18- A Conversation with Scarlet.

"I had the owner send the surveillance footage directly over to the precinct so Skye can get started on it." Mazurka informed Harlowe as he rejoined him back outside in the alleyway.

"And just in time," Harlowe remarked as a tall, average-sized woman in her mid-forties approached them, while removing her latex gloves.

"Harlowe, Mazurka," she acknowledged them with a nod.

"What've you got for us, Muggs?" Harlowe questioned as she rolled her eyes to the unflattering nickname she had been given.

She sighed removing her facemask, "I've got nothing good for you at the moment. The body's been here at least five days, but I'll have to track weather reports and wait for tox and magic screens to come back before I can give you a more accurate time of death. I think it's safe to say he's one of our serial killer's victims though, based on the expression alone. But I'm still going to take a closer look for any other possible signs of death. Given the amount of predation though, I'm not expecting to find much."

"Thanks, Mhugazia," Mazurka said to avoid Harlowe irritating her further.

"You're welcome. I really wish I could get you something more definitive, but I've tested all the bodies that have come in for every known substance and pathogen I can think of. I've even had the Grove's M.E., come and verify the work. He was just as stumped," she remarked, dawning a smug smile.

"And magic?"

"Tests keep coming back clean but it can't be ruled out. Like I told your partner, it's possible that the bodies are just too old, or maybe the practitioner found a way to cover their casting, although that's never been done before. Between you, me and the walls, magic is looking like the prime cause, but I'm warning you, you didn't hear that from me, and I'll deny ever saying it, until something comes back suggesting it's a possibility. And the five from the alley in Rosemont, are our best bet for that. They were definitively the newest victims, and the TOD for all five were between eleven and one AM."

"Any chance THAT window could be narrowed?" Harlowe questioned as he scrawled his notes in his little pad.

"It's possible. More so than with this one. I have Jordan doing the first autopsy now. Once the tox and magic screens come back, we'll see."

"Mhugazia, we're all loaded," a man dressed in a set of overalls called out to her from behind the M.E.'s truck.

"That's my queue. I'll have my reports on your desk once they get finished."

"Thanks, Muggs."

"Tch, just doing my job Harlowe," she replied as she turned and walked away.

"Walk with me," Harlowe remarked to Mazurka as he headed towards the front of the liquor store. "What time did that clerk from Liebman's say she left the store that night?"

Pulling out his notepad, Mazurka skimmed through his notes, "She said she locked the door at 11, and was in the alleyway by half passed. She heard a loud noise, thought it was just trash settling, but then said that it seemed to loud to just be trash once she found out there was murder."

"Go back and talk to her again. Find out where she thought that noise came from and ask her about the homeless guy that was in a habit of buying chocolate bars and mints. I want to know more about that new vagrant. I'm going to head back to Rosemont to meet up with Jathem in about an hour to see if we can't track down his friend, Willy at the Caldwell camp. Any chance you managed to find something in that file you requested?"

"Yeah, she's had it tough."

"Haven't we all?"

"Not like that."

"Still, you said it yourself, you think she's hiding something; find out what that is."

"You got it. I'm going to head back to the precinct first though. I want to get a start on those files with Skye. If I can get an image of the person responsible for our victim's death, Quayleigh might be able to tell us if she had seen him in the store that night."

"Better yet, if she could identify him outright," Harlowe said as he opened his car door.

"Ha, that would be the dream," Mazurka snarked as he and Harlowe parted ways, each having their own lead to follow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mazurka made his way back to the precinct and went directly to the Video Analyst room, otherwise known as Skye's Lab. This petite woman in her late twenties, was the main analyst for their precinct and was known for her bright blue hair, and the unconventional love she had for her computers.

Skye had just gotten started when Mazurka arrived.

"Morning Skye."

"Morning, Detective Yechiel. If you're here to ask about your files, they are in process. VAS is working to pull out any corrupted files, before she runs it through the recognition software. Once she's done cutting out all of the video with no motion in it, we can review what's left. Don't worry, she's going to save all the footage, timestamped and in a separate folder with your name on it. There's really not much here though, so it shouldn't be much longer."

"So, there's really nothing for me to do here is there?"

"Sorry, Yechi, waiting game like normal. Think you'd be used to that by now."

"Yeah, well this one's got me wound a bit tighter than normal. Nothing's adding up and this is the first time we may have caught one of the murders on camera."

