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New chapter of Executioner's Gambit!

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Tori waved when she saw Administrator Holly walking toward her at his usual, break-neck speed. “Thanks for inviting me again!” he nearly shouted. “Which crime scene are we looking at this time?”

“Victim number eight, Subcommander Kimoa.” She gestured for him to follow and headed to the gravity wells.

“Ooh! Hang on,” said Holly, “didn’t you say you already investigated that one?”

“I did,” said the rusty red geroo with a nod, “but yesterday, when we were talking to Oorpu, she mentioned something interesting.”

“Yeah?”

Tori grinned, pausing before stepping into the well. “She said that victim number six, Stoli, complained regularly about not having a private office. Oorpu said that he felt vulnerable to poisoning because anyone could walk right up to his desk.”

Holly followed her into the well and waited until exiting on Level 15 before asking, “Yeah, so?”

“Well, victim number eight did have a private office,” she explained, “but he got poisoned nonetheless.”

“Interesting!” He rubbed his palms together enthusiastically, but then added, “Well, from the sounds of it, Stoli always had his guard up, drinking from disposable cups and throwing them away immediately. Perhaps, Kimoa didn’t realize he was on the killer’s radar?”

Tori winced, thinking back on Runo’oa describing how everyone had pounced on him to keep him from putting his finger back down his throat. “I … doubt that,” she managed. “I’m pretty certain that everyone who worked with him hated him. He’d have to have been pretty obtuse not to notice.”

She walked in silence a moment, then paused when Holly pulled something from the strand holster on his left shoulder. “What have you got there?”

“I bought a flashlight!” He held the slender object up for her to see. “I thought it might be helpful in spotting clues.”

“There’s no light on your strand?” asked Tori.

“There is, but look how bright this one is!” With a click, he turned it on and shone the beam into a corner, chasing away all the shadows.

Tori nodded but said nothing before continuing on her way. Holly seemed disappointed. “You’re just jealous,” he sniffed. “You have no idea how many clues you’ve missed because you weren’t using one.”

“I suppose not.”

“Unfortunately,” he sighed, “it doesn’t stay in my holster very well, and it has a tendency to fall out when I bend over.”

“That’s irritating.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking I need to stick a magnet on it or something to keep it in place.” Eventually, he slipped the device back into his holster. “Did you have a look at Stoli’s apartment?”

“Not yet,” said Tori. “Officer Sese said that she could arrange it, so we’ll go through it tomorrow.”

“Tell me what you find!”

“I will,” Tori promised.

The pair entered the reactor bay without drawing much attention, but a worried-looking male rushed to their side as soon as he spotted them. “Hey there, Runo’oa,” said Tori. “The Executioner killed Kimoa by poisoning his tea, right?”

He scowled even harder. “You know he did.” Then, looking up at Holly, he demanded, “Who are you?”

“I’m Administrator Holly.” He offered his palm, but Runo’oa ignored it. When he finally lowered his paw, Holly asked, “Would you describe the subcommander as cautious?”

“Cautious?”

“Yeah, with his tea mug,” Holly explained. “Was he protective of it? Did he leave it sitting out where someone could access it, or did he keep it in his office?”

Runo’oa turned an icy glare on Tori. Though he spoke evenly, Tori could feel the venom dripping from his words, “Subcommander Kimoa started locking his office after the poisonings began. If he wasn’t holding his mug, it was sitting on his desk.”

Holly asked, “Did anyone meet with him in his office that day?”

“I wouldn’t know. I was in a meeting all morning.” And without giving the skinny male a second look, he added, “Excuse me,” before walking off.

The administrator stared at him for a moment, before adding a quiet, “He’s a sour one.”

I suppose he dislikes his help being held for ransom, thought Tori, but aloud, she said, “Could be stress. The captain hasn’t named a replacement for Kimoa yet. I suppose that means more work for everyone else.”

The door to Kimoa’s former office stood open and Holly peeked inside without crossing the threshold. “I don’t see a tea mug.”

“The mug was recovered beside the body,” said Tori as she walked inside. “It’s in evidence now.”

Holly hesitantly stepped inside, taking a moment to shine his flashlight in the darkened corners. Then, he turned it off and asked, “Hey Tori, you said something about the killer collecting trophies?”

Tori wasn’t sure what she’d hoped to find by revisiting Kimoa’s office—a broken lock on the door, a secret passage that bypassed the door—but she was studying everything she saw. Absently, she answered, “Yes. Runo’oa said that a little sculpture—the sort a cub might make—was usually on the subcommander’s desk, but we didn’t recover one.”

He shone the flashlight on the papers that were strewn across the desk, pausing for a moment on a little cup that was half-filled with paperclips. “And you think the killer might be collecting something from each victim?”

“It’s possible.”

He hrmed. “But, uh, how does that help you any?”

Tori turned to face him. “How do you mean?”

“Well, let’s say the killer is collecting trophies, and he’s got one from every victim hidden away in his apartment,” he explained. “How does that help us find him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t?” said Tori with a shrug. “But everything we can find out about The Executioner is a clue, regardless of whether we end up using it or not. You never know what might be useful.”

“I suppose,” said Holly, but it didn’t sound as though he liked the explanation. With the flashlight, he searched the walls and rafters until pausing on the air vent over the desk. Something glinted from between the louvers. “Hey, what’s that?”

Tori leaned closer. “I don’t know.”

Holly stood on his toes, holding the light up until it nearly touched the vent. “I can’t really… We could climb up on the desk to get a better look.”

