Cause of Death
Admiral Biscuit
Two lovers, intertwined.
That’s my first impression. We’re not supposed to have first impressions, but I see what I see and can’t help but jump to conclusions.
I look over at Sarge. “Time of death?”
“Coroner’s not sure.” He rubs a hoof across his muzzle. “We know that she checked in to the motel around sundown last night, so it can’t be before that.”
I nod, and look around the room. Nothing looks out of place, and now the little details that were just at the periphery of my mind come into focus. She hasn’t got a suitcase, nor does he. Add in that the motel’s kind of seedy, and I have a working theory of what happened here.
I have to remind myself that it’s only a working theory, and the evidence might contradict it later.
“I’m going to talk to the maid.” She’s not in the room; she’s down the hall in an empty room. It’d be cruel to keep her in the room, to keep her around the bodies.
“Three doors down,” Sarge tells me.
I nod.
That room is essentially the same as the crime scene, although obviously without two dead bodies. Jealous spouse? Robbery gone wrong? That could explain the lack of luggage.
The maid’s face is still damp from crying. I put a reassuring hoof around her shoulder and commence to questioning.
She doesn’t provide any new information. She was going to go in to clean the room, she knocked, nopony answered, she opened the door and saw them. She denied even going into the room; she’d pulled the door shut as soon as she’d seen and gone to report to her manager. Paramedics had been called, but there was nothing they could do, and they’d left the scene to us.
I give her a reassuring hug and walk back to the crime scene, staying out of the way of the evidence techs. I stay until the bodies are carted out, bound for the morgue.
•••
“It wasn't accidental.”
“Go on, Bones.” We all call him that.
“You see right here, there’s some bruising under the fur? That’s a sign of a struggle. And she’s missing a shoe.”
I frown. I hadn’t noticed that at the crime scene. “Nopony found one.”
“And look here.” He brushes aside some of her fur. Almost lovingly, even though she was far beyond feeling. “Scrapes. This is the biggest one, but not the only one. I combed some gravel out and there was a bit of dried blood, too.”
“If you were going to spend a night with your lover, you’d comb your fur first.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think she was killed somewhere else and left there?”
Bones holds up a hoof. “Whoa, you do the thinking on that, sport. I just tell you what I see on the bodies.”
“Thanks.”
•••
The stallion sitting in the interrogation room is nervous, so I bring him a cup of coffee. It trembles in his aura as he brings it to his lips.
“I don’t want no trouble.”
“Tell me what you know.” My recorder’s activated by a hoof button; later on, I can review his testimony.
“I seen her outside the Ponyazzo, just pacing around in front of the entrance.”
“You seen her before?”
“No.”
“She a prostitute?”
He shrugs “Probably. Boss tries to move ‘em along, but I hadn’t got no orders yet.”
I nod. That ruled out her being a high-roller or celeb. He would have recognized her.
“And then?”
“A fight. I didn’t see all of it, but some stallion got in her face and started yelling and the two of them went around back.”
“Him?”
Mortuary photographs are never flattering, and this one was no exception.
The stallion nods nervously. “Once they went around back they was none of my business anymore, but—” he takes a sip of his coffee “—I heard her voice cut off all sudden-like.”
“And that’s it?”
“Musta been five, ten minutes after the two of them left the front entrance.”
•••
It’s a reasonable working hypothesis that he’d killed her and then dragged her back to her hotel room. The timeline works for them fighting, her going to the casino with him following later, and if they were arguing he might even have a motive. Other evidence doesn’t add up, and if he had been the murderer, why would he have taken her body back to the hotel room? Why would he have joined her there? Why not just dump the body and be done with it?
I don’t like it.
•••
“Both forelegs broken?”
Bones moves the fur aside on his neck. “And then strangled. Poor guy was really worked over.”
“There’s no way he could have dragged her to the hotel.”
“Not in that condition, no. He was probably dead before she was.”
“You’re sure of that.”
“Completely.”
•••
This time, I don’t bring the guard stallion coffee. Before he can lie again, I just toss the coroner’s report in front of him.
“Awful hard to walk with two broken forelegs,” I remark. “You want to know what I think?”
His eyes are wide—he’s been caught.
“I think that our stallion owed Gladmane an awful lot of bits, and I think that somepony worked him over. I think that it went too far, and I think that somepony accidentally killed him, and now there was a problem. This sounding familiar so far?”
“I don’t know nothing about that.”
“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. Who told you to lie?”
He gives me a name.
•••
The prosecution’s got an open and shut case, and it doesn’t take very long for the jury to return their verdict, nor for the judge to sentence him to death. I should feel satisfaction, but as I sit in my study sipping a tumbler of whiskey, I can’t get the face of the mare out of my mind, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s more to the case than I knew.
Author's Note
For Quills and Sofas thousand-word throwdown.
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