Phillip crouched down to study the dark stain against the brick wall of the alleyway where Citrus Harvest had been found. He lifted up the crime scene photograph that had been taken that morning, frowning as he studied the image of the poor mare spread out across the pavement, bloodied and carved-open chest bared to view.
“That’s something that’s gonna stay with me forever,” the pale-blue-coated thestral police officer commented with a shudder.
“So when you and your partner spotted the body, then what?” Phillip asked, turning to face the officer standing at the mouth of the alleyway.
“My partner secured the scene and started calling in backup,” Officer Moondust explained. “I searched the area for any witnesses, but it was like two in the morning, so pretty much everycreature was asleep. The only witness that I could find that was willing to talk to me was a hobo griffon down the road who claimed that he saw a pickup truck stop at the alley a few hours before, but he couldn’t give me any details.”
“Hmm,” Phillip frowned, lowering his face down to the ground and studying the debris around where the body had lain. He tried to find any useful details on the asphalt, any hairs or tracks or drops that might tell him something about the ponies that murdered this mare.
It was useless. Time had wiped away anything that might be of use, or hidden it beneath the dust and detritus of the city. The scene had already been swept with tracking wands, but there were so many tracks overlaid atop one another that telling one from another was impossible.
With a sigh, Phillip strode to the end of the alley. He ducked beneath the crime scene tape and looked across the street. Strider and Daring were standing in front of a surveillance crystal perched atop a stand at the end of 35th Street. Strider was watching the playback on the circular stone that he had used.
As Phillip proceeded over to them, he looked up and down the street. It was lined on both sides by shops, taverns, and restaurants, with apartments stacked atop them reaching up to the sky, claustrophobically close to one another. Many windows were darkened and only a few silhouettes could be seen within the shop windows, but he nonetheless felt eyes watching their every step.
Strider was looking as though he were holding back curses with great difficulty. “There are too many cars that passed down this road this morning,” he complained. “There’s no way to narrow it down.” He sighed and put the viewer back in his pocket. “Anypony else feel like we’re looking for a needle in a haystack?”
Phillip nodded his assent as a streetcar trundled past them. The garishly colored advertisements posted on the sides of the bright yellow carriage instantly drew the eye, declaring that one could call for cheap rates on life insurance. The carriage rattled and clattered down the street, electricity buzzing from the cable that ran above the street, leaving a faint scent of ozone in its wake. Brakes squealed as it pulled into the stop where a few creatures waited beneath the glass shelter.
“Now boarding, 35th and Whinnychester; next stop, Natural History Museum,” an automated voice announced over the streetcar’s speakers, slightly muffled through the metal and glass frame as the occupants began to disembark.
All this was just one of a potpourri of sensations that assailed Phillip. The constant background noise of a city of seven million creatures--overlapping voices, vehicles, music, and clattering--struck at his ears, and dozens of different scents filled his nostrils, nearly indistinguishable from one another. The cold air, heavy with industrial pollution, scratched at his coat.
Compared to Ponyville’s four hundred thousand, or even Sydneigh’s million, it was nearly overwhelming
“We got nothing, don’t we?” Daring asked, despair biting into every syllable.
“That’s not true,” Strider replied. “We got a lot of things. We just don’t have anything that points specifically to the culprits.”
Daring growled, then dissolved into a brief coughing fit. “Damn this air; how do ponies live here?" She spat and cleared her throat. "If we’d been here sooner--”
“Have to work with what we’ve got,” Phillip sighed.
Daring hissed and scuffed her hoof against the sidewalk. “And meanwhile, these fuckers are probably carving up some other poor pony so they can dump them in the street.”
“Hey, we can’t give up that easily,” Strider urged, taking to the sky. “C’mon, let’s see if we can talk to some of the victims' friends. Maybe they’ll remember something.”
“Maybe,” Daring said glumly, picking up Phillip and following Strider through the canyons of steel and stone.
The corner of 8th and Trottington was within a stone’s throw of Central Park, the barren, slush-coated trees visible to the north corner. Parked on the side of the street was a long white truck, with the sides opened to reveal boxes of non-perishable food and personal care products. Volunteers carted supplies from the truck onto a set of folding tables that sat beneath an awning attached to the side of the truck; a line of homeless citizens made their way across the tables like a buffet line, taking a selection of offered products. Painted on the side of the truck, over the doors, were the words Hunger Free Manehattan: Mobile Food Pantry.
As the trio of investigators approached, Daring noted a jar on the end of the table marked Donations. She pulled out her coin purse and dumped a hoofful of bits into the jar with a clinking.
