[Q16 - Llanic - AI] Late to the Slumbloc Party (Part II)

Late to the Slumbloc Party (Part II)

By the time Detective Korick Dallard reached the walkway, the real work was already over.

The forensics droid had completed its sweep hours ago. The body had been zipped into a black recovery bag and left beside the railing, waiting for transport. Evidence markers dotted the duracrete in random fashion, but the scene itself felt strangely lifeless—as if someone had already decided which questions were worth asking.

Two patrol officers stood watch near their speeder bikes parked next to the crime scene. Or rather, they were supposed to. Instead, they stood in the middle of the crime scene sharing a box of doughnuts, the city's evening haze stretching beyond them.

One of them—a young human officer temporarily assigned to scene security—looked up as Dallard approached. "Want a Mon Cala Jellysweet?" she offered, holding up a brightly colored pastry. Dallard didn't even slow down. "No." The officers exchanged a glance. He stopped beside the body bag, taking in the disturbed footprints, the scuff marks, the carelessly shifted evidence.

Then he looked back toward them. "Bugger off."

The younger officer blinked. "What?"

"You heard me." Dallard nodded toward the parked speeders.

"Take the bikes. Go patrol somewhere else. I'll deal with this."

The two officers looked at each other again, shrugged, and began gathering their things. Neither seemed eager to argue. Moments later, the repulsors whined to life and the speeder bikes disappeared down the elevated thoroughfare, leaving the walkway quiet.

The crime scene belonged to Dallard alone.

Silence settled over the crime scene. The city stretched endlessly below, a maze of lights and shadow between the towers of the Slumbloc. Wind tugged at the evidence markers and rattled loose panels somewhere overhead.

Dallard crouched beside marker four. Then marker seven. Then the body. Nothing. The scene was useless. Every footprint overlapped another. Blood traces had been stepped through. The railing had been touched, wiped, and touched again. Whatever story the scene had once been able to tell had been trampled flat long before he arrived.

Which left only one useful question. Why?

He stood and looked across the walkway. Someone had gone to considerable effort to delay him. Someone had made sure the body was processed before he arrived. Someone had contaminated the scene just enough to destroy its value without making it obvious. That wasn't incompetence. That was intent. His eyes drifted toward the small object resting inside an evidence bag near the edge of the walkway.

The datachit.

The only thing of interest recovered from the victim. The only clue worth following. Too convenient. Dallard picked up the evidence bag and turned it toward the fading light. A crime scene this compromised shouldn't have yielded anything useful. Yet somehow the datachit had survived untouched. Perfectly visible. Perfectly recoverable. As if someone wanted him to find it.

The thought lingered as he stared out across Llanic.

Maybe the murder wasn't the message. Maybe the datachit was. And maybe whoever had staged all of this was counting on him to follow exactly where it led.

///

This was supposed to be a part of the speeder entry, but felt too cramped, and I decided to make it an entry on its own. I had a lot of fun with the two police speeders, and the idea of doughnut in Star Wars had to make an appearance here. 😀 I'm hoping to tie all of these Law Enforcement stories up in a neat bow wrapping up Llanic sometime soon. 🙂

Thanks for watching/reading. More photos below.