by brett hicks
String of Murder: Colonial Detective Julia Mullers
One:
The sun can rise and fall without spanning the vastness of the Britannia Empire. Being a Colonial born daughter of the stars and stripes, I am but a tiny cog in the wheels of justice. This is my home, these are my lands and I just try to keep them safe, even if I cannot stop the greater threats ever-present to us all.
My name is Julia May Mullers, this is the beginning of my story. This is just a humble detective’s life.
***
Late night gave way to bright of day and those of the nightlife were scarcely turning in for the day. Nexus City was ever bustling and ripe with the vibrancy of life and industry. This is my home, this is where I have chosen to rest my head for the larger portion of my life. While this is not the city of my birth, it has become the very pulse in my body.
The year is eighteen-ninety-five, the Colonies of the West have risen to immense wealth and prosperity. The Britannia Empire has held a stranglehold over these advances, utilizing her vast numbers to continue onward in her vision of a unified world, all under the King’s banner. Not that everyone wants this unification, but what choice has been left us? Rebels once began to rise over a hundred years ago, but the movement never gained traction and the supporters were executed and made harsh examples. Ever since this, the Britannia boot has been firmly planted against the neck of every Colonial citizen.
I cannot stop the harsh realities of my world, this is just the way of things. I can, however, stop some small matters and bring small justices where I find opportunity in my daily life. Eighty-years ago, the colonies could implement their own justice department independent of the Britannia Empire’s royal army. The Colonial Independent Law-Enforcement Department was born of this. The CILD, my employers, we are all colonial born and bred. We are the voice to our dead and the hand of justice to all the wicked.
Nexus City is home to over seven-million souls, so justice is as sleepless as the city’s inhabitants. With the rise of the new steam engines and the massive Zepps of the skies, balloons are propelled largely by steam engines and hot air. Along with the steam bikes and the steam cabs, we have become the leaders in steam-tech. Our colonial state also happens to have the richest coal supply yet to be discovered in the world. We are the very pulse of advancement and our breath is of the steam-powered progress rolling down every street. Being the capital of the metallic advance of engines and air-crafts also made us the murder capital of the Western world.
I walk the early morning streets, having just spent most of the past three evenings staking out locations a home-invasion murderer was likely to strike. My eyes are red-rimmed and burn at the assault of the early morning sunlight. Like some mythological being of the night, the light almost burned me. I was long over-due for a date with my pillow, yet here I was prowling for another suspect. A lady had seen my Black metal badge and approached me about a pick-pocket roaming the streets. She had lost her purse to what she described as a “diseased and miserable mousy wretch of a child.”
While I am not generally the one to chase down purse-thieves these days, I am still a law officer. My duty is to investigate all crimes big or small that are reported to me. While my body screamed for my pillow and some much-needed rest, my eyes scanned the periphery of the crowded market allies in search of a “mousy” girl of about eight to ten years of age. I hated these types of incidents, largely due to the children orphaned on the streets being creatures with which I could deeply sympathize. I had been just like them just over a decade ago. I know the plight of the orphan in a major city and the common indifference of the masses to their destitute state.
The trick to finding scavs is not to look directly for them. Homeless children are cunning, they survive on quick wit and creative imagination that most adults seem to misplace in their youth.
A smell of baking bread and rich leather mixed with the other nefarious odors of the city streets. With the heat of the sun beginning to intensify these odors my nose and eyes burned. My body once more protests that it was ready to be put down for the day. I was on night duty for the next week, so I should have long-since been in bed.
While the common grunt officer would scowl and glare in every alleyway, I knew to pass them by as if my mind were in better places. Children will make themselves visible if they believe watchful eyes are not on them. I remember my days on the streets of a city much smaller, but none-the-more kind to the orphan’s plight. I really prefer not to lock up the little lads and ladies on the streets, if possible. Many a mean hardened criminal has been born from such malicious treatment of youths down on their luck. I had committed many a crime to survive, that I have risen to the ranks of law enforcement are no small miracle. Many of the hooligans I ran with later became cut-throats and murderers. Others have vanished deep into the Native-American wild countries and now fight against the Britannia advancements into the wild central locations.
I might not fight Britannia as they do, but I fight her in the only legal way I know how—as a detective. I utilize the law to protect the citizens from the abuses of the far-flung motherland that once birthed her citizens.
Shadows seemed to move at the corners of my vision as I pass by another alley. The creep of death and darkness gnawed at the rising light of the early sun’s rays. The stench of horse droppings and urine prickled my nose and I knew on an old instinct that I had found my alley. If I were an orphan, I would choose the smelliest den to hold-up. Adults would often be driven back by smell alone, a passive deterrent to the lazy. Many did not care to debase themselves with he foulness of the dirty alleys in pursuit of a purse. I must have been more exhausted than I thought, because I strode right into the alley and I saw the little filthy girl trying to scramble back into the basement of an alley back entrance.
“Oye, come on out lass. I’m not a bobby, you can just toss me the purse and I’ll leave ye be.”
