Coded ambition

Fragment 8: Gaps, Part 1

Ryker Dubs pensively looked out the window in his office. He rubbed his eyes to relax them after spending many hours in front of the computer. He leaned backwards to alleviate the pain in his sore back and took a large sip from his giant coffee mug. Then he closed his eyes to concentrate on the new facts and associated information regarding Natalie Arsted's case.

It was really strange, he thought. Natalie's forensic report had finally arrived and the result showed that she had indeed been poisoned. But not with any of her drugs for her mental illness. The killer was an expensive artificial poison without smell or color that had been illegally traded in Cading for several months. It was called Invisible Hunter and it was causing the police a lot of problems because of the increasing number of associated murder cases. Whoever gave Natalie the poison spared no expense or effort to make sure she died efficiently and almost imperceptibly. According to Anne, the substance was somewhat similar to the dart frog poison, Batrachotoxin, which depolarized muscles and nerves, causing arrhythmias and eventually heart failure. However, it had been synthetically modified to work much more slowly, giving the new substance its reputation as a silent killer. It was a very efficient murder weapon.

Ryker Dubs had not expected such an extreme outcome. His own humble opinion had been that Natalie Arsted had committed suicide due to some family matters or similar. She was severely depressed after all.

The only thing that let him act differently in the investigation from the beginning was the fact that Natalie Arsted's name was on a special list of people. This internal list, designated for inspectors of the police only, collected names of special interest and was reserved for very few who could afford it.

It was a relic of the corrupt police power structures from several decades and not public or known to many people anymore. The wealthy people, however, who knew about that list still loved to secure any privileges financially, even if it was in semi-legal ways. For most, it was rather a display of power than anything else by now. Due to unknown reasons, the higher-ups in the Cading police tolerated these means worthy of questioning. It was something that Ryker Dubs had never understood.

Once upon a time, Alexander Prince had paid a large sum to put his daughter's name on it. By doing so, Natalie was suspected to not have died by her own doing. Mr. Prince had done this to force the police to do a full investigation if anything happened to his daughter. He was probably an old sly fox and wanted to protect his daughter in as many ways as possible, Ryker figured. But it also looked as if he could foresee what would happen. That fact alone was disturbing to the core.

After a moment's thought, the inspector checked the logs for when Natalie's name was added and found out that it was shortly included after she had married her husband. The interaction logs in their system also proved that she had not been on the list before that point in time, not under her maiden name. Suspicious, indeed.

Ryker emptied his coffee mug hurryingly and put it away so it did not obscure the lower part of his screen. He felt as if this detail was somehow important and everything else would disturb his thinking process. But the thought came alone without further substantial clues. He did not know enough about those circumstances and thus, could not assess them properly.

The police inspector scratched his neck angrily. It was an annoying feeling to see something that could be related but did not really matter right now. He felt a tingling sensation in his fingers but could not act on it. He was really looking forward to having some interrogations with potential suspects together with Jade later.

After learning the outcome of the murder case in which the other model died yesterday, Ryker became slightly disappointed. Apparently, the woman was killed by her lover, whom she had been avoiding for some time. He was a desperate man with severe erotomania, an obsessive-compulsive love disorder, and would rather have the model dead than with anyone other than himself. His weapon of choice, however, was cyanide poisoning. This man had slipped a lethal dose of potassium cyanide into one of her drinks. When he realized what he had done, he committed suicide in the outskirts of town.