Chapter 4: A Long Drop and a Sudden Stop
The cops took exactly seventeen minutes and thirty-six seconds to arrive at the Orchid. I only know that because one of the gentlemen standing next to me in the foyer kept looking at his pocket watch, announcing how much time it had been, and wondering out loud when the police would arrive. I tolerated his timekeeping, mostly because listening to a rich man babble in a dry foyer was still a better deal than the four waiters standing outside with umbrellas, trying to keep as much rain off of Winchester's corpse as possible. Back on the force, I had seen plenty of promising crime scenes ruined before an officer could get there, so the maître d's concern for a pristine crime scene bordered on heartwarming. Not quite as heartwarming as if he had gone out himself, instead of sending his underlings, but I wasn't about to complain. Lucky for Forensics, the rain had been steadily relenting since I talked with Sky, and the pounding flood had reduced to about an annoying drizzle.
When they finally did get there, Vale's finest wasted no time giving the wheels of justice a good hard push. Two Faunus with cameras started snapping photos of Cardin, their flashbulbs flickering like muzzle flashes from a Tommy gun. Dove Bronzewing, whose uniform now miraculously bore the rank of sergeant, walked in with a woman I didn't recognize to take statements from the diners and staff who had actually seen the big crash. I don't know what I found more surprising, the three chevrons on his shoulders, or that "Bronzewing the Bashful" was being trusted to take statements. How many years had it been since I turned in my badge? Six? Seven, already? A year or three back, I could recognize at least half of the officers on duty from either the academy or professional acquaintance. Time marched on, and it didn't care who got left behind.
Once the cameramen had spent their film rolls, the officer in charge walked past the window, and I needed two double takes and asking the gentleman with the pocket watch if I wasn't seeing things. But between the streak of pink hair peeking out from under his cap to the way he folded his hands while he talked with the four waiters with umbrellas, I could have recognized him from a mile away. My best friend at the police academy. My first partner after my probationary status. Not to mention we saved each other's lives at least half a dozen times.
"I wished to thank you again for standing out here and protecting the crime scene," I heard him say once I walked out the door. Polite to a fault, as usual. "My name is Captain Lie Ren, Vale Police Department Homicide Division."
"Of course, the fact a guy like him's captain should tell you just how desperate Vale PD must be these days," I entered the conversation with a poker face. I should have had eyes like porcelain saucers from hearing that my old friend was a police captain, but it was hard to be surprised after seeing Sergeant Bronzewing. He turned towards me, slow and cool as a glacier.
"I'll have you know, sir," Ren spoke calmly, at least until it sunk in who he was talking to. "I have served this city for ten years and—Jaune Arc? Is that you?"
"Ren! Cripes, it's been too long," I smiled as he walked over to me. He tried to shake my hand with his usual professionalism, but gave up and threw me into a bear hug like I was a long-lost brother.
"Sergeant Vasilias owes me fifty Lien, now. There's been rumors floating around the department that you were dead after that mess outside Mountain Glenn." Ren's face had a whole new light to it, talking to me. With most folks in the world, my old partner had the kind of dry soullessness that can usually only be found in old soldiers and young bureaucrats. Getting him to crack a smile, much less laugh, was an entrance into a rare and exclusive club, the only regular members I knew being myself and his beloved wife Nora.
"Sorry to disappoint you on that one. It surprised me a little bit too. And speaking of shocks, you're a captain now? How on Remnant did you manage that?"
"The way things always happen in Vale PD. Talent, hard work, and waiting for the man above you on the ladder to finally croak. What are you doing here?"
Believe it or not, Yang Xiao Long walked into my office and payed me ten big ones to find her fiancée Cardin Winchester." I normally keep a measure of confidentiality about my clients, but I trusted Ren with my life. And since he was an officer of the law, crooked though those laws may be, any information I could give him upped the chances of getting the same for me. Quid pro quo, as the lawyers call it.
"Four grand and I can help you find him," he gestured to the body, still perched on the Rolls Royce like a two-hundred pound pigeon. We both had a hearty laugh about that one. "But seriously, what can you tell me?"
"Not much at all," I reached for a new cigarette, which Ren kindly lit. "I was back in the kitchen, having a conversation with the waiter who usually serves Winchester. We heard a crash from the front, and by the time I got up here there was already a crowd gathered. For what it's worth, nobody touched anything, and these guys with umbrellas were out here for all except five minutes."
"That's good to hear. Unfortunately, protocol states an officer has to guard the body from entering the scene until the medical examiner arrives, so I'm stuck here until then."
"Gives us some time to chinwag, then. How's the kids? I haven't seen them in what, three months?"
"A month and a half, at least since we last had you over for dinner. And they're doing well. Rosa is starting school next month, and Verde will be in third grade. Nora's already complaining about how quiet the house is going to be, and if we'll ever have any more kids to fix it."
"She clearly hasn't changed, then."
"Not at all," he smiled. "And how about you? Is there a Mrs. Arc yet? I'd hate to think I missed the wedding invitation.
"The only Mrs. Arcs are my mother and 4 out of 7 sisters. I've haven't really been in a position for courting for a while now," I fed him my usual response to the question, which was not entirely false.
"You mean that financially, emotionally, or time-wise?" Ren's eyebrow rose up slowly, like a King Taijitu sizing up a meal.
