Claire and I left the crime scene after one final sweep of the apartment, which revealed nothing new.
I made my way to the first witness, the landlord, Paul Fischer, while Claire had to go to a prior personal arrangement. She had put in more than enough hours to allow herself that much and it was already getting late so I allowed her to take the rest of the night off.
Paul Fischer was a big fellow with broad shoulders and muscle overshadowed by fat, beginning to go bald and trying to hide it with a wig. Not a very impressive person. But neither was I, so perhaps I shouldn't judge.
"Sir Fischer," I greeted him with my badge around my neck, presenting it. "I am the leading Detective on the murder of Meredith Bauer. May I come in?"
"What did you say your name was?" he asked suspiciously. If he was smart or paranoid would still have to be decided.
"I didn't, " I said, "Detective Kurt Snowthistle."
He narrowed his eyes at me in suspicion. "You aren't one of these fey, are you?"
So he knew about the fey. It was never a closely guarded secret but the majority of people never encounter a revealed spirit in their lives and those that do once, chalk it up to their imagination. Unless it's a dragon, they made themselves known before showing up anywhere and were annoying to deal with.
Most spirits disguised themselves for convenience and it was rare enough, that one had to actively seek them out to unveil the truth.
"No, Sir," I said, which was technically the truth. I was only a descendant, after all, not fully fledged. "May I talk with you about Meredith Bauer?"
He gave me one last suspicious look before letting me inside. "Of course, I am just wary of fey. Bad memories and I've got a feeling they might be behind this," he said while leading me to a small but nice kitchen.
He probably took a look around the apartment before we arrived -she had been dead for multiple hours at that point after all -and drew his own conclusions before calling us.
I declined his polite offer of tea as we sat down at the table, and engaged in a moment of pleasant chit-chat, before I brought up my reason for this visit again. "How long have you known Meredith Bauer?"
"Two years, she came to me with nothing and begged me to allow her to stay in one of my apartments," he readily answered. A bit too quickly; he must have prepared for someone to show up.
"Were you aware of the fact that Ms Bauer was an ex-convict?"
I saw him struggle not to roll his eyes, but his discipline won in the end. "Yes, of course, I do in-depth background checks on all my tenants. I did not care about her being an ex-convict as long as she was paying rent on time. I’d made that clear from the beginning."
I grabbed one of the files and quickly scanned it, looking over Meredith's financial records. She always paid on time but I would have to look into the real estate situation in this area to make sure he didn't have a motive. I made a note of it.
"Was there anything out of the ordinary that you noticed about Ms Bauer in the past few days?" I asked.
He thought for a moment before answering "Yeah, yeah there was. She was unusually chipper, even approached me and asked for my mother's stew recipe for her guest two days ago."
"Her being chipper is unordinary?" It seemed like her time in prison might have hit her harder than I expected.
The stew wasn’t eaten, so whoever was invited either didn’t show up, or was the aggressor and ambushed Meredith Bauer before they got to eat.
“Oh yes,” Fischer said, taking a sip of tea. “She was usually glum and quiet, but I just thought she was getting her life together, maybe a promotion. I was happy for her.”
“Where were you yesterday evening and do you have any proof of it?” I asked, and continued to explain when I saw him bristle slightly, “I am sorry, it’s just a boilerplate question I have to ask, establishing alibis and all that.”
“I was in the Diamonds Club with a group of friends. The bartender and bouncer can probably ID me and I can get you the receipt for my purchases,” he offered.
“I'd be much obliged. Thank you for your time.”
We made some more small talk before I took my leave.
----------------------------------------
I opened up my front door around 23:30 -an early night for me- and found Daniel lying on the couch with his flashlight, asleep.
I sighed, put my bag down, and carried him to his room to tuck him into his bed.
He stirred awake the moment I put him down, mumbling something about dragons and hydras.
I kissed his forehead and left him to his dream wonderland.
Going towards our shared bedroom, I put my bag down as I passed through the kitchen, and a note Rebecca had slipped inside dropped out. It read 'Have fun, hun, enjoy the bun'.
In our bedroom, I found Rebecca was still awake and scrolling on her phone, using the wyrm plushie as a pillow. She was probably looking through Instagram, looking for recipes for me to try out and ruining another good night's sleep of hers.
