The Ripper - The Trottingham Murders

My initial briefing was that a body was found in a back alley near Horseshoe Avenue and Stonewall street which wasn't all that far off from where I lived. It was early in the morning, about 6 or so, when I was sent for by a winded cadet and lead to the crime scene near the lower east side. The morning sun struggled to peak through the heavy grey clouds that clung to the sky just like the ice on the cobblestone-paved streets. When I arrived I saw that the immediate area had been cordoned off with tape and as I ducked under the tape to enter and assess the situation I found myself confronting the living, or dead, embodiment of an understatement. My initial reaction was one of disgust, followed by stomach-churning pity, and a disconcerting feeling much like a child would feel when given a task too hard or complicated to accomplish. The smell of iron was still rich in the air and I counted myself lucky that the freezing temperatures had preserved the body since anything above room temperature would have made it impossible to breath. The gore that surrounded me was intense and unlike anything I had ever seen but my mental scarring from years as a detective staved off the lurching in my stomach and internal screaming.

I spotted Commissioner Bolt Lock standing over the body with a fellow colleague who was snapping pictures a little to close to the body for my own personal comfort. I walked over and, knowing what little else to do in such a situation, gave an unusually cheery hello as I received a tip of the hat from Trickshot the photographer and a deep sigh from the Commissioner. He spoke a few hushed words with Trickshot and sent him on his way before turning his attention to me and the body. Years of being on the force had not been kind to him but despite his age he still stood strong and tall with a coat as blue and eyes as fierce as the day he joined. Still, the sour look on his face was not something he was born with and perhaps only those that truly understood were the likes of us, who served to protect, and those like the poor mare before us whose lack of protection defined our lives. In this instance we both shared the same feeling of uselessness but it was, as the Commissioner often reminded me, "business as usual".

"I hope you brought yourself a nice big flask of coffee, Spotter. You're going to need it." The Commissioner grumbled.

"I brought tea, actually. I figured that I've lived in Trottingham long enough to finally get into the spirit of things." My mood had changed and I matched his somber attitude.

It was hard to keep one's spirits up when in the middle of a crime scene and small talk did little to distract us from our jobs. Perhaps that was what we wanted all along, given the circumstances. We both turned in unison and almost literally soaked in the sight as we examined the puddles of blood at our hooves. It didn't exactly serve to boost my morale.

"So what's the story.?" I asked him.

He gave a deep sigh as he began. "The boys over there found 'er about a half hour ago when some broad came runnin' 'round the corner screaming bloody murder. That cadet with his head in the barf bag over there was the first ta' respond and sure enough they found 'her' layin' here as dead as a doorknob and just as frozen with the temperature as low as it is. Other 'n that it's a right bloody mess and I'd be daft ta' think that word hasn't already spread. With any luck, word'll spread, and when it hits the presses we'll catch whoever did this."

"Except we never do." I added bluntly.

I didn't turn to look but I saw him turn towards me out of the corner of my eye, no doubt to lecture me about the ins and outs of police work. In the past month we were lucky to only have two murders but in the years that I've worked as a detective I saw many cases similar to this one go unresolved countless times. The lower part of the city was a hotspot for crime and not everyone could be caught, while many others simply couldn't be arrested.

"Lad, you know it's not like we don't try our damned best but it isn't in our jurisdiction. You know damn well that ponies like these risk bein' cut down every night so we can't go blamin' ourselves when things like this happen. Can't help 'em if they don't want to be helped ya know? It's their Mistress' responsibility now so the best we can do is tidy up and ID the body." The Commissioner gave another deep sigh and shook his head.

My instincts told me otherwise and I fished out my magnifying glass. "Uuuhh I dunno. Everything just feels...off." I wasn't sure what I was looking for but it finally clicked. It was almost embarrassingly obvious. "I mean just look at this mess."

The Commissioner's blank stare told me everything I needed to know.

