Ernestina, Eris, Aequitas: to obtain that which is just we must ask that which is unjust.
Tuesday, September 3rd, 2030
22:57 EST
Marius Marina
Mafioso Marina. High Tide.
I wait in the wet and fog for the waters to recede. In the darkling hours before dawn, Gotham will reclaim herself inch by inch in her ageless battle against the sea.
I've got hours to Sit. To Think. To Plan.
Soda cans, shriveled condoms, and broken glass lay gritty and glittering against the smoothness of the sandy shore. The homeless walk the beach, lighting fires, shooting up, pissing and fucking. Fog rolls in, eerie and ominous, the cries of perched gulls and pelicans like the lament of shipwrecked souls lost at sea. On the horizon, a midnight skiff signals for an unknown master, likely a drug transport hugging the coast like a cocaine addict, incensed and intoxicated in the throes of unprotected passion.
I'm a woman alone, dressed to a T…but the windows of the Hyundai are black and menacing, and the inhabitants of the Jungle of Gotham know a predator when they see one. And the more witnesses who mistake my presence here for that of Meroni, the better.
I didn't return for some misplaced memory or nostalgia. Didn't come back because this is one of the few places I ever spoke with my Angel.
… I came to frame Uncle Sally's ass for murder.
September. 2029. Faded ink still stains my neck, my biceps. I've shaved the fohawk down, but Perci Simmons isn't yet skin deep. IAB's only just cleared up the Amerikaans Center clusterfuck, and it's my first week back on duty.
…And someone's gone and gift-wrapped me a nice neat little crime scene down in Mafioso Marina.
Lawless had a new partner. Who knows what happens now. All I know, I'm not supposed to be here. Supposed to be pushing papers behind a pristine desk back in HQ. Yeah. Right. Like that'll ever happen. The giving orders I can stomach, but I'm used to seeing the cases at the scene, not officer's field reports.
That, an someone's gone and called the press. Even with the stink of rotten fish and sewage in the air, TV 18's upbeat Trisha Tanaka stands at the very corner of the CSI tape, keeping a running commentary while pestering everyone and anyone for a statement.
Homicide and MCU's got strict orders not to answer her. No more media fiascos, IAB said. GCPD can't take anymore bad PR. But damn if Nora and my team can't work with all this fuss.
"The fuck's going on here?" I find a familiar face.
"Dead body," Lawless grunts. "One of ours."
"Undercover?" I ask with dread.
"No," Lawless answers, biting his thumbnail. "CI, apparently. Danny's. In deep with the Meroni clan." Dead man. Dead criminal. Turned our side before the end. We'll bury him but we won't mourn him…he wasn't one of us. Not even one of the innocent, no cause to serve or protect. CI's a criminal, turned tattle-tale, sometimes for conscience, but more often it's cash compels him. Some might wonder which one he was. But caring won't make this case any easier. Caring won't erase it, can't solve it, doesn't help. Caring is a burden a cop can't always afford to bear.
But Danny's CI just bit the big one, and my phone has been silent all morning. I frown. "FBI hasn't said anything yet."
"FBI took one look at the headlines, Paltron, and FBI doesn't want anything to do with it."
No shit, Sherlock. After Fear Night, the Joker, and the Batman fallout Gotham City's gone and given law enforcement the no confidence vote. "That bad?"
"That bad. And people already don't like you, and IAB's going to put your name all over this."
"You saying I should be careful?"
"I'm saying, the press will turn on anyone."
"So what? " I force a smile that feels more like a sneer. "I'm in danger of them suddenly liking me?"
He shoots me a glare of disapproval, but it ends with a wink. "You mind clearing them the fuck out so we can get some work done?"
All these media whores and vultures, closing in around the kill. They treat my city's pain as entertainment, reality television for the macabre masses. But there's a new sheriff in town, now. One who doesn't give a damn about her career or public image. One who won't tolerate their arrogance or bullshit.
…They'd best get used to it.
"Lieutenant Paltron—!"
"Officer, can you give us a statement?"
"Has the GCPD identified the victim?"
"Who's responsible?" The assembled press all vie for a statement at once.
I clear my throat, gather their silence—and attention. "Ladies and Gentlemen, all audiovisual recording devices present are now the indefinite property of the GCPD Major Crimes Division. Please present yourselves at the CSU van provided for evidence processing and witness statements. Any journalists attempting to flee the scene will the subjected to prosecution. Thank you."
Lawless only shakes his head.
"Milton, Bradley!" Fred and Eugene look up from coffee and doughnuts in the mobile Tech Support unit as I stalk my way through the sifting sand.
"Oh, hey, Paltron," Milton calls brightly. "Who let you out of interrogation?"
"Har har. Establish a perimeter, will you?"
"What's wrong with the one we got?" he insists.
"You let the weasels in the front door. Move it back a couple hundred yards."
"What? You mean, cordon off the whole marina, or—?"
"Yes. Fuck," I throw my hands up in the picture of flustered frustration. "Whatever. Just do it."
"We're so closing the bridges," Bradley grins.
But Fred Milton is already on the comms. "I'm so getting Coast Guard to shut down the river. How far out to International Waters?"
"You do realize the entirety of the Narrows is about to get gridlocked," Lawless frowns.
…Ah. He's in one of his pissy "explaining" moods again. Having a partner pulled out from under you like that…it does things to a person. "Lawless, what's the first most annoying thing about working the scene?"
He scratches the auburn stubble cropping up across his cheeks and chin. "The press."
"And the second?" I return.
"Mil…" realization dawns. "Oh."
"See what I did there?"
"IAB is going to crucify you. And Garcia," he reminds me needlessly in that gruff, guttural growl.
"I'm not here to be popular. I'm here to get shit done." And everyone else can get out from underfoot or go and fuck themselves.
Speaking of which…there's dissent along the border in the form of Arkham Asylum's most beloved darling, Dr. Joan Leland.
She thinks I'm a pitiable sociopath. I think she's a bleeding-heart do-gooder bitch.
"No civies!" I inform her and her entourage firmly.
"I'm a cop," the boy's badge overshadows his small hand. "See?" Conner. Collins. O'Connoll? Shit, Lawless' new partner. Barely a day past shaving and in civilian dress. He looks fucking fourteen at most.
"Kid!" Renee Montoya practically sings, running over and strangling him with a bear hug as Allen slaps his shoulder. "How are you, neh?"
"I'm fine," he repeats dazedly. "Really, I'm, I'm fine."
