When I arrived at the Internal Police Headquarters, it was their lunchtime. Hopper had just walked out of his office when his eyes happened upon me in the hallway. I waved at him.

“I wasn't expecting to see you here.” He stepped up to me and shook my hand. “But I was hoping I ran into you somehow.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Run into me?”

He grinned and gestured to me to follow him. He led me into his office. He grabbed a newspaper that was on his desk--Orowen Daily--he flipped through the pages before pointing at a column.

It was an article following the story of green blood theory being debunked. “This is the conclusion of that incident,” he said. “It talks about Wyndham and his plans. And even has an interview with Hammer and I. And look who we both mentioned.” He laid his finger on the line that talked about my friends and I helping out the Internal Police in uncovering the conspiracy.

I just gave a little smile. “I bet Lily will be excited to see the news,” I said and asked him if I could take the newspaper with me. Hopper didn't mind.

“So, what brought you here today?” he asked me once I'd slipped the newspaper into my reticule.

“That news you showed me about how I helped you out in Stonebarrow. I would like to like do that again,” I said.

Hopper looked. “There really isn't anything of that scale right now.” He shook his head.

“It doesn't need to be,” I said. “Actually, I'd prefer something that is way less complicated than what we did a week ago.”

“I'm curious. Why the sudden urge to help?” he asked.

“I want to test something out,” I said. “My strength, if I was being precise.”

Hopper chuckled. “The Internal Police department isn't a playground.”

“Don't be coy with me, Hopper. You and I both know there are more than a few cases that go unsolved here. So many criminals who wander free even when they don't deserve it.”

There was a glint of something in Hopper's eyes for a second. His face sobered up completely and he was alert. It was the same look he'd given me when he revealed to me that he was an eidolon.

“Have you had lunch yet?” he asked.

“No, why?”

“Let's head over to a restaurant for a bit. I think I have just what you are looking for.”

****

It was just an excuse to get me away from the headquarters and away from the faithful uniformed servants of the Steam Elemental. Because he and I both ended up ordering little food and eating even less.

The topic of conversation was even more captivating. “Nine brutal murders within the span of a month,” he said, passing me his personal diary over my dish of steak and potatoes. “All the victims were women in their mid-thirties and not very well off. Four of them were prostitutes. Other five were widows or divorced.”

I went through the page he'd opened the diary on. It had names of the nine women along with their ages and a brief background on each of them. “Here it also says that the murder weapon is presumed to be a meat cleaver,” I said.

Hopper nodded. “And all the murders happened late in the night. All nine bodies were discovered sometime at early dawn. In most of the cases, the person reporting the bodies would either be a newspaper boy or a milkman or a housemaid. And in one particular case it was a lady who had opened her window in the morning only to spot a mutilated body in the alley down below.”

“So there were no witnesses at all,” I said.

Hopper nodded again. “And thus no description to follow either. Also, all the victims are from different parts of the city and none of them are personally connected in any way. The only common factor was their age and their financial condition. And then something strange happened.”

“What?” I said.

“Turn the page.”

I flipped the page on the diary. “Samantha Canning,” I read the words on the page. “Twenty five years old. Daughter to Sydny Canning.”

“The tenth victim,” Hopper said. “She is nearly ten years younger than the other women before her. And her father Sydny Canning is a renowned musician across Ravenwind.”

I frowned. “But that breaks the pattern completely. How is she connected to the other nine victims?”

“Just by a guess.” Hopper shrugged. “The Internal Police Homicide Investigations might be grasping at straws but they guessed that there was a chance of her being connected. Because the way her body had been mutilated was…well more methodical than the other victims. It couldn't have been the work of a first time killer. Someone planned and killed the poor girl in cold blood.”

“Her father is a celebrity. What if it was one of his enemies who had her killed?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to have her kidnapped and use her as a leverage against her father?” Hopper asked. “Also, there was too much indulgence in what he did to her body. Even if someone had it against her father that bad, the job would’ve been quick and efficient. I saw her corpse. The killer took his time with her.”

“Did you get any suspects in her case?” I asked.

“Only one,” Hopper said. “Her boyfriend Oswald Gooding. The inspector from Homicide Investigations couldn't really find any evidence beyond reasonable doubt. So they couldn't even get him in court. But he had been the closest thing to an actual suspect in this case.”

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“Are you sure about that?” I said.

“I'm not. That's the problem. Everyone doubts Oswald but there's very little to prove anything against him,” Hopper said.

“But where did the accusation against him come from?” I asked.

“It was Samantha Canning's father, Sydny Canning, who brought up the doubt against the man,” he said. “Why did he do that? I don't know since I handle the Witchcraft investigations. Not Homicide. But this case had grabbed my attention and I was planning on talking to the father soon.”

I nodded and shut the diary. “Now seems like a good time to do that.”

****

Sydny Canning looked older than he was supposed to be when we went to meet him. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes were sleepless and tired as if always on the brink of tears. His shoulders were perpetually slouched and his arms hung so limp by his sides they looked ready to fall off.

He was a pianist and the number of important people he had played in front of was far bigger than I could count. The sitting room wall of his mansion was covered with medals and framed certificates of his achievements.

Yet he walked past them like a ghost in a graveyard. He sank down in a settee and regarded us with those sad tired eyes of his. On the side table next to his chair was the picture of a young smiling girl. His late daughter, Samantha.

“I buried her two days ago,” Sydny said. His face was desperate yet resigned. Angry yet defeated. “What do you want from me now? The man who did this got away, didn't he? What can you even want now?”