My fake Nexus City accent was very convincing, and it held no trace of my youthful Westwood City background. Nexus City holds a lot of the Irish accentuation, while the Westwood City holds a harsher and more rustic twang that only the wild fringes can bring out in a person’s tone.
The little lass was reluctant to comply, and I sighed lightly. I knelt, and I extended my hand towards the entranceway about twelve-feet back.
“Sugar, it’s okay to come to me. I swear to you I am not going to harm you.”
My speech faltered, and she shuffled a bit, noticing the change in my accent. My inadvertent slip had more to do with my own mind rushing back to my miss-spent youth, than any calculated guise to ease her out of hiding. No one really trusts you on the streets if you speak properly, but then again no one trusts you in the East if you have a western accent, so by this insane double logic, an orphan would find my roots comforting and any authority would find me suspect the instant they heard this aspect of my past. Hence, why I had managed to suppress my origins for a very long time. Since the age of fifteen when I managed to scrounge enough coin to pay for a ticket on a zepp-liner east to apply to the Colonial Independent Law-Enforcement Department.
“You won’t shoot?”
A small voice inquired grimly, and I felt my heart clench for her. The deeply embedded fear of the law was something I had hoped to help remedy once on the job. At twenty-five, I was ten-years on this job and I had worked myself to the bone to build up a decent rapport with the local orphans.
“Sting knows me, he would tell you that I will not harm you.”
Sting is a fourteen-year-old mousy-brown haired lad with a slim wiry build. We ran the orphans on the streets. He was not so much a young gang leader as he was a small-time criminal who ran an orphanage on the sub-streets. He had ties to a small mafioso family from the Irish Iles, but he
was mainly the only one (to whom)lost children could to go to if they needed shelter. Granted, they would often end up roped into his shenanigans along the way. Sting was not so different then a boy I once knew—the only boy I ever let bed me. I found that I was attracted to girls, but sometimes a girl does what she must to survive. Besides, if my proclivities were public knowledge, then I might lose my job. This progressive steam-driven world might be advancing slowly, but there were many who still held to the old-fashioned ways of yesteryear.
“Sting?”
I frowned at her confusion. She was clearly an orphan, so how in the seven hells did she not know Sting?! Even if only in passing, she would have met him by now, if she had been an orphan for long. My detective’s instincts were suddenly bristling with the feel of a real mystery to this child.
“Officer, where are you!? Did you get her yet? Where is the little sow?! Where is my purse?!”
A loud and boisterous middle-aged woman’s shrill tone sounded from up the block. The little girl staggered back a few steps and I swore to myself in a long string. I held out my hand and waved it slightly and very adamantly.
“Toss over the bloody bag, quick! I’ll see her on her way!”
“Officer!”
The tone sounded again, and I cringed internally at the woman. She was a very poor example for all those of our gender. Having never known a moment’s discomfort, nor a night of starvation. Her voluptuous curves spoke of a very comfortable life and possibly a full brood of children born of her hips.
She approached, and the bag was a bright red eye-sore of leather that landed at my feet. I snatched it up and rounded the corner just before the nosy house-wife could bust me hiding my suspect from her. I knew that if she was aware that I had the girl cornered, this woman would insist I jail her without nay recourse for what that would do to the girl, or how it could alter her entire life. Yes, I am aware that she is technically the victim in all of this, but I also knew a hungry little girl did not deserve to be sent to a prison with a bunch of hardened men, just because she was hungry!
“Madam, she crawled into the sewer, but I managed to grab this from her.”
I held up the bright-red bag and the woman’s eyes widened. She snatched the purse from my grasp and began to look through the contents.
“You let her go?”
The woman’s tone was fiery and full of all the indignation that she could muster. I stood up straighter and my full height of five-eleven was imposing to even the men. I was built slim and slender, but I had rippling feminine muscles perfectly toned from many hours and years of training. My short-cropped blonde hair swished out of my eyes with a flick of my head. My pale-blue icy eyes narrowed and bore into the woman.
“I am a Senior Detective with the CILD of Nexus City! You would dare question my diligence in dispensing justice?! I have your purse returned to you, which is the job of the local bobbies, not a detective who mainly solves murders for a living. If you would like to follow me into the sewers, I will chase her down, but I do believe you have what you wanted to be returned to you!”
She let out a low hurmph, but she soon lost interest. She checked a large circular clock attached to her coat by a silver link chain.
“Very well, detective, I believe this unseemly matter is resolved as much as it is going to be. If I see the little trollop again, then I will have her thrown into the prison mines!”
I nodded my head and felt a rush of relief course through me.
“Have a good day, madam.”
I said and waved to her and the smaller stocky woman ambled off quickly. I looked around the corner and the little girl’s hazel-green eyes were wide on me now with shock.
“You can come out now, I am not going to arrest you. Look, come home with me, I am tired and am due for a meal, then for a long nap before work tonight. If you can stand to help me tidy up, you can stay with me for the time being.”
That will give me a chance to figure out why this little girl is setting off my senses.
