Chapter Five: Digging Deep
*Warning: Contains Graphic Content*
The sheer presence of first responders already at the crime scene was overwhelming. The perimeter of the entire crime scene seemed to be lined with emergency vehicles, their flashing lights dousing the surrounding buildings in an eerie, flashing red glow. Sirens drowned out all other noise, making it almost impossible to hear one another. Passersby flooded to the edges of the scene, pushing and pulling at each other and the officers nearby in an attempt to gain some grasp on what was happening.
To say that the scene was pure chaos would have been a tremendous understatement.
Hank pulled his car behind one of the many squad cars surrounding the scene, his mouth slightly agape.
"Holy shit," was all he could muster.
Stepping out of the vehicle and crossing beneath the luminescent yellow caution tape, Connor surveyed his surroundings with caution. The crime scene was located in a notoriously dangerous part of the neighborhood - which would explain the overwhelming presence of first responders.
The dilapidated warehouse on the corner of the block was constructed with wood that had rotted to the foundation years ago. Chipped, mottled boards supported what was left of the building's structure, the metal roof only partially supported above the cement foundation. Where two windows on the second floor had once been was only a vague remnant of their shapes, long since covered by wooden planks and various signs of foreclosure.
The front door to the warehouse had been ripped off of its hinges, leaving splinters and metal shavings strewn upon the front steps and in the entryway.
Connor didn't even have to set foot inside the warehouse in order to see the victim. Looking upward, he heard Hank curse softly.
Two chains were strung from where the two windows of the second floor had been, having been forced through the wood planks with considerable force. Between these chains was strung the corpse of a young man.
What was left of it, anyways.
The skin of the man's wrists was ripped, bloody, and raw surrounding the chains. His head lolled forward against his chest, obscuring his face from anyone not directly beneath him. The young man was shirtless, and in the center of his chest was a terrible, mottled wound. Though the wound itself was very slight in diameter, the surrounding area hadn't escaped unscathed. The center of the wound was a blackened, nearly perfect circle. The skin surrounding the wound was mottled, almost shredded, and tinged with white. As the radius spread out from the wound, the skin gradually became less of a deathly color and more of a deep, bloodied scarlet. Blood glistened on the surface of his torso, still very obviously fresh. The young man's feet were also coated with blood and looked to have been beaten to the point where they had been shattered.
Neither Hank nor Connor took notice of Gavin Reed approaching them from the crime scene until he was directly in front of them. As he neared them, his usual smirk was entirely absent from his face. He didn't even have a snide comment for Connor.
Turning to look back at the victim, Gavin shook his head in bewilderment.
"Sick fucks…"
Hank tore his eyes away from the body to look at Reed. "You got something, Reed?"
Reed continued to stare at the corpse for a moment or two, then turned to face Hank and nodded. He held out his hand to give Hank an evidence bag. Inside this bag was a single sheet of paper that was tinged with blood around the edge on one edge. Hank turned the bag toward the lights to read what was hastily scrawled upon the page, which he read aloud.
"'Maybe it isn't blue, but blood is blood. Come and get us.' What the fuck…" Hank looked back to Reed. "How do we know it's the same guys?"
"We found this on the ground below the body," Reed said, holding up another evidence bag for the two officers to see. The object in this bag was long, black, and cylindrical, with a small handle on one end and two bloodied, metallic prongs on the other.
"You've gotta be shittin' me. What is it with these guys and their fuckin' cattle prods?"
Connor's hand hovered above the center of his torso, grimacing as he remembered the pain of the attack only a few days before. His LED flashed red briefly before returning to cycle in yellow. He dropped his hand, turning to Reed.
"Has anyone been inside yet?"
Reed shook his head. "The building's unstable as hell, and Fowler called ahead to let us know you two were coming." He shrugged. "It's kind of your thing."
Hank scoffed, shaking his head. He turned to Connor, who simply nodded and stepped toward the warehouse.
The two officers navigated through the matrix of officers and first responder vehicles on the scene. When they crossed the threshold of the door, neither of them found the courage to look up into the wide, unseeing eyes of the man above the door.
