John Taylor does, actually, know better than to enter unfamiliar alleyways he cannot see. It's just that, well, given that he'd taken down 12% of the city grid six hours ago (it's not his fault they were using his friend as a generator!), many powerful people were looking to take out their frustrations on him, and he was running out of places to run. He can probably handle most things in a random alleyway, right, he's John Taylor and lots of people even know that. 

This is not, actually, anything resembling the consequences John thought he was bringing down on himself. Given the sunlight, this must be mundane London, he assumes. Well, time to stay up here for awhile, he thinks. Given the crowd milling about, it's not likely he's going to be able to get away with just fading into the background, so it's time to act like he belongs. There's a body bag, and someone crying, so the obvious thing to do is:

"Hello, I'm John Taylor, private investigator sent to help, is there anything you'd like me to know?"

One of the people loading the body looks up, and manages by quick eye contact to nominate themself to talk to him. They step away from the cart, brushing their hands off on their pants.

"Hello Investigator Johntaylor. I'm Mediator Dhobrev. It's probably a good thing you're here — we[ex]* don't have much call for investigators, in Too Many Cows. You made quick time."

"I'm not really sure where to start, honestly. Jannami's partner and their wife found her in her office this morning, and called us[ex] at ..."

They pull out a phone, attached by velcro to their black top, and scroll through it for a moment.

"... 21:25. We[ex] got here just after 21:40, and spent a while photographing the scene and preparing Jannami's body for transport. Some of my colleagues are talking to Zoshter, the partner, and Sgila, the meta-wife, but I imagine you'll probably want to ask them your own questions."

*Translator's note: When John hears this word, it comes with the strangely certain association that Dhobrev means "we (excluding you)" specifically. Which is not so linguistically unusual given the context, but it is a bit odd.

Apparently this isn't London after all, but stranger things have happened. Good thing he never got around to selling that translation amulet. He'll worry about how to get back later, though; for now:

"Of course, just want to make sure I have the basics down before those conversations. Are there any suspects yet?"

Mediator Dhobrev shakes their head.

"No obvious ones. Both the partners are pretty clearly distraught. We[ex] haven't finished speaking with the neighbors, but Jannami was fairly well liked around these parts. There were two non-locally-registered vehicles recorded by the parking monitor last night, but that's not too unusual; they could just be folks passing through."

Their phone chirps, and they glance down at it.

"Gosh. Two emergency calls in the same day."

In the background, two other purple people pile into a petite vehicle and peel out down the street.

"Might be worth looking into those vehicles anyway, just in case. Is this second emergency another murder, something that could be connected, or should I stay here and interview the survivors?"

"No telling, yet. Someone hit the emergency alert combination on their phone, but wasn't alert enough to respond to the dispatcher."

They pull up the call information and scroll through it.

"Then there was a scuffling sound, a crash, and the call disconnected."

They look back up at John.

"I'm likely to be here for a while more — at least until the crime scene people are done — so I'll keep an eye on it and let you know if it's another fatality. And we[ex]'ve already got someone in the records office in Shining Sea City looking into the cars, so I can update you on that when we[in] hear back as well."

"Thank you. I'll go interview the survivors, then", John replies, taking that as a dismissal. Now he approaches the pair on the steps, and introduces himself.

"Hello, I'm John Taylor, private investigator. I know this is a very hard time for you, but if there's any information you could give me about the events..." trailing off into an expectant silence.

The person in the green robe sniffs, and wipes at their face.

"I don't even, I mean ..."

They take a deep breath.

"It was after dinner, the last time I saw her a-alive. Jani is a bit of a night owl, so it wasn't too unusual for her to stay up after Sgila and I went to bed. She was working in her office, I think. And then when I went to check on her this morning, she w-was just lying there ..."

Zoshter presses the terrycloth of their robe sleeve into their face for a moment.

"And I just don't know how it could have happened. I made sure that all the doors were locked before I went to bed, and I didn't hear anyone come in ..."

"Of course, it's not your fault," John rushes to reassure. "Thank you for telling me. Do you know of anybody who could have had any motive, no matter how slight?" he continues in a gentle tone of voice. 

They furrow their brow in concentration.

"I don't — Oh! There was this weird money offer. She was going to switch primary writing groups, and someone anonymously offered her a bunch of money not to. But she turned it down because she felt uncomfortable staying in her current group. It doesn't make much sense for whoever it was to k-kill her, though."

"Murderers don't have to make sense, and any small piece of information can help find them. Thank you very much for your cooperation. May I have your permission to examine the scene?"

