Confidential Cases: Winggarden

by Anneal

1-1: Loss Prevention

13 Maggu, 199 TI/1024 ALB
Winggarden, United Kingdom of Aris

The bell on the clock tower struck for the tenth time.

The skies were consistently clear in the late spring, though the ocean breeze helped kept the port city from becoming uncomfortably hot. The hippogriff city of Winggarden was located on a low plateau within a bay, with breakwaters just off the industrial seaport. Slate-grey skyscrapers scattered the waterfront, though a few unfinished ones could be seen with more glass and steel than concrete. Of course, a keener eye could notice more traditional Arisian buildings with their arched roofs, along with the natural hot springs and lush hills the city was famous for.

A zebra in her early thirties grabbed a hoofful of flax seeds from her paper bag, stuffing it into her mouth. She wore a red plaid flannel shirt and light grey wool socks – one would not expect a corporate detective to be dressing so informally, and yet there was Azerda, trotting down the cobblestone road like she was on vacation. Her mostly dark mane had a thin band of white in the center and went down to neck-length, and her stripes went horizontally just below her amber colored eyes, giving her a tired appearance at first glance. Near her flank was a multi-layered rhombus with a cross in the center.

Azerda put away her paper bag and shuffled through her satchel. Thirty-eighth month without a smoke now, she thought as she pulled out a lightly crumpled note. She crunched the flax seeds in her mouth, dropping some crumbs onto the paper while she opened it up. A stylized, diamond-shaped "CS" was located on the top of the note. Azerda rolled her eyes. Companies sure loved to put their logos on everything, even case files.

"Dear Miss Zamarata,

We have received the third report since the last month that another military shipment has been marked as missing. This level of asset loss is unacceptable to Crystalstar, and we will appreciate if you would investigate the route of this shipment and its fate, along with the perpetrators responsible.

The route taken for the most recent convoy goes down Coral Street, towards Bayshore Boulevard, and contact with the convoy was lost last night at around 04:00. You will be compensated 600 Shells for the resolution of this incident.

Best wishes."

She hummed and folded the paper back in half. The city of Winggarden ostensibly had a police force, one that could be encouraged to look the other way with enough Seashells. Much of it could be tied to the city's recent history, a deep humiliation that the Arisians have tried so hard to erase. The city was formally ceded as a Legation City along with the loss of the Zumidian Mandate under the Treaty of Aïn Trotgourait just over a decade ago, allowing Wingbardians, Colthagians, and Chiropterrans to use the allegedly self-governing city as their personal economic playground. Of course, after they had defeated the hippogriffs, there was nothing stopping them from turning on each other.

The Legation City of Winggarden barely lasted a year before it fell to complete civil disorder. The hippogriffs were more than glad to take back the city, but the power vacuum left behind enabled more criminal, and most importantly, those with enough business acumen, to regain dominance.

Azerda took a left down a flight of stairs and trotted down towards a wider, one-way neighborhood road. Several automobiles parked on one side of the road, planted with linden trees that were barely above head height. The houses likewise didn't look much older, lined with low-rise prefabricated apartments that vaguely attempted to adhere to Arisian building styles. Most of them were hastily erected to accommodate rapidly increasing housing demand in cities.

A couple apartments down, a wrecked truck jutted out onto the local street intersection between Coral and Slough, the hood of the Lightstar K-5 colliding and toppling the immature, staked tree onto the sidewalk. Azerda squinted and grumbled in annoyance when she noticed a slate-gray patrolgriff and an off-white hippogriff with a brown pinstriped waistcoat, along with a black-white Buck Super coupe – Equestrian made, but clearly converted for hippogriff use. Thought Crystalstar had already made sure the police didn't show this time around.

The patrolgriff was busy placing the numbered evidence markers while the well-dressed police detective looked up as he read his pocket notebook to raise his white claw at Azerda. "Ma'am, this is a crime scene. I will advise you to stay at least five meters away from the vehicle."

Azerda impatiently pulled out a card from her shirt pocket, revealing her private investigator license. "Azerda Zamarata, private detective. As representative of Crystalstar, I am legally allowed to assist in the investigation that involves our property," she replied, saying the last sentence almost formulaically.

