by H J Peterson
Hiro almost seemed to wince at that. Of course. His father had been the one to break them up.
She didn’t say anything about it, though. She pulled a writing pad and a pen out from her back pocket, clicked her pen, and looked back up at him. “What was your business with Lord Saaltz tonight?”
“I was meeting him with a business proposition,” Friedrich said. “My father wanted to get me into the family business so I would be ready to take it over by the time I inherited it.”
Hiro gave him a suspicious look for a few seconds, but she still didn’t say anything: she just wrote down what he said.
“It’s true,” Friedrich said, defensive. “You can ask my father.”
“Yes, my lord,” Hiro said, keeping her eyes down on the writing pad. “At what time did you go to meet with Lord Saaltz?”
“I don’t know,” Friedrich said, rubbing the back of his neck. Hiro finally looked up at him, her face a blank mask. “I left after the second act started; that’s when we were supposed to meet.”
“Did you see any suspicious people on your way here?” Hiro asked as she scribbled that into the writing pad.
Friedrich almost said no, until he remembered something: the man who’d been leaving the box just as he was about to go in. He’d gone by him without so much as a second glance, in quite a bit of a hurry. Hadn’t he been holding something, too? Something shiny-
Oh, heaven almighty!
“Th-there was this one guy who came out of the box just as I was about to go in,” Friedrich stuttered. Hiro raised an eyebrow as she looked up from her notepad. “He was holding something, but I didn’t quite see what it was.”
“What did he look like?” Hiro asked.
And there was the problem: he didn’t exactly remember what he looked like. All he really remembered from that night was all the blood in the box…
“Brown hair,” he said quickly, trying to force the thought out of his head. “He had brown hair. I think he was holding a knife, too. And he’s a man.”
“A man with brown hair and a knife,” Hiro repeated. She then looked back down at the writing pad. “We’ll… do our best to find him.”
“It’s not much, is it?” Friedrich asked.
“… No, my lord. It isn’t. But the Königstadt police have found people with less to go on.” Hiro finished writing in her notepad, then looked back up at him. “You’ll be receiving a call from the Königstadt police within the next few days to help us identify this man. Please come promptly at the time given.” She performed a short bow. “Good night, Lord Eltz.”
She turned to leave.
Friedrich had no idea what possessed him to do it, but he grabbed Hiro’s wrist before she could leave. “W-wait.”
She turned to look at him, confused.
“I-I don’t like how we left things, before,” he said quickly. “And… I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”
Hiro didn’t say anything. Judging by the look on her face, though, it wasn’t because she didn’t have anything to say.
“Friedrich, now’s not the time-“
“When will be the time, then?” Friedrich asked. “I mean…” he sighed. “What happened between us has been eating at me for the past few years. And I want to be friends.”
“No,” Hiro said.
Friedrich didn’t know what to say.
“You dumped me, just like that,” Hiro said bluntly. “And for what? So your father could be pleased with you for two seconds? No, we’re not going to ‘just be friends’. You should count yourself lucky that I didn’t snap your damned wrist in half just now.”
Friedrich had to admit: that hurt. A lot.
Hiro seemed to see that: she stood up a little straighter and performed another bow. “You’ll be receiving a call from my office, my lord. I won’t keep you from your family any longer.”
She couldn’t seem to get out of that box fast enough.
Friedrich sighed, tilting his head back. He really, really hoped that she wouldn’t be the one calling him.
V. HIRO
I shouldn’t have said that, Hiro thought to herself as she left the box. I really shouldn’t have said that!
Her relationship with Friedrich had been nearly five years ago: they broke up while she was still working at the library, saving up to take the entrance exam for the police academy. She’d barely thought about it in the years since: she’d been so focused on passing that exam and getting through the academy at the nearly impossibly high standards they set for her in an effort to get her to fail that she hadn’t had time to think about. All this time, she’d thought that she was truly over it. Now, though, she wondered if her feelings had changed at all since that night she’d spent at her brother’s apartment, wrapped up in a quilt on the couch as she cried.
“You get anything?” Brooks asked. He was leaning against the doorframe of the box where Lord Saaltz had been murdered, his arms folded over his chest.
“Not much,” she said as Friedrich walked out and rejoined his fiancée. The two of them walked down the hall, Katalin asking him all sorts of questions about how he was feeling. “Just a vague description.”
Brooks raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you look ready to put your fist through a wall?”
“Forget about it: it doesn’t matter,” Hiro said. She nodded at the box. “What have you guys found in there.”
Brooks motioned into the box with one hand. “Why don’t you come and see for yourself?”
Hiro hesitated, then walked into the box.
The first thing she noticed, obviously, was the dead body. Lord Saaltz lay in a pool of his own blood just in front of his seat, the carpet beneath him stained a deep crimson. The mortal wound was obvious, as well: one giant gash to the neck. And a deep one, at that. There was something different from that one, though; she’d seen plenty of crime scene photos in her time at the police academy, but that gashed throat wasn’t right. It almost looked like…
“Is the skin on his throat burned?” Hiro asked, squatting and squinting to get a closer look, doing her best to ignore Lord Saaltz’s dead, doll-like eyes.
