//------------------------------// // Stare Into the Void, and the Void Stares Back. // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: The Detection Chronicles // by Daemon McRae //------------------------------// Chapter 2: Stare Into the Void, and the Void Stares Back “You’ve done this before, you absolute bastard.” I growled a little at the display, recognizing the kind of handiwork that comes with meticulous practice. Paperweight trotted up behind me. “Spy? What’s up?” I ignored her and turned to a cop taking notes and bagging some debris nearby. “Pardon.” The officer looked up. It was Longarm. “Yes?” “Have you had any other scenes like this? Strung up, stabbed repeatedly? Stage dressing?” I pointed at the different parts of the display as I spoke, and his eyes followed. He recognized the pattern in my questioning quickly. “You think he’s done this before?” “I think this isn’t something you get done right on the first try. Look at how the bottles are pushed in,” I moved for him to look closer at the victim’s… Barrel’s, joints. “You see how there’s no indication of fractured bone? Just rendered flesh, right? He dug the glass into the joints and through the tendons. Even with basic know-how that takes some doing, and doing it this well isn’t just beginner’s luck.” Paperweight looked back and forth between us. “You mean like a serial killer?” I thought about that. “No, not a serial killer. But he was getting ready for this. So he’s probably recreated this scene over and over to make sure he got it right. This is more than just personal. This is long, drawn out and vindictive. The guy had probably been planning this for a long time. It’s almost ritualistic, if not for the lack of any occult symbols." Longarm took a closer look. “You’re right. We haven’t been here that long, so nopony’s tried taking him down yet. We’re waiting for someone from the Coroner’s Office to get here.” He paused, seeing my alarmed look. “Oh Celestia no. They’re not sending HIM. Just somepony to collect the body, make an initial evaluation, and get him down there.” ‘There’ being the morgue. “Speaking of which, how did you get here so damn quick? We hadn’t even made a public statement. The news is just now getting wind of this.” I told him about the call from Inkblot, and how I’d been hired to investigate. “Yeah, I knew about that. But why would he call you so damn quick? We haven’t even finished processing the scene yet. I mean, no offense, but from what I’ve heard you’re barely qualified to be here by virtue of knowing not to touch anything.” I shrugged. “I tried to ask, myself, but somepony who’s checks I write told me not to ask questions about why we were getting paid to be here.” Paperweight just glanced at the floor, then the ceiling, whistling innocently. Longarm rolled his eyes. “I know the feeling. As soon as there’s money involved almost nopony asks questions. Unless it’s going a direction they don’t want. Ok, so you said Inkblot called you. I haven’t seen him since we first got here, though.” “Oh, he came up… with… us…” I trailed off as I turned to point at the elevator. There was no indication of him in the room. Hell, I wasn’t even sure he’d walked out of the elevator with us. Paperweight trotted off to try and find him. “That’s weird. So, how long ago did you get the call?” “About two hours ago. We got here maybe twenty minutes after that. Captain Jade practically shot us out of the office in a glass cannon.” He flipped through his note pad to look at some earlier info. “Yeah, maybe about… nine a.m.?” I looked at the clock. It was almost eleven. And Inkblot had called us maybe an hour ago. But something still bothered me. I just couldn’t put a hoof on it. “So, what did it look like when you got here? Was there anypony else in the room?” Longarm thought about that for a minute. “I wasn’t first on the scene, so I couldn’t tell you. Sykes was. Absolutely livid about it, too. He wanted to be out looking for Hardy’s killer. I’m starting to think he’s gonna leave and go out and do just that for the simple fact that the only pony crazy enough to stop him is Jade. When I got here though, it was pretty chaotic. I think Barrel was the only owner here, though. I know Stock got here an hour or so after we did and nearly exploded in tears when she saw him.” I looked again at the body, some little niggly feeling still tickling the back of my mind. And not in a good way. “So where’s Lock?” Lockdown, the original owner of the firm. Stern son of a bitch, and never left the office that I knew of. Having not seen him yet