"Yes, exactly," I muttered, turning to stare at the road in front of the restaurant. Before my former partner could ask me to clarify what I meant, a blue and white van with Vale PD insignia pulled up next to us before shutting down. The words "Medical Examiner" below the racing stripe erased any lingering doubts as to the van's purpose. The driver's side door opened, and I heard a voice that sounded far too cheerful for a murder scene.
"Salutations, Captain Ren!" She was short, but not enough to be worth joking about, and thinly built. She had on the white coat one would expect from a medical professional and a brown dress underneath with green accents. She had short red hair with just a hint of a curl and a pink hairbow, framing a face with wide green eyes and half a pepper mill worth of freckles. Her smile was big enough for an entire slice of watermelon, and combined with her playful salute, she looked more suited to teaching Rosa's first grade class than examining corpses. "Has the crime scene been secured?"
"It's secure, Doctor," Ren returned her salute. "My old friend and I were just waiting for you to arrive so you could retrieve the body. Nobody's moved it since the accident, and some of the waiters from the restaurant have been keeping the rain off."
"Sensational!" she literally jumped for joy as she cheered. "I love uncontaminated crime scenes! But who's the old friend?" She grabbed my hand and shook it like she was pumping water. "I am Dr. Penny Polendina, medical examiner for Vale PD. What's your name?"
"I'm Jaune Arc, private eye," I finally worked my hand out of her grip. For being so small, the good doctor had a pretty strong grip. "I was in the neighborhood when I heard some important people were dropping in." Penny giggled at my bad joke.
"Not bad, Mr. Arc! I'd love to talk further, but I really should recover this body and get it to the police station for examination. Would you and Officer Ren like to help me with the body bag and stretcher?" I couldn't quite imagine Penny getting Winchester's remains into that van all by her lonesome, so I grabbed half of the bag and followed her to the poor Rolls-Royce.
"Are you gentlemen finished with your photographs?" She asked the two cameramen. "Sensational! I'll flip the body so we can see the other side."
Cardin wasn't fat by any stretch of the imagination, but believe me, he had absolutely no future as a racing jockey. So when Penny wrapped her arms around his waist and flipped him over and into our open bag, the surprise and weight nearly made me drop my end onto the asphalt. Ren seemed as unmoved as the Easter Island statues by her feat of strength, though whether that was because he had seen her do it before, or his usual stoicism, I couldn't say.
Cardin's face looked like he'd gone a few rounds in a boxing ring, with plenty of bruises and a few cuts for good measure. His suit was easily worth ten times what mine was, but it barely looked ruffled from falling off a six story building. The only other piece that jumped out was the knife sticking out of his stomach, just below the ribcage.
"Not a whole lot of blood, for getting stabbed where he did," I wondered out loud as Ren and I set the body onto the stretcher. "Even if the fall killed him, there should be a lot more blood everywhere." It was true. Cardin's suit jacket was unblemished, and the car roof only had a trickle of blood on it.
"It is rather unusual," Penny agreed once the stretcher was back in front of her van. "Especially when you consider how the knife is placed in the first place. I wonder…"
When we turned Winchester face-up, the knife was stuck through both sides of his jacket and into his belly, like the toothpick on a gyro sandwich. When Penny pulled the knife out of him and into an evidence bag, the jacket fell open, showing us a brand new layer to our puzzle. His torso looked like a block of Swiss cheese. He'd taken a shotgun blast in the stomach from point blank range, possibly two. The chest had a score of gunshot wounds sprinkled throughout, but what really tied the piece together were the giant brutish cuts on either side of him, the slices fitting between the ribs like plates on a drying rack. Penny gasped, I felt the contents of my stomach protest a little, and even Ren looked a little pale.
"Well, I think we can rule out suicide," he concluded once we had recovered.
Author's Notes: "Casting" is the term I will use for how one assigns roles to characters in an AU. Looking back, casting Penny as a medical examiner was either a stroke of unparalleled brilliance on my part, or a sign I'm going crazy. Perhaps both. And the same could be said for me making Ren a police officer and former partner of Jaune's. Even in an AU, some characters just seem destined to interact one with another.
At the same time, I feel like I should spare a word towards one of the more common criticisms some people have given me for this fanfic: that of Jaune seeming "out of character" and not goofy enough. And they're not wrong, but I justify my choice on two major fronts. 1), Noir in general seems to require a competent, world-savvy protagonist, because only someone so competent has a chance of making sense of the crazy, twisted events that unfold around him or her. And 2), this story takes place roughly ten years after Jaune first joined Vale PD. When he first entered the academy, he was probably a lot like Canon!Jaune when he first entered Beacon: A little naïve, rather clumsy, and slow on the draw.
Now, though? It's been a hard ten years for Jaune. This is a man who has been kicked in the balls repeatedly by life, and he just keeps standing up. I want to sprinkle in Jaune's (and a few other folks) backstories gradually, but trust me; this story is film noir for a reason. (In case you don't speak French, film noir literally translates to "black film.")
To those of you curious about my writing progress, "The Clean Sweep", counting the author's notes, is now roughly 14k words in length, and I still haven't finished Chapter 6! Believe me when I say this thing has grown far beyond what I originally predicted, and it shows no signs of slowing.
Be safe until next week, my dear audience! And don't forget to favorite, review, follow me, and proclaim your love for this story to anybody who will listen.