Snow fell, for the first time in 30 years, so finely it crumbled in the wind.
Through the harsh chill and damp, children ran past. They were lined up, and where one stepped, the others followed; what remained of the snow had formed a layer so thin on the ground that even a single step melted it away to nothing. The parents were gone, vanished behind a glacial stage curtain that trembled in the gust of their passage. Even a single slip, and the entire fragile edifice would crumble, the children would collapse in anger or laughter and the parents would run in to hold their precious babies, spin them around and kiss their cheeks. But there was a precious few moments before that, that belonged to the children alone, some silent thing that only they could see with forgotten eyes.
Past the children, Rooke's light footsteps carried him through the park. High cheekbones and sunken temples cast a churlish bent to his face, where it came together over a burning stub that rose and fell rhythmically between his teeth. At a few years before 30, he'd ended up the sort of man who walked the world like a tourist.
He moved slowly. The nub cooled with a sharp hiss as the wind gusted, and he flicked it away. The sudden sourness on his librarian's face would have disturbed the children, who could sense authority at thirty paces they say, but he stepped quickly away into the snow with murder on his mind and they were none the wiser. The snow continued to drift as he walked, deeper and deeper into the park, heading for the ring of trees that outlined the limits of private property.
A phone rang, rustling his coat and startling several birds from their nests.
"Yes?" His voice was hoarse from the cold, and raspy from an active life.
"Mr. Rooke?" The voice on the other end was gruff. "Are you heading to the Baxter home, currently?"
"I was on the way. I was told that I could view the scene before-"
"Yes." The voice said. "Excellent. Someone will be waiting for you at the front, please present yourself with ID to get past the cordon."
"I'll be arriving from the back, actually."
The voice hesitated. "Alright, the back then. We'll see you there." The line clicked off.
Rooke then moved more quickly. He'd stepped further from the main path and into the thin forest surround where he hurried through the trees, a graceless haste to his stride as branches snagged his clothes and knotted his hair. It was a mischievous sort of haste, the kind of duckwalking stride that belies true urgency, instead rooted entirely in the desire to show someone up.
The copse eventually ended, and he slowed, panting, out into a backyard bound up entirely in police lights. A large wooden fence sat in picket row beneath dull windows and a snarling planter's box running the length of the back wall. It hummed, trembling faintly from the activity contained within, heat palpable even from the distance Rooke stood at. A man at the back gate done up in blue blinked as Rooke emerged, eyes snapping to Rooke with easy suspicion. Rooke strode over, badge at hand, and though traces of suspicion remained he offered Rooke the door.
The inside was different, where he stepped from the calm chill of wonderland into the furious heat of a hive. The backyard was a mess, tape and paperwork strewn about as forensics rushed about. The buzz of chatter and radio static was immediately dominant, the press of so many bodies working in a small family home sweltering. There was no wonder in their eyes, only a dull certainty.
A short man waited for Rooke there, to his mild disappointment, by the back screen door. He was a man with a grim mien about him, the lines on his face were tight and his frown stone. His hair was cropped short, but thin red lines stood stark on his scalp. He offered no more than a cursory handshake as Rooke approached quickly. Rooke took it, the men trading silent nods. "Rooke. Pleasure." Rooke said, breath gusting.
"Mark." The man said. "You're the Detective?"
Rooke nodded.
"Then you'll need to see it first," The officer murmured softly. "Before any further conversation. That will be important, I think." He rubbed his hands nervously on his pants, watery eyes glazed.
Rooke politely gestured onwards. "Best get out of the snow then."
The man muttered his agreement, marking the cross on his chest. "Bad luck. This kind of bloodshed on a white night is a bad sign." He cast one last look at the falling snow and turned and moved into the home, Rooke following closely behind. Unconsciously, his hand went up to mimic the gesture, before he diverted it to caress the thin scratches opened on his cheeks ruefully.
The home they stepped inside was richly decorated, though not all of it had been unwrapped from dust cloths. The hardwood creaked softly as they moved, shifting slightly underfoot with dips and hollows, creaking audibly as they moved past the kitchen. Three officers stood there, gossiping softly, only going silent as they spotted Rooke moving past. He ducked his head a bit, feeling the back of his neck flush. The staircase was a short one, leading into a hallway that immediately twisted at sharp angles.
Immediately, they pressed themselves against a wall. White-clad figures pushed past, one more on a stretcher held between them, very still under the cloth blanket. Rooke pushed himself deeper into the small gap and watched their backs as they slowly maneuvered the stretcher down the long stairs, before turning his head back to where they'd come from. Doors were tucked away in the dark here, and paintings coated the surfaces between. Rooke recognized a landscape or two from the view out the door.
