What Cord liked about Chief was his ability to quickly resolve issues. He understood the essence, passed a verdict, and used none of the unnecessary chatter, which most superiors loved so much. The boss never tried to assert himself at the expense of his subordinates, he even rarely raised his voice—and for this he was respected.
Upon returning home, Cord first took a shower, and second he called Dia. Despite the relatively early morning, his girlfriend was already on her feet, and judging by her being out of breath, was doing something active. After arranging a date, Cord decided to take a nap for a couple of hours.
It was not to be. He laid down for half an hour and could not fall asleep and then realized that there was nothing he was going to accomplish at home, so he decided to go to the park. Yes, there were still six hours before the date, but it would still be better to get some fresh air, and maybe some clever thoughts might come into his head.
***
At the entrance to the park, Cord's attention was drawn to a notable stream of abusive language emanating from a teenager who was fiddling with a bicycle. Because of the teenager's breaking voice, he periodically produced childish high notes, which made the dirty words sound ridiculous.
Usually not one to interfere, this time Cord decided to get closer. After all, he had tons of time and would still have plenty to meander through the park.
"You damn piece of shit, bitch…"
The bike chain had broken, and the teen's right, and apparently dominant hand, was in a cast. He was awkwardly trying to pull the chain on with his good hand, but to no avail.
"Need help?" Cord offered.
The teen turned around and blushed.
"Oh… I didn't know anyone could hear me. Sorry…"
"Need help?" repeated Cord and pointed to the bike.
The teen's face brightened.
"Yes!"
"Have you got any rag?"
"Nope."
"Okay. Never mind."
Cord squatted down beside the bike. An ordinary boy's bike, green, with orange reflectors on both wheels but without fenders, and the frame covered with gum wrapper stickers of expensive cars and powerful humanoid robots.
"Are you, by any chance, that guy from the bakery?" the teen asked unexpectedly.
Cord, distracted from the chain, looked at him.
"Which guy from the bakery?"
"Well yeah, it's you!" the teen exclaimed. "I advised you to wait for the cheesecake with cottage cheese!"
Cord smiled.
"Yeah, I remember. The cheesecake was perfect."
"I told you!"
Cord glanced at the cast. Not a single message was written on it. The kid had no friends who would write "loser" on it?
"I see that since then you broke your arm."
"Yeah. I crashed my bike into a barrier," he grinned. "Didn't brake in time."
"It happens." Cord turned the pedals with a quiet crack. The chain popped into place. "It's done."
"Thank you! I helped you back then, and today you helped me. The Law of the Boomerang in action!"
***
Cord was pensively shaking his smeared hands in the water, which caused streaks to spread across the surface. Environmentalists wouldn't have approved. However, it was in this pond that the corpse had been sunk. Is a corpse more environmentally clean than bicycle oil?
"Cord?" a voice was heard from behind.
He turned around. A smiling Fiddler was approaching him.
"Oh, hi!" Cord tried to shake his hands dry as he stood up. "And you, as I can see, followed my recommendations."
The tramp was unrecognizable. His hair, although it had regrown somewhat in two months, was still much shorter than the first time he had seen him, his face was clean-shaven, and he was dressed very neatly. It was only now that Cord noticed how young Fiddler really was.
"Yes, and I bought a razor!" the philosopher nodded contentedly. "By the way, since we have met again, I want to show my gratitude in return." Fiddler stopped at the water's edge and said: "Those two drowned the girl about fifteen meters from the shore."
***
"What?!"
"Let's go!" Fiddler beckoned and moved away.
They came to the streetlight under which the body had been found, and the tramp began to look for something on the asphalt.
"It's here somewhere…"
Cord, who had obediently been following him until then, finally came to his senses.
"Wait… Really? You saw the killer?"
"I suppose I did, yes."
"You suppose?!"
"I didn't see the murder itself," Fiddler explained, "but I saw those two who carried away the corpse. Wait a second…" He went back to looking for something.
"What are you looking for?" asked Cord.
"Bloodstains. But they're not here."
"You should have said something right away. I remember exactly where they were." Cord went to the place where there used to be blood and stood over it. "Here. Why do you need it?"
"So that you know where everything happened. Do you see where that bench is? Near the lilac bush?" Fiddler pointed at it, and there, on a hill, about thirty meters from them, was a bench.
"Yeah."
