Aftershocks: Confession
Jun. 4th, 2011 11:30 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAmanda, Haller, and Meggan arrive at the site of the interrogation, and the killer's continued silence requires additional aid.
Vanessa stood at the opposite end of a pew from Laura thinking how handy Adrienne would have been in a situation like this. One touch to anything of the girl's and she would have been able to tell them anything they needed about its past with her. She wasn't sure she really would have asked her friend to do it given the horrific scenes she likely would have had to watch. The option would have been nice, though. Then Vanessa smiled. The girl wasn't looking at her but Laura was, and the look said the metamorph was up to something.
"I understand not talking. The physical evidence alone condemns you, why help? It's a shame, though, that we know where you've been staying. Even worse, you've clearly underestimated mutant abilities. After all, if you'd just answered the questions we wouldn't have had to send our associate to your place. He reads things by touch. Very handy in our line of work. One touch and he will know the entire history of an object. Even its future, set in stone and unchangeable. We'll know everything. The people who helped you get here. Even the ones who had no idea what you were or would become. Particularly the ones who did, though. And we will hunt every single one of them down in repayment for what you've done." Vanessa smiled, the expression almost sweet. Bluffing never did anyone any harm.
The killer had settled back in the pew as much as her bonds would allow, her head tilted back against a mouldering cushion. The girl's eyes slid over to Vanessa for a moment, then returned to their study of the chapel ceiling.
Legs crossed one over the other, Laura had gotten bored of watching over the woman already. It was as if she had given up entirely and now was simply waiting for it all to get over with. Did she think she could get away with it? It was unlikely, but her attitude was close to getting her and Laura didn't want to snap at the woman. "It's no use", said as she shrugged. "She just...doesn't talk. Or move. Or anything." She sighed; the killer was taking things better than her, apparently.
"She's a very dull piñata," Vanessa agreed as she dug her cell out of her pocket. She wasn't sure if it was vibrating because of a phone call or because of a text until she saw the display. Haller, Amanda and Meggan had arrived. Vanessa wondered for a moment if any of them could help break the young woman out of her silence. Amanda's magic probably didn't work that way, unfortunately. Red eyes flashed back up to Laura. "Cavalry's in. You've got this?" She nodded toward the thoroughly bound woman to indicate she was their "this."
A claw popped from Laura's right hand. "I don't think it will be needed, but the moment she gives me a reason to stop just watching her, I'll make sure she understands how serious this is." The claw retracted, as she had no intention on using it on the woman...but she felt like punching something already. "Just hurry up alright? I don't want this to get any creepier than it already is."
Vanessa looked from the killer to the girl she had come to think of as her protégé of sorts, a smile gracing her lips for just a moment. "Only stick her in non-lethal places," she warned with a nod. "I'll make it quick as possible." She cast one last look at the restrained young woman and then turned to head to the back of the church.
The girl never even turned her head.
* * *
Tucking his phone back into his pocket, Jim carefully stepped over a piece of roofing and scanned the church sanctuary. It probably hadn't been a miracle of architecture even before its abandonment, though it seemed good enough for the pigeons that had made their home near the rafters. Here and there hung the remnants of tarps, fluttering around holes where the roof had fallen through.
"I know that sometimes you've got to work with what you have," the telepath commented to Amanda, "but I have a hard time believing there wasn't a less creepy option."
"At least we won't be having anyone walking in on us," Amanda replied. She looked at her sister. "You know, Meg, you don't have to be here. You and I can wait in the car."
“No, it’s okay,” Meggan insisted. “I’d like to stay.” Even if the pigeons might be joining them down here soon. She wanted to know what happened, in the end—even if that meant just hanging back where she wasn’t a bother. Sitting out in the parking lot meant she wouldn’t find out much of anything that would answer the questions in her mind.
"I'm not sure where everyone is . . ." Jim looked back and did a double-take upon seeing the girl in the light of a broken window. "Meggan," he said, wiggling a finger near the crown of his head in a gesture usually associated with missed crumbs or an errant eyelash, "you still have some rust and . . . I think maybe traffic cone."
Meggan chuckled slightly in spite of the situation, before dutifully nodding. It was tough to see the spot he was indicating given its location, but after a second she had returned the general area to its regular color. She had thought she’d managed to get everywhere she’d shifted after getting back to her body, but obviously not—she’d taken care of the more apparent brick pattern neck, and grass colored ears straight away. “Thanks,” she whispered. “I don’t have traffic cone anywhere else that I can’t see?”
"There's a little bit above your right ear," Amanda pointed out, smiling despite herself as she reached over to touch the spot. "I know I keep saying it, but... be careful in there. With the empathy... I don't want you picking up anything from this nutjob."
She nodded, and the orange faded back to the regular pink of Meggan’s skin as Amanda’s finger pulled away. “I know. I’ll do the best I can not to,” Meggan promised. She thought she understood her sister's concern. It would be tough not to catch anything of the killer’s emotions, but she could try her hardest to filter small bits if it came to that.
"It'll be all right," Jim said. "If it becomes an issue, we'll--"
The counselor stopped abruptly as he saw something move in the darkness. His posture slowly shifted towards rigid and defensive . . . and then he saw the flash of red eyes. Jim relaxed, his right eye darkening back to blue.
"Vanessa," he said, relieved. Jack was nearer to the surface than he'd realized. Then again, that probably had something to do with bringing two young women to an abandoned church hosting a serial killer.
The minute upward quirk at the corners of her mouth was about as close to a smile as they were going to get under the circumstances. A nod followed. Vanessa was a little tense, more from restraining herself than from the actual presence of the killer. She had slaughtered an infant. That's what Vanessa kept coming back to. She had slaughtered an infant and Vanessa was not slaughtering her in return. Every instinct she had developed as a mercenary had to be held in check. Not so secretly, she hoped the chick twitched and wound up with one of Laura's claws lodged in her knee straight through her patella.
By time she had reached the trio the metamorph had forced herself to relax, letting go of the tension in her muscles slowly. She knew Amanda would see her doing it if she was paying attention. The blonde knew her a little too well to not realize the level of restraint Vanessa was covering up. "Haller," she nodded to him and then shifted over to look at the girls, "Meggan, Amanda. Thanks for your help. Your spell helped a lot and getting her in custody, so to speak, was easy once we found her. We couldn't have done it so quickly without your help."
Amanda nodded in return, the slight smile dropping as she remembered the taste of that mind, the city's slow-brewing anger and the risk they'd all taken. That Meg had taken. "I'm glad we could help," she replied. "So, what now?" She glanced briefly at Meggan and then lowered her voice. "Please tell me we're taking care of this permanently."
Comments like that were exactly why Vanessa loved Amanda. Hell, she could have kissed the blonde for saying that if it wouldn't be so damn inappropriate at the moment. A small shake of her head answered. "We're trying to find some answers right now but she'll be handed over to the cops all wrapped in a bow and proper like we ought to. And then she's got to face a New York jury. Bishop's making the appropriate calls." It was a slight fudging of the truth. Bishop was probably on the phone with Jean-Paul or Doug rather than the NYPD, but he'd be calling them soon enough.
Amanda's tone was not low enough for Jim to miss. He thought for a moment, then nodded. "Amanda, Meggan, I want to talk to Vanessa about something. Can you guys just hang out for a while?" He met Amanda's eyes here, then flicked his gaze meaningfully towards Meggan. He didn't have Amanda's intense protective streak towards the girl, but that didn't mean he would unnecessarily subject her to gory details and the expression on Vanessa's face made him a little concerned there may be a few. She was still a student, after all.
Besides, Meggan's mind had been so . . . bright. He didn't want to baby her, but he felt that quality was something worth preserving.
Amanda nodded, her gratitude clear to the telepath. "No problem," she said. "That okay with you, Meg?"
”We can do that, yeah," Meggan agreed. It wasn’t like being sent out to the car, where she’d be completely in the dark. The pews the furthest distance away were situated under that gaping hole in the ceiling, but what looked to be an old kitchen didn’t seem so bad. Well, at least from what she could see of it through the dusty door that had been left half open. "We’ll just go wandering through an old room?” She glanced at Amanda to confirm it was okay with her if they went in there.
"Looks fine," Amanda replied to the unspoken question. "After you. Just be careful about touching anything - this place looks a little rickety."
The door was, in fact, wobbly to the touch as Meggan made to open it, not to mention providing a creaking sound that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie. She was mostly surprised that it didn’t just fall off its hinges, given it was in such disrepair. The empath poked her head in for a good view, before turning back to Amanda. “Right. Watch out for the first giant cobweb, and a pile of pots and pans on the floor three steps in,” Meggan warned. With that, she ducked inside.
As soon as Jim was sure the two had left earshot, the counselor turned back to Vanessa.
"How's it going?" he asked, his voice only a touch lower than normal.
She answered with a groan. When Vanessa spoke her voice was hushed, the way it would be in a proper church where God still lived. He hadn't been here in some time though, Vanessa was sure. "That depends. No one's been injured so you could consider that to be things going well. She's not going to get away with the rope job someone did either so that is also a point in our favor." The metamorph sighed. "However, my love, that is where our favor ends. She has said precisely nothing since she more or less gave herself over to Jean-Paul and Laura, which I believe was right about when she realized trying to outrun the man was a futile effort. Bishop's got her cell and Doug's gotten her address from some concerted effort on their part. Jean-Paul is checking out her apartment but he's on the line with Bishop so I don't know if he's found anything particularly useful."
The telepath's forehead creased. "Rope job? . . . wait, is that legal? Holding her here?" God, he hadn't even thought about what would happen when she'd been located -- he suddenly had a mental image of the police showing up, finding a woman tied to a bench in an abandoned church by a group of mutants, and arresting X-Factor on principle.
"Uh..." The metamorph looked caught somewhere between guilty and uncertain. "It's a bit of a grey area. She willingly went with Jean-Paul and Laura. She let herself be tied up. It's like asking if bondage is legal. Her allowing it implies consent. She never explicitly stated consent but since you can argue that she did not fight it or state her lack of consent that it could be a good faith mistake."
"O . . . kay." Well, at least he wasn't the only one uncomfortable. "So if you guys get a confession from her now . . . would that be heresay, or what?"
"Grey area," she replied with far more certainty than her voice had held a moment ago. "As PIs we have a lot more leeway in how we get evidence and our shadier methods stand up better in court than if the cops did it the same way. We're not bound by their protocol and procedures. She's not technically under arrest since we didn't witness her committing a felony, which is the requirement for placing a citizen's arrest, so anything she tells us we can testify to under oath. That confession will hold some weight as long as we are credible witnesses. Bishop, as an ex-detective, is the most credible of us for obvious reasons. If she denies it under oath or gives the cops a contradictory statement then we've just got hearsay." Vanessa glanced toward the chapel. "If she says something to us but then goes mute with the cops again, well, then our testimony holds more weight."
The tall man thought for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. I guess it's not really my concern, I just don't know how this sort of thing is supposed to work." Jim looked back towards the kitchenette area, then sighed. "Either way, I'm glad you guys got to her before she could make another kill, with Meggan linked in like she was . . . though it's strange. Meg wasn't picking up anger, or hate. Not pleasure, either. There was purpose, and focus, but it was cold." The telepath folded his arms and looked askance at the metamorph. "When we rode the memory of Margaret Hoey's murder there wasn't even a sense of satisfaction. Maybe we just didn't dig enough, but . . . with no emotional spike beforehand and no payoff after, I almost think she has to be hired."
