Chapter 4: D is for Detective.
No matter the role they’re actually assigned- Demon-hunter, Wizard, petty crook with a robin hood complex or monster seeking some sort of redemption, the protagonists of a Mystery Play, often as not, function as detectives, delving into the strange and poking the bizarre with sticks. Their detective work may be anthropological in nature- trying to understand the newly discovered Urban Fantasyland before it kills them- or, more likely, someone has disappeared or been killed or both and the supernatural is involved.
On occasion, the missing or dead person may be the detective themselves, and the culprit they’re tracking is the one who turned them into one of the Undead.
-Quote from an internally circulated employee email at Mystery Play LLC, presumably not for public consumption.
I chatted with the boss as I drove to what served as the Wainscotting neighborhood’s downtown, where the cop bar that I was going to meet my contact at was.
“So did we really not catch who blew up the last car, or was that just a line you fed Moira for the script?”
“Not a sign, though we’re pretty sure it was someone with a Gyges device, like you suggested. You can’t actually teleport inside these sorts of closed spaces. Folding space inside of already folded space...isn’t wise, let’s say.”
I didn’t know enough about teleportation magic to actually know what he meant, but I could guess. “Right. So the guy coming after us is a pretty good illusionist. He wore a glamour that matched ours and he can do invisibility.”
“Seems likely, ” The boss agreed. “And illusion magic would make sense for a hired killer.”
“Sure would be nice if we could talk to his family about why someone might have wanted Carrefour dead.”
“That’d just make them ask why we wanted to know, and it’s probably some wizard family nonsense we couldn’t follow anyway. Half the time when they do big slap fights over the succession to family head, it involves knives in the dark.”
I pulled up to the curb outside the bar, then. “Right. Time for my next scene. Talk to you after, boss.”
When we prepare the ‘character’ backgrounds for the clients, we try to give them a place in the world. People they know, people who know them, and give them dossiers on what they’d know about their friends and enemies. “Derek Criss” had a been stage magician who awoke to a real magic talent and worked as a consultant for the police before a scandal had led to most of his allies in the department getting fired. The only one still around was Henry Fortier, being played by Charlie Lewis.
Charlie’s one of the most versatile character actors we’ve got on staff, and an old friend when I’m not pretending to be someone else in an effort to catch an assassin.
Charlie as Henry was seated at the end of the bar, nursing a drink. When I stepped inside as Criss, he waved me over.
“Derek! Come on, sit down, grab a drink. We can catch up.” This was, presumably, for the benefit of the bit players also in the bar. They relaxed, and I headed over to join him.
“Been a while, Henry. How’s Beth?”
“Same old, same old.” He glanced around, and placed an envelope on the bartop when no one was looking. I picked it up without looking at it.
“So what do you think about the Delacourt thing? Is there a Delacourt thing?”
Charlie shrugged. “Couldn’t say, since you don’t -officially- consult with the department anymore. Call it a firm maybe until they announce the results of the autopsy.”
“Fair enough,” I ordered a drink- just beer, it was still morning. It was alright for the Henry character- he officially worked the night shift so this was his after hours. “Can you tell me anything about a Bastienne Moran?”
Charlie did a double take, and looked around again, dropping his voice to a whisper. “That’s not a name to throw around casually. Have you met her?”
I matched tones. “Yeah. She showed up at my office yesterday as part of the Delacourt maybe. Wanted me to drop the case.”
“She’s an enforcer. Second in command to Spider Bonaparte. Crime boss. Shouldn’t have a connection to the Delacourts at all.”
I knew -some- of this of course. After all, Simone was playing the part I was supposed to cover, though they’d made a lot of script changes between having to write me out and the car bombing. I really needed to brush up on the actual plot, or ask boss to fill me in. He’d probably get mad that I hadn’t been reading ahead, but well, I normally play the heavy. I generally don’t actually need to know the backstory, just my lines, and who to hit.
“Laura Delacourt said she was an old, dear friend, but didn’t mention any criminal connections.”
