STATUS Deceased – killed on duty, Section 18 front office
RANK Desk Sergeant (Detective Candidate, Probationary)
ACCESS LEVEL Section House 18, Front Office
AGE Mid-40s, by the House’s own estimate
YEARS OF SERVICE 19
SECTION Front desk, paired with Sanchez, greeting every Agent in and out
FIRST ON RECORD Session 1 – already at the desk, hollering the Agents in to Brin’s office

Kowalski held down the Section 18 front desk just past Bowlohr’s – a heavyset, middle-aged man with close-cropped greying hair and a honey drop working its way around his mouth more often than not. Officially he’d been on probation for a detective’s badge longer than anyone could quite explain; unofficially, everyone at the House knew exactly why. His mouth ran faster than his paperwork, and not always in a direction his superiors appreciated.

He and Sanchez worked the front office as a pair, close enough to finish each other’s jokes, and between the two of them there wasn’t much that moved through Section 18 they didn’t have an opinion on. Kowalski’s was usually the friendlier voice – the one that confirmed the underground moles were people rather than vermin, or waved the Agents on toward the Chuza Collections office when a case called for it.

FILE NOTES

It was his own desk that killed him. Still bandaged from a knife wound picked up earlier that day, he carried in a carefully folded, perfumed note addressed to the Agents and joked about it being from an admirer before handing it off. When Krusha finally opened it and read Griffiths’ message aloud, the parchment detonated where Kowalski sat. Already wounded, he took the blast at close range and didn’t survive it. It was one letter among several that day – the same campaign hit the Chuza Mercantile Guild, an apothecary on Culpepers, and killed a mortuary assistant named Jones outright; Kowalski just happened to be the one holding his when it went off.

“Hmm, is that perfume on it? Guess one of you has an admirer. Or maybe all three, hehe. Perks of the job, perks of the job…”

Kowalski, moments before the letter detonated

STATUS: Filed under The Good. Honey drops, a southern drawl, and years of front-desk banter, ended by a letter bomb meant to punish the Agents rather than him. His funeral was shared with Agent Crowe’s; his old desk now belongs to Agent Reese, who has yet to fill the silence Kowalski left behind it.