They razz him, rough him, pound his back and tease his hair. But it's done gently, deliberately, like he's a fucking china-doll. They're good cops, they know better…which means it has nothing to do with Frye's death. Montoya likes him. Respects him. Looks out for him like a younger sibling…but she doesn't treat him like a fellow cop. Kid, they call him. Damn if he doesn't look like one.
…damn if he isn't ready to be back. Damn if he was never ready to be here to begin with. Gordon did the hiring…and left Gotham to pick up the pieces.
He sees me watching over Renee's nappy hair, and recognition kicks in. He gives me a wide—and rather deliberate—berth.
"You!"
He cringes. Freezes. Turns reluctantly.
"Who the hell cleared you?" I demand.
"I did," Leland says, Lawless' partner apparently struck mute by my mere presence.
"And who the hell cleared you?"
"IAB thought a press liaison might be appropriate," she continues blandly. "To avoid public panic."
"And you cleared him?"
"Detective Connolly—" Connolly. Shit. I have to remember. "Has been cleared and vetted for duty by Psychological Services as of six pm yesterday."
I round on the Detective in question. "You wearing your sidearm?"
He nods to his feet.
I make a split-second decision. Damn if I don't want him gone. Damn if he doesn't belong here…and damn if after so many chances of my own he doesn't deserve at least a second…and damn it if my misplaced compassion and WATCHDOG's indiscretion isn't about to get this Kid killed. "Give it to Lawless."
He nods once, face going puce.
"Detective Connolly has been cleared for duty," Leland reminds me as he wades across the sand in defeat.
"I heard you the first time."
"Then—"
"Detective Connolly's been cleared for duty by someone who doesn't know shit about it," I snap. "You ever fired a gun, Leland?"
She stares at me in that placating fashion of hers, like I'm a child questioning the fundamental nature of the universe expecting an answer that's too complicated, too far beyond my intellectual and emotional grasp to ever hope to explain. "No."
"Ever shot anyone?"
"No," her plump lips purse.
"Ever killed a kid?" Ranaan Frye was sixteen and a thug, but still a kid, even if only to Connolly.
"No." Above the waves, wind and wailing gulls her voice is scarcely audible.
"Then don't tell me how to do my job," I conclude, "and I won't tell you to go fuck yourself."
But Joan Leland is, if anything, persistent in her pathos. "Lt. Paltron, how will persecuting him help him heal?" she calls after me.
"He's the goddamned youngest rookie in the GCPD," hell, the USA for all I know. Gotham City's got a nasty rep, so the Garcia legislature made age exceptions. That, and WATCHDOG likes to snap them up young, before Meroni's money and their student debt start looking good together. "And the youngest goddamned Detective I've heard of."
"Jimmy Connolly has passed all required standardized testing and numerous personal psychological interviews," she reminds me, struggling to keep pace with me in her heels on the sodden shoreline. High tide was hours ago, but the sun's rays have yet to parch it. "Many of your superiors were quite impressed."
Yeah. And Purple Heart recipients are recognized by presidents and congress. Doesn't mean they or anyone else was or ever will be truly prepared for the hell of active combat. She's from the sidelines, the stands, and regardless of how well she knows the rule book she's not a player. She can't possibly ever understand. I don't want the responsibility of sending some Rookie to his death, don't want that lack of guilt over losing an incompetent officer to hang over my head, remind me of my lost humanity. Don't want to witness Lawless' pain if his young partner were to be killed. Our argument has been around this Jimmy Connolly…but the content of our conversation has never been about him.
"Doesn't make him ready," I state with finality.
"And what will?" She calls after me, desperate for this moment of closure and clarity.
Being ready, I never answer her, and stride away through the sand.
CSU's set up their mobile workspace, a spacious plastic tent enveloping the dead man and prints, complete with yet another familiar perimeter of bright yellow tape. I don a spacesuit of my own, going through the expected motions while knowing the scene is already contaminated from the environment and fucking tourists. A lovely, visiting lesbian couple frolicking on the beach in the early morning hours happened to stumble across my crime scene, and decided to inform the world via Instagram.
…Which, as Fred Milton was quick to point out, sounds like the perfect plot for a murder-mystery porno.
To my surprise, the Vulture's widow is there at the tape to greet me. And she's not the only one.
Fuck. I had been hoping to see the scene in person, make a quick and quiet entry. Unobtrusive. Too late for that now.
"D-D-detecti—I mean Lt. Paltron!" he squeaks.
"Nora."
"Jimmy," ME Nora Fields says rigidly.
And from the look on Jimmy Connner—O'Connell? Connolly, damnit!—'s face I know wasn't the only one hoping to slip in unnoticed. "I'm fine," he squirms weakly under our combined attention. "I can help."
"Of course you are," she snaps with the curt tone of an errant's grandmother. "Of you you can. Here," she shoves shoe covers and crime-scene coveralls at him with venomous force. "Take this. And you, Detective—"
"Lieutenant, now," I correct her lazily.
"Yes. Whoever. Whichever," she blusters about. "What can I do for you?"
"Tell me whodunnit. And a triple shot of vodka. The press is on my ass already."
"Then perhaps you ought to invite them to engage in self-stimulatory sexual activity from various gastrointestinal orifices," she suggests while stumping back across the sand, extending the offer both to the press and myself alike. "Are you coming to contaminate my stiff or not?"
I make to follow her, but I'm interrupted before I can duck under that blatant yellow perimeter.
"The hell am I supposed to do with this?" Lawless brandishes Connolly's standard-issue Glock 26 at me in accusation. Interesting choice. Most just use that compact for their concealed carry. Then again, something with a kick like the 19 might just knock him off his fucking feet. He's not much bigger than Nora, and state law still requires her to use a booster seat while driving.
"That little girls gun?" I snort. " Hold onto it. Thing's still got a twelve round clip, you know how much damage Trigger-fingers could do if he fucks up again?" And it's not just civilian kids I'm worried about. The good kind of cops don't plug a teenager and not live to regret it. So if some sob-story rookie wants to eat a bullet because he just can't take the guilt, well, he'll have to go out and get himself a different gun.
"Goddamnit, Paltron. It was a clean-kill. You know this thing wasn't even loaded when he handed it to me?"
"Should that surprise me?" I expected as much. Cleared for duty? My ass. Joan Leland and her board of phrinks can go and fuck themselves. Connolly came back carrying a badge, alright…and a suicide wish. He's just not the type to pull the trigger himself.
Even Lawless just can't see it. "So if you knew he wasn't packing, why am I holding onto it?"
"Your superior officer said so?"
"Pulling rank already, are we? Anything else? Coffee? Ass-kicking, I mean, kissing—?"
