The Bloody Pillow

As it happened, all three of us who live together have been out of town for the weekend. My housemate Owl happened to get back earlier than the rest of us, and this is what she found:

Her door, at the landing of the first flight of stairs, was open; I can tell you from personal memory that it was closed when we left. The light to the bathroom next to her door was on; it had been off. In her room, she noticed her fake sword was missing. The books and stuffed animals on her bed had been moved neatly to the side, and there was dirt and drops of blood on her sheets and a pool of it staining her pillow.

There are, to my knowledge, six people with keys to our apartment. Walrus and I are here, in a state far away. Owl was obviously not there for the duration. Our friend Arisbe has one kind of by accident, but she's also in a different state. The two people both in the same city and having a key are the landlord and my friend who is taking care of my cat.

First order of business, we contacted those two. The landlord claims not to have been in our apartment since last I was there with him. My friend taking care of the cat said that Owl's door had been open every time he'd been there, though he hadn't gone far enough in to notice the blood and dirt. The cat was fine and nothing obvious had been messed up- no outer doors or windows open, no footprints in the house, nothing missing. The window between when we left and the first time he was there is approximately 18 hours.

Second order of business was to contact the police. They found nothing I hadn't already gathered; the blood pattern sounds like a nosebleed, and there was no sign of forced entry or robbery. Either all the cop shows are paying off, or these police folk aren't any better at their job in person than I am FROM MILES AWAY. According to Owl, the officer who came to look around thinks that Walrus and I somehow had a drunken revel (we don't drink) and forgot to clean up only Owl's room of all things. Did I mention that we are in a different state?

Walrus theorized that it was elves. When we told this to Owl, she said that this is what the police seemed to think, too.

Drat those elves.