Boy with Cherries: A Crucial Piece of Evidence in the Dawn Insurgency Investigation

Roy met his own eye in the glass of the case that held a fragment of Ishvala and knew he had no desire to step any closer. He instead occupied himself with the larger objects, feeling around the marble horse for some kind of compartment. His hands glided across the cool marble and confirmed that there was nothing sinister beneath its surface. His eye panned the room, searching for anything else that may hold secrets that could bring the investigation forward.

'Is this what you’re looking for?' Ed asked Armstrong, holding a journal in his hands.

'This could be good evidence,' he answered, taking the journal appreciatively. 'But something less circumstantial would be best. If you find any receipts of purchase, or correspondences with Dawn insurgents, those would be ideal.'

'Wait—we got some guns with the serial numbers still on them. We could use those to track down where they came from,' Ed suggested.

'Excellent—that will be deeply helpful.'

They had been in this glorified cellar for something close to an hour, yet still had run short of finding a smoking gun. Something more concrete, something more direct, something showing that Carlee and his men were directly involved with the Dawn—Roy knew that the evidence had to be somewhere in this room. Shoved in a bookcase, or in some secret compartment, there was more here than wretched war stories.

Roy made his way to the back of the large room, where the sight of something vaguely familiar caught his attention. It was some intricate frame peeking out from a thick cream tarp. Roy stopped abruptly— knowing that he had seen this someplace before.

'Sir?' Riza asked. She held a book in her hand, 'Treatise on the Limits of Democracy, Bates 1881.' She shelved it as Roy inspected the strange object.

Like he was possessed, Roy reached out and grasped the tarp in his hand. The fabric was startlingly cold to the touch, as though a thick fabric in a cold cellar would be anything but ice. Carefully, he pulled the tarp away to reveal a painting, one of a boy with sad eyes.

It was exactly as Roy had remembered it, blond hair and all.

Roy looked into the boy’s hunted gaze, saw the lines that defined delicate lips holding red cherries. Each hue of him was painted with extraordinary detail, bordering perhaps on an obsession. If ever there was such a thing as a haunted painting, it would be this one.

'Sir?' Riza asked again, coming to stand behind him.

'Boy with Cherries,' Roy answered quietly. 'Right here, all along.'

Armstrong startled behind them, quickly taking up his camera. 'You mean—!'

'The very same Halcrow bought before he died. The Dawn’s money laundering machine,' Roy confirmed.

'We—' Armstrong started, aghast. 'We searched everywhere for it. Interrogated everyone the Specials captured… but there wasn’t a trace of it.'

'I imagine the baron’s kept a tight schedule,' Roy mused. 'Moving around militias and fine art.'

'That’s evidence, alright,' Riza said. 'Concretely tying Carlee to the Dawn.'

Ed, who until that moment had been reading through some old documents, finally came over to investigate what the fuss was all about. Ed inspected the painting with typical apathy. Edward never was much of an art critic.