Chapter One: More Than We Thought
Coulson looked down at the body of Kelsie Olaky. She was still slumped against the wall; her skin was pale and lifeless. His expression was distraught as he sighed and pulled his eyes away to look at May.
"Why would someone do this?" he asked folding his arms and tucking his hands into his armpits. He stole a glance over his shoulder at the body, shook his head and looked away again.
"Money, revenge… There's a lot of reasons," May shrugged.
"I don't think so, this is the fourth murder related to a CEO of a company in two weeks, it doesn't make sense," he almost complained. May said nothing and continued rummaging in the dumpster, she made a face at him as she reached inside with a gloved hand and pulled out the slide of a pistol.
"Murder weapon?" Coulson asked.
May shrugged again. "That's my guess,"
She retrieved the grip.
"Wasn't one of them found with a massive hole in their gut or something?"
"That's what was in the papers,"
"Right, that was all the way over in Oregon," Coulson remembered it being reported on the news. "Are there any similarities in the deaths?"
"Aside from being the family of a corporate owner? I have no idea, you should ask Skye to do some digging,"
"That was my next plan," Colson nodded, restraining himself from looking at the body as he headed back towards the SUV. Jemma and Fitz appeared at the mouth the alley.
"Is it bad, sir?" Jemma asked, her face contorted with worry.
"If by bad you're asking if she's dead, then yes, it's bad," he nodded.
Both glanced around Coulson to steal a look at the pair of legs protruding from behind the dumpster. Jemma averted her eyes to the ground and nodded slowly.
"See if you can find anything, prints, fibers; you know the drill,"
With that, the pair slipped around him and scurried towards the body carrying their cases of equipment.
Fitz made a noise when he saw the body and immediately reeled around to look at anything else. He placed a hand on his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut.
"My God, how long has she been out here for?" he asked loudly. Jemma tutted him, crouched by the body and checked the temperature. She didn't understand Fitz sometimes, this girl actually looked peaceful and, as far as she was aware, her death had been swift and painless.
"Jemma?" her lab partner insisted.
"Barely five hours, Fitz," she answered quietly as she tilted the girl's head upwards. "Poor thing,"
Kelsie's clothes were barely stained, curious given the positioning of the entry wounds. Jemma frowned slightly and leaned forwards.
"How'd she die?" Fitz broke the silence. He placed both hands on his hips and stared hard at a garbage bag against the opposing wall.
"Shot, twice, in the chest," Jemma's voice was full of concentration as she lifted up Kelsie's blouse to inspect the wounds.
"I have the gun," May called.
They both turned to watch her hold up a collection of bags containing individual gun parts. Fitz pointed a finger in her direction then gave her a thumbs' up.
"Good. I'll look at it back at the lab, thank you,"
May nodded and headed from the alley. Fitz looked around out of curiosity to see what Jemma was doing. He squeaked in disgust and turned away again when he saw her prodding around on the girl's shattered, blood-encrusted sternum.
"Fitz, if you're that squeamish go and sit in the car," she snapped.
"That's a dead body, I don't like dead bodies!" he exclaimed as he squatted down and busied himself with the DWARFs; he produced the control tablet and activated them.
"It's perfectly natural, Fitz… Aside from the bullets," Jemma muttered.
Fitz wasn't listening.
"Alright my pretties, find me something so we can locate this bastard," he said and pressed a few more commands before watching them set about to work. For a few minutes, while Jemma scrutinized what she was seeing, the quad-copter robotic drones zipped around scanning the walls, the ground, the dumpster and even the garbage bags. Fitz read the data, there was nothing out of the ordinary that indicated anyone besides them had been in that alley.
"I'm going to need to do an autopsy," Jemma declared to him.
Fitz lifted his face from the table to look at her. His face was mortified.
"Why- Why would you need to do that?"
"To be sure," Jemma answered.
"About what? Isn't it obvious?"
"It appears obvious, Fitz, but not everything is as it seems, besides science says we should investigate further,"
"We?" he squeaked.
Coulson got into the driver's seat of the black SUV, he sat and waited for the inevitable call from Director Fury asking for a progress report, to which Coulson would have to tell him that it wasn't looking good. Again.
There were three other locations where the dead family members of CEOs had been found; Oregon, California, and Florida. At first, they'd been considered by the local crime services and dubbed as violent robberies, but an out of the box observation from S.H.I.E.L.D had found similarities and put everything into perspective.
Someone was targeting them specifically.
Coulson didn't have to wait long for Fury to call. As he sat twiddling his thumbs and staring out of the window at Fitz and Simmons working, the vehicles inbuilt sat-phone squawked. Coulson's head snapped around and he answered it on the first ring.
"Sir," he said bluntly.
"Coulson… Any luck?"
"Not yet, going to need to wait for Jemma's results on the fibers and the gun,"
"It was a gun this time?"
"Yes, sir,"
Fury huffed a laugh. "Probably the nicest way any of these poor folks have gone,"
"Do I want to know the others?" Coulson asked.
"You can read it in the files,"
"All of them?"
"Yes. I'm having you head this operation,"
"You are?"
"I hope that's not an inconvenience?"
"No, sir,"
"Good. There's a cooperation over in New York that I need you to look into first, this has gotten out of hand as it is and the papers are catching on. It won't be long until everything goes to shit and SHIELD ends up answering for it,"
"Well head down there as soon as we're done here,"
"Oh, and have that little hacker prodigy of yours pull up what she can on all of them, SHIELD is good, and I hate to admit it, but she's better,"
Coulson smirked. "Yes, sir,"
"Good… Keep me updated,"
Fury hung up a second later. Coulson chewed it over for a moment. His attention was dragged away to May opening the passenger door and climbing in. She looked at him then at the sat-phone then back to him, she smiled knowingly.
"Fury?"
"As always," Coulson buckled his belt up. "They all done?"
"Jemma's loading the truck, she wants to perform an autopsy so the body's being transferred also,"
"That means something unusual has caught her attention which means we should be ever so slightly concerned," Coulson acknowledged. "What about the others?"
"Skye and Ward should be back from getting the camera footage of the alley soon enough,"
"Great, we'll head back to the bus then,"
"What's the rush?" May asked clipping her belt in.
"Fury's put me in charge of finding out how everything fits together, so I've got a lot of reading and planning to do," he told her as he put the car in gear.
