Chapter Text
Chapter I ~ The Detective
At this point, Clorinde wasn’t sure how she hadn't literally turned into a shrimp. Her posture was getting worse day by day, and at this point it hurt to stand completely straight. Not too good for a woman who had a rigid reputation to uphold.
When she did eventually rise from her desk, her spine cracked in 24 places, 23 of which she didn't know even existed. What an awful existence.
Her hand instinctively reached for a cup of coffee. Grabbed onto thin air.
“Uh oh, forget something?” A rough voice came from behind her, followed by a large, scarred hand as Wriothesley placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of her.
Clorinde took the coffee and sipped it, ignoring the scalding pain that bloomed on her tongue, then leaned back against her chair. “What are we even doing here?”
Wriothesley shimmied his way into her cubicle and planted himself against the edge of her desk as she rolled her chair to make room for him.
Detective Wriothesley, the office hunk though Clorinde personally did see the real appeal. Maybe it was the abundance of muscle and fur, but she thought it made him look a bit like a werewolf. Ah well, what was she? A vampire, most likely. Or the station’s ghoul.
His cool gaze went over to the papers on her desk, scattered here, there and everywhere as if she had picked them up, shuffled through them and exasperatedly launched them away (which is exactly what she had done).
“Every lead is a dead end. At this point, I'm starting to think Neuvillette was right when he said it's time to close the case.” Clorinde took another sip. Another burn. She'd long since become immune to the real pain and consequence of drinking scalding hot coffee.
At that, Wriothesley let out a small laugh. “Right, because you're known for dropping cold cases and not at all being obsessed with the unsolvable.”
“I know when to throw in the towel. It's been… what? Twenty or something years?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as if that might clear her vision and her mind.
“Yeah, twenty years of hounding this case and now you want to quit? I know you better than that. Neuvillette does too, that's the only reason he lets you pursue this little…” he picked up a piece of paper, a document of transaction statements, then put it down, “hobby.”
She shook her head as if acknowledging what he said and promptly discarding the opinion.
“What does he have you solving other than this? You’ve picked up a new case, no?” He began to collect all of the pieces of paper and stack them into a single tower, as if Clorinde hadn't organised the mess on her desk into something she could remember. Now she'd have to reclutter the whole thing.
“Some guy has coincidentally found his cafe burnt to cinders. Arson is my guess, it's not the first of his establishments that's gone up. I think I'm becoming the new busy body. What are you working on? The boulevard murder?” Clorinde stood and realised her legs had forgotten what it meant to bear the weight of her body, hence she stood with an uncomfortable tingling for a short while.
Wriothesley nodded. “Yup. Bastard just ran off so I've got guys looking into CCTV. The boulevard has a ton of them but it also has a fuck ton of people. It's like trying to find a needle in a porcupine orgy.” That's got to be the first time she's ever heard that. “Do you know Neuvillette has been looking to hire a new rookie?”
“Neuvillette is always looking for rookies. There's nothing he loves more than fresh perspective and… dull attempts to liven up the station.”
It was part of a scheme recommended to him by one of his friends, who, to be clear, is an actress with zero experience in the police force beyond having played a constable in some Agatha Christie On Stage show. The scheme goes: if you hire a rookie, someone fresh and eager, it'll rub off on all the cynical oldies. A bit of greenery to give life to the cold hearted. What Furina forgot to realise was that it actually works the opposite way around. You give a plant to a desert and you'll find that plant dying of thirst real quickly. Eventually it'll become tumbleweed and dust like the rest of the place. Rookies don't bring life, they just get it leeched out of them.
“I heard him interviewing her. She sounds…” and his face makes something between a grimace and wince.
“Enthusiastic and empathetic?” Clorinde filled in the blanks. “Yeah, they usually do.”
“Poor kids. I had some hope for the last three ‘till they started drinking enough coffee to give a horse a heart attack.”
She gave a half hearted shrug and presented her coffee cup forwards. “Well, to the rookies.”
He gently knocked his own mug against hers: “to the rookies.”
When Wriothesley left, Clorinde took to the outdoors. Namely, the side of the police station where she could chain smoke in peace. A nasty habit.
She used to hate smoking.
She still does a bit. The scent makes her nauseous, but she doesn't drink alcohol and she doesn't gamble, so she figured that smoking was a vice that she could allow herself. Plus she'd only picked it up after one of her cases went awfully wrong. She deserved to have at least one thing to keep her hands from trembling at the thought.
The Caspar case. What was she going to do about that? Twenty years in the works. Twenty years of no progress. A series of murders that didn't add up and yet didn't make sense apart. At one point, twenty years ago, the answer was clear. Callas Caspar was a dangerous man, he'd pulled a gun on her but she had shot first. How old was his daughter? Ten was too young to lose a father. He hadn't even seen her get to high school. To graduate.
