24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

I slipped to the bathroom then back to class. We were continuing our lessons on cold-water training but the food and blood had perked me up so I hoped my attention wouldn’t wander quite as much.

Sergeant Marks was already there, replacing the head of the academy after the attack. I suppressed a pang of regret; I liked Marks but Fischer was much more experienced and his lectures had been my favourites. ‘How’s the lieutenant?’ I asked quietly.

‘A bit battered,’ Marks said baldly.

‘Can he shift?’

Marks shook his head. ‘He’s human.’

I didn’t know why that surprised me; maybe I’d assumed that because Fischer knew about supernats, he was a supernat too. ‘That was bad. Petty’s getting worse,’ I started.

‘Yeah. We’re going to have to do something. I guess I need to call in an expert.’

‘Who you gonna call?’ I asked lightly.

‘I don’t think the Ghostbusters are answering,’ Marks said drily.

‘Well, maybe we don’t need them.’ I bit my lip, wondering how much to tell Marks. ‘Listen, I know something about the poltergeist. His name was Petrovich Peril and he was at the academy more than thirty years ago. He died of exposure after getting lost on a hiking trip. He communicated with me, told me that he thinks someone is undermining the academy somehow. He wants us to find out who and to stop them. He says his loyalty is to the academy. I honestly think if we can find out what he’s talking about, the whole drama will stop.’ Though to be honest, the death threat was weighing on my mind. What if I was wrong?

Sergeant Marks stopped tidying up and looked up at me. ‘I see you’ve been doing some investigating on your own. Well, the academy is well-supervised and it would be difficult to do anything that would undermine it, so I can’t imagine what Petty is talking about. The only thing we do in-house is the finan…’ He trailed off and looked thoughtful.

‘What?’ I was burning with curiosity.

‘Captain Engell,’ Marks said slowly.

‘What about him?’ My heart gave a hard beat.

‘He does the academy finances. They’re the only thing that we really control on site.’

Was Marks suggesting that Engell might be embezzling? ‘It did attack Engell’s office,’ I reminded him – the papers flying around had a tonne of numbers on them.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed grimly.

‘Can we prove anything?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t recognize a cooked book if someone hit me over the head with it.’ He frowned. ‘We need to bring in a financial expert to go over the figures – but if we’re wrong, we’ll offend a well-thought-of officer with ties to government officials and other high-up types. It’ll be tricky.’

‘Is Captain Engell really ex-MIB?’ I blurted out.

Marks frowned, ‘Where did you hear that?’

‘Around,’ I replied elusively. I didn’t want Danny to get into trouble.

‘Protecting your source like a good detective,’ he said drily. He studied me. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘Engell used to be MIB.’

I bit my lip. That confirmed a whole other issue with Captain Engell. The financial angle was interesting, but the MIB had a whole lot of distrust toward supernaturals because they only dealt with supernats that had gone off-script. We weren’t inherently bad but the MIB hunted those of us that were, so the organisation no doubt had a skewed perception of all of us. Was Engell here with an agenda?

I bit my lip. Thomas was ex-MIB, and he was a good person. Maybe the captain was innocent.

It looked like I was off the hook for late night B&E because I didn’t have the background to know what I was looking at if this whole thing was financial. I’d seen a bunch of papers but nothing about them had seemed suspicious. Luckily it should be easy to find a forensic accountant who could interpret the numbers correctly.

Marks and I didn’t get a chance to talk more because the other recruits were coming in. We quickly put the rest of the room straight and, although we were missing a few recruits who needed more medical assistance, Sergeant Marks started his lecture on time.

‘We might not be going tonight,’ I whispered to Sidnee once we sat down.

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. Sergeant Marks gave me some insight.’ I looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear and whispered into her ear. ‘They do the finances on site. Guess who does them?’ I didn’t wait for her answer. ‘Captain Engell!’

‘Damn.’

‘You any good at forensic accounting?’

She snorted. ‘My idea of forensic accounting is counting the dead bodies at a scene.’

I grinned. ‘Same. Sergeant Marks is going to try to bring someone in on the downlow, so no breaking and entering for us tonight.’

‘Roger that.’ She gave me a thumbs-up as Sergeant Marks started talking.