The zebra took a brief moment to look at the detective closely; he had a two-toned sky-blue mane swept back, revealing a pronounced widow's peak; most notably, she noticed the lack of a Pearl of Transformation anywhere on his body. Azerda assumed that he may have hidden it somewhere, though she had heard of Arisians heavily favoring one form over the other – the majority of them hippogriffs over seaponies, which were generally more convenient for surface affairs.

"Great that some defense company is suddenly showing compassion for once. This is your company's vehicle?" he said dimly, closing his notebook with a barely audible thud. "And what's with the dress up? We aren't exactly in Applewood here."

Azerda chuckled. "The shipment of small arms equipment on that vehicle is Crystalstar's, at least. And either the Winggarden PD is seriously underfunded, or they don't have much compassion themselves if they only sent two hippogriffs to a crime scene." she returned, promptly noticing the blood stained front windows and bullet holes through the trunk of the vehicle. Azerda's face straightened, patting the seed crumbs on her gloves towards the curb. "I'm trying to do my job just like you, and we happen to want the same thing. You're going to need some help either way."

"Crystalstar equipment? So we're dealing with auto theft, weapon smuggling, and possible murder," the detective paused and sighed. "Fine. Name's Trace Drizzle. You're allowed to look around, but if you tamper any evidence, I'll make sure you'll be answering to the Crown Attorney behind bars.” Trace closed his notebook and placed it in one of his utility belt pouches, then pulled out a set of gloves.

The gray uniformed officer stood up and waved his right claw a bit clumsily – unlike Trace, his Pearl was visible around his wrist. "Water Spout. Officer Water Spout," he added. He was somewhat shorter than his partner, with a curly lock of his mane showing out of his police cap.

Green officers, Azerda thought, trotting towards the front of the Lightstar truck. A small puddle of blood was forming below the right passenger door, leaking through the door gap and onto the asphalt. An L-shaped lug wrench was found next to the puddle, the middle of the handle being stained red on top of the blood puddle in a clean blob. Near the bottom, the handle was wrapped with blue masking tape, written in black marker: 205B. Azerda knelt down towards the passenger door, her eyes turning to the front chassis. The front right tire was missing, leaving only the rotor intact with a red scissor jack propping the truck up. "When was this vehicle discovered?" she asked.

Trace walked next to the zebra mare to examine the area, beckoning Water Spout with a claw to place another evidence marker. "Neighbors reported the vehicle around seven. Whoever did this must be some petty criminal. An auto-theft ring would have stripped the vehicle in a chop shop," he commented.

"Didn't even take their tools, too. They were in a rush. Or this criminal is a reckless amateur," Azerda added with a chuckle, standing back up to examine the passenger window. Too much blood. We'll have to look from the other side.

"And no license plates," Water Spout pointed out as he flew to the back of the vehicle. "There should be a registration slip in the glove box."

Azerda trotted to the driver's side; there, the scene inside the vehicle was more visible, with a trail of blood that went from the driver's seat to the passenger door. The front windshield had two large holes at the front, more than two centimeters wide, one which went through the bloodied passenger seat. The rest of the tires were still intact, covered in brake dust.

The zebra looked at the blood in more detail, careful not to place her hooves on the blood-stained seats. The stains seemed to lack any splatter, with the elongated droplets facing towards the passenger door. Surprisingly enough, there was no blood on the windshield nor the dashboard. She frowned and pulled back out of the vehicle, wafting her hoof in front of her muzzle to get rid of the metallic odor. "Is there a problem?" Trace asked.

"Besides the lack of a corpse?" Azerda answered flatly. "Whoever did this, it must have been from blunt force trauma, and the victim lost a considerable amount of blood, enough to donate to the blood bank three times over. Which brings up the next question of how they were able to dispose of a corpse without leaving blood smears on the ground. Have you sprayed the vicinity with luminol yet?"

Trace shook his head. "It couldn't have been a blunt weapon. If there was, the victim would have been sitting on the driver's seat and hit from the vehicle door," he argued. "There would have been a struggle. The bloodstain patterns look too clean to have been from a brawl. We think the victim would have been shot."