The interior of the warehouse was just as dilapidated as the outside. The holes in the walls allowed red light to pass in from outside, illuminating the interior with a crimson glow. The entryway led into a hallway of sorts, with one of the walls entirely absent to provide access to the rest of the warehouse. This hallway extended along the length of the building, lined with doors all along the left side. There were six doors in total on this wall, with a seventh at the opposite end of the hallway.
Hank drew his gun from its holster on his hip, aiming into the emptiness of the warehouse. "I'm gonna check the rest of the warehouse, you got these doors?"
Connor turned his head to face Hank. "I think I can handle a few doors, Lieutenant."
"Oh, fuck off." Hank turned his back to Connor and walked into the darkness. Turning away, Connor allowed a brief smirk to pass over his lips as he drew his gun.
The first door yielded no resistance when he tried the handle. Sweeping his flashlight over the small room, Connor found that the room was entirely empty save for a long-abandoned beer can.
The next few doors opened with varying degrees of stiffness, but yielded similar results.
Stepping out of the fourth room and closing the door behind him, Connor turned just as the loud slamming of a door next to him pierced the sound of sirens.
BANG.
A white flash momentarily blinded Connor, which was immediately followed by white-hot agony in his abdomen. The pain caused Connor to drop to one knee in surprise, allowing the other individual to strike him across the face with the butt of his gun. He fell to the floor as he wrapped an arm around himself, feeling blood on both his hands and his face.
Three more gunshots split the air, followed by a loud thud. Raising his head, he saw Hank lowering his weapon to the body of the suspect on the ground as he kicked the gun away from his hand. Officers swarmed the entrance at the sound of gunfire as Hank hurried over to where Connor lay.
"Connor! Connor, talk to me!"
Connor struggled to sit upright, but felt Hank's hand on his shoulder, pinning him to the ground. Connor pressed his hands over a spot just above his left hip, and Hank could see Thirium leaking between his fingers.
"I'll be alright, Hank, j-just help me stop the bleeding," Connor said through gritted teeth. Hank used his other hand to press down over Connor's hands in an attempt to stop the bleeding. When it didn't work, he eyed the body of the dead man on the ground.
"Don't you fuckin' move," Hank called as he hurried over to the man on the ground.
"Not planning on it," Connor responded in annoyance.
Kneeling next to Connor again, Hank used the shirt sleeves of the man on the ground to tie as a bandage around Connor's torso. When he was satisfied that the bleeding had stemmed sufficiently, he helped Connor sit upright. "You alright?"
"I am in no danger of shutting down, and none of my biocomponents were damaged. My healing program should take care of the damage in the next few hours. If he were attempting to kill me, he certainly did - as you would say - a piss poor job."
Hank laughed, helping his partner to his feet. Connor used one of his jacket sleeves to wipe away at the blood from the laceration above his eye from the butt of the suspect's gun.
It was only then that he noticed that other officers had taken the time to sweep the rest of the rooms. Hank muttered beneath his breath.
"They couldn't even fuckin' clear the place."
"Lieutenant!" A voice called from one of the farther rooms. The head of a young officer poked out from the sixth door on the left side. "There's something in here."
Hank stepped toward the room with Connor close behind him. The room in question was filled with boxes of varying sizes, along with a wide variety of what Connor analyzed and found to be cattle prods. Some of the boxes were simple, cardboard boxes with various words scrawled on them. Others were storage crates, sealed with industrial tape and covered in markings. Every box, however, bore the same symbol. The symbol was simple - merely a black circle through which was painted a diagonal red stripe. In the center of this stripe were printed two 'R's, which were painted one above the other.
Hank saw this symbol as well, and his jaw dropped slightly. He tightened his hands into fists.
"No fucking way. Absolutely no fucking way! We locked up that son of a bitch years ago!" Hank said in a low, dangerous voice.
"What is it, Lieutenant?" Connor asked softly, cocking his head to the side curiously. His LED cycled in an amber hue.
Hank turned to face Connor, the fire in his eyes dying down a bit when he met Connor's eyes with his own. He sighed, leaning heavily against the nearest crate.
"The Red River Cartel. Red Ice ring from almost a decade ago. Downright shitty group of people - murderous savages, every one of them. All of them just killing as the price they paid to get their next fix. We locked up their leader years ago. They're the ones behind this. Now it makes sense why they were in our house." He paused.
"I was the one who arrested their leader."