"This isn't Madame Dolce's work. Her hired help is a lot 'cleaner' when it comes to their crimes so I'm sure that it wasn't a thug or pimp that did this. In every other case it's been 'business as usual' but I doubt they'd stick around to play with the bits and pieces they've torn out from their victim. This was the work of a monster, not a hit-for-hire. Nopony would want to attract this much attention."

I turned around to see the Commissioner gingerly slap a hoof to his face before finally giving in. "My boy, I just hope you know what yer' doin'. I'm not going to stop you but If push comes to shove then you better start shovin' like there's not tomorrow. There's a reason some ponies end up the way they do and there's a better reason as to why you don't go snoopin' around and finding out who dunnit."

"I was never a big fan of how things work around here and you know that plain as day. I don't expect you to come running to my rescue like last time so you won't have to worry about that. Besides, even if this is one of Dolce's girls I doubt this was planned. Anyway, I'll let you know if I dig anything up. I have work to do."

I didn't bother to look back as I began my investigation so I assumed that the Commissioner had left with an unhappy grumble at my insistence. Turning to my work, I instantly noticed many things and kept them in my log that I carried around in my trenchcoat. The crime had happened in a short alley behind a housing block that connected two adjacent streets and the area was relatively out of the way, but perhaps a regular spot for this particular filly. She was, in fact, a female a lot younger than I was and wearing the same dress and make-up that so many other "tramps" I knew wore. Her coat was a silky hue of periwinkle with a dark-blue mane that flowed delicately around her face which I had the audacity to call pretty. It was a gentle sort of interest much like one finds a loved one lying peacefully when they die so I had no qualms over admiring beauty ill spent. All it took, however, was a look a few inches south before all of that beauty was erased and replaced with the shock of the extent of the crime.

"Ugh...damn..." I muttered as I vented the ugliness of it all.

Her coat was plastered with the congealed blood from her wound and was pooled under her, as well as on the walls and splattered about in several other locations indicating that she had moved since she had started bleeding. The body itself wasn't in any better condition.There was a single defining cut which ran down her body that had cut through her blouse and coat leaving them hanging at her sides as she lay on her back. Her torso had been cut vertically in this way with two other cuts along the bottom and top creating an "H" like position that would have given the culprit easy access to inside her body. The very though was sickening but that seemed like the only possible explanation besides marking the body for whatever reason. There were many other sections of her body filled with cuts and stab wounds, especially near the torso, but the coagulated blood and temperature had made it all but possible to investigate further.

"Hey Stormbend. Come over here." The sickly looking cadet made his way over and as I mentioned that I'd need help carrying her to the morgue. His eyes shifted nervously from the body and back to me before I made it clear that what I really wanted was for him to call the coroner for transportation. Relieved from having to carry the stiff to the morgue he ran off while I fruitlessly investigated the rest of the crime scene. I had managed to piece together a possible point where she was attacked but it did little in helping figure out who did it. It seemed that not a single second went by before the cadet returned with my good friend Dr. Splint who was hooked up to a cart.

"Now there's something you don't see everyday. I bet that's a good thing huh?" As always, he bore a smile you couldn't help but imitate and while the subject of his joke was base I couldn't help but smirk at how crude it was. While any self-respecting pony would have gladly shut his trap with a good right hook he made it incredibly easy to enjoy some of the harder parts of my job. I took every joke as a welcome dose of humor and ever since my transfer had been a steady source of laughter in the workplace.

“Thaat's what I like to see." He gave me a playful punch on the arm. "Laughter, just what the doctor ordered. Sorry I haven't been able to pay you more visits but I actually have a life. Just kidding, hah. Now, I assume that bleeding beauty on the ground there is our 'patient'?" He unhitched himself from the covered wagon he was pulling to inspect the body.

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“Well I certainly have my work cut out for me. I assume you'll want to assist in the autopsy, as always?” He asked.

“Yeah. That’s actually one of the reasons I called you out here in the first place. What’s your impression on all this?"

He placed a hoof to his chin as he eyed her down. “Well...she's dead. Not much too it. Pretty nasty wound too so I assume whoever wanted her dead wanted to make sure she stayed that way. This doesn't look like a typical murder though. Whoever did this is obviously out of his mind. Maybe they were looking for something..." His voice grew softer as he looked at me. "Am I right?”

