Chapter Text
Being on the force for any amount of time teaches you two things: no two cases are quite the same, and your dreams of a consistent sleep schedule will have to stay that way. Not that I was ever one for sleep, lest it be on other people’s time. No, when duty called, you had no choice but to pick up the phone, and it was never good news on the other end of the line.
One of my first big cases back on the job reminded me of that. It was a cold morning, around four-thirty, still pitch-black, accompanied by the slow fall of a blanket of snow. The phone in my kitchen rang loudly, ruining my late-night nap on the couch. When I picked it up, I didn’t have to ask who it was. There was only one person who’d make a home call at that hour.
“Chief,” I croaked out through a yawn, “what is it this time?”
“Captain.” His soft voice would’ve been pleasant if not for the looming dread of his next words. “I’m sorry to bother you. We got a concerning tip at the start of the hour: a pile of dust outside the church. I don’t think I need to clarify more than that.”
“You don’t. Have you called anyone else?”
“Forensics, and now you.”
“So I wasn’t your first pick.” He scoffed at my joke. “Call Susie for me. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Kris. I knew I could count on you.” The relief in his voice eased the frustration of the situation. It was hard to be annoyed when someone believed in you, even if you were dead tired.
“We’ll reconvene at the station.” With that, I slammed the phone back on the hook, retrieved my stray clothes and grabbed my coat. Bitter cold was the wake-up call I needed as I hurried to my car, thrust the key into the ignition and pulled out of the driveway.
The red Packard and I had been through this song and dance many times before. It was a gift from my father, an older model but one that I preferred. Reliable, strong, and surprisingly quiet. Perfect for a job like mine.
Driving was always my favorite part of a case. An open road was the cure to a running mind; it took just enough focus to keep your thoughts from wandering too far. Evidence, questions, theories. There was no better time to mull them over, even when all you had to go off of was a pile of dust.
When a monster’s life came to an end, they didn’t leave a body behind; they left dust. No case left time for stalling, but with weather like this, there really was no time that could be wasted. A stronger gust of wind, a blizzard, anything could ruin the crime scene.
Before I knew it, I was already parked outside of her apartment, thumping the horn for good measure. A light flickered on from one of the apartment windows, not the one I was watching for, an annoyed silhouette gazing out from it before switching them back off. With a moment to spare, I slipped a butterscotch lollypop from my pocket. The familiar taste always found a way to calm my nerves, and I had plenty in reserve.
Susie stumbled out the main door after a few more minutes, her body shivering as she pulled her coat tighter around herself. Being cold-blooded may have been a boon during an interrogation, but it had no advantage during this time of year. She flung the passenger door open and practically leapt inside, slamming it shut hard enough to rattle the entire vehicle.
“Who the hell... has the will to kill someone, at THIS hour, at THIS time of year?!” She gasped, her raspy voice shaky as she leaned into the heating system. “Hit the gas Dreemurr, before I go back to bed!”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. Shifting the car into gear, we swung back around the road, cutting through downtown towards the church on the southside.
Detective Susanne Roberts, “Susie” as she preferred. We met in the training course a while back. Her files showed she was a punk, which was far from wrong; she’d given me a hard time throughout the course. When we were partnered up, it was a shock, but in spite of what the others may have thought, I was happy with the pick. She was rough around the edges, but she was good at her job, and more importantly, she wanted to do right by the people.
Despite my best efforts, there was still a bit of tension between us. We’d only been on a few other cases together after all.
Neither of us said a word during the drive. There was nothing to say, especially as my partner struggled to keep her head from drooping too low or from letting out a hoarse snore. The lack of traffic made the journey a short one. As we parked across the street from the church, she finally stirred, kicking the door open and stepping out with me, making sure to lock up as we approached the looming crime scene.
“Got any details? Ralsei... er, the “Chief” only said they found a pile of dust. I’m assuming he gave you the whole deal.” She spoke from behind her collar, pulling it up over her snout to fight the cold.
“Hardly.” I replied, biting down on my lollypop stick as the chill hit me next. “I know as much as you.”
“Great…let’s just get this over with.”
The front of the church had been entirely sectioned off, yellow tape and police cars blocking any routes of entry to the scene. On guard was Napstablook, as usual, forced to quietly endure the stares of gathering passerbys and reporters who wanted to catch a glimpse of the newest gossip. Luckily, at this hour, they didn’t have too much to worry about, letting us through with only a nod.
Predictably, it was Officer Undyne who waved us over to the biggest point of interest. She had a habit of being at every scene and bit of action, no matter the time.
“Hey, brats!” She shouted over the wind, catching her hat as it flew off her head. “Dust is right here!”
