Operation Glitterberries
Chapter 10: Blue Blood
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Disclaimer: Daria and associated characters are owned by MTV and Viacom. This is fan fiction written for entertainment only. No money or other negotiable currency or goods have been exchanged.
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Consuelo 'Connie' Avila Camacho and Elizabeth 'Liz' Reichs (no relation to Sergeant Reich, thank god!) were two of the more colorful female officers of the Lawndale Police Department. For starters everyone was surprised to learn that Connie was the tall blonde of the team, and that the name was not from the south of the border but originating from Spain after her great grandfathers had to run from the Civil War, while Liz, was simply short and tanned enough for someone with preconceptions to believe her to be Mexican, Paraguayan or some other banana country other than a 100% American. The second reason they were so infamous was due to their low threshold for idiots, and the speed they could get the pepper spray whenever one of those idiots talked to them.
The reason they were doing the night shift was that just last week a duo of lecherous creeps had insinuated to them in the mart. They had responded as usual, getting their batons out and giving one last warning. It should be keep on record than when a couple of angry female officers from the Janet Barch school of hard knocks ask you to get lost of get hit, the correct answer is neither 'You can hit me as much as you want' nor 'Grrr… Feisty.'
The only reasons they were still in the force were that in both Charles Ruttheimer Junior and Charles Ruttheimer the Third actually enjoyed the following beating and therefore they didn't pressed for charges (when they learned about that little fact both girls had to be discreetly restrained from using their guns of the pair of masochistic fools by a veteran cop), and that due to Chief Jackson's Racial Equanimity Policy it was not in his best interest to kick out two female cops that either have a name that sounds like a Mexican, or have a face that kind of looks like one; therefore they had been banished to the night shift in the worst part of the city.
They were just slightly late to their patrol area when dispatch sent the one alert than any cop truly dreads. "Alert to all units, we got a possible home invasion and arson at 1111 Glen Oaks Lane, possible officer down." Connie was the first to respond while Liz turned the siren on and hit the gas. "Here unit 777 responding, were seven blocks away. Details?"
"Unit 777 you're closer." The call came just in the middle of the station's shift change; in theory right now they were twice the amount of cops available, in practice two thirds of said cops were either filling their paperwork for the day or were in the ready room waiting for their specific assignments.
The dispatcher continued, "911 call from unidentified female minor, she reported that a short guy with a ponytail and black hoodie knifed an officer Winston. She reported fire before the call was interrupted. Address was automatically located."
Connie and Liz exchanged looks, they didn't know everyone in the station and Winston was a common enough name, but the use of names made slimmer the chance that it was a prank call. Right now the guys at the station were probably trying to contact every Winston in the night shift.
They arrived to the street in short order, and it wasn't hard to find where the correct address was. The bunch of gawkers and the smoke coming out of one of the house's windows were enough indication. More importantly was the patrol car in front of the house and the man frantically waving his hands. Parking alongside the other patrol they got out, guns in their hands; what they saw was surprising to say the least.
A couple of neighbors were attending two fallen bodies; one belonging to a young blonde and another to Frank Winston, one of the old guard veterans who survived Chief Jackson's purges. He was in bad shape, with a nasty gash on his chest, an arm bended in an unnatural way, and his eyes were rolling on his head. At least both of them were alive. More importantly, his holster was empty.
"Thank god officers. They were like this when we heard the racket." The man who was talking was also holding a sweater on the wound of Frank's chest.
Remembering that the call mentioned Liz asked, "Do girls live in that house?"
"Yes, Quinn and I think Darla too."
Connie was already getting the tiny fire extinguisher from the car, and as soon as they heard the answer both women ran to the front door.
"Frank's gun missing," said Liz as they armed themselves; she using her Berretta with both hands, while Connie held her own in the left while carrying the red tube with the right. Once they arrived they just needed a slight nod before opening the door and entering -guns first- to the house.
