Part 1. The Joker Chapter 46: Portraits
Vomit! Vomit!
Crane squatted down and vomited with difficulty, having not eaten breakfast, and soon vomited up his stock.
At that moment, a small tin and iron colored square jug much like a cigarette box appeared in front of his eyes.
The mouth that had lost its cork emitted a smell similar to a mixture of tobacco, disinfectant water, and menthol leaves, causing Klein’s nose to choke up in a hallucinatory manner and his entire body to go mental.
The strong stench still lingered around, but Klein no longer felt sick to his stomach, and the vomiting quickly ceased.
He followed the small tin-colored square pot upward, saw a pale hand that didn’t look like a living person, saw the cuffs of a black trench coat, and saw the cold and dark “corpse collector” Frye.
”Thanks.” Klein slowed down completely, propped himself up on his hands and knees, and stood up again.
Frye nodded without expression:
”Just get used to it.”
He corked the top of the small tin-iron jug, put it in his pocket, and turned toward the highly decomposed body of the old woman, and, without gloves, proceeded directly to examine it, while Dunn-Smith and Leonard Mitchell were sauntering around the room, touching the desktop and the newspaper every now and then.
Old Neil, on the other hand, pinched his nose and stood outside the door, complaining in a jar:
”It’s so disgusting, I’m going to have to apply for an allowance this month!”
Dunn turned back to Klein as he touched the wall plaster next to the fireplace with his black-gloved right hand:
”Is this place familiar?”
Klein held his breath, visualizing his own silver and white pocket watch in his mind’s eye, quieting both body and mind.
Immediately he felt differently, already in a state of psychic vision, and a picture from the deepest recesses of his memory flashed before his eyes:
The fireplace, the rocking chair, the table, the newspaper, the rusty iron nail in the door, the tin can inlaid with silver ……
The image was dim and shadowy, like a documentary on Earth, but blurrier and more unreal.
It quickly overlapped with what Klein saw before his eyes, the sense of déjà vu, of seeming to have been here before, was clearly present, and once again the unreal and evanescent hissing came through the invisible barriers:
”Hornachis …… Fregla …… Hornachis …… Fregla… …Honachis……Fregla……”
”A little familiar.” Klein answered truthfully, his head tingling a bit, so he had to hurriedly tap twice on his brow.
Honachis …… The Honachis Mountains that appeared in the original owner’s diary?
That was deciphered from the Antigonus family notes ……
The whisper just now was very similar to a certain time before, both involving the term Honachis …… This, is this a seduction?
Crane was too creeped out to think any deeper for fear of stepping out of control.
Dunn nodded slightly and walked to the front of the cupboard, suddenly reaching out and pulling open the wooden door above.
Inside, mold grew on the bread, and seven or eight gray, downy rats stiffened beside it.
”Leonard, you go downstairs and find the cops on patrol and figure out what’s going on here.” Dunn ordered up the team.
”Okay.” Leonard turned and left the house.
Dunn then opened the doors of the two bedrooms and searched them carefully.
After he confirmed that he found no clues, as well as notes from the Antigonus family, Fry the Body Collector straightened his back and legs and wiped his hands with the white handkerchief he carried with him, saying:
”More than five days dead, no trauma, and no significant effects from transcendent powers, the exact cause must await further examination.”
”Have you found anything?” Dunn turned his head to look at Old Neil and Klein.
Both of them, who had long since left their psychic vision, shook their heads at the same time.
”Except for a dead man, everything is normal here, no, at first there was an invisible force sealing the room, you know, we often have a similar operation when we use ritual magic.” Old Neil added after a few seconds of thought.
Dunn was about to speak when he suddenly looked out the door, and it took a few seconds for Klein and Old Neil to realize what was going on and turn to look around the corner of the stairs.
After a few more seconds, the subtle sound of footsteps grew louder and Leonard and a constable walked up.
The police officer smelled the stench, his face changed slightly, and immediately cooperated with his “colleagues” from the Special Operations Department to knock on the doors of the residents on the second floor, and asked about the situation on the third floor.
A moment later, wearing a silver two V shoulder badge, he looked at the dead body on the rocking chair and said:
”Katie Stephana Bieber, between the ages of 55 and 60, widowed, and co-renting with her son, Ryle Bieber, for over ten years.”
”Her husband was a jeweler during his lifetime, and her son, about 30 years of age, without a wife, had inherited his father’s business, earning about £1 15s. a week, and had not been met for more than a week, according to their neighbors.”
By this point in the description, Klein already knew where to focus next:
The missing, or more accurately, unknown whereabouts, Rielle Beebe!
The ancient notebook was probably in his possession!
”Got a picture of Ryle Bieber?” Dunn looked over at the constable, who was playing a senior inspector.
It couldn’t be called pretending, though, because the police department’s files did show him as a senior inspector, with a salary and allowance based on that, excluding the church part, of course.
The constable shook his head slightly nervously:
”I don’t know …… have to go back to the precinct to look for it, normally, we can’t leave a photo for every guy.”
”I see, go ahead and question the occupants of the first floor in detail.” Dunn ordered.
Looking at the constable, he closed the door and turned to Old Neil:
”I’ll leave it to you next, otherwise it’s going to be time to let the occupants here sleep peacefully and look for the likeness of Rielle Beebe from their dreams, well, I’m not too trusting of drawings done from dictation.”