“Oh, thank you,” a lime green hippogriff mare with a graying mane and tail said without turning around from her task of lifting boxes from the truck. “We could always use the help.”
She turned around and paused, her wrinkled daisy-yellow eyes widening at the sight of her benefactors. “Oh. I think that we all could use your help, Detectives.”
“Flowerdance, right?” Phillip said.
“That’s me,” the hippogriff nodded, placing the box down on the table and pulling cans of soup out for perusal. “I’m the one who runs this pantry.”
“You seem to know us,” Phillip said, also placing some bits into the donation jar. “This is our colleague, Agent Flame Strider. Do you have a few moments?”
Flowerdance sighed. “This is about Citrus, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” Phillip nodded.
“Okay,” the hippogriff nodded, leading them over to the opposite side of the truck, away from the ears of any of the attendants. She leaned back against the truck, letting out a sigh that formed into vapor before her beak.
“You and Citrus were close?” Phillip asked.
“You could say that,” Flowerdance shrugged. “She was a regular at our mobile food pantry for the past year or so and I make it my business to try to get to know all of the regulars here.” She sighed. “She had no one else, you know,” she said. “Her husband took the kids and she wound up on the streets after her farm went under. She was trying to find other work at the local gardens.”
Phillip was silent briefly, allowing the moment of grief to pass. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Three days ago, Monday,” Flowerdance replied. “I saw her at her usual spot outside the Burger Princess around lunchtime and talked to her, bought her lunch. She was just sitting outside and asking for some change like always; she said she was doing all right, no real changes.”
“She didn’t mention anything out of the ordinary?” Phillip pressed. “Anypony that might have been following her or that she was afraid of?”
Flowerdance gave him a look. “She was homeless and alone in the biggest city in Equestria while a serial killer was carving up ponies like her,” she said. “Who wasn’t she afraid of?” She jerked her head back towards the line of destitute citizens that were parading down the tables on the other side of the truck. “You see that line there? Normally, I get three times that number for this trip. Most of the rest of this population is trying to keep their heads down because they’re terrified…and the ones that are coming out here are only doing so because they know that they don’t have any other choice.”
Daring studied the line of creatures taking supplies from the truck, noting the way that they took what they were looking for in quick, jerky movements, heads down but eyes darting everywhere, taking in every face. Like rabbits that knew that they were in the fox’s territory, just waiting for the slightest sound to dart for cover.
The sight made her stomach twist with the nausea of unpleasant memories: living on the street, running from the law, always watching for any sign of an ambush. She looked away and felt disgusted with herself for doing so.
“So she wouldn’t have followed somecreature that she didn’t trust?” Phillip asked Flowerdance.
“She was smarter than that,” Flowerdance replied. “In the life that these creatures live, you learn fast or you get hurt.”
Philip lowered his head in thought for several seconds.
“You know the other food shelves in this city?” he asked after some deep contemplation.
“Most of them,” Flowerdance replied.
“Has there been any unusual activity among the other food shelves?” Phillip asked. “A new shelf, staff acting strangely, anything like that?”
Flowerdance’s wrinkled face creased in thought. “Now that I think about it, I have heard of a new mobile food pantry that started up a few weeks ago, not long before the murders,” she said. “It’s just a van that travels through the city, distributing food to some of the homeless ponies individually. No one knows much about them; I think they’re associated with some church, but I have no idea which one.”
“They wouldn’t happen to specialize in soups, would they?” Strider asked, his ears perking up.
“They do usually pass out bowls of soup, yes,” Flowerdance said.
“Can you describe their vehicle?” Strider asked, placing a pen in his teeth and grabbing his notepad with a hoof.
“I’ve seen them a few times, passing by on the streets. It’s a white van,” Flowerdance said. “It just has ‘Emergency Food Shelf’ painted on the sides in black.” She rubbed the back of her head with a frown. “Couldn’t tell you much about the ponies who run it, though; they keep to themselves and they always seem to move on when one of us comes to set up.” She let out a hiss. “I should have known that something was off about them.”
“That helps a lot,” Strider said, scribbling down some notes. “Thank you very much.”
“Just find them,” Flowerdance said, giving them a hard glare. “For the sake of all these creatures, find them.”
“That’s what we do,” Daring replied with a confident nod, grabbing Phillip beneath the forelegs as she and Strider took to the overcast sky once more.
The soup had been separated into jars and placed in the icebox for freezing hours ago. It struck him how easy it was for him to continue the routine even after this long; years and years of automatic practice drilled deep, it appeared. And besides, they’d have to keep up appearances for the time being, even after they’d gotten what they were after.