While my fears were not assuaged I knew now that I wasn't alone in my school of thought. "Here, let's grab her and make sure this place gets cleaned up. I want to wrap this up quickly." Splint and I grabbed her and laid her as we found her on the wagon, covering her body with a white tarp to dissuade the nosy.

As we walked I took a few sips from my vacuum flask hoping that the taste of boiled herbs would wash away the smell of blood. We made our way to the police station and parked the wagon near the back where the medical bay lay adjacent to the main offices. The Regional Trottingham Police Department, as it was known, was so far removed from proper Equestrian society that we were not under the protection of Celestia's guards so a task force was created long ago to solve this problem. The station was a 2 floor complex and composed of the booking office, which also served as the main hub; the jail, which is where ne'er-do-wells went after processing; the medical bay, for autopsies and other assorted services; and my office, which was up a flight of stairs and would have overlooked the booking offices if it weren't for the frosted glass windows. "The Morgue", as I like to call it, was only added as an afterthought seeing as the town's hospital could not accommodate an autopsy center to fit our own needs and it was clear given the sterile atmosphere so far removed from the grimy jail cells. As we walked in through the back I talked to the nurse at the front desk and filled out paperwork while Splint carried the body in on a wheeled stretcher. Splint went through the usual rituals of cleaning himself for the procedure and I followed suit remembering to put on my mask and remove my coat to better assist the doctor.

I walked through a set of plastic dividers and my nose itched at the smell of formaldehyde. "There's my lovely assistant. It's a shame we have to skip the part where we cut the poor girl and half." Splint's mask blocked his face and muffled his speech but I was sure he was sporting a smile beneath it. "I took the liberty of removing her clothes and washing the body so you're welcome in advance. Now, for the main event!" He waved a hoof over the table and quickly pulled the white cloth from one edge to reveal our victim that we would be operating on. A stronger part of me prevented me from cringing at the awkward disregard for the sanctity of the dead.

Being a surgical unicorn of the highest caliber, he levitated all the instruments from the table beside him and floated them across the body so that each instrument would be available in a moment's notice. As he spoke, he operated, and as he operated he made sure to pause frequently to point at things worth noting with his scalpel.

"There seems to be some major bruising of the legs and X-rays have verified that her legs were indeed fractured. I don't know how this was accomplished and whether or not this occurred before or after her death. There are several wounds to her torso all delivered with what I assume was a knife. One...three...five separate wounds not counting the obvious cuts. Let's dig a little deeper." At this point all I heard was the sickly separation of skin from tissue as I turned my head. "It seems our friend saved us the effort of having to dissect her which is odd because I'm not seeing anything."

"What do you mean?" I asked as I finally managed to stomach having to look at an open body.

"Look here. Nothing has been moved around or removed which is weird since the kind of cut that was made only serves to access the cavity. Another thing that I find odd is that the incisions were meticulously made. Whoever did this managed to skin her and didn't so much as scrape at the ribcage while they did it." As his intrigue grew so did his haste. "We have to go deeper."

I leaned in closer as I watched him work, slowly cutting away at several ligaments and body parts and carefully cataloging them by arranging them in separate bowls. He had a primitive way of working but he was an expert and I wasn't so I left it at that. Only after removing her stomach did he notice a disturbance and I watched closely as he snaked a pair of tweezers into the cavity. It went deeper than I was comfortable with and all I had in order to gauge his success was his half-hidden face, brow furrowed in concentration. After what seemed like an eternity his eyes widened and he withdrew the tweezers as I stared at the small circular object he managed to fish out.

“It’s a...bit.” He said in confusion.

“A bit.” I parroted.

We looked at each other hoping that the other would speak up first to explain what this meant but that moment never came. He dropped the coin on a seperate tray with a clatter. I was completely baffled by what this could mean and my brain lurched an awkward pace as I struggled to piece together any meaning from something so surreal.

"So what do you think it means.?" He finally broke the silence with the question on both of our minds.

