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tamingthemuseTitle : Mahogany
Fandom : original work
Prompt 400 Mahogany
Warnings : dead people ahead, first draft of a work in progress
Rating : PG13
Summary : it was a case like many others. Except it wasn't.
A/N : that would totally need to be reworked, if only because the continuity is a little bit deficient.
We had questionned every single person having been present at the party, and nobody had seen anything. It was disheartening to say the least. How could someone die during such a big gathering, without leaving any trace in the others's mind ? It didn't say anything too good about nowadays society, and it was a big pain in the ass for the investigation.
I met Alexander outside the place, where he was talking with one of the members of the crime scene unit. I recognized Aaron McPherson, the Scottish head of the unit, whom his accent and efficiency had earned the nickname of Scotty. I joined them in the middle of an educated commentary of the last figure skating competition of the county. I nodded toward Scotty when I reached them, and let them finish their conversation in silence. I don't understand anything in figure skating, and I don't intend to change anything about that.
After a few more sentences on the subject, the two men went back to the case.
"The body is on it's way to the morgue", Scotty said. "From first observation, I'd say the victim has fought his murderer before being stabbed in the heart with a pointy and round object. It's a pretty precise wound, not likely to be an accident."
Alexander frowned. "When you say 'pointy and round', do you mean something like a stake ?"
"Something like that, yes. I'll be able to tell you more when the body'll be on my table, but yeah, that's the kind of wound a stake could do."
"Does it sound 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' to you too ?", my colleague asked me. I shrugged.
"Aren't the vampires suppose to disappear when they're dead ?", I pointed, ready to play the supernatural crime game for a few seconds. The possibility that the murder had been somwhat influenced by mythological believes wasn't tobe excluded either. Not with such a strange crime weapon.
"They do on TV, but who knows ? Maybe they don't in real life", Alexander continued.
"We're gonna have to ask a real vampire, then", I added, before getting back to more serious matters. "Nothing else you found strange, Scotty ?"
"Not yet. The team is packing samples right now. I should be able to tell you more tomorrow", the forensic said.
With the body taken away, and the name and first statement of every person there recorded, there was nothing more we could do here. I turned toward Alexander, who had reached the same conclusion.
"Coffee and identity checking ?", he offered with a smile.
"In that order", I answered, and after a last goodbye to Scotty, we walked to Alex's car, ready for an early morning of work.
The victim's name was Agnes Marquez. She was a martial arts instructor at the local dojo. Her criminal record was clean, not even a fine for driving under influence. She was an example of the model citizen. And yet she was dead. Someone clearly had a reason to hate her enough to stake her in the heart. You needed to be more than a little angry to kill someone this way.
Alexander and I built a list of the person we needed to question regarding the case. All of Marquez's closest relationships needed to be screened. One of them must have known if someone had resented her enough to have come to such an extremity.
The sun had been up for a couple of hours when Scotty called us and asked us to come down to the morgue. I don't like going down there, but in my line of work, it's an obligation I can't really escape. The underground looked like the inside of an hospital, with bright white corridors cleaned up with some strong antiseptic.
Scotty was waiting for us in the examination room, where the body of Marquez was lying on a table, already sewn up after the autopsy. The legist had once called us to see something inside a body, before he put it back together. I had nearly thrown my breakfast up on the corpse, and it had never happened again. I'm a tough woman, and a competent detective, but there was a reason I hadn't taken up medicine in college.
"The examination confirmed what I told you outside the club", Scotty greeted us when we went through the door. "This young lady has been stabbed in the heart by a pointy object. The stab was precisely done, without any sign of hesitation. Only one strike. The person on the other side of the stake knew what he was doing. I can also tell you that it's more likely to be man, or a very strong woman. It requires a great amount of strength to stab someone to reach the heart."
Alexander and I looked at the body for a second. She looked peaceful, outside of the dark wound she had on the chest.
"Do you have any idea of the shape of the weapon ?", Alexander asked, looking up to meet the legist's eyes.
"Round and pointy, one inch and a half of diameter for the widest part to have gone through the body. Not sur about the length. What I'm sure about, though", and he turned back toward the rolling table were his tools were neatly disposed to take a transparent round box, "is that it was a wooden stake. Mahogany, to be precise. Probably grossly sharped with a knife, from the pieces I found in the wound. Untreated wood, no polish."
We leaned forward to look at the wood pieces in the box.
"Could it have been made from something at the club?", I asked, frowning.
"I highly doubt it", Scotty replied. "Wood used for furnitures and buildings are generally treated against bugs and weather. This one wasn't. It looks like it was been taken directly from a tree to make it into a weapon."
"It must have been premedited, then", Alexander deadpanned. I nodded. Someone had deliberately taken a branch to make a weapon to bring at a club and kill Agnes. But why ? There was more efficient ways to murder someone. More readily available means. The more we learned about the case, the more it looked like it was personal.
"And it's not even the strangest thing I found", Scotty then said, and we looked back at him. What could be stranger than a wooden stake as a murder weapon ?
