March 1988
It took five days for someone to find the body in the stairwell. London police got the tip from a homeless man who broke into the abandoned office building to hole up and shoot heroin. His plans changed when he pushed open an unlocked door and saw a corpse that he swore to Christ was floating in the air.
The report came across the police scanner in Juliet's flat at three in the morning.
"Possible homicide in Tottenham near White Hart Lane. Body found reported to be decapitated and mutilated."
Juliet grabbed her coat and wand, pulled on boots, and dissipated. She appeared in Cassio's flat.
Cassio turned to face her, lacing up his second shoe. He held his wand. "I can get us as far as Noel Park."
Juliet shook her head. "I've got this. I met Bev two blocks from that building for coffee last summer."
She grabbed Cassio's arm and pulled him with her. They appeared inside a dark coffee shop and knocked over two chairs. An alarm sounded.
Cassio raised his wand to stop the piercing sound. "Quietus."
"Let's get out of here before we become the next police report," Juliet said.
She went for the front door. "Alohomora."
They headed for the office building. They could already hear the sirens.
Shite. Just once I want to beat the fucking London police to the scene after a call.
Blue and white lights reflected off the shops and apartment buildings ahead. There were three police cars and what looked like four or five officers standing out front. One of them stretched yellow tape between the cars and the building.
"Quick," Juliet said, "let's try the back."
They took the long way around to the back alley and kept to the shadows. One officer walked with his back to them. Another stood by the back door.
Juliet walked forward with her wand raised. "Stupefy."
She hit the first officer in the neck. The officer at the door had all of two seconds to see her before he shared a similar fate. Cassio bent down and touched the man's forehead to keep him from remembering the two seconds.
Once they were through the back door, they followed the sound of voices to a hallway outside of a stairwell. There were three more officers and a homicide detective.
Juliet raised her wand. "Stupefy!"
Two officers fell. The third raised his gun.
"Stupefy!" Cassio and Juliet yelled.
The third officer fell. The detective looked out of the stairwell in time to get hit in the face with Juliet's last stunning spell. Cassio started touching foreheads to erase memories and implant new ones. Juliet stepped over the unconscious detective, ducked under police tape, and walked down one flight of stairs. The landing and the stairs ahead of her were slick; covered with dark congealed blood. More of it was streaked across the painted concrete masonry unit walls.
The dead man wasn't hanging in the air anymore. The levitation spell had worn off and the corpse had fallen onto the landing. The body was a deformed mess covered in its own blood. The legs were mangled and twisted at an unnatural angle. The detached head, however, still hovered above what Juliet assumed had once been the man's neck. The corpse was naked from the waist down. That was different. The man's pants were around his ankles; a clump of fabric, denim, and blood. More blood coated the course hair that covered the man's legs and stuck out over his limp dick.
There were no markings on the stairs or the walls; no chalk or numbers near the corpse. Juliet and Cassio had beat the forensics team, but they would be here soon enough. They'd have to work fast if they didn't want to spend the entire night assaulting muggle government employees and wiping memories.
Cassio pulled on gloves and took out his camera. The flash lit up the shadowed stairwell as he took pictures. After he captured what he could from the stairs, he levitated over the body and the landing to avoid contaminating the scene. He marked the body with a neon 1, cast from the end of his wand.
"Get the walls and the railings, too, Cass," Juliet said. "The spray went all over whenever this guy's neck was opened."
"Got it all," Cass said. He landed on the stairs eight feet below her, where the blood had poured over the surfaces of the stairs, dripped off the noses, and ran down the risers. "You can start."
Juliet took off her long coat and laid it on a clean step. She pulled on gloves, waved her wand, and levitated a few inches off the stairs. She walked through the air and took a knee, leaning down over the body and the landing. Cassio took out a sheet of parchment and let the camera hang on the strap around his neck.
"The M on the forehead was carved with a sharp, blunt instrument," Juliet said, "same as all the others."
She used her wand to move the head. "The neck was removed with a similar sharp, blunt instrument, possibly the same one. The spinal cord is fragmented; the wind pipe is shredded. Whoever removed the head took their time and had to use a lot of force."
Cassio took more pictures.
