//------------------------------// // Burnt apple pie. // Story: Time to lay your sleep head: Murders in ponyville // by starfox64x //------------------------------// Time went by slowly. The winter remained icy cold, but the panic and terror gripping the city had begun to loosen it’s grip. The Gilda murder was still unsolved, and had very few leads to go on. Twilight was getting very little information about what was happening other than the investigation was still going on… She finally decided to head over to the station to get some answers. She walked right in and passed by the receptionist, who was too busy with the phone to pay her much mind anyway. She spotted the chief and called out to him, “Excuse me sir!” The chief looked over, letting out a sigh. He was apparently dreading this moment, “Hello Twilight… Lemme guess, you’re here to hear about the case?” “You’re a smart stallion, Chief.” She smiled sweetly, hoping her charm would get her more info. The chief just sighed, “to be honest, not much… we know the murder weapon was small, but sharp… a new pocket knife or something maybe… no suspects… and as for the mysterious blood, we found some chunks of what looks like bone… but it’s not nearly enough to go on…” “Bone fragments? Not from Gilda?” “Nope, not a match… we’re checking patient records at the hospital and looking through the missing ponies list, but so far we’ve got nothing” “So then Rainbow Dash is no longer a suspect?” “Yes, she still is a suspect… and… to be honest, many people in town are still suspects… she was not a friendly person, and she made a lot of enemies… Rainbow Dash is just a big one considering she was frie-“ The front door slammed open, a large red stallion rushed toward the receptionist, “We need help! Some guys were attacked on our farm!” Twilight blinked, “Big Mac? What on earth is going on?” “Twilight!” Mac rushed to her as fast as his legs could take him, grabbing her shoulders in a panic“The Flim Flam brothers! I think they’re dead!” Every soul in the room looked at him with their jaws dropped… another murder… a double homicide. Twilight, Big mac, the police chief, and a few investigators all stood in the middle on the apple fields, staring at the large mechanized vehicle once known as the Super Cider Squeezy 6000. it’s engine had blown, and a fire raged across it’s entire length. The first body was beneath the vehicle, tire marks dented into the very flesh of the crushed pony. The other body took a moment to spot… but amidst the flames was the suctioning device used to pull Apples from their trees… and a pair of charred legs stuck out from in the entry nozzle as it blazed away. Big Mac looked like he was going to be sick at the sight, forcing himself to look away from the horrible atrocity that had been committed. The chief shook his head, sighing at the scene, “Can somepony please put this fire out?” Twilight nodded, lighting her horn up with her magic, taking a chunk of snow from a nearby tree and melting it before drizzling it onto the flames. A thick black smoke began to rise from the burning mechanics, filling the air above… “Alright boys and girls… you know what to do… take a look at what’s going on and I’ll talk to our friend here…” The chief motioned Big Mac to step aside with him while the investigators rushed to the scene to collect evidence. Twilight quietly followed the two, hoping to get some information on what happened. “Well Mac, tell us what happened…” The chief led him far from the scene to keep his mind off of the bodies, while Twilight stood to the side to listen in, hoping her presence would comfort him… Mac took a deep breath, rubbing his head as he tried to sort things out in his head, “Well… I was just working in the barn, er, just outside it anyway… When my little sister and her friends came running up from the fields… they said the Flim Flam brothers were riding around the fields… I was gonna go out and give them a piece of my mind… I bumped into Applejack and told her what the girls told me… she said she’d take them back home so they wouldn’t get involved. I eventually found… that…” he pointed over toward the scene, keeping his eyes away. “So you were the first to discover the bodies… how long did it take you to find it from when your sister got to you?” the chief was taking mental notes, keeping detailed information in his head. “Uh, about twenty minutes after Applebloom got to me… took me some time to find them… I think it took me another twenty to get to the station and back here…” “What the vehicle on fire when you got here?” “It was smoking…. But not on fire… I… I think the suction thing was still working when I found it…” Big mac seemed nervous, uncertain with the information he was giving… Twilight was beginning to get worried that he would be a suspect… “So your first reaction when you saw this was not to stop the suction, or to see if the victims were okay. Instead you just ran?” Big mac felt his heart drop, “I-I panicked! I didn’t know what was going on… I just… I just ran for help!” The chief continued to press for information, “That seems like plenty of time to rough up a couple of skinny city folk to me…” Big Mac’s jaw dropped, “I-I…” “Chief, you know you cant make accusation like that.” Twilight said quickly, finally stepping in, “And Big Mac, you’ve given your statement, you don’t have to say anything else until you have a lawyer… and… just in case, I’d recommend it…” he nodded quickly, shutting his mouth and sealing it tightly. The chief rolled his eyes, “Yes, but considering his statement that makes him a prime suspect… and I think his sister is just as big of a suspect as well…” “Applejack???” Mac spoke up again, but a quick glare form Twilight caused him to shut