Copper Flathoof's Journal
Entry for March 17, 1850.
I was recently transferred to Hoofington at the behest of my commanding officers. They felt my “unique investigative skills” would be better suited to the crimes around Hoofington. Which is really just a polite way of showing me the door. Grrr.
Still . . . I suppose Hoofington has been the victim of a recent crime wave. It needs all the able bodies it can get. Criminals and vagabonds are running loose in the streets, and it is my duty as a copper to go out and lift as many of them off the streets as is possible.
Perhaps I can get that promotion I've been craving . . .
March 21, 1850.
Ah, my first case since my transfer. And it is one of the most absolutely despicable things a pony could do. A foal, a child has been found murdered, thrown next to a dumpster by the school he attended. Our medical experts say that he was killed last night by repeated stab wounds, although anypony with half-decent vision could have guessed that second part by looking at the poor boy. So many holes . . .
My colleges and I have opened investigations into the precinct, asking around of anypony who might have known anything that could tell us what happened.
March 22, 1850.
Gaaaah! I am so very irritated, journal. What should have been an open and shut case is now a risky tango with monetary politics.
We've found that the murderer was a fellow student at the school. At some point in the blackness of the night, he stole his way into the cafeteria and took a knife from the cafeteria. With the knife, he ambushed his fellow student and stabbed him several times before disposing of the body by the dumpster behind the school. Being a child, of course, he didn't realize that simply dumping the body by a dumpster wasn't enough to remove the literal body of evidence.
When we made to apprehend the perp, his parents came to his defense, trying to bargain for his freedom. They said he had a mental condition, a learning disability. They said he couldn't tell the difference between celery and lettuce, let alone right from wrong. But as he was still a genius despite this flaw, it would be unjust of us to lock him in prison.
I must scoff at them. Unjust of us? What about the poor student that he murdered in blood as cold as ice!? We know he did it! We can prove the deed was by his hooves and he doesn't even deny it when questioned!
Those parents, though . . . why do I suspect that they have their hooves in the pockets of the city council? No doubt, we'll go through the legal proceedings, proving without a doubt their son murdered that student, only to have to let him go at the last minute because of some trumped-up excuse on the part of the town board. Probably with some stupid platitude. “Because of this boy's mental defects and intelligence, it would be inappropriate of us to imprison him . . .” or some such nonsense.
The only mental defect that boy has is being a psychopath.
We've released a statement to the public, so at least they know that we're not slacking off.
March 23, 1850.
An interesting thing happened today at the precinct.
A mare came in, an Alicorn. But I was taught that Alicorns only existed in royalty. Her wings looked crooked, like they had been slapped on. She said her name was Twilight Sparkle. Sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't quite place it.
Anyways, she barged into the building like she owned the place and demanded to see the child we had under custody. She claimed she had training in the field of psychology and wished to determined if the child was “insane at the time of the crime or not.”
I and several other cops tried to tell her and get her to leave, but she would not budge on the issue. The chief had us pull up her records, but we found nothing. There was no mention of a Twilight Sparkle in the past or present of Hoofington, nor in any of the neighboring towns with a small radius.
After a while, the chief hung his head and sighed. He instructed us to let her conduct her interview to satisfy her, then make her leave without a kerfuffle.
She went in. We pressed our ears against the listening device and eavesdropped as she bombarded the child with questions that made no sense to us, but to which the child responded eagerly.
When she finally exited, she held her hooves in the air and decreed “this child was not insane at the time he committed the crime!” She thanked the chief for his time and calmly left. Before she did, the chief asked where she was staying and she answered that she was staying at the home of one “Heart Throb.” Hmm. The chief sent a dispatch to investigate the home.
Nothing came of it. I'm suspicious about that Twilight lady . . . something about her just felt off.
March 25, 1850
Damnation!
Just as I expected. Just as I expected, we went through the motions. We went to the court. We made our case. Our ironclad, airtight, waterproof case, and you know what happened, journal? The child was found “not guilty by reason of insanity!” Blast it all to Tartarus! I knew this would happen. Gaah, I am so frustrated I'm not sure how I'm able to write straight!
I've made arrangements with the others at the precinct. They seem friendly and amicable enough. I'm going to the bar with some of the other coppers to get wasted. Maybe I won't remember this in the morning.
March 26, 1850
Well, today's been absolutely miserable.
The timing of our alcoholic escapism couldn't have been worse, as we all woke up with terrible hangovers . . . at least I did. I'm not sure how everypony fared. They could have them, but maybe they're better at hiding than I am.
Anyhow, that family which cheated us of a lawful conviction for first-degree murder – you remember them, don't you, journal? Yes, them. They're all dead. Dead as a doornail. Their throats were slit in the middle of the night.
I should be glad. I should be happy that justice has been done! But . . . I'm not. I'm not pleased. I'm almost . . . saddened, really, by the senseless loss of life. What crime had the parents committed beyond bribery and getting their child out of jail? Wouldn't we all want to keep our children out of jail, no matter how insane or dangerous they were?