“If they had been shot, the bullet would have penetrated through the driver's seat, not the passenger seat," she reasoned and took a brief pause. There was no use in bickering over the details when she hadn't seen the full crime scene yet. "Get your cop buddy to fly to the apartment ahead for bullet fragments. I'll check the back."

The white hippogriff muttered something under his breath for a moment. "I'll get the registration slip and remove the jack, then," Trace said, turning to Water Spout to repeat Azerda's request.

Azerda moved towards the back of the truck, where she first saw the two bullet holes. The open truck was completely empty. The holes were more than a centimeter in diameter, going through the cracked rear windshield from the left. A 7.62 Alaudia. Rifle caliber, she thought. The zebra recalled using that same caliber in her service days. They shot the back of the vehicle from a distance. It went through diagonally, from left to right.

Trace shuffled out of the vehicle, taking out a bright yellow registration slip. “Plate Number B4861. Owned by Squall Line Logistics, 233 Bath Street,” he read aloud, going back around towards the removed wheel. “It’s registered by a freight company. We’ll head there after we remove this jack. Let’s see who our tire thief is first.”

"Crystalstar gives out contracts to freight companies to transport the goods," Azerda explained. “You think the thief’s the murderer?”

The hippogriff pulled out the release valve on the jack. “I don’t like to jump to conclusions, but most of the time there’s no grand scheme at play. Read it in a book before; the majority of criminals commit crimes on impulse.”

Azerda snorted. “There are plenty of vehicles here where they could have stolen from with less risk involved.”

“Creatures have killed for food or a couple Seashells before. What makes this so different?” he returned with a shrug. The jack lowered down until it was nearly flat, and Trace Drizzle pulled it out the moment the truck relieved its weight from the equipment. A band of masking tape was on the bottom of the jack, written in black marker: 205B. "Looks like an apartment number. The same number was on the lug wrench before."

Azerda looked around at the prefab low-rises, noticing the letters hung in front of each building, starting with D at the apartment immediately in front of them. “It’s an educated guess,” she said in agreement.

Water Spout flew back shortly afterwards – his flight was somewhat uneven, barely being able to make a flat landing. “I’ve found the bullet fragments, Detective,” he reported, holding a plastic bag of the fragments. “The fragments hit apartment D over there, but didn’t go through the walls. They look like 7.62 Alaudia bullets.”

“Couldn’t have been more than fifty meters,” Azerda surmised, noticing the unconvinced stares from the two officers. “I was a markspony for the Auxiliary Corps, way before you finished high school, college colt. My Springtide bolt-action used 7.62, same as the Cloudfall semi-autos they give to infantrygriffs.”

“Did you snipe any creature?” Water Spout interjected, doing a finger gun gesture with his claws. “Like in the movies. They would tally each kill down on the stock of their rifle.”

The zebra mare rolled her eyes and trotted ahead. “Apartment B should be two buildings that way.”

The other two followed behind her. “So you’ve served in the North Zebrican War?” Water Spout flew next to her after a couple seconds of silence.

“A lot of Zumidians served in the war,” Azerda dismissed.

“My dad was a lieutenant commander in the Navy.”

“Is your dad the reason you’re writing citations in the police department?”

“Officer Spout failed recruit training for the Royal Arisian Navy,” Trace interjected with a smirk.

“Shut your beak, Trace. I just chose to serve my country in a different way."

Azerda approached the second last building on the block. The garages were located on the side of the apartment, though the lack of an address number to the corresponding garage made it difficult to recognize. She looked up at the council apartments; they had large balconies for hippogriffs to land on as a backdoor, and the floors were much taller than the ones in equine buildings. Trace Drizzle glanced at Water Spout, who gave his partner a short nod before flying off towards the balcony.

Azerda opened the door – not without some struggle due to her height – which led to a short stairway that led to the second floor hallway from the inside. The hallway floor was covered in vinyl checkerboard tiling and brightly lit by fluorescent lamps, though the lack of windows made it feel much more claustrophobic than it actually was. Reminds me of my old apartment back in Zumidia. Without all this modern construction junk, that is.

