CHAPTER FIVE – BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
LUX
Ahsoka asks what I'm thinking. "Barriss, how does The Walking Dead have anything to do with how the killers got from Ryloth to Onderon?"
"How do you get a ship ticket if you don't have money?"
Ahsoka bites. "How?"
"You use someone else's." Barriss says, the obviousness of it making me want to smack myself in the face. "As I was checking the passenger manifests, something caught my attention. Do you remember someone named Rassk?"
The name rings a bell. I scroll back in my datapad. "That was the first victim on Ryloth."
"You're correct, Senator Bonteri. Rassk was the first victim, whose credit card charges lasted longer than his life." Her voice changes. "It's sad, really."
"Credit card charges?" Ahsoka prompts.
"Right. According to the friend who discovered the body, a few things were missing from Rassk's apartment. Two of those things were his wallet and a cache of credits hidden under his mattress."
Looks like Rassk never thought beyond the most obvious hiding places.
"Is he a blue Twi'lek?" I ask.
"He is."
"So Bonnie and Clyde stole Rassk's identification and money and used both to buy the ticket." I muse. "Who was seated next to him?"
"Two men. But something else popped up as well: Dinah O'Donnel is a spice merchant who traveled to Ryloth on business, and she apparently made her flight back on time. The reason I say 'apparently' is because she filed a report with spaceport security saying someone stole her purse and boarding pass in the public refresher. When she tried to retrieve it, the person hit her in the head and knocked her unconscious."
"That sounds like the girlfriend's handiwork." Ahsoka muses.
"I thought that too. This is all I have for now, but I'll be in touch if I find something else." Barriss says, and signs off.
Ahsoka turns back toward me. "It sounds like our Bonnie and Clyde, all right. At Saw's apartment Clyde attacked and Bonnie robbed. With the tickets, it's the same thing."
I scroll back through my datapad. "I think we should pay a visit to Saw's apartment. We need to get a better understanding of why these thieves wanted him."
…
I push the crime scene tape away from Saw's front door and hold it up.
"After you."
"Thanks," Ahsoka ducks under the tape and steps into Saw's living room. "So, Saw was sitting on the couch with the television on…" She moves over to the couch. "Steela's pistol was on the table, but besides that there isn't much of value here."
I look around the room. Saw's sagging couch, an armchair he got from a garage sale, and a lamp serve as the room's decorations. He has a few work holopads scattered about along with some random refuse, but nothing worth taking.
"He says Bonnie didn't spend a lot of time in here. We should check the rest of the place."
"I'll take the bedroom if you'll take the kitchen." She volunteers.
"Deal." I doubt Saw did his dishes before he was attacked, but I can deal with a little dirt. After all it can't be that large of a stop, it's the kitchen after all.
I walk through the kitchen door and glance around the counters. Nothing except a half-eaten bagel.
Next stop, the cupboards. Yes, all the dishes are in place. All the forks and knives are in the drawer, just like Saw likes them. And the cupboards designated for food -
I check again.
Where's Saw's food?
Anyone who knows Saw Gerrera knows that he believes in three food groups: Meat, carbs, and instant food. When Dono brought up the radical suggestion of eating salad once in a while, he almost tripped over himself protesting the idea.
The pantry is almost bare. No boxed macaroni and cheese, no cans of nuna-noodle soup, none of that powder that one mixes into water to form bread that tastes like dust. Not even a measly box of ration bars.
Saw wouldn't let his pantry get this bare without running to the market to replenish it. Did Bonnie and Clyde steal his food?
Just to be sure, I swing open the refrigerator. It only houses a carton of blue milk, some TV dinners, and a twelve-pack of beer but that's typical Saw. Nothing seems to be missing here. The pantry, however, is another story.
"Lux?"
Ahsoka stands in the doorway, a hand on her hip.
"Will you check something out in the bedroom? I think some of Saw's clothes are missing."
"His food is definitely gone." I shut the refrigerator door. "He never lets his pantry go absolutely bare."
Ahsoka leads the way into the bedroom and flips open a wooden trunk. Inside are a few pairs of socks and underwear, a ragged T-shirt, and a pair of pants.
"I don't see his vest or his armor plates," Ahsoka comments "But he might have been wearing them during the attack. Is anything else missing?"
I experimentally shove the clothing aside. "I don't see the blue collared shirt I gave to him for his birthday. And he owns more than one pair of pants for sure."
"I can't find a laundry hamper or even a pile." Something on the nightstand catches her eye, and she strides over to pick something up.
"What is it?" I ask.
"Pills, and a velvet sheath," she mutters and turns the container around. "Do you know why Saw would be taking codeine?"
"It's legitimate," I explain. "Before you and your masters arrived to help us, he fell off a Tee-muss and injured his shoulder. It never really healed properly. When the injury flares up he needs to take the medicine again."
"Must have been having a flare-up," Ahsoka mumbles. "He got this filled two days ago. It's almost completely full."
She sets the bottle back on the nightstand and picks up the sheath.
"Do you have any idea what this is?"
I get a bad taste in my mouth. "No," I lie.
"Lux, what is it?"
"A sheath," I say. "A sheath for the heirloom Tandin gave to Saw."
