Crime Scene
Disclaimer: See part 1.
Sorry for the delay. Hope you enjoy this. My muse seems to be back and ready for work. Crosses fingers.
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Cordy reached down to change the station on the car radio. She was quickly getting annoyed with the overly perky speaker and the frequency of the commercial brakes. She really wasn’t interested in buying a used car from a guy called Stan, or getting a two for one special in some local burger chain. She was searching for another station as she felt a slight tingling in the back of her head. As if an invisible hand was running through the short hairs at her nape. Shit! Recognizing the warning sign of a vision she twisted the steering wheel to one side, thankful that there was nothing but small patches of grass in the gravel next to the road. Stepping down hard on the brake she managed to stop the car without screeching out. Before she could kill the engine, pain ripped through her skull as the vision slammed into her, blinding her to her surroundings. The empty landscape stretched out around her as her neck and backed tensed against the violence behind her shut eyes.
Pictures coalesced in her mind, flashing in front of her, crashing waves of colours and sounds, the pungent smell of blood and fear. Moments yanked out of sight just when she focussed in on them. Claws slashing down at her, the tearing of a shirt; hot, sticky pain as her stomach ripped open – no, not her stomach, a man. Screams and the salt taste of warm blood in her mouth. A dark shadow looming in. The sound of a heart beating louder and louder in her ear, faster and faster. Pain in her chest. Then a room, the window open, looking out on some kind of sign, a billboard? The last thing she saw before the pain thundering in her mind took over, before the pictures swirled out of sight, was a large green sign at the edge of a road. Welcome to Cascade.
Gasping, blindly grabbing for the bag on the seat next to her, Cordy found herself back in the car. Somehow she managed to open the zipper, felt the softness of a towel under her searching fingers, a plastic bag with a pair of sneakers. Then, finally the small container with the painkillers. Grabbing it she clenched her teeth against the pain that sent flashes of neon lights dancing beneath her closed eyelids. With shaking hands she unscrewed the container and dumped two pills into her hand. She dry swallowed them and relaxed back in her seat, waiting for the pain radiating through her head to subside. As the throbbing started to lessen in her face and around her eyes, she started trying to make sense of the vision. Demon attack. Definitely demon attack. In Cascade. Right.
God, her head hurt. She rubbed her forehead, and opened her eyes, the pain reaching a manageable level. A white man, she remembered looking down at herself – him, seeing the large tanned arms of a man. A pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt. No fashion sense. Huge arms, with bulging muscles. She didn’t mind muscles personally, but enough was enough, and this guy looked like one of those pumped up bodybuilders. God, how the hell was she supposed to find someone like this, when all she had was a city name? She didn’t even know his hair colour! At least the PTB could give her some information, it wasn’t like she was doing this for the kicks. She pulled out the map she had bought at the last gas station from the glove compartment. Cascade… damn, how was she supposed to find someone in a city that big? Come on! If it had been a fifteen house village, maybe, but not in a city this size.
Despite her annoyed glare the map kept showing Cascade as a city the size of L.A. Maybe slightly smaller but not by much. On the bright side it was only a few hours drive away. Again she wondered why her visions had sent her this far away from L.A. and Sunnyhell. If it turned out that she was the only psychic in America, she was going to have a serious word with the PTB. No way she was going to spend her life going cross country with a raging headache just because the idiots couldn’t figure out how to get new employees. Sharing the workload wouldn’t be a bad idea. Especially if it meant she could stay in California. So it had a Hellmouth but at least she could work on her tan while risking her life for ungrateful strangers. She really should get paid. Sighing, Cordy drove back out on the road heading for Cascade. She hoped she would get there in time. As the scenery passed by she mulled over the vision, trying to remember all the details. Something was bothering her, some little thing she knew was important.
Then she remembered, in a burst of clarity. As she had looked around the apartment she’d seen a calendar, a half naked girl smiling down at her from some tropical beach. Beneath her the dates had been crossed out with a black marker. The last cross was yesterday. Logically she knew it didn’t mean anything, the attack had happened in the evening, it had been dark outside. Maybe he crossed off the dates in the evenings, and hadn’t gotten to it yet. If she was fast she could still make it. Provided she figured out exactly where he was living. But something told her it was too late already. That he had died yesterday. That he crossed off the dates in the mornings, and never woke up today. The longer she thought about it the more certain she became. So why the hell were the PTB sending her a vision of something that happened – what - twelve, sixteen hours ago? By the time she arrived in Cascade it would be closer to twenty four hours ago.