Meanwhile, he's thinking furiously. These people have clearly never heard of security before (locks, the green-robe person says, like that means anything when they're unspecified as to type or upgrades or what threats they're rated against), but apparently must not have much need if they're so shocked locks can be bypassed quietly (and also do not have stalls on street corners selling "Tricky Dicks's Invisible Cloaks*" and other sundries). Can he hope that the murderer will be as amateurish in covering their tracks as these people are in home security? Probably not, that'd count as a good thing happening today and he's already used up the one. 

Zoshter nods.

"Yes, of course. Her study is at the end of the hall, on the left, with the red door."

So he goes in the house to find the scene. He takes in the blood spatter and fallen chair with a glance before asking the technician "So, what have you found? Besides the obvious, I mean"

The presumable forensic technician gets up off her belly, where she was examining a depression in the carpet. She leans out of the door and flashes a few hand symbols at her colleague in the front asking whether this guy is supposed to be here. Apparently satisfied with the answer, she turns back to John and begins her explanation.

"Well, there were no unexpected fingerprints on the door handle or door itself. The window opens outward, but was latched when we arrived. The body fell on top of a handful of papers, but they're not dated precisely enough to get a timeline. The medics thought, based on her temperature, that she was probably killed around 53 or 55 last night. The murderer seems to have been wearing boots, probably about 43 (base 6, 27 base 10) centimeters, and didn't come far into the room — although they did enter far enough that they could have closed the door behind them. The blood spatter is in the wrong place to say whether they did or not. They also stood in such a way as to not get any on their boots," the technician summarizes.

"The boots stand out because none of the people who lived here wore them indoors. I think that I've recovered a sample of dirt from one of the prints."

She holds up a sealed evidence vial with a small amount of red, clay-like dust.

"But it's hard to be sure that it hasn't been contaminated. None of the furniture seems to have been moved, except for the chair, of course. Similarly, there is nothing obviously missing from the room — although, since we don't know exactly what was on her desk, that's also a guess. Her work terminal wasn't configured for audio recording, and saw the last command input at 53:22 last night, so that's a good guess for a more precise time of death, or at least when she was interrupted at work. The terminal doesn't have continuous biometrics, so the attacker might have been able to give it commands before it sealed. I didn't recover any fingerprints except her own from it. The terminal sealed itself at 53:42, so we know nobody was able to access it after that point."

She points at the blood spatter.

"The bullet went into the wall, but didn't overpenetrate. I dug that out a while ago, and sent it up to Shining Sea City for a ballistics report. That's still pending, of course. I'm not super familiar with guns, but I think this was probably a handgun, not a hunting gun. Probably one of the new minimal-smoke ones, because although I did pick up traces of gunpowder in the carpet, it was a really small amount. Too small for chemical analysis, and unlikely to have left any traces on the perpetrator. Let's see ... what else ..."

She glances around the room.

"Oh — the lights were on when she was found, I'm told."

John absorbs all this information. So the perpetrator was smart enough to wear gloves and avoid blood spatter, connected enough to acquire a "new minimal-smoke handgun" (whatever sort of connections those require, it would probably blow his cover to ask right now), but not paranoid enough to switch shoes... 27 cm shoe size might be a short man or a tall woman, if he was lucky, and probably that red clay is going to turn out to be common or just outside the house but it wouldn't do to ignore it, he'll have to take a walk about the surrounding landscape later. He doesn't know enough about computers or here to tell if "sealing itself" after 20 minutes is a standard procedure (everybody is happier if Cathy is the only one touching the damn things), but also doesn't know what to do about that in either case, so he'll let these guys take care of that. The light remaining on seems a little odd to him, but maybe the murderer was just impatient, or trying to avoid a neighbor seeing what time the light went out. That's the bother with clues, they could be anything, really. 

Right, she's looking for a reply. "Excellent report, thank you. While we wait for those reports to come in, I'm going to poke about outside, see if I can identify the perpetrator's direction of exit. Unless you guys have gotten there already?"

She shakes her head.

"No, we've been dealing with things in here. But Mediator Dhobrev has been keeping the neighbors out of the yard. I can see by how you avoided the boot prints that you're used to avoiding trampling evidence, but please do try and avoid mixing up the trail, if there is one. It's been pretty dry recently, so I'm not sure how much you'll see, but I wish you luck."

The back door, which is only a few feet away from the office, is a large glass door that lets out onto a small granite stoop. The door is closed, but when he goes to open it he might notice that it did not latch properly. On inspection, it looks as though the frame has swollen slightly, and therefore requires more than normal force to close all the way and latch. Scrapes on the lintel indicate that someone — presumably the inhabitants of the house — do regularly close it all the way.

"Of course" John replies before he sees himself out. 

