sam_mm (sam_mm) wrote in morningstar_mnr, @ 2008-04-18 18:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | chad, icene, sniper |
8.30pm, Nixon Street, Icene and Chad plus NPC's
Icene was kind of grumpy. A quiet day, followed by covering the front end of the swing shift, and now, just at the end of that, the call had come in. With a sigh, Icene had gathered the team, and briefed them quickly, then, in two Hummers they'd headed out for the scene. As was the case with most crime scenes, it looked like chaos, lots of people standing around doing not a lot as they waited for the right people to arrive. Icene was glad to see the body was still in situ, and immediately directed the team's photographer to start taking a thorough record of the scene and the victim. Icene then left the team to it, bagging evidence was their job, and headed over to where a familiar face was standing.
"Hi Chad, what have we got tonight then? Any sign of Dr Morrow's van?" Her tone of voice was cool, her expression bland, her eyes taking in as much detail as she could before the scene and surroundings were irrevocably altered.
Chad recognized her and smiled, though the scene was grim. He'd been patrolling, trying to get other witnesses to step forward while protecting the scene from possible contamination with the other officers on duty. He called over another officer and broke away from the main group, preventing anything to slip out for the rumor mill to circulate. "There's a mess on the sidewalk and a couple witnesses. Probably nothing usable, since it pertains to vehicle over person, but anything helps, right?"
"Of course it does, mostly for you guys in identifying who, but for us, it can give us clues on how. Not to mention where to look for other clues." Icene smiled, then the smile faded as she turned back to the body, "Anyone move him? See if he span round before he fell? I might need to have the team speak to your eye witnesses separately, get some impressions?"
Chad shrugged. "I haven't seen anybody move him at all. There was another officer here before me and I have the contact info for the two witnesses that were willing to stick around to answer questions..." he trailed off, his head turning toward where the body lay "I can get you copies of their statements and stuff." In the back of his mind he feared the unknown. Who had done this, why had it been done and is it possible that kid could have been somebody Logan knew. Being a cop in some aspects made him feel like his family had been safer, but it had been the price he paid for his job.
"That's good, that there were some who were willing to do that." Icene shook her head, "Seems a lot of times nobody is willing to even try and help these days." She waved off one of her team, who carried the evidence bags back to the hummer, "Although with any luck this one is going to be easier to solve, I mean, it's close range, obviously, so there should have been more people who saw or heard something. We can only hope we find them before they forget everything, right?"
Chad shook his head. "Too many people out there are getting lawyer crazy. Wanting to sue somebody for just looking at them wrong because it's part of their constitutional rights or so they think." Pity behind it all is those people were all about protesting everything and not doing any research to find out how they even got the right to protest. "One of 'em lives at Morningstar." He flipped through his notebook for the information. "A Mr. Fidel Avilar?" Some days he hated that he could barely make out the chicken scratch that was his writing. The numbers were clear though. "In 7130. Says he was out with a friend and they got cut off by the vehicle that the shooting came from."
"Hmmm, wonder if I should take up house calls?" Icene chuckled briefly, "Sorry, bad joke. Especially given the number of houses I get to visit each week. Still, will be easy to find him I guess."
She looked round again at the scene, "I guess the techs are doing ok, we just need Dr Morrow's wagon to get rid of the biggest piece of evidence. I might have to pay him a visit while he's doing the autopsy. If I can stand to. Get my evidence as fresh as possible. How's you anyway?"
He raised his brow at her. Sure it was part of dealing with it to make jokes; there had been times he'd done it himself. It just didn't seem like a joking matter to him right now. "We get to do the house calls from time to time... Not fun telling a parent their child isn't coming home though." Truthfully, he hadn't ever had to be the one on that job and he wasn't too sure he wanted to be. "I don't think house calls for questioning are as tough though." He said with a smirk.
His shoulders shrugged but nothing else on him moved. "I guess I'm doing okay. Part of me feels bad for the kid's family because that part of me wonders if it could have been Logan." Different times and different places, maybe it could have been. For now though, he knew Logan was safely home and knew enough to defend himself against just about everything.