His words sent her rifling through her own memories. How had she felt when she had taken out a mark? It was the only comparison she could draw. Vanessa doubted - or perhaps hoped - that the telepath had no similar experience to draw from himself. "No satisfaction. Relief? Pride? I can't imagine there was simply nothing. It was always to have the job over with. Wet work didn't bother me much after the second or third time but I was always happy to have the job done. There was a feeling of...accomplishment," she made the word a question, "I guess. I'd made good on my word. The contract was completed. I'd get paid and move on. There was always some sort of emotion that came with that. At least for me. For the guys all I know for sure is that there was something of a tension or anxiety release. I find it hard to believe that a hired hand has no reaction whatsoever." Vanessa was almost clinical and detached as she spoke of her emotional pay off from killing people. Perhaps it should have bothered her more to speak about, or perhaps it should have at least bothered her that it did not bother her, but either way she was utterly relaxed over the topic.
"Me too. Shit, if this is some kind of psychic programming . . ." The telepath grimaced and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Though if it is, it seems bizarre that she'd have given herself up and then not talk. If programming was in place it'd make more sense to either tell her go down fighting, or else confess to throw the trail off whoever was controlling her."
"You'd know more about that than I would, likely. Brainwashing with telepathy isn't really the area of psychology that I've read up on." Vanessa considered the various angles of it as best she could. What would she do if she was going to telepathically brainwash someone into a killing spree? "Kill the evidence," she muttered. "Burn the evidence, kill yourself. Don't go down fighting but don't get caught either. That's what I would tell someone to do. Because even if you give a phony confession there's always a chance it gets tracked back to me, right? What if she's quiet because she has an escape plan? An ‘in’ on the NYPD, maybe? Or an in on the inside of a prison. She can get out, cover what tracks lead back to her puppet master and then either carry on elsewhere or take herself out of the equation via suicide or promotion within whatever organization she's with." A deep frown creased Vanessa's expression. "I don't like the potential implications of that. I like my confused lack of information better than that, even."
Looking back up at Haller, Vanessa quirked an eyebrow as a thought occurred to her. There were different flavors, if you will, of shapeshifting. Her shifting didn't work like Jake's or Catseye's, for example. Haller was a telepath but she wasn't sure which flavor he might have been. "Would you be able to figure out if it was? If she's been telepathically gag ordered or reprogrammed would you be able to figure it out by...scanning her mind or what have you?"
Jim wasn't too caught up in the ramifications of potential brainwashing to miss Vanessa's tone. The look he gave her was cautious. "I have experience with things like that, unfortunately, so yes," he replied. "It's not hard to spot if you know what you're looking for. Undoing it is where things get difficult."
She read the expression on his face easily and decided to be careful where she stepped with him. Different people had sensitive spots regarding their own mutations or the uses of them. Vanessa didn't have any regarding her own really but she watched people too much to not pick up on the caution written all over Haller's face. She wondered if it was maybe a degree of hesitancy as well. Jean would have agreed readily and contrasting his reaction with her likely reaction is where Vanessa started. She nodded to herself as she considered her next words. "We can work on figuring out rehab once we're sure that's what's going on. If that isn't what is up, though...I don't know what your personal rules are but if she's not brainwashed and she's not acting alone we need to know. If we don't know this starts up all over again with someone else doing the slaughtering. If we don't know what's motivating her we run the risk of endangering others while thinking we've made them safe. But she won't speak..."
A muscle in Jim's jaw twitched. "I'm . . . not really comfortable scanning minds without consent. I can't just go in and start digging." It was hard to explain why. It was normal for most telepaths to pick up stray thoughts, and in a way that almost diminished responsibility when privacy was invaded; perhaps when mindreading was like overhearing muffled conversations in the next room at the best of times using the power intentionally was simply making use of a natural advantage. But when your power was so twisted into itself your natural capacity for telepathic reception was almost nil, using the power felt different than just choosing to focus your attention. It made the invasion willful. Jim had suffered psychic intrusions; he took the distinction seriously.
But if he could help and didn't . . . christ, he was the one who'd asked the girls to go out of their comfort zones, and one of them hadn't even graduated yet. He could hold a lot of conflicting feelings at once, but even he found hypocrisy of this magnitude staggering. He took a deep breath and kneaded the spot between his eyebrows with his fingertips.
"If she's been psychically conditioned, there may not be much I can do without time," he said at last. "That's not the sort of thing you can just tear out, at least not without causing damage. If she's not . . . I can make a superficial link. It's how I deal with communications in the field. It doesn't go deep, but when you ask questions the answers tend to come to the surface of the mind whether or not the other person actually intends on saying anything, so if you lead I can funnel the response back to you. At the very least it will give you true/false readings."
Nodding along, Vanessa considered the options. He wasn't okay with going rooting around for information like Jean would have been. Vanessa stored that information for later and considered what that meant in light of his offer for a superficial link. "First, I want you to understand that I'm not one to push people into shit they don't want to do. So if you're not cool with anything other than figuring out if she's been tampered with telepathically or possibly more traditionally brainwashed then that's all you go on the hook for. I will figure out another way to get my answers. And if she's had her brain tampered with that's all we need, in a way. It gives us a reason beyond 'I like slaughtering muties and their infants.'" There was noticeable heat in her voice at the last, betraying some of the rage Vanessa held for the captive girl. Because of that rage she really would use any means necessary to get answers if Haller couldn't or wouldn't find them. She's probably have to ask the civilians to leave the building, though. Plausible deniability was a wonderful thing to have.
Jim shook his head. "No. I'm here. I'll do it." His voice was surer this time. He heard the smothered anger in the woman's voice, and understood. Mutants were dead. People were dead. And while knowing why would have provided some comfort, Jim suddenly realized that the important question was how. All those people, leading all those different lives . . . if someone had been pointing the girl towards her targets, there was no assurance they wouldn't continue on with another assassin. There was no excuse for a twenty-third victim.
I asked Meggan to get into her heart. How much less dangerous is a mind?
The look she gave him was critical. He sounded as certain as he looked on the matter. It was a moment that felt much longer than it was, but by the end of it she nodded. "Alright. We'll be glad of the help. So explain how the superficial link works, exactly. I ask a question, she thinks about the answer whether or not she intends to share it with me and you sort of filter that from her mind to mine and Bishop's or do you translate along the way? My concern here is losing nuance like you do in any game of telephone. Sometimes those small inflections and details you pass off as unimportant don't reveal their gravity until twenty minutes later." They could not afford to fuck this up and overlook something important just because things didn't click into place for them immediately.
The telepath rummaged around in his pocket and came out with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He drew out a cigarette and lit it. "That's basically how it works -- I act as a conduit between you and the killer. One way, in this case, though if you also want a closed link with Bishop so you can talk with him during I can do that, too." Jim took a drag. His demeanor had slid into clinical now that he had turned to a plan of action. "For her, I'll use about the same level of involvement I do when working through language barriers. A focus on intent. Think of what I'll pick up as . . . all right, imagine being in an argument with someone, and all the things you want to say, but hold back to spare their feelings. The first impulse, before it gets filtered. A lot of what we think and feel is like that, never making it to our mouths but still focused because you have to check yourself before you speak. That's what I'll give you, like you're hearing her speak it yourself." He took another thoughtful drag, then exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Sometimes, how people don't say something tells you a lot."
"Yes. Omission can be quite useful." She nodded. Hearing their killer speaking her truest, most unfiltered intent into their heads would get them far. Of course, the other side of the coin was that Vanessa wasn't sure she really wanted to be in that chick's head. For Vanessa there was a world of difference between killing someone in a war or because it was a job and doing it simply because you wanted to, because you felt just in doing so. Suddenly, she was quite hopeful the young woman was a hired hand.
Pulling herself from those thoughts, Vanessa shook her head a little to clear it and refocused on the man in front of her. "I don't think Bishop and I need a link, but we'll see what he says. I think we know one another well enough to work without it." She quirked a little half-smile at the telepath. "You work with what you're given, and since we don't have a handy telepath in our ranks we've been forced to rough it and learn one another's body language for cues. We're pretty good at it by now." A year working together at Snow Valley and almost a year working the private eye gig together had made them a well oiled pair of gears, actually.
Vanessa nodded to the end of the front hall in the opposite direction the girls had gone. "Shall we go find him and then get some answers about our girl?"
"I'll tell Amanda and Meggan what's going on," he said, "but then . . . yeah. For months this woman's been letting her actions speak for her." The telepath dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his boot, then turned back to Vanessa.
"Let's find out what it is she's been saying."
With his colleagues interrogating the suspect, Jean-Paul arrives at the apartment of a serial killer.
Speed and discretion were key for this portion of his job and Jean-Paul knew that - if she didn't talk, lives may or may not depend on the information he found in the girl’s apartment. All things considered, given the neighborhood, he wasn’t sure what he might find. He reminded himself that, above all else, appearances could be deceiving - that didn’t stop his misgivings from circling round and round inside his skull as he landed and approached the nondescript five-floor building where their admitted killer apparently lived.
The exterior was white - the Quebecois supposed that, given the city and the fact that it was in the Bronx, that might say some small thing about the quality of the tenets, but he wouldn’t have laid money on it. The ease with which he got inside and up the stairs spoke volumes.
Upon reaching her apartment, Jean-Paul made sure his feet were at least six inches off the floor and pulled his hands from his pockets. They were both gloved and one held the key Bishop had given him. Vanessa’s camera hung from his shoulder on a wide strap beneath his jacket, hidden from general view but accessible when he needed it.
Jean-Paul closed the door behind himself, relocking it quietly and then pausing so he could listen. He didn’t have superhuman hearing, but if there was someone in the apartment they’d have to move to see who’d come through the door - theoretically, anyway. When he didn’t hear anything or see movement... he nodded to himself and flipped on a light. There was a door directly to his left and, after opening it, he saw that it was simply a closet, nothing exceptional contained between the hanger for her winter coat and the vacuum cleaner on the floor. He took a picture anyway, then closed the closet door and moved cautiously forward.
There was a living room, sparsely furnished, and Jean-Paul would have gone so far as to guess that the furniture itself came with the apartment. It was all old, scuffed and ragged. The television was what he could safely qualify as ‘ancient,’ an interesting specimen complete with rabbit ears and a dial rather than buttons. Something about the place struck him as odd, and he couldn’t put his finger on it, but he narrowed his eyes as he walked around the room, turning on the lamp near the chair across from the antique television. He couldn’t see a telephone, she didn’t appear to have any DVDs or CDs, no radio or even VHS tapes. Opening the cabinets beneath the television confirmed that and the walls... that was what had struck him as odd - there was absolutely nothing on the walls.
The girl had been living in the city for long enough - there should have been something to mark this place as her own. A coffee cup with something obnoxious written on it, papers or magazines. Jean-Paul didn’t know what women her age were pasting on their walls these days, but he thought there should be something. Instead... just this strange emptiness. He took pictures of the things he noticed - rather, of the conspicuous lack of things - and then moved on.
Kitchens didn’t generally hold more information about someone than a living room, in Jean-Paul’s experience, but he found that he might have to revise his opinion on the matter. At least so far as this girl was concerned, anyway. The cabinets were virtually bare, holding only two plates, one glass, one set of cutlery, and no food. Newspapers had been piled on the counter, but he couldn’t see any particular order to them. They seemed a jumbled mess, some still in their plastic bags, others obviously leafed through. The refrigerator... didn’t seem to hold much more promise, considering the only thing on its front was a calendar. Jean-Paul snapped a picture of it, though, and then took a closer look - it was monthly and the girl had written place names and times in several of the boxes. It looked like meetings of some sort, though it took him a moment to parse her shorthand.
Tipping his head to the side, the Quebecois frowned a little. Narcotics Anonymous meetings. She seemed diligent about staying clean, if her calendar was any indication. In a pocket to the left of the main, monthly page, Jean-Paul found a multitude of take-out menus. He didn’t know any of the restaurants, but that wasn’t surprising, since he didn’t live in this part of town. Tucking the menus back in their pocket, he checked the ‘notes’ section of the calendar and found a phone number under the name ‘Thomas.’ Taking a closer picture of that, he frowned a little and opened the door.
