So last time we left off with a staggering cliffhanger... The game really is on.
So don your deerstalker hats and whatever else you want to don - hey, I'm not going to be the one to tell you what and what not to don - and read on!
"So we'll never know Luna's secret." Zelda pinned a picture of Baito's girlfriend to her bulletin board. The sheer amount of paper for the one case was staggering, and she had to take multiple steps back in order to see every lead tacked to the cork.
"Doesn't look like it." Anju leaned against Zelda's desk, sipping a steaming cup of coffee. "Did you ask Link to come in?"
"More like ordered him." Zelda sighed, dragging a hand through her hair. "I still can't believe he lied to us."
Anju shrugged, balancing her cup precariously on a stack of files. "I wouldn't say he lied to us. I mean, you never expressly asked him, 'Hey, would it just so happen that you're an ex-cop?'"
"Yeah, that would be a great conversation starter." Zelda snorted.
"People keep secrets for lots of reasons." Anju shrugged. "Maybe he was trying to protect you. Who knows? You can ask him yourself when he gets here."
A knock echoed from the door and Kafei entered, face ashen. "Just finished cleaning up in there." He swallowed slowly. "We have CSU examining for prints or trace fibers, but I'm guessing we won't find anything. Whoever did this is too smart to leave a trail."
"Make sure they double-check every inch of the cell. We need to find out who killed Luna now." Zelda insisted, fighting to keep the scowl from her face. "She had the key to understanding all of this and now it's gone."
She collapsed in her chair with a huff and Anju set down her coffee cup. "Zel, you can't blame yourself for what happened."
"Yes, I can. And now we have no leads, no clues, absolutely nothing to go off of."
"Zelda!" The door to her office tundered open and Link jumped inside, wide-eyed and breathing hard. "What happened? Is everyone all right?"
In two brisk strides Zelda stood in front of Link, then slapped him. Hard.
"Well, this wasn't exactly what I was expecting..." Link muttered, flexing his jaw and wincing. "What did I do this time?"
"You didn't tell me you were a cop!" She declared, heat rushing to her face.
"Did I need to? It didn't seem relevant."
Anju gestured for the door with her coffee cup. "Should I give you two a moment?"
"No, stay." Zelda shook her head. "Link, your police file was stolen last night, and Batio's girlfriend was killed. It was an inside job, and other than your file there's nothing else that was taken from the records room. Do you have any idea why they would take it? Why would anyone want to take your file?"
Link let out a slow breath, leaning back against Zelda's door. "Well, this complicates things. There were copies of some of the cases I worked. You know, standard stuff. I put some people behind bars, but none of them would waste time stealing my file. So if you're asking, I have no idea who would take the file or why."
"That settles it." Anju interjected. "Now we've got a mystery perp who killed Luna and stole your file –" She pointed a finger at Link – "And we don't know what Baito found out about Luna, or who she worked for. So we're basically at square one. Again."
"Just what I like." Link smirked. "To Luna's apartment, then?"
…
"Someone does not like to clean." Link noted when Zelda broke down Luna's door. "By the way, I call dibs on the next door. I've always wanted to do that."
The entire room had been tossed, with papers strewn across the floor and multiple sofas torn to shreds with stuffing leaking out of the knife cuts like wounds. Zelda carefully picked her way through the wreckage, keeping an eye out for any other intruders.
"You're on probation for now." Zelda replied, holding her pistol in front of her and keeping close to the wall, wary despite the silence of the room.
"For what? Trust issues? I thought you'd be over it by now. Yes, I was a cop! So what?" His tone was exasperated and Zelda rolled her eyes, ducking into Luna's bathroom to avoid further conversation.
"Clear!" She announced.
"Same here. No one in the kitchen. But there is something you might want to see here..."
Relaxing her stance, Zelda walked back into the living area where Link knelt on the floor. "Showing off her magnificent dust bunny collection?"
In response Link knocked his knuckles against a floorboard, and a low sound resounded from the contact. "Hollow – a classic trick, really. Whoever tossed her apartment obviously wasn't smart enough to use their ears."
Link carefully pried the board back, revealing a dark hollow space in the floor. Shining a flashlight into the shadows, Zelda reached in and extracted a single leather-bound notebook from the space.
"Look familiar?" Link asked.
"It's just like Baito's. That journal you had in your apartment... But why would they have the same one?" Zelda mused, turning over the notebook in her hands. She flipped through the pages quickly, searching for anything that could serve as a lead.
"My theory is aliens. Luna was an inside man for the aliens, being an alien herself, and then the Gerudo Cartel found of. Obviously aliens make for bad press, so when we brought her in for Baito's murder the Cartel bumped her off." Link's face was dead serious, but Zelda knew he was joking. Hoped he was joking.
"That is easily the most harebrained theory I've ever heard." Zelda shook her head.
"I'm full of them."
A low buzz alerted Zelda that Kafei was calling and she stood, hoping for some evidence or good news. "Do you have something?"
"That I do... Prepare yourself for an onslaught of criminal wisdom." Kafei's voice was excited, but Zelda forced herself to not let her hopes get too high. After what happened with Luna she was desperate for a lead, though, and Kafei's animated tone was infectious.
"All right, what is it?"
Link scrambled to his feet, pointing to the phone. "Did he find something?"
Zelda nodded swiftly. "Kafei, don't make me order you to start talking..."
"Well, you're pushy. Anyways, I was doing some more research on Baito, just in case we missed something important, and his name popped on a restricted document. It's above my level of clearance, but I know a guy who knows a guy... Long story short, Baito was an informant."
"An informant? Baito?" Zelda repeated, mostly for Link's sake.
"And you won't guess where he got his intel from – no one other than the recently deceased Luna herself."
Link started to pace, a smile slowly spreading across his face. "It makes so much sense! Luna was an insider in the Gerudo Cartel. As a seller she would have access to documents and information the police couldn't dream of getting their hands on. And the cover with Baito as her boyfriend was a perfect one – no one would ever suspect them. The notebooks must have held their meeting dates. I'll bet you a million rupees Baito's mysterious meetings match up with Luna's. To think you called my theory harebrained before..."
Kafei's voice grew louder on the other side of the line and Zelda switched to speakerphone. "Is that Link? One cop to another, man..."
"I'm going to cut you off there." Zelda interrupted. "The Gerudo Cartel discovers that Baito is getting information, but they don't know who is giving it to him. To be safe they kill him. It wouldn't take them long to find out it was Luna who was his accomplice, so before she can spill the rest of their secrets they kill her as well. Link's right, it all makes sense!"
"The problem is, we don't know who killed either of them." Kafei grumbled. "How are we supposed to move on with the case? We'd have to bring in someone from the Gerudo Cartel, and they're practically ghosts."
"Not unless you have the location of their base in a notebook." Zelda pointed to an address circled in red ink on the last page of Luna's notebook. "What do you say we check it out?"
"I thought you'd never ask."
Say whaaaaaaaat?
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Anyways, there's not much else to say here. The plot thickens... Anyone else think there's something in Link's file that he's trying to keep hidden? Any wild yet epic fan theories? (Does this mean I have fans?)
I guess that's all for now, my lovely reader. Until next time!
