The Dead of the Night -- Part I
| The Dead of the Night -- Part I | |
|---|---|
There's a hole in the world ... | |
| Players | West Englewood Detective Roberts (Brendan) and Sterling (Madison) meet at the scene of a dead body. Forensics have arrived. |
Scene Open: << In West Englewood, poverty is king. Crime is the norm, and the police are largely ineffective. Projects are packed with people trying to make it by on the nonexistent job market the neighborhood lacks. This location lacks notoriety or fame. It's bland, quiet, and there's a feeling of resignation from its inhabitants, knowing they're trapped in a place from which they'll never be freed. This is a home to slow tragedy. >> It's about 10:30 PM. West Englewood is marginally better than Englewood proper. Calls come every five minutes from someone someplace in this hole in the world. Cops exercise extreme caution, even if the average firearm around here probably doesn't work right. No one likes to work the streets here, so it is left to the rookie detectives and veteran beat cops to do their duty, pick up a paycheck, and earn their pension benefits. If this were World War I, these would be the trenches. Detective Sterling is crouched over the taped outline of where the body was found. It is at the mouth of an alley. The nearest streetlight flickers periodically. Strangely, perhaps, she is just *staring* at the outline, as if it held all of the secrets of the universe. Forensic people wander lazily in the cold and the dimness looking for clues with night-shift energy. Judging from the looks of things, she might just be the ranking officer on the scene. Fucking great. "What do you know, Sterling?" Detective Roberts mutters in his somewhat gravely voice as he ducks under the police tape. He isn't a rookie, but he doesn't exactly have the prestige that Sterling has on the force. Rumors abound. And from the looks of things neither of them want to be in this place tonight. Clicking on a small maglite he produces from his pocket the homicide detective starts to bathe the area in 200 lumen white light as he starts to poke around the parameter of the scene, checking for anything obvious that forensics hasn't tagged yet. "Got a COD on this guy, or we still waiting for the coroner for that?" "Not sure." Detective Sterling slowly rises to her full height. And she's tall for a woman. "Caller said there was a dead guy on the street." She gestures vaguely at the outline, which is, indeed, in the street. "There he was." Eyes remain fixed on the outline. "Not sure if he was injured; no blood on the ground." There's blessedly little around, for whatever reason. This is probably the cleanest part of the neighborhood, and that's odd in and of itself. "Gotta rely on the doc." She draws in a breath slowly through her nose, and then lets it out of her mouth. "Probably'll take a week, maybe more." Shrug. "You know." She then looks to Brendan, her eyes narrowing just a little. "They wake you and send you here?" "Huh." Detective Roberts moves over to the outline and shining his light on the spot, squatting down to take a closer look. Sterling is taller than him by a good margin and when he squats down it only exaggerates the difference. "Didn't see any signs of internal injury? No bruising or swelling?" Passing the light over the area of the outline, Roberts pulls out a pen and pokes around at some of the little rocks that pepper the street. "So this guy just dropped dead, and nobody saw anything. Figures." Clicking off the light he stands, "We get an ID at least, or is this just John Doe #42?" Roberts turns his eyes over towards Sterling and shrugs, "You know how it works, they call we answer. Doesn't matter what we were doing at the time. You?" Sterling huffs in response. "I'm here." That's all that seems to matter to her. And her name seems to come up an awful lot on reports floating around the precinct. For some, she's an ass-kisser; others, a devoted member of the team that'll put in 16-hour days because she can. Her father was a cop; maybe that's it. "Joseph Marcus Reynolds. Date of birth, October 27, 1982. Local resident, lives only five blocks away." She tilts her head towards the Booze and Broads. "People leaving here probably thought he was passed out drunk. Not sure who called." Shrug. "But can't say I looked too carefully before the Pine-Sol Squad came by." That would be the paramedics that take the bodies to the coroner. "And that just leaves us wandering around hopefully in the dark." Not that she seems particularly bothered by that. "I'll probably come back in the morning," she murmurs to herself, looking around. Roberts snorts, shoving the light back into his pocket. "By morning the