//------------------------------// // The Investigation // Story: La Femme Fatale // by bkc56 //------------------------------// As the three of us entered the precinct, Citrine asked, “So, what do you need, Steel?” “To start with, I really could use a place to sit down.” Before I fall down. “Also, a clear desk I can spread out on.” I tapped my saddlebag. “I have a ton of information I need to review just to catch up. Oh, can you also bring me the reports on my attack and anything else connected to the case?” Nightly raised a hoof. “I’ll get those. Citrine, why don’t you set him up at that empty desk by the wall close to us?” He turned and trotted off. Citrine led me to the desk. The dark, stained wood top was completely clear save for a desk lamp that was probably as old as I was. A standard metal office chair sat ready for use. “You can use this.” She opened the drawer, “Pads and pencils. If you need anything else, let me know. Our desks are just over there,” and she pointed, before giving me a small smile and walking off. I dumped my saddlebags out onto the desk and collapsed into the chair. I could organize the clutter later as the pile wasn’t that deep. The first step was to focus on the pictures of the anonymous notes. There were the four original notes that were somewhat vague, and the six additional, more threatening ones. Whoever created these went through a major attitude shift part way through. What caused that, and why did it seemingly escalate into a foalnapping? The questions were piling up. After a few minutes Nightly came by. “Here are the reports you wanted.” I looked up. “Thanks. Hey… Nightly, can we get help from the tech department to process some of the evidence? I have an idea.” “Absolutely, and I know just the pony.” He turned towards the door. “Be back in a sec.” Before I had time to refocus, he was back with a unicorn mare in tow. With a tilt of her head, Citrine stood up and walked over too. Nightly gestured to the mare. “Steel, this is Officer Mote. She’s new to the department, but no detail is small enough to escape her eye. And her evidence processing skills are second to none.” I stood and extended a hoof. “Officer Mote…” She shook it. “Mr Steel. How can I help?” I sat down and spun some of the pictures around to face her. “I assume you’re familiar with these and the original notes?” “Yes,” she nodded. “I actually took those photos.” “Great.” I picked up the picture of the very first note. “Whoever is involved here used this method because it’s so hard to trace. Just a bunch of random letters cut from newspapers or magazines. What they forgot is that there’s print on both sides.” I looked at Officer Mote. “I’d like you to use magic, alchemy, or whatever other means you can to remove the letters from the paper, then paste them to something clear in exactly the same layout. We can then turn it over and see what’s on the back.” I set the picture down. “Can you do that?” She tapped her chin a couple times. “Yes… depending on the glue used, that should be doable.” She paused. “It’s possible some of the paper fragments may be damaged or ripped. But any damage will barely show when I get them glued down again.” She looked at Citrine. “Except…” Citrine shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’ll fill out any justification paperwork for the time and materials. You do whatever Steel needs, and I’ll take care of the rest.” Mote smiled. “Great. But there’s also the issue of essentially destroying evidence…” Citrine pursed her lips for a moment. “The Captain has given us free rein on this case. I’m sure he’ll sign off on it.” She looked at me, “How many of the notes do you want her to do?” “Let’s be conservative. Just do the very first note.” I slid that picture forward from the others. “If that doesn’t generate any clues, we’ll do another.” I looked at Officer Mote. “You okay with some overtime?” That actually wasn’t my call, but Citrine had said we had free rein. She smiled back. “For a case this interesting? Absolutely.” Then suddenly her smile fell away as her ears drooped down. “Oh, I’m sorry. I realize this is a serious case. I didn’t mean to make light–” “No, no,” I cut her off, “I understand the technical side and how interesting it can be. You do what you do with all the enthusiasm you have. You let us worry about the serious stuff. Deal?” Her ears rose up again. “Deal. Leave it to me, I’ll get you what you need.” Citrine tapped the desk a couple times. “Okay, then. Nightly, you get the first note out of evidence. I’ll get the paperwork done.” She glanced at Mote. “Then we’ll both meet you in the lab.” With that, they turned and trotted off in three different directions. I returned to the pile on my desk. The personnel reports and business documents were supposed to have been read on the train days ago. And now I had police reports on top of it all. Every second I spent here was another second Miss Chapeau was at risk. But you can’t shortcut the process. Find the clues first, they’ll lead to the bad guys. The chaos and noise in the room faded away as I focused on my work. Even the passage of time went by unnoticed. A knock on the desktop startled me. I looked up to see Officer Mote along with Detectives Citrine and Hunter staring at me. “I see you were doing your thing, where you check out from reality for a while.” Citrine smiled. “How was the weather in there?” I snickered and shrugged. “A little stormy today. So, whatcha got?” “This…” Mote said and levitated a sheet onto the desk. It was the first note. I slid over the picture to compare. “This is great work. The layout looks identical.” I flipped the transparent sheet over. “I take it back. This isn’t great.” I glanced up at her. “This is amazing.” She looked down at the floor as some color entered