//------------------------------// // Case Twenty-Two, Chapter Three: Meddling, Busybody, Jacks-in-Office // Story: Ponyville Noire: Rising Nightmares // by PonyJosiah13 //------------------------------// The sun was just barely cresting the eastern horizon, red and gold painting the rippling waves of the Lunar Sea. The water lapped against the steel and wooden girders of a massive set of docks that jutted out from the Griffish Isles. Ships bobbed up and down in the water in time to the dinging of buoys; further inland, workers swarmed around a concrete landing pad, reeling in the small airship like a fish.  The carriage landed with a thump against the ground as workers secured the cables trailing from the blimp to the ground and to a metal mast mounted on a tractor. Almost immediately, the doors opened and one of the passengers bounded out.  Autumn Blaze paused to take a deep sniff. “Sea air!” she declared to her companions, heedless of the bewildered stares that she was receiving from the workers. “You don’t smell that in the Peaks of Peril! Well, obviously not, because it’s kinda landlocked, but still…wow! Just smell that!” She took in another deep sniff.  Strider stared at her for a beat, then turned and gave Phil and Daring a querying look. Both detectives just shrugged.  “Right,” Strider sighed. “Okay, I think I see our transport.”  A chalk-white griffon hen with orange plumage, dressed in the bright blue uniform of a constable with her peaked hat beneath her arm, was waiting on the edge of the field next to a cruiser.  “Special Agent Strider?” she asked as they approached, her voice carrying a tinge of a Trottish accent.  “Yes,” Strider approached with an extended hoof.  “Constable Sunwall,” she replied, shaking his hoof. “And these two must be the famous Daring Do and Phillip Finder.”  “Pleasure,” Phillip nodded, shaking her hoof as well.  “Hi! Autumn Blaze, freelance journalist,” Autumn chirped, pumping Sunwall’s forearm. Sunwall blinked at her, then shrugged it off.  “How far to Portsbeak?” Daring asked. “Less than twenty minutes,” Constable Sunwall reported, opening the back of her cruiser for her guests to climb in. “We’ll stop at the Historical Society so you can check out the crime scene.”  “Good,” Strider nodded, climbing into the passenger seat. “Is the officer in charge there?”  “Aye,” Sunwall replied, starting up the cruiser and turning onto a dirt road. “The detective will be waiting for you.”  “So, Constable,” Autumn asked from the backseat. “What’s your take on the Merry Celestia? What do you think she was carrying?” “Well…” Sunwall said slowly, glancing at the kirin in her backseat.  While they were talking, Phillip and Daring exchanged dark looks. Their dreams last night had been hazy, only fugitive glimpses of strange landscapes, vague, distant words that slithered in their ears like cold oil, and the scent of rotting flesh.  How much more time do we have? Phillip shook himself out of the reverie with a grunt and turned to watch out the window at the passing landscapes of rolling green hills dotted with cows and sheep grazing beneath the pink, blue, and orange sky, smoke rising from the chimneys of the occasional shepherd’s cottage. But still, his hoof slid across the hard surface to Daring’s hoof; she took it in hers and squeezed gently.  About twenty minutes later, the sun had fully risen over the horizon and they were approaching a township of tiled rooftops and narrow streets, only about half of which were paved. A wooden sign next to the entry road declared “Welcome to Portsbeak” in white letters. “Historical Society is just down the ways here,” Constable Sunwall declared, turning up an uneven, potholed road.  Phillip frowned as he noted the pathway next to the road was only partially paved, concrete sections interspersed with lengths of mud.  “Rain recently?” he asked.  “Aye, rained for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon,” Sunwall nodded.  “Did it end before the robbery?” Phillip asked.  Sunwall raised an eyebrow at his reflection in the rearview mirror. “Aye,” she said in a skeptical tone.  “There’s a method to his madness, Constable,” Daring reassured her.  The cruiser turned up a side road to reveal the Portsbeak Historical Society, a humble two-story brick building with its name posted on the sign hanging over the door. Another cruiser was parked on the street outside; traffic cones blocked off the sidewalk, with a pair of constables holding back a few curious pedestrians.  Standing on the lawn out front was a scowling jenny, glaring balefully through thick glasses, her sand-yellow mane a ruffled mess. Next to her was a tall brick-red stallion with a mane and mustache the color of a number two pencil. A police badge dangled around his neck, prominently displayed against his rain jacket, which did not cover his cutie mark of a set of hoofcuffs set atop a thick book.  