"I was sleeping there that night. Sometimes I do that in the summer when it's hot outside. And suddenly, in the middle of the night, screams woke me up. A man's voice shouted 'Stop, damn it!' or something similar. I began to listen so I could see where the voice was coming from, and then I noticed some movement on this alley. The man was squatting near the girl's body. Well, I only found out about that later but didn't immediately understand, and then he went somewhere. Oh, and one more thing: I didn't notice it right away because the girl was killed under a lantern that didn't work."
The streetlight really hadn't been working. Is Fiddler telling the truth?
"And the girl didn't scream?"
"No. Only the man. The girl apparently died in silence. Her skull was crushed in the end. I think she did not even have time to realize that she was dying."
"You said the man left. Which way did he go?"
Fiddler pointed in the direction the man had gone. It was almost in the exact direction as the Blue Eyes Brothel, perhaps a little to the left.
"Did you notice the size of the man?"
"Of course I did." Fiddler wrinkled his brow as he remembered the details. "He was tall and… powerful. Dressed in… Shorts and a shirt that was… Colorful. I think it had birds on it. I can't say more precisely, I saw him in the dark…" Fiddler shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
Cord was thinking. Sky had told me…
"Could they have been parrots?" Cord asked Fiddler to clarify.
"Well… The birds were vertical, so it's quite possible."
"Vertical?" Cord smiled.
"You know, chickens, for example, or ducks, they are horizontal, but penguins and parrots, they are vertical."
"Interesting ornithological observation," Cord chuckled, "but we have gotten off-track. What happened after the man left?"
"Nothing. I continued to watch. I was thinking about going down to the girl and then calling the police, but I was afraid that the killer was still around. And in the end, he returned."
"Was he away for a long time?"
"I don't have a watch, I don't know for sure. About an hour, I guess. And when he returned, he was not alone, but with an older man."
"Describe him."
"Mmm… Shorter than the first man, rather, uh, well-built but not fat, also he was gray-haired and had a bushy mustache… also gray."
Is this for real? Is my guess correct? Did Chief really help Familiar dispose of the corpse?
"What did they do?"
Fiddler looked around and moved a little to the side.
"The old one was standing here, and the young one was about where you are now. They were speaking, but I could not make out the words, and I was afraid to crawl closer. Oh yes, I forgot to tell you," Fiddler caught himself, "when they came, I got off the bench and hid under the lilac bush just in case." Fiddler smiled, but after a moment, he became serious again. "The tall one was clearly nervous. He periodically rocked back and forth, gesticulating, and once lost control and exclaim: 'I don't know how it happened!' The older man shouted at him, pulled out a bag from his chest pocket, and spread it on the asphalt. They put the corpse into it and dragged it to the pond."
"Wait. What kind of bag?"
"Well, you know… Uh-uh… The kind corpses are packed into, in the hospital, for example."
A pathological body bag? Oops!
"Let's go back," invited Fiddler and continued: "Unfortunately, I can't show you their exact route because I wasn't following at their heels. After they left, I lay still for a while in the bushes, neither alive nor dead, but then, mustering the courage, I decided to follow them. The next time I saw them, they were already waist-deep in water."
"Why didn't you call the police?"
"At that time, it seemed to me more correct to remember everything thoroughly."
"Then why didn't you tell anyone later?"
"Everything has its time."
Cord and Fiddler returned to the beach.
"They swam about fifteen meters from this point and sank the body. True, I noticed them earlier, when they were about halfway to their destination."
"What could have delayed them? What do you think?"
"I don't know. Maybe they stuffed the bag with the body in it with stones so that it wouldn't float up?"
"And the murder weapon?" remembered Cord. "What happened to it?"
"I don't know. It was probably immediately thrown into the pond."
Well, yeah, no point looking for it now.
"What happened next?"
"After sinking the bag with the body in it, they left."
"They did not notice you?"
"Considering that all the time I was far away and in the dark, no. If you don't look for something specific, you won't notice it."
"Wait," Cord had a thought, "you said that it was about an hour from the moment of the murder until the men returned. I would assume that fiddling with the corpse took about half an hour. Am I right?"
"Mmm… Yes. I think that's pretty accurate."
Forensics had determined that the girl had died at about half past three in the morning. That means that by the time Chief and Familiar sunk the body, it was about four in the morning. More or less…
"Dawn."
"What?"
"When they finished with the corpse, it was already dawn."
"Well, yes. But it was still dark enough. The glow had just appeared."
"When did you dive for the corpse?"
Fiddler smiled.
"You guessed."
"Well, it didn't come back by itself."
"Once again, I didn't have a watch, so I can't say exactly. But… I waited twenty minutes for sure. Nobody came back, so I decided to act. I quickly found the bag with a corpse at the bottom, cut the plastic with a knife, and pulled out the body. Then I took it to the place of death. I kept my left hand under my knees, clenched into a fist so as not to leave prints. But to move the girl, I had to hold on to the jacket, so I eventually got rid of it."
