Dogs Among Withered Roses - Chapter 24

Just one person, Ricardo, left, yet the hospital room filled with an indescribable silence.

Erkin picked up the pistol that had fallen when he was thrown to the floor and tucked it back into his waistband, then cooled his swollen face with an ice pack the nurse hurriedly handed him. He couldn’t tell without a mirror, but judging by how the cold was felt only in his hand, his cheek must have swollen more than he thought.

Pulling a chair over and sitting down slowly, he quietly stared at Berenice, who looked dazed the moment Ricardo left the room. The woman wore an expression as if something other than her injured limbs from falling down the stairs had shocked her more.

Without realizing it, Erkin touched his nose, wondering if it had started bleeding, but it was fine. Andre also only pressed an ice pack to his face and didn’t have any injuries worth calling wounds. As for Michele, who had only had his collar grabbed and released, there was nothing to say.

The one in the worst condition here was, without question, Berenice. So she should be worrying about stabilizing her own body first….

As he looked at Berenice, who didn’t have a single uninjured spot, with a troubled expression like Michele had earlier, Berenice belatedly noticed the faint shadow cast over the bed and slowly raised her head.

The color that seemed to have barely returned drained away again, leaving her pale. Startled, Erkin reached a hand toward her as her face turned white, but Berenice flinched and twisted her shoulder to avoid it. The hand that couldn’t reach her hung in the air for a moment before lowering calmly.

“Your face….”

Berenice looked as if her throat were being squeezed.

His face filling her dark green eyes, his damaged face pressed with an ice pack seemed to stab into her relentlessly, then rake over the same place again.

His very existence seemed to have become a great wound to her. Unable to endure the unknown helplessness, his ragged breath caught. Displeased by that, Erkin frowned and slowly straightened the back he had bent toward Berenice.

So that’s why this face feels so uncomfortable.

This face is familiar.

The face she made while screaming at Ricardo as if she would collapse also felt strangely familiar. He tried to ignore that unknown sense of déjà vu, not wanting to dig into it, but….

A face buried in deep guilt, on top of that a frightened expression, was just like….

‘…Run. Go somewhere safe!’

‘B-but I, I… I….’

‘It’s dangerous here. Go. Hurry!’

A young face from fifteen years ago rose in his mind and overlapped with the face of the woman, now etched with time. Realizing the source of that déjà vu, Erkin’s expression blanked for a moment.

Startled, he took a step back from the bed.

Until that moment, Berenice, who had been looking up at him with a frightened, rigid expression, flinched and reached out. Slender warmth wrapped urgently around his hand. Caught by Berenice’s uninjured left hand, Erkin closed the distance he had just widened by a step.

“Miss?”

“That, no, it’s just….”

She fumbled as if she didn’t know what to do, and Michele, who had been quietly watching, stepped in at the right moment.

“Berenice, get some sleep.”

“…Huh?”

“If you want, I’ll call a nurse and have them give you a sedative.”

Her gaze moved between Michele, Andre, and Erkin, filled with all kinds of unease. Not unfamiliar with that look, Michele signaled toward the hand holding Erkin.

“Even if you sleep and wake up, Erkin won’t go anywhere. He’ll stay by your side.”

He didn’t know exactly what she was afraid of, but at least Erkin understood what Berenice wanted, and he carefully wrapped his hand around hers.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

As if telling her not to worry, he tightened his grip on her hand, and only then did Berenice slowly nod her head.

“Alright… call a nurse. I want to sleep for a bit.”

It hurts. It hurts so much. The small mutter sounded like a child sobbing, and Erkin couldn’t say anything.

***

The doctor rattled off the same nagging as yesterday in a strict tone, then left without even properly listening to Berenice’s predictable replies.

Ten days since she was admitted to the hospital. As soon as the morning rounds ended and the hospital room door closed, Berenice picked up one of the newspapers on the bedside table. Michele had brought them while switching shifts with Andre.

「This time, a motel in the Harlem district, repeated execution‑style killing」

The newspaper didn’t fully unfold. Berenice’s gaze, which had stopped mid‑motion, remained fixed on the article taking up nearly half of the front page.

In short, it was an article reporting that a body shot dead had been found in a motel in the Harlem area on the outskirts of Georgetown. Along with a bold headline that grabbed attention, the attached photo showed nothing more than police lines tightly stretched around the room. There were no photos of the inside of the motel.

The victim, confirmed to have died three days earlier, was first discovered by an acquaintance who went to the motel after the victim failed to show up at a meeting place even after waiting. The initial reporter was also an acquaintance who discovered the body, but beyond that, there was hardly any information recorded.

