Twilight Sparkle slept in Dusk Shine's bed that night, and found herself awaking at a reasonable time the morning after, long before the sun rose. She used the time to clean up the dining room and box away her excess supplies and assorted kibble, and to listen again to the recordings of the detectives' interview with Wind Rider.
The recording-stones were already losing their clarity; a few more re-plays and they'd be nothing but static, stone and stone's natural resonance alone. Twilight committed Wind Rider's beaten-iron voice to memory before it was lost to mystical entropy.
No, I don't know what's going on. I was burying my son. Isn't there some young boy- fffzzzztt -should be buggering, faggot?
Oh, honey, you know you're more my type. Big, strong man of business, of authority. I was always a Ginsburg twink, don't you- ffftzzzttztt -'Saintly motorcyclists'… mmm.
Bah. Never could get a real rise out of you, could I, Eyes? I know that they find your bullshit amusing down in Baltimore, but how is- ffftzzt -drive you out of town with torches and pitchforks?
Aw, you know they love their country queers up here, when the pastor's out of- fttztztt*click*
Twilight frowned at the rude by-play. It wasn't any more palatable now than the last time she'd heard it. She started up the decaying recording again.
No, you couldn't, Rider. Sorry to hear about your boy. Soarin was a good sort. Shame we saw so much of him.
Yeah, well… we'll see about all that.
Ah, Rider, you better not be making threats in the hearing of police detectives.
No, I'm not taking my people a thousand road-miles into some damn place we don't know from Adam. No… no. The boy just walked into the wrong place at the wrong time. Do they even have a suspect?
I couldn't tell you, even if I knew, you know that. It's as crazy out of my jurisdiction as it is out of- ffffzzzttt -it sounds like one of those situations where there were a dozen people pulling triggers, on both sides. For all anybody knows, Soarin could have gotten shot by one of his own. Happens more often than you'd think.
Die by the sword, yeah. Boy shouldn't have been carrying. Boy told me he was getting away from-
fffzzzzttztttzttztztztttttt
-me to believe that, Rider? The Rangers say it was some sort of big meth deal. You weren't expanding operations?
What the hell do I know about Texas, detective? I'm just a- ffffffzztztztztttt -got too much sunk into the Bottoms, and my businesses. We don't have the manpower to go chasing Salvajes in injun country. I just wish- fffftststtsttst -boy would have been safer at home. 'Tell God your plans'- ffftzttzttzt -old bastard's laughing now, isn't he?
So, about the second- fzzzztztztttttztztztz -don't you think? Hell of a coincidence.
I was too busy in the funeral home, Eyes. Fighting with that damn rainbow-haired bitch. Can you believe this? Little dyke has a hell of a- ffftztztztzt -don't know what I'm gonna do. At least the boy's momma's gone, she'd have died all over again to have that mean little viper show up and claim to be her Soarin's old lady. Honor run my ass.
The second body, Wind Rider. Whet Stone here's been listenin' patiently, but- ffffztztztt -just come clean, nobody will think the worse of you. It was your *boy*, Rider.
I don't know where that corpse came from, detective- fffztttatzzttzttt -claim it if I knew who it was- fztztzttztttttt….
And that was it, the rest of the recording was nothing but static and whispers Twilight couldn't make out.
It wasn't enough. The Wind Rider Poppy Seed had described to her was a petty drug dealer and a mountain nobody. Poppy thought the local cops were fools. The detective in the recordings was no fool, and knew Wind Rider enough to snipe back and forth with him like old college roomies.
Was Wind Rider another Sombra? They said that Sombra had never been the same after he lost Cadance's mother. That something went out of him. Or maybe something crawled into the hole left when Radiant Hope died. Was this what Twilight was hearing through all of that static and poor recording-quality? Was this a man who had gotten his revenge on the world?
Wind Rider sounded tired. Sombra, for all of his other qualities, had never been… weak.
Twilight looked out the dining room window, and saw that it was getting light out. She went to wake up Flurry Heart.
***
While Skyla was using the bathroom, Dusk Shine kicked on her shoes, and unlocked the front door to take in the morning. The sun wasn't quite up, and the parking lot was misty, diffusing the glare from the replaced spot-light. Someone at the funeral home had been busy, looked like. It gave Dusk plenty of light to work with. She stood at the top of her small flight of stairs looking down towards the pavement, and eyed the bottom step and the cheap concrete in front of the steps.
