[Imprimatur] The call comes in late. The only reason she catches the ticket is that she's literally the only goddamned detective in the precinct. Everyone else is out on calls; or - better yet - down the pub for a beer.
So: it's late on a Friday evening. Izzy's spent a long week pushing paper in the precinct, filing reports, taking witness statements, reviewing giant stack of triplicate I-89 requisition forms O'Malley laid on her desk at the beginning of the month, like she was some patrol office just promoted to detective fresh off the results of his promotion testing.
Next week promises nothing better than this one, a dull series of desk-bound days, while her own cases back in Cabrini languish.
Fucking bureauacracy.
There's less crime here. Fewer murders. Fewer drive-bys. Fewer trafficking arrests - fewer everything. Sure, the slackers in Precinct 13 seem to find convenient explanations for odd coincidences that might screw up their fact pattern and shift a suspicious death right into the homicide column, but the difference between their calls and her own cannot be entirely chalked up to those choices.
Still: here's a real call, a real body, a real death right in her hands.
THE FLETCHER - Room 813.
125th Street.
"Don't fuck this up." O'Malley says, frowning at her as he hands her a post-it, the address scribbled on. "Hear me?"
[Izzy Montoya] She hates this. She's hated every moment of it. Having to swallow back her retorts - retorts that she could left fly at HER precinct - grinding her teeth as she's treated like a newbie, instead of someone who's proved herself in twice as many states as the assholes here have even traveled too. But she's behaving. She's also chomping at the bit - but she's behaving. Eyes open, head down, shuffle paperwork.
Throw her face into a Brick wall and it'd be trapped with Daniel all over again.
A call. A real call - and O'Malley handing it over, reluctantly. "Everyone fuckin' heard ya, all week long." She's already up, already in motion. She grabs her coat off the back of her chair, and snags the post-it from his hand as she slips it on. A subtle check of her weapon's position in the holster at the small of her back, and she's already striding toward the door.
"Don't wait up."
[Imprimatur] The Fletcher is a huge old hotel. It still says: THE FLETCHER in faded black paint along the top floors. Lower down, the peeling old advertisement from the 1920s promises fireproof rooms and private water closets, elevators and an automat, with ELECTRIC LIGHTS and a radio in every room.
The lobby has not changed since the 1920s, and is all the worse for it. The stink of piss rises from the corners of the carpets. The couches scattered on threadbare old carpet - crimson - are scratchy naugahyde. One or two still has a tatted antimacassar affixed somehow to the spine of the couch, but most are merely crawling with all manner of less-than-appetizing stains.
The clerk sits behind a worked metal cage, and flicks up a bored look when the rotating doors spit Izzy out into the lobby. He immediately picks her out as a cop. "Elevator's not working." He says. "Well, it'll go to the third floor. Gotta take the stairs from there."
Like the couches, the peeling wallpaper, the brass-framed revolving door, the once-grand crimson carpets that seem to be literally growing mushrooms in the darkest corners of the sagging old building, the elevator has not been updated since the 1920s. It has an atmosphere cage, and rattles up to the third floor, wheezing like an asthmatic hooker after a cheap blow job. From the third-floor to the eighth, she has to climb the stairs. The fire-safe stairs, solid and concrete, with metal railings. The whole shaft smells strongly of human excrement mingled with the herbal stylings of marijuana, spiked with the occasional shot of urine.
By the time she reaches the eight floor, she might well be breathing through her mouth rather than her nose. In which case: she'll taste all that, coating the back of her tongue.
The door to Room 813 is propped open. There's a uniformed officer standing watch there, waiting for her, and a gurney with a body bag atop it marked COOK COUNTY CORONER set outside the door. The EMTs, if they were ever called, are long gone. "Finally let you outta the brig, eh?" the uniform says to her as she arrives. "Coroner's inside. Look's pretty fucking straightforward. Junkie who OD'd. Soon as you give the word, I'm outta here."
