Case Twenty-One, Chapter Seven: Hoofprints in the Snow
The locomotive pulled into the Ponyville station with an echoing squeal of brakes, the late morning sun illuminating the steam and smoke billowing from the wheels. Almost before it had fully stopped, the three passengers were disembarking from the cab, landing on the platform.
“Thanks, Smokey,” Phillip nodded to the engineer in the cab, who nodded back.
“Phil! Daring!” Flash Sentry rushed up to them. He skidded to a halt on the platform, sending snow and slush flying. “We got your telegraph,” he reported breathlessly. “The mail train is waiting nearby, c’mon.”
He led them to a nearby side rail. The five-car-long mail train was still waiting next to the terminal post office, a small blue utilitarian shack where incoming and outgoing packages were sorted and stored before being passed on. The crew of mail workers was still waiting near the bright red engine, shuffling their hooves and staring about in a mixture of boredom and nervousness; Red Herring stood nearby, quietly consulting with the engineer while glancing at his notes.
Twilight Sparkle was standing next to one of the last boxcars, whose door yawned open to reveal stacks and stacks of crates, with bags hanging from hooks on the walls. Doctor Suunkii was standing inside the boxcar itself, speaking to his protege.
“Watch out, there are hoofprints,” Twilight cautioned as they approached, pointing at a trail of hoofprints marked through the snow.
Phillip paused to stare down at the hoofprints for a few moments. “Good impression,” he muttered, staring at one particularly detailed print. “Hmm…not good enough tracks to get a brand from them. Size thirteen…pony about three foot six.”
“I’m taking a cast of one of the better tracks,” Twilight said, nodding to a single track that had a small wooden box around its perimeter, enclosing a square of rapidly hardening plaster.
“So where’d they come from?” Daring wondered out loud. “There are no other tracks around here. Maybe they’re a pegasus?”
“No,” Rainbow shook her head. “The snow would’ve been blown away from where they landed by their wings.”
“Very good, Rainbow!” Twilight beamed. “They are indeed a unicorn. I found traces of teleportation magic here and inside the boxcar.”
“That door was open when we got here,” Doctor Suunkii said from the boxcar. “And there is one crate that was also open.”
He nodded to a single box, large enough to carry a full-sized pony inside, that lay on the floor next to him, its top pried open. Unlike all the other contents of the boxcar, it had no label.
“I have recovered hair from inside,” Suunkii said, holding up a bag. Inside was a clump of dark purple hair with faint aquamarine accents.
“That’s Starlight’s hair,” Daring nodded grimly. “Twilight, can you track her?”
“I can try,” Twilight said, levitating the bag with the hair sample over to her. She walked a safe distance away from the crime scene and with a flash of her horn, summoned a city map and a jar of salt. Burning away some snow to form a flat surface to work on, she placed the map on the ground, used the salt to draw a circle and magical runes around the map, and placed the kidnapped mare’s hairs in the center.
“Quearite. Sequor. Indago,” she began to chant, her horn glowing lavender. “Quearite. Sequor. Indago…”
The salt and the hair began to glow violet, levitating off the ground…then the glow faded away to nothing.
Twilight shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she reported. “She must be behind something blocking my magic.”
“Damn,” Phillip scowled.
“Why bring her to Ponyville?” Daring wondered aloud.
“Probably because the pony who was looking for her is here,” Flash suggested.
“Great. We’ve only got the entire city to ask about that,” Red Herring commented dryly.
“Wait a moment,” Suunkii called, frowning at the top of the crate. “There is additional hair here…”
He pulled out a pair of tweezers and plucked at the wood, carefully extracting a short, single, heliotrope hair.
“Excellent,” Suunkii declared, placing the hair in a tube. “A coat hair.”
He lifted it up to the sky and tilted it, showing everypony how the hair caught the light in such a manner that made it glimmer like a precious gemstone.
“A crystal coat hair,” Phillip noted.
“A yellow crystal unicorn,” Twilight mused. “That does narrow the suspect pool down quite a bit.”
“Oh, yeah,” Red commented dryly. “From four hundred thousand to, what, twenty-three thousand?”
“Actually, unicorns compose only about twenty to twenty-five percent of the population,” Twilight said. “If we eliminate non-crystal ponies and children--”
“Twilight,” Flash cut in. “You’re doing it again.”
Twilight chuckled nervously, blushing. “Right.”
“Why can’t you use the coat hair to track them?” Red asked.
“That coat hair isn’t enough material,” Twilight explained. “A tracking spell like this requires enough magical energy to bridge the gap from it to the pony. Blood is the best option; hair from their mane or tail can work if it’s fresh enough. But a coat hair doesn’t have enough magical energy on it after this long.”
