Chapter Text
Logico rubbed the bridge of his nose. All these plots started to give him headaches. Not that he didn’t enjoy the mystery, in fact, he admired the dedication that the same people kept getting involved in murder cases. He realized in his now dark office, the body previously haunting it had been removed, that he was alone in the office. Yes, two minutes prior a body had to be removed from his office because Bluski, a soviet cosmonaut who usually was respectful, attempted to kill him. Well, he was an ex-soviet and Logico started to reason out why: he didn’t seem very good at his tasks. But the aforementioned body did leave something behind.
A now-rumpled envelope sat on his desk. He used a letter opener and reached inside to grab a folded piece of paper. When he untangled it, he saw that it was an old pirate map, as one seen in her book. Attached was a smaller note that read: “Meet me here. There’s something I want to show you. D.O.” There on the map was a red X. He sat down on his desk looking at the map, for at least he knew this would be interesting.
Deductive Logico, of course, following the path, solved three murders on the way. All done with a quick tip of his hat, but not much of a how-do-you-do. He had beaten his previous record of a murder being solved in 14 minutes and 33 seconds, but he never kept serious track of it, every murder was a different case. Still when he arrived, he took the moment to mail the recent case to his ghostwriter for the book.
He held his hat on his head and surveyed the scene. It was a halted oil field, just a city block away was the shore to the Atlantic ocean. An oil derrick and an office building were the only manmade structure for miles. The sun was in the process of setting, lighting ruins further away from the field. Perhaps he could have gotten there earlier, but it seems that whomever called him happened to wait for him. She stood there, wind billowing in her coat, Dame Obsidian, back from the dead. At her feet, laid a body, and to her sides, stood two familiar faces, Chairman Chalk and Midnight the Third.
“Hello, Detective Logico,” She greeted, “Are you ready to solve the mystery?” He nodded from his spot. Looking around, there was no one for miles, and unlikely a telephone besides inside the office, past three potential murderers. He held on tight to his coat through the wind as he made his way towards them. She tossed three weapons in front of them, a piece of rebar, a crowbar and an oil drum.
“Three weapons-” He started.
“Three locations, and three possible murderers,” she finished with a grin. She motioned to the weapons in front of her.
“With a higher chance than average that it was all you.”
“No tricks or rigs. I give you my word, Deductive.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “If it’s me, you’ll have to find out through the clues. But when I got here, and found the man dead along and saw these two men here, I forced them to stay, give up whatever they had on them, and not say a word to you, until you found out the old fashioned way.” The old-fashioned way being the way he always solved cases.
She held out her hand, and he shook it. She didn’t wear gloves today, but her hands were wet, they were washed. He shifted and looked at the others. Chairman Chalk was a similar case of odd hands, he had dust on them too.
He began to pace around the group. Her smile followed him around. Chalk looked at him steely. Midnight simply picked at the dirt under his nails. Logico spoke up, “Who was he, then?”
Obsidian shrugged, “Dead when I got here.” Chairman Chalk balked at that, but he didn’t say anything. She smiled at the gentleman and added, “I can’t give you my word on that, though.”
“Right,” he grumbled and dropped to examine the body. Whatever injury it had to cause this death, was cleaned up. What they did not clean up, was the cement powder dusted precariously on his shoulder.
Logico turned his head to look at the weapons. The crowbar is a tool for crime more than not, but there was no similar traces of cement. The oil drum was right out from the start. No makeup in the world could cover up a bruise that large. The piece of rebar, however, was often used in cement. He brought out his magnifying glass. Considering Obsidian’s dedication to creating a “fair” puzzle, it did not strike him as odd that it was clean. Unfortunately, it was the only one clean.
From his position, crouching in the dirt, he tossed the piece of rebar at her shoes, a pair of red heels. He placed his magnifying glass back into his coat.
“Your murder weapon, Dame.”
“Who had it?” She asked. He considered staring at her until she got bored and confessed she was behind it all. He really wanted to, so he stared at her for a few moments before getting back onto his feet.
He dusted off his slacks and moved to the office building. The trail of people following him left a set of long footsteps, much like tractor marks. He stared at the building before his eyes caught on the ancient ruins behind them. The sun was setting fast. He started at a determined pace over there. The ducklings kept close.
As he got closer, he noticed something in the distance. Coming closer was a truck of some kind. He let it come closer as he looked around the ruins. There was a certain amount of physical clues he searched for in any location. He could notice a hair in the grass from a cliff above. There was no such case here, the wind had blown away any footsteps that might’ve been left. Midnight even had a pair of converse under his black suit pants.
