The Defective Detective
Impetia 30th, 542 F.A
The palm-sized woman angled her torso forward from her squat to pierce Fall, the dauntingly tall man beside her in the room, with a glare brimming with a dismay that ill-suited her small-stature. A lock of her jet-black hair hung off the side of her face, the strands caressing the dark skin of her cheek, stopping at the perfect height to highlight her mouth which twisted in distress, as she no doubt weighed on whether to admonish him or to simply allow him to soak in her discontent silently.
As Fall rocked back in a wooden chair, his eyes glossing over the ocean of information packed into his small notebook, the creaking of the old lumber beneath him accentuated the already humid discomfort boiling within the room. It had become apparent enough to him that he’d have no choice but to brave the storm, lest he desired an uncomfortable next couple of days.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” The woman pouted, folding her legs as they hung off the edge of the oak table. She was behaving like a child, and Fall was growing dangerously close to letting her have it.
“If I had a gold coin for every woman who ever said the word ‘nothing’ to me when there was, in fact, a something…”
“Well perhaps you might be King then!” She sighed. “Why don’t we have the whole truth of It then, Fall. All the way down to the dirty scraps at the bottom of the barrel. The truth is that you’re not only a self-absorbed, spiritless husk of a man, but you’ve somehow managed to cook within that apathy a sort of pretentious rationalization of the worst kind that, you somehow believe, not only just excuses. but even justifies it! Indeed, you’re incapable of communicating properly with everyone around you, and when confronted with that fact, you always, as craftily as ever, manage to distort the truth into a consequence of everyone else’s lack of understanding. So yes, women would indeed rather offer up an unsatisfactory ‘nothing’ than to pluck at the weeds of your emotionally draining sophistry.”
Fall scratched his temple, unable to hide the grimace that had been tugging at his lips. “Bell, you know I don’t deserve to be mischaracterized by my partner like that.”
“And if I had a gold coin for every man who’s claimed to be mischaracterized by me when actually, in fact, I had been entirely on the mark about every single perverse habit or thought or action they’ve ever unfortunately espoused or brought forth before me, then I might be Queen- no. Perhaps I might even be wealthy enough, Fall, to buy the properties and foods and the shirts off the back of every single human being on the entirety of this God-forsaken continent. Please consider my words carefully just this one time. You’re surely aware of the consequences of what you’ve unleashed upon Rotteson, aren’t you? You are keenly aware of the fact that an incomprehensible number of people on the other side of that door are going to die?” She pointed at the entrance of the small residential inn the two of them had been staying at for the past few days, then her shoulders slumped with her sigh. “Oh, sweet Fall. Do you truly believe that having the mayor reveal the existence of that thing in front of everyone is going to end well?”
“You suggested it,” Fall said.
“Oh, I did suggest to you, I will grant you that much. But I believe that the contents, the substance, the meat and bones if you will, of what I’d suggested, you’ll recall, were in no way related to the revelation of that thing’s existence to the unpredictable masses of this town. No, my sweet Fall. What I suggested to you was another matter entirely. Simply put, the utilization of the resources of the institutions that exist within this town to aid you in your hunt, namely, the armored peacekeepers whose authority could expedite the investigation process. The goal, of course, of said suggestion, was to assist in both the determining and eliminating of that thing before more people are murdered behind closed doors. After all, quite frankly, it’s irrefutable that, up until this point, the self-indulgent detective work you’ve engaged in thus far in prior cases has created far more civilian casualties than what could possibly be considered necessary. Unfortunately, rather than following through with any of my carefully laid out suggestions, you instead chose to reveal both the existence and the presence of that thing to the mayor, leading to the current situation that will no doubt lead to a mass panic and multiple civilian deaths. “
Fall unleashed a finger-flicking-attack that may as well have carried the force of a canon behind it when one considered her size and launched her across the room. She fluttered her glittery, transparent wings with all her might to prevent herself from crashing into the wall behind her.
“Ow! What was that for?!” she yelled.
“You talk too much.”
“Jerk.”
The way she floated back to her seat with the grace of a butterfly, as if she hadn’t just taken a powerful blow to that small body of hers, had unnerved Fall to no end. There was a part of him that envied her strange imperviousness to damage, but the cost she had incurred for receiving such a blessing was something he decided that he’d rather avoid.
Regardless of how he felt about her body though, he recognized that the fairy woman did have a point. Allowing the mayor to handle the responsibility of revealing that creature’s existence appeared to be a poor decision on his part. The issue was, he didn’t believe himself to have the ability nor the charisma to fight to convince other human beings of essentially anything, so he was at the mercy of the law of this town once he made his presence known.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Which, in the first place, is why he had been going about it through the means of ‘self-indulgent detective work’, as she called it. Fall didn’t think that there was any point in getting into a back and forth with her, however, as he hadn’t the time nor the stomach for another one of her excruciating monologues.
“So, what would you have me do then?” he asked.
“Hmmm.” She pondered for a moment, her hands stroking her chin like an old, bearded scholar at his desk pondering the fresh philosophical musing of a man a third his age. “Perhaps the simplest method would be best. Diplomacy in this situation would allow that thing far too much time to ponder its next move. Worse yet, there’s no guarantee that anyone would listen to you. The only feasible option, in my opinion, would be to confront it and extinguish its light before anyone else can respond. Only…”
He pulled his book to his chest. “Only?”
“Only, I have to ask, do you truly believe yourself to have figured it out?”