yokles will have done a number on this place, not to mention the wind blowing anything light enough to be carried off away from here." Roberts dips a finger into his mouth and tests the wind, trying to figure out which way it is blowing, but the currents between building make the pattern somewhat random. "'82? I'd say that might be a bit young to just go dropping dead, but these days any number of things could have gotten to him. Cancer, a bad ticker, of maybe just a OD he was in the process of stumbling around on." He glances over at the bar, then up to see if it has any exterior facing cameras. Of course not. "Man I love this town. Nobody ever sees nothing." "Mm." The sound indicates disagreement. "Someone knows something. The trick'll be figuring out who." Sterling makes another non-committal noise. "And figuring out why. That report'll be -- " Shrug. " -- interesting. If the doc can stay sober." Everyone on the force is grumpy or drunk, or so the stories go. "Swear, if I had a medical degree -- " Another huffing sound. " -- I could figure that shit out all on my own." There's a note of conviction there. Damned idealists. "As I don't, I have to deal with what I got." A few moments pass in silence. "Why don't you go on home, Roberts? I got this." "You ain't getting rid of me that easy." Roberts looks over to the other detective and smirks. "I ain't just going to flop on home so you can tell the Cap I was derelict in my duty' or whatever other fuckin' rumor you want to start Sterling. I get enough of it already." Roberts peers at the other detective for a moment then shakes his head as he steps back a bit to get another angle on where the body fell. He looks from the bar to where the body fell as if he is playing out a possible scenario in his head, "Wallet, cash, and jewelry still on the vic?" "Please." Sterling rolls her eyes. "You old goats are like an old sewing circle. Don't talk to me about starting rumors." Snort. "Forensic's already here doing their thing. Wallet, cash, and jewelry's all bagged up. Once forensics is done, I head back to the precinct and prepare a report." Beat. "Then I get to work on the name, get a profile." She then frowns, as if she heard something, and cocks her head to the side for a long, silent second. "And then the chase begins." Something in her voice betrays a bit of excitement in her words. "'The fuck you calling old, Sterling? I've got what...3 years on you? 4?" It's his turn to roll his eyes as he looks back to the scene, shifting some dirt around with the toe of his shoe, "Just cause you old man was a cop doesn't your lineage doesn't make you better than the rest of us who had to actually work for our shield." He pauses, glancing to the other detective and lets out a little sigh, "Sorry. Out of line. If anything you probably had it worse with all the expectations." Roberts runs his hand over his bald pate and glances down the alley, "So no blood, nothing obvious taken. Shit. Maybe this is just a guy that dropped dead and a waste of our time." "Yeah." Hard to say what she's affirming. "Expectations are the worst." There's a double-meaning somewhere in there. "Doesn't change, even though the old man's watch's ended. It just means the line needs another soldier." Beat. "Could be a lot of things that happened. Maybe Reynolds got poisoned, and someone dumped the body. Internal injuries? More than possible." Shrug. "Won't know until the doc's report. All I can see's nothing here at all for us to go on. At least, not that I can see right now." There's another long pause as Sterling's eyes are drawn to a couple of forensic folks who're drawn to something in a nearby alley. "Still don't mean you're not old, Roberts." Casually lifting his middle finger in Sterling's direction with a smirk, Roberts starts to walk over towards the mouth of the alley, following Sterling's gaze. "In this area? We ain't dealing with Professor Moriarty here, Sterling. If it was poison, it wouldn't be the kind that didn't have side effects. Rat poison and other shit, sure, but he would have been tossin' his cookies. Still, best cover all the angles." He glances from the bar to the mouth of the alley, then to the forensic folks, "What's the story?" "Don't know." Sterling takes the lead. She walks with that slow stride that detectives have when crossing a crime scene. Once she and her fellow detective are close enough, she makes her presence known to the scientists. "Find something?" To this, one male expert -- the other is a woman -- shrugs his shoulders, non-committal. "Could be," he hedges, tilting his left hand one way, then the other. "Could be a crack pipe," says the woman, gesturing to a collection of thin glass on the