Then they went straight to the source of the fire in case someone was there and they needed to get them out before they burn. The kitchen itself was surprisingly in good repair, with only a small fire in the counter where a microwave had apparently blown up, some burning drapes, and the flames of the oven and stove. It was sheer luck that while Melody Powers was an accomplished demolition expert with a flare for the dramatic Daria Morgendorffer definitely wasn't, and when she created her improvised Fuel Air Bomb she didn't take into account many of the relevant variables, like size of the room, or the exact timing of her devise. The Fire Marshall would later determinate that the gas hadn't had enough time to fill the kitchen due to the open design of the room and when the IED on the Microwave exploded the fire flash from the gas wasn't enough to do more than break a couple of windows without doing much more damage.
While Liz was covering her, Connie doused the flames with the extinguisher before manipulating the knobs to cut off the gas. The last thing they wanted was to search for the girl with a fire on their backs. Then they started searching the rest of the house; anyone who had casually met the young cops would have thought that the search would be fast and desperate. Instead they carefully and methodically searched each room, covering each other at every step. They might have been scratching a pass on their civic courses at the police academy, but compensated by getting top marks in tactics, if not for the regulations and their relative lack of experience they would have already been scouted for one of the two tactical assault teams of the city.
"Clear." Connie quietly told her partner. They had searched the entire house from top to bottom, and they found nothing other than signs of struggle in the top of the stairs and some blood in the bottom. But nothing on either the suspect or the girl who made the call in the first place. Then they decided to go outside and meet the rest of the cavalry that was coming, they all would have a long night ahead of them.
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"Have you ever seen Sick, Sad World?"
" No."
" How about Animal Maulings on home video?"
"Yeah, I'd love to have hair like that woman who was molested by the kangaroo."
"Really? She looks so every day."
"I mean, after she was molested."
"Ohhhh."
"Make sure you get, like, the big clods of dirt and stuff in it."
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As it was the shot had passed a hairsbreadth from her neck, so close than her clothes were stained with cordite and only the adrenalin going through her veins prevented her from stopping in shock. Using the impetus she had gathered in her charge she didn't allow him the chance to adjust his aim for a second shot before she was upon him, thrusting with the knife in her right hand exactly where his heart was.
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"Well, they're finally asleep. Think you can fix that?"
" Think I can fix it?"
"Tonight, on Sick, Sad World, a prime-time special about people just like you, only more pathetic."
"Just in time."
" I guess you're not going to work on your paper."
"I'll have to get an extension. Right now, I'm having trouble remembering my own name."
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Her voice was calm, eerie calm, when she answered her. "I see… You know, I find hard to believe that Helen Morgendorffer would call you. The last time I saw her she was completely out of her mind, tortured and raped until every word out of her mouth was nothing but gibberish. That kind of damage cannot be healed in a year of therapy, much less in a day. Her husband and daughter were no better, and I consider it a miracle that the youngest, Quinn, wasn't raped as well by those sadistic animals."
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Melody waked up from her memory fueled nightmare.
Her hands were shaking
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"You weren't in duty and the situation is simple enough."
Jeff Burns resisted the impulse to punch the idiot after that answer. "One officer knifed, contused and with his service piece missing; an unidentified woman cuffed to him, against regulations I might add, and narcotized with something the medics at Lawndale Charity think is more than capable of knocking down a bear; a girl making a distress call and then disappearing in thin air in circumstances that at best could be considered as mysterious and at worst suspicious... And you didn't call the captain of the Major Crimes Unit nor other reinforcements because the situation is simple?
"Overtime has been categorically prohibited by Chief Jackson. I don't have the authority to recall any off duty officer, especially for a simple home invasion gone wrong. " The night shift sergeant said with a bored voice, at odds with the seriousness of the matter at hand.
"And you didn't call Jackson either." It wasn't a question.
"He said that he wasn't to be called in the middle of the night unless someone important died. No one's dead so I didn't see a reason to wake him up."
Jeff gawked at the idiotic cop in front f him. The Night Shift never had been the most glamorous or sought after posting in any police department, but it was always well staffed for obvious reasons. Only that for Chief Jackson those reasons weren't so obvious, so he had dumped there only the newest rookies and the worst cases that he couldn't legally fire so that he would not have to deal with them. It was sheer luck that the first responders to yesterday incident were excellent, if somewhat aggressive and violent, cops instead of untrained rookies.