That earns him a snort.
"No, seriously, Paltron. How long."
"Until he's ready."
He pauses. Frowns. Considers it. Runs fingernails through his facial stubble. "How will I know?"
I shrug. "You won't."
"Goddamnit, Paltron, then how—"
"He'll ask for it, Lawless. Back, or to hand in with his resignation. Until then, he goes without."
"Yeah, and it's my ass on the line until he does."
"A little motivation wouldn't hurt."
"What? Give him hell, or a pep talk?"
"Your partner. Your problem," I call.
"What-? He's in there?" Lawless asks.
"Nora insisted," I shout back to him.
He dons shoe covers as well, bundling into the coveralls while he jogs. "What the hell—?"
What the hell, indeed. That touchy old hen probably has him chasing off gulls, for all the good it'll do us.
The tent is strangely silent. Outside, waves crash in and out against the shore. Traffic rumbles in the distance. Gulls screech. But in the confines of the CSU suits, the only sound it my own heavy breathing. The rest of Nora's team stand, awaiting her instructions.
Her 'stiff' isn't hard to miss. The corpse is sprawled sideways onto the sand. From the angle of his torso looks like he was kneeling when he died. Entry wound to the face .Large caliber, that much is for sure. Nothing but a small, seemingly innocuous hole to the forehead…but the rest of the skull has turned to jelly.
"Jesus," Lawless says, entering the tent in turn.
I don't share his shock. I've seen worse. Much worse. Nothing we do to each other can surprise me now.
"What do you think?" Nora presses Lawless' partner. "Any first impressions?"
"Hey, look, a dead guy?" he offers with meek helplessness.
"Don't be a smartass. It' s your first official crime-scene, so let's start with the basics."
"Caucasian male. Mid-to early forties?"
"Cause of death?"
"Single GSW," he points. "To the head."
"Trajectory?"
"Frontal-octipussal?"
Lawless and Nora snort simultaneously as one of Nora's grad students tuts in disgust.
"Occipital?" she prompts, grey eyes swimming with mirth.
"Yeah. Occipipital—front to back," he flushes under her laughter.
"Every time!" she sings. "And what caliber?"
"Um…large? Like .38 or.45? I dunno, with that exit damage…" he trails off, kneels down to peruse the spray of clumped flesh, splayed brains and pulverized bone up close. "Maybe hollow point?"
Nora holds up the evidence, already bagged. "It's a .357 magnum, but close range. See the powder burns and stipling?" she demonstrates with a laser pointer. "And the perimortem bruising? Physical contact. The shooter held the gun right to his face."
"So he'd…what, be standing there?" Connolly circles the corpse from a distance, puts himself nearly into the killer's shoes, where plaster of paris is beginning to harden in the gritty sand. The scene's a mess of tourist tracks and the chaotic scavenging of gulls and crabs alike. Looks like someone also tried to wipe it clean before they left. The deep imprints of footwear have lost discernment, just shallow pocketings, nothing more.
Nora nods. "What can you tell me about the killer?"
"Large foot size and impressions mean heavy. Likely male."
"Very good. Anything else?"
"He was…well he'd have to be tall, wouldn't he?" he muses aloud, testing the angle against the numbered pop-up on the ground. "I couldn't make that shot. He'd have to be taller than me by at least a couple inches."
Yeah. Like that narrows it down. When you're already half a foot shorter than the national average, 'being taller' is a useless descriptor for your perp.
"What else?" she prompts. "Time of death?"
"Um…signs of lividity," he kneels and peers over the corpse, inspecting the flecked appearance. "So at least two to five hours old. Wait, what was the temp last night? And do we have like, an internal body temperature or, you know, rigor?"
"Last night's low was holding out around fifteen."
"Really?" Connolly jerks up, surprised. "Shouldn't the river have frozen over?"
"Not Fahrenheit, you moron," the ME's intern—Smith, from her official Kane County Coroner's badge—snaps as she tweezes bone fragments from the blood and gore. "Think about it. Is it likely to be below freezing in September?"'
"That's enough, Yolanda," Nora chastens. "He's a criminal justice major, not a doctorate in forensics."
"Times 9/5, minus 32, or wait, was it…" Connolly calculates aloud, while this Yolanda gives Nora a cool—and rather pointed—stare.
"Don't hurt yourself, Kid," Lawless interrupts as his young partner's frown of concentration turns into a wracked grimace.
"God bless the American public education system," Nora's short, deformed fingers drum an impatient rhythm against her clipboard. "Fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. Give or take."
"And internal temp?"
"Thirty-two point five. That's roughly ninety degrees Fahrenheit."
"So less than…well it'd have to be, wouldn't it? They killed him during low tide. It was planned," he rushes. "They waited for low tide! They…what, they wanted us to find him? And they shot him from the front," Connolly whispers. "They looked him in the eyes when he died," he shudders, seeing what I've seen from the start: the CI's killing is nearly a mirror image of his own. That slumped body in the sand could easily be Ranaan Frye. "The killer knew him. Wanted him to know who killed him. That's awful."
"Most homicides are," Nora says gruffly. "I'm the ME. I deal with cold, hard science, Kid. Facts. If you want to wax psychological, go ask a cop."
"W-what do you think?" he asks vaguely in our direction, avoiding eye contact with Lawless and I both. Can't say I blame him—last time he saw us I knocked the piss out of him one-handedly then left him crying on the bumper of an ambulance in his underwear.
Shy? Fine. Humiliated? Fine. Immature and not ready to be here? Fuck yeah. But Jim Gordon hired him. Jim Gordon who's always gone and given me a second chance…
…Yeah, bitch. Go look how well that's turned out. I never deserved a second chance. Not once. I promised no more the night Gordon gave me back my badge, yet just weeks ago the Amerikaans Crisis happened under my watch. I killed two people. Made my partner, a father, watch children die, forced a husband kill a woman. Looked on and let a Sergeant I respected get wasted for no reason. And I single-handedly created a scenario for an inexperienced, rookie cop to chase and kill a teen. However accidentally, however reflexive, however 'by-the-book'…Jimmy Connolly is a killer now, and all because of me.
It makes me sick. It makes me mad. Makes me irrational, biased, unobjective and unfair. It makes me hate him. Blame him. And I don't have the willpower to wrest it under control, so I make Lawless make the hard decision for me. He's a good man. Good cop. Good partner. He's always been the best of me, and however desperately I despise it, I know I need him.
Aaron Lawless will make or break him. I'm his commanding officer, and that's all I can offer. Baptism by fire, sink or swim. He's got some textbook knowledge, I'll give him that…but that's not preparation for the real thing.