She stopped in front of the door labeled 205, giving it a short rap with her hoof. Azerda took a brief moment to look at the slightly faded nameplate in front of the door: Beacon Flash. Must be living here for a couple years now, Azerda thought. Trace awkwardly fidgeted with his claws as they waited.

A couple seconds later, the door swung inward, revealing a middle-aged orange hippogriff with messy plumage – her eyes were visibly bloodshot. "By An, I'm going to report you election campaign bastards if you-" the hippogriff paused when she noticed the two detectives.

"WPD, ma'am, Detective Trace Drizzle. We're conducting an investigation. Mind if we come in and have a look around?" Trace Drizzle pulled out his detective badge.

The middle-aged hippogriff groaned and wiped her eyes. "Make it quick. I work nights."

"Name and occupation?"

"Beacon Flash. Security guard for ASIC Bank."

The two walked into the living room. Azerda scanned her eyes across the room; it was modestly sized, with two wooden chairs and a large sofa surrounding a console radio and a coffee table, which appeared almost brand new. A framed photograph of an unfamiliar male hippogriff stood on top of the radio, wearing a ceremonial Royal Army uniform with multiple medals on his chest. There was a low bookshelf near the sofa, with multiple textbooks and baseball gear stacked inside the shelves in a disorganized mess.

"When do you work, Mrs. Beacon Flash?" Trace asked, jotting something down on his pocket notebook.

"Midnight to eight," Beacon Flash yawned.

"Do you have any foals?" Azerda interrupted. “No offense, but hippogriffs your age don’t normally play baseball.”

Beacon Flash blinked and sighed, placing a claw to her nose. "What did Spotlight do this time?"

As she finished speaking, a hippogriff barely above Azerda's height appeared from one of the bathroom doors, combing back his mane before dropping his comb in surprise. Almost immediately, Spotlight tried rushing for the balcony door before being stopped by Water Spout, who lightly jabbed the young adult with his truncheon back. "Poor idea, kid," Water Spout remarked.

"Mr. Spotlight, you are under arrest for suspected auto theft!" Trace shouted, pulling out his baton along with a set of metal restraints.

"What in Tartarus? I never stole anything!" Spotlight shouted defensively, raising his arms up.

"What is going on?" Beacon Flash added, her eyes widening and turning to Spotlight.

"Cuff his wings first. We still need him to open up the garage," Azerda suggested and pointed her hoof to the just-mature suspect. "If this is all a misunderstanding, you'll be released by tonight. But we found a car jack and lug wrench that traces back to your apartment number. I'm fairly confident we should find one of those truck tires in your garage. Would make plenty of sense you wouldn't try to steal from a neighborhood car – it would be too easy to track it back to you."

Trace cuffed the restraints around Spotlight's wings before pushing him out of the apartment unit, with Water Spout and Azerda following closely behind, making sure to pick up the key ring near the entrance. They went in front of the garage, where the hippogriff detective placed the key ring on Spotlight's claw. "Open it up, mister."

"T-there's nothing inside there for you to see!" Spotlight protested.

"Do you want to cooperate, or do you want us to open it ourselves?" Trace demanded.

Spotlight bit his lip and walked to one of the garage doors in the center, unlocking it with one of the keys. Azerda trotted beside him, pulling the garage up with her hoof. Inside was a red Kessler Mainline sedan, and the limited width barely allowed one creature to squeeze through. It was an economy car, ones imported from Griffonian Reich; griffon and hippogriff anatomy weren’t too radically different.

Right in the back was a workbench with a set of tools from combination wrenches and ball-peen hammers mounted against a cork peg board, most of them marked with the same 205B as the lug wrench. More obvious was the dust-caked tire placed against the workbench, the hubcap pattern matching the one on the Lightstar truck. However, the military equipment that was supposedly on the truck trunk was nowhere to be found. They couldn't have stored the crates in the garage or sold it without raising some suspicion. Where did the shipment go?

Azerda glared at Spotlight. “Enough nonsense. Your mother was out at work, and you're the only one who could have possibly accessed this garage. If you confess now, then Detective Trace here could put a word for the Crown Attorney to keep you from the slammer and you'll save us the effort of dusting for your clawprints."

