Sleep has, once again, been both fleeting and hard to find for Nadia, with her teeth firmly in a case and evidence mounting up she tends to have trouble turning her brain off at nights. Certainly it is the best explanation for why she has shown up at the morgue bright and early with the dregs of a takeout coffee in one hand and her customary offering of chocolatey goodness in the other. "Getting casts of those footprints was genius and the guy who did them deserves a raise!" She shoulders the door open and dives in without preamble. "I hassled the records people for maps and we've got the bastard!"
Black jeans and an olive green shirt open over a black tanktop don't quite manage to make her look casual but clearly Nadia isn't dressed for the office today. The hint of concealer around her eyes suggests she has taken one look at herself in the mirror and decided that zombie cop is not a good look and her short curls are still damp from the shower. Her eyes are bright though, satisfied and determined...and perhaps a little bit overcaffeinated.
Hazel looks up from her desk, where she is creating a work of fiction so carefully constructed, she should win the Nobel prize for literature. Such is the job of someone whose primary concern is making sure people do not discover that raging vampiric monsters are snacking on the local residents. "Really? I'll tell him. I might even suggest it to the people up the line... they won;t do it, but I'll suggest it! You found enough matches then?" She shoves the keyboard aside, to make room for the chocolate bounty. "Enlighten me!"
"So." Nadia drops a file on the table as well, pulling out a map of the municipal drainage system, a city overlay, and a series of...small clothespeg type photograph/card holders. She arranges the latter to mark the places of nearly a dozen bodies or witness sightings. "These are our bodies, three homeless, Angel, and Mrs Whitehead, this is our living witness at the rough position he encountered the creature. And these are our 20 year old cold cases who we've managed to confirm as having the same MO - massive trauma and near total bloodloss with surprisingly little splatter after the initial injuries." She looks up to check Hazel is following her so far and pauses to drain her paper cup, pulling a face at the now chilled liquid.
Hazel wordlessly reaches out and produces her ever-present coffee pot, to refill the cup. She looks over the map closely. "All right. And we know the creature is using the canal and sewers, thanks to our very helpful spook. God, I hope that never gets out. If someone realised half my cases are solved because the victim's ghost showed up and told me who did it, I'd be lucky to get a greeter's job in WalMart. But let's see... the creature isn't really going out of its way to be careful, so we can presume it stays fairly close to home. Most predatory animals with a secure lair like to have their hunting grounds nearby. Cats and foxes roam more, but this thing isn't exactly subtle."
Nadia nods enthusiastically. "That's not the best of it though! Once I'd got the casts and the cross referencing you did? We got hits on prints or partials at these six scenes..." She scrawls Xs on the overlay by one of the first cases in the current batch, Mrs Whitehead's murder, and four of the formerly cold cases. "AND I managed to get some animal control reports of large amounts of carrion in a couple of drains close to residential areas here and here." More marks. "Then we've got this set of prints which I missed the first three damn times I looked at it because they were related to a trespassing report the city put in where one of the security gates had been trashed and no one had thought to mention that there were a bunch of dead strays around as well - got brushed off as some wannabe satanists or something because there was a lot of blood splashed on the walls."
Hazel rolls her eyes. "Wannabe satanists. Idiots. Most satanists I have encountered would bite off their arms before they went about hurting animals. When I was training in London, there was this weird secretary who locked her tortoise up every equinox, solstice, and hallowe'en, in case someone tried to sacrifice it on Clapham Common. Ignorance is endemic..." She grabbed a pencil and looked over the map, carefully drawing faint connection lines between points. "Holy crap, lady. You did it. Or you did something, at least. Defined a pretty clear perimiter for hunting grounds, at least. You are right about the prints, that really did help. We got lucky that the Whiteheads had a lawn and not a patio. Show me what else you found!"
She takes a swig from the newly refilled mug, not bothering with her usual dose of sugar and apparently not noticing either the bitterness or the fact that the fresh brew is still hot enough to burn her tongue - Nadia has clearly spent far too long fuelled only by caffeine just lately. "So that all gives us this radius, right?" She draws a rough circle around a central part of Englewood. "Then I had a flash of inspiration! What else do competent people do when they take footprint casts? They photograph the original in situ! In this case some absolute ANGEL 20 years ago also noted which direction they were moving in!" A stack of photos hits the table, scattering some of her markers, although they are not so important now. "These ones, into the tunnel. In, in, out, in...And from your guy the other night, and the folks who went to check out the canal...out, out, out, irrelevent, out..." She pulls the important tracks out and marks them on the entrances to the drainage and sewer systems. "We've got records of a couple of investigations down there - all daylight because no one wants to go in there at the best of times and never mind after dark - and prints turning up in these tunnels..."