"Well, then I have the authority to do so; so wake him up and call the troops right now!" Instead of moving his ass sergeant Barney calmly responded, "Night Shift ends at seven, until then you're not officially in duty so you don't have the authority for authorizing overtime."
And to ensure that no one would bother him with minor things he promoted Barney St. Ives, the dullest, most obnoxious, no brain idiot he had ever seen dressed in blue, from his position in the evidence locker to the sergeant in charge of the night shift. He was obstructive and stubborn to the N degree, lacking even the most basic form of critical thinking or common sense. And he wasn't even a by the book cop; no, a by the book cop would be too much of a hassle for Jackson to deal with, especially in circumstances were the book says to wake half the city up such as this one, instead he make him understand that his current bonanza came from Jackson and that his word is gospel as far as he's concerned.
"Then let me ask you something. What do you think Chief Jackson is going to think when he arrives and find out that a cop killer is on the loose in a posh neighborhood with a service gun he could use at any moment on accredited voters? Doing something so flashy should be quite newsworthy, don't you think? I can tell you something about that: he's not taking the fall for this, and do you want to be in the spotlight when he searches for someone else to do it for him?
"Captain Burns, thank you for your cooperation, I gladly accept any help you can voluntarily provide from your own personal time." He said, as expected putting himself in a position where he could either bask in the glory or throw him to the lions, just as Jackson has done with the original captain in charge of the Night Shift.
Captain Jeff 'Burnout' Burns allowed himself a small smile as he lighted one cheap and smelly cigar, 'Typical, the only real skill Jackson teaches to all cops under his command, either veterans, rookies or screw ups like Barney, is how to properly cover your ass behind someone else. And in this the S.O.B. always teaches by example.'
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For a moment Daria felt disoriented. Where was she?
She concentrated for a second taking her surroundings, the room seemed old and a little dilapidated, with that particular smell that meant that the room was seldom opened. And behind that smell there was one far more familiar, one of old acrylic paint and burned up clay.
'Did I fall asleep on Jane's?' She thought with a grimace, concentrating on the previous day.
Then the reality of yesterdays came crashing down on Melody's mind. Waking up in the motel under that pervert (thankfully with a bed between them), and then the following shopping trip. The modest investigation she performed on her own assumed identity that lead her to the Morgendorffer house.
And then dealing with the corrupt cop and his hostage that had interrupted the search and leaved her in a most vulnerable position. Luckily for her, surprise had been on her side and she had managed to get the, otherwise skilled, thug into an ambush that let him with a massive contusion and her with a gun, a traumatized hostage and probably a warrant for her arrest. So she had picked up the few scraps she had gathered, torched the place top make it a little bit harder for her enemies and then ran before the cavalry arrived.
And now she had stumbled into the house and family of the Jacaranda, and the Jacaranda's own baby sister had welcomed her with open arms, feeding her and letting her sleep in her sister's (Melody's closest thing to a friend) room.
'I know that the Jacaranda have access to millions of dollars and other less traceable goods in different bank accounts and security boxes and I bet that buried in one beach or another, so why she allows her family to live in this dump?' Then a more than reasonable answer came to mind. '…because someone could follow the money trail, no matter how well hidden to them. Or for that matter they could follow me even easier.'
"I'm such a fool…"
Yesterday she had been tired enough to completely miss the implications in accepting shelter from the Lane family. But now that she had eight solid hours of sleep she could see the huge mistake that coming here was. Melody had to leave the house before the cops or her enemies had the slightest chance of finding her here.
She took the gun she had stuffed under the pillow and, after checking the safety was on, put it on her backpack. She was about to put on the same clothes she had shed without conscious thought yesterday before falling as a log, before realizing that the police had enough time to discover her little Matrioska trick with her clothing. It was also quite possible that all local patrols had a full description of her by now.
She needed a new disguise.
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"…I'm going to sue those useless fat cats until they have to sell their pistols in pieces just to eat, and then I'm suing them again until they have to sell themselves to a one eyed pimp. Damn fuzz!"