She could feel the headache that had almost disappeared come back, throbbing dully behind her eyes. It didn’t make sense. And she was tired and sweaty and wrinkled from sitting in the car for so long. Hell, if it hadn’t been for the vision she’d turn her car around right now and get a bed in that motel she had passed a few miles down the road. Maybe she should just tell the PTB to get some other poor sap to play the idiot for them. Instead she pressed down harder on the gas, hoping to reach the city before nightfall. Trying to ignore her misgivings about the whole situation. Hopefully she’d get some answers once she arrived.
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Jim parked the truck next to a police car, and stepped out scanning the surroundings, seeing no conspicuous people in the vicinity of the building. Only a couple of nosy bystanders, the usual photographer trying to gain entrance, wanting a bit of gore to boost the sales. Two beat cops he knew from around the precinct kept the camera and everyone else out, while some hapless civilians were walking along, minding their own business. Taking in the conversation between two girls on the other side of the road - a discussion about their math teacher - and the slightly elevated heartbeat of the two cops standing outside the door of the apartment, he made his way to the nearest one, the one with the highest heart rate; Thompson, his name was provided from somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he had only worked for a few months.
The younger man gave off a sour smell, and his skin was slightly pale and cool. A small sheen of sweat was visible on his forehead, at least to Jim’s enhanced eyesight. Looked like Thompson had been sick. As he approached Jim dialled down his sense of smell a few notches. Noting absently that Sandburg was following him – he could hear the familiar heartbeat at his back, even if his other senses hadn’t already alerted him to Blair’s presence, Jim stopped in front of the man, pulling out his ID card.
‘Ellison. What do you got?’
‘One victim… male…It’s pretty bad… I’ve never seen… someone cut him up real good.’ Thompson started going slightly green again, but managed to get a grip on himself, straightening his shoulders, swallowing, ‘This is a real psycho. Looks like he had fun too.’
‘Don’t worry we’ll get him.’ Blair gave the man a reassuring smile, but Jim picked up the subtle change in his heartbeat, and the tightening of his jaw.
‘Maybe you should stay put, Chief. Let me handle this one.’
‘Nice try, man. I’m coming with you.’ Lowering his voice so that it couldn’t be picked up by the others Blair continued, ‘What if you go into a zone. It’s not like I can help you from out here. Besides, it’s not the first crime scene I’ve seen. I’ll be fine.’
Jim sighed, knowing that Sandburg wouldn’t give in. And the kid had a point. Shrugging he went into the building, following the scent of blood to the second door on the right. Stopping in front of the closed wooden door, noting that there was no signs of a brake in, he gave Sandburg a last chance to wait outside, hoping that this once the younger man would actually stay behind.
‘Sure, Chief?’ Sandburg didn’t even answer, he just tilted his head slightly, causing a curl of brown hair to fall into his face, and gave him a look that probably meant something along the lines of: You’re kidding, right?
‘Right.’ Jim admitted defeat and pushed the door open, then stiffened, his senses spiralling out of control, recoiling. Wrong. It screamed against the nerve endings of his skin, wrong, wrong, wrong. Racing trough the inner ear, stabbing into dilated pupils. Clawing against the inner walls of his nose and burning against his tongue like ash. Wrong. Sizzling through his body, small sparks of electric energy hitting his brain, releasing chemicals, and screaming inside his mind, recoiling.
‘…Jim?…’ the voice seemed far away, but it penetrated the haze in his mind, and he held onto it, trying to focus on the familiar voice, the touch on his shoulder and the heartbeat. ‘…That’s it, big guy, just follow my voice…’
Blair kept up his low murmur, grateful that there were no cops in the hallway. The crime scene must be behind the left door, he could hear subdued voices from inside the room. but nothing to induce a zone. Not sudden flashes of light, nothing that would leave his Sentinel paralysed at the entrance. Maybe a smell? Blair couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary, but that didn’t mean anything, he was sure Jim could smell the dust in the air, the food that had been cooked inside the small apartment… the blood. But he would have been prepared for that, dialled down his sense of smell. Finally rousing Jim from his stupor, he stopped his murmur, and stepped in front of the visible shaken man.
‘Are you okay? What happened?’
‘I’m fine.’ Jim growled, sucking in a breath steadying himself. Then he looked at the door with something like apprehension in his eyes.
‘Jim?’
‘I don’t know, Chief… It wasn’t a zone. Not really, it was… it hit all of my senses, but it wasn’t a smell, or a taste, or… Look, let’s just get this over with, okay?’ another glance at the door, and a frown.
‘Wait up. What is it? Level with me here, man.’
‘I honestly don’t know. Something is wrong about this whole thing. It’s like the Sentinel part of me is recoiling…Damn it, I don’t know how to explain this, I just know that I really don’t want to go in there, or be anywhere near this place. The feeling is not as strong now but it’s still there at the back of my mind…’
‘…that something’s wrong?’ Blair questioned.
