The bus rattled to a halt in front of the station, a long silver building with “Breezy Bus” painted in blue letters along the side, glowing in the afternoon sun. The doors opened with a hiss and passengers began to disembark, the bus creaking back and forth beneath the weight of many hooves and paws and talons.
Daring stepped out first, tilting her pith helmet back to take in the town of Trottingham. Perched on the banks of the Maresippi nearly an hour southwest of Ponyville, the city was only about a tenth of the size of its older sister. The bus station sat at what appeared to be the mouth of Main Street, a two-lane street lined with buildings like soldiers at attention: barbershops, cafes, clothing stores, and other small-city comforts displayed themselves for the passing pedestrians and cars. Apartments sat on top of the stores, their windows looking down onto the street.
“This is cozy,” she remarked to the two stallions following her down.
“The metal shop is about a half-mile this way,” Phillip said, nodding down a side street.
“I need to get down to the police station, speak to Silver,” Vinny said, stumbling slightly as he tugged his bulging suitcase out of the bus. “I’ll meet you down there. See ya, fellas.” He waved them off and hailed a cab.
“Right,” Phillip said as they started walking down the side street towards their target. “Let’s walk through it again.”
“Okay,” Daring said. “Two nights ago, Gold Plate closed up his shop at five o’clock. Based on Silver Plate’s statement and testimony from a neighbor, Silver Plate arrived there about ten minutes after. He and Gold argued loudly, then Silver claims that he left in a huff. Around six o’clock, the neighbor walked past, realized that she hadn’t seen Gold come out, and found out the door was unlocked. She looked inside, found Gold with his head caved in, and called the police. Silver got there a few hours later. When the police were questioning him, he was arrested when he couldn’t give an alibi for that night.” She frowned. “Some stupid candlesticks. Really stupid reason to kill somepony, let alone your own father.”
“I should tell you about the stallion who killed his father because he wouldn’t buy him skybox tickets for a Manticores game,” Phillip replied, glancing at a small Mareish restaurant that they walked past, noting a silver shamrock in the window beneath the blinking Open neon sign and a couple of chefs on a smoke break next to the dumpster in the alley next door. The massive green container had two bulging bags within, both stuffed with empty beer bottles.
“For a Manticores game?” Daring snorted. “Okay, that’s gotta be the stupidest reason to murder somepony.”
“There it is,” Phillip said, pointing. A two-story brick building sat on the side of the road, separated from its neighbors by a pair of short alleys. A hanging wooden sign shaped like a platter over the door displayed a pair of candleholders flanking the words Custom Metalcrafting. Gold Plate, Prop. Yellow crime scene tape covered the door and the blinds in the display windows were all drawn, obscuring any view of the interior.
A white-blue griffon in a simple gray suit was leaning against the wall outside the door, arms folded across his chest as he waited.
“Think that’s our contact?” Daring asked.
“Don’t look like he’s waiting for the store to open,” Phillip said as they approached.
“You must be Finder and Do,” the griffon nodded, stepping forward. “I’m Detective Skybrush, we spoke on the phone.”
“G’day,” Phillip nodded, shaking the proffered talon. “Appreciate you coming down to meet us.”
“Truth be told, we’re all a bit out of our depth,” Skybrush admitted. “We don’t get a lot of murders out here, and this one’s been sticking in the back of my head, like a splinter I can’t dig out. Any help you can give us would be appreciated.”
“Let’s take a butcher’s at the scene, then,” Phillip said. “You brought the scene photos?”
“Yes,” Skybrush said as they started to walk around the building, reaching beneath his coat and pulling out a manila folder. “I’ve been over these a dozen times. I know that there’s something I’m missing, but I’m just not seeing it. Honestly, I think that--”
“Hold that thought,” Daring interrupted him. “No offense, detective, we just don’t want to get any biases before we get a look at this ourselves.”
“Right, I understand,” Skybrush nodded.
“When did you arrive on-scene?” Phillip asked, pausing at the back door and crouching down to study the concrete outside it.
“The murder was called in at six PM, two nights ago,” Skybrush said. “I arrived on-scene a half-hour later. Nobody had touched anything. The body was laying behind the counter.” He shuddered. “Never seen that much blood…” He took a breath and shook his head.
“Anyway, we searched the entire first floor,” he continued. “The doors to the second floor were all locked and had no sign of forced entry, so we couldn’t get up there until the locksmith’s opened up next morning.”
“And you did notice the bloody hoofprints out the back, right?” Phillip asked, nodding at the ground. A faint line of dark, almost black stains roughly shaped like crescents stood against the concrete, leading away from the building.
“We did,” Skybrush nodded. “We saw them in the hallway inside, leading from the blood pools out the back door. Unfortunately, the trail ends just a few feet away from here, so we’re not sure where they led.”
