Veronica was a strange contrast to her sister. Fran was bubbly and outgoing, while her sister was calm and thoughtful. Oh, she could still look at a mangled pile of once-human viscera without any reaction beyond a look of intense concentration, but she used words like 'the victim' rather then the more impersonal 'the subject' and such that Fran was fond of using.
Studying her 'consultant' thankfully kept the majority of the detective's attention away from the piles of unidentifiable gore paraded past by the prefecture's lead coroner. In the time before she'd been introduced to Fran, Kuhou had never seen damage to a human body like this outside of a major vehicular or industrial accident, and it was frightening to think about what kind of person could have caused this kind of damage…
"Detective?"
"Y-yes?" Kuhou realized she had been staring again, and tried to remain nonchalant as the girl turned to look at her.
"This is all wrong…"
"What do you mean?"
"Remember what I said about the chair? This person-" Veronica gestured to a plastic bag with the tip of a spinal column poking out. "-was supposedly picked up by the legs and beaten against a wall until his head came off. If that was true, why aren't any of the joints in his legs dislocated? That one over there had his chest caved in, but the organs should have been pulverized in the process, and they're barely damaged."
"I see…I do see!"
As much she'd rather not, Kuhou began studying the remains of the remains in earnest, picking one of the cadavers at random and flipping through the attached report.
"This victim had his arms and legs torn off…but if something had just grabbed him…" Now that she knew what to look for, the logical part of her mind had an excuse to glide past the gore and focus directly on what was out of place. "Then there would be bruises, or even broken bones, to indicate where the attacker grabbed him. But these marks aren't at all consistent. But then…how was the force applied? It couldn't be…psychic power?"
Veronica held her laugher back for all of three seconds. Kuhou threw her arms up in exasperation, tossing the report away and trying to ignore the little girl leaning on a bag of legs for support as she doubled over in laughter.
"I…I'm sorry…but…that's just ridiculous."
"I don't even know what could count as ridiculous anymore, after meeting Fran!"
Veronica collapsed for a second round of laughter, and Kuhou left the cold room in a huff.
Veronica still had a twinge of a smile when they sat down for tea. Kuhou had gathered all the information available, and was busy highlighting all the irregularities she could find.
"Alright, Veronica-san. So how do you think the injuries were inflicted?"
"Just Veronica, please. And I'm not sure, exactly. My first guess would be some kind of heavy industrial equipment, custom-made for the purpose."
"But why? To lug a…a trash compacter or something up twenty flights of stairs to crush a man's skull just seems pointless."
"Could it be a serial killer, following some kind of pathological ritual?"
"Beyond the extreme damage done to the victim's remains, they were of varied backgrounds, religions, genders, and three were foreigners. Speaking of the victims…"
Kuhou mumbled something around a biscuit in her teeth as the sorted through a pile of folders at her side. She untied a stack and laid it out, photos of the deceased prominent on each cover.
"…There's a major oceanfront development project going on, and the only common thread between them is that they worked for one of the local construction companies, or for one of the subsidiaries or contractors involved in the construction. That's as far as the local police got before calling me in."
"A construction company? That's a good place to find the tools and materials you'd need to make weapons that inflict wounds like these."
"I had that thought, but the sheer number of people involved in the construction puts our list of suspects in the hundreds, and that's for co-workers to the deceased alone."
Detective Kuhou leaned back in the chair, reaching up to rub her temples.
"I'm starting to think they hit a wall and just called me in to have someone to blame when the investigation failed."
"Maybe, but I think solving this case won't be all that difficult."
"What? Why?"
"In my experience, people who are exposed to crimes committed in some bizarre or seemingly-impossible fashion tend to fixate on the question of 'how' and end up running in circles as a result. Just put that aside for now and focus on the basics. We know there's a connection between the victims. We think that they were killed with custom-made tools. Let's start with the people who had access to the machine shop, and the know-how to create these tools."
"That helps, but not as much when your scenario requires a group to lug this equipment around. Even if there was only a tenuous connection between the murderers, only a single individual would be required to gain access to the resources they'd require. The murderers would still be scattered across the entire workforce."
"They would also have to transport the weapons to the murder scene. And all the victims were killed in their own homes. That's personal knowledge or access to company files, and if they used a company vehicle, that's access to the motor pool as well."
"…It's a nice theory, but there are still too many 'ifs' for my liking. I'm still puzzled as to why a group would feel compelled to commit murders in such a complex, roundabout manner. It would be so much simpler to engineer an accident on the worksite."
"I would guess they're trying to make some kind of statement. Has anything been delivered to the police or media?"
"No, nothing. And the company is working to keep the story out of the news, as expected. If the killers were so bent on making a statement, I would've expected a response from them after realizing news of the murders had been kept quiet."
"Perhaps it's personal, rather than political? A large project like this rarely goes off without some opposition from the locals."
"If something like that had happened, it would have been included in the reports."
"Ah…no offense, detective, but these are Japanese businessmen and politicians you're talking about, right?"
The detective frowned and stood up, collecting the case files with quick, efficient motions and a smile on her face.
"Get your things. We've got some people to talk to."