All the passage ways she is marking lead to one major junction under the heart of the district. "I got someone to pull maintenance records for me then poked my own nose down there just to confirm...done a lot of walking on this one. This area is...choked. Can't get close to it without some pretty serious breathing equipment these days and I dread to think how many diseases are festering in all the..." Nadia shudders. "Looks like there used to be something else under there too. Nothing living would survive long but..."
"You went down there yourself? ALONE? Are you mad?" Hazel boggled. "Even in daylight..." Well, she couldn't be blamed. With that sort of evidence there, pretty much anybody would want to go and check it out. "All right then. The directional thing, that's pretty amazing. Never would have occured to me. Guess that's why you're the detective and I'm the butcher. So you think you pinpointed where it is going. I think it makes sense. It can probably survive in places a human couldn't, so it makes the lair all the more secure. This is really impressive work. But it brings up one hell of a problem." She selected a brownie and munched on it. "Now what? We can tell the boys, and I am pretty sure they could get a hunting party together and try to take it down. But... what the hell do we tell the cops? I really do not want to leave this as another batch of cold cases, without resolution for their families. They desrerve closure. But this one is really tricky. How do we close it without revealing the truth?"
"I went into the more well maintained bits of the system with a guide so I could check out the theory that all these tracks and traces were actually leading to the same place. Took me a couple of hours to go through everything and get the idea then a whole lot longer to double and triple check everything and put this together...I'm stubborn, not insane." In truth discovering that there are 'things' out there does seem to have made her rather more reckless but there's nothing Nadia could quite put her finger on to describe or explain it even if she was willing to admit it. "I have no idea what is going into the report on this one I'll be honest. The bug thing was easy enough but this...I guess...if it LOOKS human we could call it some kind of crazed PCP addict? But then we have to explain why I didn't bring in back up... I don't suppose you happen to know whether anyone else in the department is of a fuzzy persuasion? Best of both worlds for the paperwork..." This time she does go in search of sugar for her coffee, the initial burst of excitement fading now that she's passed the information on. "I don't want to leave these to go cold...or if they have to officially then I at least want to be able to tell Mrs Bell and Mr Whitehead that the thing that killed their loved ones is dead and gone and won't be hurting anyone else."
Hazel grimaces. "I have no clue if there is anybody else in the department. I would have expected them to contact me by now, if there were. Jordan might know, I will ask her. We're going to have to give them everything we have anyway. We've done our part now, I think. There's no way I am going down there to deal with this. I know my limits, and I am not going anywhere near something that can do that to a human being. And, while you are damn good at your job, I doubt your popgun will make even a tiny impression on it. There's some jobs that are simply best left to the wolves. This is what they are for, to eliminate evil threats to humanity." She sits back in her chair and takes a deep breath. "I want this over and done with. It will be. I wonder if we can stage something. I'll see if I can find some previous instances of the same. See how they covered it up."
Finely arched brows draw into a frown at the suggestion she should not be there at the finale. Logically yes she is no different to the people who have been torn apart by this thing already but she would be going in with people who knew what they were doing, people who could fight back... Nadia is not used to considering herself a liability in this kind of situation and the idea that she might be best served by not being present hadn't occured to her until Hazel brought it up. "But they still need to navigate their own politics right? Talk to vampires about territorial...whatever? Sounds worse than jurisdictional arguments. I don't want to see anyone else dead because a bunch of wolves and bloodsuckers want to posture over who gets to take out the thing that is killing people in my city."
It's a response that her COs are all too familiar with, Nadia is digging her heels in and determined to see things through no matter the personal cost to her. Her family would recognise it as well, but usually the stakes are rather lower than her own continued survival.
Hazel sighs. "I couldn't agree more. But the fact is that we are both as we seem. And compared to the wolves and the vampires, we're are also incredibly fragile. I am sure that the pack will be able to persuade the vampires to work with them and deal with this thing very swiftly. And I can appreciate you needing to see it done with your own eyes, but really, we'd just be in the way. We'd be lunch, or hostages, at best. It's really hard to come to terms with that, believe me, I know. But we have very little to offer when it comes to the fight." She examined the map again. "And you cracked all this. Don't forget that. You did a remarkable job. Nobody would deny it. Be happy with that. Don't get yourself killed unnecessarily. There'll be plenty more cases that need this sort of attention. You won't protect anybody if you're dead."
"You absolutely trust them? They're not going to do some kind of weird monster solidarity thing and just boot it out of their territory?" Nadia folds her arms across her chest, for someone still relatively young for her rank her background has made her cynical even by normal standards. There's logic behind what Hazel is telling her but logic is a quiet voice in the face of well honed stubbornness. "The ones you've introduced me to all seem decent but..." She can't personally imagine anyone *not* wanting to take this creature down, but then again a little while ago she couldn't have imagined sitting having a serious conversation about werewolves and vampires taking down a target she'd tracked to the uninhabitable depths of the city...
