Chapter 30.1: Scene of the Crime

Blood had soaked through more than half his dark coat, adding a wet sheen and weight that obscured his features. His limbs were splayed out unnaturally, and he stared blankly into the air, his mouth agape in a frozen state of surprise. But there was no mistaking him; this was Skixx. And right at his side sat Wepp, hunched over, his hands half outstretched, ready to touch the body but seemingly unable to to do so.

“What is it?” Minkus asked, bobbing to get a better view between passing peacemakers. “What is— oh, my ears.”

Penny sneered. “Yeah, it's Skixx. Looks like someone else he screwed over caught up with him.”

“Penny,” Minkus chided, “I— I don’t think this is the time.”

She worked to maintain her cold expression, but fire inside her pressed at its edges. “Oh, don't look at me that way. He was a two-faced, lying shit. If I'd had the chance—”

A small figure stepped into her periphery and cut her off. He made no effort to speak loudly and yet was somehow audible through the throng of onlookers. “If you'd had the chance, you would have done what precisely?”

Penny blinked, turning to more clearly see the worn, sleeveless trench coat and humorless expression on this new asura. He had a small stack of notes in hand, and some sort of official-looking medallion hung from his overly long neck. His glasses must have been an inch thick, which detracted from his otherwise commanding manner. He had to be a peacemaker, pretty high up too. Penny recognized legal entrapment when she saw it.

“I was just telling my friend here what a dirtbag this guy was,” she said, as evenly as she could.

“So you did know the victim?” 

Minkus nodded, wringing his hands. “Yes. He was our— well, he wasn't really our friend— we only traveled with him, I suppose—”

Penny cut in, hands firmly planted against her hips now. “Yes, we knew him. What he's trying to say is, we knew him.”

Popping forward suddenly, Minkus stepped toward the body, then caught himself, turning to address the newcomer. “Are you sure he's— I can’t believe I didn’t think about it before. I mean, maybe I could heal— I have magic that—”

“Our healers tried,” the other asura said flatly. “He's expired.”

Minkus stopped. He stepped back to his starting point, awkwardly clasping his hands behind his back. “Oh, I see. Was it— what happened?”

Before the official could reply, though, he too was interrupted. “Oh, excelsior. You found them, Inspector.”

It was Officer Hazz, returning from whatever task he’d slipped off to while their attention was on the discovery of Skixx. He jogged up beside the asura in the glasses. “Sir,” he said, “this is Minkus— um, the Large. And the human is Penny Arkayd. They were the individuals who approached me for rather irregular assistance this morning.”

Rolling her eyes, Penny reached for anything she could fidget with and found only the edge of her belt, which her fingers quickly took to picking at. This was about to become more complex.

The inspector looked the two of them up and down, unabashedly sizing them up. He turned back for an additional glance at Wepp, who still crouched over the hooded corpse. “And this one?” he asked. Hazz nodded.

His gaze lingered some time on Wepp. After a few moments, though, he returned his attention to Minkus and Penny. “I am Inspector Mokt. It seems the three of you arrived in Rata Sum at a convenient time.”

“Oh hell no,” Penny rebutted, already backing a step away from the diminutive investigator. “We had nothing to do with this, and I’m not paying a minute of my life for whatever that little asshat did to get—”

“Oh please pacify yourself,” the inspector said all too calmly. “The likelihood of you or either of your associates having anything to do with these expungings is below even the lowest acceptable threshold of suspicion.” He raised his notes high, nearly pressing them against his bespectacled eyes.

He turned his gaze to Minkus, looking back at Penny only periodically. “Thanks to Officer Hazz, however, I do understand you may have personal knowledge useful to our progressing investigation.”

“Oh we have knowledge.” Penny could help but smirk, though the expression rapidly turned rancid. “He was a backstabbing, little—”

“We didn't know him very long,” interrupted Minkus, looking aghast at Penny. “He— well, no, he wasn't a very good person. But this? I— we— no, we wouldn't wish this on him.” He gazed again at the body laid out on the hexagonal stonework of the Plaza and sighed. Every time attention shifted that way, the sound of the crowd seemed again to vanish.

Penny shrugged, letting the rush of noise fill her ears again. “I don’t know. I might.”

The inspector raised an eyebrow. “That character assessment is grossly lacking in detail, though it does generally line up with what we’ve gathered from bystanders.” He pointed away from Skixx, up to the platform that jutted into the plaza a dozen or so yards in the other direction. Atop it was that half-circle of asuran consoles Penny had noticed before, and sitting on the steps at the near side were several little people amid a milling band of peacemakers inspecting the area. They stared intently in any direction other than the corpses sprawled out around them.

Penny scowled at the sight. Why the hell were they sitting so close to one of the victims?

