Chapter 21: The Funeral

The second Derek declared the hospital Argent-free, he took off while admonishing her to go home. That had been her plan all along, but when he asked, she tried to think of alternatives just to spite him.

Joe waited a few minutes to avoid making it look suspicious, even though it was suspicious as hell, before emerging back in the brightly lit corridor herself. No Argents, no Derek. She half-sprinted out into the parking lot, hoping to catch a glimpse of his sportscar, but nothing. He'd probably ran here or something else weird. So he used her for information, and she let herself be used. Great.

No Scott, no Derek, no Jimmy, no missing girl. So much for her Nancy Drew-persona.

Joe swore under her breath and got in her car while trying to figure out her next move. Chris Argent had tried to stop Kate from killing Scott. He would not kill an innocent sixteen-year-old girl either. Probably. Hopefully. Could she call the police on him? Could she trust the police?

"No proof he's spilled human blood," she repeated Chris' words from that night. With her dumb phone, she did not have access to the internet and she regretted telling Aunt Mel to put her dad's check into the household budget when she could have fixed her old phone with it.

Aunt Mel...Joe drove towards the 24/7 open supermarket to get the ingredients of a girls' night to wallow in self-pity. Aunt Mel had even worse taste in partners than Joe did. She met her ex-husband through Joe's dad, and that should have been a big enough red flag in itself. They did have Scott together though, so it wasn't all bad, even though they split up and got together a bunch of times before Scott learned how to bike.

Back home, she found no sign of Scott and resorted to refreshing the local news bulletin every few seconds. The current top story was of the missing girl, of course, but no updates since the initial disappearance. Finally, closer to dawn, the Beacon Post reported the police log of the night.

"Grave robbery..." Joe read the condensed bulletin post. She glanced at the time, the black dress hanging like a bad omen, and dashed downstairs to put on her shoes. Stealing Kate Argent's corpse sounded like something weird enough to happen right now. Joe nearly tripped over her own feet when she spotted Scott sitting by the table having his cereal.

"When did you get here?" Joe asked and jumped around to pull on her boot. She'd never heard him come back in last night.

"Uh, around one? Two maybe?" Scott ventured as her eyes narrowed further. "We were out all night looking for Lydia..."

"Okay, you need a ride for school?" She decided to give him the benefit of doubt and simultanously, not tell him about the grave robbing in case it turned out to be their friend. Scott had school to attend, his grades depended upon it, while Joe was still on leave and awaiting further instructions from Professor Kane.

"No, I'll just bike. Where are you going?"

"Out," Joe called over her back and slammed the door behind her. If she wanted to check out the cemetery and take a shower before the funeral, she did not have much time.

Like everything else in this town, the cemetery laid surrounded by forest on all sides. She pulled up behind the closest house instead of parking directly near the police cars in the designated parking lot. You know how many cops we have on our payroll?

Keeping out of sight, she crept along the forestline until she could get a better view. Not that she knew what she was looking for in the first place. Jimmy? The girl? Signs of...supernatural phenomena? Sheriff Stilinski was still here, interviewing a tall teenage boy and what she guessed was the boy's father. A yellow excavator sat abandoned next to an open grave. Kate's open grave. Joe shuddered.

People in white plastic suits were scouring the earth next to another grave that also looked reasonably fresh. Crime scene investigators. From this distance, it was hard to tell, but she could not see any discarded shovels or other tools used to open the grave. The image of a young girl in a hospital gown desperately digging with her bare hands filled her imagination — it would make a good scene in a horror flick. Too bad this was real life.

Something made her look back towards the Sheriff and his interview subjects. At that exact moment, the boy looked up as well and met her confused stare across the cemetery. Wait, not at her, something beh-

"Hey!" she hissed as Derek grabbed the back of her jacket and threw her into a juniper bush. He concealed himself behind a large oak and held a finger to his mouth to make her shut up. Rolling her eyes, she peered out between the needle shrubbery and the Sheriff was peering in their direction. Apparently seeing nothing, he turned back to the boy and his father.

Coast clear and Derek grabbed her again to pull her further into the forest. "I thought I told you to go home."

"Yeah, so?" Joe said and shook his hand off her when they stopped. She brushed needles and dried juniper berries off her pants. "You and your archaic attitude need a big reality check if you think I'm just gonna do what you tell me."

