Author's Note

The Prosecutor's POV

The Lost Guard: 3

I had been informed of the situation, and the crime that had been committed. I had been told of the guard, found by his bedside. The Stallion had been better off dead, by the looks of it.

Oh well, that's not my problem. His mental state is for another to care for. My duty is to interrogate him, which is more than bad enough. I can't enjoy it, how could I. I have a heart and I intend to make it stay that way. I'm just yet another unfortunate soul, on whose shoulders the responsibility falls, and squarely so.

“I take it you could as well seek a new job, and not just a new employer, since he is as dead as dust!” I pointed out.

“Yeah, isn't that why I'm here!” he merely moaned in a sorry excuse for a voice.

“I'm afraid that's why we're both here. He was confirmed dead on arrival, no question about it, yet no blade was found, and no other sign on what caused his death. His blood on the floor, his head completely severed from his body. There was nothing more. You were found on the scene of the crime, apparently devastated. I have clear and irrefutable confirmation that it was your job, your duty to guard him, his door. Am I to take it you found him in this state?” I enquired in a mild and as friendly a voice as I could muster.

It was my duty to guard him, and the door. I found him ruined. I saw nothing as I entered the room in order to wake him at the appointed time. The rest is a blank, after that!” the poor Stallion, or rather the remains of one sobbed.

“If you did not see anything remarkable once you entered the room, did you by any chance hear or see anything prior to your horrific discovery?” I continued in hope I could have anything to go on.

“There is the one thing I heard, a demented laughter, it was short, and then nothing. I neither heard, nor saw any enter, nor exit the room. Nothing. Just the laughter!” he confessed, as if it had been his own mother he had just sold.

“Just a Demented laughter? That is all you heard!” I responded, in order to confirm what I thought I had heard.

“If a pony laughed like that, she's seriously demented!” he squealed in anguish.

“Now I am worried about you. Either you heard some really demented pony, or you're totally losing it. There's the risk of both. I really wish it wasn't my place to torment you further on this point, but somepony has to ask the questions, and it fell upon my shoulders!” I pointed out, clearly cringing.

“Right now, I wish I had never woken up, or that this had at least not been my night by the door!” he merely whined, before closing his eyes, as if trying to make it all go away, before breaking out in a renewed sobbing.

By the looks, I could as well take him to a protective custody, he would need it, and with hope against hope, it may do him some good.

As I looked up from the file, just a moment later, I realised he was to give me nothing further. I could as well send him out, keeping him wouldn't help me solving this case.

“Guards, take him to a secure cell on plane three. Make sure he is safe, clean and cared for. Even if I may never get another word out of him, he is to be cared for and safe!” I pronounced.

“Yes!” the first of the guards replied, before they escorted the charge out of the room, and to the room I had directed them to.

Then I noticed something, the room where the victim had been sleeping only have a small window towards the inner yard. Very little hope for any pony, or any other to either enter, or exit, even if it had not been observed from the outside.

If he hadn't done it, could he have closed the window after the culprit? That should be evident soon, since we would catch him in his act, if he was protecting a culprit.