Buratrum - The turian equivalent of hell. The realm of spirits of dishonourable association.
Torin - Torini plural. Male turian of the age of majority (15)
Tarin - Tarini plural. Female turian of the age of majority (15)
Familia notas - The colony markings that turians wear on their faces.
Nais - Asari having reached the age of maiden (40)
Tarc - Vulgar turian expletive equivalent to shit.
Garrus
On the Citadel, crime amounted to endless piles of the same thing. On the presidium, white collar formed the rule. The petty stuff stuck mostly to the wards, along with the truly horrific stuff. Sure, the odd presidium banker offed his mistress or a councillor hired someone to snuff a rival, but for true bloodsport, the real slippery, 'dear spirits, are those entrails on my talons' crime … Senior Investigator Garrus Vakarian bet on the wards every single time.
And he would have come out ahead until dispatch called him to the Crown and Dominion Hotel. The moment he crossed the threshold, all the pristine, white-tiled streets, parks, and lakes vanished into the sixth level of buratrum. Blood painted the expensive velvet-flocked wall paper three different hues and soaked the antique carpets. He looked down at the blood that seeped out of the rug to pool around his booted talons and waited for his gag reflex to respond.
When it only yawned, far too weary in the ways of slaughter, he sighed and looked up.
You've been a cop too long, Vakarian. You're officially jaded.
He held out his right hand, talons snapping. "Someone have some gloves and booties … or hip waders?" he called. He accepted a pair of rubberized booties from one of the crime scene techs and moved over to step into the antiseptic wash at the door. Boots clean, he slipped the covers over his talons. "Who was the first on the scene?"
A timid asari stepped forward, holding up her hand as if being called on in class. "I was the first here, sir. Patrolman Sirri S'tilla."
He shrugged off her name, not caring. "You don't need to sir me, patrolman," he said, snapping latex gloves on over his uniform ones. "I work for a living." He jerked his head toward the macabre scene behind him. "Walk me through it."
He followed the young officer to the door, a wry flick of mandibles greeting her literal interpretation of 'walk me through it'.
"My partner entered through the rear door while I made ingress through the front," she said, walking the path she'd taken. She pointed toward a young human female handcuffed over by the hotel's front desk. "I saw that human searching through the cupboards under the bar. I ordered her to freeze. She complied, and I cuffed her. I proceeded into the lobby and that's when I saw the bodies and called it in."
Teeth clenched, Garrus tuned most of the rest of the report out, focusing his attention to scrutinizing the crime scene. One of the most expensive hotels on the presidium, the Crown and Dominion boasted a clientele of only the top one percent of the one percenters. What in the name of buratrum could have happened there?
"Someone make yourself useful and start running background on the hotel and owners for me," he called toward the usual cluster-fuck of junior officer lookey-loos.
The asari tugged at the collar of her armour and nodded toward the bodies. "I took pictures before I pried a thumb off their … " She cleared her throat. "... equipment and ran fingerprints." She tugged at her collar again, avoiding looking at the staged bodies.
Garrus hid a grin. Was she embarrassed to have touched them? Rookies. Leaving her to squirm, he moved closer, eyes and visor taking in the grisly scene. Each of the victims had been posed as if killed in the act of masturbating, the bodies all boasting a clean, deep slash across their throats and a lap-full of entrails.
The patrolman cleared her throat. "Every last one of these corpses is a known slaver, sir. Two of them are near the top of the Trafficking Bureau's most wanted list."
Garrus's brow plates migrated toward his nose, his practiced calm cracking for a moment. "Slavers?" He held up a talon to circle the corpses. "None of these are guests? None staying in the hotel?" Revulsion faded into surprise, which, in turn, mellowed into curiosity and then into logical process. Even the smallest measure of emotion got in the way of a solid investigation; not a failing he brought to the table. "Their posing suggests this hotel was a front for a prostitution ring as well."
"Yes, sir … I mean, sorry, SI Vakarian. And, no, none of these bodies are registered guests. The guests in the upper levels are all unharmed. The perpetrators locked down all the rooms prior to the attack." The officer blushed a deeper violet. "As for prostitution … there are two sublevels accessible only by a keyed elevator in the hotel offices. In the rooms down there, we found males and females of all species, even a salarian and a hanar. All tell the same story … they were taken from their home colonies or snatched off the streets of Omega … even the Wards here. When they woke up, they were told they could work off the price of their freedom." The nais shuddered.
"What is it?" Garrus narrowed his eyes, studying the asari's face. Something had her rattled, and as much as he might want to chalk it up to a disturbing crime scene, he didn't think so.
Taking a gulping breath, the officer shrugged. "The clientele here clearly have brutal tastes, SI. The slaves down there are in rough shape. A couple of them might not even make it."
Silently thanking her for the chance to prepare himself, he locked down the knot in his guts and turned his attention to the prisoner. "What's her story?"
The nais changed tack with obvious gratitude, spinning to face the young human. "The prisoner's name is Sophie Hakansson. She's twenty-three and moved here from Earth three cycles ago. Lives alone." She scrolled down through her notes. "Works for Shepard Industrial in the Security Mech Division as a computer tech."
"And what was she doing here?" He eyeballed her clothing. She was too clean to have slit even one throat let alone twelve. Still, she didn't look the slightest bit surprised or horrified by the scene. He squinted and crouched down, one forearm braced across his thigh, his visor feeding back her biometrics.
