//------------------------------// // Two Colts and a Corkboard // Story: Starlight Over Detrot: The Detection Chronicles // by Daemon McRae //------------------------------// Chapter 11: Two Colts and a Corkboard I’d been escorted back to my office after I’d exploded in the hospital. I wanted to protest but I couldn’t think of any reasonable arguments. So I just fumed and stewed in my own juices as I was led back to my office. There was too much going on and not enough sense and I just couldn’t deal, so I let Longarm frogmarch me home. He seemed a little hesitant about letting himself in when we got to the office, why I could only guess, but eased up as I offered him something to eat or drink. “All we got’s some cold or frozen veggies and bread with some sandwich spread right now. I need to tell Paper... Weight...” I trailed off, realizing I’d have to write her a note. Instead of the blindingly discordant anger that flooded me at the side of her hospital bed, a wave of melancholy washed over me as I pulled out a small pen and a pad of paper. I wrote something half-hearted down about going grocery shopping, and tossed it on the table. Luna knew if I’d find it again. Longarm stared around the room for a bit, his eyes lingering on the whiteboards and corkboards and all the notes and paperwork I’d laid out. “You uh... you seem to be rather entrenched here, Spy.” I’d made my way to the kitchen while he was giving the place a look-see, and called over my shoulder, “Not as much as I like. There’s a few boards in the back I need to bring out later once I get some of the lab results back from Fluff. She’s making a timeline of the blood mural at the second scene, and she’s gonna cross-reference that with a bunch of video footage from the hotel. Well, her and her small army of brain-slaves.” I heard a chuckle behind me, half-appreciative, half-nervous. “Right. So... how’s... she doing? How are... things between you two?” It was like watching somebody hold their hoof over a bucket of hot water trying to work up the nerve to dunk it in and pull out the keys they’d dropped in. “For Luna’s sake, Longarm. I’m pissed off, not broken. It’s not like I’m just going to run out the door and start killing ponies. Talk to me like a normal stallion or you don’t get dinner. And Fluff is... well, she’s dealing. I went over to Evidence last night with the intention of bending her over a lab table and plowing her stupid. Her... disorder had other ideas. So we spent the evening cleaning up her lab and the morning just talking about the case and whatever the hell we felt like.” I dug out a small bag of baby carrots, poured them in a bowl, and dropped them on the table in front of the couch. “S’what I got right now.” Longarm looked at the carrots for a moment, as if trying to determine something about them. Then he looked at me. “Spy, let me ask you something.” “That sounds like an order,” I said. I’d be slightly amused if I wasn’t so damn depressed. And angry. I’m pretty sure there was still some of that in there. But the walk home, and the cold weather, and the office that had never seemed emptier just drained everything resembling energy out of me. Honestly I just wanted to curl up and let everypony else do it. “Why are you sleeping with Fluff’n’Stuff?” I imagine my expression at the time was something akin to watching a pony grow a second head. “What? You’re joking, right? Have you not seen her when she’s an adult?” He dismissed the statement with the wave of a hoof. “No, not that. I mean, if you’re in love with Paperweight, why sleep with Fluff? Or any other mares? I get the impression you have a tendency to take it where you can find it.” I shrugged. It wasn’t something I wanted to think about, but by now I was on autopilot. I could be a serial killer we were investigating, the serial killer we were investigating, and if he’d asked me I’d probably just recount all the details of all the crimes like I was reading the book on Detrot tax law. Slow, emotionless, and with a surprising amount of clarity. “Probably because she has almost no interest in me. There are times when I’m pretty sure that if I wasn’t supplying a steady paycheck, and didn’t need her for basically everything, she’d just up and walk off. Not only is she disturbingly hard to read sometimes, but most of what I do, what we do, would not only make most ponies turn away, but grab them by the aft end and chuck ‘em out the door. It amazes me every day that she gets up and does what she does despite everything. Especially now. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if she quit as soon as she woke up.” He considered me for a moment. “You don’t have a lot of faith in her, do you?” Part of me felt insulted, like I was supposed to, but I knew what he was trying to say. “No, Longarm. I don’t have a lot of faith in myself. I’m pretty much only good at one thing, and even then not all the time. Longarm leaned on his elbow on the arm of the couch, and popped a carrot in his mouth. After a few chews, he said, “And what is that?” I smiled weakly. “Pattern recognition. It’s my special talent. I see the world, how it relates to itself. I look at a room and I can tell you what everything is for, what it does. Who uses it. Why. I can sniff out details in the stupidest hiding places and tell you exactly what it’s for. But my talent’s got a huge gaping hole.” “Oh?” I nodded. “Yeah. Time. Pattern recognition over time is... a problem for me. Not so much if I’m looking at it all at once, like a timeline of a calendar or something like that. But every time I look at something knew, over-analyze it, and figure it out, something old gets tossed away. If I’m not looking at it all at once I just don’t see it.” Longarm didn’t say anything for a while. He ate a few more carrots, and for the longest time I thought he wasn’t going to say anything. So I went back to looking at the evidence again. The crime scene photos. The ledger. The scans of the little black book. They’d made me give the real one back to evidence. “Spy, do you know what my special talent is?” Longarm asked. I almost jumped. I hadn’t really expected him to say anything else. That, and I was neck-deep in thought at the moment. “Uh... no. Not really.” I glanced at his Cutie Mark. “Um... hitting people?” He raised an eyebrow, and turned his gaze to his flanks, where the image of a block and gavel sat, against his red fur. “No you moron. My talent is judging people.” When I gave him a look about that, he elaborated, “And not like good or evil. I’m an excellent judge of character. I may not have the best instincts or the best aim, but I know somepony when I talk to them. I can tell you quite a bit about a pony just from a few minutes of conversation. Pony Resources has been trying to force me to transfer to the Hiring Staff for ages. And do you know what I see when I look at you two?” I gave him an unamused stare. “If you go all chick-flick-y on me I’m shooting you.” He laughed a bit at that. I suppose you have to be able to, in most circumstances. It was a skill I hadn’t quite learned yet. “I see me and my partner. I see two ponies who know each other like the hours of the day. If she walks out on you because of this I’ll eat my gun. Loaded.” “That sounds an awful lot like greeting card bs, Longarm. Did you just tumble flank over teakettle out of some cheap 60‘s cop show?” Another laugh. Louder this time. “Look, Spy. I’ve been right where you are. Alone. Watching my partner sleep. Waiting for things to go back to normal, when you know they’re never going to. I’ve done it over and over. Not just with him. With family. Friends. I’ve been at this a while. You’d be surprised the kind of changes my life has made, for better or worse. You spend most of your time chasing unfaithful husbands and insurance frauds, right? When was the last time anypony died during one of your investigations?” I couldn’t think of anything. And the look on my face must have told him as much. “Exactly. Look, you’re not a cop. And I can see why they didn’t let you through to being one. You’re not cut out to wear a badge like us, Spy. You’re a whole different kind of pony. You want my opinion, and hell, even if you don’t, you’re right where you should be. Just starting out. We’re going to catch this guy. Paperweight’s gonna get up out of that hospital bed. And the next morning, some evil piece of shit is going to get up and fuck over somepony else’s day. And you’ll do all this all over again. Because that’s the life, Spy. It’s what my talent is telling me you’re made to do.” I thought about his words for a while. He stopped, stared at me, waited for an answer. Finally, I said, “That’s an awfully long and roundabout way of saying ‘suck it up.’” His eyes widened, obviously not the answer he was expecting. Then, he laughed again. And I joined him. And it felt... normal. “Look, Spy, you may not ever be a cop. Probably not. You’re not gonna wear a badge, make Lieutenant, or be the Chief. But you are going to do a damn good job. You may never run the world, but you’re sure as hell gonna keep it standing.” I rolled my eyes at that. “Look, I appreciate the sentiment, but if we sit here and bullshit too long there won’t be a world... to... run.” I trailed off, my voice dipping with each word as realization struck me, not like a brick, but a large, intrusive needle through the brain. Obvious, painful, and obnoxiously slow. Longarm quirked his head at me. “You look like you just figured out where Jimmy Hoofa is buried.” “They didn’t bury him, he just went home,” I said, not paying attention. I walked past Longarm and the now very confused look he was wearing, and stopped inches from the corkboard with the crime scene photos. I looked back and forth, from Barrel’s photo to Absolutia’s. “The system...” I whispered, piecing it together. “Pardon?” the cop asked over my