Chapter 6

Once we touch down by the crime scene in Tayseri Ward, we're greeted by one of the junior detectives from homicide; one of the other turians from my training course, Valen. He doesn't really give me the time of day, but spends plenty of time trying to impress Garrus by rattling off the facts that we have so far – the dead guy is named Anthony Levi, moved to the Citadel just over a year and a half ago, working as a low-level clerk at the human embassy up on the Presidium. He's actually a resident of Tayseri Ward, which says a lot about how the embassy is paying its staff – though it's not abundantly clear why he would be hanging out in an abandoned factory's warehouse at the time of his death.

The warehouse itself isn't much; the place used to belong to a vehicle manufacturer, but any stock and storage areas got cleared out of the main body of it a while back, presumably. It's just a large, open space, with some securely sealed doors leading into what I can only assume used to be office space, the windows now firmly sealed up too. If anyone wanted to carry out surgery, and they had their own tools, this would definitely be a fine spot for it – nothing to get in the way, nice abandoned space, nobody else really around, aside from this salarian witness we need to check in with.

Garrus rather quickly thanked him once we arrived at the small tent set up to cover the body, but not before Valen shot me a bit of a harsh look as he went past – obviously not too impressed that I'm getting to work on a case like this, rather than him.

I flash him a sarcastic grin all the same. Cry me a river.

Still, my stomach does another flip once I peek inside of the tent, instinctively gagging at the first glance at the corpse. "Really doesn't look any better up close, does it?" I ask Garrus, who's having a bit of a hard time himself looking at the corpse. They've at least manage to get some of the smell to dissipate, but nothing prepares you for just what it's like; doesn't matter how much you try and cover it, the stench of an open body isn't something that just disappears, especially when you have to preserve a crime scene, and I'm grateful to have skipped breakfast. Seeing a body so expertly operated on, and then just left there, is...well, hard to put into words. Disturbing, if I had to put it into words. Still, not going to help anyone if I just stand here and ruminate over it – if I've made it two hundred years into the future without going insane, this is just something else I can handle on top of it. "It's still hard to believe things like this happen on the Citadel. You'd expect it on places like Omega, but not here."

"Every city has its murderers and psychos. They just don't have to worry about hiding on Omega," Garrus tells me. Give it a few years and you'll be getting a first hand experience, buddy. "Still, I know what you mean. People doing things like this for the credits...it's gone much further than I'd thought. Every time we shut down a lab producing organs, another one seems to spring up somewhere else, and they get better at looking legitimate. And then you get incidents like this."

"Labs? I know it's legal to mass produce for medical purposes, but isn't that a bit obvious?" I ask, as we duck back out of the tent. A rather vexed looking salarian is stood outside of the C-Sec cordon with a couple of officers, so presumably that's the witness we're here to talk to. Definitely doesn't look too happy at being held up here for a couple of hours. "Surely you can't run an operation like that without people noticing."

"You can't. It takes a lot of manpower, materials, qualified experts. You can't just start mass producing organs without some kind of medical knowledge," he nods. "A lot of these places open legitimately, get proper licenses, but not all of what they produced goes to hospitals and medical facilities. Stock goes missing, ends up in the black market. They've been getting a lot smarter about hiding when that happens, though."

"So how do you catch them?"

"Looking at materials coming in to these places, any alerts about hospitals losing deliveries, making sure what they're delivering matches up with the supplies they import into the Citadel," Garrus explains, sounding less than enthused.

"Doesn't sound like that involves a lot of fieldwork."

"It doesn't," Garrus chuckles. "The analysts do all the work on that."

"And they just let you know when they need some heads cracked together?"

"Something like that," the turian grins. Somehow didn't expect he'd be too keen on the slower, analytical side of the work. "The better we get at cracking down on illegal labs, though, the more you have people turning to alternative means. Can't say I've seen a lot of corpses like this yet, but if we don't solve this..."

"Right. If people don't think C-Sec are on top of this, we could be seeing a few more similar cases," I nod, shuddering at the thought. You never really get a glimpse at the Citadel's criminal underbelly in the games, beyond some fairly low-key stuff with Fist and Chora's Den, but this is...well, dark. If oddly familiar. I remember that Dr. Saleon guy was involved in the organ trade, but that's not until just before Mass Effect 1 begins, so this is something different.

