Infernal Investigations Volume 2 - Chapter 105 - Silence II

The bolthole entrance took a few seconds to open, with no handle and the hinge being on the inside. Waist-high, it opened up to reveal the back of a cabinet, tearing wallpaper as it opened.

Now that I could hear more of the surrounding area with the door opened, I didn’t notice any signs of alarm. Or any signs of people moving nearby at all. Strange.

Or perhaps not. With the sudden shortage of people willing to work for them, most of the gang was probably dealing with actually getting Glee Street ready for its nightly custors. Or perhaps the Baltaren had surprised Holmsteader in her office.

Either way, I forced myself to slow down . I’d hear soone coming. And I needed to lower the risk of making noise. Make enough of a ruckus, and soone would co to investigate.

It would be safer to wait for night in most cases, but that couldn’t be done now. Even if they didn’t know about this entrance, the entire room would be under watch after this. And I couldn’t risk them removing anything.

Rot, The Imp whispered, apparently deciding to start speaking again after comparing to a fish.

I ignored it, both for that being the reason it was awake and because the point of this was to remain unnoticed.

Diabolism techniques had to exist for doing magic on the fly without corruption, or the complicated ritual setups people like Donald Tyler had used. Unsurprisingly, none of my teachers had felt the need to teach any of them. They preferred loud and reliant on others to do subtlety when it ca to magic.

Instead, I worked the back of the cabinet with a knife, testing how deep the wood was. Not very deep, so I instead took the long route to the audible groans of the Imp.

Once again you deny yourself your natural-born gifts out of stubborn pride, The Imp hissed.

“I’m trying not to be detected in the middle of hostile territory,” I whispered back as I chopped. I’d probably wreck this knife doing it. “Also, wouldn’t pride be considered a good thing among devils?”

That got an angry snapping hiss, and a tossed-off remark about always having to take the hard way. As if having to deal with a horde of angry gang mbers bursting upon in a room with their boss’ corpse was the ‘easy path’.

Eventually, I sliced a square big enough for to fit. I spent another minute working to remove any part of it that could cut or stab and squeezed myself through.

As I forced my way through, I was nearly face to face with Holmsteader’s corpse.

I paused, taking in the sight for a few seconds.

Sothing had punched a hole in her head, hitting where her eye was and then traveled all the way through. Gore and chunks of brain had sprayed out from the back of her head, painting the wall. Blood still oozed from the gaping hole in the front, bits of brain and flesh falling into it as the inside of her head slowly lost its structure.

From the angle of the blow, he killer was taller than her, with a fist quite bigger than her eye. Or she might have just been looking down when struck.

I moved to my feet, pulling my revolver out as I looked around. The issue if this was a Baltaren was that they might be in this room and I wouldn’t even know it. My eyes would pass over them like an uninteresting vase; my ears would pay no more attention to their noise than that of a cricket’s chirp.

Also, it was hard to focus because my eyes were under constant assault. Getting up from the floor ant dealing with a far more horrifying sight than Holmsteader’s corpse.

She’d changed the wallpaper to another garish shade, orange, black, and pink, and the room was only half-finished. I felt nauseated seeing it, the two differing sets of horrendous color combinations present not blending in any way. It felt like soone was constantly jabbing my eyes with tiny wooden skewers.

I let out a breath, closed my eyes, focusing on my hearing. Not that it would detect a Baltaren that easily, but I trusted it more than my eyes right now.

Also, the fact that I wasn’t dead was a mark in their not being a Baltaren in the room with . I couldn’t imagine anyone involved in this conspiracy would pass up the opportunity to kill , then make it look like I and Holmsteader had killed each other. Two birds, one stone.

I breathed in, forcing the stillness of the room to be my only focus as I counted seconds. Eighty seconds passed, eighty where I heard nothing but the sounds of floorboards creaking far below, the wind brushing up against the walls, the muffled sounds of people setting up signs and attractions and preparing Glee Street for later today. But most importantly, I focused on the complete lack of sound in this room.

By the eightieth second, my lungs burned, and I hurriedly let my breath out, breathing quickly as my body scread at for what I’d done. I spent the next half-minute breathing and slowly let the tension ease out of . Not a single noise during that ti from inside this room. They were gone.

Probably. I couldn’t really set off a light bomb to try to catch them out. It would definitely attract the attention of Holmsteader’s people.

I opened my eyes again, eyes slightly watering. The wallpaper was not helping with that.