“She wouldn’t know,” Charlie explained. “Mrs. Delacourt hasn’t exactly been involved with the family business- she was basically a trophy awarded to her husband as part of a business deal with the Larues. She gets trotted out for parties and basically grew up being groomed by her family for that sort of thing.”
“Well that’s...horrifying.”
Charlie gave me a weird, confused look.
The boss’s voice cracked in my ear. “Don’t break character. We modeled this on how his mother married into the Carrefour family. He wouldn’t think it was weird.”
I was again reminded of why I hated the old magic families, and if the killer wasn’t probably working for the interests of another old magic faction, they maybe deserved a medal instead of being hunted down and handed over to them.
I gave a tight smile and shook my head. “Nevermind. Laura Larue? I can see why she took her husband’s name.”
Charlie laughed. “You’re probably not wrong. But I’m still not sure how Bastienne or Spider Bonaparte would be connected to the Larues or the Delacourts. The Larues are...impoverished gentry. An old family with connections, but not money. Hugo Delacourt was new money, but he wanted an entry into high society. Marrying Laura gave him that, and gave them the cash infusion they needed to maintain their lifestyle.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“And Delacourt’s regular business wouldn’t attract Bonaparte’s attention?”
“Bonaparte doesn’t really do normal crime- his outfits are magic specialists, mostly magical vice and smuggling. Exotic familiar smuggling, wands charged with illegal spells, illegal summons. Delacourt’s got no connection, unless maybe it’s laundering.” Charlie looked contemplative. “But we’ve ever had a reason to look into their finances before. Let me do some digging. Give me a day or two.”
“Sure thing. I’ll leave you to it, and...I’ve got some reading to do, in the meantime.” Charlie nodded, and saluted me with his beer. I paid his tab, and left.
Outside, the car was already started- or maybe just growling, it was hard to say.
“Did someone try to mess with you while I was in there? Can you tell me what he looked like?”
The car just growled again. Which, I figured, meant no. “Right. But are we good? No bombs?
The engine started purring, instead. “Gonna take that as a yes.”
I sat behind the wheel, and opened the envelope Charlie had passed me.
According to the autopsy report, Hugo Delacourt had died of acute renal failure- his kidneys had both failed and had a rate of decay well in advance of the rest of the body, as though they’d died a week before the rest of him. But from what everyone else said, he’d been in good health up until he suddenly died. The report explicitly noted that there were no transplant scars.
“Well. There’s definitely magic involved, but I’m not sure what sort of magic it might be, man, I should have read my script notes…”
Despite myself, I was getting invested in the imaginary case despite the actual murder that had actually happened. This probably explains a lot about why our business model is successful.
I’d been sitting out in public and not particularly paying attention to my surroundings for a while, in hopes that maybe the killer would come out. Maybe sitting outside a cop bar, even a fake one, wasn’t the best idea.
There was another person and seen on Derek Criss’ contact list- an occult book store. I figured I could hit up there and at least pretend to still be working on the fake case while I waited for someone to try and kill me over the real one. And I was probably due another visit from Simone soon, from what I remembered of my own script. So I put the report aside and put the car in reverse, flinching as I turned the keys…
...no boom. At least I’d read the car’s signals right.
Big Albert’s was an occult bookstore with a name that sounded like a grocery chain. It’s actually a reference to Albertus Magnus, a Catholic Saint who was often considered to be a wizard, who’d supposedly penned a lot of books on alchemy and astrology. As it happened, most of those writings were actually by someone else just using his name to try and sell their own spellbooks. But you can’t overcome centuries of tradition just by pointing out the truth.
Also by my understanding, having confidence that the spell will work is important for casting anything, and well, sticking a famous brand name on your spell can increase confidence. So “Albertus Magnus’ spell of hellish darts” works better than if it was “Steve’s firebolt”, even if the actual spell formulas are mostly identical.
