August 15th

“Hello, how can I he-”

“There are people attacking us! They have guns! I heard gunshots!”

“Calm down, miss, please tell us where you are!”

“Eastern district, Jinaimanstreet, Fla- GHAAAH!”

“Miss, miss, are you all right?”

There were crashing sounds in the background.

“Hello, hello, miss, are you there?”

***********

4:20 AM

Two police cars and an ambulance car arrived in front of the mansion. From the front cars emerged the six detectives. Hellen jumped out of the first car and ran towards the house. Klancy headed out after her and Galtomor, Fushichin, Salim, Juniper trailed behind him.

Hellen opened the door to see Joey in the hallway.

“Ahh, you guys arrived. It…it’s bad.” said Joey with a sad face.

“H-how many bodies are there?” asked Hellen.

“Six.” said Joey grimly.

“No.” said Hellen with shock but soon her shock turned to anger.

The other detectives entered the hallway and stood behind Hellen. Behind them were physicians and medical examiners.

“Is it true? Is one of the victims really that famous politician Layla?” asked Fushichin.

Joey nodded and said “I think she was the one to call the cops. I was the one who came here cause of the call, the six of us. She called us at 1:40 AM.”

“Also, why the hell are you guys running around in the dark? Turn on all the lights” said Fushichin with grumpiness.

“For some reason, all the light switches are not working. We’ve been operating with our flashlights in the dark.” said Joey.

“Maybe the culprit cut out the electricity?” asked Juniper with a frown.

“I dunno. We’ve been concerned about protecting the bodies and looking out for aggressors with guns. Layla did mention that the attackers had guns afterall.” said Joey with a frown.

“Let’s go and examine the bodies. We’ll figure out why the blackout occurred as well as who were the people responsible for this.” said Klancy and moved into the rooms followed by the medical team as well as the other detectives.

The first body they found was in a room on the first floor. The man was on the floor in front of his desk. His chest as well as his forehead were bloodied.

“Francis Matilda. 22 years old. Layla Matilda and Klied Matilda’s son.” said Klancy as he looked at his topinfo tech after scanning the corpse’s face.

Salim as well as two other medical examiners sat in front of the body and looked carefully. Hansel, the medical examiner, was the one who looked carefully towards the clothes, pulled off his shirt and examined the body.

“Two bullet wounds on the chest area. 1 bullet wound on the head.” said Hansel.

“Hmm, wait.” said Galtomor.

“What?” asked Fushichin.

“That light! It’s coming from the plug switch.” declared Galtomor.

Indeed, there was a plug switch placed behind the computer screen and a blue light was shining from inside the buttons.

“Oh yeah! Good point, so there is electricity?” pondered Fushichin.

Hellen quickly went towards the door and pressed the light switches.

“Nothing. What is going on? Definitely electricity is reaching that switch.” gasped Hellen.

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“Yet the lights are not turning on. Maybe there is something wrong with the wirings?” pondered Salim.

“We need to get the lights on to investigate faster. Let’s leave it to the examiners to come up with the autopsy report. Let’s check the other bodies.” said Klancy.

They exited the room and went upstairs through the stairs onto the second floor. The first body they encountered was that of a man’s lying in the hallway face down.

Fushichin lighted the area with his flashlight while Hellen and Galtomor took pictures.

“Two shot wounds to the top of the head.” said examiner Carlson as he inspected the body.

“So what? The culprit came from the ceiling?” joked Fushichin.

“No, obviously they were crouching and maybe the culprit shot him then.” said Galtomor quizzingly.

Hellen picked up a flashlight from the ground near the body. Its glass was broken.

“This crack. I don’t think it was caused by blunt force. Something entered it. Wait, I think there is something inside this.” said Hellen.

Klancy crouched and lighted the area around the body. He walked forward and grabbed a tiny piece of grey plastic off the floor.

“What’s that?” asked Juniper from behind him.

“A metal, it’s cut weirdly, perhaps from a casing of an explosive.” said Klancy.

With a nitrile glove Hellen put her fingers into the hole in the flashlight and pulled out a bullet.

“Who the hell would shoot a flashlight?” said Fushichin.

“Dunno, it could be just a mistake.” said Hellen.

“Hmm, that bullet does look similar to that of a glock’s right?” asked Fushichin.

Hellen nodded. Galtomor opened up his topinfo tech and searched the man’s identity.

