The body is being examined in an autopsy bay. At a glance at the scene it was an open and shut case of [slip and slide] off a roof. But a few blood stains were darker compared to the rest, shards of glass found adjacent to the wound, even though the streets was cleaned and no windows were damaged. finally bruises around the neck indicated strangulation.
The fall was a cover up. -- Anon Guest
The body did fall. There were witnesses and footage of that. What the witnesses and cameras missed was the origin of the drop. Very few cameras pointed to the top of Ivories' Tower. They were pointed out from the tower, but nothing was allowed to look inside.
That was the way Icarus Ivories preferred it.
There was broken glass in the wound, but none of the windows nor glass railings on the balconies were broken. In fact, they were bulletproof, shatterproof, and impact-resistant. A human body at any velocity couldn't break anything in the Ivories' penthouse suites.
It had to be murder. Yet there was no sign of the murder weapon.
By the time Richard Hardley got permission to examine Ivories' suites, the place was pristine. Of course it had to be. The staff knew too well what would happen if they slackened in their duties. It took a lot of patience and a lot of friendly repartee to get them to divulge what they remembered.
They weren't permitted to know dates or times. They knew sunrise and sunset. Even then, only barely. Icarus Ivories didn't much like his staff knowing how many hours they worked. He only wanted them to work until they were teetering on the brink of exhaustion.
Every single one of them had a reason to end their employer.
Richard couldn't narrow it down to any one resident of the penthouse. Not until he got a list of all the in-residence holdings, compared against everything that was currently present.
The food and beverages, Richard expected. Laundry and so forth was cycling around as expected. But there was something no longer present that had no ordinary explanation for its absence.
Icarus' office was missing one. Glass. Letter-opener.
The handle was long gone, and with it, the fingerprints that could have incriminated the murderer. Half of it was in Icarus' body. The rest of it... was likely in a large landfill somewhere near the red border district of the city. Which might as well mean that it was lost forever.
The next key was inside Icarus' office. An ordinance that would have made things infinitely worse for everyone except the Ivories and their best buddies. People would have starved. People would have died. People would have lost everything. All so Icarus and his pals could have another luxury airship.
Anyone who tidied his office had a motive to do the crime. Except... Nobody who tidied his office could read.
The trophy wife drew Richard's attention. She was permitted everywhere so long as she was beautiful. A little investigation revealed that she was a real Cinderella story. Picked up from the gutters by Icarus when she was fourteen and he was... a lot older. Raised and educated to be the perfect match to his chosen aesthetics.
She had learned to read.
She still had family in the red border district. Though contact with them was limited.
She had means, motive, and opportunity.
On the other hand, without fingerprints on the murder weapon... there was no way the courts would convict a wealthy socialite and heir to the Ivories fortune.
She was already planning to ease the stresses of regular folks like Richard.
She was definitely going to get away with murder.
What a shame.
[Photo by Danila Balashkin on Unsplash]
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