"I get that. It's hardly pleasant having them ID their kids from photo's at the lab either. Dr Morrow and his team do excellent work, but, sometimes you just can't hide things." Icene grimaced faintly, although truth be told she was normally completely cold for those encounters and they really didn't touch her. "Still, I can look up Mr Avilar, and Logan should be home right? He'll be fine. I think I might want to have a chat with Travis though. He might have known the victim? Have you met Travis? Eighteen and thinks he knows it all, but, I suspect he'll manage that growing up thing soon enough."
Chad nodded. "He seemed to want to get back home when I was asking questions, so I doubt he'll give you much trouble. He's probably having a hell of a night now trying to sleep." He paused then clarified. "Mr. Avilar that would be." He nodded curtly though. "Logan's home. We had a celebration earlier for him and some friends, so he's probably off playing some sort of game or cleaning up. I hate being on call some days."
Chad hadn't met Travis yet that he could remember. He scrunched up his eyebrows thinking. "Don't think I've met any boy named Travis yet, but if you know him, he sounds like he could use a good knock of sense." If the "eighteen and know it all" type of attitude had changed like the rest, it was a good possibility Travis was walking a similar path to what Chad was then.
"He lives at the Manor too, I might just have a word with all of the Manor teenagers, if I can get round to it. One of them was a witness at the motorcycle thing several weeks back I think." Icene looked round the scene again, "I don't suppose one of your witnesses said how many shots? I hate to leave a scene with ballistics evidence still in it, it's a flaw, but then, I am only human." Apparently.
It sounded like a good idea to him, even if it was just a preventative precaution. "If you need any help let me know. Might be a decent idea to include some parents in that." Again he was resigned to simply shaking his head. "No, neither of them said how many shots."
"OK, so presuming they were fired from the vehicle, I'll want the whole of that side searched inch by inch for any stray rounds that missed, and I'll want to know how many went into the body and how many came out. Those that stayed in there aren't too much of a problem, Greg will find those for me." Icene gave a short two fingered whistle and the team turned towards her. She beckoned them over and set them to searching for rounds as well as any other evidence.
"We don't know how many shots, so be extra careful looking, there could be one, there could be six, or even more depending on what was fired and how many were firing. Don't be leaving any stray rounds anywhere near this scene. All evidence bagged and into the hummers, are the labs advised on what's coming in so far?" There was an arch to one eyebrow as they stared at her in silence, "Well?"
"Yes Ma'am, we're on it." One of the older CSI's took the lead, and divided them into two teams, and then split down the scene so it was easier to search for the rounds.
Icene turned back to Chad, "They're not my team, I could have wished you'd waited just a half hour more, I'm supposed to be off duty as of eight, but the call came in before the swing supe arrived. Damn man is usually late but this is ridiculous."
Chad let out a deep sigh. "I could wish it came an entire day later, but truthfully I hate to see that it happened at all." It never was a good thing to leave a birthday party to work, much less have it be this type of job. "We'll keep our eyes open too." He assured her, meaning his team that was there for crowd control and protection in case the shooter happened upon the scene again.
"Never happening at all sounds like the best thing to me, I'm not sure that anytime is a good time for someone this young to lose their life." Icene gestured to the body, and then shook her head, "It's one of those things I guess, but, I still don't like seeing this sort of thing."
She looked round as she was called, and nodded in answer to a question. "We've found a round in the wall, excuse me for a minute or two?" Icene could hear the crowd of onlookers, and somewhere in that an approaching siren. Hopefully that was the ME's van coming to collect the body.
Chad turned to walk off in the direction of the siren sound. If it was in fact the medical examiner, he would want to control what the crowd was seeing. Plus it was best to give some sort of background first, wasn't it? His boots scuffed the sidewalk as he went, his eyes darting between the ground for any possible signs of evidence and the crowd for any new faces. Sadly, he turned up nothing between where he'd stood talking to Icene and where the coroner's van pulled up.