Sergeant Orf Strunkerd was a smart man, his mother had always told him so. The mayor, his brother in law, hadn’t promoted him for nothing. He still had his detractors, all cops did. They said he was a product of… what was the word? ‘Neo-politanism’? Well if the worst thing they could say was that he was an officer of the ‘new city’, then so be it. He had introduced a lot of new city style policing to Cobpleton. Like forensic analysis. Of course, big city police had wizards and fancy labs. Strunkerd swore that they too would get a lab if he figured out where they were breeding them.

Instead, they just had Constable Putty, who was allergic to most things. He was a petri-dish of substances found at crime scenes. You could get pretty close to what a substance was just by seeing how Putty’s body reacted to it. Blood made his eyes water, gunpowder made him sneeze. If Putty was relaxed or happy, then you knew it was an illicit substance.

Strunkerd held the dagger to Putty’s skin. He held the flat to his skin, he was a cop, not an idiot.

Putty sucked in air. “Yep, that’s definitely steel.”

Strunkerd pulled the metal away. A blotchy rash was forming quickly. “Can you tell what kind of steel it is?”

“Judging by my throat closing up, it’s either made out of Shamdoli Steel or peanuts. Either way I’m going to need some epinephrine.”

The sergeant smiled. He had her. He trundled over to the interrogation room. Tria Durana sat there, looking somewhere between exhausted and bored. Strunkerd dropped a packet of papers on the desk along with the dagger.

Clearing his throat, he said. “Please state your name and current address for the record please.”

“Uh… Tria Durana. The Kelpiewood, Nursing County- “

“Aha!” the sergeant shouted. “Already caught you in a lie!”

Tria was taken aback. “W-what?”

The sergeant fished in his packet for the right papers. He slapped them in front of her. “You’re not originally from Nursing County are you? You were adopted after spending time in an orphanage, one that has no record of you being born here!”

“You never asked where I was born, just where I lived,” she said coldly.

The sergeant wasn’t going to let facts get in the way of his case. “You are from Shamdal aren’t you?” he continued.

“How am I supposed to know?! I was a toddler when I got to the orphanage,” she said.

“Oh really? You don’t know?” He flipped over to the next piece of paper. It was a newspaper. It was from almost nineteen years ago. “Care to explain this?”

The incident had made headlines all over the world. ‘Newborn Princess kidnapped from Royal Crib’ wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“You think I’m some lost princess?”

“If it fits, and it does.”

“I’ve never even been to Shamdal. I might be ethnically Shamdali, but lots of immigrants are,” she said. Tria looked at him more confused and angry than guilty and afraid.

“But we have evidence to suggest you were born in Shamdal. Your snakes!”

He flipped through pages. It wasn’t something he was looking for, it was the lack of something. “We have records of every Scion family from all over the world. We have dog scions, cat scions, and plenty of fish scions. But no snake scions…save one. The royal family of Shamdal.”

Tria opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. Her eyes fell on the newspaper. She just stared at it.

The sergeant was not a mechanically minded man, as far as he knew clocks had little punctual demons inside. If he had been, he might have recognized the look of gears turning on Tria’s face. Synapses connected, gaps in memories filled, and realization crawled up her spine.

But all Strunkerd saw was the look of someone who had been thoroughly out-foxed by him. He was good detectivering for someone who wasn’t in law enforcement before he was a sergeant. Pleased with himself, he rose to fetch the confession form.

The door opened. It was Constable Putty. “Miss…Durana’s…lawyer…here…sir,” wheezed Putty. He was red and puffy even by Putty standards.

“Dear gods man! Didn’t you take your shot?” asked Strunkerd.

“I was…distracting the lawyer…as you ordered…sir,” he managed to get out as a figure pushed past him.

“My client is done talking to you,” said the newcomer.

The sergeant was surprised. “Mr. Fence? Do you know Miss Durana?”

“Enough to know that she will not be answering any more questions.”

This wasn’t good. It was bad enough that there were lawyers who hampered an honest investigation. But it was worse when they actually knew what they were doing. If anyone knew the law, it was a banker, especially one as successful as Fence. You didn’t get the rich if you didn’t know where the law could be bent.

He sized up the banker, giving him his best scowl. But there was something not quite right about Fence. If Strunkerd had been more observant, he would've noticed that Fence’s suit didn’t fit quite as well. His muscles were bulging. Perhaps he could’ve seen the glassy look in his eyes.

He sniffed, ordered Putty to fetch him a smoke or two, and reminded Fence that this wasn’t over.

There were plenty of things that Strunkerd could have done. His job, for one. He could have investigated the weird noise he heard from the interrogation room. But he was an out of sight out of mind kind of sergeant. The universe didn’t exist out of his periphery. Instead, he had today’s crossword puzzle to solve, so he sent Putty to check on them.

What was a six letter word for lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern? He almost had it when Putty interrupted his…his big metal thing that went really fast, of thought.

“Sir, there were two people in the interrogation room right? Durana and her lawyer?”

Strunkerd turned to him. “Yes, why?”

Putty was twiddling his fingers. “And…um…we had four walls in that room right?”

Strunkerd tossed the crossword and ran. He slammed open the door. Several things were missing from the room. Tria Durana, Mr. Fence, one of the three foot concrete walls, his pride. He stepped gingerly into the room, his foot catching on a pair of open handcuffs.

“Put on the siren, Putty.”

“But sir, my throa-”

“Put on the siren!”

Putty took a deep breath in and… “WooooOOOOOooooOOOO!”