“You never found a murder weapon, right?” Daring asked as they made their way towards the front of the building.
“Nope,” Skybrush admitted, shaking his head. “We searched every trash can inside the building and the dumpsters outside. Nothing that looked like a murder weapon.”
“Right, let’s look inside,” Phillip said as they returned to the front.
“Okay,” Skybrush nodded. He paused in front of the door and pulled a key out from his suit pocket, using it to unlock the door. The door swung open with a creak, revealing a dark interior. Precious metals glittered inside like the waiting treasures of an ancient temple.
“Mind your step,” Skybrush said, lifting up the tape to allow them entry. Phil and Daring stepped inside, ducking beneath the tape.
The darkened shop reminded Phil of a grandparents’ attic. Shelves and display cases were scattered about the open room with seemingly no rhyme or reason, all of them creaking beneath the weight of the many metal craftworks placed upon them. Candlesticks stood post over cases of jewelry; bookends carved with intricate designs held watering cans and lanterns between them, wine bottle racks were placed on the wall next to dozens of clocks of varying designs, from snowponies to cats to pianos; firewood holders, pots, trash cans, and planters littered the floor around the walls.
Skybrush switched on the light and the illusion of serenity was immediately dispelled. The wall behind the farthest counter, which had a cash register set atop it, was spattered with dark red blood, long since dried, as if someone had tossed a can of paint on the wall. A set of white tape on the floor formed the outline of a body where Gold Plate had once lain, marking one of the only clean spots in the midst of the mess.
Daring hissed as she finally saw it for herself. “Jeez. Somepony must’ve really hated that poor guy.”
“Let me see the photos,” Phillip said.
Skybrush plucked the original pictures of the crime scene out of the folder and handed them to Phillip. Phillip panned through them until he found the ones that showed Gold Plate’s body. The golden-coated unicorn was laying facedown behind the counter, his head facing away from the counter. The metalworker’s head was covered in blood, his skull warped like a slightly deflated soccer ball; more blood was spattered across his copper-colored suit. The victim’s horn lay next to the fractured head, splintered into two.
Daring let out a queasy moan over his shoulder. “Overkill much?” she asked.
“We’re pretty sure it’s not robbery,” Skybrush commented as Phillip bent down to study the blood patterns on the ground. “The cash register wasn’t broken open and a lot of these smaller trinkets were left alone. So we’re thinking that the killer knew Gold Plate and was pissed off at him for some reason.”
Phillip remained silent for several moments, studying the blood on the floor and the walls. The varying shades of red stood out to him like the dreadful scene was a deliberate, carefully constructed painting: arcs of back spatter that marked the deadly swings, arrow-like lines that pointed towards where Gold Plate’s head had lain, round drops that had dripped from the weapon, the misty, air-sprayed puddles of expirated blood that marked the craftworker’s final breaths.
“Autopsy said that he was hit in the face once, then several strikes to the back of the head,” Phillip commented.
“How they were able to tell that, I don’t know,” Skybrush muttered with a shudder.
Phillip looked up at the back wall, his eyes focusing upon an almost horizontal line of blood, noting the way the droplets had run down the wall. “That’s from the first hit,” he said, pointing it out. “Narrow castoff pattern...looks like something small.” He nodded to the round drops, each nearly the size of a bit coin. “That dripped from the weapon when he was holding it.”
“Looks to me like he was hit by somepony on the other side of the counter,” Daring said, moving to the opposite side of the counter. She swung her right hoof through the air as if striking an imaginary attacker in the face, her strike following the line of the castoff blood. “So, he was talking to somepony on the other side, other guy gets mad and smacks him with something hard…”
She looked over the countertop, studying the knickknacks scattered across the surface with seemingly no pattern or thought put to their placement, many of them stained with droplets of blood. “I think I found our murder weapon,” she announced.
“Where?” Skybrush asked in bafflement. “We checked everything on there, there’s nothing that has that amount of blood on it.”
Daring pointed to one item: a small statue of a bird with a long tail perched atop a stone. “This is a turtledove,” she said. “And there’s room for two statues on this stand here: see the indent where the other one goes?”
“Huh,” Skybrush nodded. “Didn’t notice that.”
“Whoever was here wasn’t planning on killing Gold,” Daring concluded. “He must’ve said or done something to make the other pony mad.”
Phillip turned back to study the floor. “Hmm...interesting.”
“What?” Skybrush asked, bending down.
“There’s no void pattern in the bloodstains,” Phillip said.
“Void pattern?” Skybrush asked.
“If the attacker had been standing next to Plate, there’d be a gap in the bloodstains, from where the blood sprayed on him,” Phillip said. “But there’s not. Means he was standing outside the bloodstains. Which means…” He looked up at Skybrush, giving him a prompting gesture.