actually surprised me. “We’ve not seen him, either. I was actually considering putting out an APB for him. Look, you might want to stand back, they’re about to cut him down.” He motioned to a group of newly-arrived ponies in medical uniforms pulling up a gurney and getting some wire cutters out. The had to set the gurney aside to keep the blood from dripping on it while they got a ladder out to reach the piano wire holding him up. The still… dripping… blood. “Shit. I KNEW something was wrong.” Longarm gave me a look. “What? Did you see something?” “Yeah, so did you. We just didn’t process it properly. Look at the pool of blood.” I pointed a hoof at the stain in the carpet. He squinted his eyes to see it. “Yeah, ok.” “Now look at the body.” I pointed up. His eyes followed. “Ok, what am I missing? I mean, it’s a mess, yeah.” Longarm looked a little confused. I didn’t blame him. I only thought about it when I realized the niggly feeling in the back of my head was the sound of blood still dripping. Two hours after the guy was reported dead. “You see where all those cuts are? He’d drain out pretty fast, yeah?” Longarm nodded. A look crossed his face of mixed confusion and slow realization. He was getting there. “Then let me ask you this. Why is he still dripping blood?” Longarm put a hoof to his mouth. “Oh. Oh sweet Celestia. You mean he was…” “Check his throat for gags and run a tox panel later for sedatives. There’s no way that many deep cuts in that many vital areas would drip for that long. I hate to tell you, Longarm. But he was still alive when you got the call. And he was probably still alive when you got here.” Impressively, the detective didn’t look queasy. Just upset. It’s one thing to walk in on a murder. It’s another to realize the guy died while you were in the room. “But then, the guy who called it in…” He was starting to put more of it together. In fact, I hadn’t even gotten that far. But I could see where he was going. “I think you’re right, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking. The guy who called it in is probably your killer.” I looked around the room. “Ok, so you know how I said this wasn’t a serial killing, that it was personal? Stored up, practiced for, just for this guy?” Longarm nodded. He was taking notes, and waved an officer over. A young mare trotted up to him. “I want a recording of the 911 call brought to the lab for voice analysis. Have them call me.” She nodded, gave me a sideways glance that said ‘The hell is he doing here?’, but decided to leave it alone. Instead, she ran off, presumably to a phone. Longarm gave me a look. “Ok, can I just ask, while I’m thinking about it, why the hoodie? Why not a long coat or something?” “Because everyone and their dog who investigates crime wears long coats and they’re damn expensive. Plus I don’t need a hat.” I glanced over at the bar, and noticed something odd. I waved at Longarm to follow me and trotted over. He followed, and glanced over to what I was staring at. “Hey, Detective. How many bottles do you see missing?” He counted. “Nine. One each for the elbows, knees, and shoulders. One in each hip. One in the neck. Why?” I leaned in. “Look closer.” He did. And I think he saw it too, but I couldn’t be sure. I heard him counting under his breath. There, in the rows and rows of drinks, were ten circles in the dust. And one of them seemed… wrong. Somehow. Different. “Why is that one circle so damn tiny?” Longarm asked nopony in particular. I was about to ponder that when I heard somepony behind me call out: “Detective?! You might want to see this!” We both turned around. It was one of the medical ponies, and he was standing near the vic’s head. They’d laid him out on the gurney. We trotted over. And soon found the tenth, much thinner bottle. Longarm swallowed. “Well, now I know why he didn’t make any sound.” ------- Paperweight drove us in silence behind Longarm’s police cruiser. He’d asked us to follow him back to the station once the scene had been processed. She glanced over after a few quite minutes and asked, “Something the matter, boss?” I pondered a bit, and decided just to think out loud. It usually helped, even if Paperweight sometimes had no idea what I was on about. “What bothers me is how damn fast Inkblot called us in. It’s bad enough that Barrel, rest his soul, was still alive when the cops got there, or at least likely to have been.” “Maybe Inkblot saw all the cops pulling up, not having heard the news yet. And when they told him about the murder he called you? The timing fits,” she offered, not