But that wasn't the end of my suffering for me, nooooo! The chief tasked me and a few others with riding in the wagon to take them to the morgue on the other side of town. It might just be, but the morgue being in a different location from the police district seems like a poor design oversight.
But I haven't gotten to the worse part – well, second worse part, after the part with the murdering. As the wagon was riding down the street, the streetlamps went out. Just went completely kaput.
There was a piercing scream like a mare crying out for help. My fellows and I went for our pistols and took aim in the darkness.
Then, as mysteriously as they went out, the lights came back on.
And we were treated to a most distressing sight. The bodies of the family . . . they were gone. In their places were poor mockeries of pony bodies. Bags of sand of various shapes and sizes were bound together tight with rope and made into the rough shape of a pony.
When we returned to tell the chief about this – this body-robbing, he did not believe us! He had an absolute fit. Said we were falling down on the job, that we were slacking off and not fit to wear a uniform or carry our badge. He scanned the room, looking each of us square in the eye, then told us we had until nightfall the next day to find the bodies and bring them back. Preposterous! I would think a chief of police would know enough about investigating cases to realize that a single day was not enough to trace the clues to find who stole the bodies, how they sabotaged the lights, and why they wanted the corpses in the first place.
I sigh as a I write. Seems my time as a copper in this place is soon to be at an end . . .
March 27, 1850
I have severely misjudged the brilliant Miss Sparkle!
After we pleaded and, I'm not too proud to admit, begged our case against the chief that one day wasn't enough time, we were coldly told to go out and find the perps anyway. Twilight Sparkle came into the district again, and she said she knew of strange things happening in the street. That a large number of criminals were making a fool of the police escorts and making off with the bodies.
The chief was suspicious of her, as I once was. Twilight suggested that she and him both accompany the rest of us taking some new fake bodies on the route so the chief could see for himself. It took some convincing, but ultimately Twilight was able to get him to agree to the idea.
As per Twilight's instructions, we loaded up the wagon with the fake bodies from the other day. We went down the street during the darkness of the night. Just like last time, all the streetlamps went off, leaving us in total darkness. Twilight made some grunts, presumably fending off an invisible attacker. There was the sound of guns being fired, just before the lights came back on. One of the other copper simply had too much of the dark, panicked, and fired his gun wildly in the hopes of hitting the crooks. It was good that the lights came on when they did, or he would have shot the chief in his blind panic!
By far the worst of it was when we went to check the fake bodies. The body-snatchers had been so kind – by the way, journal, that was what's called sarcasm – as to take the fake bodies . . . and then leave real corpses in their place! Bloody, rotted, fetid cadavers oh-so-generously thrown into the back of our wagon.
And to add insult to injury, to rub salt in the wound, they weren't even the corpses of the family! They were the corpses of some other unfortunate souls who had met their fate!
The chief was obviously rattled. He had us throw the bodies out onto the road and hoof it back to the district with the wagon going as fast as possible.
In the aftermath of it all, the chief called the mayor. The chief, the mayor, and the town council all went to the streets and after a long conversation of discussion, decided it would best to evacuate all the homes and bar the street up. All the citizens were given wagons to pack their belongings and told everything would be relocated, but every possible way into the street except for perhaps the sewers had a wooden blockade erected in front of it. Not that a lowlife scum would be stopped by something as simple as a wooden blockade, but it would at least send the message that the area was a “Do Not Enter” sort of place.
The chief dumped the task of getting the now-homeless citizens into temporary housing until new homes could for them could be found or built. The things they couldn't carry into hotels were packed into boxes and put into storage, while dates were made for all of us – able, strong-bodied stallions – to go out one day and start building new houses ourselves. Bah! I'm no carpenter. I don't know the first thing about building a house!
And now that the street's been closed . . . I'm sure the criminals will flock to like moths to a flame. Nothing says “hey, this will be a good place to stash our stash” to a crook more than somewhere where it's guaranteed a law-abiding citizen wouldn't dare to go.
But there's a silver lining to all this at the end of the day. Hopefully, the crime wave will die down and centralize more into the routes with the most ease-of-access into the closed street. Crime radiating out in four directions from the street should prove more manageable than crime radiating out the entire city in a circle.
And better yet, just as I was heading home, Twilight Sparkle appeared and took me aside. She told me she had put in a good word for me at the district, and I was being considered for promotion!
March 28, 1850.
Good news, journal! Fantastic news! I got the promotion! I was so happy, I immediately made for the door to thank Twilight for her good word, only to find her already inside the building waiting for me! She asked if I had the promotion, to which I answered “YES!” in the loudest voice I could manage. I hugged and thanked her. I knew I would not have gotten the title were it not for her help with the case. I asked her if there was a way I could thank her. She jokingly answered that I should take her out to dinner sometime. I think I'll take her up on that offer.
But before she left the district this time, she whispered something in my ear . . .
She said I could truly thank her by making sure to protect the citizens and make absolutely sure they did not go into that awful street we closed down.
What a kind and caring mare! So concerned for her fellow ponies, even when they're people she's never met!