Chapter 4. Silence
The silence that death brings is worth the pain experienced in it's wake.
|~| The Mailman.
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As Kory strolled through her bullpen on her way to her office, she once again cursed herself. She was horribly sleep deprived as a result of her stubbornness. She was done with research for the case by 11 pm but she just had to research Agent Douchebag. That took suprisingly longer than she expected and she ended up going to bed by 3am to wake up by 5am to get an early start on the case.
She stepped into her office and Mike sat on her chair, legs thrown over her table, crossed at the ankles.
"If you don't have a death wish, you'll get your pretty butt off my fucking furniture" she said, staring at him pointedly.
"I brought Coke" he said and raised it front of him. She narrowed her eyes and snatched the bottle of extra large Coca Cola from him.
"Still get out of my chair though" he raised his hands up in surrender and stood up. She dropped down into her chair, opened the coke and took a large gulp of the heavenly elixir.
"Hallelujah" she sighed.
"You're welcome" Mike said as he settled into her uncomfortable Visitor's chair.
"You really know the way to a girl's heart" she said after another gulp.
"It's one of my specialties" he replied with a smug smile. Then he got serious. "I spoke to the managers of that dating site, Cupid's arrow, but they said the messages between people are automatically deleted once they log out. Some kind of safety law. So I hacked into the site, with their permission of course. It wasn't easy. I had to reroute the messages from the main server, and that was almost impossible cause all that was left of it was like, a shadow in lame terms. Anyway I.." "Mike, baby, I love you. But you know I don't talk geek. Just get to the point" she interrupted him. He scowled at her.
"Fine. You never let me have any fun. Anyway, basically, I recovered the messages between Marlena and our guy. Don't know why the feds didn't think of doing this the first time round" he said. She grinned.
"I knew I loved you for a reason. Come on, let's go to the conference room and fill everyone in. We'll go over the texts there. Is Agent Douchebag here yet?" She asked. They walked out and bumped into the aforementioned Agent.
"Special Agent Cross" Kory said by way of greeting.
"Lieutenant Hannagan, Lieutenant Dover" Agent Douchebag replied with a minuscule nod of acknowledgement. They walked silently toward the conference room, each pointedly refusing to share whatever information they had gotten until the other broke the silence. Kory nonchalantly sipped her coke. Micheal typed on a phone in one hand and an iPad in another. Agent Douchebag was strolling behind them, hands in trousers, suit impeccable as always and brown hair covering his eyes and part of his face.
"Listen up people. Anyone assigned to the Queens case report to the same conference room we used, everyone else, if you need to run something by me, it's now or never" Kory said to her bullpen.
"Yo LT" Kendal, one of her detectives hailed across the bullpen and came toward her.
"I want you to profile a case I'm consulting on for me" he said as he reached her.
"Kendal, we've got a department profiler for that" she replied pointedly.
"Yeah but you know you're better. Plus, he's always fully booked and I need a profile today. Just off the books. The case is already closed as of today but I just need something cleared up"
"Run it by me. Mike, you guys should go on to conference, I'll catch up" Michael nodded and he and Agent Douchebag continued walking.
"Ok so this Vic comes in all shaky. She's stammering, got a lot of bruises on her. She says her husband beat her up. He's been beating her for a while now but she only decided to come in when he turned on their 5 year old son. I got all the info on her, then went with some uniforms to pick the dad and the kid- whom she left at home- up. When we got there the kid looked pretty shaken up. Was crying and everything. But the dad was no where to be found-" "hold on she left the kid at home? With the fatherThe silence that death brings is worth the pain experienced in its wake.
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As Kory strolled through her bullpen on her way to her office, she once again cursed herself. She was horribly sleep deprived as a result of her stubbornness. She was done with research for the case by 11 pm but she just had to research Agent Douchebag. That took suprisingly longer than she expected and she ended up going to bed by 3am to wake up by 5am to get an early start on the case.
She stepped into her office and Mike sat on her chair, legs thrown over her table.
"If you don't have a death wish, you'll get your pretty butt off my fucking furniture" she said, staring at him pointedly.
"I brought Coke" he said and raised it front of him. She narrowed her eyes and snatched the bottle of extra large Coca Cola from him.
"Still get out of my chair though" he raised his hands up in surrender and stood up. She dropped down into her chair, opened the coke and took a large gulp of the heavenly elixer.
"Hallelujah" she sighed.
"You're welcome" Mike said as he settled into her Visitors chair.
"You really know the way to a girl's heart" she said after another gulp.
