Wired Bone: Prologue (Patreon)

The bodies were cold, and they had been for quite a while.

The crowds of onlookers, originally just a smattering of children watching from across the street — eyes wide, expressions blank and knees drawn up to the chest — had evolved into most of the neighborhood finally approaching the three corpses that had been there since around twenty past midnight.

Several police officers were already standing around, keeping order past the yellow line some industrious soul had already produced around the crime scene. The biological automatons un-affectionately nicknamed Coppers stomped around, gathering wary looks from civilians and officers alike as their glassy eyes kept watch for any suspicious activity.

Or whatever a dog brain in a jar could manage to classify as suspicious activity.

The sky was blue and wide over the housing projects, nary a cloud in sight. The sticky heat of summer beat down on all and accelerated the decomposition of the moldering bodies. A few members of the audience held bottles or ice treats, appetite unaffected by the sight of three teenage bodies surrounded by flies.

The portly detective stepped out of the car, laid eyes on the nearest body and promptly said, “Fuck.”

“Mm?” his partner said, but he was already rushing forward, ducking under yellow tape. A few officers made to stop him, but his partner flashed her badge as she chased him down. “Harvey! What’s wrong?”

Detective Harvey failed to answer, walking around until he found the corpse’s face, turned and mushed against the floor after it had fallen, half-stained by the puddle of blood from the hole in the middle of its forehead.

Seeing the face he expected to see, he repeated himself. “Fuck.”

Harvey’s partner arrived at his side, and failed to recognize the young man’s face. “Who is it?”

“Fuck.”

“Harvey?”

“This is bad, Kate.”

Kate looked at their audience out of the corner of her eye and winced at the wary expressions on the civilians’ faces. “You, uh, you wanna take it down a notch, detective? You’re scaring the people.”

“Fuck the people,” Harvey hissed, though to his credit he did do it in a low voice. And he leaned in to whisper the next part in an even lower voice; “That’s Kingston Hill’s son.”

Kate blinked, then she looked at the body with newfound dread pooling in her stomach.

“… well then,” she said. “… fuck.”

“Yeah,” said Harvey, putting a hand to his sweaty forehead. “How did this happen? I just saw him last night!”

Kate frowned, then looked at him, “At what time?”

“I didn’t do this!”

“I know, stupid. Talk.”

“Um,” Harvey rubbed his chin. “I’d just grabbed the gas station sushi, remember? So that had to be around… eleven? Half past, maybe?”

“Closer to half past, yeah,” Kate agreed, remembering winning the seventh round of rock-paper-scissors. “Okay… what was he doing out that late?”

“Oh, how should I know?” Harvey asked, with typical old man exasperation regarding the subject of teenagers. “Grabbing booze with his dumbass friends, I guess.”

“So, who was he with?”

Harvey frowned, then looked around towards the other bodies.

Hill’s son had dropped near the edge of the corner of the sidewalk, as if he had been leaning against the currently bloodstained stop sign. The others, clearly having died a number of seconds after, were a few ways away in two other directions.

There was one around the corner, a little farther up the street, while another had run straight down the same street his friend had died on. He couldn’t remember the other normal boy too well, but the third kid was hard to forget.

And indeed, a short run down the street laid a corpse in a heap of white fur and exposed grey matter.

“These guys,” said Harvey, gesturing vaguely. “So, he was still with them up to the end.”

Harvey stood up and inspected the corpse of Jacob Hill. He noticed an upwards angle to where the bullet came in and where it came out, which made him frown. He walked back a bit, then ducked under the yellow tape again to position himself where he thought the shooter should’ve been.

He made a gun with his fingers and aimed it roughly at height with where Jacob’s head would’ve been. Then he tried to match the angle.

His frown deepened. It was very awkward. The recoil would’ve hurt his wrist if he shot someone like this, any gang assassin would know that, and it only made sense that a gang assassin or some other type of professional killer would have been the one to kill Jacob.

Kate approached him and came to the same conclusion regarding the angle, exchanging confused looks with him.

“… alright,” Harvey said. “You check out the other kid, I’ll inspect fluffy, and when you’re done let me know so we can give Hill another look.”

“Got it.”

The furry corpse revealed a sequence of events. The boy’s nose had shattered against the ground, and he had a hole in his lower back, near the spine. A lucky shot, or the result of skill?

Whatever the case, it had led to broken fingernails and a small trail from where he had dragged himself forward in a desperate attempt to escape. Harvey wasn’t sure how much progress was made, but it couldn’t have been a lot considering how little distance there was between Hill’s corpse and the place where it now laid, now with a similar hole in his own head.

No odd angle on that one, naturally. Must’ve been a shot straight down.

An execution.

The shot on the spine, however, also had no angle. As if he’d been shot from the hip. It would’ve been hard to hit someone in an area that precise like that, though. Someone with that level of skill would have to be a known quantity, but why would someone that good waste effort and possibly time doing a ridiculous trick shot instead of aiming for center mass?

Was it just a lucky shot?

Harvey’s frown deepened, but he looked around and asked questions. Nearby officers hadn’t found anything notable, besides spent shell casings, and nobody had managed to identify the boy yet, not even civilians.

That part was not unusual, as the young man probably lived outside the neighborhood. The people of El Santo weren’t kind to his type.

Harvey walked back towards Kate, who was taking her sweet time looking over the body. Eventually, she resigned herself to not finding more details and walked back towards her partner, who was once more staring at Hill’s body with a miserable expression.

Kate produced a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and offered one to Harvey, who shook his head minutely and instead pulled a cigar from his own jacket, which he wore in summer heat and would’ve continued to wear if he’d been standing on the surface of the sun.

“Thoughts?”

“And prayers,” Harvey muttered. “This… the angle of the shots makes no sense.”

“My kid had the same angle as Hill,” Kate said. “So… a killer with dwarfism? Or someone good enough to shoot from the hip, I guess. Either way, shouldn’t be too hard to track down someone notorious like that.”

“… they were caught by surprise, though.”

“What do you mean?”

Harvey looked at her, then broke CSI doctrine by walking over and moving the corpse, ignoring the complaints of the nearby officer who wasn’t done taking pictures.

Moving his clothes, Harvey revealed that Hill had a gun tucked down the front of his pants.

“A midget or an assassin would’ve been noticed,” Harvey continued as he took out the gun and inspected it. It was fully loaded. “And besides, a skilled assassin would’ve known better than to kill Kingston Hill’s son.”

“So?”

“So… what kind of person is small, unnoticeable and too stupid to know better than to toss the city into chaos?”