If I just could put my finger on what…

"Exactly," Garrus nods, before stepping through the police cordon. It's all holographic, after all – the display turns red and sets off a little alarm if it doesn't detect relevant C-Sec clearance, so we can walk through with no problems. The salarian, to his credit, seems to instantly clock that Garrus & I aren't regular officers, given that he instantly starts making a fuss.

"Are these the two you were telling me about?" he snaps at the human officer stood next to him, who, for reasons becoming rapidly apparent, looks ready to snap the salarian's neck. "Can we get this over with? I can't be expected to stay here for this long, it's absurd. I report this crime, you treat me like a criminal-"

Garrus clears his throat as he steps up to the pair of them. "Sir, I'm Detective Vakarian, this is Detective Shaw." Still feels weird being introduced as that, but I'm glad he didn't introduce me as the work experience kid at least. "We just need to ask you a few questions, then you can be on your way."

"I already told your colleague everything. I wouldn't have bothered calling this in to be treated like this!" the salarian protests, as the human officer gives me an exasperated roll of his eyes and moves off to guard the perimeter. "What more can I add? I was out here walking when I heard strange sounds coming from the abandoned factory, some movement. I assumed it might be some drunks, or some vagrants, so I went in to look, and I saw...well, you've seen it yourself now, I imagine. With a large figure crouched over him."

"How large?" I ask. That can presumably start narrowing down suspects, if we can get an idea of physiology. "What're we talking, krogan size?"

"Maybe? Possibly bigger? It was dark, and I panicked when I saw the corpse. I ran back outside, called C-Sec, and waited for someone to arrive. How many more times must I repeat myself to C-Sec officers?"

I can't really chastise him for being an asshole, but something about what he's said sits a bit funny, and Garrus is already seizing on it before I really have a chance to gather my thoughts. "So you live down here?" the turian asks.

The salarian gives a fairly rapid blink at the question, pausing for half a second before shaking his head. "No, I live further up. Aveia Ward."

"So, you were down here in the early hours of the morning for...what, exactly?"

"Is that important?" That snippy tone is back in full force. "If I wasn't here, would anyone have found that body?"

"If there was no good reason for you to be near a crime scene at the time someone was murdered..." Garrus lets that hang in the air for a few seconds. I hadn't immediately twigged on this, but he makes a good point – and he's doing a rather impressive job of putting the screws on this salarian. We get taught basic interrogation techniques in the academy, how to spot holes in testimony, but he's doing this like second nature. "I'd say that's quite important."

"Okay, okay. I was going to work," the salarian replies quickly, tone seeming to shift rapidly when he realises what Garrus is getting at. "If you're implying I could be involved-"

"I'm not implying anything. Where's your workplace?"

"One of the shops around here."

"One of? Which one?" The salarian looks like he's struggling to dredge up a name. "Who's your manager? What are your hours? How long have you worked there?"

The silence speaks volumes, as Garrus looks back at me, presumably as some kind of prompt to step in if I feel it's appropriate. May as well prove I can handle things like this too…

"Look, if you can give us something that rules you out as a suspect, it means we don't have to drag you back to C-Sec and draw this out further," I explain, trying to sound helpful. Does good cop, bad cop actually work? I guess this is a good time to find out. "Why were you really here?" He's obviously hiding something, it's just whether or not that something is an involvement with the murder.

The salarian curses quietly under his breath, glancing between Garrus and I helplessly before sighing. "Alright, fine. I came down here last night to try and scavenge. I'd heard all the factories around here got picked clean a while ago, but figured I'd check to see if anyone missed anything. There's good credits in salvage."

"Really?" Garrus asks, eyes narrowing. "And you expect us to believe that, after everything you just tried?"

"No, I can prove it! Look!" He reaches back into his satchel, slowly withdrawing what it takes me a few seconds to recognise as a mass condenser, which I quickly start thumbing through once he hands it over. True enough, a fair bit of salvage that he's condensed down for later – presumably to sell to some of the less reputable scrap dealers on the Citadel.

"That does check out," I finally nod, glancing back over to Garrus. "So you were walking around, stealing scrap, and then what?"

"It's an abandoned building, it's not stealing. Nobody else needs that stuff..." He trails off again under the withering look he's getting from both of us. "Okay, I was working, checking out some of the side rooms and assembly lines that aren't blocked off. As I said, I'd heard that people came here a year ago and picked the place clean. I tried to get into some of the old office spaces and raid them, but whenever they closed the building, they sealed that off with some serious high grade locks. Not just the kind of thing you can hack into, but I thought I could check it out anyway and see if there was any scrap that got looked over-"

Garrus lets out what sounds rather a lot like a frustrated growl. "Just get to the point."