I'm giving him Lawless. My own partner. The best cop money can't buy. I'm giving him a chance…
…Only because I'm too ashamed to fire him outright.
"It's a decent summation," Lawless concedes. "Not bad for your first time."
His small shoulders slump, crestfallen. "What did I do wrong?"
"Nothing 'wrong'," Lawless counters. "Just some intuitive leaps, that's all."
"We're police officers. We're supposed to inuit, intutit…" his boyish cheeks go pink and he looks to his feet. "We're supposed to hypotnothize."
"Hy-po-the-size, Jimmy, for the thousandth time," Nora laments. "Multi-syllabic. It gets him every time."
"Yeah. It's a good hypothesis," to his credit, Lawless keeps a straight face. "Good gut instinct, but as a Rookie you've got to back your hunches up. You're inexperienced. You need to give the brass a good, hard reason to listen and follow-up."
"I'm not a Rookie," he returns. "I'm a Detective, just like you."
"You're WATCHDOG," Lawless retorts. "With no practical experience. Trust me Kid, you're a Rookie. And until you get some street time logged I'm going to treat you like one."
"You were WATCHDOG, too," Connolly reminds him quietly.
"Boys, boys, don't make this a pissing contest," Nora cautions. "I don't want Detective Paltron to pull her gun out and embarrass you both."
That's fucking original, Nora. Like I haven't heard that one a thousand times in the last four years of service. But I grit my teeth and deliver the punchline. "Eight point five inches. Rigid steel. Accurate to a hundred and eighty five meters." I drawl. "It's a Beretta."
Lawless just stares.
"Don't tell me you haven't heard that one," I scoff.
"No. I'm…I'm just surprised you have." he scratches his auburn hair, abashed. "It's been making the rounds for years now."
Yeah. 2025. World Police and Fire Games. I've got the plaque on a wall in my office, along with an honorary key to the Men's Room from the city of Reykjavík.
"I don't get it," Connolly finally states, dark eyes furrowed in confusion.
"Were you raised in a convent?" Lawless guffaws. "Come on!"
"The gun is my penis," I scowl.
His dark eyes go enormous and he takes a step back, nearly sprawling over the corpse and Yolanda Smith alike. "…You're…you're a man?" he asks in a small, horrified voice.
"It's a joke, dumbass. Like the kind you laugh after?"
"Detective, be kind," Nora waves me off with her deformed hands. "I was trying to ease the tension. Not make more of it."
"I'm…I'm just going to go recheck the liver temperature," Connolly hides behind her, melting into the sand. "Make sure time of death's right…"
"I still can't believe you've heard that joke," Lawless mutters.
"You think I'm deaf?"
"I thought you'd have put a stop to it," he counters.
"Well as much as I'd like to take out my 'big gun' and end it, I've got a reputation to uphold. The more the press and the perps believe it, the better," I tell him. "And if that means putting up with some limp-dick juvenile humor, so be it. When I put a hand to my holster, people listen."
"That's because a hand gun bullet travels over seven hundred miles per hour," Lawless shrugs. "You'd drop a cheetah before it got out of range."
With tires and getaway drivers being the more likely. I've done both in my time. Got away with it during the IAB hearing, forensics expert called it a crack shot. After Iceland, I've had to be more careful.
"Do you smell that?" Connolly. He hunches over the body, thermometer still in place, lowers his plastic-covered face as close to the dead man's clothing as possible and takes another deep, long, whiff, like a drag.
"Don't you dare mess up my bone particulate," Yolanda clicks her tweezers territorially, austere features gone rigid. "I need those for my thesis!"
"I'm not even touching him!" he protests.
"You're dripping sand everywhere. You're contaminating the evidence!"
"I am not!"
"Dr. Fields!" they huff in unison, glaring from opposite sides of the corpse.
"Children, play nicely," Lawless laughs, before Nora can intervene. "You're going to have to share the dead person, or mommy and daddy will take him away from you."
"I'm thirty-two years old and a PhD candidate in Forensic Osteology, Detective," Yolanda Smith voices the last word as an insult, white teeth flashing. "I'm hardly a child."
"Bullying the littlest kid on the playground? Bullshit. You could've fooled me," he returns, but Nora interrupts him.
"Yolanda," she begins sweetly, her sugary voice a very smile. Burn. Those who've known her long enough have learned that politeness, from Nora Fields, is worse than any four-letter word. "Why don't you put on your big girl panties or teacher will put you in the time out chair?"
"Please inspect the body. I insist," the intern's words drip acid. "Clearly your education is considered a higher priority than mine."
"Do you smell it?" Connolly asks again.
"He's been dead less than eight hours, genius. He's not even decomposing yet."
"No…" he begs us. "Just SMELL him."
Wordlessly we all lean forward. Take a whiff.
…And gag. Fuck. It's the Marina. The only scent for miles is the Narrow's shit, rotten fish and salt.
"Smells like dockside, Gotham City," Lawless coughs. "Sorry, Kid."
"No, it's tobacco," Connolly insists. "It's rich, earthy. High grade. I'd say cigar…" he sniffs again. "Clove-scented."
Lawless raises one auburn eyebrow in the picture of skepticism. "Really, Sherlock? You got all that from smelling a dead guy? Through a CSU suit?"
"Um, yeah. So?"
"So it's a neat party-trick, " Lawless nods, now impressed. "But it won't hold up in court."
"It doesn't have to," Connolly chirps. "There'll be particulate matter and ash embedded in the clothing and hair. And clove-flavored tobacco's been illegal to import to the US for almost two decades."
Lawless scratches his beard, genuinely amused. "The hell you learn that stuff, Kid?"
"AFT," he straightens proudly.
"Somebody needs to get himself a girlfriend," he observes with a wink. He's been taking Connolly's side this whole time, doing his best to be kind, I realize. Engaging him. Take the tension off. "Remind me to introduce you to Stacey."
"Stacey?" Nora interrupts. "Gordon's Stacey?"
"Yeah, Nora," Lawless nods. "She's a doll." Short, somewhat chubby, she's got that heart-shaped face with that dark framing fringe the grunge and emo crowd go nuts over. Not to mention perky, adolescent breasts that tend to peep over the top of her clothing when she bends over… as both Milton and Montoya have noted more than once. She's also a fucking airhead. I had to instigate a department-wide no-spill policy to stop 'accidental' morning coffee clumsiness from evolving into a full-fledged sexual harassment suit.
But our ME snorts in contempt. "Absolutely not."
