Mycroft

[logan_echolls]

The complaint was about a smell, a rare thing on the London, given its amazing air filtration system. He might have ignored it, but one complaint turned to two, and soon enough three. Again, he nearly ignored it, after all it was the Ambassador's wing, and god knew they could be fussy- But safety first and all that.

He'd been expecting bad cooking, or maybe some exotic plant or bug. Not the stench of death and a fresh corpse.

Investigations like this were delicate, and so Logan kept his team small for this one. Himself, Jack, and a couple of his top guys. More importantly though, he knew he needed to pull Mycroft in on this.

Standing outside the man's quarters, he hit the buzzer.

Comments

[the_iceman]

Mycroft frowned. He wasn't used to get called at his door. Demanding ambassadors called him at any time of day, of course, but they seldom bothered to walk all the way to his quarters. And it wasn't like he had many social connections who might come by unannounced.

He set aside his drink and stood to receive his guest. "Doors," he said, and the door slid open. "Mr. Echolls. Not a social call, I presume."

[logan_echolls]

"I guess that depends on what you like to do for fun," Logan quipped, stepping in and waiting until the door was shut before saying anything more.

"There's been an incident. ...Ambassador Jeffer was found dead this morning by myself and another officer in his quarters after some reports of an unpleasant smell came in. ...It's not public knowledge yet, I'm sure you can guess why."

[the_iceman]

If Mycroft was shocked, he hid it well. "I suppose that explains why he didn't show up to the dinner party last night," he observed. "Is there any chance he died of natural causes? I don't imagine you'd be here if there was."

[logan_echolls]

"Not unless a knife naturally grew out of his neck," Logan replied. "I'm kinda guessing someone else planted it there. Don't suppose you have any insight as to who?"

[the_iceman]

"The list is unfortunately long," Mycroft replied. "Is there anything we can tell from the crime scene? The type of knife, perhaps? The time of death?"

[logan_echolls]

"Time of death would have been three days ago, sometime around midnight. I've logged everything else, but they started immediate clean up for sanitation reasons. I of course did a full virtual scan of the room though. I can have the holodeck recreate the scene if you'd like to look yourself," he offered.

[the_iceman]

Usually that would be his brother's job, but Sherlock wasn't here. "I suppose that would be fruitful," he said, a little reluctantly.

[logan_echolls]

"Very fruitful," Logan teased, flashing that boyish grin, then nodding to the door. "Come on, let's go."

[the_iceman]

It was a boyish grin that had no function whatsoever except to tease him, and yet Mycroft registered it and enjoyed it. It made Logan look very handsome.

Put aside easily, Mycroft followed him to the holo-deck. Well, as leg-work was concerned, this was the bare minimum and therefore tolerable. "How many of your staff know about this?"

[logan_echolls]

"Less than half a dozen,": Logan replied, tapping a code into the interface and calling up the crime scene. It was obvious Logan had taken the time to do a room scale full scan. Every item in the space was documented and digitized, down to the stray drops of long dried blood.

"Figured it was best to keep the profile low on this. Murder's pretty rare on even a ship this size these days. I don't want people to panic."

[the_iceman]

It was like being there, in the room where it happened. Fortunately, smells had been kept out of it. It was a static picture of the crime scene. "I suppose it's fortunate also that we don't have flies on the ship..." he remarked dryly as he observed the body. Flies would have made this picture much more gory.

"It's a knife from the wood-shop, I think. I knew it was a bad idea to get arts and crafts on board."

[logan_echolls]

Logan made note of that, watching Mycroft as the man took in the scene.

"Don't suppose you know anyone he was having a hard time with?"

[the_iceman]

"Unfortunately, I have a list," Mycroft replied. "No one outside of the ambassadors, though. So, I'm afraid someone got their hands dirty."

[logan_echolls]

Logan sighed, pushing his hair back with one hand and nodding.

"Right. ... Shit," he said, looking around the room.

"Okay, so- We definitely need to narrow that list down. I can't haul in a bunch of ambassadors for questioning."

[the_iceman]

"It's quite a vicious scene..." Mycroft remarked. "They could have smothered him in his sleep, but they chose confrontation. So they must have been confident..." he said, mentally narrowing the list. "What else does this crime scene tell you?"

[logan_echolls]

"You said the knife is from the woodshop. I already knew it wasn't from here- Guy only had one set of knives, high end, in the drawer over there. None of them looked touched. So it was planned, not impulsive. The killer had intent. ...I mean, let's be honest, scenes like this have one of two causes. Sex or money. Except I looked at his accounts, he was no better off than most of the other ambassadors, and as far as I can tell he wasn't seeing anyone, at least not publicly."

He sighed then, realizing they were going to need outside help.

"There are two people we could reach out to, but I'd rather only speak to one or the other. There's Goodfellow, the puck. He runs an escort service, he'd know if the guy had hired anyone lately- Or there's Dorian Grey, who doesn't run anything except his mouth- But he does tend to know things. Who'd you rather we reached out to?"