[Izzy Montoya] The elevator would take her to the third floor - if she let it. She doesn't, though, as she's well accustomed to taking stairs for reasons of her own. Small metal cages are not her favorite thing, so she starts the trek up from the lobby itself. She takes the steps one at a time, steady and strong, doing her best to not smell anything, yet feeling it coat her throat, the back of her tongue, despite her efforts.
"JesusMarymotherofFUCK this place is disgusting..." She always has had a way with words, Izzy. She casts a look at the gurney, the body bag, and then offers the uniform a brief, barely amused smirk. "Something like that."
Straight forward. "We'll see." O'Malley loves numbers. Get in, get out, go with the obvious, fuck the rest. She pulls a pair of rubber latex gloves from the inside pocket of her coat, and tugs them on as she steps into the room.
"What've we got..." asked of the Coroner as she approaches. Maybe O'Malley will get what he wants. Somehow, she doubts it...
[Imprimatur] A hotel room; two now, actually. The front room has a worn couch from the 1960s. It looks vaguely mod, rough upholstery a putrid yellow the color of piss-warmed snow. A kitchenette is wedged into what must have, at one time, been the bathroom. Dominated by metal cabinets with peeling baby blue paint and chipped formica countertops, a fridge that would've been the height of technology in 1973. It wheezes, chokes on its fluidity.
There is a single incandescent bulb dropped naked from the ceiling. The door to the bedroom is dark. The body's laid out on the couch. Tourniquet around the arm, a needle rolled through the shag carpet half-way underneath the narrow coffee table. He's a man: somewhere in his mid-30s, wearing worn jeans and a BEAUTIFUL DOWNTOWN SAGINAW t-shirt. Three days' scruff of beard on his cheeks.
"Looks pretty standard," shrugs the coroner, filling out paperwork on a clipboard. "I'd say he's been dead 14 hours. Super got a complaint about a leak downstairs, come up here to see if it was coming from in here, found him like that. Heroin. There's a bag with a half-dozen oxycontins still to go in the nightstand. Names Joseph Matthews. Some unemployment check stubs in the desk. An unfilled prescription for Vicodin, too. Didn't find a suicide note, could've been accidental."
[Izzy Montoya] "Charming." It's all she can say about the decor. It makes her place look like a palace, and on a detective's salary, that would take some doing. She listens to the coroner, making her way through to the kitchen, opening the poor wheezing fridge, opening cupboards, before moving to the desk. She opens the drawer, and rifles through the stubs, looking for anything else as well. When she looks at the body, she arches a brows lightly.
"Where th'fuck is Saginaw?" It's an idle question, though little things are oft times important. "Got himself a nice little personal pharmacy going on, hm?"
She turns to the body, and studies Mr. Matthews, going so far as to settle into a crouch next to him. She reaches out to touch the tourniquet, turning the arm toward her to study the needle tracks, the man himself. She's seen plenty of Junkie's in her day - in fact the thought drives her a bit crazy. But this one's dead - not much she can do about him, cept figure out if he really did himself in.
No funny business, O'Malley said. Too bad, says Izzy. In her world, things are rarely what they seem.
[Imprimatur] There's not much in the fridge; a six-pack of beer, just one can of Natty light left. There's a stack of old Chicago tribunes, folded open to the CRIME REPORTS scatter graph, showing the serious crimes that have occurred in the city, some to the police blotter. Other to the SUNDAY SERVICES record in the back of the Sunday paper. A half-dozen sheets of paper are missing from a legal pad tucked up into the desk, but otherwise there's not much of note.
A pack of ramen noodles.
A wedding ring.
A wrinkled suit in the coat closet, not even a winter coat.
"Saginaw?" the coroner looks up, started. " -uh, Michigan, I think. You remember that Simon and Garfunkle song - " and he starts to hum it, in a surprisingly good voice. " It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw - "
The dead man has track marks. They don't seem recent, there's no real bruising on the arms though the blood has already settled in the body, and that could just be an artifact.
