The classroom that sister Paula arranged to be my office was a 16 x 27 feet empty laboratory. A set of six workbenches with eight or nine stools each dominated the place. The benches were parallel to each other. The empty black stools looked direct at me. Disposed in a straight line, along with the length of the working tables, waiting for students. All benches had a steel sink with water taps on both endings. In front of every stool, there was a full mounted Bunsen burner, with asbestos grids and metal tripods. The rear bench top was taken by some electronic equipment and scales, covering most of it.

I was in the chair, in the teacher's table that was in front of the benches a few feet away. A lot of files, maps and other documents that I asked to be delivered to me scattered in front of me. By my right side, a skeleton seemed to grin at me, staring at my chair. I could feel that he had a sarcastic look in his face from the angle of view, where I was standing.

 I was in a privileged position where I could have a perfect view of the entire room. Behind me hanging in the wall in their poles, there were some flags above a big whiteboard. 

At the back of the lab, very big shelves and wood cabinets covered every inch of the wall. Inside one of the cabinets, lots of equipment, used at physics demonstrations. In the next one, a dozen bottles and flasks of chemical substances, with different shapes. Almost any color of liquid or powder could be found in those bottles. One could only identify their content by their labels.

The upper half of the wall by the left of the teacher's table was replaced by a set of huge moving glass windows. The lower half still showed their white paint. The entrance door of the laboratory was in the corner of that wall, facing the teacher's table.

It was almost time to meet the first witness of the afternoon and the only one that I needed to see. The other witnesses I discarded. What I found out about the girl that saw the homunculus was enough to conduct my investigation.

The lunch with mother Ana was fast, after the landslide she didn't have much time to hang out with me and Voluptia. 

We didn't have much to say to each other, also. Since the school was isolated from the outside world, everything depended on her. She was the one calling the shots. They would have an emergency meeting with the members of the staff. I told her my feelings about the case, avoiding, on purpose, any part of it, that could cause her more worrying. 

She was already feeling very tired and the weight of her age was charging its price. She looked like she aged at least ten years since the night before. Sister Paula attended the lunch with us, to help her superior mother in anything that she needed. It was when I was told that sister Paula was her main assistant. That was why she never left her side, unless when mother Ana asked her to do, herself.

After that Lunch, Voluptia pretended to go back to her dormitory. She claimed that she felt tired and needed to rest the rest of the day. So she gave orders to not be disturbed. That was a lie, she had her own mission to pursue. One that would give me an upper hand in our case.

We parted ways with a hug and one of the priests took me to my new office to wait for the girl.

Sarah Drummond was a sixteen years old teenage girl, that would be seventeen in a few months. A tall girl with blonde hair, captain of the Volleyball team. Their most talented lifter. Not one of the top students in her class. Instead of that, she was one of the most popular girls of the school. According to what Voluptia found out in her secret meeting with her friends, she was some sort of queen to them.

I looked at her picture. Her face was frozen in a simple casual look. Her long hair was cascading from both sides of her face. A gold set of threads, covering most of her ears. A black ribbon held the rest of her hair in place. She had a charming upturned button nose. And her heart-shaped lips completed her looks giving her a very attractive face by her age. Her blue almond shaped eyes contributed to give her a cute, yet, mature aspect.

I put her file away and moved to the other files spread all over the table. Examined one by one and took some notes. I gave special attention to the files about the greenhouse and the hospital's staff.

When I gave myself for satisfied I sat in the chair reflecting about all the new clues that I had. I could form a picture in my mind, but one that I didn't like at all.

Lost in my thoughts, I saw by the windows of the laboratory, the blonde girl arriving. Her long hair was dancing in her shoulders when she moved. She wore the school uniform. A white shirt, a blue blouse, and long blue skirts. She was getting close to the door of the room. And she was not alone.

She was being escorted by one of the female nuns. Sarah was by the side of the nun. As she moved she kept her head looking down.

I heard a faint knock in the door, and I asked the girl to enter the room. The teacher, a middle-aged nun with an overweight body, said that she would wait outside.

But I was against it. I didn't want her present. It could interfere with my interview with the girl.

The girl didn't like that. But she moved inside the room. I could see the nun disappearing down the corridor behind the glass windows.

Sarah was avoiding eye contact with me. Kept her hands resting in her belly, one above the other. She was standing away from me and looking shy with her eyes pointing at the floor.

She seemed nervous to get closer to me. So, I broke the ice:

"Please take a sit, I promise you that this won't take long, I need to ask you a few questions and you will be free to go."

She reassembled her mood a bit. Sat in front of me and attempted eye gazing. With a look of confusion and discomfort, she looked straight at me and said:

"I already told everyone what I saw. Why do I need to talk to you too?"