Seeing our suprised face, the legist went on : "I've noticed the blood around the wound have a peculiar coloration. Not the kind that could be explained by the stabbing. The blood in the extremities is normal, though. My theory is that there had been some sort of poison on the stake. I've sent samples to be analyzed. The results should tell us what kind of poison it was."
"All of this is speaking about premeditation", Alexander commented rather blankly. I nodded. It was highly unlikely someone had found a stake made out of untreated mahogany and dipped in poison lying around when he had a sudden urge to kill Agnes. It was time to go and talk to her closest relations.
"Thanks, Scotty", I said while we moved to leave the examination room. "Give us a call when you get the results."
"Aye, Captain", he replied cockily, before going back to his daily routine.
Our primary investigation hadn't shown any known relative of Agnes'. Her parents were deceased, and she had no siblings. No other family member could have been found. Yet she was part of a close community living in a big ranch outside the city. Some kind of hippy group, that was looked upon with contempt and wariness by the locals, but never did anything to attract official attention.
I was a teenager when the community had come to settle in the old McAllister ranch. The previous owner had died a few months before and his only daughter, a fashionable stylist that had made a name for herself in Philadelphia, had put the property on sale as soon as the funeral was over. She had had no intention whatsoever to ever come back in town. When Lupita Lawson had offered her the price she wanted for the ranch, she hadn't had the slightest hesitation, had signed the papers up, and had gone back to her rich husband and dazzling career. It had been the talk of the town for weeks ; how could a local girl have turned her back on her roots like this ? The old McAllister would have been so disappointed to see that, the ranch he loved so much taken over by hippies while his own flesh and blood definitively throw it all away.
It was the first time I passed the wooden gates of the property, and I would be lying if I didn't say I would have like it to be under better circumstances. As soon as we got out of the car, Alexander and I were greeted by a friendly-looking middle aged woman that I vaguely recognised as being the owner of one of the local bookshops. She, however, knew who we were.
"Officer Johnson, Officer Griffins", she saluted us while going down the few steps leading to the main door. "What a pleasure to see you here ? Can I help you with something ?"
Alexander and I exchanged a quick glance, and we both put on our best grave faces.
"We've understood that Agnes Marquez lived here", Alexander said.
"Well, yes, she is a member of our community", the woman replied cheerfully, though her expression had faltered for a second at my colleage's use of the past. "But I'm afraid she isn't here for the moment."
"Madam, is there a place where we could discuss more privately ?", I asked, not wanting to break her the news in the middle of the front yard.
Fandom : original work
Prompt 400 Mahogany
Warnings : dead people ahead, first draft of a work in progress
Rating : PG13
Summary : it was a case like many others. Except it wasn't.
A/N : that would totally need to be reworked, if only because the continuity is a little bit deficient.
We had questionned every single person having been present at the party, and nobody had seen anything. It was disheartening to say the least. How could someone die during such a big gathering, without leaving any trace in the others's mind ? It didn't say anything too good about nowadays society, and it was a big pain in the ass for the investigation.
I met Alexander outside the place, where he was talking with one of the members of the crime scene unit. I recognized Aaron McPherson, the Scottish head of the unit, whom his accent and efficiency had earned the nickname of Scotty. I joined them in the middle of an educated commentary of the last figure skating competition of the county. I nodded toward Scotty when I reached them, and let them finish their conversation in silence. I don't understand anything in figure skating, and I don't intend to change anything about that.
After a few more sentences on the subject, the two men went back to the case.
"The body is on it's way to the morgue", Scotty said. "From first observation, I'd say the victim has fought his murderer before being stabbed in the heart with a pointy and round object. It's a pretty precise wound, not likely to be an accident."
Alexander frowned. "When you say 'pointy and round', do you mean something like a stake ?"
"Something like that, yes. I'll be able to tell you more when the body'll be on my table, but yeah, that's the kind of wound a stake could do."
"Does it sound 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' to you too ?", my colleague asked me. I shrugged.
"Aren't the vampires suppose to disappear when they're dead ?", I pointed, ready to play the supernatural crime game for a few seconds. The possibility that the murder had been somwhat influenced by mythological believes wasn't tobe excluded either. Not with such a strange crime weapon.
"They do on TV, but who knows ? Maybe they don't in real life", Alexander continued.
"We're gonna have to ask a real vampire, then", I added, before getting back to more serious matters. "Nothing else you found strange, Scotty ?"
"Not yet. The team is packing samples right now. I should be able to tell you more tomorrow", the forensic said.
With the body taken away, and the name and first statement of every person there recorded, there was nothing more we could do here. I turned toward Alexander, who had reached the same conclusion.
"Coffee and identity checking ?", he offered with a smile.
"In that order", I answered, and after a last goodbye to Scotty, we walked to Alex's car, ready for an early morning of work.
The victim's name was Agnes Marquez. She was a martial arts instructor at the local dojo. Her criminal record was clean, not even a fine for driving under influence. She was an example of the model citizen. And yet she was dead. Someone clearly had a reason to hate her enough to stake her in the heart. You needed to be more than a little angry to kill someone this way.