Sure enough, there was a pile of dust gathered up in front of the church doors. It had been meticulously dusted together and separated from the snow, a large glass casing resting over it to shield it.
“You’re on top of things, as usual.” Those words escaped my lips every time we met. You could say a lot about how Undyne carried herself as a member of the force, but you could never say she was lazy. “Any other findings?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Blooky already numbered them; they’re around the side. That nerd friend of yours is already checking them out!”
“Nerd friend? Oh.” I’m not sure why I asked. It was obvious who it was, but he’d have to wait. “I take it the pile was found in this exact spot?”
“Exactly! It hasn’t moved an inch since we got the call!”
“Who, exactly, made the call?” Susie crossed her arms as the two sized each other up. Strong personalities like theirs never matched up well. “We wanna talk to them.”
“They’re sitting in my squad car, punk. You can talk to them after your preliminary investigation!”
I decided it was best to butt in. “Thank you, Officer. We’ll take it from here. Feel free to join your partner at the perimeter.”
“I’m on it! Say hi to the Chief for me! Uh... not YOUR Chief… whatever, you know who I meant!” She marched off to join Napstablook, barking some more orders at them as they began a short, routed patrol of the building.
“Damn, I hate being on dust duty.” Susie sighed, shaking her head as she circled the grim pile. “You don’t have any gloves, do you?”
“I do.” My other pocket always kept a pair handy. In this line of work, you never knew when you’d need them. Slipping them on gave little comfort from the cold, but it made the next part a lot easier to stomach. Lifting the glass, my fingers pushed through the dust with little effort, searching for something, anything to help us identify the victim. Susie had to turn away and pretend to inspect the doors. She was anything but squeamish, but even she knew that this part could be morbid.
Monster dust was coarse, thick, and surprisingly heavy. Most days, the wind wasn’t strong enough to drag it away, save for a few flakes. Being a human, I suppose, made me more equipped to handle this part of the job over most monsters. It was uncomfortable, sure, but it paled in comparison to the sight of a cold corpse.
At first, my fingers found nothing, only more and more dust, but eventually they brushed against something soft and smooth. Pulling it from the pile, I could feel the pit in my stomach twist into a tight knot. It was a bowtie, bright pink and unfortunately all too familiar.
My words escaped my lips before I could stop them. “Damn it...”
“W-What is it? Who is it?” Even her aversion couldn’t stop curiosity from taking over, her eyes falling onto the bowtie as her expression softened. “You know ‘em or something?”
“Yeah,” I sighed, ”it’s Snowy.”
“Snowy, huh? Shit, like, the guy who made the bad jokes you’d tell me about? Doubt someone lame like that deserved something like... this.” She sighed too, rubbing the back of her head as she kneeled over the other side of the dust. “Did you find anything else?”
“No. There’s nothing but dust and snow. The autopsy will hopefully give us more info, but... there’s no doubt about it to me.” My gloved hand placed the bow at the top of the pile, sealing the glass over it once more. I’d known Snowy for as long as I’d known anyone in town, all my life really, and I knew this was a special kind of cruel. He was annoying, sure, and at times ignorant, but he wasn’t a bad guy. Not the kind of person who deserved to go out alone like this.
“Guess we should take a look at whatever else they found then… damn.” Susie stuffed her hands in her pockets, shaking her head as she gazed down at the pile. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Let’s go.”
As expected, there was only one other person who could be trusted with examining the rest of the evidence at the scene of the crime. He wore a long white lab coat beneath his fur coat and a pair of goggles over his thick rimmed glasses, long gloves stretching over his hands. His blue feathers clung close to him as he shook the snow from his body.
“Ah, Kris,” he said in his usual smarmy tone, “I should’ve expected you’d be here late. And that you’d drag bad company onto my crime scene.”
“Berdly.” I nodded at him, and Susie made a noise between a cough and a gag behind me. “I imagine you’ve already examined the dust and evidence.”
“Indeed. The Chief called me to collect samples, but alas, I’ve had no choice but to wait for you and dear “Susan” here to arrive and complete your preliminary inspection before I could take anything to the lab. If only you’d had the integrity to get here sooner… I fear precious molecules have already been lost from each of these items.”
“Yeah, yeah, Birdbrain.” Susie scoffed, crossing her arms at him. “We’ll just go ahead and get that done, and you can go stand somewhere else... preferably far enough away for us to work in peace.”
