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“Well done, kids,” the sheriff said, shaking his head and tapping his bracelet to end the recording. “Now, let’s get down to brass tacks. What you each said makes sense, but you’re each other’s alibis, and everyone on this train heard your altercation, and what you said to that man.”
“Is he missing?” Jade asked. “Or is it something else?”
“The man was murdered,” the sheriff said simply. “You’re going to hear it elsewhere, and besides, I think you already knew that.”
“We most certainly didn’t,” Jade said, looking horrified.
“Now, we have two witnesses saying you disappeared as soon as the lights went out,” the sheriff went on. “And the way this fellow was killed, well, not many folks have the brute strength to crush someone’s skull without a weapon.”
Jade gasped, her eyes flicking up to Rafe’s.
She didn’t mean it as a betrayal, at least he hoped she didn’t.
Yet the sheriff nodded once to himself as if it added up.
“I didn’t harm that man,” Rafe said calmly, as much to Jade as to Sheriff D’arxx.
“By your own accounts, you lifted the man up by his lapels, held him in the aisle, and said,” the sheriff pulled up his notes on his bracelet, then read. “If you put a hand on her again, I will cut it off and feed it to you.”
His dispassionate tone made the words sound all the more ominous.
“Was his hand cut off and eaten?” Rafe asked lightly.
The sheriff sighed and shook his head, with a disgusted expression.
“Then I don’t see what my threat had to do with anything,” Rafe said. “I didn’t threaten to crush his skull.”
“Well, no one else on this train had the capacity to do something like that,” the sheriff said. “Most beings just aren’t capable.”
Rafe could hardly argue with that.
“I could arrest you, and put you in a cell right now,” the sheriff went on. “But you and I know that’s just a formality, since you could just shift and break out of any cell we’ve got here on the frontier.”
He was right about that.
“With that in mind,” the sheriff went on, “I’m going to suggest something to you both.”
Rafe leaned forward, wondering where the man was going with this.
“You can’t get back on this train,” the sheriff said. “And you can’t fly off-world. Your bracelet and palm scan will be refused at any exit point for Sigg-3.”
Rafe nodded, that was expected.
“So, I’m not going to make fools of us both by arresting you, son,” the sheriff said. “I suggest you do your best to fly under the radar for the next few days.”
“Days?” Jade asked.
“The man you killed was the only judge on Sigg-3,” the sheriff said. “We have to wait for another to arrive before we can have a trial. It may take some time, but make no mistake, justice will be served. And I’ll go to the Invicta to get it, once we have our ruling. And you, young lady, are going to go down as an accomplice. Now get off the train.”
Jade looked stricken, her face had gone cold and expressionless.
“Now,” the sheriff repeated forcefully.
She flinched, and Rafe swallowed the impulse to smash the sheriff to bits. It was an obvious set-up, and he wasn’t falling for it.
“Come on,” he told Jade gently. “It sounds like we have a couple of days to find the real killer. Should be a cakewalk in a backwoods little burg like Rothbart.”
The sheriff swallowed a growl.