“You like them?” he asked, leaning against a broken pillar, “These are the Chuck Taylor All Stars. Well, not his shoes, but his style.” He admired the shoes, as the rest of them moved on.
He grumbled at the ground, not a speck of oil, cement powder, or whatever traces a crowbar might leave behind. The truck was getting closer too.
“You know, it’s bad luck to bring an oil drum into ancient ruins,” Midnight stated, Chalk nodded along. Logico furrowed his brows at the statement. Midnight shirked away into himself, only glancing at Dame Obsidian. She looked murderous, but she was a murderer, or she might be. He never figured out if she actually killed Producer Powder, all those moons ago.
Logico looked with a new sense of dedication, to either prove or disprove the oil drum logic. A few paces out from the ruins sat on drum. He grabbed the drum and headed back, hoping to see a pattern made in the dirt. When he stepped to enter though, he didn’t. A sense of wrong did come over him and he put the drum down. It was a flimsy excuse, but it might be all he could gather. He kicked the oil drum in, its numbers rolling onto the side.
By now the truck had pulled up, just outside the ruins. A boy he recognized stepped out of the driver’s seat. He had a pair of sunglasses on. Logico walked out to meet him, noticing none of his suspects followed. With his hands in his pockets, he pulled a note out. It read: SGD RGNQSDRS RTRODBS VZR MNS AX SGD ZMBHDMS QTHMR.
On reflex, he attempted to read the code through his detective decoder, but it was gibberish. The boy leaned in.
“I call it Next Letter Code,” the boy informed and winked. Logico began to feel his headache return from a day ago. The boy huffed and pulled out another paper from his other pocket. “He wanted you to have this as well.”
It immediately rang in Logico’s head, that sentence, he didn’t even read the paper handed to him. Once he did, it confirmed his suspicions: “To Deductive Logico, According to a psychic vision, the confidant’s message can be read if you replace each letter with the next one in the alphabet.” It was hand-written.
Once he looked up to ask, he heard the door of the truck close. The boy revved it up, sending dust flying and, with the way the wind was blowing, right into Logico’s face. He finally decoded the message. “The shortest suspect was not by the ancient ruins.”
He returned to the ancient ruins. Dame Obsidian scoffed at him.
“Are you really taking hints?” She complained. He spit what dust got in his mouth towards her direction.
“Who’s sending you hints? How do they know?” Midnight asked, trying to get a look at the coded message. Logico handed it to him willingly, and watched as Midnight’s face crumpled from confusion and distaste.
“The answer to both questions are ‘I don’t know.’” Logico explained, “Well, the boy was from the Detective Club, and now I suppose my secret helper is too.” Logico always placed him as distinct. It was the way that he never showed his face, even though others did, or how he always backed his claims with a pseudo-science. He wondered if that was him on the boat during the case with Bookie-Winner Gainsboro.
He looked back to the truck, now far in the distance, uncaring if he got any other clues correct. So, he set back towards the office building.
The second he opened the door, he got far more information than from the ruins. A set of dirt covered shoe prints walked into the room. They were a standard male shoe, much like the body’s or Chairman Chalks, but definitely not Obsidian’s heels or Midnight’s specialty sport shoewear.
“I’ve solved-” a gasp came from the group “-a part of the mystery,” Logico clarified. A mix reaction came over the crowd, mostly disappointment. “I know where everyone is during the murder, but the murder weapons are…” he trailed off. He needed one clue, just one and the murder would be solved.
Alas no clues were found in the office. Logico was officially stuck and there was no truck coming to help him. But truly, he was never actually stuck. He just had to think it through.
He found a black board full with numbers, being used for competing sale numbers most likely, so he rushed towards it. He began to draw out the graph he’d seen in his head many times.
The onlookers all tilted their heads slowly. He filled it out, and saw the large gap in knowledge he had. He looked behind him to see that they saw too. Through the windows, the orange light of the sunset poured it. It bathed them all in red. One more clue, he thought, but as he looked at it, he realized he didn’t just need one, he needed two. Where the crowbar was, and where the oil barrel was. Perhaps the oil drum was with Chairman Chalk, or the crowbar was in the oil derrick.
He erased, drew white Xs, and erased again, until the board was tinged with gray markings that he couldn’t seem to get rid off. He heard Dame Obsidian laughing. He realized his tie was askew, that his brown gloves were stained with white chalk.
