Private Ghosts

[Callista Volpe]

P E L A G O N​

The wind never stopped whipping through the floating city if Pelagar. It was at its worst when crossing the bridges between districts, as Naressa did now.

She was in a hurry, but didn't want to run. Pulling her hood tightly around her head kept it from pulling her hair free. She could see now.

Her pulse was racing. They had to be close behind her now. If she could make the embassy building she would be safe.

Her vision was clear. She saw the flash of the blaster an instant before everything went dark.

---

FOUR DAYS LATER

Droids were sweeping the apartment with scanners. Holographic markers highlighted the blood stains to avoid any of the forensic team walking through them.

Yesterday the body of a conferedrate embassy aide, Naressa Tar, had been found in floating in the ocean outside the city. Today they'd found signs of a struggle and blood stains in her aosttment. The blood did not belong to Naressa.

This was sensitive. Naressa had a past in military intelligence, as did a lot of people working in embassies. She had diplomatic immunity and it seemed she had been murdered on Alliance territory.

The Alliance allowed her to be here and so far no one was making noise about foul play or counter intelligence. The Confederacy had already admitted that an investigation had just been opened to check Naressa's links to organised crime. The Alliance were sending a Jedi too. Callista didn't know whether they were coming to join the investigation or to chaperone an Obsidian Knight.

A CIS diplomat murdered in Alliance space. No clear motive yet.
Linny Rennis

 

[Linny Rennis]

Somebody at the Temple had said the word 'murder' and Linny Rennis had practically jumped out of her seat. Never mind that she was a rookie, barely started her Jedi training and only just qualified as an 'adult,' they'd sent her. It was either a complete and total belief in her incredible investigative abilities, or that the Knights and more experienced Jedi were too busy invading the Sith Empire and nobody else could go.

Linny liked to believe it was the former.

The trip to Pelagon had been uneventful, giving her plenty of time to nervously read and re-read the details of the case. A Confederate diplomat found dead. The CIS themselves were suspecting the organised crime was involved. They'd dispatched one of their own, an Obsidian Knight, to investigate. Linny was to liaise and assist wherever possible.

'Make sure everything stays on the level' the last part of the file had said, 'contact the Temple if you need assistance, SIA on standby for any security threats you may discover.'

When she arrived at the apartment, she flashed her ID to the security officer, waiting for him to confirm with the Marshalls. "Padawan Rennis, I'm the Jedi investigator," she told him, trying to force a little confidence in her voice. She had just as much right to be here as he did, no need to feel like a kid. Even as the officer looked down at her in disbelief, even as the call came through to let her in.

Linny stepped inside and carefully worked her way around the markers. An awful lot more blood than she was expecting. Ruined what seemed to be a pretty nice apartment. The gentle hum of the droids clashed with the muttering of the forensic team as they did their thing. Stood amongst it all was her contact, who seemed a whole lot more grizzled than she'd been expecting. Swallowing her nerves as best she could, Linny approached her.

"Knight Volpe? I'm Linny Rennis, I think you're expecting me?" she asked, giving a quick smile before trying to make a more 'business-like' expression. "I'm your Jedi partner for the investigation. Have there been any developments since you arrived?"

Please don't tell me I'm a kid.

Callista Volpe

 

[Callista Volpe]

If they were assigning her a padawan then they weren't too interested in watching Callista closely.

"Callista," she replied bluntly. She offered a firm handshake.

"Assuming your briefed up to someone finding the body and checking out the room...no, nothing new."

"I need to touch this," she told one of the forensic team, pointing to a table. All the decorations on it had been toppled.

"We've picked up all the prints. There are quite a lot here."

"You'll notice the single blaster hole in the wall," Callista said, addressing Linny. "Yet no body here. The victim was found with a single tight blaster bolt wound to the side of the head. Either point blank or a rifle shot."

She laid her hand on the table, closing her eyes. An image flashed across her mind. Two bodies, rolling across the floor to strike the table. They broke apart and ran in separate directions.

"Two people struggled across the floor."

 

[Linny Rennis]

Linny shook her hand and then hid her wince as long as she could. Tough lady. Ouch. Making a mental note not to get on the wrong side of her, Linny followed as she kept up with Callista's blunt, rapid-fire talk. Every word she said seemed utterly stripped of anything non-essential. Admirable, but a fair bit scary.

"Body in the ocean, apartment a mess. Signs of a struggle." She regurgitated what she remembered from the file, but it'd be a fairly rough shuttle ride and she'd read the same line about twenty times while trying to digest it. She took in the blaster shot in the wall, frowning at the slight scorching in the fancy panelling.

"Any hope of a match with the wound on her body? Might help us rule out whether it was blaster or rifle. We don't know if she was shot here or taken somewhere else." It took a few seconds for the cold reality of that last statement to hit Linny, making her shudder a little. "That might explain why nobody saw someone dragging something suspiciously large." She had to focus on the details, on the case. Not the uncomfortable, squishy things inbetween. She paused for a second to tap out something on her datapad, wondering about surveillance and reports of people coming in and out of the building. "Has planetary security checked for local reports, do you know?" she asked, thinking it sounded like the correct thing to do. Maybe.

Linny did recognise Callista's psychometry. She felt it, a little brush and tingle of something in that strange, soft sensation that she wasn't entirely used to within herself. Her eyes followed where Callista was looking, across the devastation. Linny stepped carefully over, kneeling down a little as something glimmered in the light. Taking her pen from her pocket, she nudged it gently with the plastic end, trying to work it out.

"Glass? Or crystal of some kind?" she reasoned out loud, sucking on her lip as she thought it through. "Could be a drinking glass, maybe she knew who it was?" Depending on if it was being used, or if it was just caught in the chaos. However, as she pressed and checked the chunk, she noticed it there.

"Blood. Look," she indicated, pointing to a smear of drying crimson right across one edge. It'd seeped into the spider-web cracks where it'd impacted and smashed. "A weapon, and I don't think it said that the victim was hit, right?" She looked around for more shards, larger chunks of crystal. If they could pull more of the object together, one of them could probably draw a lot more information than they could out of one chunk.

Callista Volpe

 

[Callista Volpe]

"We should check with the coroner, but I only got told about the blaster shot," Callista replied.

Callista stepped up to the front door of the apartment. A handprint on the inside of the door. A glass, a makeshift weapon, used to draw blood. Someone either killed Naressa here or failed in the attempt. It was a mess.

Callista touched the door, but there wasn't enough of an imprint left in the Force. Or perhaps too much to pick out anything in particular.

"A struggle on the floor, a shattered glass used to draw blood. A missed shot," Callista said. She kept her eyes on the handprint, talking over her shoulder at Linny.

"Doesn't speak of a deliberate hit? The body makes it seem that way, but this feels more like an argument that got out of hand..."