"It means that whoever did this is one sick bastard. All I know is that I'm not going to get any sleep tonight." I said dejectedly.

Splint made a motion with his scalpel as I walked out of the room knowing he'd keep working until a report landed on my desk. I removed my makeshift scrubs and grabbed my coat as I made my way through the building and into my office where I belonged. I opened the door with and was greeted by the sight of a large pile of mail cluttering my desk and I groaned as I sat down to begin the task of sorting the junk mail from the even more worthless workplace mail. There was a fireplace in my office and I stoked the open flame with leftover office memos as I opened, scanned, and burned away most of the worthless mail. Anything that needed my signature or looked important enough went straight to my desk but I spent a good portion of my time feeding the flames with the curling black edges of things of little importance to me. Occasionally my mind would drift back to the filly downstairs and my body would go cold with the thought of a crazed murderer prowling the streets of the town I was sworn to protect. I prayed for a miracle and as I sat down at my table my prayers were answered in loud, slurred yells.

"I don't care if tha' Commissioner's in a meetin'. I'm expectin' a meetin' of mah own and bah Celestia's crown I'mma gettin' it." I could barely hear the sound of the officers arguing with our guest but I could make out their conversation from his yelling alone. "Who in tha' flippin' hay is Detective Spotter? What do you mean he's handlin' tha' investigation? I told ya I wan-don't touch me! This jacket 'ere was tailor-made."

I finally opened the door and peeked over the railing to see a pudgy looking stallion old enough to be my father wrestling against the might of two officers. It seemed like my presence went unnoticed and as he looked up all eyes fell on me. I remembered him from my last run-in with the local gangs and I froze knowing it was too late to head back into my office.

"Fer the luvva...It's you?!" He nearly screamed out.

I talked with the officers into letting him go and lead him to my office as he quaintly recalled my previous run in with him as I was at the apex of my investigation into illegal shipments of counterfeit bits.

"So yer the fellah who ruined The Lady's plans. Ooh I swear If I wasn' her on business I'd have ya hangin' from a lamppost by noon today." I let him vent as he continued to threaten and I knew better than to act against him. I knew his kind, and he would just jump at the chance to file a report for police brutality. Besides, I knew from our previous encounter that he was a lot stronger than he looked.

I finally lead him into my office and closed the door, tenting my hooves in front of my face as he exhausted himself with more verbal hatred and colorful insults than I could think of. After noticing how calm I was he settled down by laying across a guest sofa and dug his dirty hooves into it, another vain attempt at eliciting a reaction from me.

"Are you done or would you like me to hand you a baby bottle for your tantrum? Your here on business and the last thing you want is to be stuck with me inside a police office so I'll make this quick. I need info and for you, time is money, so I'll be happy to pay you for your time here." I seemed to have grabbed his attention and he tilted his head towards me in interest. "I know you're here to see the body under orders from the 'Lady' herself so I won't stop you. I will, however, need all the information you might have surrounding that poor filly's death and I mean all of it."

His face quickly shifted from shock to that of a pleasant smile. "Ya don't like ta mince words do ya? Alright, ya gots yourself a deal. I'd like to make sure you have our gal though. Oh, and the name's Bouncer."

I obliged Bouncer's request and led him downstairs to the medical bay where we caught Splint just about wrapping up the autopsy. It seemed odd that Lady Dolce would send somebody like him down to confirm the death of one of her workers and it was a while before Bouncer got himself together. He identified her as Dewdrop and was working with three other girls the night she was murdered.

"Were you close?" I asked him.

"As close as I could get with tha merchandise. We've been losin' a lotta girls out there since 'bout a month ago." He described a recent string of supposed kidnappings but there was never a ransom and it was so long ago they were all assumed to be dead. Three girls altogether: Sweet Tune, age 23; Taffy, age 28; and Hot Breeze, age 33; all of them taken and never seen or heard from again. When I asked him who could be behind this he replied with a shrug and some advice. "Usually they only pull these kinds a' tricks if they wanna send a message."

