Ice Heart

Ice Heart is the third full-length Westbury Detectives chapter, as well as the first to not feature Pinhead as lead antagonist. The story follows Pang Wei and Jack being harassed over a mysterious painting, while Byrd finally gets to go to dinner with Roger Mezzini.

Summary
Officer Antonelli has managed to arrest a member of the Miyamoto Group and discover the group's detective murder pattern, with Byrd worrying if Roger is safe. Antonelli becomes irritated and insists Byrd go to Roger and confess, promptly before leaving with his own husband and daughter. Elsewhere, Pang Wei falls for a strange painting of a tough-looking blonde man and after buying it, is cornered by a young man who offers to buy it back from him and fails. Roger comes to the WDA after an assignment in Chinatown, and an incredibly flustered Byrd asks him to dinner, although not explicitly calling it a date, but Roger accepts. Pang Wei receives a call from the same young man offering money for the painting.

A bizarre murder is found outside town, where the victim was clearly not a Miyamoto Group victim and his wallet was untouched. Pang Wei calls Jack and invites him and his friends to a party in celebration of his roof being fixed, which is held as a small casino just outside town. Meifun Yan is attending and greets Jack's group, and the party goes well aside from Jack's sloppy advances on her. Meifun brings him down to the casino under the guise of them on a date to show him the man who's been harassing Pang Wei, roulette worker Lucas O'Hare. O'Hare becomes agitated and blocks Jack's questions, but suddenly complements Meifun's dress while the rest of the roulette table looks on.

Pretending to be the man in the painting, O'Hare steals the canvas from Pang Wei and locks himself, his assistant Ezra, Jack and Pang Wei in an elevator, where Jack notices a missing poster for the same man he found that morning. The group wrangles their way out of the elevator and the painting is partly destroyed, revealing something inside it...

Title
Ice Heart, or "Ice Heart~Sonoke mo Naino ni" is the fourth track on Miki Matsubara's 1984 album Cool Cut, as well as the album's most rock-styled song and one of the few tracks to have non-synthesized instruments. Fauna has mentioned it being her favourite song on the album.

Background Information

 * Cafe Baci is an actual Italian restaurant in Westbury, NY.
 * At one point in Cafe Baci, a young man with glasses and a young woman with a scruffy bob are at a table together. This is a cameo of Fauna's friend Cody Ball and Rei Ayanami, secondary protagonist in the Japanese television show Neon Genesis Evangelion.
 * Oasis Casino takes its name from another Miki Matsubara song, simply titled "Oasis", from her 1981 album Cupid.
 * The gallery worker is a cameo of Mary Koenig, Pang Wei's co-creator.
 * Fauna got the image of Oasis Casino from a dream, but in it, she only entered the building as far as the front entrance. The dream version of Oasis included a hotel, and had a leather gay bar on the third floor.
 * Fauna underwent jaw surgery halfway through the chapter, and beforehand, put up an illustration of Jack and Meifun in the style of as Robert Palmer and a girl from Addicted to Love. Fauna was physically unable to update until almost a month later.
 * The chapter was originally to be an entirely different story focused around Pinhead, the only set event being that he has intercourse with Emma Bishop and a murder is planned. Fauna, relying on method writing, had a number of difficulties getting into Pinhead's psychotic mindset, and decided that other characters desperately needed development instead.