Derek did not seem in a mood to play games. His nostrils flared. "What are you doing here?"

"I don't know? Looking for Jimmy or the missing mystery girl?" Joe picked more leaves out of her hair. She really needed that shower. "What are you doing here?"

Derek did not seem to hear her, his entire focus directed out of the forest towards the cemetery. He had that slight wrinkle near his eyes he got whenever he did long-distance hearing.

"What? What are they saying?"

He growled. "I don't know, I can't hear them unless you shut up."

"Jeez, fine," Joe whispered and took a few steps away from him. To give him space and silence, not to get away from his presence, that was just a bonus. Outdoors seemed to work a lot better for her, but she was unsure what would happen if they ever had to get into a car together.

She waited until he lost that focused look and then prompted: "Well?" At his silence, she tilted her head to give him a tired look. "You know I'm gonna find out anyway. You might as well just tell me."

He glanced at her and like it was against his common sense, he said: "Whatever came here last night took a dead woman's liver."

"Ew," Joe said and wrinkled her nose. "Is that, like, a normal thing you guys do?"

"I don't think so, but I'm not an expert."

"Well, did you take some dead person's liver when you got bit?"

Derek looked at her again and seemed to weigh the pros and cons of whatever he was going to tell her. Eventually he let out a short breath and said: "I never got bit. I was born a werewolf."

"What? You can be born like you?" Joe exclaimed, enthusiasm getting the best of her grammar abilities. "Scott never mentioned that! So it's like a genetic-" She stopped herself from saying 'disorder' at Derek's dark look and backtracked. "It's genetic? Dominant mutation?"

"We can have human children," Derek said to answer her question while he still looked towards the cemetery.

"X-linked? Y-linked? Or codominant, maybe, so-" She stopped and remembered Chris Argent's words that there had been human children in the Hale house at the time of the fire. How many siblings did Derek have? Or use to have? Clearing her throat, she eased off the eagerness. "Sorry, guess it doesn't matter."

She wrinkled her nose at the thought of anything stealing a dead woman's liver. "Why the liver though? I would've guessed the heart. Did the kid see anything? Was it the girl or-"

"No, he didn't see anything," Derek murmured — he had the listening face again. "There's more people coming to get things ready for the funeral. We should go, you most of all."

Joe followed Derek out of the forest; he walked with such confidence she assumed he knew the way out without being seen. "Uh, so, about the funeral."

Derek stopped so abruptly she walked into his back and felt his chest rumble when he said: "You're going."

Not a question and not much emotion in that flat tone. Joe still tried to explain when he began walking again. "Only because I think Jimmy might show up. I mean, he spent the last five years or something looking into the case, who co- damn it, Derek!"

He'd turned around and stopped again so she nearly crashed into his chest. Face unreadable, mouth tight. "What's your obsession with Jimmy Carter?"

"It's not an obsession..." she began while taking a few steps back so they weren't flush against each other. His eyebrow raised and in turn raised her hackles where she decided she had nothing to defend from Derek Hale. He had no right to question anyone's obsession with anyone. "I just feel sorry for him! He was obviously bullied in high school," she waved her hands in Derek's direction who only deepened his scowl, "and yes, he might have been working for Peter Hale to some extent, but he doesn't deserve to be hunted down by the Argents either."

"If he shows up at Kate Argent's funeral, he deserves to be hunted down by them," Derek sneered and tore around again to stomp further out of the forest. Not for long, as he stopped again after a few steps without turning around. "You accused me of killing Kate-"

"Accuse is a little strong, I was just asking..."

"-because her death seemed too convenient, right? Ever thought about how she might not have died of convenience, but because of someone's twisted notion of justice?"

"You're saying Jimmy killed her?"

"I'm saying it's not impossible he did," Derek muttered and started walking again. Apparently talking about Kate was not the key to a friendly conversation with him. "You don't know the guy, Joe. Or what he's capable of."

Left speechless for a while, she waited a bit before following. At last, she muttered: "I know he helped me find you when you were being tortured for a day straight."

She saw Derek's shoulders tense, but he did not stop or say anything in response.

They finally reached the edge of the forest onto a narrow gravel road where he had parked and she realized it was on the complete opposite end of her car. It would be another half hour walk to go around the cemetery, she deduced, and glanced at her cell phone with a grimace. If she did not wash her hair, she would still be able to make it.

