Buzz buzz
Liv reached over to her coffee table to grab her phone, unlocking the screen, see saw that she had a text from Clive.
Body found in Room 698, The Grand Hotel at 162 Westfield Avenue
Meet you there
Clive
This text was almost immediately followed by another, this time from Ravi.
On my way, got the equipment from the morgue, be at yours in 10.
Hope your hungry ;P
Liv felt the familiar excitement of beginning a new case in the pit of her stomach as she got up and began tidying up her apartment, just waiting for Ravi to arrive. Without the good work she did in solving murders for the Seattle Police Department, Liv doubted she would have been able to pull herself out her post zombie transformation depression, her friendship with Clive and Ravi certainly helped as well. Checking her watch Liv grabbed everything she thought she might need and locked up her apartment and went outside to wait for Ravi, who pulled up a few minutes later.
"So what personality do you think you'll end up with today? I'm personally hoping for some kind of undercover secret agent, who knows kung fu!" Ravi said as Liv climbed into the car.
"I'm hoping for another artist, I think my room could do with redecorating. Or maybe a musician, that could be fun." Liv mused as she idly watched the people of Seattle mulling around through the window. Fortunately, traffic was light so it didn't take long for Liv and Ravi to arrive at their destination. However, the hotel they arrived at couldn't have been more of an oxymoron. The Grand turned out to be a seedy looking building, with an unappealing exterior and a vibe that just screamed 'this is where I bring the prostitute that I just brought on a street corner.'
"You never know," Ravi said starring up at the ugly building. "It could be a really deep under cover secret agent."
"More like low level drug dealer." Liv said dejectedly, before making her way up the steps to the reception. The receptionist, a pervy looking middle aged man, directed them to the room and the uniform officers stood guarding it waved them through. The room was very sparsely decorated, with a king sized bed, a dresser with a chair and a wardrobe, all the same faded brown as the walls and floor. The body was lying on the bed, the cover and pillows were scattered on the floor, completely in the nude.
"Wooh, you could warn a girl." Liv said to the officer that had let them through at the door.
"This can't be the grossest thing you've seen as a medical examiner." Clive said walking over to them.
"Believe me, I'm not grossed out." Liv said, "I just wasn't expecting to walk into a room and find a naked dead lady in front of me. All I'm saying is a heads up would have been nice." Clive just chuckled slightly, before turning to Ravi.
"You're up, what can you tell me?" Clive asked, Ravi set down his suitcase and grabbed a pair of gloves, before walking over the body.
"I would guess the victim to be in her 30's, no physical wounds on the body suggests she wasn't killed violently. However, body shows signs of asphyxiation, possibly caused by a drug overdose, but I won't know more until I get her back to the lab and run some tests. But at first glance I'd put the time of death at around 1am." Ravi finished his preliminary examination and stood back.
"Drug overdose huh, not surprising." Clive said looking out the window into the seedy street below.
"Where are her clothes? And have you found a handbag or purse?" Liv asked looking round the room, nudging the bed sheet on the floor.
"We haven't been able to find them in the room, I've got uniforms searching the rest of the hotel, laundry, garbage, excreta." Clive said, flicking through his notepad.
"What about a name?" Liv asked.
"We have the name she checked into the hotel with, but even the owner confessed that a lot of his guests often use aliases. Apparently she checked in under the name Lily Saturn. Still, we're running it just in case." Clive replied.
"You have to agree it's a little suspicious that a person would check into a hotel using a fake name, throw away all her clothes and belongings and then take an overdose." Liv said.
"I agree it's a little unusual, but so far we don't have much to indicate foul play. Now if your post-mortem shows up something then we'll have somewhere to start, but until then we'll have to wait and see if forensics or the uniforms turn something up." Clive said. "Either way I'm going to talk to the maid who found the body, you coming?" He asked Liv.
'Right behind ya." Liv answered following Clive out the room. The maid was seated in the room opposite with a uniform officer guarding her. Her bland beige maid's uniform clashed against her goth appearance. Her skin was caked in make up to make it look almost as pale as Liv's, with heavy black eye make up, piercings in her tongue, lip, nose and eyebrow and spiked black hair with hot pink highlights.
