[Aramantha]

They found her facedown in the fountain.

What a place to die, eh?

We were on the scene in less than a half an hour. But like usual, it wasn’t fast enough. Somebody had already dragged her, lifeless, to the ground. People here never respected crime scenes. It was like everyone felt they personally had to feel like the savior of a woman who had already died. I personally always believed in leaving the dead well alone. They already had to go through dying, why put them through your phoney savior tears?

‘Course I say that and then immediately turn around and watch a dozen people get autopsied every month. In a way I’ve always wondered if the autopsy helped them find their own peace. They could feel us cutting them open and they knew we wouldn’t let their death be unavenged. Then again, the moment I write those words on paper, they sound like a buncha hokey bullshit.

In any case, the drowned girl’s body awaited us. It wasn’t a pleasant sight, slash marks deep and jagged across her torso. Almost looked like she’d been tortured at first glance, the way the knife had ripped instead of cut. We did our best to gather clues at the scene for the poor girl but it was hard enough just to keep the crowds away. God I hate this place.

Murder here is a spectacle. Within a week of the girl’s death, her pictures had infiltrated every corner of the internet. The sight of her body, splayed out in the fountain, red tendrils slowly seeping into the water around her. There was a certain twisted, dark serenity to it, but that didn’t mean the girl deserved to be turned into some kind of pariah. “The Drowned Angel” they called her. The funny thing was, they didn’t even know her. We didn’t even know her. Nobody knew who she was, not even the coroner. But nevertheless she was an angel, descended from above some said. How can you label someone an angel? Isn’t that a pressure they don’t deserve?

That’s a whole different rant though. What was more important was that the case was going nowhere. We’d cut open every inch of her, searched every identifying feature of her in the database, and we’d come up emptier than a birdbath in the summer. She was a ghost more than an angel. And goddamnit it frustrated me. I always hated cases I couldn’t solve. Still do. And shit this one was… blank. The file spanned three pages and two of them were a coronary file that basically said we had no idea what we were even looking for. The scene had been trampled and ruined of anything useful. Even the slash marks were essentially unidentifiable, just some kind of thick, dull blade. You know how many thick, dull blades there are in the world?

And still her popularity grew in the eyes of the people. There was a closed session of the church 11 days after her death. 167 people shedding blood in honor of The Drowned Angel. A shrine was enacted to her at the fountain. People began to herald her as a sign of the end times. Some even said she carried a message from the gods — that we were somehow hiding something that great. It was exhausting, irritating, and downright invasive. This country’s obsession with transparency meant privacy was impossible. A woman couldn’t be left to die without a million people shoving her into their own agendas and narratives.

It’s never bothered me when people vilify me. I’m an investigator, a detective, the man at the center of every major case this city sees. I’ve made mistakes, I’ve fucked up, I’ve missed clues, and I’ve made countless press conferences just to say that despite my best efforts, I’m completely fucking useless. At some point, the public needs someone to blame, and I’ve always been happy to be that person.

What does bother me is taking advantage of the dead. Taking advantage of me. Taking advantage of this nation and our obsessive compulsion toward the worst religious craziness. It’s so easy to brainwash people in a place where brainwashing is the norm.

[Aramantha]

It was almost two weeks later when the dame walked in. She sauntered with her skinny pencil suit and her cigarette holder. She was the spitting image of someone you would call a dame, and to any other inspector likely an exciting prospect. For me I could tell she was trouble from the moment we first locked eyes.

“Allen Mackleby…” she crooned, giving a sly grin in my direction

“Stop smoking in my office.” I said in response, doing my best to not be intimidated

She scoffed and snuffed out her cigarette on my desk.

“You’ll find very quickly Mr. Mackleby, that I am not one who takes orders from people lower than me.” she said, a threatening lilt on the edge of her voice

“I don’t like smoking. I’m sure you respect that given this country’s history of cancer. Or are you not from around here?” I asked, doing my best to look unfazed

She threw back her head in laughter, her laugh almost a cackle that truly, truly made you uneasy. Are people just born to look, feel, and emanate villainy? This woman surely felt that way.