“That it is,” Brooks confirmed, squatting down next to her. “See how the blood looks kind of crispy right there, too? Kind of like it’s already scabbed over?”
Hiro looked closer at the portion Brooks was pointing to and nodded. “What’s that from?”
“That suggests that the blade was red hot when it ended our friend, here,” Brooks said.
Hiro frowned and looked back at Brooks. “What would cause it? The blade being hot, I mean. And why would you want it to be hot before the cut? Don’t people just heat blades up before cauterization?”
“Please, go ahead and ask another question,” Brooks grumbled. “Don’t try and figure everything out by one little piece of evidence, kid: gather everything at the crime scene, then try to find some answers.”
Hiro pulled out her notepad to write that down.
“If you’re about to write everything I just said down, I’m going to smack you,” he said.
Hiro looked up at him and blinked, confused.
“I ain’t one of your professors at the academy,” he said. “We’re partners: that means less taking my word for it and more bouncing ideas off of each other. Two heads are better than one, right? Especially when one of those heads is so crammed with knowledge that they can’t fit anything else in there.”
Hiro didn’t say anything.
Brooks raised an eyebrow. “That was a joke.” He slapped her on the back. “Lighten up, kid: this is a murder investigation, not a death sentence.”
Hiro nodded. “Alright. So, do you have any theories about what caused the burns around the wound?”
Brooks nodded at the door. “Take a look at that door handle.”
She looked over her shoulder.
She frowned. “It’s… melted.”
“Correct,” Brooks said, standing up. He touched the door handle with gloved hands, running his hand down the dro
oping metal. “These babies are made of brass. Do you know how hot things have to get to melt brass?”
Hiro just about answered him, until she realized it was a rhetorical question. She would have to get used to that after actually having to answer questions in the academy.
“Hot,” Hiro said, instead. “You think they’re related?”
“That I do,” Brooks said. “Take a guess as to why.”
Hiro looked back at the body. “You… think the assassin was an Alchemist?”
“Correct,” Brooks said. “It’s going to make getting prints off of that doorknob a bitch, but at least we can narrow down our suspect pool. Did you get a description from your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” She said quickly.
Brooks raised an eyebrow. “… another joke, kid. Now, though, I’m curious as to know why you’re so antsy about it.”
Damn it, Hiro! “We can talk about it later. All I got from him was that the assassin has brown hair. And that he was a man.”
“Male, brunet, Alchemist, and it’s probably safe to assume that you can add member of the mob to that description,” Brooks said to himself. “Shitty odds, but not the worst I’ve had.”
That seemed to be the general consensus.
“Now, let’s talk about you and that Eltz kid,” Brooks said.
“No,” Hiro said. “No no no no no-“
“Why not?” Brooks asked. “You’ve got something to hide, Ikeda?”
“What? No! Of course not,” Hiro said defensively. “Why are you so interested about it, anyway?”
“Because you’re so interested in not talking about it,” Brooks said. “Come on: I’ll stop pestering you about it if you just tell me about it.”
Hiro raised an eyebrow. Somehow, she doubted that.
“Why do I get the feeling that the pestering’s going to get worse if I tell you?” Hiro asked dryly.
Brooks chuckled. “There she is: the Hiro Ikeda who punched her final interview proctor. I was wondering when you were going to show up.”
Hiro blushed. Of course, he heard about that: it seemed like everybody had. Hiro had been a social pariah all through her time at the academy, but that suddenly changed after the first section of the final testing at the academy: every recruit was required to go through an interview to make sure that they were stable enough for the work, and where they were most suited to work within the force. Her interview proctor had been one of the longest-serving inspectors on the force, and a hardened traditionalist: he didn’t believe that “people like her” as he put it had any business on the force. He’d assured her that he would make sure that she never got employed on the force as anything more than a secretary. Hiro had had it, by then: she’d spent the past few years of her life as a second-class citizen, turning the other cheek every time racism and sexism reared their ugly heads, but in that moment, something in her snapped. She punched him, hard. Broke his nose, if the crack when her fist landed and the immediate gushing blood were to be believed. She fully expected to be expelled after that, see all of that hard work go down the drain, but that didn’t happen. People suddenly liked her, and Berkowitz had let it slide, too, saying that it was nice to see a recruit with the balls to call out her superiors on their “bullshit”. The story had spread like wildfire since then.
“Don’t act so embarrassed: we’ve all wanted to sock Inspector Dachs,” Brooks said. “So long as I don’t get a broken nose, I don’t care.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Am I going to get a broken nose, maybe a black eye for asking about that Eltz kid?”
“No,” Hiro said. “Let’s just talk about it later, alright? I don’t want to get into it, right now.”
“Sure, sure,” Brooks said. “We should probably get back to the station: Berkowitz is going to want to know what we found.”
“You think what we found will be enough?” Hiro asked as the two of them stood up.
“To find the guy? Probably,” Brook said. “To keep us from getting our asses chewed out, tonight? Unlikely.”
Hiro sighed. “Great.”
“Don’t worry: Berkowitz is nothing if not quick and efficient with his ass-chewing.”
