Chapter Text
Rekrap sat in his office at his desk, as per usual. He relished in the fresh April air that softly blew in from the open window, skimming over some reports that he was supposed to go over, and tossing them into carefully organized priority piles on his worn oak desk. The files were regarding some recent cases he had been helping Jaron with. There had been a truly shocking amount of assault cases recently, and Rek had been given the truly mind-numbing job of looking over them in case they were related in any way, or were needed to help solve future cases the detective agency received.
Rek glanced over the ever-ticking golden clock to see when he could finally get a break from the monotony of the near-endless paperwork. Rather unfortunately for him, the clock only read a little bit before 10:50. He fell back in his chair, feeling a bit hopeless that there were still around 70 minutes left before he could reasonably go on lunch.
Fortunately, as Rek was lamenting his job and watching the minute hand of the clock complete a full circle, the door to his office burst open and Jaron ran over. His shoes loudly slapped against the stained linoleum floors like dying fish, causing Rek to look up and meet his coworker's far too excited eyes.
“We got a new case, and oh boy, is it an interesting one,” he said frantically, rushing over and slamming a manilla folder onto the desk, sending Reks nicely organized piles spiraling into the air and onto the floor.
Rek grimaced at his once organized papers and spoke as he bent over to grab the reports, “Define ‘interesting’? The last time ya said that it was pretty violent.”
“Oh no, it isn’t that violent this time, it’s just someone we know! Also, the body vanished,” he said, far too excited while digging for something in the many pockets of his trench coat.
Rek froze. The clutter below him was momentarily forgotten as endless horrible possibilities of who had been killed swirled in his mind. Had all of ClownPierce's “business ventures” caught up to him? Had SB737’s reckless habits come back to haunt him? Had Mini gotten too ambitious and flown too close to the sun?
“You good, dude?” Jaron said, turning away from Rek and sitting on the desk.
Rek focused on the now crushed papers in his hands and Jaron’s voice to stop himself from further spiraling. After a few brief moments, once Rek felt he could speak, he managed to croak out a simple question, “Who?”
For a detective, Jaron seemed lawfully oblivious to his friend's emotional situation. Alternatively, he was fully aware and was merely playing with him. Before Rek had time to mull over the possibilities too much, he started talking again in a far too positive way, “The police are pretty sure it's Mogswamp, ya know, the one who had the dinner party yesterday.”
Reks' swirling thoughts quieted slightly and he was finally able to unclench the paper and bring it up to the table. Murder cases always hurt more when it was someone you knew, but at least it wasn’t one of his super close friends. Rek was pretty distressed still, but figured he should try to solve the case, “That is interesting. We were there pretty late, when did he die?”
Jaron pulled a notepad from one of his many pockets, flicked it open, and started skimming over some of the hastily written bullet points, “The police received a call after some neighbors heard screams at about 3 AM, and the forensic guy said the blood found on the scene was, like, pretty fresh.”
“That was, like, what, an hour or so after we left? Has the coroner report come back yet?” Rek inquired, going back to cleaning up his messed-up desk.
Jaron turned slightly and looked at him, “So, about that..” he said it far too suspiciously for Reks liking.
Rek made direct eye contact with Jaron while cleaning up some papers, “What, did the body vanish or something?”
“Well… The official case report says that Mog is a missing person, so you're right. But it gets better, there is only CCTV footage of people leaving his apartment, and everyone left by 2 am!”
Rek stared at him momentarily as he picked up the last of the papers from the floor and set them back on his desk, “Is there any other way in the room then?”
“Someone could have scaled it maybe? But it's on the 6th floor so I doubt it.” Jaron suggested, intently watching Rek clean.
“Should we go investigate then?” He suggested, rising from his chair.
“Yeah,” Jaron said, rising from the desk “Can you drive? My car is running low on gas and I don't want to get more yet. Also, I took you home last night.”