So the late Stormbringer hadn't died here? Now that Dusk knew that, it was obvious. No bloodstains, no signs of a struggle. She thought back to the little fractured glimpses she'd seen in the dodgy light of her smartphone's weak flashlight. Arms arranged crossed in front of his bloodied shirt, eyes closed, not twisted around or distorted or otherwise disturbed.
Someone had laid the body there on the sidewalk, as if they'd needed their hands free for something. Or laying down a heavy burden while… what? Waiting for someone, or something? Why would someone bring a murdered body into the heart of a small city, in the middle of the evening? They had to have broken the spotlight, it had been intact the evening before, and she was pretty sure the morning before they'd left for school.
Dusk Shine looked around the parking lot. And then over at the sign advertising the funeral home's crematory services on the garage, Dashville's Victorian Crematorium, a fancy sign in an artsy fin de siecle style she'd seen elsewhere in town.
Someone had brought an inconvenient corpse to a crematorium. Dusk Shine felt stupid for not having seen it earlier. She wondered if the cops had made the connection?
They must have, Soft Eyes didn't strike her as that sort of stupid.
Dusk Shine walked down into the parking lot, and spun around, looking at all the angles. A passage to the alley twenty-five feet to her right, the back entrance to the funeral home was, say, sixty feet directly in front of her, past Skyla's and her bedroom windows, the dining room window, and the funeral home's turnaround.
Where was the panel van? The cops must have impounded it. Wouldn't they have?
Dusk Shine started to walk over to the passageway into the alley, when she heard something, a muffled wail – and her head whipped around to her own front door.
Flurry Heart!
Twilight Sparkle kicked into a run from a dead start, dashing across the parking lot and leaping up those stairs, her front door banging wildly as she burst into Dusk Shine's apartment.
A streak of pink and blue and purple hit Twilight just above her solar plexus, and she grabbed the sobbing little girl, dropping to her knees on the cheap carpeting in the hallway.
"Shush, shush, shush, I'm here baby. I didn't go anywhere, see? I was just out in the parking lot."
"Don't ever do that, mommy. Don't go away."
"I'm not going anywhere, Skyla. Now let me get my shoes back off, I need to shower up and get ready for school. You want some orange juice?"
Dusk Shine agreed to take Skyla to the library that evening, and between babying a clearly stressed little girl, and working on grading her students' returned homework from the assignments she'd given the day before, she didn't have time to worry about corpses and bikers until very late, and by then, it was too late to do anything but make plans for the weekend.
Twilight discovered the next time she checked the police station bug that the thaumic charge had run out. All she was getting was dead air. She disassembled the surveillance rig, and listened to the last few interviews she'd captured while she'd been busy at the school. Nothing of interest, right up to the moment that the sound cut out.
In a few days, even the record-obsidian would be nothing but dead stone again, and the only evidence that would exist that she'd illegally bugged the authorities would be a rather New-Age-ish bracelet in the lost-and-found basket at the front desk of the police station.
Twilight made a call on Dusk Shine's smart-phone, using the number on the business card that those two biker-mechanics had given her before all of this nonsense began. She got an answering machine.
Twilight Sparkle didn't leave a message.
***
Dusk Shine left school for lunch again on Friday, driving the blue Beetle across town and down into the Bottoms. She followed the directions she'd saved on her phone, finding Forge Road where it diverged off of Water Street, back along the railroad. A cluster of aging shacks and warehouses ended in a crowded parking-lot half-full of the sort of mix of battered junkers and gorgeous vehicles that was the mark of a good custom place.
Dusk Shine could tell that whomever had made the sign for the Wax Brothers' 'Victorian Crematorium' on the garage outside of Dusk Shine's front door, had painted the sign that advertised 'Silversmith Custom Motors', despite the completely different subject matter and superficial style. The sign had a beautiful fifties-advert-style rendition of a hot rod racing a chopper into the name of the custom shop, done up Kustom Kulture-style. Dusk was beginning to want to meet the artist or artists behind these signs…
Dusk Shine pulled the blue Beetle into an open stall in the Silversmith parking lot, and went looking for the front office. She failed to find anything that really resembled Twilight Sparkle's idea of an office, but in her explorations came across the Probie in one of the garages, leaning over a low-slung and exotic-looking motorcycle that she didn't really know enough about to describe except that it was all chromed-up, and half-disassembled.