But then the murders kept happening, and suddenly Callas wasn’t the main suspect. Evidence came up, too much too quickly, and Clorinde thought the murderer may have well framed the evidence and written I'm framing him in red paint. Callas wasn’t an evil man, but something had made him deranged. Something had driven him to aim a gun at her. What could bring such a respectable man to the brink?
“Clorinde.” A voice broke through the questions.
She turned her head and plucked the cigarette from her lips, letting smoke curl from out of her mouth. “Chief.” She nodded her head in respect.
He joined her, a tall, suited thing next to her. He was pretty for a man. Dazzlingly so. And he never came underdressed, never looked anything beyond composed. He also never looked particularly enthusiastic about anything. But then some people are just made that way. Lord knows Clorinde can relate.
“Can we speak?” He asked. She angled her packet of cigarettes at him and he gratefully took one, placed it between his lips and allowed her to light it for him.
“Yes, sir.”
He inhaled and blew out slowly. “I've hired a new rookie.”
“I am aware, sir. Wriothesley told me.” She suddenly realised that confessing such a thing might get her companion into trouble when she saw Neuvillette cock a pale eyebrow.
“Oh he did, did he?” He mused then looked forwards once again. “Did he tell you who it is?”
“No, sir. Should I know?”
He stayed silent for a bit, as if carefully considering this question. Another inhale. Another exhale. “I think it would be better if you saw her yourself. She starts on Monday. I've… she's your rookie, Clorinde.” Neuvillette looked at her now, wanting to gauge her reaction no doubt.
Clorinde has never really had big reactions to anything. Ever. She's not the expressive type. Not emotional. Nothing really crosses her face until she wants it to, until she wills it. In that regard, Clorinde is a master at control.
So he can’t get a reaction when he tries to read her blank expression. “She’ll be investigating the cafe fire?”
“I'm reopening the Caspar case. Fully.”
Oh.
She puts the cigarette to her lips and doesn't stop smoking until the burnt end stings her fingertips. Then, she crushes it into the side of the metal trash can, and leaves it on the cigarette tray at the top. “I see.”
“You and her already share something in common.” He eyes her with those deep blues, again trying to read emotions that she doesn't allow to manifest. “You're both obsessed with this case. She's smarter than she looks, I think you'll be good for each other.”
Clorinde wants to make a snappy retort: yeah? She'll make me readable to you while I make her a master of emotional disguise?
But she doesn't. Clorinde isn't that kind of woman. She just nods once. “My break is over. Thank you, Chief.”
When she returns to her desk, she realises just how small the little cubicle is, with its white walls on the sides, a tiny white desk drilled into them, and a computer old enough to confuse a teenager now but still functional enough to store the information database. Old doesn't mean bad.
There's no space here for a partner.
Clorinde shoves the Caspar case away from her and starts to work more on the arson case. It doesn't stop her sourness.
~~~
She lives alone in a not too shabby part of the city. It's certainly a massive come up from where she was raised, and it's a humble apartment block with nice people which is all she can truly ask for.
Clorinde traverses to the third floor apartment, slips her flats off and neatly places them by the door before removing her suit jacket, her pants and her blouse in the middle of her living room floor.
“Mrrreow.”
“Hello, Monsieur.” She bends down and sticks her hand out as a Prussian blue stretches before her and begins to greet her.
He fits his head in her hand, up her wrist and pushes his body into her shins before looking up at her with his big blues.
“Were you lonely all day?” She picks the cat up and lets him arrange himself over her shoulders, purring like a steam train as she heads for the cupboard and pulls out everything she needs to make a coffee. Another coffee.
Monsieur bumps his head into her cheek as she boils water in the kettle, and she veers towards where she keeps his packets of food. That's enough to get him leaping off of her shoulders and yowling like he's been starved for thirty days and nights.
“What a greedy young man,” Clorinde fake scolds him as she attempts to navigate the kitchen with a cat weaving through her legs intent on getting that food.
He starts to scoff the moment she puts the food in his bowl and she briefly wonders how she could achieve such a simple happiness. With coffee.
Her bedroom lacks a description. There's a bed, a wardrobe, a desk piled with all sorts from scattered earrings to makeup to documents. And there's a cat tree in the corner. But as far as personal items go… Clorinde isn't sure what she's supposed to put up. All of her printed pictures are stored safely in an album, so she can’t go framing them and putting them up. And every other picture is saved in her phone. Besides, no one comes here. There's no one to remind of the good times.
She undoes her hair from its ponytail and slips into fluffy pyjama pants, then into an oversized shirt, and prepares to watch another true crime video. It's her version of a good day. A perfect day is Saturday when she gets to host DnD. Granted, there hasn't been much time for DnD lately. Everyone either keeps having babies or getting married.