“I appreciate your trying to get information out of me so easily Mr. Mackleby, but I’m afraid it’s my turn now.” She replied, taking a seat, “I’m sure it kills you you can’t figure out who killed that poor woman in the fountain, doesn’t it?”

This woman was well and truly getting on my nerves.

“Can we just cut to the chase?” I asked, irritation framing every word

“Aww the poor inspector can’t solve a case…” she mocked, giving an exaggerated frown that very much made me want to reach across the table and strangle her, “Don’t worry though. It’s solved. And we’re pulling it from your case files. Here’s the information you’ll repeat to the public at your press conference tomorrow.”

She slammed a folder onto the table, delighting in the way it made me jump.

“You- what? You can’t do that! You’re pulling it from my files? What the hell is going on?” I yelled

“I’d advise you to be quiet Mr. Mackleby.” she snapped, her voice suddenly hard, cold, and angry

For the first time in my life I had the feeling I could be killed right here and now. People talk about fight or flight, the body’s instincts kicking in when they’re faced with immediate danger. I could feel the adrenaline pumping suddenly, I could feel my heart pick up, my body tense, my jaw clench. Fear. Primal fear.

I’ve never been scared to say I’m a man who can be scared. A man should be scared sometimes, especially in a job like mine. A fearless man is a dead man when a dozen guns are pointed at your head. But even then there was always an escape. I could run, I could hide, I could take cover. Not here. In my office I was trapped like a mouse in a cage. And something told me she could kill me without anyone noticing.

I silently slid the folder towards me, trying in vain to keep my hand from shaking. The contents were a load of horseshit. A clearly spun story of a meaningless prostitute killed by their pimp. God this country just loved blaming shit on the woman.

“You want me to sell this horsecrap to the public?” I asked in almost a whisper

“I want you to tell the public your findings. And those are your findings.” She said with a pleasant, poison laced grin

I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do. If she was telling the truth, the case was out of my hands whether I liked it or not. Struggling now would just push that hook further into my mouth. And pure weakness is pure weakness, I wanted that woman out of my office.

“Thank you Mr. Mackleby.” she said, and she walked out the door

The next morning I walked out in front of a crowd of media representatives and cameras and I lied to all their faces.

Don’t tell me you wouldn’t’ve done the same damn thing.

[Aramantha]

Allen Mackleby was never known to be much of a drunk. In his most pensive moments, he might’ve even called alcohol a blight on humanity. This was not one.

He layed on the floor of his dingy apartment, half-empty bottles of sap ale littering the floor around him. The day after he’d lied about the Drowned Angel, he’d walked to the local liquor store, slammed 400 Quinta on the table, and demanded as much ale as that could afford him. He didn’t want to feel his guilt. He didn’t want to feel his anger. The magic of Branchian sap ale is it made it quite easy not to feel anything at all.

So now he laid here alone, sprawled out, a thousand yard stare on his face. He still didn’t even know her name. The agent who had ruined his faith in himself, the nation’s faith in him. She had ruined his reputation without a care in the world. They knew he was lying. He knew he was lying. She knew he was lying. So why? Why force this story? Why cover up the girl? Was she important somehow? Dangerous?

Allen let out a sigh. The ale had quelled his feeling, but his thoughts still ran as wild as ever. Part of him knew he’d run out of liquor soon. That the crash and the pain and the misery that came from abrupt sobriety would hurt more than anything had in a long time. But he was lost, torn from his vessel. It was like his very mind was being burned, a war waging between his fear and his sense of justice.

It was fear, he realized, that kept the citizens docile. It was fear. Nobody had the strength to speak up anymore. Those who did were silenced. Even politics these days felt like it was being run through a thin funnel to achieve a perfect drop of a result at the end of it all. Manipulation. Manipulation and fear.

He was done being scared.

Still drunk, Allen wobbled to his feet, kicking over bottles as he slugged through his apartment. He grabbed his pistol off the table. Something had to be done.