"Hello there, uh, Probie?"
"Mmm, what? Oh! Hello, Miss! How'd you get in here?"
"Garage door's wide open, Mr. Probie. Is Mr. Back here?"
"Ah, Sentry. Flash Sentry. 'Probie' isn't a name. Call me Flash, please."
"Mr. Sentry, is Mr. Silver Back here? He said something about taking a look at my Beetle. It's been too many months since my last maintenance visit, and that was on the other side of the country. Mr. Back was right, I needed to make arrangements here, now that I'm living in Dashville. Is he around?"
"Ah, nah. He's… visiting a client. Should be back in a few minutes, maybe fifteen?"
There was an awkward moment, and Dusk remembered her manners.
"Sorry about the other night. I didn't say anything when the cops just up and pushed you down, and hauled you away. You got out OK?"
"Yeah, naw, it wasn't nothing. Part of the life, yanno? They didn't have anything on me, I just got to see the inside of the tank. Again. Won't even be a mark on my jacket. Aside from, well, the scuffs on my cut." Dusk followed his eyes over to where the leather article of clothing was carefully draped over a wire hanger on the wall, next to a rack of tools. You could see a bit of a mark where he'd been dragged across the concrete sidewalk.
"I appreciate you asking, though. Nice of ya, after we left our business on your front steps, or so I hear."
"Is that what it was, your business?"
"Well, hell, what else could it be? Bikers attract other bikers. It's like we've all got asshole magnets stitched into the back of our cuts. Ah, it's nothing I should be talkin' about to a nice lady like yourself. Uh… I could look at your car until Silver Back gets back, if you like. Not like I'm really up on my Volkswagens, but I could give it a glance."
"Is there much difference between a Bug and any other car of the time?"
"Are you having me on? Each company, it's like they speak different languages, or at least dialects. Some of 'em, you can sort of figure it out, if you know one of their relative languages. Like figuring out Spanish from knowin' Italian."
"Does it take much study, becoming an auto mechanic?"
"Seems like, yeah. We don't really do the newer cars, though. It's getting so ya have ta take a degree in computer programming to keep up with all of that crap. Easier to just work on classic cars and motorcycles."
"Surely the newer motorcycles have computerized fuel injection and so forth?"
"Yeeeahh…" the biker drawled, squinting a bit at Dusk. "That's true enough. But every company has a different way of doing things, and different manuals to wade through. We're set up for Harleys, mostly. The MCs up here are pretty conservative when it comes to their hogs. The hobbyists and the daytrippers, they get their work done elsewhere for the most part. Down in Asheville, I think, some of 'em?"
"So you're saying that you can deal with one way of programming your engines, but not another, slightly different way? Aren't you kind of young to be this set in your ways?"
"I'm not set in my ways, I'm still learning! I-"
Dusk Shine blushed, realizing what she was doing. "I'm sorry, Mr. Sentry, I didn't mean to poke at you. Yes, of course, you can look at my Beetle. Not that there's much to look at, it's pretty much factory standard."
They stepped out into the early-fall sunlight, and Dusk went around to the back of her car, cracking open the engine compartment.
"So what is it, a '76?" asked Flash Sentry.
"No, I'm pretty sure it's a '73 or '74. Sixty horsepower, of course, or else I couldn't take it out on the interstate, not with- with Skyla riding along. Just wouldn't feel safe, I don't think."
"Yeah, you see the older underpowered models on the Cruise occasionally, but I hear tell they're pains in the ass to keep running. Looks to be in pretty good shape. Of course, air-cooled makes for limited ways that your radiator can mess things up in the engine compartment. Had it checked over recently?"
"Uh, I think so, last time? It may have been a year or two." Twilight's father had been the one to deal with maintenance issues, he always had her drive back to Canterlot City to use the family's favorite mechanic, an ancient expert named Gearshaft.