her cheeks. “You aren’t just a unicorn, you’re a wizard!” I opened the desk drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass. “Now let’s see what we can see here…” I studied the back of each letter. Each fragment was another tiny clue, but I needed something bigger. Something more obvious. A clue that would lead somewhere quickly. Something like… I banged my hoof on the desk. “Like that!” I looked up to see three wide-eyed stares. “What did you find?” Citrine asked, leaning in. “Okay, follow me here.” I flipped the sheet over to the front side as I glanced down. “Look at these two letters, here… and here.” I pointed at each with the handle of the magnifying glass. “They were next to each other in a word in some headline of the newspaper they came from.” I flipped to the back side, and pointed at them again. “I know that because there are parts of sentences, even words, split between the two bits of paper. And there’s a date, half on one, half on the other.” I tapped a report on the edge of the desk. “And that date is less than a week before the delivery of this note to Miss Chapeau’s shop.” I stood up. “Where are you going?” Citrine asked. As I collected some of the papers from the desk and put them in my saddle bag I answered, “To the main branch of the Canterlot Library. They have a periodical archive going back years. They’ll have a copy of the paper these two letters came from. We have an approximate date. We know what page they’re from, even what part of the page. And we have some text we can easily look for. We find the original newspaper, and then we’ll know what town this note was almost certainly made in.” Nightly touched Citrine’s shoulder. “I’ll get our stuff. Meet you at the door.” Officer Mote waved a hoof. “Wait, wait. Can I come too? I can help with the search, and I want to see where this goes.” She looked at Citrine, who glanced at me. I nodded. Citrine addressed Mote, “Sure, we’d appreciate another set of eyes.” I paused. “Wait, we’re going to need photos of the note and the back side for each of us to compare with.” Mote levitated a set of photos from her satchel and let it plop on the desk. I looked at the photos and up at her. “How did you figure…?” She smiled at me. “It was logical. If you didn’t find anything on the back to explicitly identify the paper, the next stop would be a search at the library.” The main hall of the Canterlot library was as impressive as some small museums. The walls were covered in artwork, with statues and display cases filling the open area. Several hallways led off the main rotunda to the various wings. We made a bee-line to the archway under the sign: Periodicals. A search down the hallway quickly led to the door labeled: Newspapers. It was a large room with row after row of cabinets containing multiple wide shallow drawers. The smell of wood and newsprint was everywhere. “So what’s the plan, Steel?” Citrine asked as we all looked around the room. I stepped forward and turned around to face them. “I’ll take the Canterlot paper. Citrine, Nightly, why don’t you two take the two Manehattan papers?” They each nodded. “Officer Mote, why don’t you, umm, just use your best judgment to pick a town. We’ll start with the issue from the date the note was delivered, and work back say two weeks. If we don’t find anything, we’ll all pick a different town.” Wood scraped on wood as I opened the first drawer to start my search. The crinkle of paper accompanied my flipping to the correct day. This actually wouldn’t be too hard. Scan the day’s headline for occurrences of the two key letters side-by-side, then flip to the back side to check for a date printed in that same spot. I was a little over a week back when I was startled by two knocks on the cabinet behind me. I turned to see Officer Mote watching me. “Found it,” she said with a barely subdued grin. “You did? Already?” It was looking like this mare was worth her weight in bits to any investigation. I wonder if she’d consider working for a private agency someday… She turned to go. “Come on, I’ll show you.” I closed the newspapers and pushed in the drawer. As we walked, she explained. “I decided to start with towns close to Canterlot. I began with Ponyville, but the typeface of their newspaper didn’t match our letters. So I tried Appleloosa next. I found it in the edition five days before the note was delivered. The date in the article references an event in town a couple days before that.” We stopped at a table that had several papers laid out. I heard Citrine and Nightly come up behind us. Citrine spoke softly, “We saw you go by. What’s up?” I glanced at her. “Mote found the paper. Appaloosa.” Mote pointed at the headline on a paper. “Here are the two letters.” She turned the page over and pointed again. “And here’s the text on the back. It’s a perfect match.” Nightly snickered. “Not sure why we came at all. We should have just sent Officer Mote and relaxed with coffee until she returned.” Citrine and I laughed softly while Mote looked down at her hooves. I reached for my saddlebag. “Who was it that lived in Appleloosa?” Citrine answered before I could get out my notes. “Mr Calico, the owner of the failed textile mill that Miss Chapeau used. We talked to him a while back, but it didn’t seem like he was involved.” I nodded. “That’s right, Calico. I think it might be time to visit him again.” Nightly glanced at a clock on the wall. “If we wanna do that today, we have to get to the train station right now.” Officer Mote shooed us away with a hoof. “You guys go. I need to document this with some pictures and clean up. Then I’ll go back to the precinct and write up the report on what we did and what we found. Just don’t forget to tell me all about what you find out when you get back.” She grinned.