We talked a bit more and it turns out that while the disappearances and murder were all employed under Lady Dolce none of the other gangs had stepped up to claim responsibility. 40 Bits' worth of information netted me a lot of names, a lot more speculation, and absolutely no leads into the investigation. As I sat in my office alone thoughts began to swirl around my head as I tried to piece together what I feared would be an unsolvable case. I figured it would have been a rival gang but now it was becoming clear that there was a third party involved which only served to complicate things further. Rather than suffer through another headache I took a break and began to read through the paperwork on my table. I opened up one of the more important looking letters and signed it off, putting it aside and repeating the process for the next half hour.

By the time I reached the last few the urge to go sleuthing around the streets had me second-guessing my decision to read through cold-weather advisories and missing pet flyers. Just as I was ready to head out a knock came to my door and was greeted by an officer who presented me with the results of the autopsy. I thanked the pony and carefully tore open the manilla folder as I examined the documents within. As I read I felt a cold sort of feeling make it's way up my spine and an uneasy feeling of severe nervousness. Not toxins were found within the body, no outstanding injuries other than everything I already knew and a professional statement from Splinter that reciprocated my own feelings about the entire ordeal.

There was one section in particular that caught my attention, however.

"Several items were found lodged within the open cavity of the victim. Items listed were located under the lugs and hidden deep back within the cavity with minimal intrusion. List is as follows:

23 Bits Currency

1 Cloth Money Bag"

That one section dug held onto my brain and refused to let go. I felt a surge of hatred make it's way up my throat and I swore as I tossed the autopsy report onto my desk. In a desperate need for distraction I turned back to the paperwork when a particular letter caught my eye. It was a plain envelope whose paper had yellowed due to age or condition but it was so incredibly shoddy that it puzzled me how I had noticed it before. There was no return address and it was simply addressed to "The Detective" at "The Police Station" in a letter so crude it reminded me of how a child would address a letter. Curiosity got the better of me and I opened the envelope removing the equally yellowed piece of paper. The penmanship of the letter wasn't any better and was barely legible with spelling mistakes abound.

'This is odd...' I thought to myself as I squinted at the crude lettering. 'What is this?'

"dear mister detective

how are you? im doing fine today was a good day but the night was even better i had a really big din(n)er so i dont eat at night."

I felt a shudder through my body and my mouth went dry as I continued to read. The letter was folded several times over so I continued to unfold it as I read along.

"i learn(e)d toni(gh)t the average (w)hore carries 24 bits."

My mouth went dry and I glanced at the autopsy report on my desk. I suddenly noticed how much I was shaking.

"i take what i want but im done for now (yo)u can take this for keeps."

I placed a solitary hoof over my mouth as a single Bit fell from the unforld fold of the paper. The clatter of the coin could be heard as I continued to read.

"catch me if you can if we meet again i will give myself in

the fun begins."

I let go of the letter and let it drop on my desk as I finished reading. I wandered around my office and returned to my desk to find the letter exactly where I had placed it. Was this some sort of a joke? Was this all some part of an elaborate scheme by the local thugs to drive me insane? No. It couldn't be.

A part of me wanted to just lay down and die but then I'd be handing the murderer another victory. Confusion, anger, and despair were all heavy in my soul and I could do little but sit as precious time passed me by. I gave a final glance around my office as stuffed the report and letter into my trenchcoat pocket. Foregoing the rest of my work day I locked the door to my office and walked out pausing only to drop off the finished paperwork with the pencil pushers in the offices. As I walked outside into the open air of the city I glanced up into the sky to see the heavy cloud cover making a mockery of the remaining daylight. I began to walk, slowly at first, from the station towards the east side of town. It was only a matter of seconds before my motivation drove me to a trot and after a while I found myself running with my lungs burning, but the urgency kept me going. I was scared for my life and the life of those around me. It didn't matter who was behind all of this because I wasn't going to stop until I found them. I would never stop.

“Catch me if you can...”

I turned a corner as I ran through the backstreets of town. As went on I looked into my coat to find the handle of my gun at my side, insurance for when I finally found the maniac.

“The fun begins.”