unhelpfully. “Maybe. But why did he call me so damn quick? There’s just something about it that’s bugging me. He said…” and something clicked. Or at least, a cog turned. It wasn’t an answer, but at least now I knew the question to ask: “How did he know that he couldn’t trust any of the detectives he had on retainer less than an hour after finding out about the murder? I can think of at least three of his trusted P.I.’s that he’d call first.” Paperweight mused a bit. “Wait a minute. Didn’t he say if it was his choice he’d have called a new detective entirely? So who told him to call you? Maybe Stock did?” I was surprised at that. “That’s right, it wasn’t his decision. But Stock couldn’t have told him. Longarm said that she didn’t get there until an hour after they did. And we got called maybe half an hour before that…” I trailed off. “What are you thinking, boss?” Paperweight had that look on her face that just screamed ‘Tell me tell me tell me’. “I think we need to find Lockdown once we’re done at the station.” Speak of the devil. I’d no sooner finished my sentence than she’d pulled into the parking lot and landed a neat little spot near the entrance. I swear if I hadn’t seen her do paperwork I’d swear her Special Talent was parking. We dragged ourselves out of the car and followed a recently parked Longarm into the station. He looked at Paperweight’s parking spot, then at Paperweight. “Don’t ask,” I told him, before he could open his muzzle. “Ok, so the ponies from the coroner’s office left before we did. Any chance they’re already done?” I asked hopefully. Longarm laughed hollowly. “I wish. I don’t want to go down there any more than you do. But we need answers.” I shuddered. Anypony who was anypony who knew anypony in law enforcement stayed away from the morgue. Or, more specifically, the mortician. Slip Stitch. “Can I just wait here?” Longarm gave me a smile that reminded me of griffins I’d pissed off. “You want in on this investigation? You gotta suck it up like everypony else, bronco. Look, we still need to talk to Evidence first, so you at least have some time to prepare yourself.” Paperweight gave me a supportive pat on the back while we made our way inside. And I remembered why I hated the goddess damned DPD. Oh, I love the cops. I think they do great work. Most of them. I think this city would implode without them. Most of them. It’s the building I hate. HATE. More specifically, the File Cloud. It roared unpleasantly above my head like a tornado full of firearms and paper cuts. I’d heard horror stories about the thing. Like it going out of control. Or being used as a raging thunderstorm during Halloween. As well as ponies disappearing into the unholy thing and being seen weeks later covered in lacerations and red tape. Literally. And then a heavenly voice from the clouds echoed across the room. And I remembered why I loved the DPD. The cops, not the building. “Hey, Esp! If you’re going to stand there all day can I decorate you?” I looked across the room at Radiophic Telegraphica. AKA Telly. AKA the best set of flanks I’d ever seen. “Please don’t!” I called back. “Paperweight might charge you for it!” She punched me in the shoulder. “Hey! What do you mean, might?!” I raised my eyebrows into my mane at my assistant, amazed that that was what she chose to take offense to. Telly just snickered. “I’d ask if you came to flirt with little old me, but I know why you’re here. And I don’t envy you. From what I heard the guy was a mess.” I shook my head. “I haven’t been around as much death as most of you ponies, but holy Tartarus alive was I not ready for that.” “So why are you here? I’d think you’d want to talk to the Chief Patholigist first,” she gave me one of those ‘I’m sorry’ smiles before turning her attention from her sound board, then back to us. A couple of times. Damn she could work. I responded with a ‘Goddess help me’ sad grin. “Well, fortunately Longarm here wants us to talk to Evidence first. Apparently the Coroner’s not done yet.” She raised an eyebrow. “And you think Evidence will be? They’ve only had the stuff for like, four hours. And it’s not like they have a backlog.” A voice came over one of the headsets on her neck and she talked into a mic for a second. Longarm nodded. “That’s why I want to get to it now. Before they do any tests on it and possibly destroy it. I want to get a good look at all that stuff outside of his body before they give it a chemical bath.” Telly nodded. “Right.” She looked back at me, and pointed a hoof off to the corner of the rather large room. “Evidence