There was... virtually nothing in the refrigerator. Only a few ketchup packets from fast food restaurants and similarly acquired packets of soy sauce. She didn’t even have anything to drink stored inside. Just the pilfered condiments. Closing that door, he opened the freezer and found out why she had nothing in the refrigerator - she had more frozen dinners stored up than he would have thought possible. Or palatable. That must be why she ate take-away so much, to shift up the variety.
A quick search of the lower cabinets proved his theory - she had no pots or pans, no cooking utensils. Even at his lowest point, he’d always had the things he might need to attempt to cook. The stove was clean - almost as though it was never used. The microwave, though, had spots of food in it that had popped while she was heating it. The drawers were similarly empty - he supposed with only the one set of cutlery, she didn’t need any of the drawers.
He almost missed the trashcan on his way out of the kitchen, a slightly confused frown still on his face. Jean-Paul paused, though, when he noticed it and sat on his heels to go through its contents, feet still not actually touching the floor. Bills, for the most part. Rent stubs indicating that her living fees had been automatically paid. The Quebecois took pictures of these, making sure to get the account numbers specifically because that sort of thing was usually important - especially because he’d seen no indication that the girl had a job she could use to support herself, even in a low-income housing complex like this.
Flipping through the rest of the bills, he continued to take pictures until he found what was beneath the bills, and then he frowned even more intensely. The antiseptic handwipes were mostly dry now, crumpled up and holding their shapes even as he drew one out of the waste bin. Who hid evidence of a crime like murder in the trashcan in their kitchen? Because, despite the dryness, the scent of lemons still wafted upward once the wipes were disturbed. Lemons and old blood - they were covered in splotches and smudges of blood that was obviously days past its prime.
Jean-Paul dropped the wipe after taking a picture, then covered the lot of them with the bills he’d been looking through and stood. There had been no evidence, thus far, of a second person being involved in the girl’s crimes, but he had more of her apartment to check and he needed to do it quickly - and someone had to be paying those bills.
The bathroom came next, dingy but unremarkable. The only thing that stood out in her medicine cabinet was a bottle of anti-anxiety pills, but he checked the label and found that the prescription had been filled in mid-2010, which meant she hadn’t been taking them for quite some time - there were still two pills left in the bottom of the bottle.
She had some make-up but nothing fancy, and her haircare products were cheap. According to the price on the bottom on the conditioner, she’d gotten them buy one get one half-off at the local drugstore and they’d only been 99 cents to begin with. There were no curling irons or hair driers, no perfumes or lotions - in short, nothing that a girl her age would likely have just tucked away in drawers.
After snapping pictures, Jean-Paul shook his head and moved on to what he assumed was either the main bedroom or the spare bedroom.
In the end, neither search nor interrogation yield the expected results.
The tableau in the chapel hadn't changed. There was the suspect, staring at the roof, and there was Laura, staring at the suspect. A few forgotten candles, their holders long since gone, had been lit and pressed onto the steps or pews with their own melted wax. Their soft light disguised the building's dilapidation, creating a warm, close dome. None were set close enough for the killer to have reached.
The girl's head moved towards the back of the chapel at the creak of feet on floorboards, but she didn't actually turn. The candlelight painted her loose hair like a halo.
Vanessa and Bishop, familiar faces to the young brunette, made their way into the chapel with yet another set of footsteps. It was easy to hear from the way the trio walked that their new addition wasn't a regular part of their roster. There was something just a touch out of sync about the third set compared to the others, but the suspect didn't have long to realize that. They had considered the pros and cons of Haller being seen and while in the end it likely wouldn't matter either way the investigators had chosen to take advantage of whatever psychological edge they could get. For that reason, in part, the third set of footsteps quickly died off.
Leaving the tall, wiry telepath to find a spot he liked, Vanessa and Bishop continued together, each step in perfect sync with one another despite the half foot height advantage the ex-detective had on the ex-mercenary. A hand went to the lower back of their suspect's guard, the gesture in and of itself relieving Laura from duty. Vanessa whispered quietly enough that most people wouldn't have heard her without her lips at their ear but the feral heard her just fine. With a nod the young woman had set off toward the back of the chapel, taking her leave. Vanessa, on the other hand, walked down the pew in front of Caroline's. She found a spot more or less right in front of the girl and hopped up to sit on the back of the bench in front of it, feet bracing on the edge of the one in front of their captive. All she did was smile, quite benevolently at that, and give the girl a small wave.
While the girl's attention was on the two investigators, Jim took a seat on the floor at the back of the chapel. The carpet was moldering and smelled it, and some of the debris that had gathered against the wall contained the mummified remains of vermin, but it didn't matter. A few deep breaths, and the telepath's attention was on the first order of business: culpability.
The killer's mind offered no unusual resistance -- not even the sort of rudimentary shielding techniques that could be taught to the mindblind. Cautiously, Jim felt for signs of tampering. Even skilled telepaths left traces if you knew where to look, like stitching of a slightly different shade in a mended garment . . . but Jim felt nothing. Her natural defenses were easily evaded but intact, with no telltale holes or scar tissue evident. Whatever she had done, it had been of her own will.
In a way, it was worse knowing that for a certainty.
The telepath took a deep breath. #Her mind is clear,# he reported to Bishop and Vanessa. #Ask your questions.#
The girl, oblivious to the psychic eavesdropper or the silent communication happening around her, simply watched the metamorph sitting on the pew before her.
* * *
The door opened slowly and the light that he’d turned on in the living room shone through, leaving his shadow to fall across what seemed to be... arms and legs. Many, many arms and legs, carelessly discarded. Drifting forward, the Quebecois nudged one with the toe of his boot and found it to be... hollow.
Mannequin arms and legs. He could see the knobs that were used to attach them to the bodies. Sitting on his heels again, still hovering, he nudged the leg with a gloved fingertip, causing it to roll over. On the inside of the thigh... he found what seemed to be slashes or gouges, often very deep. It looked like the sort of thing you’d get after repeatedly striking it with a knife.
Jean-Paul checked the foot to see which leg he was looking at, but he wasn’t surprised to find it was the left one. Looking up, he found the light switch and turned on the overhead light. The illumination fell on a room... almost entirely barren, save the various mannequin parts scattered haphazardly off to the sides. But not entirely barren. In the center of the room stood a complete mannequin and to his left were two more, all three in varying positions. One was simply standing, another poised as though to run, and the third crouched in something resembling a defensive position.
Upon closer inspection, he found that they all had similar markings on their left legs. Considering that was one of the wounds inflicted on the victims, Jean-Paul thought this was all fairly damning evidence. Damning evidence that... the girl had gone to absolutely no lengths to hide. It was just like the antiseptic wipes in the kitchen - who left their practice dummies assembled in their spare room? What kind of person could do these things and... just see nothing wrong with it? Even psychopaths and sociopaths attempted to hide the evidence of their crimes. And they taunted the police.
* * *
Bishop sat back across from the young killer, next to Vanessa's perch. "Caroline, I believe we got off to the wrong start. I'm Bishop and this is my partner Bobbi Badalandabad. We're the mutant detectives from X-Factor and we're working your case, mostly because the NYPD don't give a fuck about mutants. I'd like to take your statement, for the sake of being thorough. We can see that you did these killings, that's a lock. I'm interested in knowing two things: how you did all this and why. Serial killing is death penalty territory and I suggest you give me your statement because it might help you avoid it. If you have anything you want to be made known to the news, I'd be willing to do that as well. NYPD will not give you that offer." Just because they had no grounds for taking her statement and anything they got from her would be inadmissible didn’t mean she realized that.
The girl's brown eyes shifted to Bishop.
"I wonder why he keeps offering me a chance to explain."
Her expression hadn't changed, but the words arrived in the investigators' heads without passage through the ears. Accompanying the thought was a vague sense of curiosity, as if the prospect held no importance for her.
Bishop didn't use anymore of his new information yet, instead only locking eyes with her to stare back. He knew what she thought now and he accepted the possibility that, if uninterrupted but kept on track with his presence, she may unwittingly answer the questions for them.
Vanessa sighed. Bishop's stoicism really was less than productive at times. "Not speaking won't do you any favors," Vanessa said, a little unimpressed with her partner. "The cops might think you're something of a hero. Some of them anyway. But they can't get away with showing it. There are plenty of mutants locked up in jail, though. The very sorts of people you've been hunting down? They'll be in there with you." She smiled faintly. "And they'll find out pretty quickly who you are, why you're in." Vanessa gave a careless shrug. "If you don't want to survive the night then that's fine. But if you do, you might wanna speak up so you don't accidentally get thrown in with a mutant with an anger management problem."
No surprise or fear in her mind. "That's okay. I was lucky to get as far as I did."
As her gaze shifted from one mutant to the next, the image of their eyes washed into their minds: Bishop's, dark and gleaming in the candlelight, and Vanessa's, unreadable pools of blood red.
"You were always going to find me in the end."
* * *
Jean-Paul shook his head, remembering the way she’d simply... gone along with them. She’d just said ‘alright’ and that had been that. No struggle, no monologuing, no recriminations. She hadn’t even put up a fight when he’d tied her to the pew in the church. Shaking his head as he continued taking pictures, the Quebecois attempted to push his considerations about the girl from his mind. He knew one thing - it took a certain kind of person to plan and execute the sorts of murders she’d committed. It took a certain kind of person and, given the slaughter he knew he’d caused, it said something that he found himself as unnerved as he was by this room.
He found large quantities of shredded fabric, discarded much like the pieces of the mannequins, though it took Jean-Paul a few moments to come up with a theory about the fabric. It wasn’t until he saw the old denim strung between something that looked almost like an embroidery hoop that he realized she had to have been testing something. The material ranged from corduroy to cotton and back to denim and it had all been slashed - perhaps she’d been testing the strength of the fabrics. Or perhaps she’d been testing her own strength to see how much force it would take her to cut through to skin. Perhaps both.
The last photograph that he took was an up-close shot of what appeared to be a linoleum knife embedded in the shoulder of the mannequin in the middle of the room. He’d leave it to Vanessa to pinpoint the specific type, since knives were more her area of expertise than his, and move on to the next room. He made sure to turn off the light and close the door behind him, then resolved to not think about what that room might say about the girl they had in custody.
* * *
"Lucky to get that far. So you did it, and I'm guessing just because they were mutants. And self destructive, at that. Death by mutant?" Bishop wasn't personally curious now that he knew she was the killer and a bigot. He was very interested in gaining a full confession for professional purposes.
For the first time there was a flicker of surprise in the killer's eyes, even as the reply floated to the surface of her mind. "They were mutants. It would've been over the day I met one who was invulnerable or mind-readers." A wash of realization followed an instant later. "Mind-readers. They're reading my mind." The faint surprise evaporated.
"Death by mutant it is." Bishop stood, preparing to leave. "You should confess. It would go a long way to helping the humans you hurt as collateral heal. If you cared about any humans at all you'd ease their fears."
"There's always collateral damage." But an image of the girl who'd walked in on Laura and Jean-Paul as they cornered her in the club bathroom rose to her mind, and with it the decision she had made not to call for help. To not risk the building being brought down around them because the mutants had finally found her.
"Always collateral damage. You'll get to read about it in the paper, 'Mutants in District X riot. Annihilation of people like never seen before.' A bomb doesn't have much on some of the guys I know." Bishop looked down to her, using his position to become imposing, wanting to further her fear of mutants for his final ploy. "They wouldn't stop when they found who you were working with or how you chose your victims, if they ever did find out. The damage would be done by then and it would be war."
