The first of a series...
Bavarian Fire Drill
It was a bank the first time.
The building, missing only gargoyles to achieve a more arrogantly gothic appearance, housed a stuffy, family-owned financial institution that now featured enough bodies to form a corpse-only softball team. Somewhere between trying to determine how the dead came to be so… hollow and wondering if her partner had ever robbed one, the noise level around Olivia multiplied. The board members arrived, a well dressed and ill-mannered bunch wearing the sort of haughtily perturbed faces only the rich can muster at four am.
The bodies lacked an interior, skin sinking into the cavern that a skeleton would have prevented. The seven pairs of eyes took in the display of all that could go wrong with a person and seemed partially worried about the damage to the carpet and mostly concerned with the bad press. There were demands for a swift, quiet investigation, one that included notifying no one. Not even the family of the victims, the board unanimously required, since they were obviously burglars and therefore would be neither mourned nor missed.
Olivia, clinging to a calming breath, asked them to be escorted to another room. Returning her attention to the nearest blob of human, she noted that the board remained firmly entrenched on the cleaner parts of the rug. Primarily because the speaker declared it.
"Oh no, Miss FBI agent, we're not leaving a vault under the supervision of a crooked organization."
When a limp body was rolled over to the sound of squish, releasing a stream of bodily fluid from its slack mouth, the agents were ordered by the designated speaker to depart and take the inconvenient remains with them. He was on the governor's speed dial, played tennis with the mayor and was worshiped by an unholy host of lawyers. Satan himself would only be a bank teller in their grand empire. This was meant to impress and intimidate while ignoring the commonly held premise that the FBI trumps a man in a smoking jacket.
"Gentlemen," Olivia pleaded, "let us do our jobs." Which was meant to suggest that they retire anywhere that wasn't here, a fact sailing over the inflated heads of the assembled civilians. "We'll do it faster without your input."
The resulting shouting, turning the initial investigation into Insult Mud Wrestling, was halted by a voice rising above the volume.
"There's four camera crews outside," the bellowing man informed. "Reporters saying the board's here as suspects."
Exit three generations of ridiculous money, tripping over their Italian shoes to reclaim their reputations from rumor. A litany of 'this is your fault' and 'why I never's' drifted like cigar smoke behind them. Olivia smiled, an inadvisable expression when one's face hovered over the stench of soggy people. She knew that voice.
Stretchers carrying long, dull black bags fought against the museum-like steps and the caster wheels argued about their cruel treatment. Two boulder-weight cameras followed the deafening progress, filming the unidentified bodies being carted off to what the public might assume would be a certified, upstanding coroner who didn't take self-made, hallucinogenic shakes with his eggs.
Standing on the landing facing a crisp sunrise, Olivia turned to the man currently brushing the stain of heirloom wealth from his coat. He liked money, she knew, but while he wanted it handed to him, Peter never held out his hand. He'd worked for it, snapping the backs of a few laws in the process. The bankers only worked at spending ancestral dimes in exorbitant increments even as they stuck out eager palms for government bailouts.
"What was that about?"
"What?" Of all the things a genius can do, they can't successfully play dumb.
Olivia conducted a stance that, though hands weren't on hips, indicated they might as well be. "Increasing the number of reporters through what the bureau likes to call A Lie."
The man had the good grace to look offended. "Merely an exaggeration."
"That could have compromised the investigation." The conviction of tone was missing. It was too damned early.
False statements were better left to the criminals, she wanted to tell him. That he'd frequently been one kept her from bothering.
Peter paid the emerging sliver of sun a day's worth of attention. "You wanted them gone, right?"
And that she did, because agents are armed with pistols but that family came standard with machine gun attorneys. A blood bath need only happen once a night. Or a de-boning, as the case may be.
Muttering something about social engineering, Peter steered her into a morning that promised loose skin and lengthy interrogations. If asked, Olivia would have to deny knowledge of the person who'd sent the bankers out into a night full of absolutely no cameras. The news vans hadn't arrived for an hour after they'd rushed out to claim an interview. But when Peter slapped an over-rich coffee into her hand, the prospects of the day brightened.
"Just don't do it again."
And expect a lawsuit before it's over.
Stay tuned, gentle readers...
