Arc II, Chapter 32: An Illegal Search

Finally, the NPCs started to pack things away and break down the room. We were ready for the next scene. The tables of food were being packed up and taken somewhere in the distance. The sad part was that Bobby’s Craft Services Are The Real Heroes trope had likely played some part in the absolute feast and he was the only player who had not gotten to enjoy it.

Not to mention that he was Mutilated wherever he was.

Kurt Willis, the GI Paragon who had been leading us on this storyline was playing his part being a likable if slightly boisterous police officer, was going into his spiel about how this was a waste of time again. He repeated himself a lot. I doubted every word would get into the final cut. I wondered how much, if any of it was actually on the script.

“Dr. Halle is very influential in this town,” he said. “Bothering him with nothing to show for it is going to be embarrassing for everyone here.” He gave us a look over. “Well, embarrassing for those of us with real jobs. I doubt the movie dude or the psychic are going to fall too far in public opinion from this pageant of misfit detect—”

Just as he was about to finish his line, a banquet worker walked by him pushing a trolley with a bowl of hard punch inside. As she did, the trolley’s wheel caught a snag in the carpet, and the bowl of punch launched up over Willis, showering him in the thick, syrupy red beverage.

He cursed loudly in shock.

If I didn’t know better, I would say he really was shocked, as if he was not expecting it. Was it possible something new had happened?

Cassie gasped. “It looks like blood!” she screamed. It sounded almost involuntary.

The banquet worker was apologizing profusely as Cassie started hyperventilating.

“I think he’s in danger,” she said.

“I can’t believe I got assigned to this stupid exercise in futility,” Willis yelled as he desperately tried to wipe the red drink off his uniform. It stained instantly.

“Nobody’s going to die,” he said with a meaningful gaze. “I have to go wash up. Don’t go anywhere without me. I’m in charge of making sure this investigation is above board!”

I got the feeling that when he said, “Don’t go anywhere,” he meant the opposite.

“Cassie,” Kimberly said, “It’s okay. He’s just fine. He’ll just need a new uniform.

“You don’t understand,” Cassie answered, “It’s a sign. It means that we are heading toward his death. It’s happened to me before.”

Willis looked at her at first with worry, but then he wiped that off his face and replaced it with anger. He left us behind after soaking up as much punch as he could with banquet napkins.

The punch had looked like blood.

Cassie’s Foreboding Signs trope could help her predict death order. In this case, it was telling her that Willis’ life was in danger. She was right, of course. He had a trope guaranteeing he would be First Blood. With her premonition, we would be able to discuss our impending doom On-Screen and in character. I could see how that would be useful.

“Are we really going to stay here?” I asked.

“Not a chance,” Antoine said. “I think we need to go see if Dr. Halle’s hiding something.”

He nodded over toward a large map of the new wing that had been constructed. Halle’s office was featured prominently on the first floor.

We knew where we were going.

“Why the heck would he need an office this big?” Isaac said. “Something tells me his ego had a hand in the new wing layout.”

We spread out. There was a wall of filing cabinets in a hall that looked like a break room connected to his office. His office also had its own bathroom, several closets, a separate area for his secretaries, a conference room, and a fountain that gurgled in the corner.

His desk was cluttered with paperwork as well. A solitary filing cabinet was behind it.

“Keep your voices down,” Antoine said. “If we get caught our investigation is over.”

We searched high and low. The file cabinets were locked, but his desk drawer where he kept the keys wasn’t. Dina found them in seconds. She didn’t even have a trope for that.

We each took a cabinet and started searching.

“I’ve got it,” Kimberly said. “The file from the surgery he performed the morning of the murder.” She looked over it. “My initial impression is that it looks right. I trained as a nurse to help round out my profile for the pageant circuit. These logs and notes are consistent.” She flipped through them. “He was operating for five hours…” She read aloud, “The foreign object was carefully removed, necessitating intricate dissection due to its size and the extent of tissue involvement. Multiple sections of the small intestine were resected, and primary anastomosis was performed… The nursing staff signed off on it.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

She passed the documents around. Her Savvy jumped four points. Convenient Backstory was a really quick way to graduate from nursing school.

“Look,” she said, “He could have faked the whole document, but then the conspiracy would have to include a dozen other people. I just don’t think he’s lying about it.” She looked up at the frames on the wall filled with graduate certificates, licenses, and newspaper clippings. “The guy is incredibly qualified. He’s a world-renowned plastic surgeon yet he was the first call for a complicated emergency surgery from an abdominal injury.”

“So either he’s innocent or he managed to get a lot of people to lie for him,” Antoine said. “That’s terrible news. It means we broke into his office for nothing.”

“We’ll just tell him I came in for a consultation,” Isaac said. “I wonder what the going rate on calf implants is.”

Antoine casually handed him a folder to look through. Antoine had taken a peek. Isaac took it and began flipping through it.

“Check this out,” he said, holding up a large folder filled with photographs.

We gathered around him and looked over his shoulder. Inside, were a collection of photographs of women in various attire, ranging from swimsuits to evening gowns. They appeared to be on stage.

The women were beautiful, but the pictures themselves were marked up with ink from someone circling their various body parts and writing notes beside them like, “Gorgeous” “Perfect” or “Too chubby”.

The pictures spanned at least a decade.

“Oh my god,” Kimberly said as Isaac flipped through them. “That’s me!”

She grabbed the picture and examined it closely.

On the back, it said, “Miss Carousel 1994.” Kimberly was the reining Miss Carousel.

“They’re all Miss Carousels,” Isaac said, showing the other side of several of the photos.

There were lots of names. He flipped through them. At the bottom of the stack was a picture with “Miss Carousel 1972” written on it.