[Izzy Montoya] Crime reports. Sunday services. Sheets of paper missing, shitty beer... the little things. She notes them all, filing them away. He hasn't been here long, despite the stubs. Despite his personal drug cocktail, he looks to be shooting up... one would think an OD would be simpler with all the pills.
She chuckles. "How old do I look - what's your name, anyway? - didn't they break up in like, the 70s?" She studies the arm a bit more, before setting it down. She studies the man's face. He's scruffy, but even now, 14 hours after his death, she should be able to see the more tell tale signs of a junkie... She gestures toward the arm, mentioning casually as she reaches toward the needle under the coffee table... "Those tracks aren't recent. He got a wallet on him? Photos of the wife?"
Then she hesitates before picking the needle up. "Photog got everything?"
[Imprimatur] "It's a classic, Detective," the coroner asserts, re: Simon and Garfunkle. Saginaw. Looking for America. "I mean, you don't have to be two hundred years old to appreciate Mozart, right? Or Haydn or whatever."
He remains back, against the wall, his spine straight, removed from the immediacy of the corpse. "No wallet. Got the name from the super downstairs. No ID. No car keys." When she asks about the photog he breathes out nearly a sigh. "Shit, Ma'am. I'm just here for the body. I don't care about anything else. You done with him so I can get him down to the morgue?"
[Izzy Montoya] He doesn't give her his name, and says he just wants the body - so she gives a yell to the uniform at the door. "HEY! Photog been in?" She expects a negative, really, and doesn't pick up the needle. In fact, she expected a lot of things - corner cutting, and the like, in order to keep their numbers high. It seems to be the secret everyone knows, and no one admits out loud.
They're the best because they slap a pretty picture on it all. She'd love to spend a week or three in their file room... But, what she has is this. A case they want open and shut, that she won't hand to them until she's sure it's open and shut. "And tell the Super I wanna talk to him!"
What she also has is a small digital camera in the other pocket - Ashton Kutcher made it sound like the perfect buy one night, so she picked it up. She's never taken pictures of herself with it, or friends and family and loved ones - as if she had enough of those to make a difference. No, she keeps it with her for times like this, times where she might need something to back her up. So she starts to take her own photos - the body, the needle, the desk and papers, making a quick yet efficient sweep of the room - including the papers and what they're open too, etc.
She takes a series of Mr Matthews, including a closeup of his arm. "Keep your pants on. I won't be much longer - after all, it's just a junkie, right?" She's not even really listening to what she's saying, and when she settles to a crouch to take a better picture of the needle, she does what she always does.
She listens to what the room has to tell her, too.
[Echo, echo, does she hear an echo? HAIL!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Imprimatur] There are moments in life when we see disaster headed out way. Snapshots, where we open our eyes, take a picture, laminate it, shape it at the corners, tuck it into the dark corners of out soul, where memory breeds with fear in pintucked closeness. The last moment before the crash, brakelights smeared across the windshield, the drum of rain on the roof, a withheld expectancy -
- what next?
There's none of that here. In this room.
Izzy cannot sense what they felt, the dead whose voices echo back to her, the living who murdered, who felt a life twisting into death beneath their hands. Maybe she doesn't bother to imagine it: too much, too close, too immediate, too real for her.
She remembers inside.
She shouts something about the Photog and the uniform at the door just swings around, gives her a heavy look and a snort, says something about Protocol. It's not, yet. Not for fucking junkies. Not for No Humans Involved.
His features - blunt and round with an extra chin and a shadow of whiskers underneath - are dull looking, but there's a certain ferrety gleam in his eyes.
A knock on the door. Single. Singular. Sharp.
The creak of hinges; a man's voice a moment later. "Joe."
" - what the fuck do you want?" A harsh voice, an addict's rasp. Nicotine there, roughened vocal cords.
"Checking on the patient. Let me in."
"NO!"
A struggle, a cough, the slap of hands against wood, the crack of wood against bone. "Fuck, Jesus, my fucking kn- "
"You need to be in treatment."
"How the hell did you find me?"