I looked at Hopper from the corner of my eye. I caught a glimpse of his fingers twitching nervously. Seriously? He was also going to shut down at an emotionally tense moment like this?

I took a silent yet deep breath and stepped forward. I had to appease the old man before he called in his guards to kick us out. “Mr. Canning, we aren't here to waste your time,” I said. “I know you are mourning deeply for your loss. I won't pretend to understand what it's like to be in your place. But I can offer you something that might give you some kind of closure at least.”

For a split second, I saw a glimmer of interest in Canning's eyes. But the interest was soon cloaked by caution and wariness. “What kind of closure?” he asked.

“We might know who killed your daughter and we may be able to bring him to justice,” I said and nudged Hopper forward. “Tell him.”

“Uh yes, right.” The witch hunter general pulled out his diary. “This is about the man that your daughter had been seeing–”

Canning raised his hand with a jerk. His fingers were long and almost delicate. “I'd already told the police about him and they did nothing. They think I'm crazy.”

“Mr. Canning, no one thinks you are crazy,” Hopper said. “This is a matter of not having evidence to prove that Oswald is the murderer.”

“If you don't have that kind of evidence then what did she just say about bringing that man to justice?” Canning pointed a long finger at me.

“I meant I'm going to deal with him personally. There will be zero involvement of the Internal Police,” I said.

Canning seemed bewildered. “You are just going to let her do that?” he said to Hopper.

Hopper gave a wry grin. “I suffer from a bad memory, Mr. Canning,” he said. “I probably won't even remember having this conversation with you.”

I held back a grin myself and kept my gaze intent on the grieving father. “Isn't this what you want, Mr. Canning? For your daughter's killer to suffer.”

Canning stared at me for a second before leaning ahead in his chair. “But…if you know Oswald did it. Then why are you here? What do you want from me?” he said in a cautious voice.

“That's the thing, Mr. Canning,” I said. “We don't know if it was really Oswald.”

“But you kept insisting on it,” Hopper said. “We want to know why. Why were you so sure about Oswald being the killer?”

Canning's long delicate fingers clamped down on the armrests of his chair. “Truth be told, even I can't tell if it was really him.”

Hopper and I both frowned together.

Canning sank back in his chair. “Sometimes I think if I was just being stubborn because I didn't like him the moment my daughter introduced him to me. Or had I really managed to see through the facade of his smile and gazed upon the devil behind it. I shouldn't have felt that way but Oswald never gave me the impression of what a normal man looks like.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“He was always too cheery, always smiling. Always making jokes. I'd even tried intimidating him with my social standing and achievements when Samantha brought him home. But it seemed to have no effect on him. I wouldn’t say that he was confident. It just felt like he didn’t care. Yes.” Canning nodded. “He seemed like a man who cared about barely anything beyond himself. But my daughter seemed to love him. It had been eight years since her mother passed away. And I still feel like I couldn't do as much for my wife as she deserved in our marriage. So I tried to redeem myself and didn't try to object Samantha’s relationship with that man. But I was still a cautious father. So I hired multiple private detectives to dig up information on Oswald's past.”

“What did those detectives find?” I asked.

“Disappointment,” Canning said. “Oswald was like a ghost. There was very little to find out about his past. His parents had died due to strange illnesses while he was a child. He grew up at his single aunt's house who also died of unknown reasons when Oswald entered his teen years. He had his first job by age twenty three. And he came to Orowen last year. Yet he owns his own two story house while working as a clerk. His parents and his aunt weren’t rich so he couldn’t have got enough of an inheritance to buy a house like that. Neither did he have any other relatives. Despite having grown up mostly alone, he hadn’t seemed to get into any kind of trouble. His past was so plain that it raised suspicions. I was going to bring up my doubts to my daughter but…before that I had the police coming to my doorstep to tell me they found her…found her dead…”

Tears welled up in his eyes but he choked them back, swallowing hard.

Hopper and I gave him a minute to gather himself. Then I asked, “But you told this to the homicide inspector, right? If he wasn't able to find anything by traditional investigation then did they call in a regulated magic practitioner? Did they carry out some kind of divination or something?”

“They did,” Hopper said. “They called a witch from the Blind Oracle coven. The divination result was negative. That's the reason why the investigation has gone back to square one. Because any semblance of a suspect they had also turned out to be a dead end.”

“But it is him. Those eyes. They couldn't have belonged to a human. Such absolute disregard for anything. That's not human!” Canning clenched his fists. “Oswald is the one who lured my daughter before he…he…”

This time, the man couldn't hold back his tears. They came forth in unforgiving streams of sadness. I took a slow step forward and crouched in front of him. I looked into his eyes and said, “I made you a promise that I would personally give the killer what he deserves. I will keep my promise, Mr. Canning.”

Then I turned to leave. Hopper was right after me. “So you also suspect Oswald Gooding?” he said.

I thought about it as we walked down the porch steps and the main gate of Canning estate. According to the grieving father, Oswald showed signs of absolute apathy yet he had managed to lure Samantha in a trap. Other than that, he had grown up mostly an orphan but he hadn't been born an orphan. A childhood with that many deaths is usually unsteady. And I knew a thing or two about what an unsteady childhood can do to a person. Yet Oswald’s life seemed spotless according to what Canning had told us. “I would be lying if I said I thought he was innocent,” I said. “Yet, I won't deny that the deaths of each of his guardians might still be a coincidence and he might just be an unfortunate individual. But he also owns a two story house in this city after being here only for a year. That's enough to raise suspicions.”

“Are we going to go and see him now?” Hopper said.

“Yes, paying him a visit won't hurt,” I said.