"It's one of my specialties" he said with a smug smile. Then he got serious. "I spoke to the managers of that dating site, Cupid's arrow, but they said the messages between people are automatically deleted once they log out. Some kind of safety law. So I hacked into the site, with their permission of course. It wasn't easy. I had to reroute the messages from the main server, and that was almost impossible cause all that was left of it was like, a shadow in lame terms. Anyway I.." "Mike, baby, I love you. But you know I don't talk geek. Just get to the point" she interrupted him. He scowled at her.
"Fine. You never let me have any fun. Anyway, basically, I recovered the messages between Marlena and our guy. Don't know why the feds didn't think of doing this the first time round" he said. She grinned.
"I knew I loved you for a reason. Come on, let's go to the conference room and fill everyone in. We'll go over the texts there. Is Agent Douchebag here yet?" She asked. They walked out and bumped into the aforementioned Agent.
"Special Agent Cross" Kory said by way of greeting.
"Lieutenant Hannagan, Lieutenant Dover" Agent Douchebag replied with a minuscule nod of awknoledgement. They walked silently to the conference room, each pointedly refusing to share whatever information they had gotten until the other broke the silence. Kory nonchalantly sipped her coke. Micheal typed on a phone in one hand and an iPad on another. Agent Douchebag was strolling behind them, hands in trousers, suit impeccable as always and brown hair covering his eyes and part of his face.
"Listen up people. Anyone assigned to the Queens case report to the same conference room we used, everyone else, if you need to run something by me, it's now or never" Kory said to her bullpen.
"Yo LT" Kendal, one of her detectives screamed across the bullpen and came toward her.
"I want you to profile a case I'm consulting on for me" he said as he reached her.
"Kendal, we've got a department profiler for that" she said pointedly.
"Yeah but you know you're better. Plus, he's always fully booked and I need a profile today. Just off the books. The case is already closed as of today but I just need something cleared up"
"Run it by me. Mike, you guys should go on to conference, I'll catch up" Michael nodded and he and Agent Douchebag continued walking.
"Ok so this Vic comes in all shaky. She's stammering, got a lot of bruises on her. She says her husband beat her up. He's been beating her for a while now but she only decided to come in when he turned on their 5 year old son. I got all the info on her, then went with some uniforms to pick the dad and the kid- whom she left at home- up. When we got there the kid looked pretty shaken up. Was crying and everything. But the dad was no where to be found-" "-Hold on she left the kid at home? With the father who just beat him up?" Kory interrupted.
"Yeah. She said if she took him the husband would be suspicious. So anyway, she told us the husband would be home but he wasn't. We put out an APB on him. A few minutes later, some uniforms called and said they got him. He was coming out of a cafe. We got him into questioning. He kept denying ever laying a hand on his family, claimed he loved them. The mother and the kid said, yeah, he beat them. We looked at his hands. After pounding on his wife that way his knuckles should have been bruised at least. Nothing. Soft as a baby's. I got a hunch and called in child services to sit in with the kid during interview instead of the mom. After we spoke for a while, the son broke and told us that his dad is awesome and loving and that his mom beat him up and put him to the charade. We sent the mom to the hospital, discovered that the wounds were self inflicted. We arrested the mom and let the son go with the dad. My question is, why? Why did the mom do it?"
Kory sighed. "It could be for a number of reasons and I'd have to sit in for an interview to be sure but I'm thinking, attention" she said simply.
"What?" He asked, confused.
"She was seeking attention. If you look you'll probably find a background of ignorance, nonchalance. She wasn't given attention as a kid and now she's trying to get it. Her husband probably paid more attention to his job and the kid than to her. She wants the attention of her husband, of the cops, the media, everyone. Now they'll finally hear her, they'll finally see her. It's not her siblings in the spotlight, or her kid. It's her time to shine" Kory said with feeling. She always got sucked into the character she was profiling. That was one of the main reasons she left the job in the first place. If she profiled a killer for too long, she started to think, make decisions, function like the killer. It was like to profile them, she became them. It was scary sometimes.
"Wow. Thanks LT. I'll check her background" Kendal said and left. Kory took a deep cleansing breath and turned. She was shocked to find Agent Douchebag leaning on the wall and watching her through his wall of soft-looking brown hair.
"I thought you went off with Mike?" She asked as she calmed her racing heart. On the outside though, she looked calm and composed.
"I came back to get you. Breefing's about to start and we're all waiting on you" he said in his usual short, clipped way.
"Alright. Sorry. Let's go" they walked out together and made their way to the conference room she had picked for this particular case.
True to his word, everyone sat, waiting. As was usual to a cop shop, the conference room was noisy and everyone teased and laughed and talked amongst each other. And there was lots of caffeine, cold in form of Coke as she usually preferred it, or hot in form of coffee. They quieted down when she went up to the makeshift stage.