It's interesting this door wasn't latched properly. Was this lock forgotten about by the green-robe-person, or opened later in the hubbub? Either way, he takes a moment to open the door, close it all the way, then open again, to see how loud those operations are and estimate if the victim could reasonably have heard this back door open (if it was the entrance the perpetrator used). He doesn't actually step onto the granite stoop, but instead grabs a monocle and a lens from his pocket, and kneels down to scan the granite stoop for any red clay, or anything else interesting. 

Opening the back door is loud enough to likely be audible from the office, but not from the bedroom. Closing the back door all the way produces a loud squeaking sound where the wood rubs that would probably be faintly audible throughout the house.

The granite step is most interesting. The boot prints in the office showed that the tread of the killer's boots had a chevron pattern, for grip. Faint marks of red clay show only one boot print — headed away from the house, to judge by the grip pattern. The edges of the footprint are too ill-defined to confirm it, though, on the hard stone of the stoop.

The grip pattern in conjunction with the not fully closed door is good enough for him to assume this is the killer's exit (he's still agnostic as to which entrance they used). So he will continue to not step on the granite, instead heading inside to tell that forensics lady about the new boot print for her to examine, then exiting himself out the front way (where people have already been) to cautiously circle around the back. He does look faintly ridiculous, as he's effectively doing a duck-walk right beside the house to make sure he isn't stomping on any unnoticed foot prints, but he's assuming these people are too professional to laugh at him. 

Indeed; even if people were not occasionally compelled to walk in unusual ways, everybody here has either had some amount of crime-scene training, or is too distraught to take much notice.

And, as it happens, his caution is well-placed: while the killer mostly kept to the clover, which has recovered with a certain springiness from any impressions, there are two places where footprints can be made out. At the front corner of the house, in the dirt near an ornamental bush, a set of tracks heads around the corner toward the front door. At the rear of the house, in the shade of the old oak tree where the clover is sparser, one set of tracks heads toward the house, and one set leads away. Their vector seems to indicate that the killer passed through the back yard of the neighboring house, and from there potentially to the street.

Before he can get a better look at the neighbor's yard, however, the community mediator that he spoke with earlier waves him down.

"An update on the second emergency call — I'm not sure how you guessed it, but it was a fatality," Mediator Dhobrev signs to him, to avoid having to shout across the yard. "A man was found poisoned by a syringe full of swimerwudnoicane. He managed to hit the distress signal on his phone, but then passed out and away before Emergency Services got there. There were signs that he had been in a struggle, but the team there is still going over everything."

John lets the translation amulet guide his hands in order to convey "I hoped I was wrong, but coincidences generally aren't." as he starts walking towards the Mediator. "I also found tracks; one set going into the front, one set entering the rear, and one set exiting out the neighbor's backyard. I can follow those tracks for maximum caution, but speed might be of the essence here, it might go better to assume the same person perpetrated both"

Dhobrev nods.

"Yes, that makes sense. I can delegate someone to follow up on the tracks now that we're more or less done with the stuff inside the house. Forensic Technician Angelad is being called over to the other scene — would you like to catch a ride with her?"

"Absolutely" John replies as he picks up speed and hurries over to catch said ride. 

Angelad nods to him, and hops up into the drivers seat of one of the little electric Emergency Services vehicles.

"The other scene's only a few streets away, so it's not a long trip," she informs him. "Do you mind if I look up swimerwudnoicane on the way there? I'm not familiar with it, and I'll have to use the audio interface since I'm driving. You can't drive because of our insurance."

"No trouble at all, I'll be happy to review it as well" John replies as he hops into the other seat. 

She nods, puts the vehicle in gear, and then taps her phone and whistles a long series of morse-code-like sounds. Johns translation artifact renders it as:

"Voice command — search request — encyclopedia — s-w-i-m-e-r-w-u-d-n-o-i-c-a-n-e"

Her phone chirps, and responds in the same code.

"Recognized: voice command, search encyclopedia. Searching ..."

"Swimerwudnoicane, also referred to as sumdruginane, is a chemical primarily used in veterinary medicine for the treatment of heartworm. In low doses, it can bolster immune response and prevent cardiovascular spasms. In high doses, swimerwudnoicane can cause dizziness, nausea, and heart attacks. The drug is usually counterindicated for human use, but has been successfully used to treat some congenital microcardiopathies. The Large Continent Safe Medicine Coalition restricts its use and sale to licensed veterinarians and doctors in the territories that subscribe to their handling guidelines. Smaller Continent does not make much use of the drug, preferring to use the older wyrmbegonicane, although recent studies on the effectiveness of swimerwudnoicane in treating cows and other large farm animals may change that. Swimerwudnoicane is manufactured through a process involving the reduction of precursorite with acetic acid ..."