" - shhh. You're going to go into withdrawals, soon. Then you'll be back - "
"YOU ARE NOT PUTTING THAT SHIT IN - "
"Shhh. Joe. Remember? We're on the same team. We're getting you off that shit. Getting you back to - "
"I CAN FEEL IT IN ME. I AM SHITTING IT ALL OUT. I AM - "
"Joe - "
"HANDS OFF. GET OUT. I AM GONNA CALL ME A LAWYER. I AM GONNA - "
"Court-ordered, Joe. I'm doing this the kind way, but if I need to call - "
"You think I don't know what's going on. I know. I fucking know. I SEE you under -
Oh god. Oh god. OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, GET THEM - GET THEM AWAY FROM ME - GO GET - JESUS FUCK - WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU - "
The sound of someone choking; swallowing his skin. His tongue, or - like he was trying to breathe in and spit up at the same time. The drum of heels against the wooden floor.
A body collapsed, a creak of floorboards beneath moving weight. And, later, the click of a closing door.
[Izzy Montoya] The uniform spins back, and smirks, and she meets his look with a flat one of her own. It's not protocol, of course. Not for junkies. Not for an open and shut case. Her brow creases briefly with irritation, but she turns her face from him and continues to take her pictures instead.
And listens.
She listens carefully, making sure that her face remains a mask, doing her best not to react, not to show that she knows, that there is something here that they aren't seeing, or worse, something that they are, something they are hiding. She closes her eyes, briefly, as the door clicks in the memory of the wood itself, and she drags her fingers through her hair.
She takes a few more shots, and then grabs the needle in her gloved hand, and stands. A moment, and she slips the camera into her pocket, and digs in another to find an evidence bag. There is something wrong here. Something really wrong. And there are some things screamed that reverberate in her mind - things that make it far less simple than open shut case. And far worse than that - it may be better for her to look the other way.
Or to look as if she looks the other way. For now.
[...two can keep a secret if one of them is dead...]
To the Coroner, then. "Alright. I got what I need from him. Bag and tag."
But she doesn't leave the room just yet - she makes another sweep, to see if there's anything else she missed, snapping pictures of anything she finds interesting, or distracting.
[Imprimatur] A body.
A bruise on the knee.
Faint bruises on the torso, fading, the blood drained down. A few drugs scattered around, nothing else. The room is otherwise clean and empty but for the cheap, tattered furniture. The scent of sorrow, of despair sharp in the air.
[Izzy Montoya] She captures the bruises - the knee - the torso - and then nods as she steps back and waves the coroner forward to do his part. She tucks the bagged needle into her pocket as she searches for her pack and lighter, as she watches him work. She locates the pack, and shakes out a cigarette, as she steps into the hall with the uniform.
"Got a light?" Casual. Yet not. He says yes, he says no - either way she'll locate fire somewhere, and step outside for a smoke. He won't see her hands shake. He won't see the way her mouth tightens, the way the muscle in her jaw clenches, the way she has to push memory from her mind so that she can think clearly, dissect it, pick it apart.
He also won't see this, what happens later: the research she does on the victim, searching for the court order she'd heard mentioned, hoping for the identification of the wearer of the heels, and those involved with the order. She digs as deep as she dares, on her own time to avoid the ever watchful eye of her temporary boss, her temporary co-workers.
Don't mess this up, he said.
Too bad for him - she answers to another. And she won't.
[Izzy Montoya] [intell +investigation - COME ON KAHSEENO!]
[Izzy Montoya] [wits +subterfuge - DONT BE A BITCH, KAHSEENO!]
[Imprimatur] Do we notice?
to Imprimatur
[Imprimatur] Joseph Matthews.
He has a record. A series of arrests for possession and other junkie lifestyle issues: stripping copper from a construction site, purse snatching, the usual. Stealing a prescription pad. Uttering a forged check. He did less than a year in Cook County jail, was released on probation. Testing positive for opiates, a probation violation, and given "Alternative Sentencing."
Drug treatment.