Detective Eddie Brock stood there letting the woman rant to the four winds; god knew he wanted to join her. The levels of cooperation between the LPD and the OPD reached a new low yesterday. When Miss Morgendorffer had called the officer on shift in the hospital and told him what had happened he had been recalled to get the statement and sent the cavalry before the girl could get to far from her home. The answer from the LPD had been to hang them up before they could even tell about what the night call was about.
They had tried at least thrice more before giving up.
The next movement of the very angry lawyer was when she called her boss Erik, the man that had penetrated Lawndale's finest institutional obfuscation, but…
"…And then I'm going to teach Erik that if he forced me to give my home phone number so that he might call me at midnight for one of his idiotic questions that a junior student at Law school could answer his first day then he could return the favor and at least keep his cell on in case of emergencies…"
The other local number they had tried belonged to the secretary's, but when they tried that one after two hours of frustration with the LPD and Erik no one had answered. They were still trying but for all intents and purposes the phone line was a dead end.
At least Miss Morgendorffer was cursing for both of them. "Then I'm going to bring our full tribe to war! And I swear we're having his scalp decorating our tents."
'Uhh, what was the last part?'
"Sorry, what did you say?" He had been more or less tuning out her angry rant but the last part sounded a little weirder than the norm.
"That I'm going to kill your Lawndale counterparts as soon as I get out of the hospital, but only after I left them begging for food in the streets."
"Okay…"
Right now they had run out of options to let Lawndale police what was going on; in the morning he would go to Lawndale's police and demand some answers, because if he was correctly reading the whole situation, for Daria to make the call from that particular phone she must have gone through a cop and a bystander to do so.
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Melody had found an old, judging from the smell at least ten years, white t-shirt and a discolored red running shorts, that along some garish sunglasses big enough to wear over her own large glasses were the extent of the available props for her disguise but that wasn't going to be nearly enough to conceal her from an organized manhunt.
She had searched the bathroom for any color of hair dye, but it seemed that the Jacaranda hadn't taught her family the essential supplies needed in the house of an international spy. She was half tempted to wake up Jane, or possibly Trent, and ask them if they had a proper dye or maybe a wig she could use to hide her identity, but that would raise too many questions, and she wished to respect Jacaranda's wishes, at least concerning her family's innocence, both legal and moral.
That only left one option.
After silently cursing the ice cold water emanating from the shower, apparently the Lane family was the kind of family that saved money by turning off the heater at night, she carefully washed her hair before doing the same with the rest of her body. Then once she was done she went to the mirror and carefully taking a pair of scissors she started cutting her long hair, thanks to the shower and a liberal amount of shampoo far more manageable and therefore easy to cut, at least in the physical sense, emotionally she was unexplainable feeling as if she was cutting a leg instead.
Examining her now much shorter hair she suddenly felt a pang of regret, the hair was the only thing in her appearance that had been cared for, probably an integral part of the real Daria Morgendorffer that would be lost now. But then again, if she didn't avoid the people looking for her, then both Daria and Melody would become a note in a police report, and probably by that point communism would set in the States and there would be enough bodies that mass graves would be the norm.
Getting dressed and readjusting her backpack so that she could fit the laptop she had acquired from Quinn Morgendorffer's room as well as most of her clothes, her orange t-shirt had to stay, tidied the room she made her bed.
Before she crossed the threshold she left a fifty dollars bill in the table of the living room to pay for the lodgings and the inconveniences the family was going to have in the next few days, hoping beyond hope that their family tree remain out of sight when the heat came to this place.
With a sight she ran away from her latest safe haven, probably to never return.
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"And then we burst in as soon as we could but didn't find anyone inside." Jeff was in front of the Morgendorffer house, interviewing Liz and Connie about their impressions of the incident; almost ten hours had passed since and by now rushing in guns blazing was a waste of time; the suspect probably had left long ago.
And why wouldn't he, there had been no roadblocks isolating the zone, neither did the cops organized a methodical combing of the area other than a somewhat disjointed search inside the patrol cars. A chopper with a searchlight had been out of the question without Jackson's signature; budget cuts and all that jazz.
