Most of Flores’s morning was spent searching for jobs. Investigative or commercial, it did not matter to her. She went from store to store to asking for employment or if any trouble was about. Each time, the door was promptly closed. As it turns out, having a resume as empty yet cursed as hers meant little chances for work. Lost in the dreary atmosphere enveloping her, she almost ran into a scene of minor nuisance unfolding. There was a gumshoe interrogating some angry businessman. Cautiously getting closer to take a better look at the man, he wore a heavy beige trench coat over a police uniform that bore a badge. It identified him as a detective working for the Laslow police department. He looked as if he had recently walked off the set of a once-popular noir film. He even had his hands in his pockets, although that could be more attributed to the cold weather.
“For the last time, no! I don’t know where she is,” the man in the suit yelled in annoyance, “She hasn’t shown up to work and she hasn’t called in sick yet!”
“Look, I just wanted to know if you knew what her daily routine was like. I didn’t even ask you all of that nonsense,” the detective calmly stated, “If you could please tell me what you do know then-”
“Get lost, pig! You are wasting my time and time is money!” The businessman almost spat at the detective as he walked back into the office building they were standing outside of. “I don’t pay you lot at the department to be stupid.” His last words before he disappeared into the building hung in the air for a while as the detective sighed and lit a cigarette. Flores approached the detective anxiously, unsure of whether or not to even do anything. But this was her chance to prove to someone, anyone, that she could still be useful,
“H-hey, do you need any-”
“Oh, excuse me. Could I ask of something from you?” His buttery smooth voice startled her, It was a stark contrast from the voice he used to talk to the businessman.
“Of course. I-I’m happy to help.” She was not expecting him to be so upfront.
“Good. It's a relief to see there are still some reasonable people in this city, but I digress.” The man’s frustrations were understandable. From what Flores had experienced so far, most of the residents were more used to using their fists over their words. Even the bleak streets surrounding her felt unfriendly. “I’m looking for a woman wearing a white business suit with a black skirt, red tie, has black horn-rimmed glasses. Not very descriptive, I know, but that’s all I have to work with right now. She’s relatively short, about five foot two, white with black straight hair, and smokes often. Also frequents the nearby park, have you seen her recently?”
Digging in her memories, she drew nothing. “No, I don’t think I have, sir.”
"That sure is a shame. Well, you have a good day now-”
“W-wait! I can help. I am, was, and might still be an investigator, and the only thing I’m good at is sniffing things out.” She visibly winced at her own joke.
“Now tell me why I am to trust a shifty figure in a trench coat?”
“Because you’re wearing one as well?”
The detective pulled out two coins, specifically a penny and a quarter.
“Here’s a little test I like to give. The penny is an honest coin, as honest as the man on the back. The quarter is weighted with the same weight that its man had to bear.” Both coins glimmered under the moonlight.
“I’m guessing you won’t tell me which side that quarter is weighted.”
“Yep. Pick one and then pick heads or tails. If you get it right, I’ll take your word.”
“How am I supposed to do that? T-this is all just luck.”
“That’s exactly what someone trying to mug me would say. Now pick.”
Struck frozen with uncertainty, Flores stood there motionless. Her eyes searched the coins as if they would yield any secret strategy, but it really was just a game of luck. She took in a breath and chose the penny by pointing at it with a shaky finger.
“Relying purely on luck, I see you aren’t from here.” Just as the detective was about to ask her which side she chose, a wrench smashed into her foot from above. The screaming pain led to her clutching her right foot while cartoonishly hopping backward. Nick looked up to see the same businessman he was squabbling with sneering above.
“Whoops! Looks like I missed!” The businessman laughed before closing the window he so carelessly and callously dropped the wrench from.
“Unlucky,” the detective remarked at Flores’s unintentional sacrifice. “Hopefully it doesn’t reflect the outcome the coin chooses.”
“T-tails! I choose tails!” she yelped through clenched teeth.
“Ah, so you chose what you do not have. Is that because you have so little, or is it because you seek more.”
“W-wait. How do you-?”
The detective chuckled, “Relax, it’s just a neat proverb I picked up from an eccentric friend of mine. Let’s see if you chose right.”
The detective placed the chosen coin on his right hand while he stowed the other away in his coat. Its copper finish shone against the matte black of his gloves. He flipped the coin through his fingers until it reached his thumb. Once the maneuver was complete, the coin was launched into the air. It shimmered brilliantly through its graceful trajectory before being caught like a prey animal in the detective’s hands. He slowly revealed the result.
