Series of Death, Draft 02, CH 32 (Patreon)

Trembor called the gym as he settled in his office; he’d finally remembered why the hare had seemed familiar. It came to him as he left his gym and remembered a hare trying to enter. It hadn’t been the only gym visited by one.

“Grebor’s gym,” the badger answered.

“Grebor, Trembor. Question; the hare that showed up at your gym, he kept—”

“You want his name,” the male said with a chuckle.

“How?” The lion hesitated. “How do you know that?”

“Marlot called earlier. The male’s called Al’garinam.”

Trembor wrote it down. “Of course he did.” It seemed to confirm the wolf wasn’t in league with the hare. Unless this was still part of his ploy, but Trembor had trouble convincing himself of that.

“Are you two working together again?”

Trembor bit back the angry response and forced a calm. “No. Thanks for the name.” Then he disconnected.

He did a search on the name, limiting it to the city, and got a dozen results. Except for three, they were zebras who shared it as a family name. Another search informed him the name originated out of Pavoria, and that it translated to stripes. Of the three, two were horsed and one a tiger. No hares.

Had he used a false name, or was he a traveler who was only passing through? A new resident who hadn’t finished registering with the city?

He brought up Jaxca’s report on his two open cases. Both with broken necks. Both the ID had been taken out, then returned. If he ignored the fight that had happened, both scenes had been immaculate.

This led him to think they had been carefully planned. Which gave the false name more weight. It would make it easier for him to go to the gym and… what, pick his prey? Had the two bodies been members of gyms? That was simple to check. He called up the places their IDs had been scanned. Grebor was the exception that he didn’t require anyone to swipe in, but IDs were still used to pay for their membership, so even another gym like his would be on the list.

Arlant Shines was a member of a gym. He went there three times a week; serious fighter, that male. A call told him no one working there remembered a hare showing up, and they had no one by the name of Al’garinam registered. It made sense. If the killer didn’t want to be identified, he wouldn’t go to a place that required swiping the ID in each time.

As he’d expected, the rhinoceros didn’t frequent a gym. Prey didn’t fight, and as big as Roughskin had been, he was still prey. Something of note came up in the ID search. Roughskin was a member of a club called Reversal. It was flagged as being under watch by the enforcers. With the tag of ‘deviant.’

He had to call vice to find out what it was about. Reversal catered to predators who wanted to be treated as prey. It took all kinds, Trembor decided, no matter how wrong it felt to him, and noted that as a place the hare could have encountered the rhino. He couldn’t confirm it, because the club didn’t divulge their client list, and Trembor couldn’t show they mattered to the body he was investigating.

He asked vice, but they also had nothing. The reason they were watching the club was that Jasken, the RI of the territory the club was in had a few bodies that could be linked to the club. The current theory was that the club helped disposed of the bodies the ‘play’ accidentally created when a member couldn’t afford to pay for it.

Why the club didn’t pay for them and avoided the hassle of disposing of them, then the possibility of being charged for being an accomplish in a tax evasion case Trembor didn’t know, but people who engaged in deviant behavior probably had more than just that one thing wrong with them.

He called the RI.

“RI Jasken,” the female answered, sounding tired. Last name? He hadn’t known that.

“RI Goldenmane here, I have a question about the bodies you’re investigating with a potential link to the Reversal Club.”

“Go ahead,” she said, sighing.

He fought the urge to ask what was wrong. He didn’t know the investigator, so couldn’t pry. “What condition were the bodies found? I have one who was a member, and I’m trying to determine if his death has anything to do with the club.”

“I am not taking it,” she snapped.

“My territory, my body,” he replied defensively.

“Good. I have enough to deal with here.”

“So, the condition?”

“Give me a second. By the time I got them, they were exposed to the elements for a while, so there was decomp. No one’s going to want to eat them by the time I’m done with them; if I can ever close those cases.”

“What’s the official cause of death?”

“Varies. I have a ripped throat, a crushed torso, exsanguination, probably more.”

“Broken neck?” he asked, confident his body hadn’t originated there.

“I have one of those, yes. If you think it’s linked, call vice. They have more information on this than I do at this point.”

“Thanks.”

He could link the hare to both bodies, if he accepted that he’d sneaked in unnoticed at a gym. Maybe he’d watched from the outside. And at Reversal, the rhino would have been considered a predator. Was that the hare went after?

This felt like he was dealing with a hunter, except he couldn’t actually link the hare to the coyote, and he couldn’t actually say the hare had killed the rhinoceros. There was no evidence on the body itself that couldn’t be explained as fur lying during the fight.

Hunters could be careful, but they left evidence they had been there. Experts claimed hunters wanted to be caught; that on some level they understood what they did was wrong and subconsciously left clues so they could be stopped.

It had been how they’d finally caught Ruxul; he’d left fur on every body and eventually, they had enough to link them all to him and work out the pattern.

Trembor cursed.

Thinking of Ruxul led to thinking of Marlot, meeting him for the first time. The timid wolf looking out of place at the back of the crowd of RIs. Trembor had wanted to comfort him right there.

His pad buzzed, providing a welcome distraction, until he saw the name; Herelex Goldenmane. He answered; for his nephew to use the bypass code, this couldn’t be good.

“Herelex?”

“Uncle Trembor.” The young male sounded at the edge of panic. “Dad’s been arrested.” By the other sounds Trembor could hear, he thought his nephew was still at the academy.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Dad called me in the middle of class and told me to get Isie and go to Grandpa when we were done here. I overheard one of his coworkers argue with someone about the arrest, but dad disconnected before I heard any details. I—what am I supposed to do?”

“I’m going to call Bay. She or her mate will pick you and Isenson up. Get your brother right now. If your adviser had a problem with it, have them call me. I’m going to find out what’s going on with your father.”

A call to Baytil had Ufen on his way to pick up their nephews. A second got him the precinct where his brother was headed to, but not the reason for the arrest. Even using his position as RI didn’t give him an answer.

That, more than anything else, had Trembor running out of the precinct to join his brother.

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