The bedroom door was last, slightly ajar where it had been pulled open at the end of the hallway, flanked by a surly officer and a swathe of tape. The two pulled away from the wall eventually, each chewing their thoughts as they approached.
His guide, a police sergeant by patch, took a moment to greet the watchman familiarly as Rooke slowly steeled himself. The chatter went on as Mark flipped his badge open and shut like a metronome, the look in his eyes receding like the horizon until it grew so distant you couldn't hope to make out a single thought. The officer beside him waved them through. The sergeant paused as Rooke stepped up beside them.
"I asked him if he wanted to join us - he refused. Quite brusquely to boot." Mark confided blithely as they pushed the door open. "Not that I blame him." He dabbed expressionlessly at his forehead.
Rooke heard not a word, nor caught his expression.
The expression stretched upon Annabeth Baxter's face drew the eye, as they stepped slowly into the room. It hung, as wide as a banner and nailed to the wall in seven points, facing them as they entered. Intoxication and despair twisted her lovely porcelain features into a grotesque death mask. It was the centerpiece of an intricate affair of plastic and gore as the workers buzzed and chittered about.
A drip of blood fell to the floor, and even the muttered conversation halted for it.
Mark looked on expressionlessly. He'd been the homicide sergeant who'd been called to investigate, he explained quietly as Rooke continued to observe silently.
"When'd you realize Annabeth wasn't in here?" Rooke asked.
"Around the time we finished cataloguing the parts." Mark gestured to the floor. Annabeth's limbs lay untouched, dead and still with not a mark upon them. The examiner was still there, quietly avoiding their eyes as she continued to wordlessly catalogue the remains.
"The rest of the family was piled on top, like kindling. We couldn't exactly sort through it blindly, so it took a bit."
"Haunting stuff." Rooke muttered, crouching down and squinting as the facemask seemed to stare back. Mark nodded slightly, turning as someone entered the room closely behind them. A large black man stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind him as everyone briefly turned to the sound before turning away once more. He ran a nervous hand through thick black curls as he stepped into the room.
"Booker." Mark greeted gently. The black man moved up to them, his eyes rimmed with red, and offered them both a polite nod of the head. "Mark." He greeted, rum voice exhausted. "The coroner's outside with the...er-"
"Yes." Mark said, briefly squeezing his eyes shut. "I know."
Booker nodded, turning to Rooke who stood and offered his hand. "Rooke." he said, wincing at the man's grip. Booker shook his head. "Pleasure. Lamonte Booker." He squeezed for a second longer before turning to Mark, who quirked an eyebrow at the dark expression on Booker's face.
They struck up a conversation with the medic, a conversation Rooke was only half-listening to as he tried to take as much detail as he could. The bodies had been pulled apart and covered with white cloth, only the limbs having been uncovered during the course of investigation. One more body had been here, but had been already transferred to the morgue. They had been piled up carelessly, almost discarded, but Annabeth had been given something resembling care to the violence inflicted on her.
Rooke's phone buzzed loudly, and he cursed under his breath as he struggled to pull it out of his pants, pausing for a long moment to read the screen before slowly tucking it away.
The medic, broken from her reverie, visibly hesitated, words on her lips, but shook her head eventually. She muttered to Mark, "Too soon to tell, and I shouldn't be speculating."
Rooke opened his mouth, question ready, but she turned those dark eyes on them and Rooke slowly shut his jaw soberly. "I'll get you what we can as soon as possible."
They left, by ones, after that. Mark the first, then Booker with Rooke beside as the ME returned to her gruesome work.
"Didn't feel right, making talk here." Booker said quietly after a bit. Rooke turned curiously back to the door, where through the crack the figure of the laboring ME was barely visible. "Ex-military?" He asked curiously. "She manhandled those bodies pretty well."
"Maybe. Best not to ask that sort of thing." Mark rubbed an eye with the back of one hand. "Alright, Booker, could you-"
"No."
"Well alright then." Mark grimaced. "I appreciate the help."
"You do love to ask." The taciturn man shrugged.
"Booker's the resident comedian." Mark whispered to Rooke drily. Rooke felt a brow raise.
Booker, not batting an eye, turned and leaned against a wall, stretching out a bit and relaxing. He looked unlikely to move to Mark's visible disgust, who simply shrugged helplessly, and went to shut the door firmly behind them.
