The note is written in code. I can't make any sense of it. I've seen a few but this one is new. Hopefully, the investigator can figure it out.
Investigator Freeman shows up with a few men from the guard house. He starts pointing out things to take into custody for examination and perhaps some divining magic. Almost all of the dust is swept into a container and taken back. The magic stone downstairs, and the small cloth scrap from the broken window are taken in as well. While they are going around securing evidence, Ken comes up and asks me what I'm looking at.
“Coded message, I think its calling for a hit on someone. Ran into a local informant who was ordered to bring it here as a job for Peter Moldmaker. He said Peter was some sort of hit man. Can't figure it out though, not a code I've seen before. It takes me forever to figure these out.”
“Mind if I have a look.”
I hand it over to him, couldn't hurt. He looks it over for a few seconds.
“Looks like whoever the boss is thought that some people going missing on their side were revenge killings for some form of sabotage they pulled on a rival gang. No names of targets, though. Looks like he was just supposed to pick some people out from whatever this rival gang is. Peter was supposed to receive a bag of 50 platinum sovereigns as pay. 'The Pigeon,' probably whoever was carrying the message, has the money and was supposed to give it to Pete if he accepted the job. Though if it isn't meant to be a hit there are a few other possible meanings.”
'The Pigeon'? Well, looks like Vinnie finally got away with something, assuming his boss and Pete don't turn up again. I don't agree with the assumption that these missing criminals are revenge killings. If they were, I'd think that the perpetrator would have left some form of message, a warning perhaps. But there was no calling card here, no note, just a mess and an abnormally large amount of dust.
“You got all of that, that fast?”
“If I'm alright in assuming that it was meant to be a hit, like you said, then this one is almost uselessly easy, just enough code to say it isn't a code in court. Man, one guy back home had what everyone called 'Idiot Code', a system where letters were pretty much swapped randomly, and every time one was repeated it was a different letter. The first 'A' in the note would actually be a 'D' and the second 'A' would be a 'Q'. You'd know it was a code, but it was damn impossible to figure out. At least, until someone managed to steal one of his very select few translation sheets he gave to his most trusted contacts, it was. Then he went and changed it all around...”
Freeman finally gets around to asking what else we may have found. I give him the coded message. Ken fills him in on what he figures it means, and I fill him in on what I learned from my 'local informant.'
“So one culprit down, one to go? Assuming that this guy really is out of here. If my hunch is correct, and this dust and the other piles your informant heard about, are the remains of bodies, we might have a very powerful wizard running around disintegrating people. That's all I can think of that'd leave piles like this around.”
Ken chimes in, “Perhaps a vigilante, if all of the targets are criminals.”
Freeman shakes his head negatively, “I don't know if they all were criminals though. It's actually fairly unlikely, considering the amount of them. Too many people have gone missing after the shift to this area of the city.”
“Any idea where to look next?”
“No, I want you two back on standby at the guard house. If there's a wizard strong enough to do this to people running rampant, we'll need magical assistance to bring him down, and I don't want to lose any men just because we weren't prepared for who we find. I will keep you updated for when I find out our next move.”
Looks like its back to business as usual, for at least a little while. I hate being on standby, it always makes me feel useless. At least I'll be able to have a few training bouts with Ken.
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