That's as far as she gets. Someone's always glancing at her computer screen, the unit clerk gives her looks when she requisitions files. Frustratingly limited information.
So: it's late on a Friday evening. Izzy's spent a long week pushing paper in the precinct, filing reports, taking witness statements, reviewing giant stack of triplicate I-89 requisition forms O'Malley laid on her desk at the beginning of the month, like she was some patrol office just promoted to detective fresh off the results of his promotion testing.
Next week promises nothing better than this one, a dull series of desk-bound days, while her own cases back in Cabrini languish.
Fucking bureauacracy.
There's less crime here. Fewer murders. Fewer drive-bys. Fewer trafficking arrests - fewer everything. Sure, the slackers in Precinct 13 seem to find convenient explanations for odd coincidences that might screw up their fact pattern and shift a suspicious death right into the homicide column, but the difference between their calls and her own cannot be entirely chalked up to those choices.
Still: here's a real call, a real body, a real death right in her hands.
THE FLETCHER - Room 813.
125th Street.
"Don't fuck this up." O'Malley says, frowning at her as he hands her a post-it, the address scribbled on. "Hear me?"
[Izzy Montoya] She hates this. She's hated every moment of it. Having to swallow back her retorts - retorts that she could left fly at HER precinct - grinding her teeth as she's treated like a newbie, instead of someone who's proved herself in twice as many states as the assholes here have even traveled too. But she's behaving. She's also chomping at the bit - but she's behaving. Eyes open, head down, shuffle paperwork.
Throw her face into a Brick wall and it'd be trapped with Daniel all over again.
A call. A real call - and O'Malley handing it over, reluctantly. "Everyone fuckin' heard ya, all week long." She's already up, already in motion. She grabs her coat off the back of her chair, and snags the post-it from his hand as she slips it on. A subtle check of her weapon's position in the holster at the small of her back, and she's already striding toward the door.
"Don't wait up."
[Imprimatur] The Fletcher is a huge old hotel. It still says: THE FLETCHER in faded black paint along the top floors. Lower down, the peeling old advertisement from the 1920s promises fireproof rooms and private water closets, elevators and an automat, with ELECTRIC LIGHTS and a radio in every room.
The lobby has not changed since the 1920s, and is all the worse for it. The stink of piss rises from the corners of the carpets. The couches scattered on threadbare old carpet - crimson - are scratchy naugahyde. One or two still has a tatted antimacassar affixed somehow to the spine of the couch, but most are merely crawling with all manner of less-than-appetizing stains.
The clerk sits behind a worked metal cage, and flicks up a bored look when the rotating doors spit Izzy out into the lobby. He immediately picks her out as a cop. "Elevator's not working." He says. "Well, it'll go to the third floor. Gotta take the stairs from there."
Like the couches, the peeling wallpaper, the brass-framed revolving door, the once-grand crimson carpets that seem to be literally growing mushrooms in the darkest corners of the sagging old building, the elevator has not been updated since the 1920s. It has an atmosphere cage, and rattles up to the third floor, wheezing like an asthmatic hooker after a cheap blow job. From the third-floor to the eighth, she has to climb the stairs. The fire-safe stairs, solid and concrete, with metal railings. The whole shaft smells strongly of human excrement mingled with the herbal stylings of marijuana, spiked with the occasional shot of urine.
By the time she reaches the eight floor, she might well be breathing through her mouth rather than her nose. In which case: she'll taste all that, coating the back of her tongue.
The door to Room 813 is propped open. There's a uniformed officer standing watch there, waiting for her, and a gurney with a body bag atop it marked COOK COUNTY CORONER set outside the door. The EMTs, if they were ever called, are long gone. "Finally let you outta the brig, eh?" the uniform says to her as she arrives. "Coroner's inside. Look's pretty fucking straightforward. Junkie who OD'd. Soon as you give the word, I'm outta here."