"Frankly, Nora, if I want to set my partner up with the department secretary it's none of your business."
"Stacey has an associate's degree in communications," Nora expresses her disdain for such an academic underachievement.
He frowns. "Stacey is hard-working, good-looking, and—"
"Socially awkward?" I quip.
"I was going for 'compatible', but yes," Lawless agrees. "A little bit backwards."
"Jimmy needs a self-supporting woman with sophistication, class, and a decent education. Not some geek gamer girl whose daddy happened to be on the School Board and had Loeb in his pocket." Nora bristles. She's always been opinionated, but I've rarely seen her this passionate.
"Jesus, Nora. Since when did you get so snobbish?"
"Since you decided to set up that poor boy with the department harpy?" she replies without batting an eye.
"Harpy?" Lawless throws his arms up, incredulous. "She's a sweetheart!"
"Stacey's been through every man in that department," Nora tuts. "Twice."
"Jesus, Nora. Just because she's gone on a couple of dates doesn't make her a slut. She's dependable that way. Keeps it casual. It'd be a nice stepping-stone. Ease him into it."
"Well I don't want that tramp 'easing' him into anything. Especially—" she stops abrupt.
"Especially—?" he presses, then dawning comprehension contorts his features. "Oh."
"Oh, what?" I demand as a knowing, superior 'I told you so' look passes between the two of them. "What?"
"Nora's the ME," Lawless whispers.
"So?"
"So…so certain shall we say, confidential medical information reportable to the CDC passes through her office?"
"What?"
"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands?" he pantomimes as an aside.
"Seriously, if you're—Oh." I stop short. Clap. The Clap. Chlamydia. STDs. She's Kane County Coroner and Gotham City ME. Nora Fields knows more about the average Gotham woman's vagina than her own OBGYN. "Fuck," I reiterate.
"Yep," he nods. "Fuck."
"Besides. I've already offered to set him up with Andi."
I blink.
"Andy?" Lawless clears his throat, subconsciously glances at Connolly's scrawny back. "I uh, I know him?" 2029. Gay guy comes out of the closet and it still knocks us off balance. No wonder the public call us pigs.
"Not a him. Her. Andrea Taylor, you homophobic old fossil. One of my best grad students," Nora says fondly. "And a darling."
"That's so not going to happen," Connolly pipes in for the first time. "I already told you."
"Oh, shut up, you. You're twenty-one, and you have no idea what you want yet," she nudges him in the rump with her child-sized foot. "Besides," she continues rapturously, "I've done a Punnet, and your babies will be adorable."
"Dr. Fields!" Connolly yelps, simultaneous to Lawless' cry of "Nora!"
"What?" she grumps. "I'm fifty-seven, postmenopausal and widowed. You can't blame an old woman for wanting grandchildren."
…No, Nora. No, I can't.
"She's a bit old," Lawless opines.
"Nonsense. I'm confident the reproductive status of her oocytes is perfectly acceptable."
"For him," he remonstrates. "She's what, a good five years older? At least?"
"And she's bi-racial," Connolly chimes.
The temperature in the tent drops an easy fifty. Yolanda Smith's handsome mulatto features have turned to ice.
I cross my arms. Stare him down. "That a problem?" I ask him coolly.
"Well yeah," he rolls dark eyes with a stupid, superior grin. "Obviously."
Silence.
"No! Not like that!" Connolly blurts, springing to his feet in horror. "I…I meant…I just…just she's more likely to marry some guy who's like, her age, you know? And like, Asian! Or Latino. Statistically speaking! An-and she's twenty-seven and she's never been married, so, so, so she's never going to. Also statistically speaking!" his hands flap like a flock of squawking seagulls. "That's all! Really!"
"AFT taught you all that as well?" Lawless asks drily.
"No," he flushes. "Dr. Fields left the Journal of Sociology and Statistical Inference in the bathroom again."
"So that's what you do when you disappear in the bathroom for half and hour at a time?" Smith smirks.
"I'm a slow reader," Connolly confesses, face now scarlet. "And I have GI issues."
"Sure," she purrs. "'Issues' is one way of putting it."
Connolly only cocks his head, oblivious.
"I'd love to see her go up against Fred and Eugene," Lawless nudges me. "She'd give them a run for their money."
Yeah, great. Just what I need. A room full of cops making dick jokes and a walking sexual harassment suit in six-inch stilettos. Footware aside, Yolanda doesn't seem the type to tolerate bullshit.
"You're not my student anymore, Jimmy," Nora corrects him. "You can call me Nora. And wishing her away doesn't make it happen," she stage-whispers as she scrapes under the fingernails for samples on the right as he gingerly examines the left. "Trust me, I've been trying it for months."
Connolly nods. Hops to perch near the head, inserts two fingers into the remains of the rigid mouth with a squelch, then poking and prodding with easy enthusiasm.
"It's a good thing Fred's not here," Lawless' low chuckle cuts across my ears. "He'd never hear the end of this."
"Wrong gender, wrong orifice," I snort. "Finger your wife lately?"
"This morning. Vigorously. And that's absolutely—"
"None of my 'fucking business'?"
He can't help but laugh. "Took the words right out of my…look, let's just stop this here, okay?"
"Dr. Fields?" Connolly calls. "See this? His clothes reek of smoke but his fingers, his nails, his teeth are all clean. No buccal or global—no, wait, glottal lesions," he amends. "So he wasn't a smoker himself, but spent a great deal of time with one."
"Gaetano." Lawless growls. Punk Italiano chain-smoking motherfucker who takes his hits straight out of the Godfather. He's a wannabe wash-up taking advantage of Uncle Sal's injuries to establish a territory and a name for himself here in Gotham. Now he's gone and killed one of our men, execution-style, just to send a message.
Gaetano himself might not be all the bright, but guarandamntee he's got Uncle Sally's Enforcers cleaning up after his mess. Family is everything, la Cosa Nostra's creed. This crime-scene was long since scrubbed and sterilized before we even set foot in the sand.
"Did I do good?" he looks to Nora for affirmation. It's needy. Desperate. A child's plea for adult attention and approval.
"Did you do well," Nora snaps. "Yes."
"Is it enough to bring him in for interrogation?"
"No point," I say. "Greasy Guido bastard'll lawyer up, hit us with a harassment suit."
"Language," Lawless groans. I spent the last six months as Perci Simmons…and she isn't as far gone as I'd thought.
"And this from the man who a moment ago was discussing massaging his wife's clitoris—" Nora bags her final fingernail swabs in exasperation.
Underneath his helmet, Connolly turns a blotchier shade of puce and chokes.