Rooke had a premonition, suddenly.
"Now," Mark said quietly, standing beside him, and running his hands down his pants once more. "I want you to explain to me how you found Ms. Baxter again, if you wouldn't mind. Take your time."
Rooke woke up four inches from a stain he couldn't hope to identify, and wondered why it smelled more appetizing than his morning coffee.
Then, he wondered why he was on the floor at all. The bone-cracking yawn answered that, and he stretched out and curled up on the cold floor.
He'd evidently made it home at some point. That was nice. Mildew and stains left a pall over his cheap apartment, where it was hung with cheap venetian blinds and fading wallpaper. The sun poured through the gaps. His long limbs were pale in the bars of light, folded like spider legs under his torso where they clung to the cheap carpeting and attempted to bury themselves deeper into the warmth. They cramped as he shifted them.
He made it to the bedroom eventually, rising on numbed limbs. Here, the smell of burnt frankincense pooled on the carpet, soaked into the walls like a stain. It soothed his mind, like stepping into his grandmother's home once more. He could hear her wooden tenor, like a fine sandpaper to his anxiety. Here, his limbs finally unclenched, leaving behind a cold exhaustion as his shoulders slumped, and he began moving quickly.
10 minutes and he was out the door, cursing the world, taxpayers, and every damn man-jack that went to bed self-satisfied.
The second day dawned, overcast and slightly chilly.
The drive to the Baxter home was a quick one, and it was only a short walk from where he parked around the corner.
The hive had been sedated, long before he'd arrived, the last workers sluggish as they slowly backed off reluctantly. The last remnants of homicide's less than fruitful investigation was the crime scene tape that already showed fingerprints running along the sides. Rooke slowly chewed his bagel as he stepped over it, and walked into the home. The ME's remained, as well as a few patrol officers that aborted salutes as they caught sight of him.
There was only a single unmarked path, with plenty of leftover tape and evidence bags haphazardly left to either side. Rooke walked slowly past them to a room he'd found earlier, one he'd found enough space in to hang a corkboard and stretch out a roll of twine.
He began with a name. Things often started with names. Person, place or thing, it always started with something to identify.
Annabeth Baxter went on top of the corkboard, on a little yellow post-it he nailed down with a bright red pin.
"Report's in from the Coats." Booker said tonelessly. "Initial reporting is definitive intent to harm or kill, probable psychosis expected in the assailant; I got the profilers started on it." He turned slightly to the ME, who paused in her work to turn to them. She cleared her throat, and said "Yeah, the cuts are pretty amateur though." She picked up her forceps, lifting a ragged cut of skin. "The knifework is haphazard, but there's definite intent to it. Some of these cuts were post-exsanguination too, and judging by the state of the blood and cell damage, likely some time after the attack." She used her gloved hands to gently impress a thumb into one of the dismembered limbs. Rooke found himself morbidly curious, leaning in as she manipulated the stump to reveal the cut of bone. "Sawed at, with no ragged lines. They took their time." She said softly, tracing it, "Lines up with torture. Unpracticed. Crime of passion is my estimate, if this was the serial killer they'd get the broad strokes right, then start losing it once the blood flows."
Her eyes were dark. Rooke chose not to respond.
Thomas Vargas went below her, followed by Edmund Waller.
Dead went on the board, and then the twine was unspooled, winding around the pins with a soft rasp.
Rooke felt his shoulders tighten, before he forced himself to relax. "She hired me." He said. "I'm a private detective these days, I'm in the yellow pages, the internet, whatever."
"She's in the hospital." Booker said thoughtfully. "I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would be a real pain in the ass to do it herself, rather than having someone else contact you for her."
"It was her." Rooke said. "I met her. The scene explains a lot about why she...well, about her circumstances."
"I believe you." Mark said. "And I appreciate you letting us know where she was hospitalized. Why she's refusing police protection, however, is slightly suspect."
Rooke kept his mouth shut.
Mark twisted his head slightly to the side, the sandy-haired man's features warping with some buried emotion. "Detective Rooke. I presume you read the papers on this case." He spoke softly now, the trembling undertones of emotion almost entirely hidden.
"A reported third body." Rooke said, voice even quieter than Mark's. "First two were a man in his eighties living with his children, and a teenager in a trainyard. All given similar..."
"Treatment." Booker provided helpfully in his steady baritone, eyes still shut. Rooke rather felt like punching the man as he shifted himself to get more comfortable against the wall.