[Izzy Montoya] The elevator would take her to the third floor - if she let it. She doesn't, though, as she's well accustomed to taking stairs for reasons of her own. Small metal cages are not her favorite thing, so she starts the trek up from the lobby itself. She takes the steps one at a time, steady and strong, doing her best to not smell anything, yet feeling it coat her throat, the back of her tongue, despite her efforts.
"JesusMarymotherofFUCK this place is disgusting..." She always has had a way with words, Izzy. She casts a look at the gurney, the body bag, and then offers the uniform a brief, barely amused smirk. "Something like that."
Straight forward. "We'll see." O'Malley loves numbers. Get in, get out, go with the obvious, fuck the rest. She pulls a pair of rubber latex gloves from the inside pocket of her coat, and tugs them on as she steps into the room.
"What've we got..." asked of the Coroner as she approaches. Maybe O'Malley will get what he wants. Somehow, she doubts it...
[Imprimatur] A hotel room; two now, actually. The front room has a worn couch from the 1960s. It looks vaguely mod, rough upholstery a putrid yellow the color of piss-warmed snow. A kitchenette is wedged into what must have, at one time, been the bathroom. Dominated by metal cabinets with peeling baby blue paint and chipped formica countertops, a fridge that would've been the height of technology in 1973. It wheezes, chokes on its fluidity.
There is a single incandescent bulb dropped naked from the ceiling. The door to the bedroom is dark. The body's laid out on the couch. Tourniquet around the arm, a needle rolled through the shag carpet half-way underneath the narrow coffee table. He's a man: somewhere in his mid-30s, wearing worn jeans and a BEAUTIFUL DOWNTOWN SAGINAW t-shirt. Three days' scruff of beard on his cheeks.
"Looks pretty standard," shrugs the coroner, filling out paperwork on a clipboard. "I'd say he's been dead 14 hours. Super got a complaint about a leak downstairs, come up here to see if it was coming from in here, found him like that. Heroin. There's a bag with a half-dozen oxycontins still to go in the nightstand. Names Joseph Matthews. Some unemployment check stubs in the desk. An unfilled prescription for Vicodin, too. Didn't find a suicide note, could've been accidental."
[Izzy Montoya] "Charming." It's all she can say about the decor. It makes her place look like a palace, and on a detective's salary, that would take some doing. She listens to the coroner, making her way through to the kitchen, opening the poor wheezing fridge, opening cupboards, before moving to the desk. She opens the drawer, and rifles through the stubs, looking for anything else as well. When she looks at the body, she arches a brows lightly.
"Where th'fuck is Saginaw?" It's an idle question, though little things are oft times important. "Got himself a nice little personal pharmacy going on, hm?"
She turns to the body, and studies Mr. Matthews, going so far as to settle into a crouch next to him. She reaches out to touch the tourniquet, turning the arm toward her to study the needle tracks, the man himself. She's seen plenty of Junkie's in her day - in fact the thought drives her a bit crazy. But this one's dead - not much she can do about him, cept figure out if he really did himself in.
No funny business, O'Malley said. Too bad, says Izzy. In her world, things are rarely what they seem.
[Imprimatur] There's not much in the fridge; a six-pack of beer, just one can of Natty light left. There's a stack of old Chicago tribunes, folded open to the CRIME REPORTS scatter graph, showing the serious crimes that have occurred in the city, some to the police blotter. Other to the SUNDAY SERVICES record in the back of the Sunday paper. A half-dozen sheets of paper are missing from a legal pad tucked up into the desk, but otherwise there's not much of note.
A pack of ramen noodles.
A wedding ring.
A wrinkled suit in the coat closet, not even a winter coat.
"Saginaw?" the coroner looks up, started. " -uh, Michigan, I think. You remember that Simon and Garfunkle song - " and he starts to hum it, in a surprisingly good voice. " It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw - "
The dead man has track marks. They don't seem recent, there's no real bruising on the arms though the blood has already settled in the body, and that could just be an artifact.
[Izzy Montoya] Crime reports. Sunday services. Sheets of paper missing, shitty beer... the little things. She notes them all, filing them away. He hasn't been here long, despite the stubs. Despite his personal drug cocktail, he looks to be shooting up... one would think an OD would be simpler with all the pills.