Ahsoka's mouth snaps shut, and we reach an unspoken consensus: Don't. Tell. Tandin.
"This just gets stranger and stranger." I muse.
"How?"
"That holo of Steela that Bonnie showed to Clyde. Saw kept it right here on the nightstand, so there's no way she just didn't notice the pills. The thieves took food, clothes, heirlooms, and a gun; they pass up expensive electronics and a controlled substance that sells high on the black market. Why would you do that?"
"Ex convicts needing a change of clothes?"
"How would a man and woman meet in jail? And why did a holo make Clyde change his mind about killing Saw?" I pull Saw's nightstand drawer out to reveal the collection of holos he thinks I don't know about. I press the button on one.
There's a three-year-old Saw, holding a newborn Steela like she's a tooka.
Saw and Steela, sleeping in sleeping bags.
Saw, maybe five years old, all dressed up in first-day-of-school attire.
The next holo is of me, smiling in blissful ignorance of the practical joke about to play out.
"Hey Bonteri! You need to get your holo taken for the records." Saw snapped, carrying a camera.
"Okay. What do you want me to do?"
He gestured to the nearest building. "Just stand up against the wall and smile."
I stood against the wall and smiled. Saw lifted the camera and was about to press the button to capture the image when I heard something above me.
I looked up too late, and a bucketful of freezing cold water slapped me in the face.
Saw snapped the photo, laughing. "Ha! You should see the look on your face."
I turned red, and not from the cold water.
"That wasn't funny!" I yelled, and chased after Saw until I couldn't go on any longer.
"Saw never struck me as sentimental," Ahsoka says, clicking through another holo, this one of Saw's parents.
"He really isn't, but he liked holos." I concede. "That one of me was part of a prank, and the others he and Steela held onto."
"That prank apparently happened to Dono too." Ahsoka points out, showing me a holo of a soaking-wet Dono. "And from Steela's expression in the background, I'm willing to bet she was the one holding the bucket."
"She was." I reminisce. "We didn't figure it out until we realized she was the only one who hadn't been soaked. The next morning, all of us dumped a bucket on her when she came out of the barracks."
A smile twitches on Ahsoka's lips. "Fives played a prank on a batch of shinies a while back." She says. "He took a recording from a horror movie, hid a speaker in the shower room vents, and told the shinies the showers were haunted."
I can only imagine the chaos that would come from a "haunted" shower room. Every communal shower experience I know has been awkward unless there were privacy walls. Horror movie sounds coming from the vents would make me seriously consider washing myself in the sink for the rest of my life.
"I wager that didn't go over well."
"By the time Rex finally found the speaker and convinced the shinies that nothing supernatural was going on, they were either taking their blasters into the shower with them or taking birdbaths in the sink." She rolls her eyes. "It wasn't hard to find out who did it; Fives was in stitches the whole time. And Master Kenobi wonders why we never get anything done when we're off-duty."
"Pranks among men, there's nothing like it."
"Amen. But anyway," she says, lifting the holo from the living room so she can see it. "These holos only make sense in context. To Bonnie and Clyde they're just a bunch of pictures of people they don't know."
She holds the holo of Saw and Steela in front of her chest.
"Look at this picture. If you were Bonnie, what jumps out at you right away?"
I look closer. The image is of Saw and Steela in front of the ruping pens, his elbow casually propped on her shoulder.
"It's two rebels in a camp," I say lamely, not knowing what else to tell her.
"Good start. To a native Onderonian, the rebels are considered heroes. But Bonnie and Clyde are off-worlders, so that doesn't apply. What we have here is proof that Saw is the wrong kind of victim for them."
"Ahsoka, they've gone after bachelors living by themselves. Saw fits the bill perfectly."
"No," she shakes the holo. "When Bonnie saw this, she didn't know Steela was dead. From her perspective, this holograph is proof that Saw has a family. He isn't some bachelor that nobody's going to miss or care about if he's gone. He's a brother, and if they killed him his sister would never stop looking for the ones responsible. All in all, killing him would be a bad decision."
I nod, kicking myself for not making the connection. "Families always complicate matters when it comes to getting away with murder." I know that firsthand.
"Right. Which is why the targets have been bachelors. No families means no one's needling the investigators about the case, and it'll eventually go cold. We're lucky they picked Saw; if they didn't we probably wouldn't have noticed what they were doing."
I cross my arms. "So we're looking for a couple who want to get away scot-free for their crimes, own a slugthrower, and don't harm men with families."
That gets us nowhere, and Ahsoka knows it.
"Hopefully Barriss will come through with her research." She says, setting the picture back.
My comlink rings.
"It's General Tandin." I flip open the comlink. "Lux Bonteri speaking."
"Senator Bonteri, are you and Commander Tano still at Saw's house?"
"We are." A cold feeling creeps into my bones. "Is Saw all right, General? Is something wrong?"
"Saw is fine," Tandin reassures. "I need you to meet my men in the third block south of Malagan Market. I'm sending the address to you as we speak."
"Third block south of Malagan Market? That's residential."
"I'm aware. One of my men responded to a report of a noise disturbance and requested immediate backup. We have another body."
Jack and Mar don't waste time when it comes to murder.
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Until next time,
LS
