The Light in the Deep

by Alcoac

Rapture Noir. Exiled Inspector Teddy Nuckles wasted not a single good thought when he set eye on the lumbering brute clutching a bag of blood on Opening Day of Rapture. He shot him. In the bag, a beautiful woman's severed head. Chief Sullivan orders him to focus on the Fontaine case, but Tenenbaum's autopsy brings up many a puzzle, including a link to German experiments in Poland.

5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Two hours later, I still couldn't get my mind off the question, and couldn't bring my stomach to get up an appetite. I was sitting in The Fighting McDonagh's Tavern, just a short bathysphere ride from the security offices in Rapture Central Command. I always did my best thinking outside the office and right now the English-style pub was perfect. I was staring at a plate of fried fish and chips but couldn't take a bite. This time of the afternoon most folks were still at work. Fortunately, Bill McDonagh that crazy Brit who owned the joint was attending to his duties as head engineer of Rapture at the moment. He rarely visited his pub during the day, so that's the exact time I would come. I owed him $500 from a bad night a few months back. Long story. Let's just say, cherchez la femme. Worst part is, when I did run into him from time to time making rounds with Ryan, he'd never bring it up with me. Crazy Brit.

The visit to Tenenbaum's had left me with more questions than answers, pardon the cliché. She wrote up cause of death on the brute as my gun shots had severed his spine and airways, but she told me in fact, had the big man not taken my lead, he would have likely died within hours if not minutes. All of the malformations and irregularities in his body, she had said. Didn't make no sense to me what some old Jerry gas had to do with a guy like that down in Rapture. Still, there's no such thing as a coincidence in police work.

Also, unfortunately, Tenenbaum had even less information to tell me about the victim, the woman. She had been able to give me time of death as about 24-48 hours prior to dropping out of the bag. Not entirely helpful. Worse, she had confirmed the woman had been alive during her beheading due to the effusion of blood around the wound and other details I hadn't bothered to remember. With Tenenbaum, if you could get the bottom line out of her, you didn't want to go back asking for more.

Interestingly, the doctor had been able to tell me the makeup was applied after the beheading. That was the kernel I was trying to pop. That might throw my call girl theory out the port hatch. I doubted the brute would have had the manual dexterity, let alone artistic talent to apply the makeup the way she was dolled up. Without names for the mismatched pair, I didn't really have much to go on. Just more questions. The beauty and the brute.

Back in Philadelphia, before everything that happened, we used to have a saying printed up on the wall of the detective's shop – Get off Your Butt and Talk to Joe. Joe being the man on the street who had the information you needed to put wind in your sails. Problem here was, even in Rapture, there were a lot of Joes, and I had no place to begin.

I decided to begin with my lunch. I started chewing on bits of the fish and smothered tartar sauce on everything. I couldn't imagine anyone lasting a week in Rapture who didn't have a taste for seafood. Just another of Ryan's surprises he somehow neglected to print in the brochure. The waitress came over and re-filled me with a third glass of cold water. I was thinking about how there was a lack of variety in the food in the deep, and it occurred to me there had to be an even smaller variety of cosmetics. Even with the booming free market allowed to unfetter its whatever-Ryan-called –it, there still just weren't enough materials to make for that many styles.

"Cherchez la femme," I muttered.