ground. The glass is too thin to be from a broken beer bottle. "And, I mean -- a test tube? Not likely around here." The female expert makes a face at her colleague before he can say what's on his mind. "Probably worth collecting." "But if we collect all the glass around here we'll be here all night," says her male counterpart. Roberts squats down to look at the glass on the ground, pulling out his light to shine on the fragments. "Only one way to find out. Bag it and tag it and send it to the lab." He looks up to the male tech and nods his head in the direction of where the body was, "If that was you, wouldn't you want someone to give enough of a shit to do their best?" He stands again, looking over to Madison, then down the rest of the alley and to the techs. "How far have you gone down the alley?" "We haven't," admits the male scientist. The body was found in the westbound lane of the street. The alley is across the eastbound lane, between an old, abandoned laundromat and a half-fallen brownstone, a reminder that this part of the city was once occupied. The lamplight does not reach the alley's end, which means that there may be a way to travel back there. Naturally, Sterling's already looking down into the darkness too. Detectives are the worst kinds of cats. "You want to take point?" she asks. "Sure." Roberts shines the light down the alley and starts to walk very slowly down the narrow passage. He starts to methodically sweep the beam of the flashlight back and forth as he focuses his gaze on where the light hits to narrow and focus on one small area at a time. "Eyes open, Sterling." She responds by bobbing her head before taking her place a step behind and to the right. The alley continues to a brick wall that serves another commercial building behind the laundromat, but facing the street adjacent. To the right is the laundromat; to the left, the alley terminates in a wooden fence, which appears to lead to the back yard of the ruined brownstone. The gate is left slightly ajar, but motionless in the cool autumn air. There is no sign of forced entry or exit; just the open portal to another darkened area of the city. The fence effectively hides what may lie behind. Lowering the light, Roberts looks over to Sterling. "What do you think? Goose chase? We go much further and we just might as well open up to all of Chi-town." He grumbles, clicking off the light, "Even if we do find shit, this far out it's going to be hard to tie to the body." It's hard to see Madison's face in the darkness. "Not abnormal for there to be a loose gate." Her tone is cool, calm, and clinical. "But we don't have to go too far." Shrug. "Maybe Reynolds got high back here, OD'd by accident or took some cut shit, wandered out through the alley, dropped his pipe, then -- " She gestures behind the two of them. " -- out on the street, collapse, dead." Beat. "If he did get high here, maybe there's a reason for it. And maybe that reason's back here somewhere." "Won't know 'til we have a look, right?" He shrugs with a nod, and at the very least clears the jacket he wears from the holster on his side in case he need to draw his weapon. "Fair enough." Brendan makes his way slowly over towards the gate and gives it just a little push to swing it open as he keeps his eyes peeled out to the darkness beyond. There's no one there. The backyard is a mess. Paver stones used once are beginning to lift, thanks to the roots from a half-dead tree planted in dirt that's sparsely-covered with grass. There is a broken rope hanging from one of the tree's branches, the untied end frayed to a tuft of plastic hairs. Dried leaves on the ground make it next-to-impossible to move silently. The concrete porch is cracked in many places, and the back wall of the house has caved in to reveal the remaining structure's insides. The only other thing of note is a shed in the far corner from the gate. Oddly, though, there seems to be some noise coming from it. A trained observer would notice the trail of crushed leaves from the gate to the shed. Roberts looks to Sterling, points to the leaves, then to the shed, just in case she doesn't see it. He slowly withdraws his Glock from it's holster and motions over that way. It's not just any kind of noise. It is a cell phone. Playing on it is what appears to be a video camera of an empty child's bedroom. The inside of the shed shows signs of habitation: a bedroll; an air mattress; and the smell of fast food. Sterling makes a noise in her throat, and then suggests quietly: "We should have forensics take everything here and bring it back to the precinct." Beat. "We need to figure out what this is and if it is related to Reynolds, why." Why indeed. <End> | |