Sunwall stopped the cruiser and let her passengers out. The stallion in the jacket scowled at Strider as he exited.  “So you’re the G-Pony,” he snorted disdainfully.  “Special Agent Flame Strider,” Strider said, striding forward with an extended hoof.  “Detective Rule Enforcer,” the stallion in the jacket replied, ignoring the hoof. “This is Angela Coastline, the custodian of the Historical Society. She was the one who called us.”  The jenny shifted in place, frowning at them before turning away.  “Oh. And here we have Phillip Finder and Daring Do, Equestria’s biggest meddling, busybody, jacks-in-office,” Rule Enforcer snorted at the other two detectives. “And…” His severe scowl turned to a sneer on the sight of Autumn Blaze, then he turned and looked back at Strider.  “Seeing as this is the doings of some infamous international criminal, I’m gladly handing this over to capable hooves of the Royal Bureau of Investigation,” he snorted. “So follow me inside so you can work your magic and figure out where these thieves went, Agent.”  “I intend to,” Strider said coolly. “Phil?”  Phil grunted and stood up from where he’d been pawing and nosing at the ground outside the museum. He trotted up to Angela. “What happened?” he asked her.  The jenny took in a breath. “I already told the police everything I know,” she muttered. “They came in here late last night and talked me up about how they were planning on doing research for some book they were doing. One of them--the blind one--bumped into me and pickpocketed my keys, then went into my office while his partner was talking to me, opened my safe, and took out the ship’s log. I didn’t realize that they’d taken it until they left, upon which I called the police.”  “Never saw them before?” Phillip asked.  “They were there that morning, but I didn't speak to them before they left,” Angela shook her head.  Phillip was silent for a moment, then extended a hoof.  “Need to see your horseshoes, please,” he said.  Angela blinked and raised a hoof. Phillip studied her horseshoes for a few moments, then turned and showed them to Strider, who nodded in satisfaction. “We’ll find ‘em, Miss Coastline,” Phillip reassured her, setting her hoof down.  “Daring, Autumn. We’ll take care of this,” he said, following Strider and Detective Enforcer into the museum.  Daring nodded and made her way to Angela Coastline’s side. “Angela?” she asked.  The curator responded only with a quiet grunt. “Why did they take the ship’s log?” Daring pressed.  “I don’t know,” Angela replied, refusing to look at them. “Just find them and get it back.”  Daring Do frowned at the curator. “Angela, these ponies wouldn’t have taken the Merry Celestia’s log if there wasn’t something in there that they wanted,” she said gently. “What did you find in it?”  “Nothing,” Angela replied, shuffling her hooves.  Daring’s frown intensified. “You bought the log of a ship from the year that it mysteriously vanished and left no survivors,” she said. “You kept it locked up in a safe for two weeks. And there was nothing in it?”  Angela was silent for several seconds, then turned and glared at Daring Do.  “Ponykind have been around for nearly a hundred thousand years, but only the last four thousand years of been of any significance,” she spoke in a severe tone. “Do you know what every pony, griffon, hippogriff, dragon, kirin, and zebra did for ninety-six thousand years? We hid in caves and huddled around campfires, praying that the things waiting for us outside the light would leave us alone. Their numbers fell and ours grew…but not all of us have forgotten why we once lived in fear. And that there are things out there in the dark that must never be brought to the light.”   And with that, she turned her back on Daring and Autumn with a sigh. Daring opened to speak, then stopped with a frustrated huff.  Autumn frowned in thought for a few moments, then her face brightened.  “There are things out there in the dark,” she said quietly to Angela. “But there are also ponies who have to stand against that. Ponies like you, who know what’s out there and know to protect others from them.”  Angela lifted her head slightly.  “That’s why you bought that book,” Autumn continued. “That’s why you kept it hidden. You knew that there was something bad in there, something that had to be kept secret…but you didn’t destroy it because you knew that somepony would need to know that someday.”  Angela didn’t answer verbally but gave an almost imperceptible nod.  “Daring and Phil have faced things like that,” Autumn pressed. “Real monsters. They’ve looked into the darkness and laughed at it. And besides, whatever it is these guys are after, you know that they’re going to use it for their own ends. Isn’t it better that they know what they’re getting into?”  Angela frowned in pensive silence for several seconds, then nodded and stepped in close. “I took photographs of the log’s pages,” she whispered. “They’re hard to read, but…there might be enough for you to figure it out. Once they’re gone, I can get the photos and the projector from the darkroom in the basement.”  “Thank you,” Daring nodded. “And thanks, Autumn.”  “No problem,” Autumn beamed.  Inside the Historical Society, Phillip paused in the hallway, crouching down to study the welcome carpet, drawing a hoof over the mud stains spread over the mat. “Strider. Got a tracking wand?” he asked.  “Right here,” Strider nodded, pulling out a long black wand with an embedded blue crystal that glowed faintly with power. “This is the latest version: it can filter between different tracks.”  “Well, don’t we have the fancy kit here,” Detective Enforcer grumbled as they proceeded into the exhibit hall. Phillip paused to scan the entire room, eyes moving across every wall, every painting, and every case. His eyes went to the single older-model surveillance crystal mounted on the wall over the door, the faded emerald lens staring back at him.  “Right. Let’s see the office,” he said.  “Right this way,” Rule Enforcer grumbled, gesturing down a side hall.  They proceeded down a hallway, the wooden beams creaking beneath their hooves. Phil and Strider both kept their eyes on the floor, every step measured and careful.  They finally reached the door marked Office and stepped inside. Angela’s office was a tiny room, the shelves littered with books and binders. One desk sat next to a battered filing cabinet, stationery scattered across the surface; another worktable carried glue, bottles of cleaning liquid, brushes, jars of paint, and other equipment for restoring books, paintings, and other artifacts.  The safe in question sat atop the filing cabinet, the door still hanging open with the key in the lock to bare its empty interior. Phillip looked at the ring of keys dangling from the lock, frowning as he noted that there were ten keys on the ring and that many were similar to the one that opened the safe.  Strider stepped forward and switched on the tracking wand. The blue glow revealed a mass of shoeprints on the floor of the office, many clustered around the safe.  “So who won the soccer tournament?” he joked to Detective Enforcer. The red stallion’s sole response was to raise an eyebrow. Strider returned to his work with a small sigh. “Okay…that’s Angela’s horseshoes…Detective, may I see your horseshoes?”  Rule Enforcer obligingly lifted up one of his hooves, allowing Strider to check his heavy-duty iron horseshoes. “Right, those are yours…” He twisted a dial on the side of the wand and two of the horseshoe trails disappeared, narrowing it down to two different sets of prints.  “Hold this for a second, Phil,” Strider requested, passing the wand to Phil. He took out a measuring tape and measured the distance between two of the hoofprints. “About two-foot-nine…too short,” he muttered, measuring the other set. “Yeah, about three-foot-six. That’s Wither’s height.”  “Aces,” Phillip nodded, passing the tracking wand back to Strider. “Need to see surveillance crystal footage.”  “The memory crystal is in the corner there,” Rule Enforcer pointed to a section of wall next to the desk with the stationery. A set of round crystals was embedded into the wall, glowing faintly as they awaited a command.  Phillip pressed one of the crystals, which projected an image of the exhibit hall into the air before him. Phillip rewound the footage to the previous night, scowling as the two familiar stallions appeared in the room, meandering through the exhibits.  “Biff and Withers,” he grumbled, watching as they trotted up to a display case containing a set of navigational equipment. He squinted at the two stallions.  “No mud on horseshoes,” he reported.  “Well, that just blows the case open, doesn’t it?” Detective Enforcer snorted, sarcasm practically dripping off his tongue.  Phillip gave him a scathing look, then nodded to Strider.  “It means that they didn’t walk here, or at least didn’t walk far,” Strider reported. “They must have had a car parked nearby. I’ll see if I can find it.” He proceeded out the door, tracking wand held in his mouth; its illumination revealed more of the perpetrator’s tracks leading back out the door and down the hall.   