Maybe she's missed a trick.
Monsieur joins her on the couch, having clearly stuffed himself, and lays with his head resting on her foot as she swipes through videos on her TV. Whatever. She doesn't need marriage or a baby to feel ultimate happiness and love. She just needs her cat, a good show, and a campaign to rot her brain away.
Her phone rings just as the video is getting good, and she pauses it with only a small sigh.
“You wanna come out?” Wriothesley’s voice sounds through the phone.
Her eyes narrowed. “Not particularly.”
“C’mon. It's me and some of the guys. Charlotte and Chevreuse will be there.” Clorinde wasn’t a particularly big fan of Charlotte. She found she could be a gossip. But Chevreuse was more agreeable. Still, giving up a great day for a night she won't remember? Not because she'll be drunk but because it won't impact her in the slightest.
“I don't drink.” Clorinde absentmindedly began scratching beneath Monsieur’s chin.
“You don't have to. We won't be drinking too much anyway. Think of it as a reunion.” We see these guys all the time.
She took a deep breath in, exhaled in a controlled sigh, and stood. “Fine. Send me the address.”
The bar was in the nightlight district, one bar out of a row of bars illuminated with neon signs, bouncers posted at every door, spotlights keeping the place bright to deter the no good kind. Clorinde showed up in what she hoped was a casual enough suit. Navy pants, and a blouse unbuttoned at the top.
Wriothesley was practically in the same outfit he wore to work, some of the other guys too, but the girls had nice enough dresses to make Clorinde think she blended in well.
“Good to see you out of the house, Clo.” He passed her a glass of Coke as she slid into the booth next to Charlotte who was already eyeing her up to find her best side. Don't have one.
“I was starting to think you were a vampire.” Charlotte bumped her shoulder against Clorinde’s. “Now I see you only come out at night. So you must be a vampire.”
“Careful~” one of the guys, a man called Pierre who's working on petty shoplifting cases, leaned forwards. “She bites.”
Clorinde thought to entertain the idea, but she doesn't like blood. Not really. Not if she told the truth. She can handle a lot of it, as in a lot of it, but tolerance doesn't equate to taste. She sipped her Coke instead.
Conversation drowns out in her mind as she leaves everyone to entertain themselves, ordering pints and cocktails alike while she nurses a steadily flattening soda. Charlotte tries to convince Clorinde to get something stronger. So Clorinde gets a carbonated kombucha. Nasty stuff. Amazing for the gut.
The more she thinks about it, the less she can connect the cases in the Caspar case. It's only named the Caspar case because he became the primary suspect for so long. Usually, cases are named after the victims but there were so many. And then there were so many more. Series of serial killings. People dropping dead. Some were poisoned, some were shot, some were found bloated and decaying in rivers. There was only two threads that connected them all: they were rich, and they knew people. Which sounds like a nonstarter. The rich know people, that's why they're rich. But they were all friends with tech people, Fatui, heavy bourgeois culture. There was some… near invisible line that she had managed to draw across them, and that line was that they were close friends with people who were part of the technology industry, or sponsored the technology industry. Tech all across Teyvat varied, from the traditional and rural Mondstadt, to the techtopia that is Natlan and Nod Krai. Still, it existed.
But then, Clorinde herself knew tech people. She had plenty of connections. The difference was that she wasn’t an elite. Therefore, she clearly wasn’t good enough to kill.
“Teyvat to Clorinde,” Charlotte waved her hand in front of Clorinde’s face.
She glanced at her, and Chevreuse leaned forwards to face her. “We were asking whether you wanted to go out with us next week. We’ve got a shopping trip planned.”
She didn't even know why the girls tried. They were always trying to rope her into something, even while knowing that she was… not the most sociable. She always appreciated the effort, no less.
“I would like to.” She gave them her most sincere smile, namely the edges of her lips twitched. “Thank you. Where will we be going?”
“Escoffier opened a bakery in the shopping district so we're going to check that out. Then Charlotte needs to buy a bridesmaid dress. We want to ask your opinion.” Chevreuse gave her a warm smile in return.
“Me? Dress opinions?” She sounded a bit more stunned than she thought she did.
Charlotte let out a slight laugh, tipsier than her companions. “You might not have style, but you have eyes, Clo.”
Do those things not go hand in hand? “I shall try my best then.”
Charlotte clapped her hands while Wriothesley barked a laugh from across the booth. He leaned back, one arm draped over the top of the seat like he owned the place. “Careful, Charlotte. You’ll scare her off. Next thing you know she’ll disappear back into the cave she lives in.”
“My apartment is not a cave, thank you.” She sighed. “It has windows.”