"Sorry for wasting time. The tech geeks have an update on the case and I expect you all to have more good news for me. Mike, brief the team then we'll go from there" Mike took a dramatic bow that had all the cops burst into laughter. All apart from a certain Agent.
"I know, I know, I rule. I would've loved to get deep into the processes but boss lady here's impatient. Basically, I hacked into Cupid's arrow, one of the most secured dating sites and got the messages between Queens and our suspect. No need for applause" everyone laughed again and Kory glared at him. He rolled his eyes and swiped on his ipad. The screen behind them came on and the messages between Queens and the suspect were displayed.
Day 1.
'Hey' Suspect.
'Hi' Queens.
'I looked at your profile and I just feel like I've known you forever' Suspect.
'Haha. Cool I guess' Queens.
'So, what do you like doing for fun?' Suspect.
'Well I like singing and dancing so my favourite thing to do with my friends is kareoke' Queens.
'Cool. I love kareoke. I'm not good at singing but it's still fun' Suspect.
'Haha. So what do you like?' Queens.
'Well kareoke too. And I'm interested in acting. Never made it though' Suspect.
'Omg me too' Queens.
'Ever went anywhere with Acting?' Suspect.
She didn't reply after that. Probably got spooked and thought he knew she was a movie star which, evidently, he did.
A few days later, the suspect texted again.
Day 2.
'Hey Carla. Been a while' Suspect.
Queens didn't reply. He texted again a day later.
Day 3.
'Did I say something wrong? Shit I do this all the time. I never have any luck in relationships' Suspect.
'Oh no. I was just slightly busy. You know I have zero luck in dating too' Queens.
'How could someone as pretty and charming as you not have luck with relationships?' Suspect.
And so it went on and on. They'd talk, exchange things about their characters and the suspect always seemed to like the same things she did or just suggest her favourite things. Whenever Queens got a weird vibe he'd manipulate her with sad, probably untrue stories about himself and she was right back where he wanted her.
"Thank you Mike. So obviously, he was stalking her" Kory started when everyone was done reading. "From the pattern of the messages, the way he always knew her interests, her likes and dislikes and her triggers. He was also manipulating her but that's expected. We'll look into past boyfriends, love interests. We already have a list for that. I gave them all a call last night, told them we'd drop by so Agent Cross and I will take that. I want Detectives Molly and Christian to go to every social media site that Queens's name has been mentioned and dig up any obsessed fan or love interest that is not on the list currently displayed on this screen. Officers Mendez, George and Gregory, your responsibilities are to do the rounds, door to door on Queens neighbors, see what you can jog out of people's memories. It's unlikely they remember anything of significance but we make the rounds again. Detectives Lois and Gray I need you to head to the morgue and have the FP dig up the lab reports on Queens. I need to look over it again. Detectives Macy, Alan and KC, I need you to dig up the old case files on Marlena. Contact the FBI, tell them to send over the files. We need them. Agent Cross, I trust you'll do us the honours of smoothing the way on that" The aforementioned Agent inclined his head. As usual, he was at the corner of the room, somehow finding where the darkness was thickest and just melting into it. She understood that a little more now that she researched him.
He was a navy brat. Both his parents were navy and spent more time on sea than land. He raised himself and was always a loner. His parents wanted him to join the navy so he started a business as an act of rebellion. It flourished, like really flourished and he became filthy rich but his parents disowned him. Two years later he closed down his business and joined the police academy. He was exceptional and was recruited by the FBI before he even graduated police academy. Then from there the details became woozy. He was an exceptional Agent and closed many high profile cases. But that was expected. There was a particular case though. The details of the case were kept tightly under wraps and after that, Agent Cross never had a partner. Never worked with anyone. Not until her. But she had a feeling this wasn't about her. The case meant something to him, just as it meant something to her. So she'd work with him on this and put aside their differences because Marlena Queens meant more than some petty grudge with the FBI. But she'd still call him Agent Douchebag. It was her right dammit!
"Alright does anyone else have something for me?" When none of her cops spoke she continued. "Ok. Get to work everyone. Agent Cross, we're in the field" everyone left to begin their activities and she strolled to the corner where Agent Cross was.
They strolled out of the precinct in silence. When they reached her car, Kory got into the passenger seat to avoid an unnecessary fight.
"Your analysis of the messages were accurate but you missed something. He knew her. Intimately. He knew things from far before she became an actress. It's either he's been stalking her for a while now or he's someone close to her" Agent Douchebag said.
"That's true. We'll look into her past, from before she became famous. Good eye" Kory said.
Had she looked at him at that moment, she would have seen the slightest smile grace his face.
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xoxo,
Mimi.