“Then we’re gonna have to do hoofwork,” Red grumbled. “My favorite thing.”
“We’ll have to get lists from the Ponyville census at City Hall,” Twilight declared.
“What can I do to help?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Spread the word through the weather ponies,” Daring said. “Pass out photos of Starlight, Caballeron, and his freaks. Tell them to keep an eye out for any of them.”
“On it!” Rainbow Dash saluted, zipping off in a rainbow blur.
Flash frowned after Rainbow as she flew off towards the rising sun. “It’s been hours since Starlight was kidnapped, right?” he asked quietly. “The odds of getting her back alive--”
“Don’t,” Phillip cut him off. “Sombra wants her alive for whatever reason or the Doctor would’ve killed her right then and there. Just focus on right now.”
“Right,” Flash nodded, turning back to scan the ground for any other clues with a worried frown.
He watched as the rainbow-maned pegasus spoke to the twin blue sisters out the window, who both mulled over the photographs that she handed to them. Anger twisted in his chest like a serpent coiling about his ribs, igniting a fire that raced through his veins.
The detectives lived. And worse than that, they were already on his trail, hounds baying at his heels for his blood.
How were they still alive? What twist of fortune allowed them to keep evading both him and his assassin?
The fire in his veins suddenly turned to ice. He was so close…if he failed now, his masters--
He stopped those thoughts instantly. He had not failed yet.
The Plague Doctor was busy with preparations for the amberclaw tomorrow night. And after several failures, perhaps it was time to use a different piece.
He considered the two mares who were busy molding the snow clouds outside, their orange vests flapping in the wind. The one with the spiky mane paused to speak into the radio clipped to her vest.
Now there was an idea…
The intercom buzzed. “Signor Dorata, Detectives Sentry and Herring are here to see you.”
“So, what are we gonna do?” Red Herring asked as he sat in the lobby outside Alba Dorata’s office, keeping his voice low to hide it beneath the clacking of typewriters and chatter of the secretaries bustling around them like worker bees in a hive. “Just ask one of the richest ponies in Ponyville--who, by the way, has poured a lot of funding into the police, the fire department, the hospitals, and the fucking Filly Scouts--if he was hanging around the train station at four in the morning so he could kidnap a mare?”
“Well, maybe not in those words,” Flash replied, staring out the window at the street seven stories below. He shifted in place, wingtips fluttering slightly. “You remember the last time we were here?”
“I’m trying not to think about that,” Red grumbled, shifting in his seat and frowning at the list of crystal unicorns from the census. Several names were already scratched off, but many more were left.
“‘Only fifty-six suspects,’” Red grumbled in an imitation of Twilight’s voice. He glanced up at the framed photographs displaying the sunshine-coated crystal unicorn hobnobbing with the citizens of Ponyville, from the rich and influential to the poor and humble, and the clipped newspaper articles crowing of North Star Capital Industries’ generosity to the city.
“They can gussy it up all they want,” he muttered. “This will always be Monopoly Investments to me.”
The door across from them opened and a griffoness with a clay red coat wearing a prim suit exited.
“Signor Dorata is very busy at the moment, gentleponies,” Ryder said calmly, pausing before the door. “Please state your business.”
Flash cleared his throat. “We just need to ask him a couple of questions and then we’ll be out of his mane.”
The bodyguard frowned at him. “What questions?” she asked.
“If they were questions for you, we’d gladly ask you,” Red stated. “But the main point of asking him questions is to get answers from him.”
Hoofsteps approached from behind. Alba Dorata appeared, his white and amber beard bristling slightly as he magically adjusted his tie. “I have not forgotten the debt I owe you, detectives,” he said placidly. “I can spare a few minutes.”
“Where were you early this morning?” Flash asked calmly. “Around three AM?”
The crystal businesspony raised an eyebrow. “Asleep. As any sane pony would be at that hour.”
“And I’m certain of that,” Ryder cut in. “We wouldn’t be very good bodyguards if we let our charge wander around.”
“Do you know this pony?” Flash Sentry asked, taking out a sketch of Starlight Glimmer and showing it to the two.
Alba Dorata frowned at the picture, then shook his head. “No, I’m sorry.”
Flash and Red glanced at each other, then Red sighed. “That’s all we needed,” Red muttered. “Sorry for bothering you, sir.”
“Hmm. Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for,” Alba said, stepping back into the office. Ryder gave them both a glance, then closed the door behind them.
“Dead end,” Red Herring mumbled as they turned away from the door, reaching up to retrieve his coat from the hangers next to the door leading back into the hallway.