Angelad taps the phone to interrupt its playback, and leaves her finger on the fingerprint sensor.

"Voice command — search request — Emergency Services database — local veterinarians"

"Recognized: voice command, search Emergency Services database. Searching ..."

"Two veterinary practices within 30 kilometers. Result one: Too Many Cows Animal Hospital, proprietor Zoshter, distance 4 kilometers. Result two: Seacoast Animal Rescue Center, proprieter Seacoast Animal Rescue Center Corporation, distance 15 kilometers. Expand search?"

"... huh."

Angelad turns the cart down a street that joins this one at a 120° angle, and beeps the cart's siren to get a pair of pedestrians to get out of the way.

"Do you want me to look up anything else before we arrive?"

"Zoshter, isn't that the partner?" John asks.

"Yes, indeed. But they have a rock-solid alibi, given that Emergency Services people have been with them all morning," Angelad remarks.

"I'm not sure what to make of it. But it's just as well — we're there."

"There" turns out to be a small building with a sign across the top reading "Flexible Community Spaces". Another purple-pantsed person waves Angelad and John in. Angelad grabs her crime-scene kit from the back of the cart, and makes a point of going in first — she is the official one, even if John knows how to respect a crime scene.

Inside, there are a number of small meeting rooms with movable dividers so that the space can be reconfigured for different purposes. One of them, near the middle, has the body in it. The body wears a reversible red and green robe, currently with green on the outside. On his feet are a pair of strappy sandles. He was a small man, and he fell with a hand outstretched toward the door, face down. His phone lies where it fell beside him. His hair is a wispy greying red, and the syringe, still half-full, lies on the ground by his neck.

Angelad pulls on a fresh set of gloves.

"I'm not so sure that these two cases are related," she remarks, as she gets out a magnifying glass and camera. "The other one was nice and clean, but this one is pretty messy. Look — there's a gouge in his neck where the syringe was knocked or pulled out as he struggled, and there's blood on his knuckles, probably from the same."

"Maybe Zoshter could have an accomplice, but the perpetrator could well be trying to frame them," John muses before they go inside, giving way to Angelad automatically (and respecting her point about being first). As John does not have official cameras and tools, he elects to stand back a bit out of the way and observe while Angelad pokes at the scene.

"I'm not actually certain they're related, this just strikes me as being too much crime in too small a time for this density, though of course criminals don't exactly keep time tables," John says. "Sometimes criminals are smart enough to change their modus operendi, or they have things go wrong unexpectedly, which makes this sort of thing hard to tell definitively, but I agree the previous murder looked much more well-planned than this one. Hey, do we have an identification for this guy?"

"That's a good question."

She looks up at the medic who was first on the scene.

"His phone identifies him as Dhant, nominally of Largest City, but in practice he's not there much," the medic replies. "Dispatch says he's a travelouge writer, goes all over. But he must be independently wealthy or something, because his books are terrible, and never sell more than a few copies. His car is parked outside — the blue and white one. Dispatch is trying to figure out who his next of kin is, so we[in] can get permission to search it."

Well isn't that suspicious.

"Thank you," he says with a nod of acknowledgement. "It might be good to figure out where his money came from, but I suspect this man was killed for witnessing or knowing the wrong thing."

Of course he can't just ask about any log books, attendants, or hours these "Flexible Community Spaces" have, that'd give away that he doesn't actually belong here... wait, didn't somebody mention a parking monitor earlier?

"Actually, do we have any data on his movements, where he was before he came here?" he asks, keeping his hands in his pockets and generally standing far enough away from the phone not to make people nervous he's going to touch it or anything.

"I'm not sure. Let me ask."

The medic takes their phone off their vest and has a short conversation with dispatch.

"The parking monitor first registered his car at the lot by the train station two days ago. Dispatch just got off the phone with the inn there, and they confirm that he had rented a room for a week. The other parking places in town aren't rigged for automatic payments, so we[ex]'re not sure where else he may have gone, but we[ex] can ask anyone if they've seen it or him around town."

"Tsk. Careless," Angelad interjects from the floor. "No prints on the syringe, but there's a partial print on the discarded safety cap here, over near the wall. It's not big enough to get a definitive match, but it might help."

"It's heartening that they're sloppy, at least. And please do ask around, thank you". 