up once more. “Why is that, chief?” “he said that he ran into her in the orchard… she could’ve been out here with the brothers… and the fact that she didn’t want her little sister to ‘deal with them’, it sounds to me like she might’ve been protecting them from seeing this…” Mac bit his lip, trying to force himself from opening his mouth again… “I can see what you’re saying, but it’s all speculation.” Twilight seemed confident in her knowledge of the legal system. “Chief! Found something!” One of the investigators rushed to the chief, holding a few papers in his unicorn magic’s grip. The chief glanced through the two papers before looking Mac dead in the eyes, “I’m gonna have to ask you and your family to come with me to the station.” “f-for more questioning?” Mac asked sheepishly. “No, we’re putting you under arrest under suspicion of murder…” “What?” Twilight jumped in once again, “What kind of evidence could you have to do that?” “Apparently an invite from the Apple family to the Brothers…” he said, reading over the piece of paper, “for some sort of… ‘Final challenge’… we’ll talk more later, but YOU.” Mac felt the cold eyes of the chief land back on him, “You’re coming with me…” At the station the entire Apple family was separated into their own rooms, including the cutie mark crusaders who were put in their own room together with a child psychologist. Big mac had given him story once more, going into as much detail as he could about what happened, hoping his honesty would prevail. Applejack on the other hand, was angry and insulted that she was being questioned, “I’m the head of my families farm! You think I’d do somethin’ as stupid as murdering somepony and risk losing everything?” “Look ma’am, we just want you to recall what happened today…” the officer was getting a bit annoyed by her stubbornness, but kept his cool under the pressure. “I toldja once, I was walking around the fields inspecting the trees all dern day long.” “It’s winter, what on earth could the trees be doing?” “Tending to the trees is a year ‘round job! See if any trees are dying and whatnot…” “Were any dying?” “well, yeah, a couple…” “Did you keep a record of which ones were dying?” “Course I did! Right here in my noodle!” she pointed at her head, grinning with a bit of self satisfaction. She always did have a good memory when it came to her farm. “Not on paper thought?” The officer didn’t have the time to take to admire her memory… “Nah, I don’t need it…” The officer suddenly pulled out a sheet of paper, “So then this doesn’t look familiar to you?” Applejack pulled the paper closer, seeing the map of her farm with tiny X’s marked here and there, maybe a dozen throughout the farm. “No… where didja find this?” “It was on Flim’s person” he said simply, “That, a letter, and a bushel of apples were all that they had…” “Apples?” she blinked, looking down at the map once more. “Applejack, this doesn’t look good for you.” The investigator explained, “You admit to looking around for keeping track of dead trees, and here’s a map of your farm where the bodies were…” She looked up, connecting the dots the officer was giving her, “Hey now! I told you! I was memorizing them! I didn’t need a map!” “Hm… well if that’s all you’re going to tell me, I’m going to talk to your grandmother… you stick here for a moment” “Now don’t’chu go accusing her of nothin’! She’s been in the market all day! You found here there when you rustled us up!” “I know, but we still have questions…” Applejack let out a huff, annoyed by the whole situation… but deep inside she felt afraid… her little sister was out playing and somepony was murdered… it could’ve easily been her instead. Although now she began to realize that as a prime suspect, she could be sent to jail for this… In the other room, the Cutie Mark Crusaders sat with a special officer, a kindhearted cheerful young mare with a big smile, “How’re you doing girls?” “Good.” The girls said around the same time. None of them knew what was going on exactly… they just knew they were being asked questions for… something…. “That’s wonderful girls… So what were you doing today before you got on the fields?” “We were trying to see if making snowponies was our super special talent.” Scootaloo said quickly with a big bright smile. “I made the best one.” Sweetie Belle added with a big grin. “No way!” Applebloom quickly jumped in “Mine was so much better!” The officer could tell she had to stop this before things got out control, “O-okay girls, tell me about what you did on your way home…” Applebloom knew the farm best, so she started to explain, “Well… we were taking a shortcut through the fields when we heard voices… we looked and we saw those Flim Flam brothers picking a couple apples from our trees while they were driving around the field…” “Really? What did it look like they were doing?” “Well… I watched ‘em for a moment…” Applebloom said with a thoughtful expression, “Looked like one of ‘em was examining apples from each tree and the other was marking something off on a piece of paper…” “Really?” the officer recalled a piece of evidence from the scene that may have related to this, “Are you sure?” “Yeah! I couldn’t tell what it was, but he was definitely writing something down… Didja catch him up to no good? He was definitely stealing apples! Didja arrest him for it?” “Er… I can’t tell you that…” the officer got nervous, not wanting to tell the little girls exactly what happened… “When did you leave?” “Well, we thought they heard us, so we scattered… we found each other after a few minutes and ran back to the barn to get Big Macintosh.” “Did you see Applejack around anywhere?” “No, I didn’t see her…” The officer nodded, scribbling down some notes for records, “Okay, how