The Little Red Bird

Part 1 - Honest Work

August 17, 1958

Henry left the awful stench of his cheap cigars to linger in our office once again. The kind of stench that sticks to walls and takes an open window and hurricane winds to get rid of.

Despite his dirty smoking habits he leaves his desk tidied at the end of the day, papers stacked neatly to the side. Pens arranged according to length adjacent to his steno-pad. Compared to his, my desk makes the bureau look like they hired a deranged chimpanzee to handle homicide investigations. Not a single paper is free of a coffee stain much less crumpled in some fashion from exhaustive skimming. That being said, no one solved homicide cases by being neat.

My caffeine addiction is my best friend, without it I'd be at home passed out on my recliner with the Mercury Bullets against the Apollo Mavericks on the tube. Instead, I'm here at my homely desk staring at this dossier about a dead musician.

Death isn't new to Rapture. A lot of names and faces have gone across my desk, filed in my cabinet, and left to be forgotten in the depths of my brain. Yet this one, this musician, she doesn't have to sing much less be alive to tell me something is different.

---Rapture Bureau of Investigation---

Culpepper, Anna

DOB: 07-14-1931

Height: 5' 8"

Weight: 126 lbs

Occupation: Musician

==

Found deceased in respective apartment. NO criminal record. NO associative criminal history.

Autopsy pending once crime scene is cleared by forensic team.

See on site photographic file E-77429 for further information.

==

There wasn't much to read on file. Being at the scene is another story.

The power was out in her section of the suites which meant the electrically heated plumbing pipes froze over from the cold of the deep sea water and eventually burst. Her whole apartment was flooded an inch high, enough to submerge any evidence that'd have proven useful to the guys in forensics. That's when Henry and I were called over to take a gander.

Anna Culpepper. A dead woman plopped into her luxury bath tub, body riddled with bullet holes, and blood smeared all around.

"Hell of a way to clock out for a musician." saying as I lifted a cigarette to my lips. I took my time to draw and exhale before saying "Heard any of her work?".

"No but she had a reputation." said Henry sighing as he stooped over the bath tub's edge to get a closer look at what was left of Culpepper.

"For what?"

"The what doesn't matter, it's with who."

"And who is that?"

Henry sighs again and takes a moment to look back at me before saying a name I've heard countless times on the job. "Andrew Ryan."

I turned away from the body to get a look of the view from Culpepper's bathroom window. It was the floor to ceiling kind that you'd find in some big shot's office topside. Instead of skyscrapers and wistful clouds it was open ocean gently lit by the glow of Rapture.

"A reputation huh?" I said to Henry over my shoulder. "Must've been a good one to get a place like this? Was she sweet with him or something?"

"Quite the contrary." Henry said as he stood straight and joined me at the window to peer at the view. "Her lyrics didn't speak too highly of him, in fact, they're pretty damning."

"So you have heard some of her work?"

"Alright, maybe some." Henry said with a smirk.

"Enough to know she has a reputation." I smiled and dragged on my cigarette.

"Yeah, the kind of reputation that gets you labeled as a 'parasite'." Henry says as he moves his eyebrows up and down for satirical effect.

Having been in Culpepper's apartment for a little over ten minutes I could begin to feel the cold ocean water seep into my oxfords. It was the kind of cold that leaves that part of you without a sense of touch. The closest thing to being dead without actually getting there.

In Rapture being labeled a "parasite" by some, particularly Ryan, is the closest you can be to death without actually getting there.

Unless you're Anna Culpepper.