Tragweite
//
Disclaimer: I don't own Law and Order: Criminal Intent, it's characters, or anything else, for that matter, except a few pairs of shoes, a lot of comics, and a Crunchie bar. I'm not profitting from this publication, unfortunately, in any way except from the warm and fuzzy feeling I get when I read reviews.
Author's Note: I swore I wouldn't start a new story until I finished Unreal City, but this idea was knocking around in my skull so hard I sort of HAD to, so I could get some sleep. This is Bobby/OC, but I wouldn't discount the idea of it turning into a shipper fic at some point before the end. I can't help myself. This takes place after Frame, late September, 2008. Oh, and btw I don't have a "beta," I don't even really know what that is or how to get one, so my stories will remain filled with minor errors. Also, I only know a tiny bit of german, so apologies in advance for any mistakes I make. Unless someone who speaks german fluently wants to help me out…
Summary: When an old man, a middle-aged mother and her teenaged daughter are all shot, the detectives are called in to investigate the ritualistic elements of the murders. They soon delve into a sinister world which neither or them is quite ready for. Bobby/OC. Angst. Some disturbing content.
//
235 E. 73rd st.
Bergen Beach
Brooklyn, NY
September 22nd, 2008
Such a nice old man, Peggy Bradley thought as she walked out onto the broad verandah of his sun-stippled house, towards her ancient VW bug. Her daughter, almost a mirror image of herself at that age, sullen and beautiful in a sloe-eyed, dreamy way, followed her, kicking at stray pebbles with her scuffed Converse, laces trailing. Peggy lost herself for a moment in thoughts of her father, a proud and distant man, not the type to let emotion overwhelm him. She could remember only a few times over the years, as a younger man, that he really let himself show his feelings—in a flash of anger, or with a sudden, unexpected bear hug. He had smelled of wintergreen mints and pipe tobacco. She had spent most of her young life desperately trying to please him, before reverting into angry dissonance as a teenager, rebelling against his coldness by having wild fits of fury, weeping loudly in public, riding in red cars with loud boys, smoking joints and listening to smoky, thrilling music. Now she looked back on him and could finally, after years of therapy, make a certain, unsteady peace with his memory. He was a lonely, frustrated man. Not like her warm, affectionate neighbor, who had just offered her the most generous gift she had ever received. Her daughter shook her out of her reverie.
"Hey Mom," she said. "Can I drive?"
"Not on your life," Peggy replied, reaching for her keys. "This old boat is dangerous enough. Besides, is that all you have to say? Leon—Mr. Ernst—don't you have anything to say about that?" She fumbled around in her purse. "Damnit, why are my keys never where I put them?" Her daughter sighed, assuming a posture of great boredom.
"Ma, I already thanked Mr. Ernst like a thousand times," she said, looking down the road towards the car pulling up behind them. "You know I'm totally thrilled that he's crazy enough to give me college money. And," she added significantly, "the money to get my own place."
Peggy finally found her car keys buried in a pack of tissues. She had started to reply that they'll have to see about that, ask Mandy's father, have a family discussion, when the car which had been slowly approaching them, rolled to a stop just next to them. Her daughter, ready to be indignant, peered into the tinted windows.
She was about to ask the driver a question, when, from inside Leon Ernst's big house she and Mandy heard a muffled crash and a long, wailing shriek. It was a haunting, terrifying noise, simultaneously far away and right up close, threading into her ears. Her daughter's eyes grew huge. No, oh no, she thought, incoherently, whirling around to face the house. No, Leon, oh god, what—
She heard the muted click too late to do anything. Oh please, she thought, looking desperately towards her beautiful daughter, who had rounded the car to stand by her side, her skin waxy, sweat on her upper lip. As her daughter started to grab her hand, Peggy turned again slowly towards the silent, dark car.
"Don't hurt my baby," she begged. "Don't—"
A roaring, clanging noise filled her ears as her vision suddenly flooded with red, which faded, for what seemed like an eternity, into blackness.
//
In New York City's war on crime, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Major Case Squad. These are their stories.
//
Majestic Theater
245 W. 44th St
New York, NY 10036
September 23rd, 2008
Ilse Fischer always liked to have a bowl of orchids in her dressing room. She loved to look at them as she practiced her scales, a sort of moving meditation for her. After graduating Julliard at age 17, a musical prodigy, she had landed a few off-broadway roles, nothing major. The problem with New York City was that it was chock full of musical prodigies. People spilling out into the streets who could sing like they were posessed to do so. And most of them were. Standing in lines to audition for American Idol, they grouped together and told stories about how famous they would someday be, these hundreds of thousands of geniuses, all trying to fill the same solitary spot. Broadway's streets were lined with hopeful young faces, people who had gotten the unfair, inexplicable twin gifts of both beauty and talent. After a few years most of them left, used up like old sponges, going back to their homes nursing lifelong resentments about the "industry" that had swallowed them up. Some died of overdoses. One or two, maybe, got to live the life they has always somehow expected was rightfully theirs. Ilse had been born with the curse of hard intelligence, and she knew, before she started her career, that beauty, talent, and brains weren't enough to make you famous, and that being famous certainly wasn't enough to make you happy. So she slaved away for 15 years, working part time as a german tutor, part time as a waitress, and spending ten hours a day practicing, when she wasn't in some small part of an even smaller show. Hard work, Ilse knew, was the crux of all of it. When you earned something, really earned it, you had a right to happiness. And here she was. After all this time, she had finally landed what they called her "break out role" as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera. A broadway show. A leading role. At age 32, this was quite an achievement. Everyone said so, and she agreed. Her story was taking up pages in People, the New York Times, and opera magazines across the country. A young girl, orphaned by a violent hate crime against her parents, Jewish immigrants from Brandenburg, themselves both hard-working people. Although she was hesitant to speak of her past—she was only six years old when they died, these reporters had managed to dredge up old newspapers and police reports, documenting with startling severity the savagery of the crime, it's details spattering blood across their glossy pages. The old man had been tied to a dresser, forced to watch his wife being raped by several men, then beaten to death with a silver Kiddush cup, a ceremonial artifact, the one nice thing they had brought back with them from the mother land. Then he had been castrated, and his neck had been broken minutes before he would have bled to death. The attackers hadn't noticed their young daughter hiding in the crawl space under their floor. She hadn't seen any of it, and anyways was too young to remember, but she had some flavor of the incident. Remembered the sound of heavy breathing, the thick, metallic scent of blood. They had only found one of the four men involved, a skinhead kid, really, a kid, 16 years old, who had been promptly tried and executed. He had reportedly given names, but nothing had ever come of it. Reading this abbreviated tale in the slick pages of a national magazine, Ilse wondered why people would want to read this story for entertainment. But so it went. Because of her story, she had been adopted by an upper-class, deeply sympathetic German couple, who loved her dearly for as long as she could remember. She had a good life. And now—she sang scales, her voice ringing out.