Rek looked at him, “OK ok, maybe don’t drive a 14-year-old truck so gas mileage won’t be a problem.”
In response, Jaron turned to face him. “Rek your forester can legally drink and my car is 6 years younger than yours,” he said flatly.
“Ya want me to drive or not?” Rek said, waltzing over to his office door and opening it.
“Fine, fine,” Jaron replied, slithering through the open door as Rek tried to close it on him.
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To the detectives, apartment 649 looked the same as all the others from the outside. It was one of the last in a long series of equally spaced, wooden doors that lined a garish and monotonous cream hallway. The only defining features of the apartments were the bright white apartment numbers that had been neatly painted onto each door, and the occasional decorated doormat welcoming people into the residences.
The lone detail that singled out apartment 649 from the repetition of the hall was the bright yellow police tape that blocked off the entranceway.
Jaron pulled out a small key from his pocket and attempted to unlock the door. It was surprisingly difficult to unlock the door, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of the latex gloves or the lock. It took him a few moments before the faint click of the lock opening could be heard, and they were able to duck under the police tape and enter the small apartment.
Rek gazed past the small entryway and further into the familiar house. It looked remarkably different during the daytime than it had had at night. Sparking streams of golden light poured in through the fluttering pink curtains of the living room. The light bounced around the room, glimmering off the replica scheele's green wallpaper, and resting on the majestic bookshelf and red couch that decorated the room.
Focusing on the entryway once more, Rek noticed it was slightly different from when they had been by the night before. The shoe rack by the door was still a mess of haphazardly stacked shoes and the coat rack was sparsely hung with jackets. The only difference was that some things were missing; a pair of black dress shoes and a purple coat.
Before Jaron was able to walk further into the residence, Rek grabbed his arm and pointed out the differences, “So, some of his stuff is missing.”
“What, like a robbery?” Jaron said, still looking further into the house.
“No, like his shoes and coat. I don't think a criminal would take those.”
“Eh, He was probably just cleaning, or something.”
“Yeah, maybe, It’s just strange,” Rek replied, releasing Jaron, though something about that explanation didn’t sit right with him.
Venturing further into the house, the pair entered the dining and living area where Mog had held the dinner party that evening. At first glance, the apartment looked practically the same to Rek as it had the night before.
Over in the living room, the flipped-over game of Monopoly rested on the white carpet, the game pieces and cards scattered across the floor. The room was also littered with colorful pieces of fake money that would occasionally flutter away from where they were precariously balanced by the faint breeze from the fluttering curtains and the open window.
As he looked around, Rek almost immediately noticed something was off. That window had not been open last night.
Upon seeing this, he split off from Jaron as he went to investigate the kitchen. As he wandered further into the room, a few strange red stains on the carpet caught his eye. Before he stepped deeper into the room to investigate more, Rek pulled out his phone and started taking photos of the crime scene in front of him.
After he had taken the photos, Rek moved over to inspect it closer, however, when he passed by the couch, he noticed something slightly odd with Mogs knitting basket. Amongst the brightly colored skeins of yarn was a gun.
As he took a photo of the odd screen Rek called out to Jaron, “So, I just found a gun.”
Jaron looked up from where he was going through cabinets, and started to cross the house to where Rek was, “Hold up, dude, I'm coming over,”
“Alright, it's kinda odd, though. Just considering you said the neighbors reported yelling not a gunshot.” Rek said, pulling a very crumpled evidence bag from the pocket of his hoodie and putting the gun inside it.
Jaron reached Rek and looked down in the basket, “Yeah, that is pretty weird, is there anything else that points to it being a gun?”
Rek waved in the general direction of the blood stains, “Ehh, not really, the blood stains kinda match up but they would match up to a lot of other weapons.” He quickly scanned the ground before looking back at Jaron, “Could you check if there is a bullet anywhere?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You’re probably not going to find anything, if it's a bullet it's most likely still in the body,” Rek called out as Jaron started walking away.