“Heads.” The detective watched Flores’s expression remain unwavering. He didn’t know that she physically could not show the despair washing over her. “You win.”
“What?” Flores rubbed one of her ears to make sure she wasn’t hearing things.
“I said, you win. You’re just an average passerby with honest intent. Now will you actually lend a helping nose to stick into places where we don’t belong?”
“S-sure, of course. That’s why I came up to you. But if it’s not too much, I would appreciate some… uh…” She searched for a word that would make her sound the least like a beggar. “Commission?”
“You want to get paid? Admirable, but there are far better ways to make money on these streets.”
Flores nodded before quickly realizing the necessity to specify. “I-I’m just a bit down on my luck. I’m not looking for any-”
“Hehe. You didn’t look the type anyway. But, I see you’re a pragmatist nonetheless. I'll lead the way, but don’t get in mine. By the way, what’s your name? Can’t work in this field as strangers.”
“Flores, Flores Fortune, nice to meet you.” She extended a hand.
“Detective Nick Henderson, the feeling’s very much mutual.” He gladly took it. He sure was smooth. “Wait, that name. Aren’t you on the criminal registry?”
She sighed. It was only a matter of time before he recognized her name. “Just so you know, I never did anything. They just had better lawyers and more money, that’s all.”
“A crime you didn’t commit, eh? Say, mind telling me what it was?” he asked politely, “I won’t rat.”
“Long story short, I took a case and it was a stinger. They set me up on drug smuggling and before I knew it the gavel was striking a guilty verdict.”
“Tell ya what. You’re on probation, right?”
“Not really. They kind of are a bit…” She thought carefully of what she was going to say next, “...understaffed, as you said.”
“Well, in that case. I could get someone to potentially clear your record for you.”
“You can do that?” She was surprised, although, considering this was Laslow, she really shouldn’t have been.
“If you know the right people and make the right deals, anything can happen around here.” Nick extended his hand.
“Then it’s a done deal.” She shook Nick’s hand with her free hand. He gave a surprisingly firm handshake and Flores felt her hand almost get crushed under his grasp. She hid the pain easily given her non-expressive face.
“You don’t know how glad I was to see someone so friendly in this forsaken place,” Nick chuckled, “If you had any more, you would’ve probably been smarmy enough to become a used car salesman.”
“I… Is that a compliment or an insult?”
“Depends on how you take it.”
“I take what I can get,” Flores responded merrily.
“I’m guessing that’s why you’re so desperate for work. Alright, I’ll bite.”
Finally, a ray of hope and dash of good fortune fell upon her. Eager to please, she geared herself into the mentality of a true investigator, which was asking questions first.
“So are we going into the building to question people or…?”
“Word of advice to you specifically, don’t stick your nose in if you aren’t invited. Expect to put up a fight if you do. Also, they definitely don’t want to see me again.”
“So… What now?”
“I’ve got some other leads.”
----------------------------------------
After a nice walk through the light snow, they arrived at 8th Street where an old public library building was under renovation. Concrete stairs led up to a chain link fence covered with torn blue tarps. Given the deteriorating condition of all the left-out equipment and materials, something had caused the renovation project to be abandoned. Maybe some horrific discovery had condemned the building to the fate of rotting away slowly. Or maybe it was a lack of interest or funding. But besides that, she had learned that this wasn’t the first time the detective had to make do with some stranger as a partner.
“So where are you from anyways?”
“Texas. The actual Texas and not one of its puppet states,” she clarified.
“Ah, a cowgirl? All the way up North in the New England Confederation? Is this a blessing?”
“I bet you wish, but no. I don’t remember much from my time there, just that I was born there. So I’m not a true Texan.” She clutched a bit tighter onto her folder. The documents within were all she knew about herself. She didn’t want to admit that her identity likely wasn’t even hers to Nick, but she didn’t know what else to say. She tried to redirect the conversation to a convenient distraction.
“God, what is that smell?” Flores’s nose had caught the scent of something disturbing emanating from a nearby alleyway. She cautiously sniffed the air again before realizing exactly what it was. “Hey, detective. I reckon there’s been some unsavory activity here.”
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Nick grimaced as he knew what Flores was talking about. “I wouldn’t pay too much mind. Probably some poor schmuck who ripped off the wrong guy. There’s a fifty-fifty chance that said ‘wrong guy’ was part one of the families.”
“And the dead are left there to rot?”