Alexander and I built a list of the person we needed to question regarding the case. All of Marquez's closest relationships needed to be screened. One of them must have known if someone had resented her enough to have come to such an extremity.
The sun had been up for a couple of hours when Scotty called us and asked us to come down to the morgue. I don't like going down there, but in my line of work, it's an obligation I can't really escape. The underground looked like the inside of an hospital, with bright white corridors cleaned up with some strong antiseptic.
Scotty was waiting for us in the examination room, where the body of Marquez was lying on a table, already sewn up after the autopsy. The legist had once called us to see something inside a body, before he put it back together. I had nearly thrown my breakfast up on the corpse, and it had never happened again. I'm a tough woman, and a competent detective, but there was a reason I hadn't taken up medicine in college.
"The examination confirmed what I told you outside the club", Scotty greeted us when we went through the door. "This young lady has been stabbed in the heart by a pointy object. The stab was precisely done, without any sign of hesitation. Only one strike. The person on the other side of the stake knew what he was doing. I can also tell you that it's more likely to be man, or a very strong woman. It requires a great amount of strength to stab someone to reach the heart."
Alexander and I looked at the body for a second. She looked peaceful, outside of the dark wound she had on the chest.
"Do you have any idea of the shape of the weapon ?", Alexander asked, looking up to meet the legist's eyes.
"Round and pointy, one inch and a half of diameter for the widest part to have gone through the body. Not sur about the length. What I'm sure about, though", and he turned back toward the rolling table were his tools were neatly disposed to take a transparent round box, "is that it was a wooden stake. Mahogany, to be precise. Probably grossly sharped with a knife, from the pieces I found in the wound. Untreated wood, no polish."
We leaned forward to look at the wood pieces in the box.
"Could it have been made from something at the club?", I asked, frowning.
"I highly doubt it", Scotty replied. "Wood used for furnitures and buildings are generally treated against bugs and weather. This one wasn't. It looks like it was been taken directly from a tree to make it into a weapon."
"It must have been premedited, then", Alexander deadpanned. I nodded. Someone had deliberately taken a branch to make a weapon to bring at a club and kill Agnes. But why ? There was more efficient ways to murder someone. More readily available means. The more we learned about the case, the more it looked like it was personal.
"And it's not even the strangest thing I found", Scotty then said, and we looked back at him. What could be stranger than a wooden stake as a murder weapon ?
Seeing our suprised face, the legist went on : "I've noticed the blood around the wound have a peculiar coloration. Not the kind that could be explained by the stabbing. The blood in the extremities is normal, though. My theory is that there had been some sort of poison on the stake. I've sent samples to be analyzed. The results should tell us what kind of poison it was."
"All of this is speaking about premeditation", Alexander commented rather blankly. I nodded. It was highly unlikely someone had found a stake made out of untreated mahogany and dipped in poison lying around when he had a sudden urge to kill Agnes. It was time to go and talk to her closest relations.
"Thanks, Scotty", I said while we moved to leave the examination room. "Give us a call when you get the results."
"Aye, Captain", he replied cockily, before going back to his daily routine.
Our primary investigation hadn't shown any known relative of Agnes'. Her parents were deceased, and she had no siblings. No other family member could have been found. Yet she was part of a close community living in a big ranch outside the city. Some kind of hippy group, that was looked upon with contempt and wariness by the locals, but never did anything to attract official attention.
I was a teenager when the community had come to settle in the old McAllister ranch. The previous owner had died a few months before and his only daughter, a fashionable stylist that had made a name for herself in Philadelphia, had put the property on sale as soon as the funeral was over. She had had no intention whatsoever to ever come back in town. When Lupita Lawson had offered her the price she wanted for the ranch, she hadn't had the slightest hesitation, had signed the papers up, and had gone back to her rich husband and dazzling career. It had been the talk of the town for weeks ; how could a local girl have turned her back on her roots like this ? The old McAllister would have been so disappointed to see that, the ranch he loved so much taken over by hippies while his own flesh and blood definitively throw it all away.
It was the first time I passed the wooden gates of the property, and I would be lying if I didn't say I would have like it to be under better circumstances. As soon as we got out of the car, Alexander and I were greeted by a friendly-looking middle aged woman that I vaguely recognised as being the owner of one of the local bookshops. She, however, knew who we were.
"Officer Johnson, Officer Griffins", she saluted us while going down the few steps leading to the main door. "What a pleasure to see you here ? Can I help you with something ?"
Alexander and I exchanged a quick glance, and we both put on our best grave faces.
"We've understood that Agnes Marquez lived here", Alexander said.
"Well, yes, she is a member of our community", the woman replied cheerfully, though her expression had faltered for a second at my colleage's use of the past. "But I'm afraid she isn't here for the moment."
"Madam, is there a place where we could discuss more privately ?", I asked, not wanting to break her the news in the middle of the front yard.