is down that hall, downstairs. Before you go, let me ask. Have you… have you met our Forensic Analyst before?” She stopped paying attention for a minute, shouting something in a language I didn’t know into three different mics. I shook my head, and she smiled. “Ho boy, you’re gonna have fun. Don’t worry. She’s no Slip Stitch.” “Oh thank Luna,” I pressed a hoof to my chest, which had tightened as soon as she said the word ‘fun’ like it tasted funny. “Don’t start praying yet. Actually….” She just trailed off, and pointed at the hallway again. “GO on, git. You’re distracting me.” I was going to say something else when I felt a warm tingle around my ear. Followed by a sharp tug. Paperweight just groaned and said “Come on.” “Ow. Ow! Ok, Dear Goddess. I’m coming!” I shouted as she dragged me away from the instrument panel and down the hall. Longarm just chuckled. ------- Now, many ponies come and go through many parts of DPD headquarters, or ‘The Castle’. There’s a lot of work to be done at any given time and not enough ponies to do it. Which is why the distinct lack of anypony anywhere near the entrance to Evidence struck me as odd. “Um, Longarm? Are you sure this is the right place? Did they move?” Longarm gave me a look and chuckled. “Oh, no. I can’t imagine anyone moving Lady’s stuff.” “…Lady? You have royalty working for you?” “You’re DAMN RIGHT he does! And HE works for ME!” A loud, boisterous, surprisingly youthful mare’s voice came in over a speaker above the door I hadn’t noticed before. I winced at the volume. Longarm just sighed. “Lady, can you let us in? We need to look over the evidence from the Barrel case.” There was silence. “Um… what just happened?” Paperweight cocked her head to the side. Longarm waved a hoof at her. “Shush. Lady, come on, open the door.” More silence. “Oh, for the love of… To the sweet and noble Miss Lady Fluffington Stuffington the Third Esquire. We doth humbly request entry into your grand lair. Please.” Longarm drawled unenthusiastically. It was quiet for one more moment, then the speaker came back on. “Oh sure. Be enthusiastic about it, why don’t you. Get your tight flank in here before I spank it.” I was dying. Just rolling on the floor laughing. “Oh… oh Luna. Did you… Fluffington Stuffington?! Oh my goddess… can’t… air… not working….” I was still laughing on the ground when the door slid open and a blur of purple something whooshed out of it, and landed on my chest. HARD. I started gasping for air when the same youthful voice I’d heard over the loudspeaker yelled from somewhere above me, “Thou DARE scoff at Her Highness’s name in front of her?!” I stopped gasping for air for a second to look up at my assailant. A small, light purple pegasus filly with a spiky, dark blue mane glared down at me. She wore a spiked collar and had black eyeliner. Longarm sighed. “Fluff ‘n’ Stuff, get off of him. He’s the P.I. helping out with the Barrel case. We kind of want him alive.” She glare daggers at me, then hopped off, and trotted back into the room. I regained what composure I’d managed to maintain during my laughing fit and stood up. “Ok. Whoo. I’m sorry. I just… sorry.” Fluff ‘n’ Stuff didn’t turn around, instead just sitting in the middle of the room, her back turned to me. I could see her Cutie Mark was similar to mine. Hers was a magnifying glass over a chalk outline. (Mine being a magnifying glass over a file folder.) I looked at Longarm, who shrugged and motioned at Fluff ‘n’ Stuff. I had an idea of what I was supposed to do. But… I trotted a little closer, and said, “Um, Your Highness? Miss Lady Fluffington… Stuffington…” (don’t laugh don’t laugh please Luna don’t laugh) “Esquire,” she said, without turning around. “…Esquire. I’m sorry I laughed at your name. We could use some help. And I’m… new to addressing… royalty.” I sat quietly for a minute, hoping I’d done it right. She turned around and considered me for a moment. “Hmmm, well, you ARE new. I can’t expect everypony to know the proper procedure for addressing The Queen of the Lab the first time. Ok, I’ll forgive you. But first, you have to do something for me.” I smiled. “Sure, what?” “Bow,” she said matter-of-factly. Ok, I thought. Part of the game. I bowed, still looking up at her. “That’s not how you do it. Your nose has to touch the floor,” she huffed. Just play along. “Like this?” “Perfect,” she said. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but I heard her trot closer to me. I just barely registered that she was behind me when I felt a sharp pinch on my flank. “Ow! Did you just bite me?!” I jumped away from her and turned to face the offending filly. She just grinned wickedly at me. “Now that that’s settled,” she said, completely walking over my question, “Let’s take a look at all that shiny stuff.” I looked to Longarm for answers. As he and Paperweight walked past me, following Fluff ‘n’ Stuff, all he told me was, “Dude, she’s older than you.” “…what.” “SERVANTS!” Fluff ‘n’ Stuff barked. Almost instinctively I turned and followed. I decided then that focusing on the case was much more important than worrying about the older-than-me filly who’d just goosed me with her teeth. She led us to a huge table full of stuff from the crime scene. But something bugged me. “Um, where’s the evidence for all the other cases?” Fluff ‘n’ Stuff, who’d taken a seat across the table from me, pointed out the door. “My loyal subjects are working all those other boring cases. This one looked nice and juicy, so I kept it all to myself.” She looked up at Longarm. “Don’t worry, Longitude, I haven’t cooked any of it yet.” “It’s Longarm,” he grumbled, but went back to staring at the evidence. “Are these the bottles from the crime scene?” “Yuppers,” she cooed. “Ain’t they shiny? Makes me want a drink reeeaaalll bad.” I opened my mouth to ask a question, which apparently Longarm determined I shouldn’t, as he shut my mouth again with a hoof. I decided to look at the bottles again. Something seemed suspicious. “You laid them out alphabetically?” She just gave me a look. “Duh.” Right. Ok. Equinox. Two bottles of Fillyball Whiskey. Incoltnito. Ne’er Do Well Scotch. Nightshade. Two bottles of Old Colt Lager. Rider’s Rum. And a personal favorite, Umbral Spice. “Hmm…” I poked Paperweight, and pointed to her coat pocket when she looked at me. She paused for a moment, then, realization crossed her face and she handed me a notepad. I wrote out the brand names in order. “Equinox… Fillyball….” I could feel the others staring at me while I worked. Something seemed off, but I couldn’t put it together. “ANYwho,” Fluff interrupted my train of thought, and I pocketed the notebook for the moment. “I want you all to take a look at this piano wire. It’s something pretty interesting.” “What, did you find some trace on it?” Longarm asked, almost hopeful. Fluff looked downtrodden. “Psh. No. I wish. Actually, quite the opposite.” She pointed to a table where the wire had been laid out, and anchored to keep it from curling up. There was still a lot of blood on it. “Look at the ends. Notice anything?” I leaned in to give it a look. “…they’re all cut.” Longarm just scoffed. “Yeah? How else did you think he’d get it out of there?” “No, you… not like that,” I argued. “Look. Notice anything about the cuts?” Longarm gave it a cursory glance. “Not really?” I looked at Fluff. “You know what I mean.” It wasn’t a question. She smiled knowingly. “The cuts are perfect. No angles. They’re straight. These are factory cuts.” Longarm raised an eyebrow. “So what? Does that tell us what kind of tool he used?” I sighed. “Just the opposite. You wanna tell him?” I asked Fluff. Paperweight looked back and forth between us. “What, what is it?” Fluff leaned on the table to stand a little taller. “It means he didn’t use a tool. He took the wires out of the piano by disassembling the thing. The guy is good. We can’t trace tool marks because he took the whole damn wire out the way it’s supposed to go.” Longarm swore. “Damn. We got anything else?” I took out the paper again. “There’s something to these bottles, but I can’t pin it down.” Paperweight snatched her notepad back. I knew better than to argue. “Lemme see that. Equinox… Fillyball… Incoltni…to… oh. Oh goddess." “What?” I asked. She’d found something, that’s for sure. “I’ve done more than enough word games. It’s the names. He chose the bottles specifically. It’s not Equinox, Fireball, Incoltnito. The order’s wrong,” Paper explained. Fluff went back to look at the bottles. While Paper spoke, I could hear her rearranging them. “So what’s the order?” Longarm asked. Paperweight looked shaky, even pale, while she read it off. “Fillyball. Old Colt. Umbral. Rider’s. Old Colt. Fillyball. Ne’er Do Well-“ “-Incoltnito, Nightshade, and Equinox,” Fluff ‘n’ Stuff finished for her, her voice just as shaky. Longarm and I trotted over to the table to see what Fluff was seeing. She’d rearranged the bottles so the labels lined up. I felt sick. Longarm looked it. The bottles spelled out a simple message: FOUR OF NINE. “…Paperweight?” “…yes Spy?” “I was wrong. We ARE dealing with a serial killer. And he’s not even halfway done."