He nodded. “That person is the only suspect that fits the clues. The first victim of that thing is always a powerful crime of passion. And with it being the late Mr. Leaf, the innkeeper of the White Lily who was murdered a week ago, I narrowed it down to three suspects: his wife, his estranged son, and the owner of the Red Dragon across the street.”
“The other innkeeper?” she asked, twirling her hair around her finger.
“In a town as small and as out of the way as this one, every single guest counts. Our victim’s decision to open a second inn hurt his rival’s pockets more than he bothered to let on when we spoke with him.”
“And… what then, about this estranged son?” Bell asked. “I don’t recall ever having run into that one.”
“We didn’t, but we did hear from someone that he had returned to town recently.” Fall slipped his notebook into the pocket of his coat.
“Did we?” she asked.
“Think back. The old woman mentioned the ‘flower boy’ being back in town.”
“Flower boy… the White Lily…”
“Correct,” Fall said, adjusting the brim of his hat as he stood up from the creaking chair. “The boy, as in the son of the innkeeper of the White Lily.”
“But then, how come we never ran into him? Is it possible that he’s been hiding and targeting people this entire time?” she asked.
Fall circled his way past the counter and walked behind the bar. “Think back to when we first arrived here. When you felt the sensation of one of those things feasting just as we entered the town.”
“The feast… yes, I did feel the sensation run through my body. It was certainly nourishing itself on some poor human’s mana at that time, but… I had assumed that it was the innkeeper, or one of the two missing courtesans.”
“It’s possible, but I’m willing to bet that the estranged son is who you were looking at. You’ll recall that the Innkeeper had been dead for six days once we’d arrived, the very same day of the disappearance of those two girls. It’s entirely possible that he visited after hearing the news about his father.”
“Hold on a minute, you’re overcomplicating this. So, the first victim was Leaf, and then potentially the two girls. Then the estranged son comes back to town, presumably due to the news of his father’s passing, and he goes missing as well. Is this why you’re assuming that his death was the feeling I got when we entered this town?”
“Correct again,” Fall said as he grabbed a crowbar from beneath the countertop. “You haven’t felt anything since then, right? Which means it’s stopped hunting once it sensed you.”
“I haven’t…” She paused to think. “So, then it’s the Red Dragon’s innkeeper? It has to be a crime of passion. The innkeeper himself aside, why would his wife kill their child? The Red Dragon is the only one it could possibly be. After all, a mother would never…”
“Well, that’s certainly possible,” Fall interrupted her. “After all, I did discover that our White Lily had bed the Red Dragon’s wife a few days before his untimely passing.”
“You’re joking,” Bell slapped her palm against her face. “So then it is him.”
He wedged the crowbar into a slight opening in the lid of a barrel he’d found. “Don’t be so sure. Don’t you want to know how I found out?”
“How you found out?”
Fall tugged down on the crowbar with all the strength he could muster, and the lid came flying off. The barrel lopped over to the side, and the body of an adult human male crumpled out pathetically. In a state of surprise, Bell flew over to examine it, landing right next to his dried-out eyes.
“What… Are you saying this is… the son’s body? But… we’re at the White Lily.”
“This little lily is poisonous,” Fall said.
She turned to face Fall in shock. “Why?”
“Once the Red Dragon found out about the affair, he decided that the best way to get even was to make a move on our innkeeper’s wife himself. Unfortunately for him, it seemed that she wasn’t at all interested in any of his advances. That’s when he decided to entice her by calling it a form of revenge against her husband, and explained his extra-marital affairs to her.”
“So, she found out that he was cheating,” Bell said.
“As for the estranged son,” Fall continued. “You’ll recall how the gentleman at the parlor told us that he had gambled his mother’s inheritance on dice when he was seventeen, which is why he had become estranged in the first place.”
“I see I see…” She stopped to think. “Though, while the motives are certainly present… what do you have in the ways of evidence? Outside of the body, we don’t exactly have anything pinning it to her. This could have merely been a makeshift hiding spot by the Red Dragon after committing the murder here.”
“Just by examining the body, what do you think the cause of death was?” he asked.
“Cause of death? There are streaks of dried blood near his mouth, and he wreaks of vomit, and… teeth marks near the neck. Unless this is a trick question then it can only be one thing, right?”
“Sure, but how could that thing hide a body here and feast on its mana without anyone knowing for three days in a row? Let’s face it, Bell. It was difficult to ascertain it with the first body since he was found in the middle of some alley, but this one makes it abundantly clear, doesn’t it? There’s no room for doubt. We need to hurry, or we might end up with even more dead bodies on our hands.
Bell was still pondering. Fall was fully confident in his theory, but the gravity of the consequences if he was wrong would be catastrophic for not only the both of them, but also for the entire town. It would be the equivalent of a meteorite striking them where they stood right at that moment. With that in mind, he didn’t blame her for taking her time to think things through.
“Well, I can’t say I’m one hundred percent or seventy-five percent or forty percent or even twenty percent on board,” she said, sighing. “But we’re out of time and out of chances and out of luck. What’s say you, Fall? Shall we bet on your hypothesis and make our way out there?”
His body arched forward, and he rested the back of his hand onto the ground. allowing her to climb up his palm before lifting his pocket-sized partner over to his shoulder, where she strutted over and made herself comfortable. With an unamused sigh, he casually advanced towards the door.
“Let’s gamble, Bell.”