A knock came at her door, breaking her concentration. "Who is it?" Her speaking voice was strong and slightly husky, bearing the thinnest traces of a german accent, one she had worked very hard to lose. Her door opened, and the director, Max Glatzer, stepped into her room. She took a silent breath. She had an instinctive mistrust of Max, who always seemed to her to be holding some kind of secret grudge—against whom she didn't know. He just always seemed to have a deep and disturbing current of anger, hiding somewhere just below the surface of his smooth, glossy personality. Plus, he was a well known Broadway letch, and she had to be careful. She had gotten the part because of her talent, but it probably helped that Max looked at her like a cat looked at a canary in a cage just above him.
"Ilse," Max said, acknowleging her.
"Max," she replied, wrapping her robe closely around her. "What can I do for you?"
"Oh, nothing," Max scratched his jaw, slowly, and seemed to be restraining himself. "I was just wondering if you had heard about that murder in Bergen Beach yesterday." Ilse just looked at him. He dropped his hand. "I guess you haven't," he said, slowly. "Leon Ernst?" He noted the way her shoulders stiffened at the name.
"I've never heard of him," she swallowed, sounding very young all at once. "Why, should I have?"
Max eyed her, his eyes slipping over her body. "I guess not," he murmered. "I thought it might mean something to you." He started to scratch his jaw again, but forced himself to leave it alone. "Sorry to interrupt. And remember, dress rehearsal at 4:30. Bring your A-Game, the Secretary of State will be in the audience tonight." He didn't wait for her to respond before slipping out of the room. His cologne left an unidentifieable, male smell in the air.
Ilse sat down and stared at the door, her eyes dilated, nostils tightened, for at least ten minutes before once again resuming her scales.
//
235 E. 73rd st.
Bergen Beach
Brooklyn, NY
September 23rd, 2008
Eames shook her head, slowly, at the scene before her. So many years, countless murders, and she still felt an unnamed sadness fill her when she saw the death of a child. At any age, it just seemed like so much waste. Maybe it was the ghost of her own pregnancy, at the emptiness that had filled her mind after she gave the child away, even though he was alive and well, and she could see him when she wanted, he still wasn't really her child. Maybe it was the ghost of her marriage, at all the times she had told Joe that she didn't want kids, that it wasn't fair to them, the prospect of being brought up by two cops, two people who could die at any moment. The loss that she felt when Joe died. The loss that could only be filled by work and more work. She had to concentrate to clear her head when she first arrived upon this scene, her partner fidgeting in the car, burning with nervous energy, bounding out almost before she has really stopped, now pacing restlessly back and forth before some bookcases reading titles, his hands shoved behind him, one hand cupping the other, head tilted up. She got up, slowly, from her perch next to the old man's body, and went to stand next to her partner, silently bemoaning the twinge it cost her back. She had started to feel old, recently, in body and in mind. Even though she remained remarkably young-looking, which her sister constantly gave her flack about, she was beginning to feel the effects that all the years of early mornings and chasing itinerant hookers around the city had had on her body. Not to mention the recent losses and misfortunes that had overtaken her life. She looked over at Bobby. He certainly was showing the effects of his hard life. Since his brother had died, he had put in more of an effort to get back into shape, to start pulling himself together again in all things, even though his magnificent brain had never seemed to take a rest, pulling in the arrests and convictions with the same frequency and reliablity as always. Leaner, now, his eyes a little sunken and filled with the past, he looked both older and younger than he had in the past year.
He had somehow noticed her staring at him. "Uh, Eames?" His voice, as (almost) always, was soft and measured. Her thoughts interrupted, she turned to face him.
"The man is a Leon Ernst, 67," she reported to him, "although there seems to be some question as to whether or not he was using an alias."
"It seems likely," Bobby replied, thoughtfully, glancing back towards the books. "He was a man…with many faces." He reached up towards the top of the shelf, and handed over to her a small bronze bust of the god Janus, it's dual heads staring emotionlessly outwards, one towards Bobby, one towards Alex. "God of beginnings and endings," he said, quoting from some nameless inner source.
"Well," Alex said, her usual snark somewhat muted by the frailty of the old corpse behind her. "I don't know about beginnings, but he got half of it right."
//
A/N: I hope this lives up to my previous efforts! After so much Unreal City writing, it's hard to write in the past tense, so forgive me if I mix tenses every so often.