"CLITORIS!" she bellows, smacking him upside the head with her clipboard and earning herself the baffled glances of all CSU personnel within earshot. "It's a female reproductive organ, Jimmy, not a bad word! I have one, your mother has one, even Yolanda and Lt. Paltron have one—"
Her words are like a shot to the gut. Like a grenade—
Lawless mistakes my fleeting pain for Yolanda's social outrage. "Sexual functions are considered culturally taboo because America is a backwards, repressed, erotophobic country," he drones with the delicacy of a collegiate professor, deflecting the conversation away from it's current course. "Racism, I believe you will find, is universally frowned upon."
"What's a Guido?" Connolly blurts, grabbing Lawless' lifeline, desperate to avoid the previous topic.
"What's a Guido?" Lawless repeats. "Aren't you from Gotham? How can you not know that?"
His diminutive partner shrugs unhelpfully from the ground.
"It's an offensive term for an Italian-American. Derogatory slang."
"So it's like nigger," he muses, "but for white people?"
Silence falls. Heads turn. Nora smacks her face with that clipboard. Even I'm gaping.
"Is he fucking serious right now—!" Smith finds her feet in disgust. She looks seconds away from bitch-slapping his ass.
"Oh, don't mind him," Nora mollifies. "He meant no harm—"
Lawless cuts off her mother hen bullshit. "Kid?" he strides forward and addresses him sternly, "don't ever say that again."
Already tiny, already enveloped by that baggy CSI suit, Jimmy Connolly shrinks even smaller, perhaps pisses himself. "S-sorry."
"I tried to talk him into mortuary sciences," Nora explains, "but the tactless little runt's been insistent on all that criminal justice nonsense. I'm still hopeful he'll come around, though."
"Yeah," I snort. "Perhaps even faster, if he keeps that up." In innocence or not, you go wandering around Gotham City dropping the n-bomb you'll end up on Nora's slab, guaranteed. From Smith's current expression, she'd do it herself.
"Maybe if someone reconsidered their stance on department-issued firearm restrictions—" Lawless begins.
"No," I remain firm. "I told you, he'll get it back when he's ready."
"Still here," a small voice rings from the sand, Connolly sheepishly waving up to us with the dead man's left arm.
"That's a person, not a puppet," Nora snatches the offending limb away and lays it gently back to earth. "Mind your manners."
"Says the woman who cuts up dead people for a living," he argues. "You're like a mad scientist."
"They're naked, too, but that doesn't give me license to fuck with them."
"Dr. Fields!"
"Interestingly enough, the way state law is currently written a mortician is the only person who can legally engage in necrophilia," Lawless offers. "Strange little loophole, right?"
"Mr. Lawless!"
"How do you—the boy who couldn't spot a penis reference with a periscope—know what necrophilia means?" Lawless scratches his chin in bewilderment.
"Because the students in my criminology 101 class were assholes, that's how," Nora explains, patting Connolly's head. "Between that and the endless 'extra-credit' jokes he had a rough time."
"Yeesh," Lawless grimaces.
"It's not true!" Connolly cries.
"Of course it's not," Lawless amends. "I just meant 'yeesh, college kids'. They can be pretty cruel. But don't feel bad—Nora's not all that bad-looking…for a geriatric patient."
"You're not too bad yourself," Nora titters, fanning herself sensuously with that clipboard. "For a dead man."
But Jimmy Connolly is far from amused. "Would you guys just…just stop it with the sex stuff? Please?
"You heard Lawless!" she thumps him in the stomach. "This country's all sexually repressed. You'd be less embarrassed about it if you'd just admit to yourself you enjoy it. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of! If you'd just let me set you up with one of my interns, you wouldn't have to feel so awkward about masturbation—"
But 'one of Nora's interns' has had enough. Yolanda Smith rises stiffly, tossing tweezers and bone fragments in the dust. "The day I consider screwing your little boytoy, Dr. Fields, is the day I buy myself a better vibrator."
Lawless catches the question on his lips before it's even voiced. Don't ask, he mouths a warning, don't ask. "Lost yourself another intern, did you?" he squints after her in the mid-morning sun. She's already stalked past the yellow perimeter, and doesn't show any signs of coming back.
"So it would seem," Nora tests the victim's hands for powder stains with an air of nonchalance. "Apparently I go through them faster than the GCPD does officers."
Charlie. Charlie Fields. The Vulture. Big, gruff man, mustached, overweight, fond of donuts and coffee and kept a silent vigil over Gotham's Dead for over twenty-five years. He was there when I joined…never thought he wouldn't be there once I'd left. He was a part of this City for so damn long it's still shocking to remember he's gone.
Not only gone, but his killer's still loose. Jim Corrigan. Nora asked me to handle it…but conscience got the best of her. Not mine, not hers: Charlie's. Said her husband wouldn't've wanted to go outside the law. That we had to do it right, do it proper, do it by the books or not at all. So I've got a sharp eye on him, day and night: I made Detective Stephens his new partner. Not a toe out of line, not a hair out of place, and the second he or a distant cousin so much as moves or spends a penny of the Bratva's blood money, his ass is forfeit.
But Lawless doesn't know. Thinks the investigation's closed, just another meaningless murder in a city of millions. "Nora—"
"Don't 'Nora' me, Lawless," she chides. "I'm the widow, not you, and I'll be the judge of when it's appropriate. My Charlie had a grand old run, and he didn't regret a minute of it. He made room in the force for fresh faces, and I'm proud one of my students could take his place." She thumps Connolly again with that clipboard, but in genuine affection. Gordon, Montoya, Crispus, now Nora…the whole damn city's gone and caught Connolly fever. Thank fuck Lawless seems somewhat immune.
"Dr. Fields!" the Andrea Taylor in question finally makes her appearance, albeit doubled over and out of breath. "I'm sorry for being late. The bridges were all blocked off and traffic was re-routed downtown. Even the ferries have shut-down. The radio said the Coast Guard's got the whole river shut off. I had to park up past the Palisades and walk…Where's Yolanda?" She straightens her CSU hood, attempting to brush dark hair behind her ears through two layers of plastic.
"She tendered her resignation," Lawless shrugs.
"Resignation?" Taylor asks, aghast. "She was three months away from completing her PhD!"
"The social environment wasn't working for her," Nora tells her stiffly. "Are you really twenty-seven and never been married?"
"Yes?"
"Pity," Nora clucks.
Taylor looks baffled.
Long story, Lawless mouths.
"Hey, Andrea." Connolly waves shyly.
"Hey, James."
"It's Jimmy," he insists. "Just Jimmy."
