Paranormal

“Am I… surrounded by murderers, or just idiots…?”

Frankie backed off from the two men as the tide of her fear caught up to her again. 

“It was a year ago… They started advertising how someone died on the ride, and- and was currently haunting it.” Conrad’s finger magnetized to his quivering lip. He was beginning to find how stupid this sounded out loud.

“Are they still haunting it?” Mary chose this moment to join the conversation. Everyone decided to ignore her. At least Katie shot her a friendly smile. She hoped she didn’t still think she was still a suspect.

“No such thing as ghosts.” Frankie affirmed. “As we know. Therefore, you two are suspects. You should know all about that… y-yeah, Frank?”

Frank wasn’t especially intimidated by her claims at this point.

“If we were responsible for the death… why would we have come here running to tell you about it? And if it was just me or just him, wouldn’t we have killed the other guy too, not just Jack? That’s a witness.”

“We both found the body at the same time.” Conrad argued. “If this was a plot to kill you, we wouldn’t have said a thing.”

“…Fair.” Frankie hated to consider the possibility. “Okay, then. Frank. If you’re not the murderer, give me your gun.”

“‘Sceuse me?”

“You can hand over the taser too.”

“I’m the only authority here, ma’am. If you don’t wanna trust me, that just casts the shadow in your corner. What’s your alibi?”

“How would I have killed him from the freaking lobby? Do I look rich enough to afford effed-up stealth-murder trickery?”

She got a chuckle out of the cop.

“The mouth on this girl, huh?”

“This is how she handles things when they get rough. So please don’t be rude, sir.” Katie’s slight glare creeped the officer out a little. “And hand over your weapons.”

Without an alibi, Frank was left to sigh, almost embarrassed, now one pistol and a taser poorer.

Katie got the taser. Frankie couldn’t figure out how to unload the gun and wouldn’t listen to Frank’s advice as he tried to walk her through it, so she wound up sticking it in her shorts and calling it a day. Even after serving in a literal criminal organization for a few days, there was something humiliatingly vulgar about having such a violent object strapped to her waist after all she’d been through.

“The body really had no wounds on it?”

“Not a scratch, miss.” Frank weakly repeated.

“Let’s see it then.”