About an hour and a half, after he had parted with the guard captain, Ryuji strolled confidently into the guard barracks in the nobles' district. The captain was waiting for him and looked a bit worried, unlike Ryuji. “Why do you look like the monster that ate the mercenary? You do have a plan right mil… Ahem, Sir?”
Ryuji grinned at him and nodded. He had secretly always wanted to be like a certain kid detective on TV. He had even watched a lot of criminal investigation shows from America to see how they did things and here he was getting to put that knowledge to use. “can you show me to this merchant? I think we need to have a little chat. Pick a couple guys that are pretty good at spotting things and bring them with us, ok? If this works and the guy really did do it we’ll know soon enough.”
There was an actual interrogation room in the barracks complete with implements of torture. Ryuji was a little shocked when he spotted them but the man sitting at the table looked far more than shocked. He looked sick as Ryuji sat opposite him.
The peevish-looking man with short golden hair and arrogant eyes looked at Ryuji with a mixture of fear and defiance. Then he began yelling in a whiney nasal voice that seemed designed to grate on one’s nerves. “Who are you? I demand you let me go! I’ve done nothing wrong and I guarantee that the count will hear about this! You have no reason to keep me here.”
Ryuji smiled at the man and then laid into him with a barrage of questions. Before entering the room, he had told the captain and the guards not to speak but just to watch the man’s responses. He told them to pay close attention to the direction the man’s eyes were looking as he answered questions and to watch his hands and body as the stress ramped up.
Ryuji started with simple questions like the guy’s name and job. He soon asked the man where he was that morning and the man gave him a running dialogue but Ryuji noticed that he kept looking up and right. With a grin, Ryuji pressed him on details about one of the businesses he supposedly visited that morning and the man began fidgeting with a ring and was constantly looking up and right. Gotcha lier! was going through Ryuji’s mind.
Ryuji asked him which barracks he had visited that morning and he said it was the one in the center of town. This time he was fidgeting with a shirt button but he did look up and left so Ryuji assumed he was telling the truth. But when he asked if he had left any equipment there or any deliveries the man flinched and drew his hand to cover his mouth before speaking. He said that he’d only looked over their inventory but his eyes were up and right again and he was now turning unconsciously toward the door. Too easy, Ryuji thought.
“Last question. What do you think of beastfolk women?” The man began breathing heavily and sweat actually started beading on his forehead. His eyes stayed down and to the left for a couple minutes before he responded. That was some long internal debate there. Dude, could you look any more guilty? “I guess I like them as much as the next guy. I don’t really have an opinion either way.”
Ryuji stood. “Very well. We have several others to interview so it might be a while before we can release you. Be patient and justice will prevail.” He then flashed his most disarming smile as he left the room.
The moment they were outside the room the captain who had at some point introduced himself as Kraise jumped at him. “What was that? We didn’t find out anything! I thought you were going to interrogate him or did you decide he isn’t the guy we’re after?”
Ryuji grinned and shook his head in the negative for a second. “Nah, that’s definitely our guy. I even know where he hid the evidence we need. It’s all in the guard barracks. Let’s be quick and don’t let anybody let this guy go.”
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On the way over to the midtown barracks, he explained that during high-tension interrogation that looking up and right meant someone was thinking up a scene to lie about and that straight right was the sounds to lie about. On the other hand, if they are looking left, they are usually remembering a fact. If down and right it’s thinking over their feelings while down and left is arguing with themselves.
He then went on to explain that people often lean forward under tension if they’re telling the truth but lean back if lying. He explained a bunch of body gestures including hand gestures and grinding teeth. By the time they arrived, every one of the men accompanying him was looking at him as though he were already a wizard or some kind of sage. Ryuji had one more big trick for them. The guards were ready to arrest the merchant on what they had but Ryuji told them to wait because they were about to have all the proof they needed.
When they entered the barracks the captain in charge there wanted to protest but Kraise told him to shut up and just watch. Ryuji knew what he was looking for and went right to the locker cubbies. Under one of the cubbies was a pair of shoes. Ryuji smiled and pulled out a feather duster. He used the handle to scoot the shoes out.
These were finely crafted, boiled leather shoes with a glossy sheen to the green-dyed leather. Definitely not the kind of shoes that you would think of a guard wearing, even off duty. As Ryuji used the handle of the duster to tilt the shoes a line of dried brown blood became apparent near the sole. Ryuji looked up into the amazed eyes of captain Kraise and his men but he wasn’t done yet. “Who’s locker is this?”
Kraise looked at the other captain who was scowling with a hurt look on his face. “His name is Vreese. He’s a good man! There’s no way he would commit murders like that!”
Ryuji shook them all with his next piercing question and maniacal grin. “Tell me. Is this Vreese a beastfolk? He is, isn’t he?... He’s also innocent.”
The captain looked relieved but also curious. Ryuji then pulled out his secret weapon. It was an inconspicuous metal box. He opened the box, careful not to spill any of the black dust inside. Then he began swishing the feather duster through the dust and over the shoes. After a second, he found what he was after with a grin.
He then stood and examined the halberd. Without hesitation, he began dusting the halberd the same way. Finally, the captain had had enough with this weird elf and his antics. “What in the name of all the gods do you think you’re doing? That weapon belongs to one of my men and I demand you leave it alone! Are you putting poison on it? What is that?”
With a grin, Ryuji turned. “So glad that you asked. I was just proving that your man didn’t commit any murders and destroying any chance of the real killer getting away with the crimes. Come over and watch closely. What I’m about to do is pull the killer’s fingerprints off of these two items. Obviously, your man touched his own weapon but I bet that the killer is the only one who touched these shoes. By finding fingerprints that match on these two items and then checking the fingerprints of the suspect against them we can be for sure whether he was the one who killed the latest victim.”
As the guards and the two captains clustered close, Ryuji pressed a piece of paper covered in a thin layer of gummy glue against the shoe’s toe where he had been dusting before. As they watched in amazement, the paper came away with several finger and thumbprints. Ryuji held the paper out for one of the guards to take and then pressed a new piece of paper to the shaft of the halberd in several places. This paper he handed to another guard.
“Keep those separate and don’t touch the surface or fold the paper. Those fingerprints belong to the killer and nobody else while those may have some of the guard’s prints mixed in. the fine trace of blood on the back of the halberd’s tip decorations is certainly the same as the blood on the edge of those shoes. That blood belongs to the victim from today.”
“Now that we have all our evidence, all we need to do is get the suspect’s fingerprints on this third sheet and compare them. If possible, I would like one of you with really good attention to detail to compare the fingerprints. If any of the fingerprints from these items matches even a single print from the suspect it will be irrefutable proof that he’s the killer because nobody in the world has the same fingerprints.”