“Ritam Chandra. Age 39. Son of Jamal Chandra and Hatili Laina.” said Galtomor.

“Huh, what was he doing here? A friend of Layla or her husband?” asked Fushichin.

Meanwhile Klancy found even more grey plastic scattered around the hallway.

They went towards the hallway to the left. At the corner of the room they found two bullet holes in the wall. Klancy put on his gloves and pulled out the bullets. The bullets were much longer compared to that Hellen found from the flashlight.

“Let’s put this in a plastic bag but remember the location of the holes” said Klancy.

They opened the door of the first room they encountered and it was very clear it was a bathroom. The room next door was spacious and had a double sized bed but nobody was inside it. So leaving it, they went along the hallway and arrived at the room at the end.

Entering the room they found a woman’s body lying face down. Her legs were crushed under a bookcase that was almost getting in the way of the door. Her hair was bloodied.

Hellen quickly arrived next to the body and sat down. There was no doubt about it, it was Layla’s body. Hellen put a hand on her mouth in horror. Fushichin frowned fiercely.

Carlson the examiner sat next to the body and moved her head.

“Two shot wounds to the back of the head. There seems to be a bullet wound on her back as well” said Carlson.

Fushichin’s eyes fell on a smart phone near the body. He quickly approached it but realized one thing.

“This smartphone… it has a hole inside it. Did someone shoot at it? No heart to value properties, am I right?” asked Fushichin with a smirk but nobody was willing to laugh at his jokes.

“Hey, look at this.” said Klancy as he lit his flashlight towards the wall of the room.

A teenager was sitting on the floor, kneeling against a wall next to a wardrobe. She was obviously dead.

“Hmm, there doesn’t seem to be any bullet wounds. But…” said Klancy as his eyes sharpened.

“But what?” asked Salim.

“There seems to be slight marks on her neck.” said Klancy.

“Wait, does that mean she was strangled to death?” asked Galtomor with surprise.

“Yes, we should further inspect the body and get the autopsy. But I could try to gauge the time of death by rigor mortis” said Klancy.

Claiming that he grabbed the victim’s body and pressed his fingers on it and moved the limbs to see the stiffness.

“It’s flexible, and the body hasn’t gone cold yet. I would guess that the time of death is between 1 to 2 AM ” said Klancy.

Galtomor checked the girl’s face with top info tech.

“Claire Matilda. Victim’s daughter. 16 years old.” said Galtomor blankly.

“Hey, when did you guys arrive at this mansion?” asked Juniper while looking at Joey.

“2:30 AM. The victim did call us. But they were on their cell phone and something happened before she could tell us her address. We were eventually able to track the location of the call. But we really lost time. The call happened at 1:40 AM. We arrived fifty minutes later. I’m surprised the agency hasn't given you the log of the call yet.” said Joey with sadness.

“We’ll eventually get it. In the meantime, we should examine all the evidence we could find.” said Klancy.

They exited the room into the hallway and entered the room they had previously disregarded. The room with the double sized bed.

“There is nothing here. I’m gonna check other places.” said Hellen and exited.

“Hey, wait! I’m going too” said Juniper and exited the room, followed by Fushichin.

Galtomor walked around the room with Klancy with their flashlights. Salim took pictures to preserve the scene.

Galtomor arrived in front of a device that emitted blue light. It was placed on the cupboard next to the bed.

“Huh, it’s a Baelix.” said Galtomor.

“Baelix?” asked Klancy.

Galtomor smirked and said “I guess old folks like you wouldn’t know. It’s an AI controlled voice service device.”

Galtomor looked at the device and yelled “Hey, Baelix, could you turn on the lights? It’s bloody dark in here. And if you can’t do that, tell us why you can’t!”

The device did not respond.

“Is it broken?” asked Salim.

“Maybe you gave it too many commands.” said Klancy.

“Hmm, no. Probably protected by voice recognition. It’s not accepting my commands because it recognizes I’m not registered.” said Galtomor.

“Alright, how do you register your voice into it?” asked Klancy.

“There are different ways to do it. I’m assuming the application that registers new voices to this Baelix is on the owner’s phone or PC.” said Galtomor.

“If it’s on the phone, then that’s unfortunate. Fushichin found a phone with a bullet hole in it, right?” said Salim.

“Ugh, more than that, it’s pretty troublesome if the application asks for login information. But I doubt that’s the case. I’ll check this computer then.” said Galtomor and booted up the pc that was on the desk.

**********