Chapter 6

  "Soorry about the chief." Dick apologized as he led us back out onto the street from the police station. "He's an amazing man, but he really is all business. It's a couple of lines of small talk, then talking aboot the case, then he kicks you oot so he can move on. You'll get used to it, you becha."

  I couldn't help feeling discouraged. Dick was polite enough, but we'd been given almost no information to go off of. I had a general idea of the situation, but aside from a bloody matchbook, we didn't really have a solid lead. I guessed we could just wander around the areas of the city that the two gangs occupied and hope for the best, but that seemed like a flimsy approach.

  Was there something that I had missed? Maybe a clue I hadn't uncovered? Or maybe something Chief Nod had told us?

  "It's not your fault, Dick. I was just hoping we'd find out a little more information. I mean, aren't there any suspects?" Since Dick was in front of us, I figured I'd press him for some information.

  "Dick? Oh right... Soorry, I forgot you wanted to call me that." Detective Placeholder still didn't seem to enjoy the nickname I'd given him, but he seemed too passive to really argue. "We still don't really even know who the leaders of the two gangs are. Up until recently, they'd been pretty quiet so there wasn't much need to investigate. If I had to guess, it seems like one or both of them recently had a change in leadership. Sometimes when a crime organization boots their leader oot, the new head honcho likes to mix things up, doncha know."

  "Couldn't you just ask around in their community? You mean you don't have any informants?" It was really starting to bother me just how little this police department cared about the gangs until they started causing trouble.

  "What do you mean?" Dick turned to me quizzically. "How are we s'pposed to question them?"

  I was taken off guard by Dick's blunt question. "I mean, can't you just talk to someone?"

  Detective Placeholder looked at me for a few moments before responding. "You can't talk if you can't speak their language. The best we can do is basic hand signals, but the language barrier is very real."

  Of course! I'd been such an idiot. I didn't know why this hadn't occurred to me sooner. During the last investigation, I'd been able to communicate with the Deep Ones, but only because I had an ability called Eldritch Whisperer. It allowed me to communicate with different eldritch beings, even if they didn't speak our language. For intelligent beings, it would allow me to speak their language. In regards to unintelligent beings, I would be able to convey feelings to them.

  The humans of this world wouldn't have that ability, so there really wasn't a way for them to communicate. It was easy to judge people like Chief Nod for acting so harshly and treating them as nothing more than beasts, but I remembered my feelings toward Deep Juan before I gained the ability to speak with him. In our first encounter, I'd treated him as a monster. In fact, Joan and I had nearly killed him while he tried to defend himself. I still wasn't a fan of Chief Nod's feelings toward the eldritch races, but I shouldn't judge him too harshly.

  Now that I understood the reasoning behind the communication barrier, there wasn't much point in furthering the conversation. I did have one more question to ask Dick before Joan and I let him get back to work.

  "Who's Cathy?" When I'd brought up the name of the club on the bloody matchbook I'd found, Chief Nod gave me a very odd reaction. For such a serious man, he actually laughed.

  "Cathy..." Detective Placeholder wasn't unfamiliar with the name, but he took a long time trying to choose his words. "I don't know how you got that name, but you're better off staying clear of her. She's trouble."

  NPC is hiding information from User

  Emotion: Fear

  Motive: Concern

  Even without my evolved Read the Room activating, I could have guessed that Dick was purposefully keeping information from me. It warmed my heart that his motives were pure. That said, I would be lying if it didn't make me even more interested in this Cathy person.

  "The only evidence we currently have points to her club, The Deep Tentacle Cabaret. Can you tell us anything about her?" Joan was the first to speak. She had clearly had the same thoughts as me. She didn't even need an awesome ability to help her read his intentions.

  Dick shifted nervously, clearly battling with his conscience. Finally he took a deep breath and replied. "She's connected to the Cult of Cthulhu. We don't really know what she is, but we assume she's connected to the leader."

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  "Connected? Like a friend? A daughter? A lover?" Maybe it was pointless to press on the issue, but the attitude toward this Cathy person seemed to contradict their supposed lack of intel or suspects.

  "We don't really know." Dick put his hands on my shoulders and looked pleadingly into my eyes. "You can't trust her, Clay. Not a single word. She's bad news."

  "I understand..." I didn't really, but I wasn't about to contradict Dick to his face. He was clearly worried about me. This line of questioning was pointless. "I appreciate your concern. We'll let you get back to work."

  "Be careful out there. Call the station if you need to get ahold of me for anything." He handed me his business card before heading back into the station. I could tell that he was still rattled from our conversation. I glanced at his business card. Apparently his first name actually was Detective, so that god had just been lazy with their naming scheme again.

  "So where to?" I asked Joan now that we were alone. Well, we weren't entirely alone since my favorite little ball of miasma was nuzzling up to my leg.