It wasn’t just the initial reporter who lacked information.

A man in his thirties from Bridgent.

That was all the information about the victim that could be learned from the article. It was questionable whether that could even be called information.

An official statement from the Belloc police that, considering the brutality and seriousness of the case, it had been handed over to the Federal Bureau of Security. Testimony from the motel owner that the victim had paid a week’s lodging fee at once but refused room cleaning and rarely went in and out. Even the field investigation focused on staff and guests present at the time of the incident….

She flipped to the next page to see if there was more, but that was the end.

Berenice slightly creased one corner of her eye. Compared to its prominent placement on the front page and its large headline, the content and conclusion weren’t much different from any other murder report.

Rather than the article’s original purpose being to deliver important facts to citizens claiming their right to know, it felt as if it wanted this incident itself to go beyond simple attention and stand at the center of controversy.

This is troublesome.

After checking the journalist’s name, Berenice muttered quietly.

Whose influence is this? The first person that came to mind was Jonathan Weaver, Director of the Federal Bureau of Security. If not him, then Martin Gates, the head of the Belloc branch of the Bureau, or perhaps the Belloc police commissioner.

She knew well that Jonathan Weaver viewed the Belloc mafia as something that needed to be dragged in and crushed one day, but….

A bastard who acted like he’d lose his position the moment he left the capital, Rockbern, didn’t seem like the type who already knew something and was pulling strings over a murder in Belloc’s Harlem district. It wasn’t even originally handled by the Federal Bureau of Security.

Turning over the other names that came to mind besides Jonathan Weaver a few times in her head, Berenice pulled out the tabloid newspaper that had been placed at the very bottom of the stack on the bedside table.

As the other newspapers slid down in a heap, Michele, who had been sitting in the armchair, approached and tidied them up, placing them neatly back on the table.

The tabloid was covering the same case as well. However, perhaps because an embargo had been placed on the details, it wasn’t any different from the other newspapers. As she skimmed over the article, which felt like it might have been written by the same reporter, Michele asked in a low voice.

“Want to see more photos if you’re curious?”

Berenice, who had set the tabloid on the bedside table and shifted her body, asked back with a puzzled look, “Since when do you have all the photos?”

“We didn’t take them. Got them from a Federal Bureau of Security investigator.”

“That’s unexpected.”

Berenice didn’t ask whose hands the investigator’s photos had passed through to end up with the mafia. That wasn’t what mattered right now.

Instead of Berenice, who couldn’t use her right hand, Michele spread the photos one by one on the folding table. Taking the remaining photos with her left hand, Berenice gave Michele, who looked like he had a lot to say, a brief glance before lowering her gaze.

Both hands tightly bound and fixed to the armrests of a chair, a head bent forward as if about to collapse, clothes and shoes soaked in blood, the floor of the room….

The article had only stated ‘a body shot dead,’ so it hadn’t been clear what the exact cause of death was, but it was a single gunshot wound fired into the back of the head like an execution.

Muttering that she didn’t understand why the article had been written so vaguely when the cause of death was this clear, Berenice shook her head slightly.

The photos began with wide shots that captured the entire scene at a glance, then gradually narrowed the frame. Even though they were black‑and‑white images composed only of grayscale, it felt as if the stench of blood rose vividly from the dark gray stains.

Large and small bloodstains scattered across the floor and walls, a bag of belongings that seemed too light for someone who had paid for a week’s stay at once, evidence photographed from various angles as if not to miss a single detail….

After carefully examining everything, Berenice returned to the victim’s photo.

It seemed he had been subjected to severe torture before being killed. A thick gag had been stuffed into his mouth to prevent him from screaming, and his face was so mangled it was impossible to recognize who he was.

At the very least, the wounds covering his face were familiar wounds.

With her keen eye, Berenice recognized that he had been beaten mercilessly with heavy knuckles, and as if something came to mind, she picked up another photo.

No wonder. She’d wondered why there was so much blood on his hands unlike the gunshot to his head, but looking again, the hands hanging bound to the armrests had no fingernails at all. The blood hadn’t come from somewhere else. It was the victim’s own blood.

After confirming that one of the yellow evidence markers placed around the motel room indicated the victim’s fingernails, Berenice frowned.

What is this? Why is it so excessive?

Beating his face as if to peel the skin off with knuckles, and ripping out his fingernails… she couldn’t understand the reason. Just from the photos, it didn’t look like an assassination request handled by Valentiera’s contract killing company.