Hazel sheakes her head. "Trust me on this. NOBODY does 'extreme prejudice' like a bunch of angry werewolves. They're the tactical nuke of the paranormal community. One angry wolf could see off several vampires. I expect several of them will go down to deal with this one. They'll be thorough. We wouldn't have enough vampire left to scrape into a sandwich. I don't know much about vampires, to be honest, but I know about wolves. Enough to know that vampires avoid pissing them off, and with good reason. The entente they have here is unusual. Normally they are far less cooperative. It should work to our benefit in this particular case, though, so we can be glad of it. Some of the wolf community can be pretty dismissive and antagonistic to human beings, but I have a feeling that they'll be very grateful for what you have done."
"They can show gratitude by making my life easier and not dumping their turf wars on my doorstep..." Nadia sighs but the point does seem to be sinking in slowly. "I'm not feeling particularly suicidal at the moment...I do want to know what is going on though. Not down to the moment but I want to know the plan, when they are going in, what they EXPECT to happen, what might be left for me to deal with or if they have a cleaning crew. I want to meet the people going in and talk to them when they come out. If I have to leave this to a team then I want to know the team in question." She leans back in her seat, turning her attention to the coffee and breakfast sugar. "I...sort of met another wolf as well, guy called Cal. He was there for the bug hunt and...we may have a date at some point. Not saying I need him to be a part of this, just...full disclosure."
Hazel shrugs a shoulder. "Not an unreasonable request. Besides, as you are the only person who has seen all this first hand, you'd be the sensible choice to brief them. We can set that up pretty quickly. They're pretty efficient, when it comes to destroying this sort of threat. There might still be casualties amongst their number, of course. We have no clue how dangerous this thing really is. And... I have not met Cal. At least you are going into this with a little more knowledge. It will work out fine, provided he isn't a jerk." She grin. "Humans do not have a monopoly on bad dates, unfortunately."
She chuckles softly. "He seems pretty decent so far. We've discussed the fact that I am definitely 'hot woman cop' and not a girl, he can apparently cook which is definitely a good sign, and...well I'd put him about 10 years younger than me and one of my little cousins was heavily into his band so... Should be fun if nothing else. We won't go into the fact that I gave my cards out incase anyone wanted to contact me about the bug monster rather than so they could try and hook up."
Hazel chuckles. "Well, best of luck with it. Wolves tend to live in the moment a lot, though. And can be pretty disorganised. That's why they leave a lot of the day to day actual running of their lives to those like me, wolf bloods. They don't always understand human society properly, depending on their upbringing. But it sounds like he has a pretty good handle on it all."
"How do you deal with sitting on the sidelines though? It's like being...I don't know, Jarvis or Alfred or someone. It's not about the glory it's about making sure the job gets done, not just suiting up the hero and sitting on your hands until they get back or don't." Nadia snorts and grabs a brownie. "Or maybe being the spouse of a cop...I guess I just don't enjoy being on the other side of that equation."
Hazel sighs and twitches a little. She reaches for her coffee to calm herself. "You have no choice, really. That's how you deal. And you do pretty well, though. You get to go out and face the foe a lot, as a cop. But you just have to accept that there are things you cannot do, and others can. If you don't, you usually end up going nuts. or dead from going into something you cannot possibly handle. It is why I am alive. When my family went off to fight, I was always left behind. Then one day, they never came back. I'd have been dead too, if I went with them. It puts it all into perspective."
"I don't like it." She decides after a few moments thought. "But I'll learn to live with it I guess. At least I know some things out there can be fought and killed by mundane means." Nadia starts shuffling some of the storm of papers back together so they aren't occupying the whole of Hazel's desk. "And on that note, I suppose I should really be heading out. I've got..." She pauses to think, "Two interviews and a chat with a CI lined up before I can break for lunch. As well as the weird stuff, seems like I am the go-to name for interviewing vulnerable witnesses what with me being a gentle and feminine flower and all, less indimidating than the big scary boys."
Hazel snorts. "You're a lot better choice than some in the department. Just because you have a brain." She swigs coffee. "I'll talk to the gang and set something up. This is getting near the end, finally. Hopefully after that we can get a little break from the world of the weird."
Nadia nods and grins. "A break would be good but somehow I'm not holding out much hope. I'll settle for getting a weekend off that isn't interrupted by...something." She scoops up the remainder of her evidence storm and returns it to its file. "Give me a call when you want to get everyone together...and thanks for the extra coffee." She finishes the cup and pitches it into a trash can on her way out.
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