Phillip continued to watch the recordings, observing how Withers daubed his face with a napkin, then flicked it into a trash can while speaking to Angela. He paused the recording, then rewound it a few moments, squinting at the napkin, then hurried out of the room.  “What is it?” Rule Enforcer asked, following him out and skirting the still-glowing trail of hoofprints.  He returned to the exhibit hall to find that Phillip was digging through the trash can that Withers had thrown his napkin into.  “You can’t seriously--”  “Aha,” Phillip grunted, yanking the crumpled napkin out of the trash can and unfurling it. He held it up to the light, revealing the red and blue logo of a set of cliffs overlooking a sea at sunset on the cloth.  “Recognize that logo?” he asked Detective Enforcer. “White Cliffs Dine-In,” the stallion responded. “They’re a popular franchise in the Griffish Isles; there’s at least three within a few miles of here.”  Phillip turned the napkin over to reveal a phone number written on the other side. With a grunt of curiosity, he proceeded out the door and back out front.  Outside, Strider was proceeding down the sidewalk, frowning at the glowing mass of hoofprints and tracks on the sidewalk, with the others all watching his progress. “There’s too many to filter out,” he shook his head.  “They weren’t walking on mud, mate, remember,” Phillip called.  Strider nodded. “Okay, if they were staying on the concrete…” He carefully proceeded down the sidewalk until it reached a branch where the main path continued onto a patch of heavily trodded mud, with another cracked section of pavement heading in a different direction. This smaller sidewalk had significantly fewer hoofprints on it.  “That’s better,” Strider nodded, twiddling the dial on his tracking wand. Several of the glowing blue hoofprints faded until only Withers’ trail was plainly visible.  Officer Sunwall let out an admiring whistle. “Now there’s a right proper gadget,” she said admiringly. “Where can we get one of ‘em, eh?”  “Sorry, they’re pretty expensive. Only the Bureau and larger departments can afford them,” Strider replied, following the trail further down the sidewalk and onto a small parking lot. The hoofprints ended at a pair of tire tracks, which Strider set to examining.  “Wheelbase: 115 inches,” he reported, jotting it down in his notebook.  Meanwhile, Phillip had proceeded to a public phone and inserted a bit, spinning the dial to enter the number from the napkin into the phone. The phone rang a few times before it picked up.  “Hello?” a mare’s voice said.  “This is Phillip Finder,” Phillip stated. “Who is this?”  There was silence for a beat. “Um…this is Pearl Shine. Did I do something?” “You’re not in trouble,” Phillip continued. “But two or three days ago, you met a stallion in a White Cliffs Dine-In, a white earth pony with black hair and sunglasses. He was traveling with a tall brown earth pony in a fedora. You wrote down your number on a napkin for him.”  “Oh, uh…yes, yes, I remember him,” Pearl Shine continued slowly. “I met him a few days ago at the diner just north of Portsbeak; we were both sitting at the bar for lunch. He said that he and his friend were traveling south to Portsbeak to see the Historical Society. We flirted a bit and I wrote down my number on his napkin. What did he do?”  “Do you remember what car they came in?” Phillip asked.  “Um…I think it was a blue or brown Chevroneigh,” Pearl said. “I think I remember part of the license plate…9BX.”  “Thanks for your help. Police will be in touch if they need anything else,” Phillip nodded, jotting down some notes and hanging up.  Daring Do smirked at Detective Rule Enforcer. “Well?”  The stallion snorted, his mustache bristling irritably. “Not bad,” he admitted. “I suppose the rumors weren’t entirely exaggerated.”  “Lead on car. Likely rental from Saddleshire or nearby,” Phillip grunted. “Should follow up on it.”  “Right. We should,” Enforcer admitted. “The police station isn’t that far from here, we can walk.”  “Daring?” Phillip asked.  “Autumn and I will stay here,” Daring said. “We have scans of a journal to study,” she whispered into his ear.  He smirked with the side of his face that Rule Enforcer couldn’t see and leaned in to kiss her. “Good luck,” he said, following Strider and Enforcer down the sidewalk.  Angela took a heavy breath. “Come,” she declared. “We’ll go down to the darkroom and look at the scans.”  “Cause of death is pretty straightforward,” Doctor Mortis declared, stripping her gloves off and tossing them into a trash can. “Rapid exsanguination from a slit throat. He bled out within seconds. Based on rigor mortis and stomach contents, I’d put his death at sometime between 4 PM and 7 PM last night.”   