"Miss Florence Wright, my name is detective Clive Babineaux and this is medical examiner Liv Moore, we'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Yeah whatever, I'm still getting paid whilst I'm being kept here right? And its Flo, I hate Florence." The maid replied, examining her chipped black nail polish on her fingers.
"Okay Miss Flo, can you tell me what time you found the body." Clive asked.
"About 11, guests are supposed to check out at 10, then I clean the rooms ready for check in at 3. That dead chick over there only paid for one night so I assumed she'd already checked out. My shift started at 10 and her room was the fourth on my list to clean for today, so yeah, it must have been about 11." Flo replied.
"And were you working yesterday when Miss Saturn checked in?"
"Yeah, sometimes I cover reception when Donny is too lazy, he usually has a nap in his office. She arrived at around 7, just before I left. She came in gave me her totally fake name and asked for her room key. She then went up to her room and I didn't see her again until this morning and by then she was dead." Flo said before blowing a bubble in the gum she was chewing, totally unbothered about finding a dead body.
"Was she with anyone?"
"Not when she arrived but I left soon after, so some one might have come later. You'd have to ask Donny. Are we done here? I've not got anything more to say."
"For now." Clive said, fishing out a card from his jacket. "If you remember anything else that you think might help our investigation please give me a call. We'll contact you if we have any further questions."
"I do have a question." Flo said as she took Clive's card. "Where do you get your make up? I'd kill for skin that pale." Flo directed at Liv.
"Um…" Liv stumbled, caught off guard by the question. "It's natural."
"Seriously?! Lucky you." Flo said before walking out the room and disappearing down the hall.
"Well she seemed very blasé about the whole situation but I don't think she's a murderer." Liv said.
"I agree, let's go talk to this 'Donny' find out if anyone else went into her room." Clive said as he and Liv made their way down to reception.
"Mr Donny?" Clive asked the pervy man at the reception desk.
"The one and only." Donny laughed showing off his yellow teeth.
"We've got some questions we'd like to ask about the woman found dead upstairs."
"Yeah about that, how long until you move her out and I can start renting the room out again? Also no offense but the big police presence here is scarring away customers."
"Mr Donny, that room is a crime scene and will be unusable until the end of this investigation. As for your business, I'll be sure to let the killer know what an inconvenience they have caused by committing murder in your hotel." Clive deadpanned.
"Hey, I'm just trying to make a living here. No need to get all sarcastic, I was just asking."
"Mr Donny, we've been told that at the time that Miss Saturn checked in you were in your office while Miss Wright covered reception. Is that correct?"
"Well I didn't see her check in so it must be. Flo finishes cleaning the rooms at 3 and then covers the reception while I do paperwork in my office. Flo leaves at around 7 and then I cover reception for the rest of the night, until Sam comes in at 11 to do the night shift."
"Did anyone else check in after 7pm?
"A few, 3 I think, but there were also a few people that came and headed straight up to the rooms, guests of the guests so to speak." Donny laughed at his own joke.
"We are going to require records of all the people who stayed at the hotel last night and all footage from your security cameras." Clive said.
"I can send you all the booking receipts, who knows, some of the names might even be legit. However nearly everyone who comes here pays with cash, so I don't know how helpful they will be." Donny said, chuckling to himself as he started clicking on his computer. "As for security footage, we only have the one camera in reception, I can send the video files to you as well."
"Much appreciated, we will also need the details of your night porter, Sam, we'd like to ask him some questions as well."
"No problem." Donny said writing an address and phone number on a piece of paper and sliding it over to Clive, who nodded in thanks before turning to Liv.
"This case is going to be a headache, I can already feel it coming on. With no real names and no credit card receipts we are going to have trouble tracking any of these people down."
"What about the camera footage? Will that help?" Liv asked.
"Potentially, depends on the quality of the footage, although I'm not holding my breath. Also the camera faces the reception above the door, so we will only be able to identify the people as they exit. But for all we know the killer could still be staying at the hotel." Clive said rubbing his fingers over his forehead in frustration. "I hope your visions can help us out on this one, its going to be a real ball ache if they don't."
"I'll try my best, but remember I can't just get one on command." Liv reminded, in an effort to take away the feeling of pressure to help solve this case.
"Yeah, yeah, either way, I'll have uniforms canvas all the rooms, see if anyone saw or heard anything. Meanwhile why don't you head to the morgue and make sure this definitely is a murder before we start chasing up this list of guests for no reason." Clive said.