“Not always. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it's just the unwanted carcass that’s left. As for the rest, let’s just say harvested like crop…”
“So human bodies flow like money? How macabre…”
“Waste not, want not,” Nick morbidly joked. “Such is the way of things in life. I still remember when that wasn’t always the case. But no, best dwell on the past. We’re nearing the place we need to search.” Nick quickly referred back to his notepad to confirm the address. They were supposedly less than a block away. As he looked back up, however, he was surprised to see that they had arrived. A small sign of a pie with a knife stuck through it gently swung above in the wind.
“We’re supposed to investigate a bakery. I hope our missing person didn’t become a meat pie.”
“Hey, look on the brightside. Then the case would be as easy as the shop’s goods. I could do with an open-and-shut case right about now.” Nick quickly hatched a plan of approach. Since his uniform would make it too obvious as to their intent, he decided to use the extra pair of hands he had with him. “Why don’t you go first, see if they are willing to answer a few questions.”
Flores stood in front of the glass door. She couldn’t make out anything inside as the glass had a fine sheet of ice accumulated on the surface. She whipped some of it off with her sleeve and saw that the inside was barren. There was no one inside manning the counter.
“Seems empty.”
“Try the door,” Nick suggested.
Flores cautiously pressed her feeble weight against the door. Much to her surprise, the door actually moved. As the door’s chime rang, Flores entered the little bakery. There were only a couple of cakes and pastries on display in the display cases. The size told her that it was likely a small independently run one.
“Something’s off. Why would someone just leave the door unlocked?” Flores could feel the fur on the back of her neck stand up along with the goosebumps running down her arms. The stale, dead air left an unnerving gut feeling she couldn’t shake off. Sniffing the air calmed her nerves slightly as there was no scent of blood nor odor of death. All she could smell was the stale stock of some underbaked and some burnt stock that was probably bought elsewhere. The entire place nearly smelled entirely of terrible baking, except for the back. There were definitely some quality goods from what she could smell, anything from a lemon tart to an apple pie. Even odder was the distinct smell of coins. Copper coins, to be exact. As she stared at the cardboard-looking pie, she saw her reflection in the glass. It was staring back with an odd intensity.
“Facades don’t last long…” She swore her reflection had spoken. Or was it her inner consciousness? She wouldn’t have time to ponder as Nick finally entered the building.
“Seems like no one is home after all. Sorry for using you as bait, you know how things go around here.” Nick walked up to the counter and noticed a small note written in nearly illegible handwriting.
“Out for crime and justice?” Nick read the note before placing back on the counter, “Heh, didn’t think he’d set up shop here.”
“Who?” Flores snapped out of her trance and faced Nick. “You know the owner?”
“Yeah. He’s a friend of mine. We have a little thing where he keeps getting in trouble and I keep bailing him out. It’s a wonder it took this long for him to get tangled into another case. Haven’t heard from him in a while now.” Nick sauntered behind the counter and towards the back.
“W-wait.” Flores reached out to stop him by grabbing his shoulder. “Don’t we need a search warrant or something?”
“Not unless we get caught,” Nick slyly replied with a smirk. “It’s not a crime. Just business.”
“Slick…” Flores followed Nick into the backroom of the bakery. There was nothing but an assortment of shelves, ovens, and prepared pies that made Flores’s mouth water. Thankfully, she did not have the unconditioned response to immediately start drooling at the mere sight of the pastries. She was still human, after all, which is why she had to subtly wipe her mouth a bit before mentally kicking herself back in control. “Why must he hide all the good stuff back here?”
“Beats me. His antiques never end, it seems.” Nick’s eyes wandered to a corkboard of notes and plans for the upcoming weeks. There was a hastily written note addressed to him personally. It seemed as though his friend had anticipated his arrival. “He left me something in the freezer room.” He briefly looked over to notice a keypad along with a locked metal door before glancing back at the board. “Of course, he forgot to give me the code.
“So I guess that’s it then.” Flores sighed as she prepared to leave. This time, it was Nick who grabbed her shoulder.
“Not yet, sleuthhound.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do? There’s probably not anything worthwhile in that fridge. Maybe he just left you a pie or something.” There was a hint of jealousy in her monotone voice.
“Sour grapes, the fox says,” Nick joked.
“Oh come on. That was low-hanging fruit- Dammit!” Flores smacked herself on the forehead with shame and disgust at her own unintentional pun. Nick chuckled and shook his head. His attention was turned back toward the keypad on the wall. He closely inspected the thing and smiled.
“Seems that dimwit didn’t listen to me. I told him not to get a Brintec lock.” Nick glanced over his shoulder at the still-petrified Flores. “You wouldn’t happen to have a screwdriver and some wire on you, would you? Flores?”