But Flash paused as he started to retrieve his own trench coat from the hanger, staring at the other long winter coats on the rack.
“What are you thinking?” Red whispered.
“These ashes,” Flash whispered, nodding to some fluffy gray ashes clinging to the collar of one of the coats, a high-quality light blue jacket. “They’re just like the ones on Alba’s ashtray on his desk. I bet that this is his coat.” He glanced down at the collection of heavy boots sitting in the drying racks underneath the coats. “Size thirteen…” he mused to himself, nodding to the boots under his target jacket.
Red frowned at his younger counterpart for a moment, then shifted to block his body as he made a pretense of adjusting the buttons on his coat. A couple of the secretaries gave him looks that reminded him of a schoolteacher watching for any sign of daydreaming or trouble-starting, but for the most part, the busily working stallions and mares were content to keep to their work.
Behind him, he briefly heard the sound of tape tearing, then Flash stood up, clearing his throat. “Right. Let’s go,” his junior partner commented.
Red followed Flash out into the hallway and into the elevator. As the metal doors closed behind them with a ding, Red glanced up to make sure that there were no security crystals, then turned to Flash. “You got it?”
Flash smiled quietly as he pulled two objects out of his coat pocket: a pair of small plastic bags, each containing a piece of gray-colored tape.
“One from his jacket collar, another from the sole of his boots,” Flash said, quickly labeling the collected evidence.
“You know a judge might challenge that,” Red pointed out.
“He left his coat and boots out in a public area,” Flash pointed out. “We didn’t go into his pockets, so we didn’t violate his right to privacy.”
Red smirked. “We’ve all taught you well, rookie.”
“I am pretty good,” Flash said, straightening his back.
“Don’t get a swelled head,” Red chided as the elevator doors dinged open on the bottom floor. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
Sunshower sighed as she bent over the desk, sorting through the cluttered missives of weather reports, schedules, and data charts.
When she was a younger mare, invigorated by spending all day outside in the air, she had no empathy for the higher-ups of the Weather Service. As far as she knew, they were a bunch of older washouts who just sat around in their offices all day and let their power go to their heads with regulations and bullshit statistics and stuff.
After she got promoted (a job movement that she didn’t ask for, but was gently encouraged to take after arthritis started to creep up her wings), she slowly started to realize how wrong she was. Even two years later, she was still baffled as to how much paperwork went into making sure that Ponyville had enough clouds and precipitation, that the temperature was within acceptable parameters on a day to day basis, that there was enough rainfall to make sure the crops grew but not too much.
Combine that with dealing with complaints from civilians miffed about how they were getting too little or too much sun or rain or whatever, her workers’ schedules, and the occasional rogue weather, and she suddenly no longer blamed old Windgust for being so grouchy.
And of course, that was all with Rainbow Dash trying to use the weather ponies like a personal detective force. She snorted disdainfully. Rainbow was a good kid and a decent worker…when she decided to actually do her damn job.
“Okay,” Sunshower muttered, pushing some of her gray-blue mane out of her face and running her pencil down the list of weather orders for tomorrow. “I can pull RD over to help clear out the docks…Raindrops and Thunderlane can get that cold front moving and then--
The phone on the desk next to her rang. Sunshower groaned and lowered her face onto her hoof, the constant ache in her wings throbbing in time with her heartbeat. A phone call this early in the morning could never be good.
She grabbed the hoofset and raised it to her ear. “Weather Service,” she grumbled.
“Foglia. Sette. Torrente. Ventiquattro.”
For a moment, Sunshower thought she recognized the strange, muffled voice on the phone, but as the sentence finished, a strange sensation ran through her head, like fog seeping through her brain. Thinking became a chore, an expenditure that she could not afford, as tired as she was…she let herself slip away, vaguely observing the drowsiness setting over her face, how the pain in her wings faded to nothing as she listened.
“You will ensure that there is a cloud of fog over the Whitetail Woods tomorrow night,” the voice on the phone said.
“Yes,” Sunshower observed herself nodding, watching as she picked up the pen and scratched out part of the weather plan for tomorrow, instead scribbling down an order for rolling fogs across the southeast.
“You will go to Phillip Finder and Daring Do and bring them to the northeastern outskirts of the Everfree District,” the voice continued. “Ensure that they are killed.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sunshower felt a tiny thrill of horror. She was supposed to kill somepony?!
But the emotions faded away like leaves on the wind. It was all right. The voice on the phone had told her what to do. That was all that mattered.
“Yes, sir,” she heard herself speak.
A dial tone answered her. Sunshower drowsily watched as she set the phone down and stood to search for her targets.
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There are sleeper agents among us.
11166014
Very sus.