"Okay, I'll text you when we've got something." Liv said heading back upstairs to help Ravi with the body.
A few hours later Liv, Ravi and Jane Doe were in the morgue awaiting Clive's arrival. Liv had just finished her scrambled eggs and brain on toast and was waiting to find out what mystery personality she was going to end up with.
"So what you got for me?" Clive asked walking down the stairs into the morgue.
"She was poisoned." Ravi revealed. "We found huge amounts of Aconitum, more commonly know as Wolf's bane, in her system. Death would have taken mere minutes."
"So it was murder." Clive summarised. "Makes sense, given that the uniforms turned up empty in their search for her missing belongings. However, its turns out the the garbage was emptied this morning, it could have been a coincidence but it's looking more likely that the killer dumped her belongings, knowing that the body wouldn't be found until the next day after the garbage had been emptied. I'll send some uniforms to track down the garbage truck."
"We also found around six different semen DNA samples…on the body." Ravi trailed off awkwardly.
"You didn't tell me that!" Liv hissed.
"You were already eating your lunch, it didn't seem important." Ravi replied, trying to hold back laughter.
"Anyway," Clive interrupted. "Forensics found the same on the bed where we found the victim, it seems she was involved in some kind of group sexual activity. Do we think it was consensual?"
"Like I said at the crime scene there aren't any defensive wounds on the body and I haven't found anything in her system to indicate that she received some other drugs to make her…complacent. I would assume that whatever she was involved in, it was consensual." Clive nodded and made a note in his notebook.
"What about the poison, do we know how the poison got into her system?" Clive asked.
"Well her stomach contents turned up empty, so it's a bit of a mystery. I haven't found any puncture marks, either so she wasn't injected with it. I'm not really sure how else you would get it into her system." Ravi admitted.
"Well, keep working on it. Meanwhile," Clive said turning to Liv. "Do you want to tag along to visit the night porter from the hotel, see if he saw anything suspicious?"
"Yep, let me just grab my jacket." Liv said as she shrugged off her lab coat and walked over to the coat stand.
"By the way," Ravi said as he followed her over. "Give me a heads up when you discover what kind of personality traits you're adopting, is she's some kind a crazy serial killer with a fancy for men of the Asian decent, I'd like to know."
"Don't worry Ravi, if that does happen, you'll be the first to know." Liv joked grinning at him manically, before walking out the morgue.
"Not funny Liv." Ravi shouted after her.
-x-
Liv had still yet to figure out what kind of personality their mystery Jane Doe had, she usually felt the effects by now, but she still felt like herself. Well a slightly hotter, fidgety version of her herself. She had been in Clive's car less that 15minutes and she had already changed position eight times and Clive was starting to give her funny looks. Thankfully they arrived at Sam Anderson's house not long after. The house itself was out in suburbia, the typical American dream house. Clive knocked on the door and it was quickly opened by a very homely middle aged woman who wore an apron with red hearts on it, an oven glove on one hand and a big smile on her face.
"Hi there! How may I help you?" The woman asked cheerfully.
"Hello, my name is Detective Clive Babineaux and this is medical examiner Liv Moore. We are looking for Sam Anderson; we have some questions we'd like to ask him." Clive said holding up his badge.
"Oh my!" The woman gasped, putting her hand over her heart. "Of course, come in. I'm Mrs Anderson, Sam's mother. Is everything ok? He's not in trouble is he? Follow me." Mrs Anderson said, closing the door behind them and leading them down into the basement.
"Sam, the police are here to talk to you." Mrs Anderson called out to the heap on the bed. "Sorry, he works nights and usually sleeps all day." Mrs Anderson walked over to the bed and shook him awake.
"Mom! Go away I'm sleeping." The heap moaned, trying to move away from his mother.
"Honey, the police need to talk to you."
"The police? Why?" Sam asked sitting up in bed and rubbing his eyes.
"I don't know dear, but you shouldn't keep them waiting."
"Whatever, I'll be up in a moment."
"He'll be right with you." Mrs Anderson said leading them back upstairs and into the living room. "Would you like a drink or a snack while you wait?"