The old Neil nodded and removed several thumb-sized bottles from the concealed pockets at the waist of the classic black robes, spilling the liquids inside in a certain order.
Immediately afterward, he twisted out a handful of powder and sprinkled it around himself.
A strange, pungent odor steamed and emanated, unaffected by the stench in the room, while Klein suddenly felt an additional ring of invisible power around Old Neil, power that separated him from his environment, from himself and the others, just as the house had been in its previous state.
Old Neil half-closed his eyes, his mouth opened and closed, and recited a low, muffled incantation, for which Klein was unprepared, and only vaguely heard “I pray for the power of the goddess”, “I look to the night for favor”… …
Whoops! A sudden gust of wind entered through the window and blew up the powder.
Kraven’s heart suddenly shook, all the bumps on his skin bulged out, and he felt a certain indescribable and extremely horrible “smell” that he couldn’t dare to look directly at quickly filled his mind.
His head was confused and tense, just like the state after doing a set of difficult math problems.
Suddenly, Neil’s eyes opened and went black.
He took out an absorbent fountain pen from his pocket, and on the waste paper on the table, he brushed and drew, his movements so fast that his entire body was trembling.
Klein stared, only to see a face with deep eye sockets and a high nose quickly appear.
When the short, naturally curly hair was finished, the old Neil wrote a line of words at the bottom of the portrait:
”Black hair, dark blue eyes, and a full porcelain denture on the left side of his mouth.”
Snap! The pen in Old Neil’s hand collapsed onto the paper, and his body jerked a few times in response.
”That’s what’s left of the Rell Beebe lookalike in the room.” Old Neil, whose eye color quickly returned to normal, whispered.
Then, he returned to where he had just been and slowly turned in place, and that invisible, spaced-out power dissipated, turning into a breeze that blew away.
”Praise the Goddess.” The old Neil tapped four times in quick succession on his chest, coming together in the shape of the Crimson Moon.
Klein’s spirit relaxed and observed more closely, realizing that there was nothing special about Rielle Bieber’s features and her aura was quite calm, except for the noticeable sagging of the decree lines on both sides of her nose.
”I’ll try to see if I can use the divining rod finder method.” He picked up the portrait, rummaged through the male clothing in the bedroom, and spread them all out on the floor.
Dunn, Leonard, and Old Neil didn’t stop, watching him pestle the silver-encrusted black cane over the clothing and the portrait, Fry the Body Collector silent as ever.
As the brown color turned to black, Klein finished his meditation with a deep look in his eyes and released his grip.
The black cane stood quietly, as if it were thrust into the floor.
”Rielle Bieber’s location.” Klein murmured again in his mind.
With a whimper of wind, the cane fell, but as it fell, it kept changing direction, eventually becoming a small rotation around the fulcrum.
Without the help of any external force, the silver-encrusted black cane regained its footing.
Klein tried several times, all ending in the same way, and could only shake his head at Dunn and the old Neil.
There is a strange force interfering with their own “divination”……
Dunn removed the black gloves and said to Leonard and Klein:
”You guys take Riel Bieber’s portrait and go question the tenants here for final confirmation, then put a warrant out on him for the murder of his mother.”
”Okay.” Klein gripped his cane and bent down to pick up the portrait.
Once the neighbors had confirmed that the man in the portrait was indeed Rell Beebe, Dunn sent Leonard and the constable to the police station to complete the paperwork, while he and Frye headed to a couple of pubs in Tingen to look for the man through underground channels.
Klein and Neil Sr. returned to Blackthorn Security in a public carriage, and it was not yet eight o’clock, Roxanne had not yet arrived.
Closing the door, Klein looked sideways at Old Neil and asked, half-questioningly, half-questioningly:
”Why would I, would I send notes from the Antigonus family to the home of Rielle Bieber?”
This was not at all in the same direction as the Welch residence to Iron Cross.
Old Neil walked over to the sofa position and grinned:
”Isn’t it perfectly obvious? You have not known whether you have touched the power within the notes, or whether you have been curious enough to do some of the rituals it describes, and have incurred a bizarre presence that you should not have incurred, and the purpose of this power, of this presence, was to give the notes to Rielle Beebe and to break off all the clues so that no one would find out about them.”
”And so, except for you, who was singled out, Welch and Naya both killed themselves on the spot, and you, frankly, I still don’t understand how you survived.”
”I don’t know ……” Klein replied with a deliberately bitter smile as he followed and sat down, “Your guess as to what happened occurred to me, I just don’t understand why the notes had to be given to Rielle Beebe. ”
Old Neil spread his hands:
”Maybe his out-of-birth spirit count fits the bill, or maybe he’s the only remaining descendant of the Antigonus family, in short, there are too many possibilities …… There should be a similar reason as to why that notebook was sold to us in Tingen City.”
”I think it’s descent like that.” Klein suddenly realized for a moment, then sighed, “It’s a pity that I didn’t notice it the first time, and both Rielle Bieber and that notebook are gone.”
Old Neil chuckled:
”That’s something for Dunn to worry about, and a good thing for you.”
”Why do you say that?” Klein frowned in confusion.