  "Either we head back to the office to prepare, or we try that Deep Tentacle place." She looked to me, expecting me to make a decision.

  "It's still early in the day. I doubt that club would even be open right now, so it would probably be a waste of time. Besides, we're a little under-prepared. I need a bump to my dexterity before we risk facing any mini-bosses. Let's use your Ramen Chef ability when we get back to the office." I replied, after a brief moment to organize my thoughts.

  Joan's ability Ramen Chef ability made it so that once per day she could make ramen noodles that would provide a +5 buff to a person's strength, constitution, and dexterity for two hours. It had been a life-saver in our last investigation, and now that we had easier access to boiling water, we should be able to utilize it more frequently this time around. Adding +5 to my dexterity would bring me back up to my base stats from the first investigation. Since I'd already found out how poorly my Parkour! ability functioned when my dexterity was lower, it would be in our best interest to at least give myself the option of using it as a weapon. The idea of adding an additional +5 to my constitution would bring me up to a whopping 24 points! I could probably take a bullet and be perfectly fine with that kind of constitution, so the concept made me a little giddy.

  My best weapons this time around were my incredibly high constitution, and the incredible fighting power of Dalos. He'd already proven his worth in the first battle of this investigation, and he was growing stronger by the minute. Unlike Joan and I, who could only increase our levels at the end of an investigation, Dalos' levels would increase without delay. I summoned my journal to check his current stats. When I looked at the end of the last investigation, he had been at level two.

  Dalos (Hound of Tindalos)

  (14Y's Familiar

  Level 4 (Eldritch Puppy)

  5% to Level 5

  STR: 17

  DEX: 17

  CON: 13

  INT: 4

  WIS: 6

  CHA: 10

  I was surprised to see he had already increased another two levels. Both his strength and dexterity had increased by a single point. If I had to guess, I would say he gained a single stat point that would be automatically assigned each time he increased a level. I couldn't imagine he'd gained enough experience from our single battle to level up twice, so it was likely there were other elements involved in increasing his level.

  "So what are your thoughts on everything?" I asked Joan as we made our way back to the office.

  "I think we really need some actual information. We've gotten a lot of opinions and very few facts." Her response was perfect. I had been trying to figure out why this investigation seemed so frustrating. It wasn't that people hadn't told us a lot of stuff regarding the situation, but everything we'd gotten was drenched in opinions. In an investigation, it doesn't really matter how a person feels about something, what matters is the actual facts. Right now, we were starving for facts.

  "I'll be able to talk to the eldritch beings unlike the police, so that should help. But I'm not sure what to make about this Cathy. Obviously she can communicate with them. They wouldn't warn us not to trust her if they had no way of communicating." I was trying to sort out my thoughts as I spoke. "So it seems like the police have a history with her. Either they already approached her about things, or she's burned them in the past."

  "Do you think we can trust her?" Joan asked.

  "I don't really trust anybody, except you." My immediate response caused a slight smile to form on her face. "If we're talking about film noirs in general, she could be any number of character archetypes. I mean, the entire film noir genre relies on almost everyone lying in one way or another. It's rare there to be to many characters that are entirely innocent, they're usually guilty of something."

  "So we talk to her even though we know that she's likely lying to us?" She asked. It was a fair question. Why ask someone a question if you're pretty sure the answer will be a lie?

  "At this point, even if she leads us into a trap, at least we'd have a lead." I didn't like the idea of putting ourselves in danger, but we couldn't be expected to finish this investigation if we were playing things too safe.

  Joan and I continued to talk as we made our way back to the office safe house. It wasn't until we were right outside the building that I suddenly realized something was wrong. Usually my Read the Room ability would be able to identify hostile intent from those nearby, but there was one exception. I'd discovered during the last investigation that one individual had the ability to block my ability to read their intent. That individual also happened to be the most likely to be trying to get that god's reward for killing me.

  "What's up, loser?!" The man cut off our path to the door to the safe house. His pink spiked mohawk stood out against the thick fog covering the streets. It was Raif, the one person who would never trigger the red outline of my Read the Room ability no matter how much he wanted to harm me.

  "Clay..." A quiet voice came from directly behind me. It belonged to the woman who I'd been looking for.

  "Tara." I turned to find the green haired woman's eyes fixed on me. Although her eyes were pointed in my direction, the woman behind those eyes seemed to be miles away. She looked as detached as the first time I met her. But something else was wrong.

  "I'm sorry..." Her eyes quivered, possibly fighting back tears.

  "Clay! Focus!" Joan's voice forced me to focus on the situation. She had already summoned her pen, and held a fighting pose. At my feet, Dalos barred his teeth at the pink haired punk.

  I finally realized what was wrong, and my heart shattered.

  Surrounding Tara was a red outline.

  "Clay... I'm sorry." Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  This wouldn't be a touching reunion. She was determined to kill me.