The griffon detective only had to think for a moment. “It was a unicorn,” he concluded. “He beat him with his magic.”
“Right,” Phillip said, looking over to where the blood had spread across the back hallway; some faint partial hoofprints could be seen in the spatter. “But he did get some blood on him anyway when he left.” He and the griffon followed the faint trail of half-formed bloody hoofprints and droplets of blood that led down the hallway.
“He was carrying the statue next to his head as he left,” Phillip said, crouching down. “Okay, based on the length of the tracks…”
“About three-foot-two,” Skybrush said. “We did measure the tracks already. Oh, and there’s a clearer track down there. One of my colleagues says it looks like either a Trotsonian or a Gardener brand.”
Phillip gave the griffon an appraising look, then nodded approvingly. “Ripper job,” he said with a small smile.
“Hey, guys,” Daring called from the front. “I think there’s something you should see.”
The two stallions returned to the front, where Daring was gesturing at the counter. “I was taking another look at the blood up here, and I saw something. Phil, you see these bloodstains here?” She pointed at a small trio of bloodstains on the counter. Each of them had a flat border on one side, as if somepony had cut off part of the stain with a ruler.
“There was something on the counter here,” Phillip frowned. “Something box-shaped that the killer took with them.”
“Let’s have another stab at that trail,” Daring said. “I think I have an idea where he was heading.”
They followed the trail down the hallway and back out the door, into the lot. “Somepony who was that desperate to avoid blood would want to get it off them quickly and get rid of that murder weapon that they just picked up,” Daring theorized. “There’s a river near here, right?”
“Yeah, a tributary off the Maresippi,” Skybrush confirmed.
The river proved to be a short walk from the shop, with a sloping bank leading down to the rippling waters. Daring took off and hovered over the bank, slowly panning back and forth as she studied the reed-covered mud.
“Aha!” she declared a minute later, pointing. A few reeds and grass had been bent aside and faint hoofprints could be seen in the mud.
“Gardener brand, about three-foot-two,” she confirmed, following the trail down to where the blue waters lapped at the bank. “Yup, looks like he bent down here and tried to scrub himself off,” she reported. “And I bet…”
She took in a breath and dove into the water with a splash. “Uh…” Skybrush stammered, pointing.
“She does that,” Phillip admitted with a sigh.
After a few moments, Daring splashed back out of the water like a dolphin breaching the surface, a grin on her face.
“Got it!” she declared, holding out her hoof. A small pewter statue of a turtledove sat in her hoof. Drops of blood and hair clung to the little item.
“Aces,” Phillip smiled at her, holding out a bag for her to place the murder weapon into.
“Unfortunately, all this points right at Silver Plate,” Detective Skybrush pointed out. “He’s a unicorn with the right height and from what we were told, he had a reason to hate his dad.”
“Fair dinkum,” Phillip admitted. “But let’s take a look upstairs first. You got a key?”
“Yeah, but why do you want to go up there?” Skybrush asked, taking a spare key out of his pocket.
“Might be other clues in his room,” Phillip replied.
They returned back into the metal shop and Skybrush unlocked a door in the hallway, which creaked open to reveal a narrow staircase leading upstairs. They trotted upstairs and found themselves standing at the joint of an L-shaped hallway. A bathroom and linen closet was off to the right, and two bedrooms stood on either side of the hall in front of them.
“I got the left one,” Daring said, pushing forward into the left room.
Phillip entered the right one, pausing at the door to study the room with his eyes. The bed on the left was neatly made, having clearly not been slept in for a while. To the right was a small desk with a wheeled chair in front of it, the top clear of any debris or items save for a lamp and a single bronze key. The entire room was covered with a thin layer of dust.
Phillip proceeded to the desk first and opened up the bottom drawer. Inside was a lockbox and several papers tucked into envelopes, all of them addressed to Silver Plate.
“Bills,” Phillip muttered, panning through the envelopes. Every single one of the envelopes was a bill from various banks and lenders, and several were marked as late.
“No Gardener brand horseshoes,” Skybrush announced, looking up from underneath the bed. “I suppose it was too much to hope.”
Phillip grunted and turned his attention to the lockbox. Reaching into a pocket, he extracted a set of lockpicks, selected a wrench and pick, and inserted them into the lock. After thirty seconds of clicking and fumbling, the lock finally gave with a snap.
“You need more practice,” Daring called from the next room.
Phil stuck his tongue out in her direction as he opened the box. Inside were several small scraps of paper, each marked at the top with three small balls.
