Austin can feel Sheriff Maxwell’s eyes boring into him as he climbs up out of the ditch on the side of the road. He looks up from his feet to find her hands propped on her hips, her eyebrows furrowed. Her eyes are narrowed and remind him of a hawk’s, scoping out its prey. There’s a gun holstered at her hip, though her hands aren’t straying towards it yet. Austin keeps his eyes glued on it even so.
“What were you doing back there?” she repeats herself curtly. “This is a crime scene.”
Austin pushes his hair back from his face, tucking it behind an ear. “Just curious.”
“Awfully suspicious place to be curious.”
Sheriff Maxwell tips the brim of her hat up slightly with a flick of her hand, shifting her weight and staring down the road, past Austin. He cranes his neck to see what she’s looking for, and sees a silhouette emerging through the ethereal fog that hasn’t yet managed to disperse. It’s Mac the deputy, of course - no one else allowed to be back here but law enforcement. Austin suddenly realizes how bad his presence looks.
“Look, I didn’t have anything to do with this accident, or whatever it is,” he says maybe a little too loudly. He can see Mac’s eyes widen as she reaches them on the road and recognizes him from their conversation not even thirty minutes ago.
“I thought I told you not to come back here!” she exclaims.
“Why should we believe you?” the sheriff asks, at roughly the same time.
Sheriff and deputy pause to look at one another for a moment. Then, Sheriff Maxwell sighs, and turns to size Austin up with her sharp gaze.
“Why are you sneaking around in the woods, Mister…?”
“Jones. Austin.” He shoves his hands back in his pockets, seeing no reason to keep them out any longer. “I saw someone else sneaking around in the woods, and I ran after them.”
“I didn’t see anyone else but you back there, Mister Jones,” the sheriff says cooly. “I don’t suppose you have proof of the person you were chasing?”
Austin frowns. “Well...no. But -”
“But if you don’t, we don’t have any reason to believe you,” Mac interjects, before the sheriff can say anything.
The sheriff clears her throat. “Deputy Abrams is right. This does look bad for you.”
She’s telling the truth about that, and Austin knows it. He’s been arrested before, of course, but not for anything as serious as this, and he might not be able to talk his way out of it this time.
“I promise I wasn’t involved in the accident,” he begins, choosing his words as carefully as he can under pressure. “Their bodies have holes through the chests, right? Ones that go all the way through, and out the other side? Like they were gored with something. Not bullet holes. Nothing a human can do, probably.”
The sheriff and deputy are silent, and stare at him wide-eyed. Mac is a little pale, and when she first tries to speak, her voice comes out as a squeak. She clears her throat and starts over.
“How did you know that?”
“I’m staying with a guy who interns at the hospital. He says there’s been animal attacks around here recently.” Austin looks up at the graying morning sky. “Coyotes or wild dogs. But this was a deer, right?”
“Coyotes don’t attack humans,” the sheriff says. She pronounces it cay-oat, like they do in Texas. “They’re afraid of them. It’s unusual that they’d come into town, let alone be around humans in general. They usually go for smaller animals, unless someone’s bothering a den. And deer...well, the ones around here aren’t too scared of cars, but they’ve never attacked anyone head-on. Deer don’t do that.” She eyes Austin again. “How long have you been in town, Mister Jones?”
“I only got into town two nights ago,” Austin says, smiling thinly. “But I’m not really one to run around stabbing people with antlers.”
“But you did arrive just in time for two people to be killed,” the sheriff says pointedly.
Austin sighs. “I’m staying with a local, Otter Redford. I was at his apartment all night last night. You can ask him. I didn’t leave until after he left for work this morning.”
The sheriff nods, flipping open the notebook attached to her belt and scribbling something inside.
“Did you know those people?” Mac nods towards the car in the ditch. Austin shakes his head.
“Can’t say I did.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you know about their wounds.” The sheriff peers at him, her face in shadow from the wide brim of her hat. “The coroner took the bodies hours ago. How’d you know how they died?”
Austin digs his hands deeper into his pockets. He hates these kinds of questions. There’s always a good chance the people asking will just think he’s delusional.
“My heterochromia.” He indicates his face, his right eye a dark brown, the left eye piercing green. “I can see stuff out of this eye,” he taps under the green one, “that other people can’t. Psychic stuff. I think it might run in the family, from what my dad’s told me. I was talking to the ghosts of the people in the car, out there in the forest. They were telling me what happened to them.”
Gritting his teeth, he looks down at the old pavement of the road and braces for impact. Sometimes there’s a bombardment of questions, sometimes just a plea for him to take things seriously, but maybe this will be the first time he actually gets handcuffed for telling someone about being a medium. None of that comes. When he looks up again, Mac is half-smiling at him, and Sheriff Maxwell looks like she’s still processing.
“You can talk to ghosts,” the sheriff says, finally.
Austin nods. “Since I was eleven.”
“He could help with the investigation,” Mac posits, and the sheriff and Austin both snap their gazes towards her in surprise. She shrugs at them. “It’s not like we have any other leads to go on. Having someone around who can talk to the dead victims might turn out to be useful. If he can actually do it, I mean.”
“You believe him?” Sheriff Maxwell asks, a little incredulously. Even Austin is incredulous - he can’t remember the last time anyone from local law enforcement trusted him so implicitly with anything.
Mac shrugs. “Sure. I’ve seen weirder.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s in any position to be aiding the investigation,” Sheriff Maxwell says. It’s clear that she doesn’t trust him. Austin’s found that most people don’t trust him quite as easily as he’d like them to - it’s something like a combination of his appearance and the fact that he’s always sneaking around in places where he’s not supposed to be. Law enforcement officers, especially, have never quite appreciated this talent of his.
“But,” the sheriff goes on, making eye contact with Austin, “we don’t have enough evidence, beyond the circumstantial, to officially declare you a suspect. And if your alibi checks out -”
“Which it will,” Austin cuts in.
“- then we have no choice but to accept you had nothing to do with this,” the sheriff finishes. “Ghosts or no ghosts.”
“So, I can leave?” Austin asks, glancing down the road. The fog has dispersed quite a bit, and he can actually see back towards Main Street.
“I wouldn’t leave town, if I were you,” Sheriff Maxwell says.
“But I can leave this conversation,” Austin says, arching an eyebrow.
“Oh - yes.” The sheriff looks startled. Austin can see Mac trying to stifle a laugh behind her hand, and rapidly failing at it. “Yes, we’re done here. You can go.”
“Cool,” Austin says, and turns his back on Sheriff Maxwell and Mac. The gears in his mind turning as he walks farther and farther away from them, relieved to be free of the conversation so he can finally hear himself think. If these attacks are supernatural in origin, something more than just rabid animals, they’re never going to get anywhere with the investigation. He could probably solve the case for them. Stop the attacks, before more people die. Clear his name. Sure, he doesn’t have a badge, but he’s technically trained for this shit, even though he’s not an active agent at the Department.
Once he starts thinking about it, Austin knows exactly where to go first to start asking questions. If he’s quick enough, he can probably even beat the sheriff there. And job hunting? That can wait for tomorrow.
gotta admire austin’s confidence in solving random supernatural mysteries he comes across