Before he got too far he turned around and lightly tossed something in an evidence bag over to Rek, “Oh, by the way, I found this list of dinner party guests that we could use as a potential suspect list.”
Rek failed to catch the item and it landed on the floor below him. He bent down and picked it up while looking it over, the list was pretty normal at first glance, a thin lined sheet of white paper covered with neatly written cursive names. It had all the names of people who attended the dinner party but at the top of the list, there was something odd.
Mog's name was written out at the top of the list and crossed out, why in the world would someone put their name on a guest list?
Before Rek had time to speculate more on why the host of an event would write his name on a guest list Jaron interrupted him. “Oh, OH OH. Rekrap, second of your name, I found something!”
It had always perturbed Rek how excited Jaron got over investigating literal murders. Still, he assumed it was either leaning heavily on the fun parts, or suppressing all emotions so this job didn’t make you too depressed. “What?”
“Okay, ok, so there is a hole in the wall but it's not like a bullet hole it's more like a diamond shape, and it looks like someone wiggled it free after the fact!”
Rek walked over to him, and sure enough, there was a diamond-shaped hole in the wall, it was right by the window, almost hidden by the blustering curtains. It was not a bullet hole, that would have been more rounded and far smaller. However, It looked rather similar to an arrow hole.
Rek was no expert on arrows, but he could remember when Jaron had started getting them more involved in serious cases and Clown had insisted he learn how to defend himself. They had used a variety of weapons but this was the most reminiscent of a crossbow hole.
“It kinda looks like a crossbow made it.”
“That would explain the lack of a gunshot.”
“Yeah, but was there a gun,” Rek commented, pulling out his phone and snapping a picture of the hole.
Jaron pulled out a little notepad and flipped through it before writing something down, “Mog didn’t own a gun so I’m not sure, maybe it threw us off the trail?”
Rek shoved the full evidence bags into a larger shopping bag, and crossed his arms, “It just seems sloppy.”
“Yeah, somethings not right.” Jaron said, glancing around and starting to walk over to the door, “Let's get back to the office and call up the suspects.”
“Sounds good!”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It was around 6 pm by the time Rek and Jaron had finished all of the phone interrogations. Nothing of note had come up in any of them, mainly because everyone was suspicious.
Clown, Mini, and Brock all had very weak alibis. Brock and Mini claimed to have gone straight home and directly to bed seeing no one who could confirm and Clown had crashed at Branzy’s place, a claim which, by all means, should have been verifiable except the fact that Rek had seen Branzy lie in court to prove Clowns innocence. Loony, Clown, Wunba, and SB all owned and were reasonably proficient with a crossbow.
The only real lead they had was Clown, he had a very questionable alibi and could use a crossbow. Jaron was fairly convinced it was him. Rek on the other hand wasn’t convinced. Sure, Clown may have been a contract killer for the P.M.C. but the crime scene was far too sloppy to have been him. Clown also never used basic guns like the one he had found, all of which had red accents to match his work outfit.
It didn’t really matter who they thought it was, because even if they were 100% sure it was someone, there wasn’t enough evidence to convince just yet. They would be able to do more investigation tomorrow and the fingerprint analysis had yet to come back from the labs.
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Rek stared up at his ceiling, the glow-in-the-dark star stickers gazing back down at him, uncaring about the events of the day. Mog's death seemed like nothing more than another big city murder case and yet something about it felt wrong. He had no clue why this one felt off, he had dealt with people he had known dying before, but there was something more going on here. Something more sinister. It just felt like they were missing a single clue that would cause the whole case to fall into place.
Maybe sleeping on it would help, Rek had always found answers that came to him as he slept and was able to process the information from the day. Rolling over and facing the window by his bed, Rek gazed out at the real stars as he drifted off to sleep, hopeful for the coming dawn, failing to hear the faint shrill of scratching nails against the window.