"She says that she heard that this place was a slaving hub and came to try to find her sister." The officer checked her notes. "Apparently, her thirteen-cycle-old sister was grabbed by slavers just over a year ago."
At the mention of the sister, Sophie's heart rate jumped and her jaw clenched. That much was true. After another second, he stood. "Continue, Officer."
The asari nodded and held out an arm toward the door behind the counter. "I continued through to the hotel offices, and found the owner and night clerk both … " She led the way through the door, stalling just inside. "... like this."
Garrus's mandibles flicked. Two human males hung from massive wooden bookshelves. Their attackers had slit their throats and bellies, but those bodies had been nailed to the shelves with their arms outstretched, their feet pointed toward the ground. "Crucified," he whispered, the mystery piquing the macabre part of his brain that found such brutal statements as fascinating as they were revolting.
"Whoever did this doesn't just hate slavers," he said, leaning in. "No, this goes way deeper than hate." Straightening, he looked around. "Has anyone seen my partner?" His hand measured his height. "Big guy, red-brown hide, white familia notas?"
When only shrugs answered him, he turned to the patrolman. "Officer, take this transponder code and find my partner." He paused, just to breathe in, but for some spirit-forsaken reason, she seemed to think he was waiting for her to fill in a blank.
"Patrolman Sirri S'tilla, sir."
"Yeah, whatever." He flicked his talons at her. "Run along, and when you find him, drag him out of whatever hole of self-loathing he's wallowing in, run him through a car wash, and get him here."
The asari backed toward the entrance. "A car wash, sir?"
He spun on her with just enough command momentum to send her scurrying. "Go. And stop calling me sir."
When she left, he turned back to the main room, moving deftly between crime scene techs and photographers. Crouching next to the first body—a batarian—he shoved the grotesque and bawdy posing from his mind to take in the details. Every crime boiled down to its details, even one of which, if overlooked, could mean not catching a small gang of brutal murderers.
One brow plate twitched a little. Although, if those bodies all proved to be slavers involved in the sex trade, he wouldn't twist his guts over letting the perpetrators walk. He leaned in, careful not to contaminate the evidence, spying a hair stuck in a collar. No, solving that case would be a matter of pride, not justice, that was already more than evident.
Someone had already seen to justice.
"Tech! Bag and tweezers." He held out a hand, the demanded items appearing as expected. He plucked the hair from the body, holding it up in front of his eyes: long and red, a generous wave along the half-metre length. He bagged it, then held it out. "Tag this."
Human perpetrators? The brow plate twitched again. Not completely unexpected. They had a long and bloody history with batarians and a bone-marrow-deep hatred of slaving. Using the tweezers, he pushed the collar aside to inspect the batarian's neck.
"Dear spirits," a female voice gasped, earning a glance toward the back office. "Are the fucking ambulances on the way? Where in the pits are the ambulances?" The tarin sprinted past him, making it outside before he heard the sounds of retching and the tarin's breakfast hitting the pavement.
Unprofessional. But telling.
He leaned in to sniff the corpse. Perfume. Sweet and floral, not the usual bath of chemicals. Subtle, unlike the brilliant red lipstick smeared on the male's collar and neck. Garrus leaned back, crouching with his weight on one leg, forearm braced across his thigh, his gut beginning to piece together how everything had gone down. Squinting, he turned to pin the prisoner with a calculated stare. She met his eyes, a low fury simmering behind hers.
Defiant and certain that she stood firmly anchored on the side of justice. He respected that.
He stabbed a talon in her direction. "Someone take her over to the precinct and keep her isolated. I don't want anyone to do more than offer her breakfast before I get there." He nodded, not breaking eye contact with the woman when a patrolman acknowledged his order and hurried over to take custody of the witness. Despite her anger, her stare remained open, no sign of shame or guilt. She didn't have anything to do with the murders, but she didn't harbour the slightest scrap of compassion for the victims.
She remained locked onto him, a missile homed in on a priority target, until her escort herded her through the door. A wry grin tweaked one mandible. Lots of attitude there. He shook his head and continued down the body. Most of the evidence from the victim's clothing would have to wait until the medical examiner got a chance to sort through the guts draped down the man's front.
Discovering the same lipstick and perfume combination on each of the bodies—three batarians, two humans, and a turian—he noted that the particular shade of red showed up brilliant even against the wash of blood. Intentional? Another defiance? At least one of the killers standing up to say, 'I did it, and I'm proud of it'.
"Dear spirits." That time, the oath came from a voice that Garrus recognized. "What the hell happened here?"
Pushing up, Garrus turned toward his partner and cocked a brow plate. "And here, I thought that figuring out what happened was our job." He took a quick inventory of Senior Investigator Nihlus Kryik's inebriation level. "Where were you? The call came in over an hour ago."
"At home. Asleep." The torin stepped carefully around the evidence markers, his coordination confirming the truth of his claim.
Sober.
Garrus nodded and turned back to the work. That made for a nice change of pace.
"Come on," he said, leading the way into the office. "You got here just in time for the really fucked up tarc."
(A-N: Originally, this story was meant to be co-written with someone else who was going to write Kal'Reegar as Garrus's partner, but real life is a thing. Since Kal was a character she was feeling, I've brought Nihlus in, instead. So apologies for those expecting Kal. :D Hopefully, Nihlus will prove a fun counter to Garrus.)