The first thing I did was walk to the door, then, being sure to only use my gloved hands, dragged a piece of furniture over to block the door. No desire to be barged in on, and even less to have my fingerprints all over this place.

No one was nearby yet, so I could afford the noise of wood on wood.

There was a cabinet alongside one of the walls, mostly storing various papers, and I emptied it before slowly dragging it into place. The squeal of wood on wood felt as if soone bounding upstairs imdiately. Sohow, no one had by the ti I’d moved it into place. I wedged a few chairs for more leverage.

With the entrance firmly barricaded in case any of Holmsteader’s people ca up, I finally turned my attention to the corpse.

Holmsteader’s expression was harder to read with this much of her face missing, but she didn’t seem shocked. Angry and irritated, yes, but not like soone about to be killed. Whoever had killed her must have struck quickly.

Another on the list of dangerous foes involved in this. Could I not just have the majority of people left be the scheming masterminds who didn’t know how to throw a proper punch?

Then again, I didn’t think the Priestkiller could throw a punch, and he was the most dangerous of them all so far. I checked her mouth, and as soon as I opened it, blood poured all over my hand. Hrrm. I forced it further open and found the tongue had been torn away. So, should I try to drag her corpse all the way to the elder Vesper and see if I could convince him to do a ritual?

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If they had taken steps to prevent the easiest ways of bringing the spirit back to answer questions, I doubted they would have left the harder ones available. And trying to drag Holmsteader’s corpse all the way through the underground did not sound like a good idea.

Considering how strong the Hells’ hold on her soul would be, anything left would be fragnts as well. I’d take the body only as a last resort.

Checking her pockets turned up so money that I pocketed, a pair of very nice-looking daggers that undoubtedly had ways to be tracked. Checking her clothes turned up so more coinage hidden away, a thin stiletto, a two-shot derringer, so jewelry, a few pieces of which glinted lightly in a way that might an enchantnt, and a package of hoof cream, how decadent. I pocketed all of it.

So, no real clues on the corpse, leaving everything else to search, starting with the desk. Assuming the killer hadn’t known precisely what to take. They might have been here to evaluate if Holmsteader needed to be handled, but it hadn’t sounded that way. They might have warned Holmsteader, but imdiately destroying her face pointed more towards not wanting her alert before the killing blow. The question was, were they trying to silence an uncertain part of their conspiracy, or covering their tracks if they knew their sche was destroyed?

Or both? Soone had to suspect that Kelson wasn’t actually dead. Especially if lissa wasn’t around to be forced to answer if she’d done the job for them, or turned coat on the Fla?

It might have been smarter in a cold sense to try to have lissa go back to them and try to sell that she actually had killed Kelson. But not now. Her having a crisis of faith and being near Versalicci would be the worst possible move. Let them sweat in their ignorance. If they were on the move like this, killing the weakest links in their organization?

Soone would try to talk once they realized that was happening. The trick was figuring out who to convince of that before they died. Leaving the body alone, I moved to the desk. Two entire drawers were missing, and the other ones had mostly miscellaneous items and correspondence. I stuffed most of it inside my coat just to be safe, but the two missing drawers convinced these wouldn’t have anything damning in them.

Whoever had done this had just taken both of the entire drawers with them instead of removing any evidence from what was probably a false bottom. Probably teleportation, or so way of storing it where it wouldn’t be noticeable. Just walking away with an entire drawer would draw attention. Unless they had a way of making themselves unnoticeable, shadow-magic or-okay, enough focusing on the drawer.

Two options: the first that they could teleport. Not unknown, and the people doing this had the magical firepower to pull it off. Also, the one with the least relevance to anything else and with no further leads.

As for the Priest of Baltarens ability to fade from the concious mind, just as hard to track but more evidence of who this killer was.

Nothing I could provide besides my own testimony, of course. Now, the question was where the actual docunts were, not just the copies she probably took out of this drawer as a public show?

The Baltaren cleric had probably taken the drawers assuming any hidden caches would be too difficult to find. They might be right. I doubt Holmsteader had let any of her people know where it was. It might make them a little too ambitious about replacing the boss if they knew all the boss’ secrets. It wouldn’t be near the bolt-hole. You never kept your secrets too close together. One might jeopardize the other.

Paranoid , where would I keep it? Better yet, how would I disguise sothing I regularly needed access to but couldn’t let anyone know existed?

I looked around the room, taking in the changed wallpaper. She had a strange sense of decor. But changing it out this often would be expensive, and ultimately I think even Holmsteader would have her favorite garish combination.

