School of the Crown Assassins

12

"Someone should've seen them," Nydia added as she licked some spilled whipped cream from her fingers.

"No one did," the principal responded.

Arielle narrowed her eyes and glared with scrutinizing intensity, "It's the first-floor main room. Even the students staying in the outer circle gather there. How's that possible?"

"As you may have noticed, the weather's unusually nice today. Most of the students were practicing outside or attending their classes."

"Wait, so the body had been hanging there since before dinner time? When classes were still ongoing?" I asked.

"We're not sure how long it had been on display, but our forensics put the time of death in the afternoon."

"And no one noticed he was missing until he was found dead on the sculpture?"

He shook his head, "Mr. Balker has a history of disappearing and not attending classes and even his friends had suspected nothing of his missing presence. It wasn't until his father had called us from Cressida and stated that he received a threatening message that we realized Mr. Balker may have been in danger."

The name of the Unassailable Court Assassin the Crown Fortier claimed was unable to attend was named Balker. I suppose I now knew what the emergency was.

"What did the message say?" Knox inquired.

"The same one you had read earlier," he stated. "The hierarchy will fall."

There was a moment of silence before I asked, "If bringing down the hierarchy is the murderer's goal, then why did he or she kill Balker?"

"The Balker family has been a prominent member of the Court and was a part of the original assassins who united the Broken States and formed Concorde. Killing a direct descendant and their only son is a major threat."

"So the killer sent Balker's father a message before they placed him on the sculpture," Arielle summarized.

"But why?" Knox inquired.

"To mock them," Nydia replied. "I'm guessing you guys tried to look for him with no luck."

Principal Cartwright nodded a confirmation. "We scoured every corner of the school for an hour but were still unable to find him until he was put on display in the main room for all the students to see."

"And," Damien added, "you probably recommended all of the students stay outside to train or hang out in the nice weather while you covertly searched the place. Am I right?"

Principle Cartwright bowed his head. "Some students stayed behind despite our words, but..."

"So our killer had the circumstances needed to place the body where they wanted and write the message," I summed up. "Vacant enough for no one to catch them, but not enough for their presence to be unusual."

"What about the cameras?" Arielle asked.

"Every single camera in the school had gone blank for five minutes. By the time we had been able to get them back up and running, the body had been placed and students were already starting to gather."

"So the body had to have been hidden somewhere near the sculpture," Knox stated.

"That's what we had predicted too," he said. "But we had found no signs of the body's hiding location anywhere in the neighboring vicinities."

"Okay..." Nydia drawled. "But why wait in the first place? The killer could've sent the message to his father earlier, maybe even after he had been killed, and still carried out the plan flawlessly, despite classes still being in session. Why wait for nine hours and risk getting caught?"