Glasses clinked around the table. Clorinde lifted her kombucha a second late, mostly so they would stop looking at her. She took another sip. Charlotte had already turned half around in the booth, scanning the room with a journalist’s instinct for something interesting. The neon lights outside pulsed through the windows, pink and blue cutting across the polished wood tables and crowded floor.
The nightlight district was loud even for a weeknight. Music thumped through the walls from somewhere deeper in the bar, and laughter spilled over from the line of booths along the wall. A group of students argued about politics near the dartboard. Two men in tailored coats spoke in quiet tones at the bar counter.
Clorinde’s eyes lingered on them for a moment. Expensive watch. Clean cuffs. She had a habit of watching people since she was young, instilled into her by her… not-mother. It didn't always mean suspicion. Just another bad habit.
She frowned into her drink. Another round came to the table and Clorinde decided then that she'd have to leave soon.
~~~
As usual, she ended up driving Wriothesley back home to his dark apartment on Fontaine's main row, a long strip of road at its heart lined with tall buildings all side to side, endlessly stretching into the distance. The train ran above, built on what used to be the aqueduct and occasionally rumbling the entire row so that the apartments and delis and convenience stores shook. It was pretty at night, Clorinde thought. Very detective.
Wriothesley managed to wrestle himself out of the seatbelt and clamber out of her car, shutting the door loudly behind him while she got out and helped him up to the front steps of his apartment block. “Hey, you…” he didn’t sound drunk despite being so. Drinks always went to Wrio’s legs and brain. His mouth worked even better than when he was sober, if anything.
“Hmm?” Clorinde fished his keys from his pocket and began to shove him towards the door, working on unlocking it.
“Be nice to the rookie, huh?” He nudged her unsteadily.
Clorinde dragged him inside and discarded him on the sofa. “Why wouldn’t I be nice?” She may have a bit of a cold streak, but everyone knew Clorinde was agreeable. She was never mean, never nasty. A tamed dog is what she’d heard someone call her. She couldn’t argue with the description, as dehumanising as it was.
Wriothesley looked up at her as he loosened his tie, his eyes flashing like he wanted to say something. “Have a good weekend, Clo.”
She didn’t question it, blaming it on him being drunk and confused, even if she did get back in the car and ponder why on earth she wouldn’t be nice to her new partner. It had been years since she’d had a partner. Neuvillette knew she preferred to keep to her own.
Clorinde started the engine and let the car idle for a moment. Above the street, the train rattled across the old aqueduct tracks again, the long metal groan rolling through the night. Windows along the row trembled faintly. Somewhere down the block a deli worker stepped outside to smoke, the glow of his lighter briefly illuminating the sidewalk.
Very detective, she thought again. She pulled away from the curb.
Fontaine’s main row stretched ahead of her in a long line of streetlights and reflective pavement, the towers of apartments rising on either side like quiet sentries. The roads were thinner at this hour. Only the occasional taxi slid past, and a delivery truck idled outside a convenience store halfway down the block.
Her mind, as usual, returned to the case before she’d even reached the first intersection. She tapped the steering wheel lightly with one finger. Different methods. Different scenes. No overlap in timing, no shared weapon, no obvious escalation. If anything, the killer seemed deliberately inconsistent.
Which meant, naturally, there were multiple murderers. In which case the case isn’t one huge thing, but rather a lot of different cases. So why then were all of the victims the same sorts?
Clorinde slowed at a red light. The river cut through Fontaine like a long silver scar, threading past the financial district and under the old bridges before spilling toward the harbor. If the body had been found there, it meant either the victim had been dumped or had ended up in the water elsewhere.
Her fingers tightened slightly on the steering wheel. The victim was some daughter of a perfume maker, a perfume maker that also just so happened to have a close friend who he supplied perfume for and who worked for smartphone technology coding interfaces.
The light turned green. Clorinde drove on. By the time she reached her apartment building, the city had grown quieter. The neon glow from the night district was distant now, replaced by the softer amber of residential streets. Her building stood on a quieter corner, brick and glass with a small stairwell leading up from the pavement. She parked along the curb and stepped out into the cool air.
For a moment she just stood there listening. There were distant engines, footsteps, the low murmur of voices drifting from open windows. And above it all, far off, the faint rumble of another train crossing the aqueduct.
Clorinde locked the car and went upstairs where Monsieur was already dead asleep in the centre of her bed. She took off her blouse and pants, brushed her teeth, and shuffled herself into bed next to him, awkwardly trying not to roll off of the edge as he had taken the majority of the bed.
The new rookie would have to wait for Monday. The weekend called for relaxation, true crime documentaries, and takeout.
And maybe a bit more focus on her actual case at hand. She’d have to visit the owner of the cafe.