"No thank you ma'am." Clive said taking a seat. Not long after Sam emerged looking tired and sweaty, like he hadn't showered in days. He was thin and lanky, with a pieced eyebrow, a tattoo covering his neck and clothes that looked to be two sizes too big for him. Liv didn't find him attractive at all but the moment she saw him, she couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to have sex with him, she could imagine pushing him to ground and climbing on top and having her way with him. The thought gave Liv a hot flush and an excited feeling in her neither region. But Liv quickly shook her head trying to get rid of the thought as Sam flopped down onto the sofa and adjusted himself through his trousers. However, the feeling didn't go away, maybe Jane Doe found him attractive, but Liv couldn't understand why.
"My name is Detective Clive Babinaux and this is medical examiner Liv Moore, and we have some questions we'd like to ask you."
"This better be important, I'm knackered from work." Sam said, looking bored.
"Mr Anderson, where you aware that the body of a guest at your place of employment was found dead this morning?" That seemed to peak Sam's interest.
"Really? Cool, how did she die?" Sam asked eagerly.
"I am not at liberty to discus an ongoing investigation, we would however like to ask you some questions about your shift last night."
"Yeah, go ahead." Sam said.
"Do you recognise this woman?" Clive asked passing over a picture of the deceased. Sam took the picture and had a good long look at it. Liv immediately fantasised about him starring down at her like that as he thrust into her. Her breath involuntary hitched and Clive turned to her.
"You okay? You have a vision?" Clive asked.
"No, sorry. Just not feeling well." Liv replied.
"Sorry don't recognise her." Sam said handing the picture back to Clive.
"Do you remember anything unusual happening during your shift last night." Clive asked, putting the picture back into the folder.
"Nope noth…actually there was something a bit strange. I didn't really think much of it at the time." Same said. "About 12:30, maybe a bit later, a group of blokes came downstairs together and then rushed out the hotel. There was this awkward silence between them and they were all starring intently at the floor. I thought it was odd because it was a strange time for a group outing and I didn't really get the impression that these guys were friends." Clive made a note in his book.
"How many men were there?" Clive asked.
"I dunno, five or six, they rushed out pretty fast. It should be on the security camera."
"Thank you." Clive said. "And just for the record what time did your shift finish?"
"Six."
"And you were at reception the whole night?"
"Pretty much, I went toilet a few times and went into the office to eat once or twice, but apart from that yeah, I was there the whole night. I'll be on the camera footage as well."
"Thank you for your cooperation, we will be in touch if we need anything else from you. Here is my card if you think of anything else." Clive said handing it over before making his way out the house. Liv was thankful to get away from Sam and rushed out the house.
"With the security camera footage we should be able to verify his alibi, but either way he has no motive so I doubt its him. What about you, you were acting strange in there, you think he's hiding something?" Clive asked.
"No, no, I'm fine, just feeling a bit lightheaded." Liv said fanning herself slightly but she was already beginning to feel normal again now that she was away from Sam. Weirdly, Jane Doe's brain didn't seem to fantasise about Clive the same way it did Sam. Thank God for small miracles, Liv did not want to start fantasying about sex with Clive. Thankfully Liv was spared from more of Clive's quizzical look by his phone's ringtone.
"Babinaux." Clive answered in greeting, he listened to the other end for a moment. "Really?" Clive said in astonishment. "Text me the details." He said before hanging up and turning to Liv. "We managed to track down the garbage truck and found a hand bag and clothes. The handbag contained an ID belonging to a," Clive looked down at his phone as he received a text. "Felicity Carter. Let's go check out her house, I've got the address." Clive said brandishing her address on his phone screen.
"Right behind you." Liv said, desperate to find out more about the brain she had eaten. During the journey to Felicity's apartment, Liv received a text from Ravi.
Any personality traits manifested yet?
Liv was unsure what to reply, apart from Felicity's apparent attraction to Sam, Liv hadn't really noticed any prevalent personality traits yet. In the end Liv went with,
Vivid imagination.
When they arrived at Felicity's apartment Clive got the super to unlock the front door and they started to look around. At first glance nothing seemed out of the ordinary but upon closer inspection Liv and Clive began to notice some oddities. Her book shelf contained nothing except erotic novels, her DVD collection was mainly erotic films and porn and she apparently owned more underwear and lingerie than normal clothes. On the dinning table Liv saw Felicity's laptop and booted up. When the password screen appeared, Liv hoped this brains muscle memory would kick in, which it luckily did.