"Wait. Jacket?"
"A biker jacket. Leather. With prints on the left sleeve." Fiddler spread his arms out in a gesture of guilt. "I also noticed, although it was too late, that the girl's head was bleeding. Not strong, but enough to leave drops marking the way we came. I put her head where the bloodstain was, and that's it."
"Why did you lay her down so neatly? Arms along the sides of the body, legs together…"
"I don't know. Probably because I wanted the deceased to look decent, the last respect, so to speak."
"Where did you dispose of the leather jacket?"
"Well, uh-uh…" Fiddler was embarrassed. "I can show you."
"Great! And again I will ask: why did you just leave and not call the police? We could have solved the case in one day."
Fiddler sighed.
"I guess I showed weakness. It's just… You know, I'm homeless. The testimony of homeless people is rarely taken seriously, and we can easily be punished for vagrancy. So in general, because I didn't want problems for myself."
"Then why did you tell me now?"
Fiddler smiled.
"You helped me once, so I decided to return the favor. You know, there are few things in the world that I believe in, but the Law of the Boomerang is an exception."
Cord chuckled.
"Well, then I'll throw the boomerang again."
***
Goodwill and tasty food work wonders.
After going to a nearby kebab joint and ordering two spears—one with pork and one with lamb—as well as buying a two-liter package of tomato juice, two servings of pickled onions, and two wheat buns, they sat down on the nearest bench and for the first ten minutes silently gnawed away on the juicy meat spiced with fabulous crispy onion, added to it freshly baked flat cakes and washed it all down with some quite ordinary juice ideally suited for the dish.
Having finished their dinner, both lounged lazily on the bench. Cord wondered how lucky he was to get out of work today. For the sake of this, it was worth breaking Crane's nose, hee-hee.
Stop. Job.
Cord suddenly realized something.
"Listen, Fiddler, how did you know I was an investigator? I do not remember that I told you about that."
Fiddler smiled.
"On the day of the murder, I came back here just as the police had already begun working. I sat on the bench on the parallel alley and watched you investigate the case. I saw two men who were not in white and were fiddling with the body and then went to the pond. I assumed you were investigators."
"Yeah," Cord nodded, "only the forensic team wear white. But you said that you drug back the corpse, which means that your scent would have been preserved on it. So why didn't our dog find you if you were sitting nearby?"
"I had orange peels in my pocket. And dogs dislike citrus fruits. They eradicate their sense of smell."
"How do you know that?" Cord frowned.
"I'm homeless. And not only people are homeless. There is nothing worse than returning to your hideout and finding it occupied by a pack of stray dogs. After all, if they find food from you, you can never get rid of them. Orange or lemon peels help keep them away. Of course, that will not protect you from a large and hungry pack, but from a small one, of two or three dogs, it is quite effective. Therefore, before returning to the scene of the crime, I took myself orange, ate it, and put the skins in my pocket. By the way," Fiddler smiled, "aren't you curious why we met today?"
"Coincidence?"
"Nope. It was a coincidence when I met you at the hospital. When that happened, I thought maybe it was a sign and I should tell you about the crime. I began to wait for you here almost every day. But whenever you returned, you were constantly with the police and never came alone, except for today. Why, by the way? Isn't the working day still not over?"
Cord chuckled.
"I was suspended for the day. There was a slight excess: I smashed in a trainee's face."
"For what?"
"He pretended to have thrown out my aquarium with my hedgehog in it, although in fact he just hid it, but I didn't know that."
"An aquarium with a hedgehog?" Fiddler was surprised. "You can keep pets at the police department?"
"No, it was a rubber hedgehog. It was a memory of an incident from childhood, so to speak."
"Hmm… If you don't mind, I would like to hear the story for which you need to punch someone in the face."
Cord chuckled.
"Well, we have time, so I can tell you. Do you know about boarding schools for troublesome children?"
***
"My mother, one of the best child psychologists in the city, was one initiator of their creation. I don't know if you know, but mental health testing was introduced in 1961. Two years later, when it showed its effectiveness, my mother suggested introducing what at the time was an innovation into practice. The idea was simple: not only adults have mental problems. For example, a child was raped—it suffers trauma. Or it was mistreated by the parents—also causes trauma. Or a child, for example, loves to kill all kinds of birds and little creatures—why? To help such children grow up as normal people, a special boarding school was created.