***
“So, what you’re saying is that we don’t have any leads other than one of the most vague descriptions I’ve ever heard?”
Hiro winced. She hated getting yelled at. She hoped Brooks was right about Berkowitz being quick about this.
“I wouldn’t say that, sir,” Brooks said. “We actually do have quite a bit on this guy: we know that he has brown hair, is an Alchemist-“
“Oh, well that’s really going to narrow things down,” Berkowitz said, rolling his eyes. “Guess what, Brooks? You’ve still got tens of thousands of people to eliminate before we figure out who the hell did this!”
Brooks stayed silent.
Berkowitz sighed and drank some whisky from a flask. “You know, for someone with such a high closure rate, Brooks, you sure aren’t making much progress with this case.” He looked over at Hiro. “And as for you, Inspector Ikeda-“
“It’s only been a few hours; of course we aren’t going to have much,” Brooks interrupted. “Give us more time to actually find something, and we probably will.”
“And in the meantime, the king, the mayor of Königstadt, and the commissioner are going to be breathing down my neck, waiting for a conviction,” Berkowitz muttered, rubbing his temples. “I suggest that you hurry up, Brooks: if you don’t, I have a feeling that one of us is going to the chopping block, and you can bet your ass I’m not going to let it be me.” He looked at Hiro. “You said that Friedrich Eltz was the one who gave you that description?”
Hiro nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You’ll bring him in for questioning, and you’ll figure out who he saw,” Berkowitz said. “I don’t care if you have to show him every photograph of every damned Alchemist with brown hair we have: you’ll do it, and you’ll find our man. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Hiro and Brooks said in unison.
“Good,” Berkowitz said. “Now, get the hell out of my office, and get some sleep: you’re going to need it.”
VI. ADELRIC
Adelric spent the morning after he assassinated Lord Saaltz the way he’d spent every other morning of his life since his sixth birthday: he practiced the violin.
That morning, he was working on learning the first part of Veroni’s “Concerto in A Minor”, the very piece that the Imperial Symphony Orchestra was making every violinist play as a primary audition that year. He was planning on making it that year: he’d worked so long and so hard on his violin skills that it only seemed natural. He was good enough to be in that group; all he had to do was prove it. Even if he didn’t make it past the first callbacks, he could still get into any other orchestra in Vorbereich with just reputation alone after this: if you were good enough to make it past the first audition for the Imperial Symphony Orchestra, you were good enough to be the principle player in every other group in the country, and even some outside the country. If he made the first callback, he would finally be able to find a real job, one that didn’t involve pick pocketing or, like it did last night, murder.
The thought of what had happened the previous night only made Adelric work harder that day, hammering out those complicated rhythms and arpeggios into his memory so he’d be able to play them with the absolute precision. He remembered how angry he’d been with the establishment when he walked into Saaltz’s box… and how all that went away when Saaltz begged for his life. The job ended up being messy, nothing like what Bator had asked for, but it got the job done: the entire city was, from what could be gathered by the paper boy shouting the day’s headlines on the corner, in an uproar about what had happened.
Of course, Adelric didn’t care too much about that: he was just interested in getting away from the underground before it killed him.
Right about the point where he began to work on rehearsal mark D, he heard a knock at the door.
“I don’t suppose ya plan on coming t’ work today, do ya?” It was Klara’s voice that came through the door. “Just because Bator liked tha’ hack job ya did don’t mean ya get t’ skip out.”
Adelric put his violin down and walked over to his door. When he opened it, he saw Klara standing on the other side, looking nothing like she had the other day. She was back to looking like Bator’s favorite Basher: she was wearing a long coat that went down to her knees, well-fitting pants tucked into knee-high riding boots, and a white dress shirt, without gloves to hide her mechanical hand. Her red hair was up in a tight bun, but as usual, there was some hair that came out of it and framed her face. You couldn’t even see the bun: she was covering it with a soft cap. She was right back to her old self, for better or for worse.
“How’s ya little music thing coming, Agresta?” she asked mockingly. “It’s called a conserto, right?”
Adelric sighed as he walked into the apartment to put away his violin. “It’s pronounced concherto, actually. It’s Valtruscan: they throw in weird ‘ch’ sounds everywhere.”
“Well, pardon me,” Klara said, rolling her eyes as Adelric put his violin back in its battered case and began loosening the bow. “My heaven, you musicians are damned finicky; ya’d think ya’d at least use them nerves of yours to clean up ya damned apartment.”
“Will you stop calling me Agresta?” Adelric asked as he put his bow back in the case and began folding up the sheet music so he could put it into the case. “I’m not nearly as good as he is.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Klara said as Adelric shoved his music into the case. He shut it, latching it shut as she leaned against his doorway. “You’ll be happy t’ know that you’re on easy street today; he just wants ya t’ play on the streets, maybe earn a few marks while one of his new kids picks their pockets t’ get a few more. Easy stuff; doubt ya could screw it up.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Adelric muttered as he grabbed his coat and shrugged it on. “What is Bator having you do, today?”
“He’s got me workin’ a job at some mansion in Geldmarkt,” Klara said.