"Hey Clive, Felicity left her laptop logged in." Liv lied easily.
"Really? That's convenient. Check out her calendar, see if she put why she went to the hotel yesterday." Clive said walking over the table Liv was sat at.
"Nope, she's just got an appointment marked to go to the hotel, but it doesn't say why or who she was meeting." Liv said.
"Check and see if her texts and emails are synced up with this laptop and if she messaged anyone to meet her. Liv had a quick check through the emails and texts on the laptop but didn't see anything mentioning the Grand, however she did find a lot of sexy messages and photos sent to many different men. Liv went back to Felicity's calendar to see if she frequented sleazy hotels often, no such luck. However, Liv did find something that explained Liv's fantasy's and Felicity's taste for erotica.
"Clive, up until two weeks ago Felicity was attending a weekly sex addict's anonymous meetings." Liv shouted.
"That definitely explains what I just found in the bedroom." Clive shouted back. Liv got up and followed Clive's voice into the bedroom where he was stood in front of an open cupboard. Liv peered over Clive's shoulder into the cupboard and saw that Felicity basically owned her own sex shop. The cupboard was filled with chains, whips, handcuffs, dildos, lubricants and others things that Liv couldn't even name.
"Wooh." Liv eventually managed to say once she was over her shock.
"Yep." Clive replied closing the cupboard. "I think we can assume that whatever happened in that hotel room, it was consensual." Clive turned away and continued looking around the room, whilst Liv still remained in shock and if she was honest, a little bit horny.
"Check this out, I think I found a diary." Clive said lowering the mattress that he had been looking under. He flicked open a page and read it aloud.
"February 4th: Jason Smith, medium sized, and adequate technique. Contact if desperate. Followed by a phone number." Clive recited before turning to another page.
"March 22nd: Garry Watson, large size but poor technique. Don't contact again. What does this mean? Do you know?" Clive asked turning to Liv and seeing that she had on her vision face, as Clive had dubbed it.
The moment Clive had started reading the diary entry, Liv was thrown into a vision. She saw through Felicity's eyes that she was sat up in her bed, a man asleep next to her, a lit cigarette in one hand and her diary open on her lap. June 23rd she wrote, just over two weeks ago Liv realised. Felicity looked at the man lying asleep next to her and wrote his name down in the diary, Vince Mulligan.
'Size…' Felicity whispered to herself lifting up her duvet and looking over the man next to her before lowering the sheet again and turning back to the diary. 'Small.' She whispered dejectedly. 'Technique hmmm.' Felicity said to herself before writing down, mediocre.
The vison ended with Felicity closing the diary and putting it back under the mattress. Liv shuck her head and turned to Clive who was waiting for her to explain what she saw.
"Felicity was keeping records of all the men she slept with, their size and how good they were in bed, in case she wanted to contact them again for a booty call." Liv said, rather disgusted with Felicity and herself for how Felicity's brain was making her feel, which was mainly horny. "Check to see if she wrote who she was meeting up with last night." Clive looked thoroughly disgusted as flicked to end of the diary.
"No such luck, last entry was from two weeks ago."
"That's the one I saw, Vince Mulligan, right?" Liv asked. "Wait, Vince Mulligan, I've seen that somewhere." Liv made her way back into the living room and over to the computer. "There Vince Mulligan, he ran the sex addict's anonymous meetings that Felicity went to." Liv said, pointing at the appointment in the calendar.
"Hmm, not exactly setting a good example is he, sleeping with one of the people he was trying to help, maybe we should have a chat with him. If the sessions are still at the same time, there should be one tomorrow at 7pm. Let's go see if this Vince knows anything."
"Believe me, I'm the last person that needs to go to a sex addicts meeting." Liv said dejectedly.
"Yeah, we're not in that stage of our friendship where we talk about our sex lives." Clive said holding up his hands as if in defence. "I'm going to call and get a team to more thoroughly go through the apartment and laptop. You head home and talk to Peyton or Ravi, whatever, just not me." Clive finished, walking out the room to make his phone call. Liv just shook her head and left the apartment to head back to her own. She could already feel that is was going to be a restless night, probably filled with a lot of online porn and her secret vibrator.