She chuckles. "How old do I look - what's your name, anyway? - didn't they break up in like, the 70s?" She studies the arm a bit more, before setting it down. She studies the man's face. He's scruffy, but even now, 14 hours after his death, she should be able to see the more tell tale signs of a junkie... She gestures toward the arm, mentioning casually as she reaches toward the needle under the coffee table... "Those tracks aren't recent. He got a wallet on him? Photos of the wife?"
Then she hesitates before picking the needle up. "Photog got everything?"
[Imprimatur] "It's a classic, Detective," the coroner asserts, re: Simon and Garfunkle. Saginaw. Looking for America. "I mean, you don't have to be two hundred years old to appreciate Mozart, right? Or Haydn or whatever."
He remains back, against the wall, his spine straight, removed from the immediacy of the corpse. "No wallet. Got the name from the super downstairs. No ID. No car keys." When she asks about the photog he breathes out nearly a sigh. "Shit, Ma'am. I'm just here for the body. I don't care about anything else. You done with him so I can get him down to the morgue?"
[Izzy Montoya] He doesn't give her his name, and says he just wants the body - so she gives a yell to the uniform at the door. "HEY! Photog been in?" She expects a negative, really, and doesn't pick up the needle. In fact, she expected a lot of things - corner cutting, and the like, in order to keep their numbers high. It seems to be the secret everyone knows, and no one admits out loud.
They're the best because they slap a pretty picture on it all. She'd love to spend a week or three in their file room... But, what she has is this. A case they want open and shut, that she won't hand to them until she's sure it's open and shut. "And tell the Super I wanna talk to him!"
What she also has is a small digital camera in the other pocket - Ashton Kutcher made it sound like the perfect buy one night, so she picked it up. She's never taken pictures of herself with it, or friends and family and loved ones - as if she had enough of those to make a difference. No, she keeps it with her for times like this, times where she might need something to back her up. So she starts to take her own photos - the body, the needle, the desk and papers, making a quick yet efficient sweep of the room - including the papers and what they're open too, etc.
She takes a series of Mr Matthews, including a closeup of his arm. "Keep your pants on. I won't be much longer - after all, it's just a junkie, right?" She's not even really listening to what she's saying, and when she settles to a crouch to take a better picture of the needle, she does what she always does.
She listens to what the room has to tell her, too.
[Echo, echo, does she hear an echo? HAIL!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Imprimatur] There are moments in life when we see disaster headed out way. Snapshots, where we open our eyes, take a picture, laminate it, shape it at the corners, tuck it into the dark corners of out soul, where memory breeds with fear in pintucked closeness. The last moment before the crash, brakelights smeared across the windshield, the drum of rain on the roof, a withheld expectancy -
- what next?
There's none of that here. In this room.
Izzy cannot sense what they felt, the dead whose voices echo back to her, the living who murdered, who felt a life twisting into death beneath their hands. Maybe she doesn't bother to imagine it: too much, too close, too immediate, too real for her.
She remembers inside.
She shouts something about the Photog and the uniform at the door just swings around, gives her a heavy look and a snort, says something about Protocol. It's not, yet. Not for fucking junkies. Not for No Humans Involved.
His features - blunt and round with an extra chin and a shadow of whiskers underneath - are dull looking, but there's a certain ferrety gleam in his eyes.
A knock on the door. Single. Singular. Sharp.
The creak of hinges; a man's voice a moment later. "Joe."
" - what the fuck do you want?" A harsh voice, an addict's rasp. Nicotine there, roughened vocal cords.
"Checking on the patient. Let me in."
"NO!"
A struggle, a cough, the slap of hands against wood, the crack of wood against bone. "Fuck, Jesus, my fucking kn- "
"You need to be in treatment."
"How the hell did you find me?"