The owner of the store was a local temporarily recruited for the Mystery play, because he didn’t want to let some actor touch his books. To be honest, given the general rarity and value of magical books, I couldn’t really blame him. He was just using his own name, Sam- Sam Stevens. But he liked to confuse people who didn’t know that by letting them ask to speak to “Albert” and then fucking with them, as some of the site survey crew had found out when they went to scout the location.
Theoretically, Carrefour wouldn’t know about this, and so Criss wouldn’t either, and we’d get some laughs for the highlights stream, but well, I’d been blown up last night. I wasn’t exactly in the best mood for comedy.
I stepped into the shop and a bell rang overhead to alert those inside that someone had come in.
Big Al’s looked exactly what you’d expect an occult bookstore called “Big Al’s” to look like, in that it was small and covered in shelving from ceiling to floor, even behind the counter. It was a two room affair, but the two rooms were only separated by an archway that barely stood out from the rest of the wall with a few signs posted on the inside of the arch that seemed design to confuse anyone who tried to go browsing and find something on their own.
Sam, assuming that was who was behind the counter, looked like exactly the sort of old man who would think it was funny to name his bookshop after a magician-saint and pretend that he’d just stepped out if anyone asked to speak to Big Al. He was old, white-haired, rosy-cheeked, and with teeth too small and even for his mouth- badly fitting dentures, maybe, but he was grinning expectantly and showing them off anyway.
I looked him dead in the eye, and asked, “Can I speak to Sam?”
The grin disappeared.
I held up a hand. “Sorry. A friend warned me about the gag in advance- a regular I think, Alan Weems?”
Weems was the guy who’d recommended we talk to Sam about using the store for the Mystery Play.
Sam nodded. “Ah. Yes. Weems. He does like to spoil my fun, sometimes. But of course. I’d be happy to help. May I have your name?” He should have been briefed on what “Criss” looked like.
Derek Criss- I’m a private eye. I wanted to consult with you regarding a death that may have happened under occult circumstances.”
Sam raised an eyebrow, obviously getting into the part. “What sort of occult circumstances?”
“Some of his organs died before the rest of him, like a death curse that only affected his kidneys. They’d been dead for at least a week before the rest of him caught up.”
Sam blinked a few times in surprise. “Oh dear. I’d heard there’d been a few cases of necromantic organ transplants- using a zombie heart when a fresh one wasn’t available, that sort of thing but if it was something like that, you wouldn’t be here, hmm?”
“Yeah. No signs of surgery or scarring, just dead organs where live ones should have been.”
Sam scratched his chin, then turned to the shelf behind him, hopping up on a footstool in order to pull a book down.
It could still be necromancy, although of a rather specialized sort. Though of course, the modern name for the school is a misnomer, since technically it only refers to communication with the dead, not animating corpses or or even manipulating the vital force. But since it touches on the dead, they…”
I tuned him out for a bit. He and Lawson were two of a kind, because Lawson could talk on this all day, and I didn’t want to hear it from either of them. Mostly I just rode through it on auto-pilot, waiting for him to ask a question or get to the root of the issue.
“...So there’s a couple of possibilities. One: He could have had a spell that was maintaining his organs past the point of failure that suddenly stopped being cast on him, and two: It could have been some sort of trade- something he forcibly fed the life force of his kidneys while maintaining the outward appearance of his health. There are a lot of minor demons and spirits that make that sort of deal.”
I jotted this last bit down in the notebook I carried as “Criss”. “Any idea of what specifically might make that kind of deal?”
“It would take some time to do the necessary research, and preferably some more information to narrow it down. But I could get started if you like and reach out to you soon.”
I peeled off a hundred I’d be given for my expenses, and passed it to him. “Would this be enough to start with?”
The bill vanished instantly. “It certainly would.” He was all smiles again with his too-small teeth. “Is there anything else I can assist you with, detective?”
“Not right now. I’ll see if I can get you more information, and then call. The one painted on your window, correct?”
“That’s the one,” Sam said through his teeth. Normally I’d take that as him wanting a fight, but no, his eyes were smiling too. It was a bit unnerving, and I say that as a guy with issues with his own dentition. I gave him a nod, and he waved as the door chimed on my way out.