Chapter 44: We Need a Lawyer and a Maid, Stat!


We pulled up to the Dockum place, finding it still bedecked in its yellow caution tape and rusting vehicles. I sat in the passenger seat of Victor's truck, just staring at the house for a while. I really didn't want to see inside. From the outside I could just mock how white-trash the place looked, but if I went inside, to the scene of a murder . . . it's not something I wanted to face after an already long and taxing day.

"We goin' in or what?" Victor grumbled, but I noticed he hadn't moved from his seat either.

"Yeah. Just a sec."

"What, is little Rogue afraid she'll see a ghost?"

I turned to glare at him, "I had a long day at work, I endangered my two best friends, which almost drove me nuts, and now I have to go see where some kid was killed. Not really in a great mood right now, Victor."

"You don't have to be in a fucking good mood. You don't have to skip through a damn crime scene singing a jaunty tune, but you do have to see it. Got it? And the first step of that is getting your cute little ass out of my truck."

I let out an angry growl. "Shouldn't the cops have searched every inch of this place already? And the place has been contaminated from weeks of being abandoned."

"The cops didn't know what to look for. And it ain't like we're looking for a fucking DNA sample." He pounced out of the car and yelled back at me, "Now get out here!"

I grumbled a little, but jumped out of his truck. I swear, I was going to break an ankle one of these days, that truck was so fucking jacked-up.

Sabretooth lifted up the police tape for me to walk under, "So chivalry ain't dead," I commented.

"It is dead. I killed it. I got a bit left on me, is all."

I chuckled, then immediately felt bad for doing so in such morbid circumstances. I was about to ask Victor to get into the home when I saw that a small window right by the doorknob had already been broken. I carefully put my arm through and unlocked it from the inside.

We walked into the Dockum house. The first room we came across was the living room, which was untidy, much like the lawn. It was clearly lived in and rarely cleaned, but nothing as bad as you'd see on one of those hoarders shows. It had all the tell-tale signs of being home to a family who was short on time, low on funds, and wasn't terribly concerned with appearances. The once floral couch was stained by many substances, the television was the twin of the one of mine that Victor had broken, there were papers and wrappers everywhere, and the carpet looked like it had a fair amount of dirt stomped into it.

"Come on," Victor told me, "it was supposed to have taken place in the kitchen."

Wandering into that room, it clearly was in worse shape than the rest of the house. Not surprising, considering a teenage boy was killed there, and presumably there had been a fight beforehand. Cabinets and drawers were left ajar, almost everything that had once lain on the counter was knocked over, and many substances were splattered on every available surface. Victor headed to the refrigerator and opened it.

I rolled my eyes, "You're not seriously looking for food right now, are you?"

"Come here, tell me what you see."

I stepped lightly on the floor, feeling it was akin to stepping over a grave. I looked into the fridge. "Everything's broken." It took me a second to realize what those words meant. "Everything's broken." I started to look through the cupboards, and Victor did the same. "Every bottle and can has been broken."

Victor headed to another room, but shouted back, "Naw babygirl, it's exploded."

"Explosive decompression. Well shit."


tx peppa: Just so everyone knows, her real comment was this - 'I would the first one to buy a Mccoys stuffed doll. It could have a pull string and it will quote some medical stuff.' I have to agree, someone really needs to make a fluffy Beast doll, it would be awesome.

Lexxxi: Glad you got an account. We're going to have the mystery solved before the X-Men reappear, but we're getting close, I swear.

Jincofthe2ndLaw: I love hearing the theories! The truth will be coming out pretty soon, so you'll be able to find out if you're right or not.