"Aaand it's Andi, just Andi."
"Um. Hey, Andi."
"See, that wasn't so hard. Care to give me an update, Jimmy?" She asks him with a smile.
"Eh," Lawless comments. "He could do worse." He's right—she's not bad looking, and fairly smart from what limited interaction we've had. She's also got a bit of a hero complex and a preoccupation with justice that's guaranteed to get her in trouble in my city.
"Don't ask my opinion," my arms are crossed. "I refuse to get involved in your little office playdates."
"Kid like that?" Lawless nods to Connolly, still bumbling through a conversation with Taylor. "Probably been bullied his entire life. I think a girlfriend would do him some good. Give him some confidence."
"Sorry, but they're not standard issue. You've got to work for one."
"Yeah. I suppose you'd know."
"Lawless, the fuck's that supposed to mean?"'
"Just that…you're a woman?"
"It's a gender, not a club," I remind him.
"He can update you while you're working, Andi," Nora nods to the long black roll hanging from the nearest tent-pole. "We're finished here. The rest is up to your gadgets and my expert dissection skills. These scumbags don't stand a chance."
"Well, um…our victim is male, caucasian, mid—"
"Yeah, I've got that part," Taylor lays the body bag beside the corpse, slanted eyes shining. "I mean the investigation."
"Oh. Some gui—er, guy named Gaetano shot him."
"Fingerprints, great," she moans, catching the dual zippers. "Guess you didn't need me after all."
"Don't I wish," Lawless sighs. "Hit like this? I figure the guy was gloved or the casing wiped clean before it entered the chamber. And that gun? Long gone."
"Well, with my new grant, that shouldn't be a problem," she explains. "Our new electron fluorescence machines from WE can dust and trace metal corrosion down to a micrometer. If our shooter so much as even touched that bullet with his bare-fingers, we'll find partials."
"Sounds Batman-esque," Nora harrumphs. "You paid how much for that machine, and I still can't get decent lighting in my morgue?"
"You're an elected official. I'm doing a research project with GSU—and private funding pays so much better."
"What about DNA?" Connolly asks her hopefully as they attempt to roll the body in. "Will it find that, too?" Our CI was six foot four, a solid two hundred and forty pounds…at least before half his head went missing. I'm amazed they get him to fit.
"We'll run PCR, but it's unlikely," she explains with a grunt, bending a knee that is slowly cementing into rigor. The limbs are always the last to go. "The chambered explosion can reach several thousand degrees Celsius—higher than the melting point of steel—in addition to the friction generated along the barrel. Most organic residue will have been incinerated."
"But I thought, fingerprints were you know, orgamic too."
"Or-ga-nic," Nora emphasizes, a trace of long-suffering exacerbation in her hoarse voice.
"He could've done worse," Lawless shrugs.
"They are," Taylor presses the zippers expertly with her olive-colored hands. "But the lipophilic residue left behind is still in its unique configuration. Like a fossil. But the DNA evidences will have been cooked. It's useless."
"On the count of three, then? One, two—" Taylor's long 'threeeeee' trails off in a grunt as the corpse never swings to its intended height on the stretcher.
"Shit," Lawless sees the crisis, nearly knocks me off my feet to intervene, shouldering his straining partner out of the way.
"I got it," he says defensively.
"It wasn't you I was worried about," Lawless explains. "Andrea doesn't need to go slipping a disk at this age."
"And your wife's not likely to like it if you come home with a hernia," Nora snorts. "Nothing like a little testicular intestine to ruin the mood."
"I might not be a builder, Nora, but I know the ergonomics of lifting."
"I miss Yolanda," Taylor groans, hands laid on her sacrum, stretching her back. "She paid her way through undergrad with a tennis scholarship. Still coaches. No offense," she adds in an apologetic tone, "but foosball's not exactly a strenuous sport."
"Well, my partner the athlete here seems to think you'll be able to pull tobacco ash, potentially match it to something like the shooter's clothing or car," Lawless clasps Connolly's shoulder. "We've also got some tread marks up the beach. Could be a start."
"In theory, yes. But it won't be enough." Taylor argues as Connolly wriggles away. "Even if we can isolate the tobacco used with gas chromatography and match it to our killer's clothing, it's not enough to exclude any other buyer from the kill site."
"What about the footprints?" Connolly wonders.
"Next to useless."
"I thought footprints were unique."
"Walking patterns, not stationary footprints," she continues. "And this beach is sketchy enough before someone tried to wipe their tracks. Any honest forensic podiatrist would say so on the stand, and I'd support them. I can extrapolate a rough weight, but that's all, I'm afraid. The evidence might be enough not to exclude him from a pool of suspects, but certainly not enough to convict him."
"But the sand…that'd totally still be there, right? And the salt? So we get a warrant for the shoes."
"Gotham's shorelines were mostly artificially constructed and maintained beaches dating back to the 1970's, before the environmental movement and beach nourishment became standard. The National, State and City parks as well as the Palisades beachfront have all been restored, but so far from City-center and so close to the Narrows? Most of this sand was mass imported from Florida or manufactured. There's no unique soil indicators."
"Sure there is. Like, pollution levels? All the industrial drainage and heavy metal contamination from the Narrows run off."
"Would indicate only that shoes were worn upstream. And from the tread patterns I could elucidate, I think we're dealing with custom tailored shoes. I guarantee anyone wearing those would have had them professionally cleaned after this. Any evidences left would be contaminated beyond useless."
"So it's not even worth a shot?"
"If he's who your office claims he is, getting a warrant without tipping him off would be impossible. And any unofficial inquiries into his clothing or whereabouts last night will only ensure he destroys whatever evidence is left."
"Only circumstantial that someone with his height, weight, shoe-size, shoe-type and preferred tobacco was at the scene of the crime?" I snort. "If your department would do it's job right, we'd have him behind bars before the week is out."
"My department does what it legally can, Detective." Taylor corrects. "We've got evidence, but in order to convict it has to stand up to reasonable doubt, or you'll just risk losing the killer to the double-jeopardy clause where no matter of evidence, however concrete, could get him convincted. And regardless of what I think about this man's guilt, I can't fabricate or falsify evidence just to put him in jail if there is a possibility—however remote—that he could be innocent. You want to convict him? So do I. But I need a smoking gun."
"Well, it's not a gun, and it's not smoking—at least right now—but it'll do." Connolly pipes from the ground. "Dr. Fields, you should sit down."
Nora flushes. "Jimmy, my blood sugar's fine!"
"No, really," he insists with all earnestness. "You should sit down."