"Huh, a manual transmission. The later models had automatics, you're cool with stick?"
"This was the car my father taught me to drive. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with an automatic transmission."
"Well, then. Silver will want to do his own evaluation, of course, but it doesn't look like a crisis job. Probably start with an oil and filter change, and go over it stem to stern for rust-checks and the like. Not sure if we have Bug filters on hand, probably have to special order…"
Shouting suddenly interrupted Dusk Shine and Flash Sentry's cozy little consultation, as a door slammed open across the parking lot in a one-story building on the next lot over. Dusk couldn't quite hear the beginning of the argument, but the rest of it –
"-I ain't gonna do it, and that's final! I don't care what you and the rest of them idjits do; it ain't my business, and you can't make it mine! Piss off, Rider!"
"Who else am I gonna get to do this? Thunderlane? Are you fucking kidding me? See reason, Silver!"
"See shit and die, you old ditch-diggin' dumbass!"
"BOSS!" yelled Flash Sentry, his face as red as his sallow complexion allowed. "We gotta customer!"
"What? Oh, hell. Hello, little lady. Sorry about all that. Uh, Wind Rider, this is that sweet little thing with the mint Bug I mighta mentioned before. Uh, Sunshine Dusk was it?"
"I don't remember you sayin'-" "My name is Dusk Shine-"
Dusk blushed herself, mortified at having talked over the big scary biker-king. He was somehow bigger close up, taller than anyone she'd met since- well, a while now. Looking kind of pale, though, and baggy around the eyes as she stared steadily up into their weak and watery grey haze.
You couldn't look away from a predator, they might take it as an opening.
"Huh. Another hardassed twist. You're crawling out of the woodwork all over the place now, aren't you? Stay out of my way, lady. Silver, this ain't over. See reason. I gotta go take care of – oh, what the hell now?"
Two huge motorcycles came rolling down Forge Road just as Wind Rider had turned around to stalk back into whatever hole he had crawled out of. On their broad backs were the two small biker-girls who Dusk Shine had seen earlier in the week at the police station, and behind the grey-haired one was the tall pink-haired one, curled up like she was cupping the much smaller woman behind the handlebars.
Dusk put names to the faces – Blitz on her own bike, Gilda and Butterscotch riding tandem. All of them looking stern and serious.
Or, in Butterscotch's case, scared enough to wet herself.
"Hey, you old fucker! I want what I came for! I came to bury Soarin, and I'm gonna do it if I gotta bury you over top of him!"
"You rainbow twat! Get out of my town! Get offa my property! You got my boy killed! Get outta here before I go get my shotgun and paint the street with your innards!"
The rainbow-haired one dropped her kickstand and leaped off her 'bike, blood in her eye and her gloved hands curled into fists. The ash-haired one elbowed the big pink-haired one, and as the taller girl slid off the back of their bike, the rider gunned it forward so that the third girl's charge was cut off.
"Fuck you! This was your goddamn fault, and I came here to tell you that to your face, you miserable bastard! We didn't have nothin to do with the Salvajes, or any of that crap, until you started with those damn phone calls. I didn't get Soarin killed – you did! Whatever the hell you told him, he just started getting crazy. Started pushing for deals. We woulda never been there when it all went to hell if he hadn't been listening to your damn calls. So come and get it, old man! I'll give you a matching pair of black eyes, make you goddamn symmetrical!" Blitz spun around and tried to get around the back end of her friend's big steel barrier, and Gilda backed her motorcycle up so that she kept it between the raging little kaleidoscope and the target of her fury.
When Dusk Shine looked back at the outlaw biker, she saw that Silver Back was holding him back. The smaller man had grabbed the taller man around his waist, and both of them spun to maintain eye contact with the girls. Silver Back's powerful arms squeezed like a pair of pliers, keeping Wind Rider from advancing to meet Blitz's frustrated charge. Wind Rider's face was growing an alarming mottled mixture of red and grey, and he looked more like he was having a stroke than a fit of temper. As Twi- as Dusk Shine watched in fascinated horror, she thought she saw the old man's legs were shaking. The way Silver Back was hugging Wind Rider, she couldn't be sure if it he was holding him back, or holding him up.