“Pawnshop tickets,” Phillip said, extracting and studying them one by one. The tickets went back for almost a year and were records of several items that Silver had sold at local pawnshops: cufflinks, photograph frames, books, antique coins.
“Looks like Silver wasn’t very good with his money,” Skybrush clicked his tongue over Phil’s shoulder.
Phillip paused to study some of the tickets. All the tickets were for the same item: a golden pocket watch with an image of a deer embossed on the cover. And according to them, Silver had sold and bought the watch back three times, and had sold it again less than a month ago.
“What do you think?” Skybrush asked. “Some kinda addiction?”
“Maybe,” Phillip said, returning to the other drawers of the desk. “What’s this?”
He pulled out a sheet of notepaper that appeared to be covered in mathematical calculations, with numbers corresponding to percentages. Lists of numbers and letters were bunched together in the lines, written in four different colors: black, red, green, and blue.
“You think that’s a code or something?” Skybrush asked. “K4529, 55A89, A494Q…”
“It is a code,” Phillip said. “But not what you might think.”
“Nothing in Gold Plate’s room,” Daring announced from the doorway. “What’d you guys find?”
“Enough for me to make a theory,” Phillip said, rising. “Think it’s time to speak to Silver Plate.”
“I’m still learning a lot, but here’s what I know so far,” Doctor Mortis said, using her magic to adjust her mask as she bent over the blue-gray earth pony, studying the remnants of his mouth and the back of his head. “All of them died around the same time: I’d put it at sometime between 10 PM last night and 3 AM this morning. This chap’s three friends all had their throats slit by the same type of knife: something curved and thin, kind of like a sickle. The unicorn mare also has the marks on her hind leg,” she continued, nodding to the body laying on the next slab. “Somepony grabbed her leg with a chain of some kind. Looks like she was trying to run away.”
“What about the cuts on her face?” Red asked, fighting the urge to scratch his face through the mask that the pathologist had insisted that he wear, which did nothing to hide the odor of death that blended with the perfume of garbage. He studied the dead mare's face; the blood had been cleaned from her coat, revealing the long, thin, parallel scratches across her forehead.
“Looks like a bird or something mauled her when she was killed,” Mortis commented. She bent back down over the stallion. “This one is the oddball, though,” she said. “GSR traces on his hoof confirm that he shot himself in the mouth, and there’s also that stab wound in his leg. The only blood on his body is his own, though, and...hello,” she murmured, pointing with a gloved hoof. “Looky there.”
Red bent over the body, squinting at the flesh that was laid bare beneath the stark light of the overhanging lamp. It took him a few moments, but he finally spotted what had caught Mortis’ attention: a small red dot on his foreleg.
“Looks like a needle mark,” he commented.
“And it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before he died!” Mortis said excitedly. “I’ll have to get a blood sample for Suunkii!”
Red sighed and mopped his face. “So...one guy gets some weird drugs, gets stabbed in the leg, and shoots himself, the other three get their throats slit and one of them gets attacked by a bird,” he mused to himself. “What’s the connection?”
“The Industry Kings,” Flash announced from the doorway, holding several thick binders beneath one wing. “Twilight and I found the files on all of our victims.”
Red exited out into the hallway, happily discarding his mask into the trash can. He took the files from Flash and studied them.
“Rich Winds,” he said, tapping a folder with the orange griffon’s photo clipped to the front. “Cirrus Stirrer...Glitter Charm...and Greg Granite.”
“All of them have long rap sheets for drug dealing and racketeering,” Flash stated. “And they’re members of the Industry Kings.”
“Thought it’d take you longer to find these,” Red commented. “That file room is a mess.”
“I’ve been spending a lot of time reorganizing it,” Twilight smiled as she emerged from the room in question. “The criminal records are now grouped by species, categorized by name, classified by the level of crime and I even came up with a system for cross-referencing additional cases, suspects, witnesses, and victims!” She grinned. “It’s some of my best work.”
Flash chuckled. “I thought that portal spell was your best work,” he said.
“Flash, a good organization is key to everything,” Twilight replied. “Imagine how efficient everything would be if information was readily available to everypony’s hooves."
“Has anypony told you you’re obsessive?” Red snorted, prompting Twilight to stick her tongue out at him. “C’mon, rookie. We’ve still got four bodies on the slab in there and the only way we’re gonna figure out what happened is with some hoofwork...unless you’ve got a spell for that,” he commented to Twilight as he started to head back up the stairs.
“Well, there are theoretical spells that allow for time travel,” Twilight mused. “It would take an enormous amount of power to move even a few hours back in time, but if I could--”
“He was joking, Twilight,” Flash interrupted her gently, giving her a brief kiss on the lips. “I gotta go.”
“I’ll let you know if we find anything!” Twilight called after the stallions as she headed back into the laboratory.