"Why?"
He shrugs and offers a small smile that melts her heart. "Because you've got a mashed cigar butt on the bottom of your left shoe. I think it fell off the body when we dropped him."
There were some hiccoughs with the trial, certainly. But DA Bradshaw and Nashton got our asses into the clear before the end. First degree murder, twenty-five to life, no parole? Justice. But Gaetano Meroni didn't last two weeks at Blackgate. Some of Chekov's old Bratva pals didn't take too well to Uncle Sally backing out on the Joker arrangement and held a good old fashioned welcome/shanking party in the showers.
…Like I said: Justice.
Ji Yeon is only a stranger, but she suffered the same fate as my Angel. Abducted. Sold into slavery. Sexually brutalized…yet at the end of it, she found Karl. A man who loves her. Respects her. Treats her well. It can't ever hope make up for the hell she went through, but it's a damn good ending. Far better than she ever had reason to expect.
My Angel left me. Ran back to Gerald. Craved that cocksucker's attention and love despite the horrors that accompanied it. Thinking back now I can see it, the skittish, inwards posturing, the heightened paranoia and listless nervousness, even around Lawless…'socially backward…awkward…poorly socialized…disliked by peers… ' it was all there in Kirkov's freshman evaluation, all in Rachel Dawes' reserved recommendation.
…When my Angel first stood here, he was still a frightened Child. In less than a year with Lawless, he became a Man. He needed Lawless. Needed that confidence. Maturity. Spirit. He never needed me.
I'm a cop. Some of Angel's first words to me in thirteen years. I looked my own son in the face, too blinded, too embittered, to see. I brought that boy out of a basement of living hell…but in the end, his audacious innocence in the face of evil consumed him. It was my rescuing him that drove him to take an oath to protect and serve, to carry GCPD's bronze shield, just as it was Lawless' fierce fatherhood and nurturing that led him from this place down the long road to the Legacy, to the Joker's last lethal embrace.
Jimmy Connolly. My Angel. My baby boy.
…I am Midas. I am Gorgon. Everything I love must turn to stone. But if I am monster, then let me do the monstrous. I am Atlas, I shall not shirk.
Wednesday, September 4th, 2030
04:47 EST
Marius Marina
Dashboard cigarette lighter and a printed receipt. Two simple ingredients are all I need to start my inferno.
I've placed the bodies in a ring around the van, and in the morning sun they'll be visible to the traffic raging on the Carl Finch Memorial Toll-Bridge overhead. I laid each carefully, painstakingly, remembering every horror of every crime scene, all the nuances of hired hits, revenge killings, and gang warfare in my decade of GCPD duty.
By the time I finished with my canvas, Victor fucking Zsasz would be put to shame.
I stripped down. Kept the Hyundai's heat on all night, just to speed up the rigor. Throw Nora's timeline and the police report off the figures given by Six. Lies, lies, subtle lies and deceit. Even the GCPD moles will misdirect them.
I stacked the bodies, spread the legs. Tied the right arm of each up by their scavenged shoelaces, index fingers extended in accusation, and with the stiffness of rigor mortis the limb now stands freely. Each corpse was carried and arranged, feet facing the abandoned van, their heads and open legs creating the points and lines of a perfect pentagram.
The eyes I'd all taped open.
The van contains too much of my DNA. Sweat, skin cells, body hair. The bodies, too, might contain trace amounts from our brief contact, but wouldn't you know the bastards brought gloves and ammonia with them. It doesn't take much. Between the chemicals, salt air, environmental exposure and FD firehoses any trace DNA recovered will be questionable at best. A hit like this will still take priority, Legacy or not. Sooner or later Nora will get the forensics back. But PANDEMONIUM Joint Taskforce will have already acted on orders, followed intervention/escalation protocol, and hauled in the usual suspects for questioning. With the ensuing media frenzy, this crime scene will become three-ring circus…one where the lioness has her handlers jumping through hoops in her stead.
I light the receipt, the paper evidences of my time at Candidly Cameras erasing my involvement. Behind me, the seats and sumptuous carpeting of the Hyundai have already begun to blaze.
My work is done. I take my leave. I must be far, far away before the GCFD—or Sal Meroni— ever gets the call.
The Korean Killers associate with the Bratva, some on-again off-again fling as loose and opportunistic as the women between Bruce Wayne's bedsheets. They've used Nabokov for their dirty work before. And there's bad, bad blood between the Meroni clan and those Russian hitters, the tension mounting and a tipping point that PANDEMONIUM Taskforce has been warning about for almost a year. We've been expecting violence between la Cosa Nostra and their Northern Red cousins. We have contingency plans, GCPD and FBI protocol and collaboration.
Those Khangpae were wary of the Aryan brotherhood, so I let them talk to Perci. I don't know where they stand with Meroni, but it can't make life any easier for either of them if they were to get a little misdirection. The Joker needs them banded together for his coup d'tat to work…I'll rip them apart, one by one, and let them take turns killing each other off.
Aryan Brotherhood takes out a hit. But the bodies found on a known Meroni dumping site? This'll confuse the shit out of them. It'll also bring Gotham's Godfather himself out to play.
…and where's the only neutral place three crime kingpins can meet? The one place Salazar Meroni would never dare shed blood? Sisters of Mercy Convent.
Korean Killers and the Brotherhood will want a word with him. I know just where to find them.
I watch the inferno from a distance in those transient moments just before dawn as sirens shake my city from her sleep.
I am mesmerized, comforted, one step closer to my prey, one breath closer to my Angel.
The crabs and gulls, sand and heat might do some minor damage before CSU shows up, sure; but those Khongpae cocksuckers prey on girls like Ji Yeon, sell them into sexual slavery and leave their families in an endless anguish. If someone wants to pay Nora to pretty them up a bit after autopsy, so be it. She'll still have DNA, dental, and fingerprints to identify them. Their families will know for certain of their fate. No mother will be left forever wandering what happened to her baby boy…
That's all I can offer them. Their wives, now widows, their mothers, now bereaved of their beloved sons: surety.
No woman will suffer as I have done. I give them all the grace to bury their dead.
… I just don't give a damn whether it's an open casket.
DISCLAIMER: Andrea "Andi" Taylor is an OC borrowed from Irish Luck's brilliant work of Batman detective fanfiction titled Unmasked. Originally appearing as a cameo role, after re-reading Unmasked (which you should do right now if you haven't already), I couldn't help but allow her voice to explain all the Forensic Jargon to us. Irish has just started medical school, so stop by and shower her with some encouragement and reviews, and possibly petition for a sequel as well!