“This is some bullshit,” Harun said to Jaafar. “Look at this, you dog. Look at this chest we found. Look at this woman in it, all chopped to bits and wrapped in a sheet and then in a rug then locked in a chest then thrown into the river then washed out to sea. That’s terrible. What are we doing here, honestly. What kind of a city are we running? What kind of an empire? Go solve this or die, you schmuck.”
Well.
Jaafar’s got no idea, no clues, just a jigsaw of a woman stuffed in a trunk so off he goes to his family, to mourn them, to spend the next three days getting high as hell, just waiting for the end. God provides, or doesn’t, and either way it’s out of his hands, fuck.
Three days later, welp, he’s fixing to get hanged and wouldn’t you know it, a handsome young man bursts out of the crowd, face like a moon, mole like a dish of amber, you get it: HOT. “I did it,” he says, “I killed her, there’s no point left in life for me, don’t kill the vizier, kill me instead.”
Jaafar takes his head out of the noose and squints at the young man. “What was her name?” he asks.
“Um,” says the young man. “Huh.”
“You don’t know?” says Harun.
“You would think I would,” says the young man. “But I don’t.”