"And so in 1967, our family moved to a scientific community. I was six then. My father worked there in the research institute, my mother worked in the newly built boarding school, and I studied there and spend time with 'abnormal' kids.
"When I was seven, a nest with a hedgehog and baby hedgehogs was found on the territory of the school. Well, the other kids and I gave the mom milk to drink. Out of best intentions, of course! We simply did not know then that milk is poison for hedgehogs. Two days later, the mother hedgehog died, and the baby hedgehogs were taken to the school zoo. But I got to keep one. I had begged my mother to take care of it.
"Well, I took care of it. He lived in an aquarium, stomped like an elephant at night, and constantly scraped on something. I played with him with a candy wrapper on a string; he ran after it like a cat. I fed him minced meat, sometimes beetles and grasshoppers if I could catch them. I loved the little beast, and I hope he loved me too.
"But two years later, he died. He lay in the aquarium, belly up, and did not move. I informed my mother about it. She reassured me and said that the hedgehog had gone to another world, but I would definitely keep a memory of him.
"The next day, instead of the hedgehog's body, I found its rubber brother in the aquarium. He looked exactly like a real one, but I was not fooled: I understood it was a toy. Nevertheless, my mother was right: I really remembered my hedgehog for the rest of my life.
"If I am not mistaken, in psychology this is called an anchor. And my mother used it to keep my memories of my childhood friend forever."
***
Cord shook up the juice carton.
"Would you like some?" he politely offered Fiddler.
"No thanks, drink up."
Cord drank what was left in one gulp. Then he threw the package into the trash can next to the bench.
"Now I understand why you did this to the intern, but why do you keep such an important thing for you at work?"
"Because," Cord sighed a little sadly, "the best days of my life are spent there. I spend the night at home but only to rest, and the most interesting things happen in the Department's walls. That's why the hedgehog is there. I look at him, for example, when I'm doing tedious work, and my soul feels at ease. By the way, regarding work, it's time for me to do something."
"Oh yeah. I promised to show you the jacket."
"No, I'm talking about something else," said Cord. "I should have gone diving a long time ago."
***
They returned to the pond.
"Do you have a knife?"
"Of course." Fiddler took a penknife from his trousers pocket and handed it to Cord.
"Hold on to it for now."
Cord untied his sneakers and pulled off his socks. Fiddler, looking at him in surprise, muttered:
"Are you seriously going to dive in there?"
"Well… Yes." Cord, who had already taken off his shirt, was now unbuttoning his jeans. "You said that you remember where the corpse was lying in the sack? So show me."
"But the water is cold!"
Cord, having finished with his jeans, tossed them on the pile with his clothes, took the knife from Fiddler, and headed into the pond.
"No, it's tolerable," Cord said, already up to his waist. "How many meters did you say, fifteen?"
Fiddler, realizing that there was no point in dissuading the investigator, replied:
"Yes."
Cord estimated the distance to the target, pulled out the knife blade, and then took a full chest of air and dove.
The water was cool but not icy. Surprisingly, it was not particularly cloudy: Cord saw two meters under and in front of him. In any case, now the sandy bottom was clearly visible: he could see algae, stones, and suddenly the head of a doll with a missing eye.
Cord went back up to the surface. His feet couldn't touch the bottom, even on tiptoe.
"You went too far to the left by about a meter to a meter and a half," Fiddler shouted to him from the bank. "And go forward as far as you have already swum."
Cord dived in again. I hope I will not get an eye infection from the water. Okay, I need to concentrate.
There was a hole ahead, so he had to dive deeper to see the bottom, still only algae and rocks, nothing out of the ordinary. Just a second… There was something black moving to his right.
Cord went to the surface, breathed in, and, not listening to Fiddler's remark, dove to the bottom again.
He swam towards the moving blackness. Cord was convinced: yes, it was definitely polyethylene, seventy by two hundred centimeters, a pathological body bag. It had been carelessly cut open down the middle and was torn in some places. Filled with stones and—
Damn, I definitely need to quit smoking.
Cord floated to the surface again.
"I found it!" he shouted to Fiddler.
"Great!" was the response. "Are you getting out soon?"
"Right now!"
Cord dove (hopefully for the last time) and immediately examined the interior of the bag. And in one corner, he found what he was looking for—a red shoe.
The body of the murdered woman had been found barefoot, and according to Sky, Piala was shod in red high-heeled shoes. So the girl had really been here.
Cord lifted the end of the bag where he found the shoe and cut off a small piece of polyethylene.
If I am lucky, there will be Chief's or Familiar's fingerprints on it.