He shuddered and tried to banish the mental image of the beating heart being torn from that mare’s chest, hugging himself as her last desperate scream echoed in his ears. Nausea clenched his stomach and he leaned over to dry heave into the trash can, spittle tumbling from his lips into the can with the rest of the refuse.
Wiping off his mouth, he sagged back into his chair with a sigh. As always, he sat alone in the apartment, staring at the clock on the wall. The only sound in the entire place, ignoring the constant background cacophony of the city, was the second arm ticking inexorably around the circumference, marking the passing time. It was nearly six PM and the sun was dipping ever lower towards the western horizon, casting ever-lengthening shadows across the streets.
They’d presumably go back to the hotel to recuperate at the end of the day. That might be the best place to attack…
Or call them.
The thought made his heart quiver in his chest and he gasped for air, briefly entertaining a vision of his own heart being torn from his chest while the rest of the congregation watched.
But…what was the alternative? Go down with the rest of the ship if they failed? Or be disposed of the moment he was no longer of any real use to them?
Besides, what kind of pony was he if he stayed silent forever?
One that was alive.
But even rats had a sense of self-preservation.
He strode over to the phone and picked up the phone book from the drawer beneath it.
The sun had long surrendered the sky to the overcast night by the time the weary trio returned to their hotel room.
“At least we got something,” Strider commented, stretching out his wings with a groan.
“Yeah, a white van trawling the streets,” Daring said sourly, hanging up her pith helmet and grabbing her flask from her pocket, filling the room with the scent of Manticore Rare. “You know how many of those are probably in this city?”
“It’s more than we had before,” Phillip pointed out, placing his own trilby on the hook next to Daring’s pith helmet.
Strider smirked a little. “You see Swampfire’s face when we made the report to the SAC?”
Daring let out a bark of a laugh. “I didn’t even know that faces could turn that shade of purple!”
The two stallions both laughed quietly, but the humor quickly faded out. Phillip turned and looked out the window with a low sigh. A common nighthawk, dark gray with a flattened head and a short, squat build, perched atop the ledge of the balcony outside the window. It turned towards him with a big black eye and let out a loud, buzzing chirp, fluttering its white-tipped wings and baring the tufted white ring about its neck.
Beyond them, the music of the city continued unabated, only slightly dimmed by the night: a constant continuing cacophony of vehicles and voices and radios and construction and more. The city truly never slept.
His stomach twisted at the thought that the morning might bring with it another corpse sprawled across the street for all to see. But what could he do?
The phone on the bedside table rang. The trio all paused and glanced at each other, then Phillip picked the phone up from its cradle. “G’day.”
“Detective Finder?” said the tranquil mare’s voice on the other end. “This is the hotel switchboard. We have a caller asking specifically for you. He says it’s urgent.”
Phillip’s raised eyebrows made Strider and Daring both pay close attention. “Put him through,” he said.
“Connecting,” the operator said. There were a few clicking noises and then a timorous male voice came on, just barely audible over the background noise of the street: he must have been on a public phone.
“H-hello? Detective Finder?”
“Who are you?” Phillip demanded.
“Uh, Salmon,” the voice on the other end replied. “Listen, I…I can tell you about the murders. I…” He swallowed. “I was part of it. I drove the van and made the soup.”
Phillip’s eyes narrowed, but his heart began to speed up in his chest, maintaining a disciplined but eager rhythm. In the brief pause, he heard a faint clattering and a muffled voice behind the caller’s rapid breathing.
“Where are you?” he asked.
Salmon didn’t answer for a moment; Phil heard his breathing shift as though he were looking about, nearly muting the faint voices in the background.
“L-look, I…I think I’m being followed,” he gasped out. “I’m calling you from a public phone because, for all I know, they’re tapping my home phone. Can…can you meet me at the southeast corner of Central Park? I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll be there,” Phillip nodded. “Watch yourself.”
He hung up the phone and grabbed his hat from the hook. “Central Park, southeast corner, fifteen minutes,” he stated, tossing his companions their hats.
“Be there in three!” Daring declared, grabbing him beneath the forelegs as Strider opened up the balcony window. The three of them soared out of the window and headed northwards through the frosty Manehattan night.
Salmon hung up the phone and took a breath, looking around. The only other figure he could see was the hawker on the corner, trying to find some evening customers for his hot chocolate and coffee stand before he headed home.
But just because he couldn’t see them didn’t mean that they weren’t there.
He just had to get to Central Park. Then he’d be safe, shielded by the Stormbringers. In five minutes, it’d be over.