Spotlight stared uneasily at Azerda and then Trace before gulping. "Alright, alright! I-I thought the Lightstar was abandoned. Pickups like that come with all-terrain wheels, and I was planning to strip them for my custom car. It-It's not against the law to strip an abandoned vehicle," he admitted defensively.

"Yes, it is," Trace shook his head and placed his claw to his forehead. "Do you know that you are a potential suspect for first-degree murder as well? There's blood on your lug wrench, and Miss Azerda here suggests that a victim was possibly killed by blunt force trauma. You know this looks bad for you, right Mr. Spotlight?"

"Huh? I-I never killed any creature!" Spotlight exclaimed – beads of sweat formed on the sides of his ears. "S-sure, I might have taken a tire, but I don't kill creatures for one. There wasn't even blood anywhere when I was working on the truck."

Azerda raised an eye. "No blood?"

Spotlight nodded frantically. "Y-yeah. The vehicle was empty of belongings on the inside. That's why I assumed it was abandoned. It was around four-thirty in the morning; I have irregular sleep schedules since I finished high school. I was thinking of stripping the wheels before sunrise."

The zebra glimpsed momentarily at the tire. "Go on."

"But the tires were heavy for one hippogriff to carry. I was able to carry one tire back to the garage, but when I was returning to pick up my tools to work on the next tire, some creature...some creature shot at the vehicle!" he recalled. "I flew off as fast as I could. I was planning to get my tools later in the morning, but then you" – Spotlight pointed at Trace and Water Spout – "showed up."

"Did you see the shooter?"

Spotlight shook his head. "No, I didn't. The truck's back was blocking my sight. I didn't bother looking back to check."

Azerda trotted closer to examine the tire, the glisten of the aluminum hubcap being faded from brake dust. "This dumb kid didn't clean the tire. If it was next to the puddle when blood was leaking out of the car..."

"...then there would be blood marks on the tire," Trace finished, crossing his arms and frowning. "Hold on. Does that mean that Mr. Spotlight was removing the tire before the murder?"

"I don't think this kid's the kind to be planning out murders...or performing truck heists, for that matter. And if he’s struggling to haul a tire to his garage, there’s no way he had a strength to haul the body out of the truck. Assuming Spotlight isn't the killer, the victim could have been planted between the time he was hauling his tire to the garage and returning to get his tools," Azerda suggested.

“We should check Squall Line Logistics, like I said before. Maybe they can identify the driver and possible victim,” Trace turned to Water Spout. “Do you mind watching over Mr. Spotlight until backup to transports him to Harbor Division? Don’t want to be wasting an hour writing his paperwork. And get a blood sample from the crime scene. We can try and analyze it back at the crime lab.”

Water Spout groaned. “I have to be with him?” he muttered. “…Whatever, Detective.”

Azerda trotted her way back to Trace’s coupe, with the hippogriff detective flying next to her. “The evidence doesn’t add up.”

Trace blinked and nodded slowly. “Based on my intuition, the whole circumstance seems very suspicious.”

“We were arguing about how the perp would have snuffed the victim, right? But there aren’t any blood smears in the road, there’s no corpse, and the timing is all wrong. When I saw the lug wrench, there was no blood on the bent end, only on the handle. And no claw or hoof smears on that, either.”

Trace flew towards the driver’s side of the police car, opening the door. “And the shot doesn’t match the blood trails. The bullet traveled diagonally through the truck, but the blood splatters are almost straight across from the driver’s to the passenger’s side.”

For a while, we’ve been making one big assumption. I doubted it at first, but…Azerda stopped and placed her hoof down on the car hood.

“What if there wasn’t a murder victim?”

Comments

[Comma Typer]

Won't be starting things off easy, then. I already think that there is a big kind of conspiracy if Azerda's final thoughts here are true, but still, that means the perpetrators are still amateurs to an extent because... well, no body to be found, no trace of where that body could've gone, and the crime's too perfect...

I'm thinking it might be corporate sabotage from a rival company. That's my first bet, especially with careful mentions of things like where Spotlight's car came from, of Squall Line, Azerda's comment about Crystalstar putting its logo everywhere... it'd at least fit thematically.