Casey Donovan (thatshellfire) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-10-24 15:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | roxanne, sam winchester |
Who: Wren and Kyle
What: He needs help on a lead, she needs to show him how not to walk like a cop
Where: The park-Then off to see the hookers
When: After their conversation on the network
Kyle wasn’t much of a typical cop, he never had been. He had never exactly wanted to be a cop, it wasn’t a calling he spent his life actively seeking, it was a fate he spent most of his life trying to avoid. He’d run from it and it came back to bite him, before he knew it he knew he was in it for life. There had been a time that he thought about doing other things, but he knew that time was over and there was nothing else he could imagine doing anymore. He didn’t bother looking back, he didn’t bother even reminiscing there was nothing down that road but pain and frustration.
So he dove into his job, he chased his demons with booze and he did what he could to do the right thing. His methods weren’t always looked upon with praise and he’d done plenty of things he wasn’t proud of, but it was par for the course. It wasn’t the actual job that mattered to him, it was the work. It was the work that brought him to this park in the middle of the night to meet someone he barely knew, but who would hopefully point him in the direction he needed. He had no reason to trust her other than she had been willing to trust him a little, and to him that action spoke louder than most of the words of his superiors who assured him that he had their “support.”
Their last conversation on the network had been mildly amusing, what with her assertion that he walked like a cop, and he had no idea what that even met. He was pretty sure that she’d let him know regardless. He was dressed the same as usual, a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, he was wearing his beat up leather jacket on top of it badge in his jacket pocket and gun strapped under it. He was a few minutes early and he waited at the meeting spot, his hands in his pockets and his eyes peeled and alert.
Wren had just left a john crying in an alley, but you’d never be able to tell it by looking at her.
She was dressed all in white, a sundress and long, white blonde hair, skin golden under the fabric and wig. She looked intentionally harmless, a little vapid with her bee stung lips glossed in a sheer sheen. She was going for a particular type of client that night, trying to lure out the hooker killer, and she’d only bothered to slip a long sleeve shirt under the sundress before meeting him. It was cold out, and the shirt (thin and also white) did little to keep out the chill. Under her dress, there was a knife at her thigh, out of sight and unnoticeable.
She walked up behind him, smiling at his flannel and jeans. The mark of men was all over her neck and jawline, greedy fingers and lips. “You even stand like a cop,” she said, the night air cool enough to be visible when she spoke. “Normal people don’t watch so very much.”
He turned to look at her when he caught her attention and he gave her the once over, he wasn’t leering and he was seemingly as unaffected by her appearance as he would have been anyone else, but the concern was welling up inside of him regardless. She was too young to be out here meeting a shady cop in the middle of the night to help catch a murderer. “I was looking for you, I couldn’t exactly stand around not watching,” he said in his defence but his voice was soft and mildly amused.
She stopped directly in front of him, and she looked up at him, a smile on her lips. Then, she took his hands, freed them from his pockets and shook them out. She surveyed her work, and a moment later she reached up and pressed at his shoulders, rolling them back so they were less straight, less I am a cop! She stepped back again, she gave one last tug to the hem of his shirt, rucking it and messing it a little, and then she walked over to a nearby bench and climbed up on it with the grace of a debutant climbing stairs at her coming out ball. “Walk please,” she said, her smile bright and soft all at once.
He furrowed his brow a bit as she moved closer and actually pulled his hands out of his pockets and started shaking his hands a little, he was hard pressed not to roll his eyes but he couldn’t help the small grin as she went through the motions. At least she was pleasant about it all. He was pretty sure this was all a very polite and hands on way to tell him to stop looking so stiff but he wasn’t sure he’d know how to function without that tension in his muscles. But he tried.
He watched her as she climbed up to the bench and instructed him to walk...So he did, with purpose and with long strides, his legs were long, he was taller than most people after all. He turned and looked at her. “Cop walk?” he asked almost afraid of the answer.
She nodded, but there was a smile on her lips. He was handsome, for all his strength and angles, and there was something trustworthy about him that she liked very much. “Cop walk,” she agreed, and she held out a hand for him to help her off the bench, the motion reminiscent of Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, nothing of the whore in it. “We’ll just have to let them think you’re the kind of cop that likes paying for girls,” she said, as if that was a normal thing, which it was. Her first long-term client had been a sheriff, so she knew the type well. “Help me down,” she coaxed, “and we can walk the rest of the way; it’s close.”