This time, the girl's stare actually held a hint of puzzlement. "Who I'm working with?"
"Didn't lottery your victims. Most weren't openly mutants," was the factual reply to her unspoken question.
The girl studied Bishop's face. "No one had to tell me who they were," came her thoughts.
"I can smell you."
They were the first words she had spoken since the interrogation began. They were soft and matter-of-fact, as if noting a stray eyelash on Bishop's cheek. She held his eyes with her own, solemn and calm.
A white eyebrow raised for a moment, then fell again. Vanessa considered their captive in a new light. She could smell mutants? "So you're either delusional but lucky to have not hit a human by accident, delusion but painstakingly meticulous to confirm your suspicions before striking or," she trailed off. Vanessa let the moment of silence hang as a whisper of a smile touched with amusement graced her lips. "Or you're exactly the sort of person you've been hunting. A mutant. Who passes for human."
The girl's gaze shifted to the blue-skinned woman. The accusation had no visible effect. With a kind of detached serenity she met Vanessa's eyes with the thought: "I never said I wasn't."
* * *
It didn’t take him any time at all to fly over to the other bedroom. He turned on the light, attempting to distance himself from what he might find there - only... there was really nothing extraordinary to be found. At least not on the surface of things. Again, the girl had personalized nothing in the room - no hangings, no pictures or artwork. There was a complete lack of knickknacks, even.
Her bed was simple, obviously old and the mattress sagged in the middle. The pillows, like everything else, were worn and the sheets were drab. There was a blanket at the end of the bed, but it was thin, almost like something from a hospital, and it likely wouldn’t have done much to provide actual warmth. There was nothing of interest beneath the bed, no boxes full of memorabilia, no loose boards to pull up. Admittedly, pulling up a loose board while hovering over the floor wouldn’t have been particularly easy - lack of leverage - so he was almost glad that she’d maintained such an austere living space.
He found clothing in her closet that seemed appropriate for her age, but most of it was worn, likely picked up from second-hand shops he’d guess, and it was obvious from the way the dirty clothing was simply piled in a corner that she didn’t care for the clothing in general. It was like they didn’t matter. He supposed, when you went out killing people, your clothing wasn’t necessarily the most important thing on your mind.
Even though he gave it a cursory yet thorough search, Jean-Paul found nothing at all that resembled a trophy. Serial killers usually kept trophies, he thought. But she had nothing, not even clippings from newspapers where the deaths had been announced. There were no pictures, no photographs as though she had stalked them, no indication as to why she’d picked the people she picked. He’d seen a documentary once that showed how killers sometimes kept shrines or a sort hidden to glorify the murders they committed... but he found none of that.
* * *
Vanessa couldn't help but be fascinated by the young brunette. "You know, some people would assume that's a hell of a lot of self-loathing on your part, but you don't strike me as the sort." A quirk of her mouth hinted at a grin that wanted to start. "Self-loathers tend to feel it. All the fucking time, actually. Bit annoying really. You don't strike me as the emotive, self-hate kinda girl." The question about whether or not she was right was left unasked.
"Maybe once." The thought was threaded with another echo. A group of voices, speaking in unison: "God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
"But not now?" She made no mention of the serenity prayer or it's obvious link to Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous groups. As much as she disliked what the girl had done, at her heart Vanessa was so used to studying people that she couldn't help but want to study her strange thought process. She wondered if Haller picked up on that or if he was only filtering stuff to her head rather than picking up anything she thought as well. It didn't matter either way really.
"Reality is reality. There's no point hating what you can't change."
Despite it all, Vanessa smiled and dipped her head in a small nod. "Some people never learn that." Her head cocked to the side while she tried to piece together the sort of logic that would lead someone to hunt and kill mutants when she didn't despise herself for being a mutant. After all, being a mutant she couldn't change. So she'd done something she could change. What change was she trying for, though? "But changing what you hate, that's different isn't it?"
The girl's eyes shifted, lingering on Bishop's face before returning to Vanessa's. "I don't hate mutants. I know they're not all criminals.
"But we're too dangerous."
Vanessa nodded. She understood that all too well, actually. Her own mutation wasn't defensive or offensive in and of itself. Having to fight someone with legitimate super powers would have her well out of her league. It was something she had come to terms with long ago. Traditional weaponry was all that she had to level the playing field between herself and someone like Bishop or Garrison or Jean-Paul. Her friends could take her out before she could blink if she didn't see it coming. "So're people. Some turn bad. Some don't. Should someone go around killing people because they might be dangerous? They might slaughter people? Might become serial killers? A lot of the things you use to destroy can be used to create, too. Fire burns and it purifies. Should you eradicate fire because someone may get burnt? What if you put out the only one that could keep someone from freezing to death? And you'll never know it."
The girl looked her dead in the eye. "And a good person's power could still destroy an entire city."
* * *
He photographed the brushes and other usual grooming tools that girls had, then focused on the two unpackaged knives. They were like the one he’d seen in the spare bedroom still stuck in the mannequin. Next to the knives sat a jewelry box. It didn’t look particularly expensive, a theory proven when he lifted the lid and found it to be made of thin pieces of light wood, easy to break. There was a chip there, though, that looked as though it had come from her Narcotics Anonymous group. He also found a small gold cross on a chain which he lifted out of the box and set next to the NA chip. Beneath that, he found a letter, its paper folded into fourths, which he opened. It read:
After taking a picture of the letter, he refolded it and tucked it back into the box, then laid the other contents atop it and closed the lid. What a strange thing, to feel a sudden spike of sympathy for the girl who had killed so many. Jean-Paul wasn’t even sure she deserved his sympathy, but he couldn’t help feeling it.
Moving on, he returned to her desk and went over the items there more carefully, photographing the Bible, the girl’s name embossed on the cover, and the notebook that she’d apparently used as a journal. Jean-Paul flipped through the pages, taking a picture of each even as he skimmed them himself. While there was no mention of a partner, there was also nothing to indicate that the girl was completely insane. The juxtaposition of one topic with another was strange, though she didn’t ramble about hearing voices or anything odd. It was simply incongruous, the way she would talk about going to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and then finding old mannequins to practice on. As though... her killing was completely normal and, thus, it was obvious that she would have to find the mannequins after her meeting.
The way some girls wrote about going to the movies or going out with friends, these things that people took for granted - that was the way she seemed to speak of her life despite the fact that others would most certainly think it out of the ordinary.
* * *
For a moment nothing further came, and then the girl spoke again.
"No way to predict who becomes a mutant," the killer said in that same quiet, inflectionless tone. "No oversight when they do. No criteria for what power goes to who. Dangerous mutations. Lethal mutations. Some uncontrollable. Some mutants can mean the best and still kill. And if not them, maybe their children."
"There's no oversight to who buys a knife," Vanessa pointed out, clearly referring to Caroline herself. "Anyone can pull a trigger. Shoot up an entire school. Build a bomb with mundane materials. Poison. Mutations may make people more inherently and immediately dangerous than a normal human, but humans can all too easily destroy one another. The holocaust took a lot of people to pull off, but they sure as hell pulled off genocide. Mutants are just another piece on the board. They may be the big guns but not all of them. Not even most of them. Most are as harmless as humans. Maybe you're cool with being a bigot, but I prefer to be more equal opportunity about taking out dangerous foes. Humans are just as fair game."
Perhaps it should have concerned Vanessa that she was actually discussing this with the killer. It was possible it would paint her in a different light with both Bishop and Haller. She was okay with that. If they really wanted to know she could explain why she was keeping up the discussion. The information she was getting was pertinent enough that she didn't think either would particularly mind or even maybe care. Most people would have been more argumentative than Vanessa was being, but there was no point in arguing. It would get her nowhere and she wanted to understand the thought process. She wanted to know what had led Caroline here.
The girl gave the faintest shake of her head. "Humans have a chance against humans. Against mutants, there is no level playing field. Not even for other mutants."
"I did what I could with what I had. To prevent as much damage as I could.
"My power took me this far, but it can't compare. In the end all I had was a sense of smell and the advantage of surprise."
* * *
Just as he was putting the journal down, the Quebecois caught sight of a bit of paper sticking out toward the back, which seemed strange. The journal itself seemed to start when she’d moved into the apartment in early 2010, but she hadn’t used even two thirds of the paper, so why should there be something extra at the back? Pulling the paper free, Jean-Paul found himself looking at what seemed to be an old print-out from CNN.com. It had been folded many times, the creases worn soft in spots, and he was careful as he unfolded it.
There was no second page attached, though, and Jean-Paul frowned again as he snapped a picture and folded the paper back up and fitted it into its spot in the journal. He’d done his job, at least. Whether or not he had anything of value on the camera... well. That was up to someone else to decide, he supposed. Which meant he’d be taking this information back to the others.
As he made sure everything was as it had been when he entered, Jean-Paul hoped that someone would be able to make sense of this girl who had survived such horror only to end up taking so much from others for no apparent reason. After turning out the lights, he unlocked the door and exited the apartment, then relocked it and left the building.
* * *
Relaying all this from the back of the chapel, Jim found himself physically nauseated. Part of it was the nature of the conversation and the girl's unnerving lack of emotion, but the aspect that pushed it over the edge was because, in a way, the girl was right.
She was a minor mutant, posing no more of a physical threat than a baseline human, yet she had been tracked down with empathy and magic, apprehended by two mutants with enhanced physical attributes, and was now being robbed even of her choice to maintain silence. She was a killer -- she had killed a child -- but even now they were proving her point. Against an organized group of mutants working with intent, Caroline had never stood a chance. The twisted motive had grown around a grain of truth -- and she met it all with a sense of absolute resignation that was somehow even worse than rage.
They had saved lives catching her. It would bring families closure, and lift the veil of fear. Jim didn't doubt for a minute that when lives were at stake, using every resource in your arsenal was fundamentally the right thing to do. But now, linked to this deadened, damaged girl's mind, he just felt sick.
Bishop looked from Caroline to Vanessa and back. "Have your mangled philosophy all you want, but when they execute you tell God he fucked up making mutants and that you know better, because I'm done listening to your bullshit." He stepped out of the line of benches and headed for the exit in back so he could call NYPD to tell them he had the killer in custody.
He looked to Haller on his way by, catching the expression. "There's never equality in violence." He offered as he saw the man considering all the ideas in the room.
"I know," Jim said, letting the link dissolve. It was clearly a dismissal, and it was a relief. He rose to leave with Bishop, stealing a glance back to the dome of light surrounding Vanessa and the killer. "But sometimes I have to wonder if there's equality in anything."
"Only in freedom. Can't regulate equality." Bishop looked to Haller and smiled for a moment, then stepped out of the church with him.
Vanessa stood at the opposite end of a pew from Laura thinking how handy Adrienne would have been in a situation like this. One touch to anything of the girl's and she would have been able to tell them anything they needed about its past with her. She wasn't sure she really would have asked her friend to do it given the horrific scenes she likely would have had to watch. The option would have been nice, though. Then Vanessa smiled. The girl wasn't looking at her but Laura was, and the look said the metamorph was up to something.
"I understand not talking. The physical evidence alone condemns you, why help? It's a shame, though, that we know where you've been staying. Even worse, you've clearly underestimated mutant abilities. After all, if you'd just answered the questions we wouldn't have had to send our associate to your place. He reads things by touch. Very handy in our line of work. One touch and he will know the entire history of an object. Even its future, set in stone and unchangeable. We'll know everything. The people who helped you get here. Even the ones who had no idea what you were or would become. Particularly the ones who did, though. And we will hunt every single one of them down in repayment for what you've done." Vanessa smiled, the expression almost sweet. Bluffing never did anyone any harm.