"So you left Officer Winston outside while you got inside without backup?" They looked a little ashamed for a second before rallying up. "They told us that girls were living inside there Boss, no time to wait for anyone."
"Don't worry you took the right choice there." Night Shift's response times were some of the worst he had ever seen in his career, the Café Lawndale incidents that make into the news for a while were just an example, first with someone stealing ALL the computers from the previous cybercafé despite the alarms blazing out for over an hour, then was that mob of high school children that somehow made it undetected halfway to town's square before dispersing for a lack of embassies to burn, and finally a second burglar (or maybe the first one, after all he's still at large) stealing a goddamned industrial sized coffee maker with the alarm going off for hours before any response.
"Boss, do you really think this is a burglary gone wrong?" The confusion in her voice was evident, it didn't look like a burglary, but then again it didn't look like any other out of the mill crime he had ever seen.
Sergeant St. Ives has been treating this as it was a simple home invasion gone bad with two perps, a woman that Frank had arrested and the other unknown accomplice being caught in the act by one of the daughters that lived in the house, and then she had called Frank's patrol car so he had gone inside and arrested and cuffed the woman to himself leaving himself open to his accomplice, a guy dressed in black who knifed him and stole his gun, leaving him for dead alongside his partner before trying to burn them alive. Then, since the woman's car was parked in the entrance, he ran to freedom while Frank heroically dragged himself out of the fire.
The problem was that the theory while making sense at first glance (for someone who didn't see too many chapters of 'The Law and Order') had more holes in it than a paper target after the local shooting championship. "No, I don't think so. What do the witnesses say about this whole mess?"
Following the chronology of the incident, Frank Wilson was definitely off duty and way out of his patrol area and there were no records indicating just why he was here. And Frank was a true by the book cop; an incident, any incident at all, no matter the urgency he would have radioed first and then acted; charging like a bull was not part of his M.O.
"Umm, according to the usual gawkers, busybodies and voyeurs Frank came here more or less at half pass six, lights off, talked with blondie and then went into the house. By that point most of the voyeurs lost interest until the fireworks later."
Connie then added, "No heroic and foolish actions without backup as Barney was telling us in the radio. Then again, having that pussy say something means that the opposite holds true." Barney's theory implied going to inside the house, running towards the sound of gunfire or some similar nonsense. Then again, Barney was trying to play sofa detective without even leaving his office.
The same blonde was found later cuffed to Frank, something that only an amateur would take as an arrest. No cop would ever cuff himself to a criminal, it restricted the policeman's mobility too much and gave the criminal unlimited access to a limp and with some bad luck to a serviceman belt; and even a small woman like that would be enough to get the cop pinned simply by refusing to walk and sit down in the floor, not to mention a whole lot of martial arts moves.
And there was the woman herself, Marianne Richmond. According to Liz and Connie her clothes were in tatters after using part of the fabric for trying to stop Franks blood, hardly the attitude of a prisoner towards her capturer. While not having any injuries herself, other than the marks of the cuffs in her wrists, she had been injected with a powerful sedative; the lab was already running analysis on the blood.
She worked for Helen Morgendorffer, the house owner, a piece of information they got from her husband, who had found out about his wife being on the ER not by the police but by calling to every hospital in town after she had run late from an errant for her workaholic boss. And until he called the hospital to ask for the status of the woman was that he found that no one left the husband into his wife's room or had asked any questions to him at all.
"Okay, let's see what's inside." He said before inspecting the house's interior.
There had been an old suitcase full of clothes near the door, which made some sort of sense since the Morgendorffers were on a camping trip so they probably decided those were too many clothes for a single weekend, but from there on things stopped having any kind of sense.
The fire in the kitchen was simply bizarre. For what the Fire Marshall told him on the way, someone used the microwave, cooking oil and a high caliber emergency flare, as some sort of timed detonator. The idea itself was devious, even if the execution was so sloppy; to torch the house it would have been easier just to spread the oil through the kitchen and then lit a match.