"Get in," Derek said from the driver's end of his car. The sleek black sportscar, a Chevrolet Camaro now that she was close enough to see the labels, sat inconspicuous on the small side-road they had emerged. When it became clear that Joe was not getting in, Derek came back up and leaned over his car."Get in, Joe."

She really needed to wash her hair.

"At least open the windows," Joe muttered defiantly and slid into the leather seat that both felt and smelled as expensive as the car otherwise looked.

He heeded her request without a word, the windows going down on either side, and she tried to discreetly angle her face out of the car. Derek apparently did not notice and he put on a pair of aviator sunglasses before starting the car with a gentle purr. It was a long way off from her hacking and sputtering old Ford.

She put her seatbelt on and tried to avoid breathing too much. It was less than five minutes to her car. She could hold her breath for five minutes, right? Apart from the proximity, this was Derek's car. As far as she knew, he slept in the damn thing and it was permeated with his smell. It was a wonder her eyes didn't start to water. It was his territory without a doubt and she felt like a trespasser.

Derek, unaware of her discomfort, drove with one arm resting in the open window and one hand on the wheel. Completely relaxed, the exact opposite of how Joe felt.

"My car's by that red house before the cemetery if you come from the-"

He answered without looking at her. "I know."

With raised eyebrows, she turned to Derek who seemed a bit too suave for her liking. "Okay, hotshot, can I ask you a question for once?"

He shrugged, as if it did not matter either way to him.

"What were you doing in my bed that night of the full moon?"

It might have been wishful thinking, but she thought he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. With the sunglasses, it was even harder to gauge his expression and he did not seem like the kind of person to become embarassed either way. His voice was level when he finally answered. "Trying to not tear Scott into pieces."

The Camaro rolled to a smooth stop next to her old Ford.

As much as she had wanted to jump out of the car only thirty seconds ago, she stayed put. "That was like the first level of a multi-layered answer. How is my bed and your self control related in any way?"

Derek gripped the steering wheel with both hands even though they were parked. Without turning his head in her direction, he took a deep and possibly annoyed breath that came out with a growling undertone. "You want to do this now? Are you sure?" Before she could answer, he continued. "Because I'm not wasting my time trying to explain anything until you're ready to believe."

He turned towards her and she saw her own expression mirrored in his sunglasses. She was subconsciously making a skeptical face.

Joe tried to make her expression neutral, but her face was equally bad at lying as her voice. "Believe is such a heavy word-"

"We're not doing this now. Get out."

"Go home, get in, get out — didn't your momma ever teach you the magic word?" Joe muttered while she undid her seatbelt. She got out of the car, but bent back in to smile sarcastically at him. "Thank you, Derek."

She saw the hint of a beginning eye roll as she slammed the door shut. He tore off before she could unlock her own car and she made a rude gesture at the retreating sportscar. Ass.

"Mr. Argent! Mrs. Argent, can we get a few words? Just a few words! A few words, Mrs. Argent! Mr. Argent! Please!"

The reporters were going mad when the Argents arrived to take their space. Extra policemen were on duty to keep the reporters on the right side of the barrier and they tried to shield the family of three from the cameras, only succeeding halfway. Three lines of chairs were set up next to the open grave and closed casket already waiting.

Joe pulled on the biggest sunglasses she had found back at the house and clutched the wide-brimmed hat down when exiting her car. The cold wind ripped at the police banners and sparse flower decorations surrounding the grave. Another car pulled up, but whoever exited was surrounded by a trio of large bodyguards. Joe took advantage of the distraction and darted inside the barrier tape, her heels sinking down into the wet ground.

Chris Argent still stood by the front line of chairs, while his wife and daughter had sat down, probably facing the same struggles Joe did with their footwear. His face grim, as appropriate for the occassion, he only nodded at Joe's arrival.

"Sorry for your loss," Joe said automatically and curtsied as much as her attire allowed.

His voice sounded gravelly. "Thank you for coming."

Joe took a seat at the far back, holding onto her hat so the wind didn't take off with it. Allison turned in her chair and gave Joe a tight smile, one that Joe tried to return. Almost twenty seats and less than a third of them filled. In addition to the Argents she knew, the rest looked to be serious-faced men in dark clothing that she doubted were Kate's friends from college.