The salarian straightens up a little, now that 'bad cop' is back into play. "I heard some noises coming from the warehouse direction. Just some shouting, only for a second, usual noises in a place like this at that time of the night. Anyway, I finish up in the other parts a couple of hours later, can't get into any doors, go to check out the warehouse, and then I see the body and that figure over him. He looked up and saw me, I know he did, so I ran back outside as fast as I could to hide and call C-Sec."

"So if you were trespassing in here and wanted to hide it, why hang around for us to show up?" I ask, frowning.

"I was hiding from the killer! I didn't want to try and flee into the streets in case he came after me, I just...hid until I heard the sirens, and then came out to talk to your officers." He narrows those wide, beady eyes at me, folding his arms. "I wanted to tell someone what I'd seen."

"Sure, just as long as you made a story that exonerated yourself too. That's very noble," I say, rolling my eyes. Still, what he was saying makes more sense, especially with the evidence from the mass condenser. Some elements of it still seem weird, though. The shouting back from the warehouse isn't completely consistent with the evidence that the victim was killed without a struggle, after all – the incision to the neck is too precise for that. I glance to Garrus. "Any other questions?"

"You didn't get a good look at the killer? Any details at all?" Garrus asks.

"Like I said, it was dark, and I didn't stay long. He was big, though, hunched over. I can't say for sure what species, I just got a quick look before I ran. The body and all the blood took most of my attention." He shudders, presumably remembering the sight. Must have been even more grisly than what we've seen, so I can at least sympathise.

"And the victim? You didn't recognise him?"

The salarian shakes his head. "No. I know some of the other scavengers, but I've never seen a human down in the factories before." He pauses, looking back at me. "So...am I clear to go, now?"

Garrus looks over to me expectantly. Shit, I get to make the call? Going off Citadel law, trespassing and scavenging on abandoned property is still technically a crime – the land still belongs to the Citadel, after all, so trespassing and theft could land the salarian in court and with a pretty hefty fine. That said, we wouldn't have information on the killer without him; and elements of his statement feel like they could be important. He didn't have to stick around, after all.

"Consider this an official verbal caution for your record," I finally say, making a note on my omni-tool of his details, to book that in once we're back. "And I'm confiscating this mass condenser. Abandoned or not, you can't trespass and take materials, plus it's dangerous. Not just for reasons like this." I gesture back towards the tent with the corpse in. "That clear? You get caught doing this again, and you'll get taken in, okay?"

The salarian definitely looks pissed about losing his mass condenser, but he's not about to push his luck. He must know he's getting let off a bit easier here – playing this completely by the book, I should probably have taken him back to the station. "I understand. After this, I won't be going anywhere near one of these places again."

"Make sure you don't," Garrus mutters to him, fixing the salarian with a stern stare as he nods rapidly, before rather swiftly gathering himself and heading away from the crime scene, back towards the residential area of the Ward. The turian fixes me with a look, mandibles stretching into a smile. "Letting him go?"

"I mean, not exactly. He stills get a caution on his record, and these," I say, gesturing to the mass condenser. "Aren't exactly cheap. Why, think I should have cuffed him?"

"If I thought that, I wouldn't have let him walk away," Garrus chuckles. "You did the right thing. Dragging him in for trespassing wouldn't help us solve this case any faster. Just don't get too nice with people." That's a relief, though I didn't anticipate he'd be too antsy over not playing exactly to the book, all things considered.

"I'll try not to. I was about ready to take him at face value when he started talking, honestly," I admit. "I guess you get an instinct for when people are lying, huh?"

"It's usually the irritated ones. If they're getting defensive without even accusing them of something, well. You can start drawing conclusions."

We start heading back towards the warehouse crime scene. By now, we've got more forensics staff on the scene – while they'd initially started by just checking the body, we've got more people available to start sweeping the rest of the factory, presumably including the locked off areas that the salarian scavenger mentioned. There's still room for us to head in and look around, but it's good to see the place getting a proper look through by the experts.

"Interesting that he talked about a shout, though," Garrus comments.

"I was thinking that too," I nod. "From what they were saying, there's not signs of a struggle, just the tensed up muscles. Which might just be the rigor mortis? Maybe it was just someone shouting from elsewhere in the Ward?"