The killer had settled back in the pew as much as her bonds would allow, her head tilted back against a mouldering cushion. The girl's eyes slid over to Vanessa for a moment, then returned to their study of the chapel ceiling.
Legs crossed one over the other, Laura had gotten bored of watching over the woman already. It was as if she had given up entirely and now was simply waiting for it all to get over with. Did she think she could get away with it? It was unlikely, but her attitude was close to getting her and Laura didn't want to snap at the woman. "It's no use", said as she shrugged. "She just...doesn't talk. Or move. Or anything." She sighed; the killer was taking things better than her, apparently.
"She's a very dull piñata," Vanessa agreed as she dug her cell out of her pocket. She wasn't sure if it was vibrating because of a phone call or because of a text until she saw the display. Haller, Amanda and Meggan had arrived. Vanessa wondered for a moment if any of them could help break the young woman out of her silence. Amanda's magic probably didn't work that way, unfortunately. Red eyes flashed back up to Laura. "Cavalry's in. You've got this?" She nodded toward the thoroughly bound woman to indicate she was their "this."
A claw popped from Laura's right hand. "I don't think it will be needed, but the moment she gives me a reason to stop just watching her, I'll make sure she understands how serious this is." The claw retracted, as she had no intention on using it on the woman...but she felt like punching something already. "Just hurry up alright? I don't want this to get any creepier than it already is."
Vanessa looked from the killer to the girl she had come to think of as her protégé of sorts, a smile gracing her lips for just a moment. "Only stick her in non-lethal places," she warned with a nod. "I'll make it quick as possible." She cast one last look at the restrained young woman and then turned to head to the back of the church.
The girl never even turned her head.
Tucking his phone back into his pocket, Jim carefully stepped over a piece of roofing and scanned the church sanctuary. It probably hadn't been a miracle of architecture even before its abandonment, though it seemed good enough for the pigeons that had made their home near the rafters. Here and there hung the remnants of tarps, fluttering around holes where the roof had fallen through.
"I know that sometimes you've got to work with what you have," the telepath commented to Amanda, "but I have a hard time believing there wasn't a less creepy option."
"At least we won't be having anyone walking in on us," Amanda replied. She looked at her sister. "You know, Meg, you don't have to be here. You and I can wait in the car."
“No, it’s okay,” Meggan insisted. “I’d like to stay.” Even if the pigeons might be joining them down here soon. She wanted to know what happened, in the end—even if that meant just hanging back where she wasn’t a bother. Sitting out in the parking lot meant she wouldn’t find out much of anything that would answer the questions in her mind.
"I'm not sure where everyone is . . ." Jim looked back and did a double-take upon seeing the girl in the light of a broken window. "Meggan," he said, wiggling a finger near the crown of his head in a gesture usually associated with missed crumbs or an errant eyelash, "you still have some rust and . . . I think maybe traffic cone."
Meggan chuckled slightly in spite of the situation, before dutifully nodding. It was tough to see the spot he was indicating given its location, but after a second she had returned the general area to its regular color. She had thought she’d managed to get everywhere she’d shifted after getting back to her body, but obviously not—she’d taken care of the more apparent brick pattern neck, and grass colored ears straight away. “Thanks,” she whispered. “I don’t have traffic cone anywhere else that I can’t see?”
"There's a little bit above your right ear," Amanda pointed out, smiling despite herself as she reached over to touch the spot. "I know I keep saying it, but... be careful in there. With the empathy... I don't want you picking up anything from this nutjob."
She nodded, and the orange faded back to the regular pink of Meggan’s skin as Amanda’s finger pulled away. “I know. I’ll do the best I can not to,” Meggan promised. She thought she understood her sister's concern. It would be tough not to catch anything of the killer’s emotions, but she could try her hardest to filter small bits if it came to that.
"It'll be all right," Jim said. "If it becomes an issue, we'll--"
The counselor stopped abruptly as he saw something move in the darkness. His posture slowly shifted towards rigid and defensive . . . and then he saw the flash of red eyes. Jim relaxed, his right eye darkening back to blue.
"Vanessa," he said, relieved. Jack was nearer to the surface than he'd realized. Then again, that probably had something to do with bringing two young women to an abandoned church hosting a serial killer.
The minute upward quirk at the corners of her mouth was about as close to a smile as they were going to get under the circumstances. A nod followed. Vanessa was a little tense, more from restraining herself than from the actual presence of the killer. She had slaughtered an infant. That's what Vanessa kept coming back to. She had slaughtered an infant and Vanessa was not slaughtering her in return. Every instinct she had developed as a mercenary had to be held in check. Not so secretly, she hoped the chick twitched and wound up with one of Laura's claws lodged in her knee straight through her patella.
By time she had reached the trio the metamorph had forced herself to relax, letting go of the tension in her muscles slowly. She knew Amanda would see her doing it if she was paying attention. The blonde knew her a little too well to not realize the level of restraint Vanessa was covering up. "Haller," she nodded to him and then shifted over to look at the girls, "Meggan, Amanda. Thanks for your help. Your spell helped a lot and getting her in custody, so to speak, was easy once we found her. We couldn't have done it so quickly without your help."
Amanda nodded in return, the slight smile dropping as she remembered the taste of that mind, the city's slow-brewing anger and the risk they'd all taken. That Meg had taken. "I'm glad we could help," she replied. "So, what now?" She glanced briefly at Meggan and then lowered her voice. "Please tell me we're taking care of this permanently."
Comments like that were exactly why Vanessa loved Amanda. Hell, she could have kissed the blonde for saying that if it wouldn't be so damn inappropriate at the moment. A small shake of her head answered. "We're trying to find some answers right now but she'll be handed over to the cops all wrapped in a bow and proper like we ought to. And then she's got to face a New York jury. Bishop's making the appropriate calls." It was a slight fudging of the truth. Bishop was probably on the phone with Jean-Paul or Doug rather than the NYPD, but he'd be calling them soon enough.
Amanda's tone was not low enough for Jim to miss. He thought for a moment, then nodded. "Amanda, Meggan, I want to talk to Vanessa about something. Can you guys just hang out for a while?" He met Amanda's eyes here, then flicked his gaze meaningfully towards Meggan. He didn't have Amanda's intense protective streak towards the girl, but that didn't mean he would unnecessarily subject her to gory details and the expression on Vanessa's face made him a little concerned there may be a few. She was still a student, after all.
Besides, Meggan's mind had been so . . . bright. He didn't want to baby her, but he felt that quality was something worth preserving.
Amanda nodded, her gratitude clear to the telepath. "No problem," she said. "That okay with you, Meg?"
”We can do that, yeah," Meggan agreed. It wasn’t like being sent out to the car, where she’d be completely in the dark. The pews the furthest distance away were situated under that gaping hole in the ceiling, but what looked to be an old kitchen didn’t seem so bad. Well, at least from what she could see of it through the dusty door that had been left half open. "We’ll just go wandering through an old room?” She glanced at Amanda to confirm it was okay with her if they went in there.
"Looks fine," Amanda replied to the unspoken question. "After you. Just be careful about touching anything - this place looks a little rickety."
The door was, in fact, wobbly to the touch as Meggan made to open it, not to mention providing a creaking sound that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie. She was mostly surprised that it didn’t just fall off its hinges, given it was in such disrepair. The empath poked her head in for a good view, before turning back to Amanda. “Right. Watch out for the first giant cobweb, and a pile of pots and pans on the floor three steps in,” Meggan warned. With that, she ducked inside.
As soon as Jim was sure the two had left earshot, the counselor turned back to Vanessa.
"How's it going?" he asked, his voice only a touch lower than normal.
She answered with a groan. When Vanessa spoke her voice was hushed, the way it would be in a proper church where God still lived. He hadn't been here in some time though, Vanessa was sure. "That depends. No one's been injured so you could consider that to be things going well. She's not going to get away with the rope job someone did either so that is also a point in our favor." The metamorph sighed. "However, my love, that is where our favor ends. She has said precisely nothing since she more or less gave herself over to Jean-Paul and Laura, which I believe was right about when she realized trying to outrun the man was a futile effort. Bishop's got her cell and Doug's gotten her address from some concerted effort on their part. Jean-Paul is checking out her apartment but he's on the line with Bishop so I don't know if he's found anything particularly useful."
The telepath's forehead creased. "Rope job? . . . wait, is that legal? Holding her here?" God, he hadn't even thought about what would happen when she'd been located -- he suddenly had a mental image of the police showing up, finding a woman tied to a bench in an abandoned church by a group of mutants, and arresting X-Factor on principle.
"Uh..." The metamorph looked caught somewhere between guilty and uncertain. "It's a bit of a grey area. She willingly went with Jean-Paul and Laura. She let herself be tied up. It's like asking if bondage is legal. Her allowing it implies consent. She never explicitly stated consent but since you can argue that she did not fight it or state her lack of consent that it could be a good faith mistake."
"O . . . kay." Well, at least he wasn't the only one uncomfortable. "So if you guys get a confession from her now . . . would that be heresay, or what?"
"Grey area," she replied with far more certainty than her voice had held a moment ago. "As PIs we have a lot more leeway in how we get evidence and our shadier methods stand up better in court than if the cops did it the same way. We're not bound by their protocol and procedures. She's not technically under arrest since we didn't witness her committing a felony, which is the requirement for placing a citizen's arrest, so anything she tells us we can testify to under oath. That confession will hold some weight as long as we are credible witnesses. Bishop, as an ex-detective, is the most credible of us for obvious reasons. If she denies it under oath or gives the cops a contradictory statement then we've just got hearsay." Vanessa glanced toward the chapel. "If she says something to us but then goes mute with the cops again, well, then our testimony holds more weight."
The tall man thought for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. I guess it's not really my concern, I just don't know how this sort of thing is supposed to work." Jim looked back towards the kitchenette area, then sighed. "Either way, I'm glad you guys got to her before she could make another kill, with Meggan linked in like she was . . . though it's strange. Meg wasn't picking up anger, or hate. Not pleasure, either. There was purpose, and focus, but it was cold." The telepath folded his arms and looked askance at the metamorph. "When we rode the memory of Margaret Hoey's murder there wasn't even a sense of satisfaction. Maybe we just didn't dig enough, but . . . with no emotional spike beforehand and no payoff after, I almost think she has to be hired."
His words sent her rifling through her own memories. How had she felt when she had taken out a mark? It was the only comparison she could draw. Vanessa doubted - or perhaps hoped - that the telepath had no similar experience to draw from himself. "No satisfaction. Relief? Pride? I can't imagine there was simply nothing. It was always to have the job over with. Wet work didn't bother me much after the second or third time but I was always happy to have the job done. There was a feeling of...accomplishment," she made the word a question, "I guess. I'd made good on my word. The contract was completed. I'd get paid and move on. There was always some sort of emotion that came with that. At least for me. For the guys all I know for sure is that there was something of a tension or anxiety release. I find it hard to believe that a hired hand has no reaction whatsoever." Vanessa was almost clinical and detached as she spoke of her emotional pay off from killing people. Perhaps it should have bothered her more to speak about, or perhaps it should have at least bothered her that it did not bother her, but either way she was utterly relaxed over the topic.
"Me too. Shit, if this is some kind of psychic programming . . ." The telepath grimaced and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Though if it is, it seems bizarre that she'd have given herself up and then not talk. If programming was in place it'd make more sense to either tell her go down fighting, or else confess to throw the trail off whoever was controlling her."