Her plan of trying to find Jimmy in the throng of reporters without getting her picture plastered on every tabloid newspaper was proving harder than she thought. At least the sunglasses concealed where she was looking and she scanned the lines of reporters and other spectators. Derek had a point about Jimmy showing his face at a location that was sure to be crawling with Argents. She doubted his paranoia had subsided after turning into a werewolf. Still, would he let this opportunity pass?

The wind tickled the still damp strands of hair in her neck. Some instinct made her turn towards the woods instead, where she and Derek had stood concealed earlier. It offered a good vantage point over the ceremony without a chance of being seen. With her head twisted to the side, she missed the arrival of the old man approaching her with his cronies on either side.

"Christopher tells me you are the woman who held my daughter alive long enough to reach the hospital." His voice was as cold and dead as the body in the casket. Joe turned slowly and faced the old man who stood above her. He looked like an old grandfather, white hair and wrinkles that were too heavy set to be from smiling.

"I, uh..." Joe had no words. This was Kate and Chris' dad? Before she could line up her thoughts, he clasped her hand in his gloved ones.

"We are in your debt," he said seriously and gave a smile that revealed he was definitely Kate's father. "Gerard Argent."

"Uh...I'm sorry for your loss," Joe stuttered. Having the Argents indebted to her was the last thing she wanted. Polite niceties took over and she blurted: "Sorry, I'm Josefina Delgado, wish we could meet under better circumstances..."

The older Argent nodded and let go off her hand. He took his seat in the front, next to Chris' wife. The bodyguards remained standing. Apart from Chris' wife and Allison, there were no other women attending the service. No mother then. Gerard Argent gave some sort of signal to the priest and the ceremony started.

The reporters fell silent, but took pictures throughout everything. Joe found herself focusing on Gerard Argent — he sat with a rimrod back, refusing to acknowledge the vultures with cameras. Having the ceremony outdoors in the middle of winter did not make much sense unless they wanted the publicity. Or they tried to prove a point that this was not enough to break them.

Joe, feeling as much as a spectator like the reporters, studied the other attendants. Only Allison looked sad. No one looked happy, most of them grim and stoic, but no one cried or showed any sign of suffering a loss. Closed casket, with a picture of a smiling Kate on top. Not that there was anything wrong or strange about a closed casket, but Kate's injuries had not been that bad and Joe figured it would have fit better with their image to have an open casket to really throw it in everyone's face how resilient they were.

The priest kept his sermon neutral. He talked a lot about forgiveness, which seemed appropriate in the funeral of a mass-murderer. Nothing about Kate being in a better place. It probably went against his principles to outright lie like that. Kate's last apology to Peter echoed in Joe's ears. Her plea to shoot had seemed more heartfelt.

The priest prompted if someone would like to say something, but no one even looked up. Clearing his throat, the priest moved on with the funeral. Joe's eyes were still hidden behind the sunglasses, dry as the desert when the casket was lowered down into the grave. She slumped back on the chair and turned to the woods again. Was he out there?

A movement on the far edge made her sit up straighter. Sheriff Stilinski moved with long strides towards a statue and Joe closed her eyes in defeat when he pulled out Scott and Stiles by the backs of their shirts. She kept her head turned towards the front in order to not alert the other funeral-goers and noticed Allison doing the same with a bit too much conviction. Idiots.

The funeral ended without the usual meet-and-greet as Joe always thought of them, where the attendants stood in line to offer their condolences to the immediate family. The Argents fled the scene when the casket and accompanying flowers were in the ground, leaving the rest to shuffle out. The reporters focused on the Argents and Joe was able to slip away to her car without too much hassle.

Unlocking the door with trembling fingers — the funeral getup was not suitable for the California winter — she had the same sensation of being watched as before. She looked up towards the nearest forest line, but it was empty as ever, all the humanoid shapes a product of her own imagination. Turning back, she realized Chris and Gerard Argent were engaged in a deep discussion by their cars. Chris gestured a bit towards her and Gerard scrutinized her from afar.

He caught her eyes and instead of looking away, he gave her a solemn nod. She returned it, heart beating harshly in her chest, before escaping into her car.

While Derek's stare could get intense, Gerard Argent seemed to look straight through her. She had the feeling that being the focus of that man's attention was a bad place to be.