“It seems you’ve failed to tame your new partner, Kris.” Berdly scoffed, checking something off his clipboard. “Let me know when you’re done. I’ve much work to do, and I’d prefer NOT to keep dearest Noelle waiting for my report once the sun comes up, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll let you know once we’re finished.” Pushing past him as we looked around the area, three different evidence plaques had been placed in the parking lot. At the first marker was a torn piece of cloth, bright red and threatening to blow away in the wind. Resting on top of it was a golden necklace with a cross dangling from the chain and shining in the light of the street lamp.
“A missing cross right outside the church. Think we can pin it on the pastor and call it a morning?” The dragon girl asked with a smirk, clearing her throat when I didn’t reciprocate. “Seriously though, you recognize it?”
“I’ve got one idea, yeah.” Reaching into another pocket within my jacket, I retrieved my leather-bound journal. “To answer your question, I doubt it was pastor Alvin. I’ve never seen him wear any color other than blue.” A chewed-up pen was carefully placed within its binder. I jotted down a few words down as we moved to the next marker.
A black rod jutted out from the rising snow before us, its metal sheen shining in the light. “Seems we’ve found a possible weapon.”
“No shit we have.” Susie remarked, reaching down and brushing the snow aside as the black baseball bat was revealed, the handle wrapped in a thick layer of tape. “Religion and baseball. I’m not seeing a connection here, are you?”
“No, I can’t say that I...” As the words left my mouth, a chill went down my spine, a certain familiarity about the sight creeping into the back of my mind. Making assumptions was sometimes part of the job, and beyond that, sometimes you just had to go with your gut. A name flashed in my mind, and I wrote it down, but I knew it was far-fetched. That name was colder than the snow. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, looks like there’s one more marker here.” Susie nodded, ignoring or perhaps oblivious to the realization I’d come to as she moved to the final site, pointing to a pair of pawprints in the snow. “Looks to me like some furry degenerate passed through here recently, huh?”
I wasn’t eager to admit it, but she was clearly on to something. The footprints were shaped like a cat’s paw, walking along the edge of the church from the front to the back, crossing the street towards the mayor’s office and continuing up the sidewalk towards the center of town. Unfortunately, there were a few people in town who might fit such a print, so I jotted down a few names before slamming my notebook shut.
“Got all that, then?” She stood up straight once more, brushing the snow from her shoulders as she shivered. “Cuz right now I’m dying to get back in the car, dude.”
“Yeah, I’ve got it. Let’s go talk to the witness.” Clearing my throat, I began to lead the way back to the police cars, waving to the two officers before knocking on the glass of their squad car. Two heavy knocks returned from the other side, and I swung the back door open, gazing down at who I’d expected. “MT.”
“K-Kris! Yo! Man, it’s good to see a friendly face...” The monster managed a chuckle, but there was no joy in their expression. It was weary, the bags under their eyes growing darker as their frown returned.
“MT?” Susie questioned. “What’s that stand for?”
“MT is just what everyone used to call me in high school, yo. When we were little, it was ‘MK.’ That’s not my name though…”
“Alright, what is your name then? For the record. I don’t want to get whined at for using the wrong name.”
“J-just call me Monty.”
“Okay, Monty, what the hell happened here?” Susie leaned over the doorway, resting her arm on top of the car as I rested against the open door. “Officer Loudmouth says you found the dust.”
Their expression darkened further, their eyes darting away from us as they turned their head to the side. The ripped cloth from the shoulder of their poncho wasn’t lost on me, nor was their missing necklace. That could wait a bit longer, though.
“Y-yeah, I did… find that. Like an hour ago.”
“Okay... how? You like taking walks at three in the morning? Especially around churches?”
“No way! I just… I just happened to be out tonight. Me and Snowy... We used to go on late-night walks often, y’know? Usually down to the old bunker... But sometimes we’d chill in the parking lot. I thought maybe tonight we could do that again, but…”
“So you know the victim. And you knew he might be here tonight. What’s stopping us from taking your ass in for further questioning?” Her question came out with a growl as she leaned in closer.
“What? No, I... I would never.. P-please, just...” Their eyes pleaded for a way out, darting all over the place before focusing on me.
It was hard to watch this line of questioning go on any further, so I decided to step in. “That’s enough, Detective Roberts. Let’s stick to the facts before we theorize too much.”
“Don’t you dare.” She bared her teeth and thumped the roof of the car with her fist; she never did like hearing that name. “You wanna go easy on them? Oh yeah, their eyes totally scream ‘I’m innocent’, shifting around like that!” Susie got in my face with a growl, but I stood my ground. We’d been through this before, growing pains of a new partnership, I suppose. “Whatever. Go ahead, do it your way. I’m going back to the car.” With that, she puffed the collar of her jacket and stormed off, thumping the squad car once more.
