"I want the two of you to take this case. Mari, you'll be leading the investigation. All the details are in the scroll on my desk. This is a case from a good friend of mine; he's the mayor of a small town south of here. Make sure you treat him with respect."
Facing away from the door, the detective gazed out the window absently with only the top of his head visible to the pair peeking over the top of his large leather chair. Marion quietly stepped forward, reaching towards the large piece of wrapped parchment cautiously, stepping back towards the door while facing the chair hopefully.
"You can use whatever you'd like as long as you solve the case. Good luck."
Marion paused for a few seconds, waiting to see if there was anything else the detective wanted to say but after a few seconds it became apparent that there wasn't anything more to be said. The hopeful sparkle in her eyes shifted to a grumpy glare as she dragged Cenic out of the room by his sleeve. With her spare hand, she quickly unwrapped the parchment, quickly scanning through the scrawled handwriting, doing her best to make sense of it. As they reached out of earshot, Cenic gently tugged his arm out of her grasp and jogged to catch up with her stride, a look of concern plastered on his face.
"At least he wasn't smoking this time."
Marion kept her pace up as she quickly made her way down the stairs, with Cenic trailing behind her. With her now free left hand, she wrapped the parchment once more, tying the string around it neatly and handing it to Cenic.
"Two years ago he didn't even let you into his office."
Marion shot a deadly glare towards Cenic but he ignored it, having grown immunity to any looks that she could throw his way.
"It's just that... you know... he has his reasons. The same way you and I do."
"If anyone would know that, it's me."
Marion spoke while facing away from Cenic, more focused on opening the door to the supply room. After a little bit of struggling with the key, she pushed the door open while stepping back to avoid the large amount of dust that floated out of the room. Cenic, completely ignoring the smoggy atmosphere of the storage room, headed in without any second thought and grabbed a small bag which dangled off a hook. One by one, he picked out one of each tool, placing them into their specific pockets by memory. Within a minute he had circled around the room and collected a variety of brushes, powders and other trinkets to assist them in gathering evidence, all without waving away the dust once or even muttering a cough. He calmly left the room, returning to a somewhat impatient Marion, who tapped her foot anxiously as she waited for him to return.
"How do you even manage to go in there. It's like a different ecosystem."
"I assume I got my immunity to messy rooms from my dad. It's like my own special ability, which is... better than nothing, I guess."
As they began their walk towards the basement, Marion found herself smiling for a moment at Cenic's mediocre attempt at comedy. Immediately remembering the sour mood she had been in before, she muffled her stupid grin and remembered her past interactions with the detective once more.
"I just wish that he was willing to trust people more. He doesn't let anyone clean the supply room, he doesn't let us take any big cases and he doesn't trust me enough to..."
"Marion."
"I mean, it's already been fifteen years, you think he'd..."
"Marion, we agreed that whatever you saw in his strings, we wouldn't think about. I'm sure he wouldn't want to talk about it and neither do I."
Marion paused, before nodding. Silently angry with herself for getting too heated, she charged down the stairs to the basement, preparing to pack her bags.
+++
"This… this is her."
Marion squatted down in front of the casket as the client moved towards the base, pulling the cover off and revealing the corpse inside. It was decorated with great care, with a variety of flowers along the side of the middle-aged woman's motionless body, a bouquet of white roses sitting in her hands.
"You can leave if it's too hard for you."
The man shook his head at Cenic before circling around to the other side of the casket, coming to his knees to look at his lover's face.
"I need to be strong in times like these."
Cenic nodded quietly before peering over Marion's shoulder, tapping her on the shoulder to snap her out of her trance as her eyes traced the morbid yet beautiful decorations.
"We need to get to work."
Marion nodded and Cenic immediately tossed her a pair of leather gloves, pulling out a piece of parchment and a quill for himself. Without a hint of hesitation, Marion pulled up the old woman's shirt enough to see the large wound on her stomach, a horizontal cut along her abdomen.
"It's either a knife wound or some sort of machete. There's no major sign of struggle so it's more than likely it was a surprise attack."
Marion then set her gaze upon the man, who longingly gazed towards his lover's face, in his own quiet little world.
"Can you go through the order of events that occurred when your residence was broken into?"
For a few seconds, the man continued gazing until the lack of an answer led him to the conclusion that the question had been aimed at him. He quickly looked up to meet Marion's eyes and he coughed nervously into a clenched fist.
"It was a stormy night, so when we heard a window break, my wife went to go check on it. I was too engrossed in my work to go myself but… by the time I found her dead the assailant was dead. They didn't even steal anything, except…"
He quickly slipped back into silent gazing and Marion turned towards Cenic, not entirely sure what to do next. After a few seconds of silent stares, they came to the collective conclusion that it would be better if they didn't press on.
"We'll find the criminal sir, worry not. In the meantime, if you could give us some time to inspect the corpse, that would be greatly appreciated."
The man nodded hastily before pacing out of the room, closing the large oak doors behind him, leaving the two in an eerie silence. Marion turned up towards Cenic and nodded once before turning back towards the corpse, closing her eyes for a few seconds.