I thought to myself. She slowly inched out at first and I noticed the dark-brown stains of blood caked into her dirty floral-print dress. My senses were positively scratching at me now! My detective instincts were like a sixth sense all their own thing inside my body. While I was completely ordinary, outside my height, my instincts kept me sharp. Many a time in my young life, they have saved my back-side and helped me unravel a mystery. Once I began to “get the itch” I would feel a compelling need to see a case through to its end. Not that I made a habit of giving up on a case once I took it on.
Two:
Time was creeping by and I managed to take my silent orphan back to my deep city apartment. I work out of the main Nexus City Colonial Police Department. My apartment is in the low-income spectrum for those who make limited coins per month. Being a Colonial detective was very fulfilling, but it was hardly an enriching job monetarily.
The electric currents through my apartment building were fluctuating again, so I opened my ice-box to fix the last of the day-old meat I bought the day before. My young guest had been silent as the grave, she looked to be grimy and muddy, blood stains were noticeable under the regular muck of street-life.
“You can go through the second door on the right and you will be able to take a bath. I will have some clothes for you and breakfast by the time you finish. My clothes might be a little large, but I should still have a few things from my cadet days that we can work with.”
She blinked and the only indicator that she comprehended me was her moving off towards the bathroom.
“The water might not get very warm since the electric is out again.”
I called to her, but again she didn’t bother to respond. Something had happened, and it had deeply traumatized her. I could maybe learn something from the blood on her clothes, but I didn’t want her to realize I was trying to figure out her story until she shared it with me. I just couldn’t get the haunted look in her hazel eyes out of my head. She had seen death, and she had survived its touch. I could see something of myself reflected in this little girl, who looked more twelve and skinny, than ten. She was rather under-fed, but she had striking shark facial features. I would guess her to be Scottish-Irish decent if I had to place her looks on a single glance.
The cuts of roast ham crackled as I fried them to a brown crispy color over my gas-powered stove. I had two fresh eggs and I mixed them up with the remains of the day-old cheese in my ice-box. It was my version of a poor woman’s western breakfast. Little things like this peppered my tastes, little things no one was ever present to take notice. My young orphan might notice my strange western influenced style, but she would hardly have time or energy to expend the mental powers necessary to deduce that I had once been a girl raised in Westwood. I touched a hand to my right cheek. I felt the nearly invisible length of my long gun-blade scars. A small crisscross intersected between the length of the blade mark where gunpowder had exploded right against my cheek. Not at all for the first time, I wondered how I had survived the wounds or kept my swift wits about me.
The bulk of my spending coin that does not go into my rent or my food bills, goes into the flesh-colored mixture that is a lot like clay in some ways. It masks my scars and makes them nearly indistinguishable. I will likely be hiding these marks for the rest of my life—paying for someone else’s crimes, literally. Even though I am the one the Crown considers the outlaw of justice still at large.
I shook my head and cleared my mind of the morbid thoughts of my desolate past. My youth, my starving years and the many things a girl must do to survive. I feel my mind speed back into the present as the water valve squeaks and I hear the flow of water in the bathroom stop. I rush off, setting the steaming plates down on my small table and I go to my room. Being a former orphan, I never throw anything out, regardless of age or even if it is ill-fitting.
I was a tall girl from my youth, but Harvey had given me a small dress to wear my first year with him. Harvey is the name of the teen boy who had run
the orphan gangs of Westwood. Harvey had been the one who had helped me and who had hoped I would follow him off into the Native American Nation to fight the Brits.
The Native American Nation had gathered up all the wounded and fractured tribes of all the Colonial continent. Together they had pushed back the British expansionary forces for over one-hundred-years now. While the failed Boston Tea Party had fizzled out short of full-scale rebellion, it did give the Native tribes time to lick their wounds and hide their movement west from the Brits.
“Ma’am…”
A small voice squeaked from behind me and I turned slowly seeing the little girl still drying herself. She was all skin and bones. She was tanned from days in heavy sun exposure, but she was very pale beneath her clothing. Her brown hair was handing in a dark wet mass and she was trying to towel out the dampness with my old towel. I smiled at her and I turned the rest of the way around and held out the dress in front of her.
“I think I might have some undergarments that can fit well enough, too.”
I turned back to my large liquored brown trunk. It was a simple chest for storage, but it had been a nice piece for the price I was given! I fished out some old and faded cloth garments and I eyed her chest and shook my head, no need to make her try on a bra. She was too thin and still not very physically mature for her age.
“I know they’re old, but they should fit.”
She gingerly snatched the faded blueish-grey linen undergarments and put them on quickly. She didn’t complain about the faded or old-fashioned design of the garments. This little girl had already learned the harsh lesson of street-life. Clothes are clothes and food is food, even if it comes from a garbage bin.
The old blue-white linen dress fit her poorly and was a bit bagging in odd places, yet she looked at herself in my wall-mounted mirror as if it was a silken gown fit for a king’s ball. My heart-strings were being pulled on in every conceivable way with every moment I spent with this youth. She was quiet, and my mind burned with a desire to know her story, yet I was wise enough not to insist. (I could name a long list of lads who would chuckle themselves pink at the implication of me being wise in the slightest!)