The continued examination of the scene — and consultation with the building's appointments calendar — yields the following additional facts:

Dhant booked the room on arrival, at 20 this morning. His feet are one centimeter shorter than the boot prints in Jannami's office, although boots can just be bigger than sandals. On the table is a printed manuscript, purportedly authored by him, that pretends to be a romance novel but is actually mostly a lovingly detailed description of the assembly of a certain kind of fuel-air bomb. The blood on his knuckles isn't his.

Looking in through his car's window shows that he keeps it scrupulously clean, and the back is full of opaque wooden boxes, probably containing traveling supplies. His next of kin, a woman in Largest City named Vrormes, of unspecified relation, has categorically denied permission to search the vehicle, and the matter is currently going up in front of a judge in Shining Sea City.

The neighbors across the street, who live above a little bakery, and are therefore up early in the morning, don't remember seeing any car but his parked in front of the community space. A plastic surgical glove was found discarded behind a bush by the front door of the building. Angelad couldn't get any prints off of it, much to her frustration.

After learning the knuckle blood isn't the victim's, John waits for a good moment to surreptitiously acquire a drop on one of his handkerchiefs, for a quiet moment he can use to try and drowse this guy. It doesn't often work, but given the sheer lack of mystic wards around these parts, it stands a better chance here than the Nightside. 

The glove is just deeply confusing. There was a partial print on the needle cap, but none on the glove? John hopes it's a red herring, he doesn't actually want to know how a clean plastic glove relates to this nonsense. 

Once everybody seems to be done with the scene, John thanks them all before inquiring into the next steps to take: back to the previous crime scene, hang around for the courts to maybe let them search the car, wait around somewhere for additional reports to come in?

"People around here tend to prefer the government correct, rather than fast," the medic observes, shaking their head. "It's probably going to be two hours before we have permission, and Shining Sea City courts don't allow preemptive conditional searches."

Angelad packs away her equipment.

"Well, I've got to go write up two reports, for our records. But I'm going to have dispatch send someone to ask Zoshtel about the syringe, and if I were you I would want to be there for that. I can drop you off at the end of the street as I head back to the office, if you'd like?"

"You are correct, thank you kindly" John replies. 

Their return trip is equally quick, although more people seem to be out and about at this time of day.

When he walks back up to the house, a tall man is speaking amiably to Zoshter.

"Of course — just let me know if you need anything," he says, patting them on the arm. "I know how important you were to Jannami, and of course I want to support you at a difficult time like this, no matter how you're feeling."

Zoshter gives a tight nod, and the man slips into a small green car. He carefully pulls out around John, giving him a neighborly click as he does. As he goes, a close examination shows that there's a bit of red clay in the tread of his tires.

Zoshter works their jaw, and turns to go inside.

John is certainly keeping his eyes peeled, and they narrow in suspicion as he sees the red clay stuck in the tires. Quickly, he has to decide: does he attempt to stop this guy now, alerting him to suspicion while there's nothing concrete, or let him go and try to find him later? There having been two murders decides him; let's not give time for a third.

He turns his body towards the car and waves broadly, preparing to accelerate while saying "Ho, sir, could I speak with you actually?" 

He stops the car, leaning out the window to talk.

"Yes? How can I help you?"

With practiced ease, John palms two mystic tracking devices (mostly spider silk by volume, sticky and gossamer enough to avoid casual notice) and sticks one to an unobtrusive nook of the car. 

"I wanted to check if our personnel have had a chance to interview you yet about the murder?"

As John speaks, he unobtrusively spools out a thread of silk to float on the breeze, aimed to tangle in his hair. 

The man blinks.

"Interview me about the murder? Whatever for? I just heard about it and came to offer Zoshter my condolences; I expect half the town will do the same as word gets about."

"Just the general principle of 'if we question enough people some useful information might fall out' is all, like if you noticed anybody acting suspiciously last night, coming or going at odd hours, we would appreciate hearing about that!" John answers with a casual air, like of course the driver isn't under suspicion for anything. 

"Oh, right, of course. But no — I didn't notice anything. I live down closer to the center of town, so I would hardly expect to."

He points back the way John just came.

"Although ..."

"Yes?"

"Well, I was closer to Jannami, but Zosher just seems ... no, they're probably just rattled by the whole thing. Yes, it's understandable for them to be a bit off this morning."

He shakes his head.

"Was there anything else?"

At this point, the easy assumption is this guy is the murderer and trying to frame Zoshter. He'll go ahead and bite, though:

"Of course Zoshter is rattled, but now you've gone and made me curious as to how they seemed. But otherwise no."

"Alright. Well, best of luck."

He un-leans, and gently navigates the car off down the road.

And now he can track both person and car, at least in a vague directional sense. He ambles up to the porch, seemingly paying no more attention to the car, waiting for the dispatch person.