Currently, her mind was racing as to how to undo the disastrous first impressions. She wasn’t even sure why she cared so much anyways. There was something different about Nick, something she didn’t quite understand. Maybe it was an opportunity as if she were sitting down at an interview. Maybe it was something about the way his trenchcoat matched the police uniform he wore underneath. Or maybe it was… Her mind wandered to places it really shouldn’t have. Lingering uncomfortably long on the prospects of a shared future, she commanded herself to snap out of it. She quickly shook herself back to reality. Her usually stoic and level-headed professional act together attempted to restore itself. What came out, however, was an awkward and cumbersome play from an elementary school.
“Uh…” she stammered briefly before answering, “No. Probably not? I mean definitely not! I-I don’t have-”
“Okay, okay. Well, I’m sure there’s got to be some somewhere in here. Why don’t you look around for a bit while I see if he hadn’t stuck a sticky note with the code under a counter somewhere.”
As Nick went around searching, Flores’s attention was turned to a small rectangular device sitting on a countertop. She set down the folder she had been holding all this time down on the counter to investigate the peculiar object. She noticed a switch on the side and flipped it. The small LCD display flickered to life before a loud crackling static filled the room. Panicked, she hastily searched for a volume dial. She turned every knob she could and somehow tuned the thing enough to make out voices on the other end.
“Kzzkt- Unit o-three, do you copy?” a voice on the radio asked.
“Kzzzz… On my way to the scene, don’t you worry, over,” another voice responded.
“We’ve got reports of twelve heavily armed men approaching the- Kzt!”
Flores finally managed to shut the thing up. By this point, Nick was looming over her.
“Whatcha doing there, sleuthhound?” Nick suppressed a chuckle as Flores nearly jumped out of her skin. “I see you found a police transceiver. I wonder how he got his hands on one.”
“Jesus. Warn me next time, will ya?” As she looked back at the counter, she spotted the items they were looking for.
“Isn’t that what your big ears are for?” Nick joked. Upon listening back to what he said in his mind, something didn’t make sense. Something didn’t add up. He took a second look at Flores making sure to take in all of the details of the peculiar anomaly carefully. There was definitely something amiss, but he couldn’t quite lay his finger on it. It was as if something was clouding his mind and perception. He shook it off as simply being overworked recently and made a note to get more rest.
“Very funny… Now, do you need these or not?” In her hands, Flores was holding a flat-head screwdriver and a small spool of copper wire. “We’re lucky your friend happens to be a radio enthusiast.”
“He’s an oddball and a menace to the police. Surprisingly, he’s never had the book thrown at him mostly thanks to me, his defense attorney, and his mysterious wealth.” Nick set to work on the lock but quickly stopped when he saw the first screw. It was a security screw with a custom nine-point star pattern. “Would you look at that? He actually bothered to replace the screws.”
“Can you try to pry it open?” Foxtrot suggested.
“The case is stuck on tight, there’s no way anything’s getting through.”
“The front plate, I meant. Try and get the front off.” Looking back at the lock, Foxtrot was on the right track. The front plate appeared to be somewhat dented, leaving a nice gap to stick something in there. Using the screwdriver as a miniature crowbar, Nick kept applying more force until the metal clips broke with a loud snap. The faceplate had flung itself right at Foxtrot’s face, smacking her square on the nose. A most painful sensation rippled from the impact point where the metal faceplate had made contact. It was as if every nerve in her nose had been scalded with a blazing hot iron.
“Ow!” She caressed her hurt nose with the palm of her hand while trying to hold back tears.
“Whoops,” Nick jokingly apologized. He did look back to check if Flores was hurt. She seemed physically unscathed but her reaction told otherwise. “Maybe I’ll teach you how to dodge one day.”
“S-sure…” She managed to recompose herself but the pain hadn’t left her yet. “How about you show me how you intend on breaking a lock with a screwdriver and some wire first.”
“This trick only works on Brintec locks. Luckily, most people buy them because they’re cheap.” Nick grabbed the copper wire and proceeded with the first step. “First things first, you locate the power input terminal. It’s usually marked ‘power in’ or ‘9-volt in’ on the board.” Quickly finding it, he placed one end of the wire against the exposed terminal. “Next, you place one end of the wire against it, make sure it's secure.”
“Got it.”
“Now, you find the output terminal. This is always marked with an empty box.” He found it hiding behind a piece of the case. “Make sure it's the right terminal, otherwise you might short-circuit the board, or even give yourself a good shock.” Feeding the wire through, he connected the wire to the terminal and held it in place. “Then you hold the other end of the wire for a few seconds and…” The lock made a satisfied beep as the large metal freezer door unlocked. “There you go.”
