived inside. Given that he was trying to eliminate me and potentially Felipe too, it wasn’t hard to make a judgement on where he would go next. If he was trying to hide the gun that he had used, the greenhouse would be the first place to look. I waited until a specific time to make my move. Once the corridors were clear and nobody sought to spend some time in the gardens, I grabbed my gun and some gloves and headed down to investigate.
The greenhouse was big enough to be a real house; they liked to do everything bigger at the royal academy. The front door was held shut from the inside by a latch that was incredibly easy to jostle open using a piece of thin metal. The interior space was dominated by four rows of planters. The foliage was so dense that it was impossible to see from front to back, or from side to side. There was a strong floral scent in the air thanks to the variety of foreign plants on display.
Since the greenhouse was only used for botany studies at a higher level, people rarely entered it, never mind inspecting the disturbances on the ground for discrepancies. I couldn’t cast suspicion on every patch of loose dirt in the greenhouse but if he had buried it somewhere shallow, there was an easier way for me to check before digging. I grabbed a trowel from one of the workbenches and got down into a kneeling position. I lifted my arm into the air and started to rapidly stab the ground beneath the wooden frames with some serious force. He had to be keeping the gun in some kind of container. I was halfway around the room when finally...
Thunk.
I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face as the trowel stopped dead with a loud, wooden clatter. I turned the trowel sideways and excavated the dirt on the top layer, revealing a crate that had been hidden in the flowerbed. I cleared away the mess and tugged on the rope handle, only noticing that there was a metal padlock when I was stopped dead in my tracks. I used the sharp end of the trowel and beat it to all hell, shattering it to pieces and allowing me entry.
Inside was exactly what I was looking for. A dirty, but usable rifle of the type that I had seen in the store catalogue. It had been heavily modified with a shortened barrel and new iron sights, which made it difficult to tell which one it was at first glance. It didn’t matter. I knew that this was the gun that had been used to shoot at me last week. Trevor Prier was certain to be the man I was looking for, and presumably the one who attacked me with a knife the day before.
I heard the door rattle as someone tried to enter.
I quickly took the rifle and some of the ammunition and hid in the back corner, just close enough to hear what they were doing when they approached. Their footsteps were loud thanks to the tiled floor that ran down each side. When they noticed the unearthed box, there was a gasp of shock. They were distracted, so I loaded a round into the chamber and made my presence known.
“Mister Prier. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
He turned on me and held out his hands, “M-Maria? What are you doing with that thing?”
My eyes narrowed as he continued to play the fool, “I just decided to come and inspect these lovely flowers you’ve been growing. But for some strange reason, there was a box with this hiding inside of it. I wonder how it got there.”
“Please point it somewhere else! What on Earth are you thinking, young lady?”
“I’m thinking... that you’re the one who shot at me and Felipe a week ago, and the one who decided to try and stab me yesterday.” I nodded towards him as I noticed the high collar and ascot he was using to cover his neck, “Trying to cover up the marks I left by choking you?”
“What are you talking about?” he scowled.
“Take it off, now.”
At gunpoint and under duress, there was nothing he could do but follow my order and remove the rag. As I expected – his skin was marred by a harsh red line where I had pulled on his neck during our fight. Prier knew that the game was up now. I had figured out his identity and found evidence of the original crime.
His accent changed as he dropped his act, “What are you gonna’ do about it? Turn me in?”
“I was thinking that I could just kill you.”
“You don’t have the guts to do something like that.”
“Really? I almost had you yesterday. There’s no way that I’m going to back down now. You’re going to pay for trying to kill me, you’re too dangerous to be left alive.”
His face twisted as his anger came to the surface, “You bitch! Don’t you dare point that gun at me! There’s no way, how did you figure it out?”
“It was pretty damn simple actually. You knew our schedules and had a key to get access to the clocktower, which meant you had to be a member of staff. When I was wandering the campus alone you were following me, but you decided to make a play for my trust instead of pulling the trigger because Samantha was there watching on the steps. And we can’t ignore the fact that this is the gun that you used to shoot at us – using this exact bullet.”
Stolen novel; please report.
I pulled the empty shell casing from my pocket and threw it at his feet.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“Me? There’s a very simple answer to that. I’m Maria Walston-Carter, of course.”
We stared each other down as he tried to think of a way out of this situation. I was not waiting for his benefit. I had arrived at the greenhouse at this exact time for a very specific reason. Prier was so disturbed by me discovering his identity that he didn’t realise it himself; even though it was a trick that he had used to try and kill me before.
“Why did you try to kill me?” I asked.
“You’ve got a bloody screw loose if you think I’m telling you anything. I spill all the details to you, and you pull the trigger anyway. What do I get out of it?”
“Maybe I’ll let you go,” I joked. He didn’t find it half as amusing as I did. His shoulders tensed as I broke out into an involuntary burst of high-pitched laughter using Maria’s characteristic up-and-down ‘Ohoho.’