" - shhh. You're going to go into withdrawals, soon. Then you'll be back - "
"YOU ARE NOT PUTTING THAT SHIT IN - "
"Shhh. Joe. Remember? We're on the same team. We're getting you off that shit. Getting you back to - "
"I CAN FEEL IT IN ME. I AM SHITTING IT ALL OUT. I AM - "
"Joe - "
"HANDS OFF. GET OUT. I AM GONNA CALL ME A LAWYER. I AM GONNA - "
"Court-ordered, Joe. I'm doing this the kind way, but if I need to call - "
"You think I don't know what's going on. I know. I fucking know. I SEE you under -
Oh god. Oh god. OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, GET THEM - GET THEM AWAY FROM ME - GO GET - JESUS FUCK - WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU - "
The sound of someone choking; swallowing his skin. His tongue, or - like he was trying to breathe in and spit up at the same time. The drum of heels against the wooden floor.
A body collapsed, a creak of floorboards beneath moving weight. And, later, the click of a closing door.
[Izzy Montoya] The uniform spins back, and smirks, and she meets his look with a flat one of her own. It's not protocol, of course. Not for junkies. Not for an open and shut case. Her brow creases briefly with irritation, but she turns her face from him and continues to take her pictures instead.
And listens.
She listens carefully, making sure that her face remains a mask, doing her best not to react, not to show that she knows, that there is something here that they aren't seeing, or worse, something that they are, something they are hiding. She closes her eyes, briefly, as the door clicks in the memory of the wood itself, and she drags her fingers through her hair.
She takes a few more shots, and then grabs the needle in her gloved hand, and stands. A moment, and she slips the camera into her pocket, and digs in another to find an evidence bag. There is something wrong here. Something really wrong. And there are some things screamed that reverberate in her mind - things that make it far less simple than open shut case. And far worse than that - it may be better for her to look the other way.
Or to look as if she looks the other way. For now.
[...two can keep a secret if one of them is dead...]
To the Coroner, then. "Alright. I got what I need from him. Bag and tag."
But she doesn't leave the room just yet - she makes another sweep, to see if there's anything else she missed, snapping pictures of anything she finds interesting, or distracting.
[Imprimatur] A body.
A bruise on the knee.
Faint bruises on the torso, fading, the blood drained down. A few drugs scattered around, nothing else. The room is otherwise clean and empty but for the cheap, tattered furniture. The scent of sorrow, of despair sharp in the air.
[Izzy Montoya] She captures the bruises - the knee - the torso - and then nods as she steps back and waves the coroner forward to do his part. She tucks the bagged needle into her pocket as she searches for her pack and lighter, as she watches him work. She locates the pack, and shakes out a cigarette, as she steps into the hall with the uniform.
"Got a light?" Casual. Yet not. He says yes, he says no - either way she'll locate fire somewhere, and step outside for a smoke. He won't see her hands shake. He won't see the way her mouth tightens, the way the muscle in her jaw clenches, the way she has to push memory from her mind so that she can think clearly, dissect it, pick it apart.
He also won't see this, what happens later: the research she does on the victim, searching for the court order she'd heard mentioned, hoping for the identification of the wearer of the heels, and those involved with the order. She digs as deep as she dares, on her own time to avoid the ever watchful eye of her temporary boss, her temporary co-workers.
Don't mess this up, he said.
Too bad for him - she answers to another. And she won't.
[Izzy Montoya] [intell +investigation - COME ON KAHSEENO!]
[Izzy Montoya] [wits +subterfuge - DONT BE A BITCH, KAHSEENO!]
[Imprimatur] Do we notice?
to Imprimatur
[Imprimatur] Joseph Matthews.
He has a record. A series of arrests for possession and other junkie lifestyle issues: stripping copper from a construction site, purse snatching, the usual. Stealing a prescription pad. Uttering a forged check. He did less than a year in Cook County jail, was released on probation. Testing positive for opiates, a probation violation, and given "Alternative Sentencing."
Drug treatment.
That's as far as she gets. Someone's always glancing at her computer screen, the unit clerk gives her looks when she requisitions files. Frustratingly limited information.
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