Red Herring and Flash Sentry both scowled at the corpse spread across the metal slab in the morgue. Steel Bar was laid before them, a y-shaped incision baring his inner organs for examination. His neck had been cleaned of blood, revealing the ragged wound carved across his flesh to reveal his throat. The right side of his face, his forelegs, his flanks, and his lower legs were all discolored a dark purple with lividity from where he had lain.  “Too convenient, right?” Flash said to his partner.  “Way too convenient,” Red Herring replied, taking out his notepad. “According to Steno Pad, our late unlamented had a meeting with Iron Forge that lasted from about 3 PM until almost 6:30 PM. As far as she knew, Steel had no reason to kill himself and wasn’t talking like he was planning on it.”  “The letter opener has his blood on it and matches the wound,” Twilight Sparkle reported, entering the room and bringing a heavy stench with her. “There’s blood on his own hoof…it does appear to be a suicide.”  The other three occupants of the room all grimaced at the smell that wafted off the unicorn. “Pooh! I take it Spike is still molting?” Mortis asked, waving the air in front of her nose. “Yes,” Twilight admitted. “Sorry; I took a shower this morning, but it doesn’t do anything!”  “It’s okay,” Flash smiled at her, pinching his nostrils with his wings and giving her a squeeze. “It should be over soon, right?”  “Smolder says he should be going into the final stage any day now,” Twilight said with a weary smile.  Red cleared his throat. “Got a dead body here,” he said while Mortis sprayed air freshener.  “Right, right,” Flash muttered, turning to the desk and looking over the crime scene photographs that were spread across Doctor Mortis’ nearby table. He pulled out one photograph that was a closeup of Steel Bar’s head, laying across his own desk.  “Something’s not right here,” he grumbled, tapping at his head.  Twilight and Red both looked over his shoulders at the crime scene’s photographs. “Sound it out, Sentry,” Red said.  Flash’s eyes swept the pictures again and again, his conscious mind struggling to interpret the warnings that his subconscious had picked up on. “The blood…” he finally spoke aloud.  “The blood,” Twilight repeated, taking a closer look at the blood pool around Steel Bar’s neck. “Of course!”  “What is it?” Red asked.  “That blood pool is only around his head on the desk here,” Flash said. “That means that his head was already down on the desk when his throat was slit.”  “If he had been sitting up in his chair, blood would have spurted across the desk and run down his chest and onto the floor,” Twilight explained further. “Doctor Mortis, we will need to do a blood analysis. See if there are any drugs in his system.”  “Right you are!” Mortis grinned, grabbing a syringe and a test tube. She drew an injection of blood from the corpse’s arm and filled the test tube with it, stoppering it and passing it off to Twilight.  “Thank you!” Twilight dashed down the hall to the laboratory with her prize, with Flash and Red following. She immediately hurried over to a centrifuge machine and placed the blood sample into it, starting up the machine with a whirring noise. While the machine did its work, she set up a collection of beakers, burners, and chemicals on a nearby table.  “I swear, she runs off of batteries,” Red grumbled, rubbing his baggy eyes.  “No, Detective Red Herring,” Doctor Suunkii smiled through the clothespin on his nose, looking up from his own work. “She runs off of passion for her work.”  “And I run off of caffeine and spite,” Red replied.  The machine spun down and Twilight extracted the tubes of separated liquids from within, humming thoughtfully as she studied the separated plasma and solids. She started mixing, stirring, and heating the samples.  After a few minutes of work, she removed a tube of light blue liquid from the burner and gave it a vigorous shake, watching as the bubbling liquid turned purple.  “Aha!” Twilight declared.  “Yes!” Flash repeated, pumping his hoof. “I knew it!”  There was a moment of silence, then Flash lowered his hoof. “Um, what does that mean?” he asked sheepishly.  “That color, Detective Flash Sentry,” Suunkii said with mild amusement, “is an indication that your victim’s blood contained a heavy dose of barbiturate.”  “Most likely a sleeping pill,” Twilight added, turning to the other colored tubes.  “So our suicide just turned into a murder,” Red Herring said grimly. “Is anypony surprised? C’mon, kid. Iron Forge and Steno Pad both have some explaining to do.”  “Good luck,” Twilight said, stepping up to Flash. “Be careful.”  “I always am,” Flash replied, plugging his nose so he could kiss her.  She raised an eyebrow at him as they separated. “Okay, almost always,” he admitted as he followed Red out of the lab.