"...yeah." He grimaced. "Treatment. Gradual escalation of violence. All three unsolved. No leads. No witnesses. No signature. Uncertain connection. The first two were only found a week after they were determined to have died."
Thomas and Edmund were dead, attacked with similar M.O. and with nearly similar results. But no one could agree that it was a serial murder - BAU thought it lacked the marks of a real serial killer at the time. He swallowed the bagel, and drew a long line of twine to a pin he stuck rather strongly into Didn't kill?, drawing it to the Serial Killer? he placed in the center of the board.
"No leads, and I've been told to help a private detective investigate the same case." Mark said flatly. "A disgraced officer to boot, who met the victim before any officer, after which she refused all police aid save for our investigation. You understand how this looks?"
Rooke shrugged, shifting a little. "I wouldn't have chosen to do it this way if I could."
"Then give me a reason not to make your life hell."
Rooke opened his mouth. Mark didn't like the answer.
Rooke lay still, on the floor of the Baxter home. The tip of his nose quivered a little in the air conditioning, yet still he lay and waited. He certainly seemed to be in no hurry; he'd been there for the whole day, rising only to scribble more notes onto his corkboard and to pace in manic bursts of energy across the room.
Now, at least, all lay calm. Moonlight ran thick in shafts through the halls, pooling in the wide hallways and running down the floorboards. There were more windows than at first glance; thin shutters had been opened near the roof, all down the main hallways, spotlighting the fine paintings placed opposite some of the rooms. Rooke had clapped eyes on one, and found himself laying down as he contemplated them.
He'd concluded, not an hour or two ago, that the paintings had likely been done by the Missus herself. Anne Baxter, while no prodigious talent, had an eye for blocky lines. The room he was in was the one she'd spent most of her time in, by all estimation; an easel sat offset from Rooke, slightly listing and careworn, a set of paints and brushes not far past beside a sink choked by a lifetime's passion. Laying here, he could almost see her move about, scrapes where she'd dragged her feet, splatters where her eagerness took hold, holes where she'd admired her art, dust where she'd abandoned her most unremarkable efforts.
And still, what remained was enthralling. So much so, that only the framing drew distinction between deliberate art and impressionist abstraction. As it was, if one grew familiar enough with the room certain lines grew familiar.
It was unfortunate, but he had no one to bounce off of, to prevent the stagnation from setting in. Homicide had rightfully taken his presented work on the case with suspicion and anger. Politics, Mark had spat at an unseen figure far to the west, and while Booker had offered Rooke a conciliatory hand, he was no less perturbed.
Rooke slowly rose to his feet, dusting himself off and checking the time.
22:17:28
Nodding to himself, he slowly headed to the door, casting one look back at his corkboard before swinging it open and passing through on the way to his ride. His Corolla sat low on the street, one long scrape down the side jamming the passenger door shut. He had to work the driver's side a bit before it acquiesced, and he slid inside, grimacing at the sticky leather. He couldn't say why he hadn't replaced it, only that he thought fondest of it while he wasn't inside.
He hit the radio absently, flipped it on and it was already on his favorite channel - the variety news channel. A man came on and hit the murder report on a clean A-flat, and Rooke resisted the urge to applaud. On impulse, he looked out the window, to the street across from the Baxter home. A man stood there, in a pale suit, ear cocked like he was listening too. The performer on the radio started singing the weather report, and the man tapped his white loafers in time. A woman sat beside him, on the curb, one heel dangling off her feet. The two seemed to notice his look, turning to him with nearly identical looks of boredom. The woman in particular looked piqued by Rooke's choice in radio station. The man in the suit on the other hand raised a brow, tapping the face of the plated watch he wore on the inside of his wrist. Rooke reflexively looked down, and found himself nodding with the assessment; it was indeed quite late.
The man seemed satisfied by the nod Rooke offered back, and turned away, helping his lady friend to her feet and stepping into the house behind them.
Shame; the nosy sort tended to make wonderful witnesses. Unreliable, yes. But useful.
His hand went for the window knob as he switched to drive and paused; he'd never rolled it down. He shook his head, staring after them as he pulled out.
Traffic was low this time of night. The city came alive the farther he went, light blossoming around as traffic began to burgeon and pedestrians returned to their antsy ways.
The lights were off in his apartment complex by the time he arrived, the families occupying the places next to his long asleep. He nearly stumbled going up the concrete stairs more than a few times, and by the time he'd added a few new key scars to his doorknob his eyes were already drawing closed.
He barely made it inside.