"I wouldn't get your hopes up," she said as she turned in her chair to look up at him. "Yechi, this footage was taken on an older system that has not been well taken care of. At most, we might be able to get a blurry image, but based on the angle of the camera and the motion sensor light, more than a silhouette may be a stretch."

"At this point, it's more than we have, so I'll take it."

"Then I'll call you when the footage is ready for review." She tapped her finger on the top of her desk, as she swiveled her chair back and forth.

"What is it?"

"Well, rumor has it that you owe Ginny some fries from the burger joint down the road, and since you have some time on your hands, I'm thinking you should run out and get us lunch. Even with this small of a file there could still be days' worth of footage to go over, and it would be completely inefficient to stop in the middle of that to get something to eat."

Mazurka sighed as he pulled out his note pad, "Fine. What do you want?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After he stopped for lunch, Harlowe met up with Jathem, and together the salty veteran and the thirty-something beat-cop, entered the grounds of the abandoned school off of Caldwell Street in the derelict suburbs of Rosemont Downs.

"I asked for surveillance on this place but the captain refused, said unless there was evidence of anyone in Rosemont being responsible for the murders, he wasn't going to waste the resources," Jathem explained as they walked further into the camp. "That being said, I've been keeping an eye out with no luck. I haven't seen any sign of the new guy."

"And Willy Scarlet?"

"Down this way. He's keeping a new box at the far end."

"It's like a society all their own down here," Harlowe grumbled as the vagrants made themselves scarce.

Few cared to deal with the cops, even one like Jathem who had been around and not only showed them respect but had proven that he cared when crimes were committed. As few as there had been, he had often gone out of his way to see that they were solved, or at least pursued. And that, to the street folk, at least garnered some amount of trust, albeit slight.

The street folk tended to look out for their own, especially in the tight knit communities, like the Caldwell camp, and those who didn't play by the rules were forced to move on. Newcomers like Tau, were noticed, and welcomed, although most would have kept an easy distance at first. Trust was hard earned, and it was the role of those who had been there longest to decide if the new ones could stay.

Willy Scarlet had been at this camp for longer than most. He was well respected and had earned his place at the far end, in the area with the best shelter from the elements, closet to the main firepits, and the source of water; which in this camp, was a series of rain barrels connected to a vast array of makeshift filters and collecting pipes. Had this camp been anywhere else, the city would have fought to tear it all down, and scattered the residence, but in the Downs, no one cared. This was the place where people came to be forgotten, and where those abandoned to their fates gathered to scrape by in the only ways they could; together.

Jathem had a healthy respect for those who resided there. He recognized the hard lives and situations most of them had come from. There were those suffering from mental illnesses that prevented them from co-existing with the rest of society. Others that had simply adapted to the way of life after being unable to find steady work, or those, like the ex-convicts, who couldn't get jobs to begin with. And then there were the Elderly with no savings, no family, no income, and no other options.

Willy fell into the latter group. His home had burned down nearly twenty years previous. He had lost his wife and only daughter in the blaze, and his insurance premium had lapsed due to non-payment, a sacrifice he had to make to keep the lights on when work had grown scarce. Every last cent he had went to pay for the funerals, and after exhausting every avenue he had left, he ended up on the streets. He moved around the city with the rest of a vagrants, hitching south for the winters, but finally landed on Caldwell after the school shut down, near a decade ago.

For most of the vagrants, this was the first time they could relax, because they had found a place where no one was going to bother them, or force them to move, at least not for the foreseeable future. In the winter they would move their camp inside the building, but would vacate as soon the snow melted, preferring their own spaces, even if they were just cardboard boxes covered in old tarps and trash bags, strewn along fences and the pathways between the buildings.

Upon arriving at the far end, the informant from the previous day moved to the greet them. He was an elderly gentleman, known only as Frank. He walked with a distinct limp and cane, but he stood as proud as he could in the presence of the officers, despite the obvious discomfort it brought him. He had a dark complexion and wore an old hat to hide his balding head, allowing the dense curls of what remained to stick out from around the edge, but like his beard, kept it from looking overgrown or unruly with frequent trims from the camp's barber. When it came to the hierarchy in this place, Frank was at the top, ranking only under Mother Warren, who was rarely ever in her box, spending nearly all of her time checking in with the other residence, and keeping an eye on the sick or infirmed.

"Jathem, you come back to soon. The new guy hasn't returned. Asked around, no one's seen him since yesterday, and he didn't return with Willy."