"The shout lines up too well with the time of death," Garrus mutters. "You don't get many stealthy krogan either, if he was right about the species. That, and it doesn't sound like the victim was a regular scavenger."

"I mean, first time for everything, but it does seem a bit weird for an embassy clerk to come down into the factories, even if he lives nearby," I admit. "So, enough time to shout, but not enough to struggle. From the sounds of it our murderer was at least krogan sized, and it seems unlikely he got snuck up on, so...maybe he got lured down here?" Something about this does feel bitingly familiar, but I still can't quite place what it is. "Let's try and play it out." Garrus fixes me with a curious look, eye squinting beneath the blue display of his visor.

"You want me to roleplay murdering you?"

"Could you not sound so enthusiastic about that?" I ask, trying to visualise the space around me. "Just head over to the entrance so we can space this out and think it through from what we know. So, Anthony would have been stood about where I was, here. You enter-" I turn around to face Garrus. "And he could have turned around to see his killer. That would give him enough time to shout, but doesn't give you a lot of time to get close and slit his throat without a struggle, does it?"

"I've not slit many throats, but it does seem unlikely," Garrus nods.

"So he might have shouted, but then didn't resist at all when the assailant closed the distance and stabbed him. Frozen in place, almost," I murmur. What am I missing here? "But that still wouldn't allow a wound that precise, right?"

Garrus pauses, before the turian's eyes light up, immediately flicking open his omni-tool and sweeping it around in a scan of the warehouse interior. I fold my arms, slightly miffed that he seems to have worked something out before I have. "Had a bright idea?"

"What you said about being frozen. It's possible. Takes a powerful biotic to do it, but they could have put the victim into-"

"Stasis." We both say it at the same time, just as Garrus' scan for traces of eezo flag a positive trace within the warehouse's interior. "Put him into stasis, killed him with the incision to the throat, and then carried out the surgery. That would explain the tensed muscle, why there was a shout but no signs of a struggle. The victim never even got a chance to move beyond that first yell."

"Exactly," Garrus nods, looking back up and around the warehouse. "So they must have finished cutting him open and extracting the organs, then got interrupted by the salarian and ran before they could hide the body."

"Yeah, but they must have planned to hide it somewhere nearby, right? Where were they going to hide a corpse in an open space like this-"

My attention is snapped back to corner of the room by the distinctive sound of retching – the human officer who was previously stood guarding the cordon is now staggering away from the previously sealed door into the office space that I'd clocked when I entered the warehouse. There's a couple of grim-faced asari forensics officers looking back over to Garrus & I.

"Detectives? I think you should come and take a look at it."

I exchange a look with Garrus, but quickly hurry over. For forensics officers to have expressions like that, it can't be anything good.

As it turns out, it's not.

I take one look, then I'm recoiling in much the same way as the human officer from before, barely able to hold back on throwing up before I can get clear of the crime scene.

"Well," I can hear Garrus mutter from behind me. "I guess that answers your question."

They show us a lot of things in training to try and steel you for things like this, but nothing comes close to the sight, or smell, of a sealed office space, and the stench of five carcasses piled up inside of it. Two humans, a turian, salarian, even what I think was a quarian, from the fleeting look I got before hurrying out.

The killer has used this place before – off the grid, with nobody batting an eyelid at who comes and goes, supposedly already picked clean by scavengers a year ago - and the evidence hidden in a sealed room scavengers certainly wouldn't have the tech to open up.

With that many bodies in the same place, what the salarian mentioned about the size of the killer, the organs being removed...that lingering feeling of familiarity that's been sitting with me as soon as we arrived finally clicks together, even with my head still spinning.

I can picture the scene. Sat at home on my couch, legs hooked over the edge, watching Shepard and Garrus talk next to the Mako on my TV.

"I was tasked with tracking black-market trade on the Citadel," he says. "Most of it harmless, nothing I needed to pursue. But during the course of my investigation, I noticed an increase in the trade of body parts. Organs, mostly. We usually get a few of those, but not the numbers I was seeing. We weren't sure if there was a new black market lab, or if some freak was harvesting organs from citizens."

Shepard gives him an odd look of confusion. "You've seen this before on the Citadel?

Garrus nods. "Every so often, some lab sells unwanted parts through the black market. But they're not as bad as the psychos. I remember this one elcor diplomat we caught on the job. He was hacking people up and selling their organs. Had the station in a bit of a panic."

One corpse wouldn't be enough to get the station in a panic, but finding six at once?

That might do the trick.