((ooc: Continued from
Cruelty Free™.))
He didn't break into the 18th Precinct that night.
He broke in the next morning around eight-thirty, just as most of the MRC detectives were shuffling in to their desks. The sun had been up for a little over an hour; the coffee machine had been on since last night. The grounds were stale; it took a certain type of connoisseur to appreciate them, and another type to throw them out and start a new batch. The little white cat with black spots here and there slipped in on his usual window perch, as his detective typed up yesterday's crime reports, a chocolaty bear claw in her mouth.
"Morning, Elliot."
"Mormh'in'."
The cat's daily offering of powered sugar was set out on its usual teacup saucer alter. This morning, it remained undisturbed.
"Hey, Elliot—your cat's got something, there."
"Mhut?" The blonde woman asked, turning her from the screen.
The little white cat with black spots here and there met her gaze with perfectly innocent baby blue eyes. Between its paws was a very limp English sparrow. Its tail gave a prideful twitch.
"...Grumss. 'An mu het et?"
"You're going to have to translate that back to English, Elliot."
Cassandra deigned to remove the half-chewed bear claw from her mouth. "Can you get it?" At the reluctance in her fellow officer's face, the good detective added: "Come on, be a man." The cream-filled claw was held in her hand, with the most lady-like of morning manners.
"...Sure, fine, whatever. You owe me."
"You're a peash," Cassandra said, getting back to her typing and her breakfast. The other officer sighed, and advanced on the cat. Said cat crouched lower over its hard-won breakfast. Crouched, crouched... and skittered back as the man's hand descended.
As soon as its dainty paws were removed, the sparrow sprang into action.
"Oh, son of a—it's still alive!"
" 'Ep, 'hat 'appens with chats." Detective Cassandra didn't even look up.
The first thing it did was crash directly into the window pane. The second, hop away from the officer's hands, in a dazed dash for its life. The third, fly up to a desperate perch on the water sprinkler.
"Is that a—?" A different officer asked, coffee in hand, as he came through the department doors.
"I'll get a broom."
"You set off the sprinklers, man, I'm throwing you in lock up."
And so the Mutant Related Crimes Division went about its morning, with a caged sparrow fluttering over their heads. Elliot's stray cat groomed the taste of defeat out of its fur, polished off its donut consolation prize, and hopped out the window on its usual schedule. The bird stayed with them all day, defying all attempts to shoo it towards the open windows, madly dashing from perch to perch when anyone tried, a little storm front of brown feathers whirling around the ceiling.
Over there—on the potted mango tree Browning was trying to keep alive, half-camouflaged under a desiccated leaf. On his desk, a round up of incidents concerning M trafficking—and the report of items found upon a search of the Iris Clinic. Drug front? Dirty unicorns—
now he'd seen everything.
"Maybe if we try to box it—"
Flutter-dash!
"Brilliant, man. Brilliant. Remind me to bring up your brilliancy at your next performance review."
"Shut it."
On the emergency exit sign, above another desk. An incident report handed up from a street cop; a unicorn, covered in blood. An escape. An apartment destroyed. No sign of the wife or kid; kid reported missing back in July by mumsie and popsie. Popsie had been down to the station to bash in heads over it on several occasions—the officers on duty reported him to be highly agitated and verbally aggressive.
"Just leave it alone, man. It'll fly out eventually."
"Or
die."
"Yeah, whichever. You're going to give it a birdie heart attack, you keep doing that. You want it haunting you the rest of your life?"
"I'm just trying to—"
Beat, beat! Wing beat to safety!
Into the side conference room, where the officers of several disjoint cases were coming together to share what they knew.
Blood at the Future Site shop that matched the blood at the Iris Apartments—presumably the unicorn's. Also: rat hair in large quantities, and cat hair in small. The owners confirmed that had probably been there before the place got trashed. Rat with sweater watching officers work confirmed it further. God, this job, you know? Ink found on a shattered table—forensics said tattoo ink. Odd—keep your ears open for ink manipulators with a history.
The Oracle kid was apparently legit—reason for trashing? Did he tell the unicorn something he didn't want to hear, or was it a warning for him not to tell others something? Everyone at the shop polite, but tight-lipped—probably the latter. Keep trying to find out what they know—maybe send in a plain clothes.
A cop car explosion directly outside the clinic, a few days prior—related? Damn straight. Work that angle. Interview the clinic doctors across the street—someone saw something.
Pills and cash, enough to make him a key player in the M spread, tucked away in the closed clinic. Did the wife know? Did the wife find out? Probable cause.
A used EPT in the trash, and crib plans shredded in the bedroom. Daddy didn't take the news so well?
Sword shop broken into the same night—footage showed a unicorn and an unidentified woman helping themselves to some deadly weapons. The mistress?
The missing kid—what did he know? Adopted—maybe when things got rough between fake mommy and daddy, he found himself some place safer to stay. Check local shelters, places where runaways gather: the kid was the key to piecing the back story together. We need to get a timeline of the lead up, and that night.
Neighbors were useless—gone the night it all went down, and had nothing but the best to say about their landlords. Clearly oblivious. Cute couple, though. Lodger was even worse. Russian bride turned freeloader, who wasn't about to turn on her handout. Try interviewing her again later, once things had sunk in—maybe she'd be more cooperative if they found the corpse. Try pressing the visa issue if you need to.
Photographs, evidence, witness statements, hypothesizes, hunches.
Work the M angle; finding the wife was secondary. Probably dead already, anyway. Shame; pretty little thing. But then, you ever seen a drug dealer with an ugly little thing?
Ha, haha.
"Ha!"
"What the hell. You actually catch it?"
The sparrow's shoe box was unceremoniously tossed out the window; it looked a little dazed, but it flew off soon enough. Up to the roof, where it met a little white cat with black spots here and there, waiting with its eyes closed in the warm draft from a vent grate.
Thinking.