Mokt went on. “The closest thing we have to a witness insists the suspect expunged that male before also expunging an officer and winding up expired himself.”

“Closest thing to a witness?” came a high, indignant voice from the steps. A young, chestnut-haired asura rose from her seat, pressing past a peacemaker who tried unsuccessfully to still her. Ears shaking and dreadlocks holding as stiff as her posture, she walked intently at the inspector. “I watched him run away from this very site,” she popped, “and not fifteen minutes later, the fiend was killed right in front of me, after murdering one of your own officers! If I’m not a witness, what am I?”

Penny stiffened, and for a moment, the scene around her faded away, her mind snapping back to the night on the bluffs, to the cold calculation she’d seen from Skixx, the threats. That night, the threats had been all about her shop, her livelihood, which may have been as good as her life to Penny, but that wasn’t remotely the same thing as this. Even she had to admit that. Maybe the little bastard actually was capable of violence to this degree as well. The thought proved more shocking than Penny would have anticipated.

“Yes, I am aware,” the inspector replied, gesturing the indignant female back to the steps. “You are certainly a witness to the second and third attacks, but you did not witness the first. Now please sit down.” Begrudgingly, and with the encouragement of another peacemaker, she obeyed.

As he turned back to Minkus and Penny, the inspector was interrupted again. “Inspector, you should see this.”

“What is it?” he demanded, rubbing his temple.

One of his people stood up from Skixx’s side. “Something on the body, Inspector. Something we missed.”

That was all it took, and the inspector was stepping back toward the body, his brow furrowed and a hand tightening around his notes. Unsure what else to do, Penny followed, with Minkus on her heels.

The inspector reached Skixx and knelt, edging Wepp aside to get a clear angle on whatever the other peacemaker was pointing out to him. Pulling out a handkerchief, the inspector wrapped it around his hand and reached down to pinch something from the folds in Skixx’s coat. Penny couldn’t make out what the object he grabbed was, but clearly Wepp did.

“That’s not his,” Wepp insisted, pointing wildly at the thing. “It couldn’t be. Not a possibility. It—”

The inspector silenced Wepp with a cold glare and slipped the object into a leather sleeve at his hip. “I’ll decide what this is and what it is not.”

“What was that?” Minkus asked in a low tone.

“No idea,” Penny replied.

“It looked rectangular.”

Penny shrugged. “Well, that’s more than I could see, but he sure looks interested in—” She cut short, rolling her eyes. “Oh gods. Here we go.”

The inspector was now interested in the two of them again, coming back their way with intentionality. He said something to a passing officer, who subsequently got Wepp to his feet and away from Skixx’s body. The two of them approached as well, just behind the inspector.

Mokt stopped squarely between Penny and Minkus, quietly assessing them again before he spoke, one hand still resting on that thin leather pouch at his hip, where he’d stuffed the rectangular object. “You say you two traveled with this Skixx? Was that the full extent of your relationship to him?”

Penny didn’t know what was in that sleeve, but it suddenly seemed very troublesome. She narrowed her eyes at the inspector, calculating how little she could get away with saying.

Clearing his throat, Minkus stopped her with a glare. No words, just an unusually disapproving expression. Did he know what she was thinking?

“Gods, fine. I told that one everything.” She pointed at Hazz over the inspector’s shoulder. “Might as well tell you too. Skixx and I had a business arrangement, of sorts. One that the little shit went back on, which cost me a lot—a lot. He’s why Minkus and I encountered Wepp at all and why we're here with him now.” Beside her, she saw Minkus nod approvingly.

Standing alongside the inspector now, Hazz glanced back at Skixx’s splayed form and then snapped back to Penny. “Him?” he exclaimed. “This was the asura who blackmailed you with your holdings in Divinity’s Reach?”

Penny nodded. It grated every time her connection to Skixx was mentioned. When the officer looked to Minkus, he nodded as well, corroborating her story, though with far less self-loathing.

”My ears,” Hazz whispered in a low voice.

Coolly, Inspector Mokt took it all in. “Gather the witnesses into the headquarters holding room,” he instructed Hazz. “We’ll be conducting our interviews in interrogation six.”

Nodding, Hazz made off toward the small group of asura that the dreadlocked female had rejoined, and Mokt spun to call orders at a pair of officers standing beside Skixx’s body. “Peacemakers. I want these cadavers off the plaza and into containment. We’ve collected what we required from them.” He received two more obedient nods.

“As for you three,” he said, turning back to Penny and Minkus before sweeping a glance at Wepp, “come with me.”

Penny exchanged a look with Minkus, who clearly had no idea what to do but obey. He stepped on after the departing inspector, and with a sigh, Penny followed.