The Quartet Gang Murders (The Naked Empire)

[The Major]

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Chapter 2​

Faldos
Primeday -near the end of 852 ABY
The City of Farport
Detective Erik Eckelkamp: FCPD, Badge 0217

Two weeks since that ghastly scene on the north cut. Two weeks since the case that got that much more complicated by the day as details poured in about what any sane person would call another Jane Doe; two weeks on a thankless job during the wettest season on this dump’s recorded history; two weeks going mad as every detail further smeared the facts and truncated his patience for a lack of justice. Repressing the frustrations, Erik lowered his eyes down to the datapad, hunching over his sad excuse of crumbling chair to review the case notes. At the top of the current page the victim’s identity, that a secret until he was granted temporary access to some classified files belonging to the Security Bureau, her entire file, and that of a life, reduced to a number of bullet points labelled into convenient boxes for statisticians to store away for eternity -or at least until the net gave out.

Name: Ly Tront​

Age: 26​

Occupation: Special Agent​

Specialization: Undercover Ops​

Homeworld: Lanteeb​

It went on like that, showing that the victim had come here only recently after graduating from the First Order Academy on Sump. From what Erik could ascertain by way of talking to some of the agents operating here who proved to be privy to sharing, people trained there were supposed to be the bee’s knees when regarding this damnable spook work.

All the good it did Ly, he thought.

A big frown crunched out on his face as he thought of her dead face, wondering why the blatant horror of the scene was stomping down and gnawing on his guts. He wasn’t a rookie. He was better than this. Still, he didn’t sleep easily at night. Maybe it was the rain, like now, pattering against his shet apartment every night so intensely that it almost seemed like it was going to break the window glass. Maybe it was the heinousness of the crime, because violence was the rule and not the exception on Faldos -except in this case the bold depravity of it was beyond the magnitude of what the usual gangs did when fighting each other. Maybe it was because the autopsy had proven that the poor Ly had been abused with trace remains found in the spots that a corner in this town quickly got used to -but magnifying the invasion of his thoughts was the fact that it wasn’t clear if the abuse had occurred post-mortem. This fact still was making his stomach churn; this fact was flaring up his deathstick problem. Erik was hitting that and the juice quite a lot at night since these spooks had come. Or maybe it was the Director.
She, who didn’t seemed fazed by any of the grisly details, who never was caught surprised despite the wanton disregard of life spreading throughout the city since the department ramped up patrols and the gangs not getting caught and thrown into the dark offices in City Hall requisitioned by the Security Bureau: young, misguided riff-raff that didn’t come out once sent in She, who never balked at an insult, bearing the continue string of verbal diarrhea coming from the captain on the daily, working and walking all manner of hours regardless of how dangerous the neighborhood, mulling over the scant leads and ordering her agents to dig deeper, push harder, risk more. She must’ve been possessed.

Something raw stirred in Erik’s gut. He started feeling paranoid, and smelt a hint of lilac in the air. A tingle of eyes on his back raised him from his seat, and something glowed blue from the other side of the home. Looking across the darkness of his apartment he thought he spied a figure in his living room. The detective glared, reaching for his piece before walking across the space with bated breath. He drew past the shadow and found the room empty.

Erik blinked and let out the swelling air in his chest.​

For a second, he thought he saw her; he swore he did.​

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Maybe it was just a dream, but the smell of flowers wouldn’t fade….​

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[member="Tez Bola"] | [member="Sieger Ren"] | [member="Garnik Verita"] | [member="Natasi Fortan"] | [member="Leah Kaban"]​

 

[Tez Bola]

Warm droplets of the evening’s downpour steamed against the fiberglass windows of Sal’s, the diner around the corner from the mysterious murder case from two weeks prior. While the vic had long since been identified (to those investigating, that is), the murderer (plural?) was still at large. The night Ly Tront was found a pack of flatties shoved themselves inside the modest establishment in the hopes of shaking up the clientele for some answers. Disappointed that all their alibis checked out, the coppers helped themselves to a few puffcakes and left with no additional clues or leads.

Right now Sal’s windows ran gray, but in this city, that’s how the water normally looked. This diner was a staple in this neighborhood, having been in business for the past two hundred years. Their menu was about eighteen pages long containing grainy pictures, some of them being of food that most likely didn’t exist anymore. The appearance of the menu didn’t matter anyway since patrons usually requested typical dishes commonly found on a dirty backwater Outer Rim planet such as this: roast galma, Agamar sliders, Calamaria Surprise, nerf steak, and fringi spice cake, amongst other things. Additionally, they boasted their “Exquisitely Exotic Endorian Chicken,” “Sithfully Scrumptious Lambro Shark,” and “Immorally Tempting Mongo Beefhead Patties.” With these dishes in particular, they would make some wonder whether ordering one would be a decision that would come back to haunt them later that evening.

This place was also a dump, and all the locals knew it. During the week, it was mostly filled with lost tourists who couldn’t figure out how to read a map (how they ended up on Faldos in the first place was their own problem), lonely old people and working stiffs in between jobs. Weekends were for desperate cops on a tour who missed out on the other nearby joints who closed earlier, and the occasional crime boss or two (or twelve, depending on the time).

Luckily for Tez Bola, the curly haired dame on shift, it was a slow evening- the rain had made sure of that. At the moment, the only patrons inside were a Rodian at the end of the long counter sipping his third cup of caf and a pair of Togrutas in a back booth speaking in low whispers over their womp rat soup. Tez was currently refilling the salt and pepper shakers two tables away from the pair because replacing the condiments seemed inconspicuous enough of a cover to listen in. While she couldn’t hear everything the Togrutas had been talking about, certain choice words in particular had caught her attention: “sva,” “meh'a,” and “ahnu.” She knew enough Togruti to ascertain that these two knew something.

After Tez filled the last few empty shakers, she strode over to the counter. The Rodian regular motioned to his empty cup, which Tez knew was his polite way of requesting a refill. “Anything for you, Bort,” she said with her flashy smile and slight drawl. She walked over to the caf pot and poured out the remaining contents into his mug. “Darn, fresh out,” she commented out loud. “Bort, Honey, I need to go into the pantry for some more beans to grind. Don’t miss me too much while I’m gone.” The Rodian grunted in assent as the waitress made her way to the kitchen where the pantry was located. When she entered through the double doors, she quietly slid the latch shut and peeped out the window to make sure she had made a clean disappearance. Tez then pulled out a communicator from her apron pocket, punched in a string of numbers and waited for a familiar bespectacled face on the other side to appear. “Tee Boe to Maj Sib,” she said in her normal voice, which was of a non-regional mid-range timbre. “Reporting from the pre-loc. Hot lead: double pair of montrals. One of each. Requesting rendezvous. Bring cover.”

[member="The Major"] | Sieger Ren | Garnik Verita | Natasi Fortan | Leah Kaban