“Like I said, a little girl like you doesn’t have the sack to kill a man. Stop pretending that you’re willing to get those pampered little fingers dirty.” I remained silent and allowed the seconds to keep counting down. He was nervous; I could tell that he wasn’t expecting anyone to get the better of him. I was more than willing to kill if it was necessary to protect myself and others. What’s more, I had taken precautions to make sure that nobody would find out that it was me.
Bong!
The metal frame and thin glass rattled as the explosive bell chime vibrated the campus. Prier’s face turned to a pure expression of primordial terror as he finally figured out what my angle was. I had not anticipated him making an appearance so soon. This was nothing more than a stroke of chance. The heat was too much and he was planning to remove all of the evidence that led back to him. His botched ambush had thrown his plans into total disarray.
“H-Hey, let’s not be too hasty here!”
Bong!
I pulled the trigger at that moment. I wasn’t aiming for a kill shot just yet. The recoil pushed me back as the cartridge ripped through his left shin and left a splatter of blood against the tiles below. He screamed in pain and fell down onto his hands and knees. He tried to push himself away, but he stopped when he saw me loading another shell.
“You have five chimes left to tell me everything.”
“I-I can’t!”
Bong!
“Four.”
Prier now understood perfectly well. As he stared into my eyes he did not see the soul of a young child or a pampered noble lady who was coasting her way through life. It was explicit. I was a killer. That previous threat to end his life was not a bluff, I had lured him here for that exact purpose and timed it to cover up my crime. The speed at which I moved during his first attempt, and the way I fought back in the second, they were not flukes. His assessment of the threat I posed had rested solely on me knowing too much. It was too late to correct that mistake now.
“You can’t even do anything! What the hell do you wanna’ know about this for?”
I was getting impatient with his stalling, “Spill it before I spill your brains on the floor!”
Bong!
“Three.”
His unscrupulous nature won out over any sense of loyalty or duty to his client. Firer spoke so quickly and with such urgency that it was almost too fast for me to comprehend. “W-We got paid to kill Felipe Escobarus, okay? Some big shot was pissed off that he got engaged to Beatrice Booker! He wanted to arrange a business agreement with her family, but Felipe got in the way before they could seal the deal!”
Bong!
Two. I continued to train the gun on him. There was no time to reckon with his words, “So why did you try to kill me?”
He clutched his bleeding leg and shook his head frantically, “You were there when I took the first shot. You knew too much! When your friend came and asked for a study session I decided to get rid of you before things got too problematic. That’s all I’m gonna’ say.”
My paranoia was well placed but for the wrong reasons. It seemed that Felipe was the one who was in imminent danger of being assassinated. Without the name or identity of the person who was trying to kill him, the attempts would surely continue until they succeeded. I had foolishly never even considered the possibility. It was a personal failing that I had to admit to. I thought so little of the people around me that I thought everything revolved around the way that I behaved. Clearly, that was not the case. Had my proximity to Felipe and his sister kickstarted this entire thing?
“You’re going to let me go, right? You’re not gonna’ kill me...”
Bong!
I sighed, “I have to say. This was a situation of your own making, was it not? To take such an immense risk, and then to do it again. The only person to blame for this is yourself.”
He shook his head so frantically that he could have snapped it by himself. There was no more debate or argument to be had. He had told me everything he was willing to share and there was only one chime left on the clock. This meeting was adjourned. For the last time ‘Prier’ tried to make a run for the door, but he was only left hobbling and limping on the ground as the blood loss robbed him of his balance.
Bong!
I pulled the trigger again and fired the second shot through his chest. He cried out again and fell to the ground face-first with a smoking hole in the back of his jacket. I unloaded the shell and allowed it to fall to the floor. There it was; the first in a long line of dead men that would be sure to come in time. I had no time to consider the consequences now. I dropped the gun to the floor and took a moment to survey the scene. There was no hiding this one. His body was too large for me to move without being seen from the building’s windows.
When in doubt, just leave it alone.
I didn’t need to pepper the crime scene with any more evidence. It was the entire reason why I had brought the gloves to conceal my fingerprints. I stepped over his corpse and headed for the exit. I took one last glance to make sure that he was really dead before I closed it and locked the door behind me using his key. Some poor teacher was going to be traumatised when they found him, but it was better than letting him kill Felipe just for the sake of some business merger. The key was tossed up and onto the roof just to frustrate them further. I slipped my gloves into my pockets and headed back to the main building.
There were a lot of things to consider now. Felipe had already been marked for death by someone – and that meant that keeping my distance from him wasn’t going to be very effective. I needed to keep an eye on him for the time being just to make sure that he wasn’t in any danger. I could not predict how the school would react when they found Prier’s body, but the investigation may lead them to details about his real profession. Would they be willing to cover up a murder on campus as they had with the original attempt on Felipe’s life? As I returned to the inhabited area of the school, a variety of different voices washed over me. They were blissfully unaware of the fact that a killer walked amongst them.
I had crossed the line yet again. It was a cold comfort that this time was more noble than the first in both form and purpose.