"Hey, goddamnit!" barked the struggling Silver Back into his friend's ear, his muscles bunching and straining. "This here ain't your property, Rider, it's mine! I don't give a damn how much I owe you, the land's mine, the shop's mine! And I say who beats down who on my property. Settle the fuck down."
The alarming blend of choler and greyness in the old bull's face was fading as Dusk Shine watched. She could have sworn she saw his eyes re-focus, and then glance down with renewed intelligence at the snarling rainbow-haired Blitz, leaning over her friend's revving engine and restraining arm.
"Get," started WindRider, weakly, and cleared his throat, Silver Back's arms still gripped tightly around his waist. "Get this bitch out of my sight. The boy's not in the Bottoms, anyways. Lost Wax is preparing him for the last ride. Which I will give him. As is my right. You, you little shit, have done enough to this family. Go-"
And now Dusk Shine was almost positive that it was Silver Back's arms keeping the old biker upright, rather than 'restraining him'.
"Go away, little girl."
He finally slapped away Silver Back's supporting arms, and turned away, walking with a wounded sort of gravity in the direction of the building across the way that the two old men had emerged only a few short minutes ago.
Silver Back turned away from his friend, and glared at the three biker chicks, who were looking as if they were trying to decide between confusion and anger.
"And this is still my property. You three. Get off of it. You're not welcome here."
"But-" started Blitz, trying to build up another head of fury.
"Go. Away. Th' last ride will be on Sunday morning. They usually do some something stupid and showy to choose who carries the urn. Wind Rider's forgotten it, but the man's got things on his mind, no thanks to you, you dumbass. I swear, you're worse than Rider is right now." The aging biker, who had looked smaller beside the towering Wind Rider, was suddenly the tallest person in the parking lot, and he loomed over the tiny Texan like an an undercut creekside bluff thinking about throwing a little bit of a landslide downslope.
"Because of you idjits and his boy, Rider ain't in a frame ah mind to remember much, so I'll have to remember it for him. And probably organize it, goddamn it. It's usually something stupid and cliche, like a wrestling match or fastest rider to figure out who carries the urn on the last ride." The burly old man turned away from the tangle of biker chicks and excessively large motorcycles.
"The boys'll be meeting up at the clubhouse out on Benham Road. Opposite of the country market at the Benham and Reedy Creek crossroads. 8:30 AM. Now get outta my sight. Oh, Miss Shine. Sorry again about all this. We're generally better than this. I'm afraid I won't have time to look at your Bug until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. Can you come back then?"
Dusk Shine was a little distracted. She couldn't help but stare at the tall, lanky pink-haired girl scurrying forward to rejoin her fellow biker-chicks as they got back on their bikes and left. Butterscotch had held back from the confrontation, arms crossed and her eyes hidden behind that long fall of model-class hair. Now she was muttering worriedly to the little grey-haired one, Gilda. She'd come here, knowing there would be trouble, but she'd stepped back from the chaos and just let it happen. What was this Butterscotch's game? Why was she here?
"Uh - yes, sir, of course Mr. Back. I have to get back to work, I'm going to miss my afternoon classes if I don't hurry, thank you. Mr. Sentry, thank you for your suggestions."
Dusk Shine strode forward decisively, and shook hands with Silver Back. She grasped his hand firmly with her right, and grabbing his arm with her left, an aggressive gesture she'd seen Sombra use whenever he was politicking and in 'King' mode. The biker looked a little astonished at this close contact from a random would-be customer, but rolled with it. He really was a big old teddy-bear, Dusk decided.
As Dusk Shine got into her Beetle, she discreetly hid a grey strand of hair in her fist. She'd spotted it hanging from Back's arm- pulled from the disheveled Wind Rider's scalp in the confrontation. That would be useful. Twilight Sparkle knew a trick you could pull with hair, if the emotions were strong enough.
In the end, Dusk Shine was only five minutes late for her afternoon classes. Blue Grass gave her the stink-eye, but she didn't say anything as the school's newest teacher half-sprinted through past the office and back towards the third-grade classrooms.
It was only halfway through her first lesson of the afternoon that Dusk Shine looked down, and spotted the big grease stain on the sleeve of her best jacket. She blushed, and took it off, choosing to work in shirt-sleeves for the rest of the day.