“Evening, milady,” I said, taking my shoes off.
She let her phone fall down onto her chest and looked up at me. She studied me for a few moments with bags under her eyes, and I saw a sleeplessness in her that was highly unusual for her at this time. She was a night owl through and through. Before I could express any concern, she asked, “What’s wrong, can’t solve the case?”
I sighed. "It's difficult and it probably sounds insane either way," I said. I knew that I could tell her from prior experiences. We had talked about our work often and went over the laws together, figuring out what we could talk about. I usually presented everything esoteric as a theory, never wanting to burden her with it.
"Go on," she encouraged me, "I've heard some insane stuff before."
I changed into my pyjamas and slipped under the covers, sliding an arm around her shoulders. "You've read your stories, but this is a real case," I said, kissing her on the cheek. It sounded a lot more condescending than I intended.
She glanced at me thoughtfully before answering "I am serious, I've worked some ridiculous cases. No matter the case, you can talk to me about anything publically available."
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
It was somewhat of a habit of ours, venting about everything public in our jobs. We always kept it professional, sticking to justified rants or mute support and keeping anything we learned to ourselves when it came up at work. Of course, we had some exceptions but those were minor cases. Not homicides.
It felt like she was fishing for something, and the face in the mirror floated past my mind. I doubted that she knew anything about the specifics of this case.
"I am sure reporters will be using it for every headline in Cologne, " I said, "but currently, it seems like the mirror killed the victim."
"The mirror?" She asked, putting her phone away and massaging my scalp with her free hand.
"Yeah," I agreed. "I thought the same thing but I still have some other leads."
"You'll catch that perp, mirrors aren't known for running," she joked mirthlessly, grabbing my hand. She turned to me and looked into my eyes.
It seemed like she wanted to say something else, being lost in her own head and going through different approaches, but decided against it.
We drifted off towards less serious topics. Daniel's new friend, for example, and went to sleep cuddling.
----------------------------------------
-11th June 2022, Cologne
I woke up at 06:30, and Rebecca was already in the kitchen, eating cereal, Daniel's lunch was prepared and bagged. She was staring at her food, sluggishly eating it in silence.
I hugged her from behind and looked over her shoulder. "Really? I thought you hated cereal."
"I hate the sugary kind," she said between two mouthfuls of cereal. The cereal she was eating was filled with sugar but I knew what she meant nonetheless.
I kissed her neck and asked, "Why are you already awake, do you have to leave early?"
"No, " she said, thoughtfully chewing on her cereal for a few seconds before explaining, "I just couldn't sleep."
"Say, have you heard of Meredith recently?" I asked, making myself a bowl of 'sugary' cereal.
"Bauer?" She inquired. She continued after I nodded. "Yeah, I've been keeping in touch with her for a while and she wanted to have dinner two days ago, but cancelled at the last minute."
"She cancelled? Did she say why?" I asked.
She fiddled with her phone and brought up their text messages, reading aloud " ’Can we reschedule? I don't feel so good.’ Why do you ask?" It was sent relatively late at night, around the projected time of death, and we hadn’t found her phone, yet.
I put my arm around her waist, preemptively trying to comfort her.
"She is the victim. I found an old picture of you two, so I had to ask."
Rebecca was never the crying sort, but I had expected her to react in some way to the death of a friend. She only kept staring at her cereal, slowly chewing on it while lost in thought.
"Do you want to talk about it?" I weakly asked after a few seconds. I felt bad for springing this on her so suddenly and her lack of reaction unsettled me but I didn’t want to leave it like this or pass on to another topic.
She grabbed a tissue from the tissue box on the table and blew her nose. "Yeah," she said, then stopped to think before continuing, "It was just so… sudden. We were supposed to have dinner and she was so proud of her stew but..."
"How did you know her?" I prodded after noticing that she wasn’t going to continue. I wanted, and needed, to know more about their shared past but it seemed odd as I had never heard her talk about Meredith.
"Mirabel took her case, " she explained, shoving her cereal away, "we talked during our break and Meredith quoted Die Hard. We just hit it off after that, chatting about movies and books. She didn't kill anyone, but got framed. The judge was bought off but we couldn’t prove it."