‘Yeah. And the thing is, my senses aren’t telling me anything. I can smell blood, and the people in there, I can hear them talking, it sounds bad, but there is nothing here that is dangerous, no gas leak, no poison that I can pick up, nothing. I shouldn’t react like this.’ The frustration was clear in his voice. While Jim had come a long way in accepting and using his abilities, he still had an innate fear of being out of control, spiralling into a zone. Blair did his best to prevent the zones, but if he didn’t know the cause?
‘It sounds almost like some sort of ingrained reaction, an instinct. Like monkeys raised in a zoo. They still exhibit fear when they are shown a snake or a picture of one, even though they’ve never met one before…’
‘Nice, Sandburg. First I’m a throwback to the cavemen, and now you compare me to a monkey. You really know how to dole out those compliments, don’t you?’
‘I’m just saying…’ Blair muttered with a shrug and a small smile.
‘Yeah, I know what you’re saying. Come on, we have a killer to catch.’ Jim opened the door and stepped into the room. His shoulders were tense, and Blair was sure it wasn’t just the scene, but to a large part because of the instinctual reaction to… well that was the million dollar question.
Blair stepped around his friend and gasped. The bedroom was fairly large for an apartment this size. It had a king size bed and a rowing machine on the floor next to the bed. There was one window overlooking a huge billboard commercial. Some TV show he’d caught once, surfing the channels. The victim was lying on the bed, dressed in a pair of jeans and a torn blue T-shirt. His blood had soaked into the sheets beneath him, his stomach was marred by long, deep gashes, furrows. He could see something white in one of the wounds… a rib. Oh god. Oh god, this was a bad idea. He stumbled back, suddenly realising that the guys eyes were open starring, blindly, like a dead fish up at the ceiling. He had to get out of here. Turning around, grabbing for the door, out in the hallway, breathing. In. Out. Head leaning against the wall. Okay, it was just a body he’d seen bodies before, this wasn’t different. Five long gashes, dark dried blood on muscled skin. He’d seen gun wounds before, not this, not slaughter.
‘You okay?’ Oh! Jim had followed him out. Of course… he would have. Was he okay? No…
‘I’m fine, just needed a little air.’ Yeah right. Needed to puke.
‘If you want to stay here, it’s okay, you shouldn’t have gone in there in the first place. You’re not a detective.’ Yeah, and Jim was. So he could stay here, away from dead eyes and blood. But Jim would have to go back in there.
‘I’m coming.’ He pushed away from the wall. Took a deep breath and walked to the door. Stopped. Jim stopped next to him, gave him a look, probably took in his heart rate and breathing too. The colour of his skin and the minute shivers of his hand on the door knob. But apparently he decided that his Guide was okay to go in there. Because he closed his hand above his on the knob and opened the door again.
The findings were depressing. The victim, Peter Morris, 29 years old, had been killed sometime last night, between five and eight pm. The time span would be narrowed down when the coroner took the liver temperature, during the autopsy. Jim had said that he picked up steroids in the blood, and Blair was once again impressed at his sense of smell. The tests would prove it later. He’d died from loss of blood, not the cuts themselves. Blair shivered, he’d been awake, bleeding to death, hadn’t tried to move. There was no sign of a struggle no forced entrance, the windows were painted shut. Whoever had killed him, Morris had let him into the apartment himself.
‘There are no signs of restraints on his hands or feet. He must have been drugged.’ One of the men from the coroners office observed as a photographer took a last shot of the body, and its position, allowing them to wrap it up in a black body bag. The stretcher was already waiting in the hallway. Blair looked at Jim, but the detective just shook his head. They wouldn’t find any drugs in Morris’ system. Aside from steroids, that is. Nothing to explain why a guy of his size hadn’t fought off his assailant. Blair looked at Jim and noticed the tightness around his eyes, a certain sign that he was having a headache. What ever it was that had sent Jim into a zone, was still bothering him.
‘We should leave, we can come back again tomorrow without these guys, you’ll be able to concentrate better without distractions.’ Blair whispered, nodding to indicate the forensics dusting for prints, taking the last crime scene photos, picking samples for further study. That and they both needed to get out of here. Before in the hallway he couldn’t smell the blood, but in here, where it soaked the sheets, the madras, he could feel the cloying sweetness in his nose with every breath and he didn’t think he could stay here much longer without getting sick.
Jim took one look at Blair’s drawn face and nodded.
‘Yeah, we’ll finish up tomorrow. We should probably try to find out more about Morris anyway. See if someone has a reason to kill him.’
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Please tell me what you think. Thanks for reading.
Tals
