"How are you going to figure out who the Alpe might be?" Cordelia asked, when Xander called to tell her Uncle Rory's theory.
"Thanks to Johnathan I've got two leads, the journalist who wrote the articles and the cleaning company. The journalist might be trying to hype sales or he might actually know something, either way we need to question him. The other lead involves all the hotels and motels where a body was found are serviced by the same cleaning company, which is owned by a family. Johnathan showed me how to use the computer to check up on the company and websites where I could actually do background checks. It's kind of cool and given that Uncle Rory thinks that getting Private Investigator training and licensing would help us investigate Wesen matters legally, it gives me an idea of what that would involve."
"If it's someone connected to the cleaning company, that could be one of the owners, the employees or any of their friends and family. All it would take is access to the keys the company has that allows them to get into the rooms to clean. Access means someone could make a copy and return the originals and no one knows." Cordelia pointed out. "Could end up being a seriously big suspect pool. Hey, I'm sounding like a Private Investigator myself!"
"You are, maybe you could be my Girl Friday, like in the old crime dramas with a P. I., the sassy, smart lady that doesn't just fetch coffee and run things, she helps solve the crimes."
"While always looking attractive and sophisticated." Xander could almost hear Cordelia's grin and was picturing it in his head.
"Who gradually breaks down the walls he has around his heart and falls hopelessly in love with her."
"He wouldn't be a smart detective if he didn't, now would he?" Cordelia teased.
"He'd be an idiot who probably couldn't think for himself." He replied, tongue firmly in cheek.
"Since you can't make it to Los Angeles because you have classes, is Uncle Rory going to do the actual interviewing of suspects?" Cordelia asked, getting them back on topic,
"Yes, he is. He's letting me narrow things down by doing as much of the work on the computer as I can, with Johnathan guiding me. Once I've done all the background checks I can, he'll go to L.A. and check out the suspects. I can only do it in between classes and getting my homework done, so it'll be kinda slow going, but hopefully I'll find something before someone else dies. At this point it looks like one person is being killed every month. Multiple people may be being fed on though because nightmares, as reported in some of the articles, are a common side effect of an Alpe feeding on someone. Prolonged feeding on an individual can result in insanity. Apparently they feed on melatonin because they are incapable of sleeping themselves, as a people, and melatonin helps keep them from going insane. Prolong lack of sleep causing Insanity. Hell of a way to evolve. Humans need to sleep and Alpe are half human, whatever their analog originally was, it didn't need sleep."
"They also have absolutely no excuse for feeding on humans." Cordelia said in an annoyed tone of voice. "Like the Zeigevolk that don't take the suppression formula for their pheromones. They can do their rutting season without them, some just refuse to and these Alpe can just buy what they need at a store. There are some Wesen that simply have no choice, the ones that do, they risk us all being declared monsters. Find whoever is doing this, Xander and stop them."
"We will." He promised.