"Alright. So we're looking for a Suspect with either an experience in wielding blunt weapons or someone good at hiding it, given the data we're currently working on." Vere briefed Othello as they walked, unwittingly taking her as an assistant to his sleuthing.
"Hmhmhm…well. Doesn't matter; I'm gonna burn the shit in their colon as I toast their ass. They're gonna be permanently like .2 percent shit after this." She bared her teeth as she lifted her palm. A blue flame menacingly sparked into life as a shadow canted over her face.
"How violent." He remarked.
"You don't like it?" She pouted with a saddened look as she gingerly put her hand down.
"I don't dislike it. If I don't merc them first, you're free to do whatever." He half-jokingly said.
"Hehe, them? Hey, would you just shoot a woman—if it were a woman?"
"Does it really matter? Murder doesn't have a gender."
Two exchanged a laugh while Vere kept his eyes gazing at the environment. There seemed to be an odd shadow from the light illuminating the mall.
A part of it was darker than the rest of it. The shadow in question was cast by the higher piece of the bottom of the fountain.
They were on the bottom floor, a short way away from the main entrance of the Shattered Skyscraper Mall.
"Well, well, well. What've we got here." The tilting series of articulations resembled the joke of a jester as his deep voice mouthed these words. Yellow-red thought power, the duo chromatic energy divided vertically through the middle, flowed through the confines of Vere's thought nexus. The undulating curves got to work floating around him as he picked up the object at the bottom of the fountain.
A red gleam in one eye, a yellow gleam in another, and water plopping down his fingers. What he picked up was…a brick.
He rotated it, feeling the surface vaguely through his black gloves. He brushed against it, noting that the object didn't seem as wet as the inside of the fountain. He touched it just to make sure.
Then he weighed the brick in his hand, bouncing it up and down as he flexed his arm. The weight was…substantial.
An edge of the reddish brick was indented. He had to go and make sure that this object corresponds to the result of his suspicions.
"Come on, we're going back to the crime scene. I need to confirm something." He communicated with a halt, halfway getting ready to move before he remembered that Othello was there. He looked over his shoulder, taking care to make sure she came over.
As they walked, he confirmed the burgeoning feelings that washed over him. He felt…well; he felt like he was having fun. The whole thing really did feel as familiar as he claimed. The sensation of investigating tickled his fancy, causing him to focus even more on his work.
He knelt and gently raised the body once again. Then, brushing aside the hairs on the back of the man's scalp, he connected the indented part to the fatal wound.
The surfaces smoothly matched. It wasn't a complete indication, but it was a lead.
Closing his eyes, he reimagined the scene. The figure he posed to be was obscured—the build and description vague. The only notable thing was the lean, compact set of muscles designed to instantly burst with all of the strength in the body and the muscles to control that berserk force.
It was what he figured the perpetrator looked like. Unfortunately, the gray environment showed that he had no idea where the attack happened, though it could've been in a barn for all he knew.
The figure crept up to the man and smashed the brick against the back of the victim's head.
He opened his eyes and felt that it worked. The bell toll of [Hunch] was like a faint ring this time, not too thoroughly vigorous and not too quiet. Something was missing—well, a lot of things missing. But the act itself didn't seem complete.
'…Why did the guy not react? Could he have been assassinated? Or maybe someone was distracting him. Did multiple people attempt to kill him? Did the perpetrator have any aid?'
Vere turned the corpse over again, stuffing the brick into his pocket. A digit grazed against the corpse's face, feeling for any indentations that could serve as proof that the man fell over after the impact.
…
Nothing. The face was smooth, despite how old the corpse was. The detective had to search his body for any other clues—just in case he was missing something.
First, he inspected the man's orifices. Starting at the nasal cavity, there was nothing to yield any evidence of tampering. It was a shame the body was so old—perhaps the inflamed sides of the flesh within the nose could prove someone intoxicated him with a noxious substance.
Because the inside of his nose was indeed inflamed, though it didn't seem any more inflamed than the contents of the man's ear. Tsk, a dead end.
Next, he opened the man's faintly ajar lips. Check! As he ignored the stench and opened the corpse's mouth, there were traces of tampering. The same red straw he found earlier was crammed in his mouth in heaps, obstructing the other contents of the orifice.
He dismissed the bulge in the victim's neck a bit earlier—he was a man and had an Adam's apple. That was only natural. As he pressed down on it, there was an odd feeling that met the probing depression.
He presumed the throat was stuffed with the crimson straw. 'I need something sharp next time.' Vere thought.
He would make no incisions with the tools he had now. So he wouldn't be able to investigate the man's throat cavity without brutalizing the cadaver and perhaps obscuring any further clues.
He would have to rely on his hunch. Inquisitor-aligned thought power tinged in purple reverberated, and the bell tolled faintly once again. The conspiracy board materialized inches behind his head as he thought.
Sticky notes were the representations of the details he acquired, and he subtly played with a pin in the depths of his mind. The mustard yellow pin was circled by a dark red thread.
>Detail added: (Accomplice).
Othello pressed her lips in an odd way as Vere stood up. Then, she tapped on his shoulder, witnessing the wall that hindered his investigative efforts.
"Need a knife?" She asked.
"Do you have one? That man's throat is stuffed with crimson hay, and I need to inspect it to aid my theories."
"I'll do you one better. But you do need a knife later since I can't always help!" She knelt down where he once was and traced her delicate index finger along the hairy man's throat. An incision followed along the digit, and the flesh parted.
There was crimson straw. Vere noted it down. Next was the question…was the man killed by the suffocating straw first, or slain by the blunt strike—including its aftermath?
Time to inspect the site of impact once again.
His fingers traced around the wound, inspecting the victim's dark hair. A purple light gleamed in his right eye as his perspective zoomed in, revealing the faint trace of red lining.
In his opinion, the process of events went as follows.
…
The man was probably attacked first and probably had a weapon. Before he could resist, an accomplice restrained him by shoving red straw down his maw. The perpetrator then did the finishing blow, and an accomplice caught the body mid-fall.
…
The scene unfolded as the sticky notes were pinioned on the conspiracy board. The details he currently had were (Blunt force trauma), (Accomplice), and (Little to no resistance). Mustard pins were indented onto the conjured scraps of paper, and the red string wrapped around each pin connected the details together.
Check! There was a connection. A red-yellow aura spread from Vere's body, the strands of it flowing as it formed a thin outline around the edges of his frame. His [Hunch] activated as well for good measure, aiding his [Linked] details as the hunchback furiously tolled the bell.
>Case Understanding: Lv 1 -> Lv 2. The Details have been combined into (Killed by blunt force trauma after resisting a group attack).
The murder was decided for now, and all Vere needed were Suspects that fit the mental image in his head. At least one of the accomplices didn't have the strength to kill the victim directly. Either that or they didn't have the nerve.
Whether it was an ability or a physical object remained to be seen, but they shoved the crimson straw into the man's mouth. The actual murderer smashed the brick into the victim's scalp shortly after. He figured it was soon since there weren't many signs of a scuffle or struggle on the corpse.
There would at least be fragments of the environment if he struggled while bleeding and choking to death. In fact…the body was dirty, but it was bereft of any evidence of the environment!
The SAD and his thoughts synchronized at this very moment.
>Detail added: (Concealed environment) under the justification of a lack of environmental details.
The body was fresh despite its aged nature. Way too fresh.