•••

Three days later, blood pooled in the streets of the city. Another crowd gathered as another body lay suspended half in the fountain. Her blonde hair was muddied by matted blood on the back of her skull. Her cigarette holder lay floating in the pool beside her, cigarette doused.

[Aramantha]

The BID was in a state of intense chaos. There were now three major operations occurring simultaneously, and only two leaders to head them. The first was Mindy Mendel, head advisor of the BID and right hand woman of the director. She was currently caught up in the foreign affairs situation in Huenya, and given the state of war that region was currently experiencing, she had little to no reliable contact with the rest of the BID. Neither did she have the time to be dealing with anything else.

The second leader, and the only leader currently alive and in Thousand Branches itself, was Kaya Hargrave. She was the BID liaison, and the woman who facilitated the connection between the department and Levensky himself. Normally her role was one mostly of communications and administration, but given the current absence of the director, she was now the head by default.

The director, of course, was currently lying in a body bag in the city morgue. That really was not helping the situation. And of course, that problem was exacerbated by the massive investigation that now had to be held to answer how in the actual fuck the director had been murdered and her body dumped in broad daylight. The device was simple enough — two bullets to the back of the skull. Execution style. No signs of struggle.

Then there was the problem of Nils and that whole situation which had somehow still not been resolved and a singular journalist was apparently somewhere in the woods on the Southern border of TB carrying information that if given out to the public would immediately implode the entire nation.

But no no, that was not all the stress currently laying on Kaya’s shoulder. the director herself, before her death, had been involved in an investigation of her own. One that was increasingly looking like the cause of death. And one they still had exactly zero leads into.

•••

Kaya’s head hurt. The massive director’s desk sat in front of her, papers strewn violently about the surface. Everything was happening at once and she’d never been expected to do anything like this before. For the last 14 hours, she’d slugged along through calls with various members of government, memos from individual investigations, case reports, and a constant metaphorical hand in her hair — Levensky demanding to know how we had let this happen.

Privately, Kaya hated the president. Tulen Levensky was a stuck up brat who believed himself the center of the world. And he was fucking crazy. He was the type of boss who would demand absolute perfection at all times, even while making mistake after mistake after mistake himself. He talked down to his subordinates as a way to keep his own fragile male ego intact.

Kaya had believed for a long time that males should not be in power. She’d done a long historical study period before she’s been recruited to the BID. Eight years of reading about every terrible thing males had done in nations across the IDU tends to discourage you from believing a male presence could really be positive. Which wasn’t to say that men or women could not be leaders, just males. Testosterone, as a chemical hormone, made males ill-equipped to hold a position that required humbleness and admission of wrongs. That was her sincere belief. And Levensky was by no means an exception.

But today that was the least of her problems. There was a damn body in her basement and she needed to figure out how it had gotten there stat.

The investigation file sat front and center on the director’s desk. It was so odd to see the face of her dead boss (or one of them anyway) on the very table she used to give out leadership for the last 13 years. Several questions remained, even after the autopsy and analysis. Why had she been so interested in the Drowned Angel case? What had prompted her to pull it from the police — especially personally? Where had she been for the three days before she died? Where was the chief of police who currently stood out as the main suspect for her murder?

The autopsy had revealed two bullets fired from a standard issue police revolver, at point blank range, without seemingly any signs of struggle. She had then been dragged for some time, and from what the autopsy could tell, simply placed lightly into the fountain without a single soul noticing. That it shared with the case she’d been investigating, but the murder weapon it did not. It was baffling.

If it was the police captain — Allen Mackleby — how had he found her? How had he killed her without any struggle? How had he disappeared into the night without a trace? If the assumption was that the two murders had two different killers, how had both, separately, been able to get the body into the same fountain without anyone noticing?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

The door swung open to reveal a small mousy intern carrying a single piece of paper.

“They found out who the girl was, and they wanted me to inform you,” the intern said

She snatched the paper from him. At the top it read “The Drowned Angel” in quotations. Below now, there was a DNA match.

57% match
Pamela Wyatt
(Former) Director of the BID

Fuck, it was the director’s kid.