“That’s far easier than I thought it was going to be. Even a child could break into that.”
“Told you Brintec’s weren’t very secure.” He gave the wire back to Flores. “I’ll let you keep that wire in case you want to prove my point on some poor idiot’s house. Just don’t get caught.”
“Thanks, I guess…” She hastily shoved it into one of her coat pockets.
Nick slowly opened the door and a rush of cold air flew out. The total volume of the freezer was about the size of a small closet that could barely fit a single person. The dim blue light that turned on from a sensor detecting the opening of the door revealed stocks of refrigerated ingredients from milk and butter to a collage of fruits to a sliced-off female left hand with bright red nails wrapped in cellophane with a note hastily taped onto it.
Flores briefly suppressed a gag reflex before questioning Nick, “Don’t tell me this friend of yours is a cannibal as well.”
“No, but he’s certainly eccentric. Esoterically, if you will.” Nick read the note aloud carefully. It was a hastily written explanation Nick had seen time and time again. “Dear Nick, I found this near the place you told me not to be around. I think it was by the strange shop with the giant ‘X.’ I hope you are the one who finds this and not some burglar. I didn’t want to turn it in to the police because you know how my reputation is. Sorry.”
“At least he was kind enough to leave a note,” Flores pointed out.
“But not kind enough to just give me a call,” Nick sighed. He quickly scribbled something onto his notepad before placing it next to the hand. “You wouldn’t have happened to see a small cooler on your way in?”
Flores looked around the room. Besides the overwhelming amount of heavenly aromas from the various pies and pastries, she could not find anything besides a small paper bag from a sandwich shop. To her great disappointment, it was empty.
“You were thinking of eating that, were you?”
“N-no. I uh…” She quickly thought up an excuse. “I think we might be able to use this.”
“I don’t think that’s gonna…” Nick facepalmed with a sigh. “Look. We need to keep the hand fresh and not rotting.” He looked back into the freezer and found a small ice-making machine. “Unless you want to hold a soggy bag, we need something else.”
“Of course, sorry,” she hastily apologized and quickly went back to searching. In a cabinet above the counter where she found the bag was a small navy-blue lunch pail. It looked like it could comfortably fit the hand a few ice cubes inside. Unfortunately, she was a tad bit too short to reach it without stretching and standing on her toes. Through some struggle, she managed to barely snatch the thing off of the shelf in the cabinet. She proudly presented the lunch pail to Nick.
“That’ll do.” Nick grabbed it from her and opened it. Inside was half of a sliced sandwich. He was going to put it back into the sandwich bag it had probably come from but the intense stare Flores was giving the sandwich mildly amused him. He tossed it over to her with a chuckle. “Alright, fine. It’s on you if you get sick.”
Flores cautiously sniffed the sandwich for any signs of tampering. All she could smell was the savory ham, pepperoni, and salami. Her eyes glistened with joy as she took a bite. The flavors melted in her mouth as every delicate choice from the chef’s expertise told their tale to her listening taste buds. The taste of actual food revitalized the weary palette long abused by the deluge of edible misery.
Meanwhile, Nick held the lunch pail underneath the chute of the ice maker machine and held down the lever. The machine let out a loud rumble before rattling violently as cubes of ice began dropping into the lunch pail. Once satisfied with the amount of ice, Nick carefully placed the hand inside and zipped the lunch pail back up. He turned back to see the sandwich completely gone and Flores unceremoniously wiping the crumbs off her snout with the back of her hand.
“Not very ladylike, I see,” Nick joked.
“Shuddap… I was hungry…” Flores pouted as she went to go pick up her folder off of the countertop.
Gradually, the two sleuths grew ever so slightly closer as they went about their investigation. Nick would call Flores “sleuthhound” and she would respond with “slick.” Time was of the essence, so a quick sweep was all they could afford to do. Even with that limitation, they cleaned the bakery of any substantial clues or evidence. Flores had managed to sniff out an entire stash of pennies hidden in a jar amongst the shelves. There were even more pennies stuffed in various seemingly random places. One was behind a shelf, one was under a box meant for pies, and countless others dotted the room. The likelihood of obtaining such a collection through regular business alone was slim to say the least. Either way, the two collectively decided to worry about that later. Nick politely relocked the door behind him as they headed back to the station. The fasted route would be taking Laslow’s subway system. The fare was fair enough for the ability to go across the city in a timely manner. The hope was that nothing distracted them along the way.