Chapter Fourteen - Good News
A long time was spent lying down on this hospital bed. It felt like several weeks, and the truth that it was only two days seemed like a lie in comparison. These were the most mundane and flavorless days I have had in a long while. Normally, I can drag myself through a day of nothing, but two days? Insurmountable. It felt like a hellish punishment with how slothful I was. My only source of entertainment was the occasional checkup from the nurse, and the counting of grains on the ceiling above me. Every slight bump and irregularity were considered in that count, and in these two days, I counted a total of 7,899 grains. Not to mention the fact that I managed to only count the left corner by the window, because the room was simply too large for my limited grasp of grain-counting.
However, the wait has come to an end as I see my assistant, Sylphie, enter through the door. It may just be my imagination, but she is looking ever so slightly taller. My guess would be that she grew by half a centimeter, precisely.
“Sylphie says ‘hi’, Detective,” she greeted me with a wave.
The positive visage she possessed hinted that she may have learned something important, or at least those were my hopes. She scuttled towards me with two files in her hands, further confirming my thoughts.
“I hope that these are not from Faust,” I laughed.
“That is not the case, luckily. She writes hers in an extremely verbose way.”
“Good to hear. Then, what did you find out, Detective Sylphie?”
“Sylphie is holding two files. One of them contains information on the dead guy we found in the hallway, if you still remember, that is. While this other one – it contains the personal records of the Face’s other victim.”
“Other victim? Was there another murder, then?”
“Before you hurled yourself out of the building, Sylphie discovered a chair-bound corpse of the Face’s creation,” she claimed.
So there was an actual planned victim.
“Do you know who the other one was? Actually, both of them, if you will. Start with the more surprising one!”
“Sylphie thinks both of them are equally surprising to you.”
“Then, the hallway victim. By all means, he should be the bigger surprise.”
Sylphie composed herself. “Very well,” then continued, “The man murdered in the hallway was identified as Justin Prose, and the presumed reason he was there is actually related to you, Detective. This Justin was a part of a special group, or rather a cult, named Watchful Eyes. Given that look you have on yourself, Sylphie knows what you are thinking, and it is true. That cult seems to be the sender of that letter you received.”
Well, that is one question answered, despite the means of that answer being a bit brutal, it is still a question answered. Then, this cult was out to follow me? Why? As much as I thought, I thought it was ridiculous. Who would benefit from watching my day-to-day errands? It certainly isn’t the Flawless, given how the letter got to my hands. My thoughts resulted in only the concept of a fan club that I now have, or that someone decided to spy on me. It really is puzzling – there is no reasonable link between the Watchful Eyes, as they call themselves, and MC-13.
“Are you telling me that this club, cult, thing, whatever, is following me?”
She shrugged. “It is how they managed to follow you and Sylphie to the harbor. One of them was probably listening to our conversation in the car, while some other group went to our destination.”
“That seems plausible. But why? Even so, how did you go about finding out about them?”
“Simple, Sylphie pilfered the corpse of the man for his credentials, and there she found a business card with a phone number. Then, Sylphie called, and answers she got.”
“What did you find out, then?”
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She smirked. “This cult exists to spy on people for a living, and the way they get their pay is from their clients. What Sylphie suggests is that a particular person who told you to shut up about them tried to make sure you would.”
Oh my goodness. Even after having dealt with you, Linda Miller, you still continue to make matters worse with your presence. It makes so much sense now – our car has been tapped, they listened to our conversation and knew that we were heading to the harbor, then proceeded to go there without knowing that there was a serial killer we were chasing and got themselves killed. In truth, this could qualify as a first-degree murder, but I couldn’t care less about Linda and her endeavors right now. What only matters is that she put a spying eye on me, just because she could. And in turn, she jeopardized the operation at Good E’s. If there was an actual victim, and given the layout of the office, then chances are that the Face ran into the cultist first. It made them alarmed, leaving us with even less time to act.
“I see, Linda Miller deigned to make things even worse for us with what little power she had. Do you know if they will continue with this stupid commission from her?”