Then there were the stairs were the damage and blood suggested that the fight between Frank and the suspect took place, it seemed that it started upstairs where he managed one shot before being knifed and thrown out of the stairs. The problem with that scenario was that from that particular place there wasn't a place to hide, even for a couple of seconds, if Frank was coming up then he would have seen the guy coming from the bathroom, and he wouldn't have missed someone if he was coming back from one of the rooms, and at that distance it was virtually impossible to miss anyway, much less when the other guy needed to be within arm's reach.
The rest of that confrontation was easier to guess, as long as you ignored the sergeant's theory of course, the suspect must have come down the stairs took the gun and subdued Miss Richmond chaining her to the cop while she administer first aid.
But the most puzzling thing at all was the lack of other struggle in the rest of the house. No signs of the girl who made the 911 call, not even near any of the phones where they hear the arrival of the bastard…
"Unless there wasn't other guy..."
The blond cop went to his car almost at a run, surprising the female officers that were with him. Swiftly he opened the vehicle and took the radio.
"This is Officer Burns to units detailed in the search of the suspect of the Glenn Oaks incident. Report any sights of a young female going alone around the time of the crime. She was probably leaving the area while the rest of the people went to look at the fire. Over."
"Boss?"
"Think about it, if you had just taken down a cop and had his car then what would you do? His absence will be felt sooner than later, and the manhunt will be intense. So you need something to take the heat out long enough to get out, so you make a 911 call giving a tearful performance of a break and entering, giving the operator a vague description of a heartless suspect, an stereotypical male suspect at that, then you prepare a fast and dirty distraction, like a fire on a timer and while the 'usual gawkers' go and see the fire and the two bodies in a police car our female suspect gets out without people taking note."
"Hija de …" Connie said before shutting up out of respect (or fear) for her superior.
"…puta?" He demonstrated his working knowledge of Spanish with a smile before continuing. "Yeah, but it's the only thing that even comes close to fitting with our evidence. And even then I still have too many questions; but those I'll ask after we get this bitch. Right now whoever she is has probably gone to ground already, but maybe we can get a good description, I need you to interview again the neighbors, this time asking for any sights of a female; someone young enough for fooling us with the voice."
"On it."
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It was that point in the morning when it's dawning, when the first rays of sun illuminates the streets just enough to see the road, and no much more. The girl running in the street was unremarkable in every way, with her faded red shorts and white shirt. It was already filled with sweat common from exercise. Maybe the only thing out of place was the large backpack, and the uncomfortable glasses.
Therefore when the patrol matched her pace it was quite normal the way in she was started and did that little jump.
"Sorry," said the cop from inside the squad car. He was young, almost painfully so for his given job, and the obvious Asian heritage did nothing to make him look any older. "didn't mean to scare you."
The girl was puffing and her answer came in short breaths, all while trying to keep the same speed. "No prob, just too focused in not dying here."
"Reminds me police academy six months ago, felt like hell at the begging, but at the end… still felt like hell. Not used to exercise?"
"Trying to get in shape, from here I get to the gym and then to school." She said while gesturing to her backpack.
"Want me to follow you to the gym? Right now is scary 'round here."
"Scary? I know is a little early, but this is a boring neighborhood."
"Yeah, but there was a home invasion in Glenn Oaks up north, and people were hurt so…"
"Glenn Oaks? I have a friend living there. No way…"
"Yes way. A cop, someone from the evening shift, was hurt." The discomfort in the cop's face was evident.
"Man, that's heavy. But don't worry sir, my gym is a couple blocks down, and I'll be fine." Then boy seemed to think about it for a second then came to his decision. "Okay, be careful, and try to jog with a friend more often, maybe the one from Oaks? safety in numbers and all that stuff."
"You too; be careful." With that parting comment the police vehicle once more accelerated to a speed more appropriate for a car than a turtle, leaving the girl behind.
"Be careful officer. You never know when you are going to stumble with someone meaner than you." Melody patted the concealed gun in her hip, glad that she wasn't going to be forced to kill the well intentioned rookie on her way.
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Sorry for the long delay. Writer's block is always a nuisance.