As her eyes fluttered open, an entirely different image lay before her, with hundreds of different coloured threads laid out in front of her, erupting from different parts of her body. From her head were hundreds of white strings, some intertwined with thick blues. A few thin purple and yellow strings reached out towards the walls, disappearing to somewhere Marion wouldn't be following. From her heart were a few green strings, along with a dozen pink strings, all thicker than any of the rest. The thickest of them all was intertwined with a blue string, spiralling around one another in the shape of a helix. However, the string that caught Marion's attention was the large red string reaching out from inside the wound, reaching out towards the town. Marion quietly put her finger through the string, her body passing through it as if she was a ghost, before suddenly standing up with renewed energy.
"I've got them. Let's go."
Without need for an explanation, Cenic quickly opened the door as Marion passed through the door, tracing the string with her finger. Quickly taking a nod at the client and their child who were seated at the front entrance, who looked on as if she was a madman, completely unaware of the pink strings she saw attached to their hearts. Cenic quickly opened the large heavy doors, letting Marion pass and run into the rain, before turning back towards the man and his child.
"We've got a lead. We'll be right back."
+++
"What did you say he looked like again?"
Cenic quietly look on towards the frail wooden door, stretching out his legs as Marion looked towards the string somewhat confused. She reached out towards the string again, passing her index finger through it before looking back towards the door.
"Black hair, scraggly beard, thin build. Can you do me a favour on this one?"
Cenic jumped up on the spot, looking towards Marion with an eyebrow raised.
"A favour?"
"I need you to let me ask him a few questions. Just don't knock him out like you usually do."
Cenic audibly sighed but nodded when he saw the annoyed stare he got in retaliation. Marion stepped aside as Cenic jogged backwards a few steps before bounding forward, ramming his shoulder into the door.
The small shack was a single room which looked like it had been abandoned years ago. Opposite the door was one bookshelf which was completely empty and tucked to the right side of the room was a bed, where their suspect lay, eyes wide open and shocked from the sudden noise in the afternoon.
"What the…"
Without warning, Marion slipped past Cenic and traced the string to the man's chest, before nodding towards her partner. Cenic charged forward and tackled the man to the ground, using his greater strength to wrestle the suspect into submission. Within a few seconds, he was behind the man on the bed, with the suspects arms locked behind him.
"What the hell are you two doing? What the hell do you want?"
Ignoring the suspect's questions, Marion closed her eyes once more, filtering out the sounds and smells around her. Once her eyes fluttered open, the single string that had been there before were replaced by hundreds more, now coming from the suspect. From his head were a few white and yellow strings, but they were dominated by the number of red strings, with twenty or so black strings mixed within. From his heart, there was one pink and one white string which remained thicker than the rest, alongside a red string which matched the trajectory of the one she had followed. Slightly offset from the red string was a black one, travelling almost directly alongside it.
"Why aren't you answering me? If you're muggers, I don't have anything you'd want."
As if she was in a trance, she reached out towards one of the black strings, then another and then another after that. The suspect looked on baffled as Marion slowly broke into tears, forcing herself to touch the final black string that was attached to his heart. She quickly turned towards Cenic, holding back her sniffling as she spoke.
"We need to go see the mayor. We have to make him pay."
A purple string reached out from the suspect's head towards Marion's chest.
"Are you insane? We have a murderer here, remember."
"That… monster is so much worse. He's caused so much suffering. We can't just…"
Cenic glared at his partner, unable to hide the irritation or anger in his voice.
"Mari. He's a murderer, there's no changing that. We agreed that you would stop doing shit like this on the job."
Marion paused, her gaze shifting between the suspect and Cenic, her lip trembling and her knees shaking.
"I'm… sorry."
Without saying another word, she walked out of the shack into rain.
+++
In complete silence, Cenic entered the carriage, taking the seat opposite of Marion. For about half a minute, he stared at his shoes, his eyes darting around the room for some source of confidence. Eventually, he gave up and bit the bullet.
"Thanks for helping me collect evidence."
Marion stuck her tongue out at Cenic spitefully, her arms and legs crossed grumpily. Cenic looked on quietly, with his inability to know what to say leaving the carriage in an awkward silence. The pair of them remained in the quiet carriage until their coachman opened the door, grinning from ear to ear.
"Are we all prepared to take off?"
His was met with two glares, making it as clear as possible that his enthusiasm wasn't wanted there.
"Alrighty then."
He closed the carriage hastily and after half a minute, they began moving up the road, heading north.
"Look, right. I'm sorry…"
Cenic was the first to break the silence, looking towards his partner directly, his stare direct and confrontational.
"No, you're not."
Marion placed her chin on a closed fist, staring down into the corner of the carriage. Cenic look on, his irritated glare coming back to him.
"You're acting like a child."
"I don't care."
They remained in silence for a few more seconds, with Cenic tempted to simply ignore her for the rest of the trip.
"I looked into the culprit's background. His parents were in the smithing business. The mayor was friends with a factory owner which made tools and let them sell here without paying taxes, which left the local smithy no business. That was five years ago. His parents ended up taking a job at the same factory, but… you know how these things go. Once they were gone, they had to sell their house and move into the shack, but despite that they were still short on money."
Cenic looked out the window, somewhat uncomfortable with final part of his background check.
"His sister starved to death three months ago. I'm pretty sure that was the breaking point."
Marion remained silent, staring towards the corner of the room. To her, this was nothing new; she had essentially lived through all of the painful moments the culprit had lived through.
"The mayor is getting investigated soon for unfair business practices. It's none of our business what happens; all we can do is hope for the best."
Marion's grumpy frown lightened up just a little.