“I’m not climbing up on anything,” huffed Tori.

He pulled the chair out from behind the desk, but before  climbing up on it, he asked, “Do you care?”

Tori shook her head. She glanced at the paperwork across the desk. Technically, all of that was evidence, but she doubted anyone would dig through it in hopes of finding something useful. The commissioner’s visit was less than a week away, and she already had more places to look and more geroo to speak with than she had time available. “Just be careful. Don’t fall.”

Holly climbed up on the chair, holding the backrest and the desk to keep it from spinning, and then gingerly stepped up on the stacks of papers. “Yeah, there’s definitely something resting on the air vent, but I can’t…” he said, poking at it with a finger.

He slipped the light back in his holster and grabbed the vent with all his claws. “Looks like the vent just pops out. Ugh!” Dust exploded from the hole and rained down on him, leaving him wheezing. The object popped free and bounced on the deck with a high-pitched Tink! “Did you see where it went?”

Tori shuffled around the desk and leaned hard on her cane while she reached down. Her fingers found a small glass vial beside the desk’s leg. She pulled it from the shadows and stared at the white and silver contents. “Oh… Wow…”

“What is it?” asked Holly.

“It’s … titanium,” whispered Tori. She rolled the vial in her fingers until an etched number sparkled—2.231. “Very expensive contraband.”

“What the heck is that doing in the air vent?”

She closed her fingers around the vial, squeezing it tight, then turned her eyes back up to the square hole in the ceiling. “What’s up there, above the vent?”

Holly retrieved his flashlight once more and used it to explore the hole. “Uh, a lotta wires, pipes. Looks like an engineering space to access all of it. Way too tight to stand, but plenty of room to crawl.” He asked, “Maybe someone dropped it while crawling around up there?”

“Maybe,” said Tori. The glass was slick, much like the flashlight that refused to stay in Holly’s holster. But if a half-gram of titanium was worth ten thousand credits, then what was she holding in her paw? Forty thousand? More? Why would anyone crawling around in an engineering space have a forty thousand credit shard? And if they did, wouldn’t it be hidden away someplace safe? “My next-door neighbor is an electrician. Let me see if he’s got a minute to look at this.”

Biiz had just finished up an assignment and squeezed into the office with the other two only fifteen minutes later. “Thanks for coming down here, Biiz. This is Holly.”

“Not a problem, Tori. Nice to meet you, Holly,” he said, taking a moment to touch the administrator’s palm.

“We found this caught in the air vent.”

“What is it?” asked Biiz, reaching out to touch the vial, but his fingers stopping just short.

“It’s a shard. They’re illicit and very expensive,” explained Tori. “Drug dealers use them as untraceable currency.”

“Do you think Subcommander Kimoa hid it up there?” asked Holly.

“If so, it’s a lousy hiding spot,” shared Biiz. “This close to the reactor? There’s tons of access panels and engineering spaces throughout the walls and decks. Probably someone crawling around up there every week, if not more often.”

Tori pointed up to the hole. They hadn’t bothered replacing the vent. “Could someone have climbed down through the vent to access this office?”

“Perhaps?” said the electrician with some skepticism. He ran a pad across some of the paperwork sprawled across Kimoa’s desk, leaving a clean streak in the dust that Holly had shaken loose. “There’s a lot of dust on the desk, though I’d have expected more.”

Tori squeezed the vial so tightly that her fingers trembled. “…And then climbed back up into the vent to leave without being seen?”

Biiz’s ears sat high on his head. “Straight up? Without a ladder?” he asked. “I couldn’t. You’d have to be really strong. There’s not a lot to grab onto in those crawl-ways.”

“Damn,” grumbled Tori. She pulled out her strand and started to type a message to Sese and Chief Tipohee. Someone was going to have to check this shard into evidence or toss it in the recycler so the titanium could get back to the reactor. Just being in the same room with a sliver of disembodied bone was giving her the creeps.

“What’s wrong Tori?” asked Biiz.

“Someone poisoned Subcommander Kimoa’s tea,” she grumbled as she typed, “but if the door was locked, then how could the killer have gotten to it?”

Biiz looked back up at the open vent and then down at the desk. “The tea mug was on his desk … underneath the vent?”

“Presumably. Why?” asked Tori, her text message momentarily forgotten, but Biiz was digging through his tool bag. He pulled out a grimy plastic reel with a lever on one side. “What is that?”

The electrician snatched the paperclip bowl from the desk and set it down on the deck in front of his paws. He plucked a single clip from the bowl.

“It’s a grabber,” he explained. A short length of cable protruded from one side of the reel, and when Biiz slid the lever forward, four metal spider legs emerged from the cable’s end. He held up the paperclip and pulled back on the lever. The spider legs retracted and grabbed onto the paperclip.

Both Tori and Holly stared with wide eyes as Biiz reeled out a meter of cable until the grabber held the paperclip just above the bowl. He pushed the lever forward once more and the spider legs released the paperclip, letting it fall back into the bowl.

Tori and Holly shared a knowing look. Though Biiz had demonstrated dropping a paperclip into a bowl, they’d both seen a big orange pill plopped into a mug of tea. The Executioner wouldn’t have even had to remove the vent cover as the louvers were plenty wide enough for the grabber to lower a pill through them.

Biiz put the bowl on the desk and reeled the cable back up before putting the tool away in his bag. “They come in super handy,” he explained, “when a screw falls somewhere too narrow to reach.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EK9GTlolOGAYLiBSy8sDm3jxFiTSTKiLfbMA1ZClfG4/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?