Instead of going home, Joe found herself taking the route to the hospital. The girl was still not found, according to the local radio reports, and search parties were being organized in about an hour. The temperature would reach freezing tonight and she would likely not survive without shelter. Did werewolves handle the cold better than humans? Joe had no way of knowing. Was the girl even a werewolf? Not even Derek knew apparently. She thought he would be able to determine it from smell alone, but apparently not.

One advantage of having her aunt working at the hospital at more than full time was that Joe's presence did not cause suspicion among anyone there. She greeted the receptionist, smiled at the security guards, and stopped briefly for small-talk with some of Aunt Mel's closest colleagues. Everyone not busy with patients or reports were headed for the break room for the afternoon lunch and Joe used the opportunity to break into the security's control room.

The lockpicking kit came in handy after all.

What Derek said earlier struck a chord with her. Had Jimmy killed Kate at the hospital? She locked the door behind her and dove towards the surveillance center. The password was on a post-it hanging on the screen itself. A fractioned image of the hospital in real-time showed on the dozen screens, but Joe went straight for the log from the night Kate died. Another advantage of Aunt Mel working in the ER, Joe knew the layout good enough to find the right cameras quickly.

She watched the trauma surgeon from the helicopter accompany the stretcher arriving at the hospital. Moving to the next camera, she followed Kate's unconscious form with a breathing mask being rolled down the hallway to the surgery room. Fast-forwarding through the surgery itself, grimacing at the scalpels and other clinical instruments, she finally found where they put Kate for recovery. No cameras inside the rooms itself, it would be a major breach of privacy, but she saw the hallway and the policemen standing guard outside a door.

Fast-forwarding, the policemen shifted around, one left briefly only to return, the other one left and returned with coffee cups, they drank coffee, they stood-

Wait.

Joe rewound the footage and replayed it at normal speed. One minute the two policemen were drinking coffee, obviously talking to each other, the next image both coffee cups were gone. She repeated the scene twice more. No obvious friction in the footage, nothing to indicate the camera stopped recording. The time stamp looked right too, but it was almost like the tape had been spliced. Coffe cups - bam - no coffee cups.

She let the video continue and sure enough, only seconds later, nurses sprinted into the room the policemen were guarding. Fast-forwarding until they rolled out a body covered in a white sheet.

Joe's insides felt frozen. The time stamp looked correct, but did the cops just throw away their coffee cups in a blink of an eye? Maybe the raw footage would show how much time was lost, but that required more computer skills than Joe had. She checked the nearby cameras and sure enough, by the rear entrance to the morgue, a nurse suddenly appeared in the frame out of nowhere. Spliced footage.

Conversation filtered in from outside the hallway. Break must be over. Joe hurriedly closed all the files and then deleted the footage of herself breaking in. She glanced at the door, just a few more seconds before she could get out. Copying an old file and changing the name to replaced the lost footage of herself, she typed so fast her fingers were a blur on the keyboard. Come on, come on.

The lock started twisting on the door and Joe put the computer back in sleep mode. She rushed her phone out and hopped onto the desk when the door opened.

"...and I told him over and over that I was not interested in an open relationship with his room-"

"What the hell?" asked Mike, one of the burly nightshift security guard as he opened the door to reveal Joe lounging on his desk.

Joe peered up from her fake phone call, holding over the microphone in mock indignance. "Do you mind? This is a private conversation."

"You're not supposed to be in here!" he barked and shooed Joe out. She continued babbling into the phone while Mike yelled at his partner for forgetting to lock the door — again! Joe left them squabbling and hurried down the hall before they remembered she was there. She took the hallway turns to find the morgue where the tape had been meddled with.

This area was sparse with surveillance, she noticed. The morgue had a separate exit to another parking lot. Had Jimmy come in through here? Or did Kate leave?

You know how many cops we have on our payroll?

Closed casket. No tears shed at the funeral. Could Kate still be alive?

It's so crazy that there's over 100 reviews on this story now! Thank you, you are all so seriously awesome. Also, 'Dereks True Mate', big thanks to you for leaving a comment on all the new chapters. So validating, I feel so blessed.

So, for the story, Derek's hot and cold, which is to be expected, as he has other things to worry about during this time. Joe's not exactly easy to work with either and she's too busy playing detective to be swept off her feet right away.

Let me know what you think! Number one reason I'm updating so frequently is because I'm so eager for your feedback! Thank you for reading, stay safe :)