“They claimed that they will withdraw, because a valuable member of their group has died in the process,” she said with a straight face.
“Huh, that makes things easier.”
Those troubles went away with one simple sentence from Sylphie, luckily. I don’t know what else we can discover with the Watchful Eyes, especially when they go and let themselves get killed in front of us. On one hand, I have to thank Justin for his valiant sacrifice, as the Face was probably not counting on seeing anyone else in there, aside from the other victim. However, we could have made do without needless deaths. I don’t need the reputation of killing people for my benefits, not at all.
I reminded her. “What’s in the other file, Sylphie?”
“Here is the first one for you – as for this other one, it contains information on the intended victim of May 11th. And unlike Justin Prose, this one probably knew what he was getting into.”
Her tone was seemingly more serious than when she talked about Justin. It gave me the impression that whoever this other victim was, they were important. Not as a figure of status, or a politician, but someone closer.
She cleared her throat before speaking. “The victim who Sylphie found in an office room not far from where we departed is someone you probably know better than Sylphie – Detective Roosevelt.”
Detective Roosevelt?! In what world could that have been predicted? I felt my stomach drop when I heard the news that a fellow detective suffered the traumatizing death induced by the Face. I had many questions – why was he there? What was he doing? But regardless, I felt only a deep amount of respect for who he was. A valiant detective quite like no other, with his job being taken with utmost value, he never considered acting out of his role. He was one of the longest-standing detectives in our workforce, landing a spot as Watkins’ personal detective and right hand. Whatever he was caught up in, I am damn sure that it was Watkins who persuaded him to come there.
She continued, despite my lack of response. “If it helps you in any way, the Detective carried a note on him before his death that Sylphie can show you once we get to the precinct. As for his demise, it was unusual and differed from the typical MC-13 murder. The wound was less precise, and the victim presumably died of blood loss, instead of brain damage.”
Those facts are in accordance with my imagined scenario. The Face was caught by surprise by Justin’s presence, and then got thrown out of focus, leading to a flimsy kill. A killing method like hers requires immense precision, and the slightest amount of outward interference can ruin that. If this tells me anything, it was that the killer was strapped for time, but that is nothing new. It was me who saw her sprint out of there, after all.
More interestingly, a note? Whatever it might contain, it would tell us why exactly was Detective Roosevelt present at the scene of the crime, and why exactly was he there as the victim, too. Our simple operation of catching the Face in the act seemed to only grow more out of control as I learned about it. Firstly, I learned of a secret cult that is out there to watch me, and then I learned that a fellow detective of the DPD was murdered in cold blood.
The second file was handed to me in silence, leaving me with the facts. I knew that the next things that we needed to do were related with the Detective Precinct Department itself. There were two things specifically that I wished to knock out in one – the insider, and the one who led Roosevelt to his demise. Both of those questions had the same place of answer, and his name was Jonathan Watkins.
“Thank you very much, Sylphie. Let’s get going,” I informed her of my recovery in a succinct way.
“Are you feeling reinvigorated already?” She asked mockingly.
“I am doing alright. Besides, there are important things to be done. Not just with MC-13, but some personal relationships as well.”
“Alright. Sylphie thinks that as long as you can walk, she permits you to leave the hospital.”
It was a reasonable conditional – the wound still pierced like a venomous scorpion, making me unable to move it properly. Perhaps it is my lack of muscle tissue in the shoulder, or maybe the Purging Nail is a more potent weapon than initially assumed. With all haste, I descended with Sylphie to the bottom floor of the hospital on our way out of here. Every step felt like it pulsed through my whole body, and then that signal met with the shoulder, which only responded with stinging pain. That process made the shoulder twitch in response, too. It was a horrible cacophony of bodily signals being emitted back and forth, causing even more hurt.
Sylphie looked at me while I was in the middle of doing all this, and her expression showed nothing but the question of “should you really be walking right now?”. I tried my best to keep up a calm face, but that proved to be quite difficult to do for more than five minutes. Needless to say, the drive on the way to the DPD was even more bumpy and painful.