Ahh, Meredith was a fellow nerd. That explained how they had gotten so close in such a short time.
She stared at the table with a distant look in her eyes and clenched her fists before continuing "Her entire life was unfair, then she got framed for a murder, and now she got killed by… a mirror. She didn’t deserve this."
I caressed her hair and asked her "The mirror isn't the only suspect. Do you know of anyone who could have wanted to kill her?"
"No, " she said resolutely. "This must have been an accident, maybe somebody got into a fight and it escalated, but that wouldn't explain the mirror."
"Yeah, " I agreed, "anything else?"
She fiddled with her spoon and asked "Did you find a body?"
"Not yet, " I answered, "we have some Officers searching for it but there was no trace of it being moved out of the room."
"Can you prove anything without a body or murder weapon? It looks like you have no evidence and the mirror thing feels… impossible." She asked, like she was trying to make sure that I'd catch whoever killed her friend.
I had to admit that there wasn't enough evidence at the moment but I was sure that this wasn't going to be an isolated occurrence. If this was truly an accident as Rebecca thought, it might have been a new kind of spirit that had yet to become accustomed to our world and would repeat its actions before learning from the consequences. It happened with the lycanthropes, being the newest addition to Terra. They’d killed quite a few people before adjusting to our society.
"Not yet but I still have leads to research, don't worry. Do you remember anything special about her mirror?"
"No," she said. She mulled over her thoughts, debating if it was worth mentioning or not, but decided to continue, "There might be something. Daniel told me about the Mirror Monster, something that can travel through mirrors and has tendrils strong enough to crack bones or tear bodies apart. It's obviously a fairy tale but it sounds like they want you to think it's that thing, like a scare tactic. Maybe you can do something with that."
I had never heard of a Mirror Monster, and the only spirit it could be would be a fey. But I’d need more proof than merely my son’s tale, if it was one of them. Most fey were mischievous, not murderous, and any accusation of one wouldn’t even get past my captain's desk unless it was airtight. The fey courts were notoriously vengeful and took huge liberties to enforce their will whenever they can.
"But it's just that, a fairy tale. I'll look into someone mimicking it but I doubt there is much literature on it." I replied, rubbing her shoulders. I would have to contact the Department of Esoteric Defence to get information like this but it was worth a try.
"I should have been there, and helped her," she suddenly said. "I could have saved her."
"Whoever killed her might have just killed you as well," I told her, dropping my arm around her waist.
"But I could've saved her, " she stubbornly insisted, gripping her spoon.
She looked at our floor mirror, reminiscing about something. "What if it's really it?"
"The Mirror Monster?" I asked, remembering the crying face in the mirror.
"Yeah, maybe she got mauled by a magical beast because she provoked it," she offered before shaking her head and reconsidering. "No, that's stupid, there is no mirror beast. It's a fairy tale."
"It might be stupid but it's still a lead, thank you," I reassured her, kissing her cheek. “I’ll look into it.”
She looked at the cereal in disgust, it had lost all of its flavour and texture at this point so I didn’t blame her. "Are there even laws that would apply to magical beasts?" She asked curiously.
"There is probably some application of them," I reasoned, "but I'll have to leave that to the judge. I am sure there may be some loophole."
I promised her that I'd do something about it and left to pour over paperwork after some more chatter, trying to close the leads.
----------------------------------------
An excerpt from the Case File: M6-10-73 - Meredith Bauer
Investigation Progress:
Despite initial suspicions, Paul Fischer’s contracts for renovations indicate a lack of motive. In fact, it was found that he suffered financial losses due to her untimely demise. However, to ensure a comprehensive investigation, Claire Thornwood was contacted to engage in an interrogation with Paul Fischer, utilising [Redacted].
During the interaction, no incriminating transactions or sufficient motives were uncovered. Similarly, all of the victim’s neighbours have provided alibis that appear watertight and lack any apparent motive. However, as part of standard procedure, Claire Thornwood was tasked with additional checks on each neighbour to eliminate any potential leads or connections.
Case Status:
The case remains open and under investigation. Additional evidence and testimonies are being pursued to uncover the truth behind Meredith Bauer's death. Further updates will be documented in subsequent case reports.
Kurt Snowthistle