long was it from when you last saw the brother to when you got to Big Mac?” “Oh, uh… I think about twenty minutes? I found Sweetie Belle first, then we got Scootaloo and headed up to the barn.” The officer looked at the girls, seeing if they seemed like they had more to say… “Well thank you girls, just hold tight, we’ll have you out of here in a bit, okay?” the officer stood and head out to share her information with the chief… Twilight sat in the chief’s room, waiting for him to finish examining the date he had… He finally let out a sigh, leaning back in his chair. “Well… Here’s the situation as I see it… The brothers were running around the fields gathering apples for some sort of challange with the Apple family that they claim they didn’t make with them… the little girls spotted them and caught them taking apples from their trees and marking something on the paper… from what they told us, the were taking good apples and marking where they got them on a map, the spots match up almost perfectly, so the map isn’t Applejack’s after all… The girls split up, and after twenty minutes they got back together and found Big Mac. Applejack took the girls back home after working the fields all day, and Big Mac found the bodies twenty minutes after that… so within a forty minute period the two were killed by somepony… Applejack doesn’t have much of an alibi to go on, and Big Mac has a much smaller time frame… but it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have done it too… There WAS that mentioning a ‘final challenge’ from the Apple family that still bugs me…” he shifted in his seat, waiting for Twilight to give her opinion on the situation. Twilight thought quietly for a moment, “What EXACTLY did the letter say?” “Well, it was from the Flim Flam brother to the Apples… It said ‘we accept your challenge, and we plan to put your money where your mouth is… We’ll be victorious, and it truly will be our ‘final’ challenge…’ It seems to me that they emphasized that because whatever letter they received mentioned it first…” “But there wasn’t a letter FROM the Apples anywhere to be found?” Twilight seemed to have found a lead that she was following, hoping to help her friends. “No… nothing like that…” the chief had a feeling he knew where this was going… “Than you have no proof they invited them…” she grinned, wanting to flaunt her insight, “perhaps they planned to do something else and it backfired… they WERE caught stealing apples…” “From a statement from three little girls…” he reminded her quickly. “That’s right, THREE witnesses that say they saw them stealing apples.” “which give the Apple family a perfect motive to get rid of them…” Twilight blinked, suddenly finding herself unable to talk, “Not to mention they tried to run them out of business once before… sounds like a strong motive to me… we just don’t have any strong physical evidence saying they did it… but we do have enough to detain them for a bit while we gather more evidence.” Twilight listened quietly… and unfortunately she felt that he was right… “Okay… I understand… but what about the girls?” “Well, Rarity says she’ll pick up her sister… but Applebloom will either have to be picked up by another relative or a close family friend… Scootaloo though, she doesn’t really have anyone… We’re going to need to send her to a foster home soon. We’ve been trying to get to her for months now…” “Wait, you’re sending Scootaloo off?” “Yes, we have a few places in Trottingham that would love to have a daught-“ “Whoa Whoa Whoa! You can’t do that! She’s Applebloom and Sweetie Belle’s best friend! You can’t take her away.” The chief sighed. He really wasn’t in the mood to argue with Twilight about the issue. He had enough on his mind and having his guilty conscience being bombarded with more attacks wasn’t going to make him feel any better, “I know, but she’s homeless, we know she sleeps in Applebloom’s barn or sneaks into Sweetie Belle’s home at night. We know she’s stolen food before… that’s just no way for a girl to live…” “I know it’s not, but still…” Twilight bit her lip, trying to think of a solution. “Let me and my friends keep her safe at least… if you take her away she’ll only run away and be alone outside… that would put her at risk for someone to hurt her… You don’t want that, do you?” The chief twitched… again, Twilight’s stubbornness was getting to him. He let out a groan, rubbing his eyes, “Look… If she ‘happens’ to leave the station by ‘mistake’ and as long as we don’t catch her alone outside I suppose we won’t worry about her much… but if we find her out and about alone, we’re taking her somewhere safe, okay?” Twilight’s face brightened, “Wonderful! Thank you sir.” She hopped up and quickly headed over to tell the girls the good news. “Hold up a second!” The chief called out, “This case is getting big, and I need all the help I can get… If you find out ANYTHING about these murders I want you to get my attention quickly…” Twilight stared at him, a bit confused by what he meant exactly, “If you discover anything new I want you to send up some fireworks. Just a couple of red and blue strobes… I’ll come running as soon as I can, okay?” Twilight nodded, “Yes Sir! I’ll make sure to get it done!” she started out once more, but stopped herself, “Oh, Is there any new information about the mysterious blood in the park?” The chief sighed, “No, the extent of what we know is that two tracks led up to the blood, no body, and some fragments of bone… we have no theory as to what it could mean…” Twilight bit her lip, the mysterious incident was bugging her… she felt like something horrible would be discovered about that… but for now she tried to push the thought away and headed out to gather the girls.