"You'd know more about that than I would, likely. Brainwashing with telepathy isn't really the area of psychology that I've read up on." Vanessa considered the various angles of it as best she could. What would she do if she was going to telepathically brainwash someone into a killing spree? "Kill the evidence," she muttered. "Burn the evidence, kill yourself. Don't go down fighting but don't get caught either. That's what I would tell someone to do. Because even if you give a phony confession there's always a chance it gets tracked back to me, right? What if she's quiet because she has an escape plan? An ‘in’ on the NYPD, maybe? Or an in on the inside of a prison. She can get out, cover what tracks lead back to her puppet master and then either carry on elsewhere or take herself out of the equation via suicide or promotion within whatever organization she's with." A deep frown creased Vanessa's expression. "I don't like the potential implications of that. I like my confused lack of information better than that, even."
Looking back up at Haller, Vanessa quirked an eyebrow as a thought occurred to her. There were different flavors, if you will, of shapeshifting. Her shifting didn't work like Jake's or Catseye's, for example. Haller was a telepath but she wasn't sure which flavor he might have been. "Would you be able to figure out if it was? If she's been telepathically gag ordered or reprogrammed would you be able to figure it out by...scanning her mind or what have you?"
Jim wasn't too caught up in the ramifications of potential brainwashing to miss Vanessa's tone. The look he gave her was cautious. "I have experience with things like that, unfortunately, so yes," he replied. "It's not hard to spot if you know what you're looking for. Undoing it is where things get difficult."
She read the expression on his face easily and decided to be careful where she stepped with him. Different people had sensitive spots regarding their own mutations or the uses of them. Vanessa didn't have any regarding her own really but she watched people too much to not pick up on the caution written all over Haller's face. She wondered if it was maybe a degree of hesitancy as well. Jean would have agreed readily and contrasting his reaction with her likely reaction is where Vanessa started. She nodded to herself as she considered her next words. "We can work on figuring out rehab once we're sure that's what's going on. If that isn't what is up, though...I don't know what your personal rules are but if she's not brainwashed and she's not acting alone we need to know. If we don't know this starts up all over again with someone else doing the slaughtering. If we don't know what's motivating her we run the risk of endangering others while thinking we've made them safe. But she won't speak..."
A muscle in Jim's jaw twitched. "I'm . . . not really comfortable scanning minds without consent. I can't just go in and start digging." It was hard to explain why. It was normal for most telepaths to pick up stray thoughts, and in a way that almost diminished responsibility when privacy was invaded; perhaps when mindreading was like overhearing muffled conversations in the next room at the best of times using the power intentionally was simply making use of a natural advantage. But when your power was so twisted into itself your natural capacity for telepathic reception was almost nil, using the power felt different than just choosing to focus your attention. It made the invasion willful. Jim had suffered psychic intrusions; he took the distinction seriously.
But if he could help and didn't . . . christ, he was the one who'd asked the girls to go out of their comfort zones, and one of them hadn't even graduated yet. He could hold a lot of conflicting feelings at once, but even he found hypocrisy of this magnitude staggering. He took a deep breath and kneaded the spot between his eyebrows with his fingertips.
"If she's been psychically conditioned, there may not be much I can do without time," he said at last. "That's not the sort of thing you can just tear out, at least not without causing damage. If she's not . . . I can make a superficial link. It's how I deal with communications in the field. It doesn't go deep, but when you ask questions the answers tend to come to the surface of the mind whether or not the other person actually intends on saying anything, so if you lead I can funnel the response back to you. At the very least it will give you true/false readings."
Nodding along, Vanessa considered the options. He wasn't okay with going rooting around for information like Jean would have been. Vanessa stored that information for later and considered what that meant in light of his offer for a superficial link. "First, I want you to understand that I'm not one to push people into shit they don't want to do. So if you're not cool with anything other than figuring out if she's been tampered with telepathically or possibly more traditionally brainwashed then that's all you go on the hook for. I will figure out another way to get my answers. And if she's had her brain tampered with that's all we need, in a way. It gives us a reason beyond 'I like slaughtering muties and their infants.'" There was noticeable heat in her voice at the last, betraying some of the rage Vanessa held for the captive girl. Because of that rage she really would use any means necessary to get answers if Haller couldn't or wouldn't find them. She's probably have to ask the civilians to leave the building, though. Plausible deniability was a wonderful thing to have.
Jim shook his head. "No. I'm here. I'll do it." His voice was surer this time. He heard the smothered anger in the woman's voice, and understood. Mutants were dead. People were dead. And while knowing why would have provided some comfort, Jim suddenly realized that the important question was how. All those people, leading all those different lives . . . if someone had been pointing the girl towards her targets, there was no assurance they wouldn't continue on with another assassin. There was no excuse for a twenty-third victim.
I asked Meggan to get into her heart. How much less dangerous is a mind?
The look she gave him was critical. He sounded as certain as he looked on the matter. It was a moment that felt much longer than it was, but by the end of it she nodded. "Alright. We'll be glad of the help. So explain how the superficial link works, exactly. I ask a question, she thinks about the answer whether or not she intends to share it with me and you sort of filter that from her mind to mine and Bishop's or do you translate along the way? My concern here is losing nuance like you do in any game of telephone. Sometimes those small inflections and details you pass off as unimportant don't reveal their gravity until twenty minutes later." They could not afford to fuck this up and overlook something important just because things didn't click into place for them immediately.
The telepath rummaged around in his pocket and came out with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He drew out a cigarette and lit it. "That's basically how it works -- I act as a conduit between you and the killer. One way, in this case, though if you also want a closed link with Bishop so you can talk with him during I can do that, too." Jim took a drag. His demeanor had slid into clinical now that he had turned to a plan of action. "For her, I'll use about the same level of involvement I do when working through language barriers. A focus on intent. Think of what I'll pick up as . . . all right, imagine being in an argument with someone, and all the things you want to say, but hold back to spare their feelings. The first impulse, before it gets filtered. A lot of what we think and feel is like that, never making it to our mouths but still focused because you have to check yourself before you speak. That's what I'll give you, like you're hearing her speak it yourself." He took another thoughtful drag, then exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Sometimes, how people don't say something tells you a lot."
"Yes. Omission can be quite useful." She nodded. Hearing their killer speaking her truest, most unfiltered intent into their heads would get them far. Of course, the other side of the coin was that Vanessa wasn't sure she really wanted to be in that chick's head. For Vanessa there was a world of difference between killing someone in a war or because it was a job and doing it simply because you wanted to, because you felt just in doing so. Suddenly, she was quite hopeful the young woman was a hired hand.
Pulling herself from those thoughts, Vanessa shook her head a little to clear it and refocused on the man in front of her. "I don't think Bishop and I need a link, but we'll see what he says. I think we know one another well enough to work without it." She quirked a little half-smile at the telepath. "You work with what you're given, and since we don't have a handy telepath in our ranks we've been forced to rough it and learn one another's body language for cues. We're pretty good at it by now." A year working together at Snow Valley and almost a year working the private eye gig together had made them a well oiled pair of gears, actually.
Vanessa nodded to the end of the front hall in the opposite direction the girls had gone. "Shall we go find him and then get some answers about our girl?"
"I'll tell Amanda and Meggan what's going on," he said, "but then . . . yeah. For months this woman's been letting her actions speak for her." The telepath dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his boot, then turned back to Vanessa.
"Let's find out what it is she's been saying."
With his colleagues interrogating the suspect, Jean-Paul arrives at the apartment of a serial killer.
Speed and discretion were key for this portion of his job and Jean-Paul knew that - if she didn't talk, lives may or may not depend on the information he found in the girl’s apartment. All things considered, given the neighborhood, he wasn’t sure what he might find. He reminded himself that, above all else, appearances could be deceiving - that didn’t stop his misgivings from circling round and round inside his skull as he landed and approached the nondescript five-floor building where their admitted killer apparently lived.
The exterior was white - the Quebecois supposed that, given the city and the fact that it was in the Bronx, that might say some small thing about the quality of the tenets, but he wouldn’t have laid money on it. The ease with which he got inside and up the stairs spoke volumes.
Upon reaching her apartment, Jean-Paul made sure his feet were at least six inches off the floor and pulled his hands from his pockets. They were both gloved and one held the key Bishop had given him. Vanessa’s camera hung from his shoulder on a wide strap beneath his jacket, hidden from general view but accessible when he needed it.
Jean-Paul closed the door behind himself, relocking it quietly and then pausing so he could listen. He didn’t have superhuman hearing, but if there was someone in the apartment they’d have to move to see who’d come through the door - theoretically, anyway. When he didn’t hear anything or see movement... he nodded to himself and flipped on a light. There was a door directly to his left and, after opening it, he saw that it was simply a closet, nothing exceptional contained between the hanger for her winter coat and the vacuum cleaner on the floor. He took a picture anyway, then closed the closet door and moved cautiously forward.
There was a living room, sparsely furnished, and Jean-Paul would have gone so far as to guess that the furniture itself came with the apartment. It was all old, scuffed and ragged. The television was what he could safely qualify as ‘ancient,’ an interesting specimen complete with rabbit ears and a dial rather than buttons. Something about the place struck him as odd, and he couldn’t put his finger on it, but he narrowed his eyes as he walked around the room, turning on the lamp near the chair across from the antique television. He couldn’t see a telephone, she didn’t appear to have any DVDs or CDs, no radio or even VHS tapes. Opening the cabinets beneath the television confirmed that and the walls... that was what had struck him as odd - there was absolutely nothing on the walls.
The girl had been living in the city for long enough - there should have been something to mark this place as her own. A coffee cup with something obnoxious written on it, papers or magazines. Jean-Paul didn’t know what women her age were pasting on their walls these days, but he thought there should be something. Instead... just this strange emptiness. He took pictures of the things he noticed - rather, of the conspicuous lack of things - and then moved on.
Kitchens didn’t generally hold more information about someone than a living room, in Jean-Paul’s experience, but he found that he might have to revise his opinion on the matter. At least so far as this girl was concerned, anyway. The cabinets were virtually bare, holding only two plates, one glass, one set of cutlery, and no food. Newspapers had been piled on the counter, but he couldn’t see any particular order to them. They seemed a jumbled mess, some still in their plastic bags, others obviously leafed through. The refrigerator... didn’t seem to hold much more promise, considering the only thing on its front was a calendar. Jean-Paul snapped a picture of it, though, and then took a closer look - it was monthly and the girl had written place names and times in several of the boxes. It looked like meetings of some sort, though it took him a moment to parse her shorthand.
Tipping his head to the side, the Quebecois frowned a little. Narcotics Anonymous meetings. She seemed diligent about staying clean, if her calendar was any indication. In a pocket to the left of the main, monthly page, Jean-Paul found a multitude of take-out menus. He didn’t know any of the restaurants, but that wasn’t surprising, since he didn’t live in this part of town. Tucking the menus back in their pocket, he checked the ‘notes’ section of the calendar and found a phone number under the name ‘Thomas.’ Taking a closer picture of that, he frowned a little and opened the door.
There was... virtually nothing in the refrigerator. Only a few ketchup packets from fast food restaurants and similarly acquired packets of soy sauce. She didn’t even have anything to drink stored inside. Just the pilfered condiments. Closing that door, he opened the freezer and found out why she had nothing in the refrigerator - she had more frozen dinners stored up than he would have thought possible. Or palatable. That must be why she ate take-away so much, to shift up the variety.
A quick search of the lower cabinets proved his theory - she had no pots or pans, no cooking utensils. Even at his lowest point, he’d always had the things he might need to attempt to cook. The stove was clean - almost as though it was never used. The microwave, though, had spots of food in it that had popped while she was heating it. The drawers were similarly empty - he supposed with only the one set of cutlery, she didn’t need any of the drawers.
He almost missed the trashcan on his way out of the kitchen, a slightly confused frown still on his face. Jean-Paul paused, though, when he noticed it and sat on his heels to go through its contents, feet still not actually touching the floor. Bills, for the most part. Rent stubs indicating that her living fees had been automatically paid. The Quebecois took pictures of these, making sure to get the account numbers specifically because that sort of thing was usually important - especially because he’d seen no indication that the girl had a job she could use to support herself, even in a low-income housing complex like this.