"Thanks, Frank. Any chance Willy's willing to talk with us?"

"Aye, he'll come out and speak. What he says, that's up to him. You wait here, I'll go fetch him."

Jathem and Harlowe remained where they had been told, sitting on an old bench car seat that surrounded one of the larger firepits. After a few minutes, Frank returned with the elderly Willy in tow. Like Frank, Willy was a man with a dark complexion, but was nearly half his weight, yet twice his height. His eyes, with heavy bags beneath them, spoke of his tragedy, carrying a thick sorrow like a haze about the surface. It was obvious, he still spent many nights, crying himself to sleep.

"Officer Jathem, this is Willy Scarlet," Frank introduced them.

"Thank you for coming to speak with us Mr. Scarlet. This man with me is Detective Renford Harlowe. He's looking into the murders that have been happening around the city."

"Aye, there be whispers of a murder by Liebman's. The entire community is worried," Willy remarked as he and Frank sat down on the opposing bench.

"There was a group of five. They all appear to be a part of the local gang, but you may wish to have your community move into the building sooner than normal. I know it isn't ideal, but you may find it more defensible, than the current set up."

"We will take your concern into consideration, Officer, but what does this have to do with one of our people?" Frank questioned.

"Look, we just want to know about the new guy that showed up here not too long ago," Harlowe chimed in wanting to get to the point, having little patience for this sort of small talk.

"What would you like to know?" Willy asked as he looked down his nose at Harlowe.

"Anything you can tell us would be helpful. We don't think he is involved in the murders but given his arrival here after the first few bodies had been discovered, we believe he may have seen something," Jathem remarked trying to smooth over the strained nature of the conversation.

Harlowe may have been a veteran of the force, but coming from an area like Freetier, meant he wasn't used to dealing with communities of street folk. There was a certain way of doing things, and despite Jathem's warnings on the matters before they arrived, Harlowe was a man stuck in his ways, making this process precarious at best.

"The new guy, he's a young man. He had no story to tell. Quiet type, kept to himself."

"You did reach out to him though?"

"We reach out to all those who come here. We give each a chance to prove themselves. A young man like that could learn. No matter where he was from, he picked up on things quickly. He traded for goods, never took more than offered, refused some if he thought it could benefit someone else more. He was different in a lot of ways. Saw things no one else saw," Willy explained as best he could. He had come to know Tau over the time he had spent with him and felt they had become friends. "I know others found him to be off. And he was. He certainly has his quirks, but what of us doesn't?"

"You said he saw things? Do you think it was drugs or perhaps he's a schizophrenic?"

"No drugs. That boy is odd, but he's no user." Willy was quick to defend him.

"If he's a schizophrenic, he isn't like any I've ever dealt with," Frank added with a shake of his head. "No, that man, it's like he was a child. Like part of him had been erased."

Willy nodded in agreement, "Aye, that's a good way to explain it."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"About three days. He didn't come with me to the plaza, and I haven't seen him yet today," Willy replied as he placed his hands into the pockets of the light jacket he was wearing.

"Any chance you might know where he would go when he's not here?" Jathem questioned as Willy leaned back on the seat.

"No Sir. If he isn't in his box, I don't know where he would be. He only ever left at night and would be back by morning. Then he would stay around for a few days, before going off again."

"I've got one last question for you, did this guy ever give you, his name?" Harlowe asked hoping to get something of use from the conversation.

"When I asked him his name, he said something I didn't understand, sounded like Towelette. So, I call him Towel. He never complained, and never said what his real name was, or where he came from. If he saw something, I doubt he would speak to you. He liked me and told me nothing. Not sure that would change for someone he doesn't know," Willy responded with a half-smile hanging on his lips.

"Right, thanks for your time," Harlowe remarked as he stood up and stuffed his notepad away. "If he comes back here, would you mind telling him to stick around until Officer Jathem can have a word with him?"

"We will do our best to convince him," Frank replied as he stood up to bid Harlowe a good day.

"Frank, Mr. Scarlet, thank you for sitting down with us," Jathem remarked as Harlowe gave the men a nod and walked away. "I'll swing by later, after my shift."

"We shall see you then, Officer Jathem," Frank replied as he watched Jathem hurry himself to catch up with Harlowe. "If Towel comes back," he turned to Willy, "I want you to take him to the camp at the Plaza. He may give me the creeps, but that Harlowe, his type can't be trusted. He wants someone to blame for what's happening. And who better than one of us street folk?"