“Do you need a hint, Deductive?” She said his first name like an insult. “I thought you could solve any mystery with logic? Or can you be fooled?” She stepped in front of the line-up, sneering at him.
“I can only solve it with the proper amount of clues!” He yelled. “If things get erased, or cleaned, or planted!” He pushed the black board aside.
When he turned back to meet her, it was in reality, a standoff. If she gave him any clues, they certainly weren’t trustworthy, but if she gave him nothing, he would never be able to prove it was her.
He looked down at his white stained hands, her obsidian necklace, the barrels of oil, dripping black. There was something he missed. Even when he grabbed it from outside, he hadn’t realized how close it was. All the oil barrels were in the office. He’d dismissed the drum prior, but it did have a number on it. He looked back at the board, seeing the rows of numbers with checks next to it. They were checking the drums there. The drum in the middle of the lot, the one Dame Obsidian had procured, was checked there.
Of course, if the oil drum was with Chairman Chalk, then it couldn’t be on the oil derrick. He grinned at her, probably quite madly, from Midnight’s expression.
He kept eye contact with her as he tugged down his fedora and adjusted his gloves, the white powder falling off. She looked at him in admiring shock. There on a side table, was the only telephone for miles. He picked it up and rang the police from his personal Detective Club hotline number. He motioned Chairman Chalk over to take the call.
“Chalk, please tell them to arrest Dame Obsidian at the Oil Field.” He handed the phone over and the two men gaped.
“How did you figure it out?” Midnight the Third asked.
“Haven’t you heard, it’s elementary. Locations are easiest. Chairman Chalk was the only individual who could have been here. Neither Dame or Midnight have the dirty shoe print as his. Look behind you, both of you have tracked in unique steps, but he now has two. Dame, you couldn’t have been at the ancient ruins, the detective club spotted someone with a taller height from their issued telescopes.
Which leaves the weapons, the real damning thing. Both Chairman Chalk and Dame Obsidian had odd hands, one pair just cleaned and one pair dusty. These two were the only contenders for holding the once dusty piece of rebar. But if the Chairman had the oil drums, he couldn’t have had the rebar. Now I know that the dust on the Chairman’s hands was chalk and the dust once on Dame Obsidian’s hands was cement. What you were doing Chalk was checking the barrels, so they couldn’t be used against you. And what Midnight the Third was telling me, with his talk of superstitions, was that he didn’t have the oil drum either. Plus it’d be impossible to lug that drum up the oil derrick. Meaning, you Dame Obsidian, were up the oil derrick, with a piece of rebar.”
She smiled at him, but it was too bitter to be sweet. He had ended the speech with a finger pointed at her, but now it seemed regretful. Had he condemned one of his very few friends in this world, even though a part of him mourned her death, how fake it might have been. The police answered and Chairman Chalk relayed it all.
She chuckled and shook her head. She went to leave. Unable to make it far in heels, he let her go. The doorframe was a dusty blue, she held on to it before she left.
“I’ll see you at trial,” she said in a singsongy voice. With that she left the building, supposedly to wait for the police outside. The door shut behind her.
“What happened?” Logico asked the two men left behind. Midnight the Third rubbed at his neck. He leaned against a desk and folded his arms.
“I was invited to a mysterious location via pirate map, but it was Dame Obsidian so I went. I came through the ruins, taking a crowbar as I went. You know, cause murder. She found me and said she wanted to show me something. Apparently, it was a dead guy.” He gave a sheepish innocent look, shrugging up his shoulders.
“What was her point?”
“It was a royalty negotiation strategy,” Chairman Chalk replied. “She wanted more. And to be honest, it worked. I’m gonna pay her more.” He hesitantly eyed the phone.
“You’re safe now,” Logico claimed. It was weak, but honest. Dame Obsidian had been a plotting criminal, but even that day, she killed a worker already there. She was hardly one to plan prior to a crime, only quick witted to what came after. Although, not witty enough, he supposed.
Chairman Chalk chuckled and shook his head. They heard the police sirens coming in the distance, the same way Logico came in. Midnight’s head was turned in the opposite direction, eyeing the ancient ruins through the window. His brow was furrowed.
He did to get to witness Dame Obsidian being put into a cop car. Past that, it was standard procedure for him. He spoke to the cops, told his story, and began writing up a file. The only thing to do now, was to see her actually get put away.
It was the start of the end for Dame Obsidian.