Chapter 12 - Alice The Detective

Jasper's POV

I didn't want Alice to have to see this but I knew it was our best hope to find the man who was trying to kill her and Bella.

"He didn't kill him here." She said, looking at the body in the chair.

"I know, he did that in the study." I told her pointing towards the room in which the man had died.

"I don't get it." Emmett interfered with his question. "Why couldn't you just see that this was going to happen?"

My wife glared at our brother before answering him. "Because James is not thinking clearly, he is slowly going insane and doing things more on impulse than by choosing to. And besides," she looked back to the body. "I think a part of my mind is too scared to look." She continued to look him over.

"His hand." She said, examining the burnt flesh that was his left hand.

"Yeah there is a candle at the desk in there, it was obviously used to burn his skin." I told her, hoping she would go into the study rather than see the remains of the young couple, the woman at least did not have chunks of skin hacked off her body, but Alice was rather vulnerable of late, and I didn't want her to have to see this.

"Yes but there are no bruises on his arm." She pointed out. "If someone was trying to force your hand into a flame, don't you think that you would fight them?" She asked looking to me for an opinion.

"Umm, I guess..." I offered, hoping it was the right answer.

"But there is no bruising on his arm. If he had tried to fight than James would have left a bruise where he grabbed him." She continued.

"He could have been unconscious." I pointed out but she dismissed the idea immediately.

"No, James doesn't care about the physical pain. He is more interested in the fear that the pain causes." My wife informed me. "He would have had to have been awake." She examined his palm for a few moments. "And look at the cuts, there are hesitation marks every time it hits a nerve. He didn't fight because he did this to himself." She said replacing his hand in his lap.

"It makes sense," she mumbled to herself. It does? Was all I could think. "I did not submit and fear him like he wanted me to do. He wanted this man to harm himself to make him more afraid, or to test how scared he was. But these other wounds were done post-mortem." She continued, changing topics. "And James would have no interest in a corpse. Unless it was to create fear in others." She mused, turning briefly to the dead woman.

"And she has no wounds besides where he bit her." Her gaze turned back to the man in the chair. "Not to mention the hesitation marks on the body, he made her do it. James made her cut up her dead husband." Alice said and, having solved the mystery of what happened, she promptly left the house without another word.

I hated that she had grown so distant, but this whole thing with James was really getting to her, and she blamed herself for everything he did.

Authors Note: A short one I know but it shows how Alice has a good idea what is going on in James's head, but her assumptions are not always correct.

~SophieAngel69