He grabbed his bicycle from where he’d left it leaning against the side of the phone booth and saddled up. The bike creaked and squeaked as its old gears and wheels began to turn, the rusty chain clacking in protest as he headed down the sidewalk as fast as he could go.
It’d get him there.
He turned left onto Magnus and switched gears, pedaling as hard as he could go. If he could cut across Ferrus Street, he could make it--
The brakes screeched and he nearly tumbled off the bike. Salmon froze in numb disbelief, staring at the figure before him, illuminated by the dim light of the streetlamp it was perched upon.
A raven stared down at him, baleful black eyes seemingly glimmering in sadistic glee. It seemed to bare its red-marked breast at him as if gloating.
Panic seized the stallion like a crushing python and he looked for an escape. The alleyway! He could lose them in the maze of alleys!
Salmon frantically turned into the narrow alley between the frame shop and the laundromat. Nearly sideswiping a dumpster, he scanned for the next turn on the left. He nearly missed it in the dark and had to brake hard to make it, almost falling off the bike in his desperation.
“Whoa!” he cried, squeezing the brakes as hard as he could. The silhouetted figure up ahead didn’t even flinch at having been nearly run over.
Too late, Salmon recognized the figure. And the car blocking the end of the alley.
And the suppressed gun in their hoof.
Somepony coughed sharply three times; Salmon felt each cough as a light punch in his chest and the night suddenly became even colder.
He looked down and let out a whimper. Blood, so dark it seemed black in the shadows of the night, was running down his chest.
The world tilted and he crashed to the ground, gasping for air. His murderer slowly trotted up to him, the sound of their hoofsteps sounding as distant as though he had fallen into the bottom of a well.
“I blame myself,” the killer said, bending over. “Maybe if we’d kept a closer eye on you, this wouldn’t have been necessary.”
Salmon tried to speak, to plead or cry out for help that would arrive too late, but he had no breath left in him.
He left this world with tears in his eyes.
Daring did indeed land at the southeast corner of Central Park within three minutes. The park was a haven of nature amidst the stone and concrete jungle of Manehattan, surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers like the towers of a castle about the keep. Even this late at night, there were a few ponies about, joggers and walkers making their way through the barren trees and illuminated statues of the park.
Daring circled the area a few times, both she and her husband glaring down at the rivers of ponies and vehicles beneath. There were a few loiterers and parked vehicles, but none of them stood out; no one reacted to their presence in any way, suddenly looking away or turning about. There were no signs of any ambushers lying in wait.
Daring dropped Phillip in front of the memorial statue of General Sure Muster, the brass illuminated to a bright glow by the spotlights set around it. She then took to the sky just above Phillip and began to slowly turn in a circle, squinting through her pocket monoculars. Phillip took out his own binoculars, sweeping the streets with his gaze.
“He had to have been close by if he said he was going to be here within fifteen minutes,” Strider commented, landing next to Phillip.
“Or this is a trap,” Daring replied, panning her gaze up to the skyscrapers above.
“Oh,” Strider said, slowly turning in place in a controlled, casual display, gently pulling his coat away from his shoulder holster with a wing. “Right. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Phillip lifted the binoculars to his eyes and started scanning the shadows of the park. The darkness of the night was banished by the night vision enchantment on the lens, granting him perfect clarity into every shadow. He scanned a small group of tourists that were gawking at the statues and checked a withered griffon that was feeding the night birds, but no one stood out to him as suspicious.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that somecreature isn’t out to get you.
A fluttering of wings made him glance up. A bird had landed atop General Sure Muster’s head; the sight of it perched atop the perpetually determined grimace, casually looking down at him with a big black eye, was bizarrely comical.
But something at the back of Phillip’s head, a strange sense of familiarity, bade him study the bird closer and he frowned up at it. It was a dark gray common nighthawk, short and squat, continuing to stare at him and Daring. It sat with its wings tucked in close, strangely unafraid of the ponies so close to it, seemingly fascinated with them instead of trying to hunt for food.
Wings with white tips. Just like the white ring around its neck.
Phillip realized that it was the same nighthawk from the hotel. But why would it follow…?
His heart skipped a beat with realization.
Up on the roof of a nearby building, a pegasus carefully placed the Summerfield rifle on the edge of the roof. The compass strapped to his hoof spun in its housing, pointing towards his spotter perched atop the garish statue.
A heartbeat slowed to a steady rhythm. Lungs took in the frosty air at a controlled pace, slowly inhaling and deeply exhaling.
A red eye squinted through the scope. He centered the bead on Daring Do’s chest and carefully adjusted for distance and wind.
A hoof curled around the trigger and slowly began to squeeze.