Flipping through the rest of the bills, he continued to take pictures until he found what was beneath the bills, and then he frowned even more intensely. The antiseptic handwipes were mostly dry now, crumpled up and holding their shapes even as he drew one out of the waste bin. Who hid evidence of a crime like murder in the trashcan in their kitchen? Because, despite the dryness, the scent of lemons still wafted upward once the wipes were disturbed. Lemons and old blood - they were covered in splotches and smudges of blood that was obviously days past its prime.
Jean-Paul dropped the wipe after taking a picture, then covered the lot of them with the bills he’d been looking through and stood. There had been no evidence, thus far, of a second person being involved in the girl’s crimes, but he had more of her apartment to check and he needed to do it quickly - and someone had to be paying those bills.
The bathroom came next, dingy but unremarkable. The only thing that stood out in her medicine cabinet was a bottle of anti-anxiety pills, but he checked the label and found that the prescription had been filled in mid-2010, which meant she hadn’t been taking them for quite some time - there were still two pills left in the bottom of the bottle.
She had some make-up but nothing fancy, and her haircare products were cheap. According to the price on the bottom on the conditioner, she’d gotten them buy one get one half-off at the local drugstore and they’d only been 99 cents to begin with. There were no curling irons or hair driers, no perfumes or lotions - in short, nothing that a girl her age would likely have just tucked away in drawers.
After snapping pictures, Jean-Paul shook his head and moved on to what he assumed was either the main bedroom or the spare bedroom.
In the end, neither search nor interrogation yield the expected results.
The tableau in the chapel hadn't changed. There was the suspect, staring at the roof, and there was Laura, staring at the suspect. A few forgotten candles, their holders long since gone, had been lit and pressed onto the steps or pews with their own melted wax. Their soft light disguised the building's dilapidation, creating a warm, close dome. None were set close enough for the killer to have reached.
The girl's head moved towards the back of the chapel at the creak of feet on floorboards, but she didn't actually turn. The candlelight painted her loose hair like a halo.
Vanessa and Bishop, familiar faces to the young brunette, made their way into the chapel with yet another set of footsteps. It was easy to hear from the way the trio walked that their new addition wasn't a regular part of their roster. There was something just a touch out of sync about the third set compared to the others, but the suspect didn't have long to realize that. They had considered the pros and cons of Haller being seen and while in the end it likely wouldn't matter either way the investigators had chosen to take advantage of whatever psychological edge they could get. For that reason, in part, the third set of footsteps quickly died off.
Leaving the tall, wiry telepath to find a spot he liked, Vanessa and Bishop continued together, each step in perfect sync with one another despite the half foot height advantage the ex-detective had on the ex-mercenary. A hand went to the lower back of their suspect's guard, the gesture in and of itself relieving Laura from duty. Vanessa whispered quietly enough that most people wouldn't have heard her without her lips at their ear but the feral heard her just fine. With a nod the young woman had set off toward the back of the chapel, taking her leave. Vanessa, on the other hand, walked down the pew in front of Caroline's. She found a spot more or less right in front of the girl and hopped up to sit on the back of the bench in front of it, feet bracing on the edge of the one in front of their captive. All she did was smile, quite benevolently at that, and give the girl a small wave.
While the girl's attention was on the two investigators, Jim took a seat on the floor at the back of the chapel. The carpet was moldering and smelled it, and some of the debris that had gathered against the wall contained the mummified remains of vermin, but it didn't matter. A few deep breaths, and the telepath's attention was on the first order of business: culpability.
The killer's mind offered no unusual resistance -- not even the sort of rudimentary shielding techniques that could be taught to the mindblind. Cautiously, Jim felt for signs of tampering. Even skilled telepaths left traces if you knew where to look, like stitching of a slightly different shade in a mended garment . . . but Jim felt nothing. Her natural defenses were easily evaded but intact, with no telltale holes or scar tissue evident. Whatever she had done, it had been of her own will.
In a way, it was worse knowing that for a certainty.
The telepath took a deep breath. #Her mind is clear,# he reported to Bishop and Vanessa. #Ask your questions.#
The girl, oblivious to the psychic eavesdropper or the silent communication happening around her, simply watched the metamorph sitting on the pew before her.
The door opened slowly and the light that he’d turned on in the living room shone through, leaving his shadow to fall across what seemed to be... arms and legs. Many, many arms and legs, carelessly discarded. Drifting forward, the Quebecois nudged one with the toe of his boot and found it to be... hollow.
Mannequin arms and legs. He could see the knobs that were used to attach them to the bodies. Sitting on his heels again, still hovering, he nudged the leg with a gloved fingertip, causing it to roll over. On the inside of the thigh... he found what seemed to be slashes or gouges, often very deep. It looked like the sort of thing you’d get after repeatedly striking it with a knife.
Jean-Paul checked the foot to see which leg he was looking at, but he wasn’t surprised to find it was the left one. Looking up, he found the light switch and turned on the overhead light. The illumination fell on a room... almost entirely barren, save the various mannequin parts scattered haphazardly off to the sides. But not entirely barren. In the center of the room stood a complete mannequin and to his left were two more, all three in varying positions. One was simply standing, another poised as though to run, and the third crouched in something resembling a defensive position.
Upon closer inspection, he found that they all had similar markings on their left legs. Considering that was one of the wounds inflicted on the victims, Jean-Paul thought this was all fairly damning evidence. Damning evidence that... the girl had gone to absolutely no lengths to hide. It was just like the antiseptic wipes in the kitchen - who left their practice dummies assembled in their spare room? What kind of person could do these things and... just see nothing wrong with it? Even psychopaths and sociopaths attempted to hide the evidence of their crimes. And they taunted the police.
Bishop sat back across from the young killer, next to Vanessa's perch. "Caroline, I believe we got off to the wrong start. I'm Bishop and this is my partner Bobbi Badalandabad. We're the mutant detectives from X-Factor and we're working your case, mostly because the NYPD don't give a fuck about mutants. I'd like to take your statement, for the sake of being thorough. We can see that you did these killings, that's a lock. I'm interested in knowing two things: how you did all this and why. Serial killing is death penalty territory and I suggest you give me your statement because it might help you avoid it. If you have anything you want to be made known to the news, I'd be willing to do that as well. NYPD will not give you that offer." Just because they had no grounds for taking her statement and anything they got from her would be inadmissible didn’t mean she realized that.
The girl's brown eyes shifted to Bishop.
"I wonder why he keeps offering me a chance to explain."
Her expression hadn't changed, but the words arrived in the investigators' heads without passage through the ears. Accompanying the thought was a vague sense of curiosity, as if the prospect held no importance for her.
Bishop didn't use anymore of his new information yet, instead only locking eyes with her to stare back. He knew what she thought now and he accepted the possibility that, if uninterrupted but kept on track with his presence, she may unwittingly answer the questions for them.
Vanessa sighed. Bishop's stoicism really was less than productive at times. "Not speaking won't do you any favors," Vanessa said, a little unimpressed with her partner. "The cops might think you're something of a hero. Some of them anyway. But they can't get away with showing it. There are plenty of mutants locked up in jail, though. The very sorts of people you've been hunting down? They'll be in there with you." She smiled faintly. "And they'll find out pretty quickly who you are, why you're in." Vanessa gave a careless shrug. "If you don't want to survive the night then that's fine. But if you do, you might wanna speak up so you don't accidentally get thrown in with a mutant with an anger management problem."
No surprise or fear in her mind. "That's okay. I was lucky to get as far as I did."
As her gaze shifted from one mutant to the next, the image of their eyes washed into their minds: Bishop's, dark and gleaming in the candlelight, and Vanessa's, unreadable pools of blood red.
"You were always going to find me in the end."
Jean-Paul shook his head, remembering the way she’d simply... gone along with them. She’d just said ‘alright’ and that had been that. No struggle, no monologuing, no recriminations. She hadn’t even put up a fight when he’d tied her to the pew in the church. Shaking his head as he continued taking pictures, the Quebecois attempted to push his considerations about the girl from his mind. He knew one thing - it took a certain kind of person to plan and execute the sorts of murders she’d committed. It took a certain kind of person and, given the slaughter he knew he’d caused, it said something that he found himself as unnerved as he was by this room.
He found large quantities of shredded fabric, discarded much like the pieces of the mannequins, though it took Jean-Paul a few moments to come up with a theory about the fabric. It wasn’t until he saw the old denim strung between something that looked almost like an embroidery hoop that he realized she had to have been testing something. The material ranged from corduroy to cotton and back to denim and it had all been slashed - perhaps she’d been testing the strength of the fabrics. Or perhaps she’d been testing her own strength to see how much force it would take her to cut through to skin. Perhaps both.
The last photograph that he took was an up-close shot of what appeared to be a linoleum knife embedded in the shoulder of the mannequin in the middle of the room. He’d leave it to Vanessa to pinpoint the specific type, since knives were more her area of expertise than his, and move on to the next room. He made sure to turn off the light and close the door behind him, then resolved to not think about what that room might say about the girl they had in custody.
"Lucky to get that far. So you did it, and I'm guessing just because they were mutants. And self destructive, at that. Death by mutant?" Bishop wasn't personally curious now that he knew she was the killer and a bigot. He was very interested in gaining a full confession for professional purposes.
For the first time there was a flicker of surprise in the killer's eyes, even as the reply floated to the surface of her mind. "They were mutants. It would've been over the day I met one who was invulnerable or mind-readers." A wash of realization followed an instant later. "Mind-readers. They're reading my mind." The faint surprise evaporated.
"Death by mutant it is." Bishop stood, preparing to leave. "You should confess. It would go a long way to helping the humans you hurt as collateral heal. If you cared about any humans at all you'd ease their fears."
"There's always collateral damage." But an image of the girl who'd walked in on Laura and Jean-Paul as they cornered her in the club bathroom rose to her mind, and with it the decision she had made not to call for help. To not risk the building being brought down around them because the mutants had finally found her.
"Always collateral damage. You'll get to read about it in the paper, 'Mutants in District X riot. Annihilation of people like never seen before.' A bomb doesn't have much on some of the guys I know." Bishop looked down to her, using his position to become imposing, wanting to further her fear of mutants for his final ploy. "They wouldn't stop when they found who you were working with or how you chose your victims, if they ever did find out. The damage would be done by then and it would be war."
This time, the girl's stare actually held a hint of puzzlement. "Who I'm working with?"
"Didn't lottery your victims. Most weren't openly mutants," was the factual reply to her unspoken question.
The girl studied Bishop's face. "No one had to tell me who they were," came her thoughts.
"I can smell you."
They were the first words she had spoken since the interrogation began. They were soft and matter-of-fact, as if noting a stray eyelash on Bishop's cheek. She held his eyes with her own, solemn and calm.
A white eyebrow raised for a moment, then fell again. Vanessa considered their captive in a new light. She could smell mutants? "So you're either delusional but lucky to have not hit a human by accident, delusion but painstakingly meticulous to confirm your suspicions before striking or," she trailed off. Vanessa let the moment of silence hang as a whisper of a smile touched with amusement graced her lips. "Or you're exactly the sort of person you've been hunting. A mutant. Who passes for human."
The girl's gaze shifted to the blue-skinned woman. The accusation had no visible effect. With a kind of detached serenity she met Vanessa's eyes with the thought: "I never said I wasn't."
It didn’t take him any time at all to fly over to the other bedroom. He turned on the light, attempting to distance himself from what he might find there - only... there was really nothing extraordinary to be found. At least not on the surface of things. Again, the girl had personalized nothing in the room - no hangings, no pictures or artwork. There was a complete lack of knickknacks, even.
