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Post by Pee-Dee on Mar 17, 2012 16:11:51 GMT -5
Month 7, Week 2, Day 3. Semi-private.
Photographs cover Det. Dahlia's desk. Most of them show the grisly remains of the four teenagers found in the abandoned factory. The ones directly in front of Petunia are of Elly's crime-scene with her body still there as well as her autopsy, pre-revival. There's a pencil in Petunia's right hand and a notepad under the pencil. The investigating officers' reports are under Petunia's other hand, and the textual autopsy reports from the teenagers are up on her monitor.
The photographs of the teenagers are significantly more gruesome, but that's not what draws Petunia's eye. Instead it's the little details - the cuts. The missing bits. The moved bits.
The bits that are the same.
Scrawled haphazardly on her notepad are several notes. 'He tastes tongues.' 'Fast and hard. Surprise.' 'Cellphones??' 'A pleasure feast for the eyes as well as the tongue.' 'I've seen horror movies like this.'
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Post by Spinister on Mar 17, 2012 22:43:03 GMT -5
Esprit looms over Det. Dahlia's shoulder. Her eyes glance coolly over the photographs and also over Det. Dahlia's notepads. Esprit comes to some conclusions. One, she shares, "Same perp. We got a guard on Miss Winston?"
Thank Primus they didn't let the media know that Miss Winston is up and moving. Must have been hard to keep that under cover, but there would have been a zombie panic, like there was back in Japan, or religious nuts... being nuts...
...and the killer might well go after the girl again.
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Post by Pee-Dee on Mar 18, 2012 11:57:35 GMT -5
Petunia's hand jumps in the middle of her latest note, scrawling it nearly to unreadability. It's the only sign of how much her partner startled her. She's become accustomed to Det. Hunt's odd ways with disturbing ease.
Or maybe she doesn't like giving Esprit the satisfaction of seeing her startle.
"No. Not yet." Petunia taps one of Elly's autopsy photos. "Do you think that would draw more attention to her, though?"
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Post by Spinister on Mar 18, 2012 19:56:53 GMT -5
Esprit would smile over the jump in that note, if she smiled reflexively, but she doesn't. No, smiling is always a deliberate, conscious choice with her. Her face remains impassive. "Lucky it hasn't leaked already..." Esprit observes. Really, Elly is. Even a 'simple' case of Lazarus syndrome usually gets some press. It was good thinking on someone's part to keep this quiet, though, since the killer is still out there, as those unfortunate teenagers found out. "Now we know the killer didn't cause Elly's resurrection," she also notes, considering those poor teenagers. Esprit pages through the medical files. The doctors still don't understand what happened with Elly, do they? |
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Post by Pee-Dee on Mar 21, 2012 14:06:10 GMT -5
"Great, now you've got me worrying about coverups," Petunia mutters.
She digs out photos of the crime-scene at the warehouse. "He was interrupted with Elly. He got to have his fun here, and he cleaned up. I hate it when they clean up."
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Post by Spinister on Mar 21, 2012 14:22:27 GMT -5
"You should worry," Esprit encourages. The world is a frightening place. People should be frightened.
Esprit cannot think of any 'cons she knows for sure are cannibals. (Tarantulas and Rampage covered up Rampage's oddities, after all.) If this was obviously, say... Wreckage's work, Esprit might be inclined to make some of the evidence vanish. However, since it does not strike her as the work of anyone who bats for her team, she is going to assume for now that the killer is just a human or metahuman and thus fair hunting.
"He thinks he's being smart." They have a DNA sample from where Elly keyed him, don't they? They can know it is a he, at least.
She looks at the other four and asks, "Wonder if he's working alone."
Taking down four people at once? Sure, maybe he took them one by one... or maybe he had help. Killers like this don't tend to be too social, but it's not impossible.
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Post by Pee-Dee on Mar 24, 2012 14:25:17 GMT -5
"In moderation," Petunia responds. Too much worrying leads to just as much killing as too little. It just changes who the killers are.
"Can't say for certain." She picks out some photographs of the factory. "See, he shot the kids to disable. He didn't shoot Ms. Winston. I think it's the numbers difference. He wanted them down fast, so he could play without worry."
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Post by Spinister on Mar 24, 2012 22:30:06 GMT -5
Esprit listens along to the speculation. Then she suggests, "Should see if there's any connection between the kids and Ms. Winston."
If there is a pattern, maybe they can figure out where he might hit next before he does.
If, on the other hand, there is no pattern, they are up against someone truly frustrating.
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Post by Pee-Dee on Mar 25, 2012 11:26:15 GMT -5
"Yes." Petunia frowns and drums her fingers against the photographs. "You want to take a walk out to that factory, Esprit? I don't think photos are good enough to get the feel."
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Post by Spinister on Mar 25, 2012 14:42:04 GMT -5
Esprit nods in agreement. Det. Dahlia has likely noticed by now that Esprit does not say much.
OOC: Timeskip to the factory?
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Post by Pee-Dee on Mar 27, 2012 11:07:10 GMT -5
Timeskip ahoy!
Sunlight comes in through a hole in the wall. It slathers shadows among the rusting catwalks and abandoned machinery. It's too bright to look toward once your eyes adjust to the gloom, but too quickly broken into shadows to reveal much.
"I've definitely seen a horror movie like this." Petunia flicks on her flashlight.
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Post by Spinister on Mar 27, 2012 12:03:43 GMT -5
Esprit generally does not bother with a flashlight, though she has one holstered on her belt (it makes a good bludgeon and is nice for blinding crooks), unless she specifically needs to see something in 'visual' colour, like black text on white paper, because she sees in infrared on top of normal vision. She has no real context to know this is anything odd. Esprit has fuzzy memories of completely failing at learning colours in grade school, but she was a stoic child, and she eventually learned what to say to make the teacher shut up. The colours she sees have no names to the humans, and they don't even have standard names in Cybertronian, as far as she recalls, just non-standard forms in a few dialects.
"Someone's going to try blaming the victims. Say they shouldn't have been here," Esprit observes quietly.
She does not seem overly nervous. There do not seem to be any hotspots that would indicate a hiding humanoid. There are some vermin around, but they do not concern her much.
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Post by Pee-Dee on Apr 3, 2012 12:33:15 GMT -5
"They shouldn't have been. That doesn't mean they deserved to die, though." Petunia shines her flashlight on the floor, looking for the chalk outlines of bodies. They've been mussed up some since the photographs were taken, but it's good enough.
She mutters darkly, "Idiots trampling all over the effing place. Bad enough he cleaned up after himself."
She walks around carefully, flashlight trained down- until she stops by one of the bodies. Then she drops to her haunches and stares down at the floor. "Esprit? Are these nail marks?"
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Post by Spinister on Apr 3, 2012 19:33:17 GMT -5
"Could be," Esprit ventures, "Hope the forensic team looks for traces of DNA under their nails. Someone might have clawed him."
Having a match to shore up their conjecture would be nice.
Me: Are those nail marks, [Rampage's player]?
[Rampage's player]: Maybe? I guess one of the victims may have clawed at the floor.
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Post by Pee-Dee on Apr 8, 2012 20:35:15 GMT -5
Petunia curls her fingers above the nailmarks, not quite touching them. "You shoot them. Not to kill. You hurt them. Not quite to kill. You eat them. Now it's to kill."
She scuttles to the side. "This isn't just about killing. The killing's fun, but he wouldn't play if it was just about killing. It's about hurting. You saw what he did to Ms. Winston. To those kids."
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