Let's find out who you are.
"Accio wallet."
The legs twisted at a gruesome angle as the wallet pulled itself free of the wet clump that was the man's pants. Blood leaked out from between the folds of denim and fabric, where it had been trapped.
Cassio cast a neon 2 and took another picture while the wallet floated between them in the air. Juliet took the wallet, wiped it off, and removed the man's driver's license. She wiped it clean.
"Nicholas Conner. Twenty-six years old."
Another number, another picture. There was nothing else in the wallet except an expired library card and a used Underground ticket. Juliet sent it back to the dead man's pocket.
Juliet heard someone in the hallway. She stood in the air and turned toward the landing above them with her wand raised. Cassio pointed his wand up the side of the stairwell at the door.
"Put your fucking wands down."
Juliet and Cassio lowered their wands as Moody entered the stairwell.
"How did you-"
"You're not the only ones with a fucking police scanner," Moody said. He stopped two steps before where the blood started.
Juliet still hovered above the body. "Do you want to take over?"
"No," Moody said. He waved at the body. "Continue."
Juliet knelt back down, her boots hovering a foot over the dead man's torso. She checked the man's arms, back, legs, and chest. "Apart from the forehead and the neck, there are no other wounds on the body. It appears . . . wait."
She muttered, flicked her wand, and raised the man's right arm. A long, hair was wrapped around his middle and index fingers. "Cass, get this."
She leaned back so Cass could take his picture. Juliet pulled the hair free of the hand with a spell. It hung in the air in front of her face, suspended and covered in blood. She reached into her pocket and took out a vial. Once the hair was inside, she capped it with a cork and stuffed it back in her pocket. She used another vial to collect a sample of the congealed blood.
She studied the body for another fifteen minutes, looking in silence as Moody watched. Cassio took a few more pictures as she moved and re-positioned the corpse.
There wasn't anything else. At least, nothing visible.
Juliet stood up, stepped back, and raised her wand. "Geneticae mater collectio non mortuus est."
She waited. If there was anything else, anything that didn't belong to the dead man, that would do it.
She shouldn't have been surprised when a sticky substance separated from the blood on the man's dick and collected in the air.
At least he had one last moment of pleasure. Or this is a kink gone terribly wrong.
She siphoned the substance out of the air and into the vial.
Moody had not said anything. It was a good sign. Silence was usually the closet he came to giving his seal of approval.
Juliet tucked the last vial into her pocket. Cassio nodded at her.
"Crime scene investigation complete. Three samples collected. Remains will be left behind, as found, for a second investigation to presumably be conducted by the muggle authorities."
Moody nodded. "The report has already gone out. We'll let the muggles have him. This will be the seventh body they have found before we did. They'll be looking for a serial killer, or at least copy cats, by now. If they find anything that will help us, so be it."
Juliet walked through the air until she made contact with the staircase.
"Well done," Moody said.
"What are you doing in London?"
"I've been here a few days, following up with a lead for the Underground station where Carrow's body was found. There's an engineer who can tell me exactly when they encased that tunnel in concrete. That will limit the access timeline."
"I thought that kid had never been down there before," Juliet said.
"Not as far as he remembers," Moody said, "but that's not how apparition works and that body didn't walk down there on its own."
He had questioned Aaron four times while he had been at St. Mungo's, three of which were under the influence of Veritaserum. Aaron still claimed he had never been on the train platform before he apparaited there. He hadn't been jinxed, he hadn't been cursed, and there wasn't any evidence that someone had been controlling him.
They walked up the staircase. It was time to leave.
"I'll get what I can off these samples right away," Juliet said, grabbing her coat.
"I'll dig into his background and contact people he knew once his name is released to the public. He wasn't one of the muggle-borns we had a trace on. I'll keep an eye on the muggle police, too, and see what they come up with."
Moody stepped over the unconscious bodies on the ground. "Did any of these muggles see you?"
"Yes," Juliet said, "but Cass already grabbed foreheads and wiped memories."
Moody froze. Even his blue eye didn't move.
"Moody?"
"I'll be fucked by a boggart," Moody said. I am one of the fucking too old ones.
"What?"
"I know how that kid got inside the Underground station."
