Chapter 58: Sapphire Villeneuve

Gerard Kelly, Captain and Head of the Capitol City Police, stared down at the sprawled body of the Victor of the 58th Annual Hunger Games, hanging partway off her own bed. Sapphire's sparkling eyes that had explained her name were clouded over, unseeing, a bit of dried blood congealing from a wound at her temple, just above her left eyebrow. Sapphire was naked from the waist down, pink panties shoved down to her ankles, the fabric pulled taut by her parted legs which gave quite a nice view of her curly-haired womanhood.

Gerard ran a careful and gloved hand along Sapphire's vagina, cautiously pressing down on the sensitive flesh. Behind him, he could feel his deputy hovering, enough that a shadow passed over him and the body, the younger man obviously unable to help himself from a free show of something better than any Capitol porn off the Panemian internet.

"You're in my light, Deputy." Ulysses Bukater-Deveraux backed up dutifully, gripping his pencil and legal pad while averting his eyes from Sapphire's private areas. Gerard was, of course, right, even if he hadn't needed to explicitly say it. Even deceased, Sapphire Villeneuve probably did not want strange men staring at her now-dead assets. The younger man willed himself to focus.

He and his boss had taken the case as a favor to his mother, a District 1 Victor herself. Beauty Deveraux had come out of retirement to mentor Sapphire sixteen years ago, in fact, so the loss was deeply personal. A family matter. Just past 40 now, Ulysses hoped to one day take over the Chief position from his own mentor at the Department, and was pleased that – although it was left unspoken – he was clearly being groomed for just such a task. Gerard flatly refused to answer questions from the colleagues and the media about when he was going to retire, now that he was close to 90 yet still moved like a man three decades younger. Gerard would growl to any inquiring mind that he would retire when he was good and ready, though only his husband Brian knew of his promise to finally hang up his badge once the Quarter Quell was over.

Gerard pressed down on Sapphire's femininity again. "No vaginal tearing." He stood, again with the confidence more befitting of a man in his sixties, taking in the ransacked room about them. Drawers had been yanked completely off their rollers, their contents spilled out onto the floor. The closet doors had nearly been thrown off their hinges, giving the bedroom the appearance of a robbery gone bad.

Gerard almost wanted to laugh at the scene. He may still be Capitolite, but he sure as shit wasn't born yesterday. District 1 had its poor, sure, but no one destitute enough that they would be willing to try and steal from a Victors' mansion. "This ain't no foiled robbery turned into a rape, Detective. It's a suicide previously staged to look that way."

Ulysses Deveraux's jaw dropped. "How can you tell?"

"Simple. No sign of vaginal tearing, which means there was no forcible breach of her maidenhead. We'll still have to take a sample of what's in her system, but I can already pretty much guaran-damn-tee you there won't be any sign of semen. Even if we weren't being had, and a thief had managed to get in here, why were there no alarms set off by the security system that would have been transmitted directly to the Justice Building? Also, this: now what kind of a thief and clumsy-ass rapist, aside from perhaps needing to knock her out, would lay a one-two punch so hilariously bad, he leaves a hole in her skull? A hole that happens to be the size of a bullet. This bullet." Gerard pinched a golden, semi-automatic shell casing between his thumb and forefinger.

Ulysses gulped, suddenly feeling quite foolish. Was he the son of Agrippina Bukater-Devereuax, the savviest businesswoman the Capitol had ever seen, or not? "Per…. Perhaps he had a gun and then shot her before he had his way with her."

"Uh-uh. See, even if we were to assume there was a thief, and he did have a gun and was not afraid to use it…. Just where would he have gotten it? Remember: no suspicious characters coming in through the train depot, and only Capitolites like you and me and Victors are allowed permanent passports. That would mean that our spastic little robber here would have to have come from inside this district – and as you well know, no district citizen is allowed access to a firearm. The security camera footage of the Villeneuve estate has been checked….. no forced entry, Ulysses." Gerard pointed back at the dead Victor. "This poor girl somehow stole or got her hands on a .438 – a Peacekeeper's gun, most likely – and shot herself in the head after tearing this room apart and halfway stripping to make it look like she hadn't offed herself."

Ulysses felt himself shiver. "If it is a suicide, is there a note?"

"Now, you know from your training not all suicides leave a note behind," Gerard drawled. "But there is this." His gloved fingers now clenched a square-inch piece of paper, on which was scrawled in a woman's handwriting:

It IS us!

"It is us," Gerard repeated. "With the 'is' capitalized and underlined. Now what in the name of Commodus Ravinstill do you think that means, Detective?"

Ulysses didn't know, and wasn't confident enough to even attempt at hazarding a guess. But, as the Quell of all Victors rolled around and he later progressed through a successful turn as Chief of the Capitol City Police, he would develop a theory as to what would drive a pretty, still young Victor to kill herself.

And he had to admit: though sad, Sapphire Villeneuve had played it smart. She had played it like a Victor.