“Since when did you start working with her, Kris?” Monty let out a shaky sigh. “I liked it better when you worked with Berdly...”
“Not long ago, we’ve been on a few cases already. Let’s get back to business.” The wind picked up, and I pulled my jacket tighter around myself, motioning Monty back inside the car as I climbed in next to them to escape the chill. “We found a red piece of cloth and a necklace in the parking lot. I know they belong to you.”
“What? Oh shit… man, Kris, I didn’t do it, I swear! You’ve gotta believe me!”
“Relax. I’m not accusing you of anything. You need to tell me what happened. When you found Snowy tonight, was he already dead?”
“No... I-I mean, not when I first saw him.”
“Start from the beginning.”
“Okay… okay…” They took a few deep breaths before leaning forward. “So, I came out here to find Snowy. I tried calling him around midnight, but he never picked up. He’d been acting so... weird lately, man. His jokes sucked more than usual, and he didn’t even laugh at them anymore! Do you know how strange that is?”
“Very.”
“And he’d been so avoidant! We used to hang out all the time, but lately he’d been dodging everyone, even his Dad! When I called him again, his Dad picked up the phone and told me he’d snuck out. I’ve been out in the cold looking for him since like one o’clock.”
“When did you find him?”
“I dunno the exact time... maybe two? He was delirious. Talking to himself, rambling on and on about… something. When I tried to talk to him, it was awkward and he barely seemed to acknowledge me.. I got in his face a little; it was making me so angry! But then he... attacked me.” Their gaze dropped lower as they rested their head against the glass between the front and back seats. “Pecked my shoulder and tore my necklace off me too. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran away.”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“No, no one else. After a while, I got worried and felt like such a… turd, I guess. I shouldn’t have yelled at him. When I went back to check on him, I...”
“You found his dust.”
“I knew it was him, who else could it be? I was too scared to check, so I called the police and said I didn’t know who it was, but... Kris, who would do something like this?”
My hand rubbed against the back of my head as I sighed. I wanted to know the answer to that, too. “I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”
“I hope so… for Snowy’s sake, and for his Dad.” Monty shook their head as they looked back at me. “Am I going to jail?”
“No, you’re not. We’re going to send you home for now. But, if we call you to the station, you have to come. If you don’t...”
“Don’t worry, Kris, I’ll come right away if you call! Promise!”
“Good. Officer Undyne just needs to talk with you, too, and then you’ll be free to go. Get home safe.” With that, I stepped out of the car and shut the door, motioning to Undyne before returning to my car.
Susie lounged in the passenger seat, her feet kicked up on the dashboard as the radio played loudly. She hardly acknowledged me as I climbed inside.
“Susie.” No response. “Detective.” Still nothing. “Susanne!” After a few moments, she turned her head over, raising an eyebrow as her hand reached up to her ear, adjusting her cochlear implant.
“You say something?”
I sighed loudly for effect. Somehow she’d lucked into being able to put our conversations on mute whenever she pleased. “No.”
“Thought so.” She put her feet back down on the ground, turning the radio down.
“Any thoughts on the case?”
“A few.” She replied through a loud yawn. “The things we found around the lot don’t really add up if you ask me. They seem kinda... random? I guess. Nothing really lines up, especially when put together. Plus, who knows how long some of that stuff was there, right?”
“I don’t disagree.” I nodded along, leaning back in my seat as I readied my journal once more, scribbling in it as we spoke. “The bat is our best guess for a murder weapon, but until we find correlating dust samples on it, we can’t say for sure.”
“How the hell are we going to pin something as simple as a bat to someone in particular? Out here in the boonies, that could belong to anyone. Did Monty squeal?”
“No. I’ll fill you in on the details on the way back to HQ. I’ve got a few ideas, but they’re far from concrete. I’ve got the feeling we’ve quite a few conversations ahead of us.”
“Great.” She groaned once more, slumping further into the seat as she pulled the seatbelt over her frame. “You gonna let me do my job for those, or are you going to keep butting in?”
“That’s the plan if you’re going to get aggressive.” I glanced over and we exchanged looks, an understanding passing between us. “Unless a bit of aggression is what we need to get them to open up. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
“Right on.” She grinned, finally. “Back to HQ then?
“Yeah. Ralsei needs these notes before the press decides to start hounding him.”
“Of course… A kiss-ass like you has gotta check in often.” Her grin grew wider, but I didn’t match her energy, shooting her a glare. She hardly seemed to register it as she laughed. “Aw, c’mon, I’m screwing with you! Don’t get your damn pants in a twist… C’mon, let’s go fill in the Chief, or whatever.”