I was ready for that. She was not dealing with an amateur. I could see what she was trying to do. Sarah could not play with me when I was the one with all the cards in hand. So I grinned:

"Miss Drummond, you may cut your acting. It will not work with me. Body language is a fascinating subject, don't you agree? You would need a lot more practice to be able to fool me."

She looked surprised by my words. Yet, instead of giving up she kept her act, getting out of the chair and pretending that she was offended:

"I had the most traumatic experience of my life."

Her voice seemed like she was about to cry, "You insult me calling me a liar after all that I went through. I am leaving. You are a very cruel man, mister..."

"Detective.", I said cutting her deceptive act," Detective Roger Soares. So, you want to leave? If you tell me something first, you will be free to go if that is what you desire. Do you happen to know that your boyfriend is an animagus?"

I smiled when she froze at the word "boyfriend".

"I don't have a boyfriend....", she began to say, but I cut her cry and insisted:

"Lets cut the crap ok? You were in the clearing to date with your boyfriend. He was the one that found the corpse; not you. You are covering for him. And I want to know why. And I want it now!", I demanded.

"I...am telling the truth I saw the drop that fell in my forehead..."

"Oh, I didn't know you were a tree hugger.", I cut her again, being sarcastic.

"You see I happen to have been to the local. I laid below the corpse to take a better look of the branches that held it. To be able to catch a drop of blood in your forehead, you would need to be a few inches away from the trunk. So cut all the bullshit. You insult my intelligence when you do that. Unless you were hugging that tree or bumping your head in the trunk, no drop of blood would hit that pretty forehead of yours."

She was about to protest, but I foresaw It and tossed her the plastic bag with the pink note that I found in the clearing:

"I think that your boyfriend dropped this after seeing his homunculus dead."

She looked at the bag and recognized the note like I knew she would.

She had no place to go. She could not lie to me anymore. This time I got her:

"So, I will ask again. Do you know anything about magic? Did you know that your boyfriend is a warlock?"

She changed her attitude. Defeated, Sarah let out a sigh, sat again in the chair and stared me face to face. This time she was looking defiant and angry.

She knew I had won. Yet, that was not an easy victory. Besides all the arrogance in her attitude, I could see that she was afraid of me. Because I knew a lot of things that could put her in trouble with her teachers the school, and her parents too. And also her secret warlock boyfriend.

She could be expelled for having a secret lover, inside the school. They both would be. And his identity would be revealed to everyone, in special to the other mage hunting him.

So she had no choice, but to cooperate with me:

"Yes...I did know it...", she didn't know what to say to get out of that situation, but she told me what I wanted to hear.

"Good, so let's start again, this time being honest with each other. Who found the homunculus?"

"He did. He is connected to those things, he calls them servants. I find it amazing. The things that he can do. The way he can create things with a pound of flesh. You guessed right, we had a date in the clearing that afternoon. Yet, something happened. He suspected that it was not safe to see me by himself. Instead of going to our meeting he sent his servant. It was when he felt a terrible pain or so he told me for losing the connection to the thing. So he went to the local to check. And when I arrived he was in such a mess that I helped him to bail out and we invented the story about the drop of blood."

"A servant that looked just like him, am I right?"

"I don't know. He can create those servants with the material that he collects in the hospital."

She stopped like she said something that she was not supposed to. But, she continued, "He is afraid of something. Something that is about to happen here in the school. He told me that we are not safe here anymore. Our meeting was because he wanted me to call my dad and invent some excuse to be taken away from here. I had to talk to him about that. Since the holidays were about to start I had to see him before going back home."

"Ok, that is everything that I wanted you to say. I am sure you don't have anything else to say that will help me in this case. I thank you for being honest this time. But, I still need you here because I need to talk to your boyfriend. So, what about you, Luciano? Anything else to add to Sarah's statements? I know you are listening to every word that we say. So, show yourself. Playtime is over."

The girl jumped in the chair, her expression changed. "How did you know that I was here?", that male voice coming out of the mouth of his girlfriend in front of me could be seen weird. But, I had seen demons talking using the body of children before, to bother about it.

I smiled triumphantly when I heard the girl speaking with the male voice.

Everything went exactly the way I planned. That was my way to catch two birds with one stone.

Now I had the upper hand. So, I answered his question:

"Because you are stupid and I'm a genius. We have a lot of chat to catch up on. And I will know if you lie to me, be sure of that. So get ready, mister, because you're in for a bumpy ride."

As I said before: that afternoon promised. 

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So there you have it: Roger is getting close to solving the case. Or is he? Are you excited about it? What other secrets that school hides inside these walls? And when will Grotheske stop bugging me to make she appear in the story again?

 Liked the story comment, give your thumbs up, subscribe, share with your friends. This is done with a lot of heart and soul, and it is done for you. See you in our exciting next episode. Don't forget to check the very good novels in the episode info. Very good reading there.