I took a knife to the fresh wallpaper, and eventually at the bottom of the floor found what I was looking for. So of the panels in the wall had larger gaps between them than the others.

Removing it revealed a tal coffer hidden inside the wall, a padlock secured on it. Small, made of tal, set down near the floor. I might have been able to use the marble thod. Perhaps not; it was rather small.

I reached inside my coat, cataloguing my options.

Picks first, then acid if they didn’t work. Traps would be harder to handle if they existed. Perhaps try working from underneath instead of opening the top?

Use Hellfire, The Imp whispered in my mind. Or rust the lock off.

If I wanted to risk alerting anyone in here, certainly. Even the tiniest amount of fla or rust could cause corruption outside this room. Or invested in the contents of the coffer and destroyed them. Or if the hellfire or rust would destroy the contents.

For , Diabolism was not a precision tool.

Working on the padlock, I was happy to find out it was not a commissioned one. It seed Holmsteader had counted on the hidden nature of her chest to protect it above anything else. Delmar was a newer type of lock, produced after I’d left the Fla, so I didn’t have as much experience with them as I did with others. Still, it would be a few brief minutes and-

I paused. Soone was walking towards the door to the room, idly cursing the lack of vagrant workers as she got close. I worked while they made their way up the stairs, not bothering to stop. There was no stopping what would happen. They tried the door, and the cabinet shook just a little.

“Boss?” the gang mber asked in confusion. “What the hells is going on here? Boss?”

I didn’t say anything. She tried to force the door, but it refused to budge by more than a quarter of an inch.

Seconds later, I was swiftly working on the lock with my picks while Holmsteader’s gang mber ran back downstairs, screaming for help.

They’d left the building by the ti the padlock ca free. Others inside the building were heading towards the door, yelling for others to help and get weapons. I opened the coffer just a little, ear against the gap as I tried to ignore the chaos.

Sothing began to click, and I stopped moving the lid. I got a pick inside, maneuvered it, disabled the device, and finally opened the chest just as I heard many sets of hooves and boots running across the floors downstairs.

I flung it open and quickly catalogued the contents visually. There were so bars of precious of what looked like silver, a small bag of gems. Three daggers and a revolver, those probably had ways to track them. A small locket that I briefly opened. Male human, about her age, but the picture looked old. Parent perhaps?

I was far from the only Infernal who’d been born to one or more human parents.

More imdiately important was the set of books and letters in the chest. I picked the first letter up, opened it, and sighed. Behind , the door and cabinet shuddered, Infernals ramming their shoulders against it.

Holmsteader had written in code. Of course. Why settle for one layer of security when you could have multiple?

The books were more promising, even as the cabinet began to shudder. I looked through one while pocketing the daggers, revolver, and three of the silver bars. The books were a list of losses and wins on the casino floor, nas noted, a ledger of everyone for the casino, not coded at all. Of course, Holmsteader probably had far more people than just her go through her books. She’d want them to be able to read it and not use her personal cipher.

She ntioned the casino being used to funnel money into the ritual sche. Frankly, it would have been easier to just have Holmsteader fund it, and any large transactions would be too obvious. Holmsteader probably not willing to risk what money she had.

It was likely they ca with a large amount of money, probably embezzled, and left it here with Holmsteader. They stayed here for a while, betting as cover for why they went to Glee Street. Holmsteader would record the amount they spent here, and any direct link between the ritual sche and the church’s would be obfuscated.

Unless you had a list of people already under suspicion. Like the one and Mourner Kelson had put together

Soone was calling for axes now. Ti to make my escape.

Everything went through the hole first, books and letters pushed to get through. I paused, looking at the corpse, then the shuddering cabinet.

Well. If this was going to be a ss, might as well make it the ssiest one I could. I spent a hurried minute painting. It was sloppy work, especially using blood, but I judged it close enough.

By the ti axes started chopping at the door, I was already down the shaft, hurrying as safely as I could. I made it to the bottom just as they were breaking through the cabinet.

I pulled out a book of matches, eliciting a disgruntled groan from the Imp over my refusal to use Hellfire. I lit several then tossed them on the wooden walkway as I moved towards the exit. The fish surfaced once again, looking at in blank incomprehension, and I gave it a jaunty wave as I made it through the door.

They wouldn’t be able to follow that way, and with no clue who had done it, they’d have to try to guess. Not that I hadn’t left so subtle clues as to who to bla.

Upstairs, Holmsteader’s corpse would be leaned against a wall.

With the symbol of the Black Fla painted above in her blood.