Her bed was simple, obviously old and the mattress sagged in the middle. The pillows, like everything else, were worn and the sheets were drab. There was a blanket at the end of the bed, but it was thin, almost like something from a hospital, and it likely wouldn’t have done much to provide actual warmth. There was nothing of interest beneath the bed, no boxes full of memorabilia, no loose boards to pull up. Admittedly, pulling up a loose board while hovering over the floor wouldn’t have been particularly easy - lack of leverage - so he was almost glad that she’d maintained such an austere living space.
He found clothing in her closet that seemed appropriate for her age, but most of it was worn, likely picked up from second-hand shops he’d guess, and it was obvious from the way the dirty clothing was simply piled in a corner that she didn’t care for the clothing in general. It was like they didn’t matter. He supposed, when you went out killing people, your clothing wasn’t necessarily the most important thing on your mind.
Even though he gave it a cursory yet thorough search, Jean-Paul found nothing at all that resembled a trophy. Serial killers usually kept trophies, he thought. But she had nothing, not even clippings from newspapers where the deaths had been announced. There were no pictures, no photographs as though she had stalked them, no indication as to why she’d picked the people she picked. He’d seen a documentary once that showed how killers sometimes kept shrines or a sort hidden to glorify the murders they committed... but he found none of that.
Vanessa couldn't help but be fascinated by the young brunette. "You know, some people would assume that's a hell of a lot of self-loathing on your part, but you don't strike me as the sort." A quirk of her mouth hinted at a grin that wanted to start. "Self-loathers tend to feel it. All the fucking time, actually. Bit annoying really. You don't strike me as the emotive, self-hate kinda girl." The question about whether or not she was right was left unasked.
"Maybe once." The thought was threaded with another echo. A group of voices, speaking in unison: "God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
"But not now?" She made no mention of the serenity prayer or it's obvious link to Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous groups. As much as she disliked what the girl had done, at her heart Vanessa was so used to studying people that she couldn't help but want to study her strange thought process. She wondered if Haller picked up on that or if he was only filtering stuff to her head rather than picking up anything she thought as well. It didn't matter either way really.
"Reality is reality. There's no point hating what you can't change."
Despite it all, Vanessa smiled and dipped her head in a small nod. "Some people never learn that." Her head cocked to the side while she tried to piece together the sort of logic that would lead someone to hunt and kill mutants when she didn't despise herself for being a mutant. After all, being a mutant she couldn't change. So she'd done something she could change. What change was she trying for, though? "But changing what you hate, that's different isn't it?"
The girl's eyes shifted, lingering on Bishop's face before returning to Vanessa's. "I don't hate mutants. I know they're not all criminals.
"But we're too dangerous."
Vanessa nodded. She understood that all too well, actually. Her own mutation wasn't defensive or offensive in and of itself. Having to fight someone with legitimate super powers would have her well out of her league. It was something she had come to terms with long ago. Traditional weaponry was all that she had to level the playing field between herself and someone like Bishop or Garrison or Jean-Paul. Her friends could take her out before she could blink if she didn't see it coming. "So're people. Some turn bad. Some don't. Should someone go around killing people because they might be dangerous? They might slaughter people? Might become serial killers? A lot of the things you use to destroy can be used to create, too. Fire burns and it purifies. Should you eradicate fire because someone may get burnt? What if you put out the only one that could keep someone from freezing to death? And you'll never know it."
The girl looked her dead in the eye. "And a good person's power could still destroy an entire city."
He photographed the brushes and other usual grooming tools that girls had, then focused on the two unpackaged knives. They were like the one he’d seen in the spare bedroom still stuck in the mannequin. Next to the knives sat a jewelry box. It didn’t look particularly expensive, a theory proven when he lifted the lid and found it to be made of thin pieces of light wood, easy to break. There was a chip there, though, that looked as though it had come from her Narcotics Anonymous group. He also found a small gold cross on a chain which he lifted out of the box and set next to the NA chip. Beneath that, he found a letter, its paper folded into fourths, which he opened. It read:
| Caroline, I'm writing to tell you how sorry I am for breaking off contact. You must be angry with me. I want you to know that I wasn't doing it to punish you, or because I stopped loving you. I just couldn't enable your addiction any longer. I couldn't watch you kill yourself. The last few years were hard for both of us, and I didn't know what else to do. I was selfish. I wasn't there for you when you needed me, and I can't imagine how painful that must have been for you. I hope you can understand, even if you can't forgive me. I wish I could make it up to you. The advocate told me you're almost one year sober now, and that you're doing well. I am so happy to hear you've gotten your life together. I won't push, but I hope you'll call me. I'd like to start over. Love, always, Mom July 1, 2010 |
After taking a picture of the letter, he refolded it and tucked it back into the box, then laid the other contents atop it and closed the lid. What a strange thing, to feel a sudden spike of sympathy for the girl who had killed so many. Jean-Paul wasn’t even sure she deserved his sympathy, but he couldn’t help feeling it.
Moving on, he returned to her desk and went over the items there more carefully, photographing the Bible, the girl’s name embossed on the cover, and the notebook that she’d apparently used as a journal. Jean-Paul flipped through the pages, taking a picture of each even as he skimmed them himself. While there was no mention of a partner, there was also nothing to indicate that the girl was completely insane. The juxtaposition of one topic with another was strange, though she didn’t ramble about hearing voices or anything odd. It was simply incongruous, the way she would talk about going to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and then finding old mannequins to practice on. As though... her killing was completely normal and, thus, it was obvious that she would have to find the mannequins after her meeting.
The way some girls wrote about going to the movies or going out with friends, these things that people took for granted - that was the way she seemed to speak of her life despite the fact that others would most certainly think it out of the ordinary.
For a moment nothing further came, and then the girl spoke again.
"No way to predict who becomes a mutant," the killer said in that same quiet, inflectionless tone. "No oversight when they do. No criteria for what power goes to who. Dangerous mutations. Lethal mutations. Some uncontrollable. Some mutants can mean the best and still kill. And if not them, maybe their children."
"There's no oversight to who buys a knife," Vanessa pointed out, clearly referring to Caroline herself. "Anyone can pull a trigger. Shoot up an entire school. Build a bomb with mundane materials. Poison. Mutations may make people more inherently and immediately dangerous than a normal human, but humans can all too easily destroy one another. The holocaust took a lot of people to pull off, but they sure as hell pulled off genocide. Mutants are just another piece on the board. They may be the big guns but not all of them. Not even most of them. Most are as harmless as humans. Maybe you're cool with being a bigot, but I prefer to be more equal opportunity about taking out dangerous foes. Humans are just as fair game."
Perhaps it should have concerned Vanessa that she was actually discussing this with the killer. It was possible it would paint her in a different light with both Bishop and Haller. She was okay with that. If they really wanted to know she could explain why she was keeping up the discussion. The information she was getting was pertinent enough that she didn't think either would particularly mind or even maybe care. Most people would have been more argumentative than Vanessa was being, but there was no point in arguing. It would get her nowhere and she wanted to understand the thought process. She wanted to know what had led Caroline here.
The girl gave the faintest shake of her head. "Humans have a chance against humans. Against mutants, there is no level playing field. Not even for other mutants."
"I did what I could with what I had. To prevent as much damage as I could.
"My power took me this far, but it can't compare. In the end all I had was a sense of smell and the advantage of surprise."
Just as he was putting the journal down, the Quebecois caught sight of a bit of paper sticking out toward the back, which seemed strange. The journal itself seemed to start when she’d moved into the apartment in early 2010, but she hadn’t used even two thirds of the paper, so why should there be something extra at the back? Pulling the paper free, Jean-Paul found himself looking at what seemed to be an old print-out from CNN.com. It had been folded many times, the creases worn soft in spots, and he was careful as he unfolded it.
| FINAL VICTIMS LOCATED IN CORONADO HOTEL July 8, 2006 After three days, recovery efforts have been come to an end at a 4 storey Coronado hotel. Many homes and businesses were left devastated in the wake of last week's magnitude-8.3 earthquake, leaving hundreds trapped and others injured or dead. When the Evergreen Hotel's top three floors came crashing down it left 37 people trapped, authorities said. "We just located the 37th trapped victim," Coronado Fire Department spokesman Roberto Vasquez said about 9:45 a.m. Saturday. "He's been confirmed dead." Edward Alito, 42, was pronounced dead on the scene. A resident of North Castle, New York, Alito had been vacationing in Coronado with his family. He is the last of the hotel's 18 fatalities, most of whom were guests staying on the upper floors. Remarkably, the Alitos' 17 year old daughter Caroline was found alive and virtually unscathed only a few feet from her father. Alito's wife reports she received a call her daughter made while awaiting rescue. "Her cell phone was still working," said Alito's wife Judith, who managed to evacuate before the building's collapse. "She kept saying 'Mom, dad's hurt. Please tell them to hurry.' She called a few more times, but her battery died, and it took three days for anyone to get them out." Caroline Alito was flown to a nearby hospital for observation. Rescuers report she was weak but stable. Alito and his daughter were the last of the staff and guests unaccounted for, Vasquez said. "It's like a nightmare," said Evergreen manager Eaton Spence, 54. "These were people on vacation for the Fourth of July. There were families here. Before this happened I didn't even have an opinion on mutants. Now I do." Spencer is referring to the mutant terrorist known as Magneto, who allegedly incited the devastating quake on July 5th. 1 | 2 | Next |
There was no second page attached, though, and Jean-Paul frowned again as he snapped a picture and folded the paper back up and fitted it into its spot in the journal. He’d done his job, at least. Whether or not he had anything of value on the camera... well. That was up to someone else to decide, he supposed. Which meant he’d be taking this information back to the others.
As he made sure everything was as it had been when he entered, Jean-Paul hoped that someone would be able to make sense of this girl who had survived such horror only to end up taking so much from others for no apparent reason. After turning out the lights, he unlocked the door and exited the apartment, then relocked it and left the building.
Relaying all this from the back of the chapel, Jim found himself physically nauseated. Part of it was the nature of the conversation and the girl's unnerving lack of emotion, but the aspect that pushed it over the edge was because, in a way, the girl was right.
She was a minor mutant, posing no more of a physical threat than a baseline human, yet she had been tracked down with empathy and magic, apprehended by two mutants with enhanced physical attributes, and was now being robbed even of her choice to maintain silence. She was a killer -- she had killed a child -- but even now they were proving her point. Against an organized group of mutants working with intent, Caroline had never stood a chance. The twisted motive had grown around a grain of truth -- and she met it all with a sense of absolute resignation that was somehow even worse than rage.
They had saved lives catching her. It would bring families closure, and lift the veil of fear. Jim didn't doubt for a minute that when lives were at stake, using every resource in your arsenal was fundamentally the right thing to do. But now, linked to this deadened, damaged girl's mind, he just felt sick.
Bishop looked from Caroline to Vanessa and back. "Have your mangled philosophy all you want, but when they execute you tell God he fucked up making mutants and that you know better, because I'm done listening to your bullshit." He stepped out of the line of benches and headed for the exit in back so he could call NYPD to tell them he had the killer in custody.
He looked to Haller on his way by, catching the expression. "There's never equality in violence." He offered as he saw the man considering all the ideas in the room.
"I know," Jim said, letting the link dissolve. It was clearly a dismissal, and it was a relief. He rose to leave with Bishop, stealing a glance back to the dome of light surrounding Vanessa and the killer. "But sometimes I have to wonder if there's equality in anything."
"Only in freedom. Can't regulate equality." Bishop looked to Haller and smiled for a moment, then stepped out of the church with him.
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Date: 2011-06-05 01:15 pm (UTC)Great sequence, guys. I love the way the two scenes are presented. Kudos.