shoulder, trying to see what I saw. “The system. It was something I’d said a while back that just kind of poked at me since. I knew this guy had a pattern, had previous victims. He basically told us as much at the first scene. Quick, Longarm, if you had to take down all of Detrot’s infrastructure with only nine bullets, who would you kill?” He rolled it over in his head. “Well, Absolutia, for one. I’d say the mayor, but he’s little more than a chess piece. His secretary, though, half the city walks across her desk every damn morning. LS&B would be a great place to start if you couldn’t get to some other firms. Or if you were trying to absolutely fuck over some politicians.” I nodded. “Right. I know that they spend quite a lot of money to make problems go away for certain ponies in power. Fortunately, I haven’t been asked to do any of that. They just point me at a guy who’s already fucking up and give me a camera. Who else?” “The Chief, although you’d have to be a special kind of stupid to try that shit. Even Fluff’n’Stuff is scared shitless of her and I’ve seen her stare down minotaurs.” An idea crossed my mind. “I’m not exactly sure she... scared them into submission.” “...I don’t want to think about that. At all. Anyway, you’d also want to take out the Director of Transportaion. Or you would, if he hadn’t had a bloody heart attack two months ago.” Ding. Red flag. “Heart attack? You sure?” He nodded. “Yup. Autopsy came back on him pretty damn quick. It helps the guy was several dozen years old and drank like his last name was Punch.” “What was his name?” I asked out of curiosity. “Steam Rail. He became Director after a couple of decades of working the rails and the streets driving ponies where they needed to go. If anypony knew how to get anywhere anywhen without stopping, it’d be him. Or Taxi.” I flinched. “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure Rail could do so legally. Still, that’s... convenient.” He looked over at me. “You want me to do some digging?” “Couldn’t hurt. Who else?” “Chief. Absolutia. Rail. Secretary. LS&B. Lessee... probably After Glow. Hell, I’d get to her as fast as I can, before anypony else figured this shit out, too,” he mused to himself, looking at a few of the scans of the notebook. “...ok, who the bloody buck is After Glow?” Longarm turned his attention to me. “She popped on our radar after Hard Boiled and his partner Swift went to visit this club on the far side of town called the Vivarium-” “Whoa whoa whoa. The Vivarium?! Are you serious?!” He smiled at me. “So you’ve heard of it then.” I shimmied from one hoof to the next. “Let’s just say... if you’re going to cheat on somepony, do it there. They don’t take kindly to... snoops.” “...Stilettos?” “Stilettos.” “Right,” he concluded, still smiling slightly at my unvoiced misfortune. “Well, from what I know of what we know about the place, she’s pretty damned important. She doesn’t run the join, but if my intel is right... and given the state of things, that’s actually a valid question, taking her out would leave a huge gap in their operation, and keep them swaying on their feet long enough to make moves on their territory. Of course, there’s a couple other criminals on the list, but aside from those six, the only other pony I could think of is... Telly.” I quirked a brow. “Telly? Why take out Telly when the Chief is a much better option?” “Because taking out the Chief is suicide. Come on, Spy. Try to imagine DPD without Telly.” I couldn’t. “Son of a bitch.” “Exactly. Now, these are just guesses, mind you, but they’re my best guesses,” Longarm explained. “This guy probably knows some more vital targets, ponies behind the scenes I’ve never heard of. I wouldn’t be surprised if his previous victims, or his newest, were ponies... or other folk... we’ve never heard of.” I nodded, and turned my attention to the black book scans. And then my eyes got really, really wide. “Longarm.” “Yeah, Spy? What’s up?” I pointed a hoof at a specific page. A specific line. A specific set of letters. “That.” “Wha... VM AG at 3/6 A. What about it?” “I’ve gotten very good at reading this notebook. At least when I have names and places to fill in the gaps. I think I also have the fractions thing down,” I explained. When he nodded for me to continue, I said, “This translates, if I’m right, to After Glow at the Vivarium, 6 P.M.” His eyes widened. “You’re joking.” He turned to me. “Please tell me you’re joking. That was a lucky guess. You’re just fucking with me.” I shook my head. “Nope. See here, the VM? That’s how he initials single words. First and last letter. Two word names or more are easy. The 3/6 A? Three-sixths into the afternoon. Six P.M. If this means anything else it’s a disturbing coincidence. And name me one time a cop was allowed to ignore a disturbing coincidence.” His head sunk as realization hit him that we were, in fact, going to have to go to the Vivarium. “Once. Then he got fired.”