He gave her a shrug, he certainly wasn’t going to be able to learn a new way to walk any time soon, let alone one that didn’t make him feel ridiculous. He took her hand gently and helped her down off of it. Kyle was not, in fact, the kind of cop who liked paying for girls. He enjoyed sex, and often, but he didn’t pay for it and he certainly didn’t go seeking it from girls that should be focusing on homework and prom dates and not turning tricks to make ends meet. He’d save them all if he could. He’d seen way too much over his time as a cop, and while he didn’t begrudge a girl who needed to make a living, he hated the fate that usually befell them. They deserved better.
He nodded at her, “What am I walking into here, Wren? I’m not worried, but I’d rather know, I don’t want to give anyone a scare, they might not help if that’s the case. And I need the help,” he needed them to trust him, a few of them did. He had his contacts but they had been a very long time in the making. He didn’t expect anyone to roll over and trust him, but he didn’t want any of them to be next either.
She slipped her arm into his, and she guided him toward the sidewalk. “You’re walking into an abandoned tenement where five girls live. They have a pimp, but it’s too early for him to be there, hopefully.” Hopefully was the operative word in that sentence. “His name is Damian, and he’s very upset about losing an employee.” She said it with a bit of derision, and the sentiment seemed on unfamiliar on her tongue; she wasn’t used to it. She’d never had a pimp; her mother had taught her that they did nothing but beat a girl and keep her on a financial leash.
She slowed as she walked, the building in the distance crumbling, an unsafe nothing without windows to keep out the cold Seattle air. “He picks them poor,” she said, talking about the hooker killer she, too, had been tracking. “He doesn’t choose girls who look like they have expensive clothing, good pimps, homes or families. He likes them young, not on the street very long, still trusting and scared. I haven’t been able to lure him out,” she admitted, talking more to herself than to him as they stopped in front of the building.
His jaw clenched the longer she talked, he wasn’t so sure if “hopefully” was the word he was looking for when it came to not running into the pimp. He sure as hell wasn’t scared but the last thing he wanted was to put the girls in anymore of a rough spot than they already were.
He looked at her a bit incredulously and grinned a bit, “Wren, what are you doing trying to lure out pimps?” he asked curiously. He trusted her, he didn’t know why, but he knew she was doing what she could to help people. He just wanted to know who this girl was.
“Not the pimp,” she said, tugging him forward and into the abandoned building. “The killer.”
She didn’t give him a chance to respond to that, because she was knocking on a door that was barely on its hinges and announcing them loudly to whoever was on the other side. When the door creaked open, the girl that opened it looked very, very young, with a bruise healing at her temple. “Kitten,” she said, having seen the girl on the street. “I have my man with me, his name’s Kyle, and he wants to ask about Jess,” she explained, the my man a very intentional choice of words. She leaned against Kyle’s side, smiled up at him as if she was smitten, and the door opened a moment later.
Inside, there were five mattresses on the floor and five makeshift makeup tables with mirrors. Colorful pictures lined the flaking walls, pictures of pretty girls in magazines and actresses from the movie screen. A generator in the corner provided power for strings of Christmas lights and a small space heater, and the room still held onto a perpetual cold. There was no pimp in the room - only four girls, all of which looked over at Kyle with distrusting, too old eyes.
Kyle was more than ready to ask her what she was getting up to, but that was a conversation for another day. When the door opened and his eyes landed on the bruised face of the young girl his blood may have been boiling but his face softened and as pissed as he was about the situation, he nodded at her and stopped clenching his jaw. He looked down at Wren as she leaned against him, and then back inside as the door opened.
The scene inside wasn’t much better and he was hard pressed not to end this now for good, but he knew that wasn’t the smart thing to do. It was the hardest part of his job, knowing all the problems, seeing them every day, and having very little by way of options on what to do for them. He took in the room fully and completely before his eyes went back to the girl. He didn’t even know where to start, “Hey,” he said after a moment. “I’m Kyle, can we talk for a minute?” he said calmly.
Wren nodded encouragingly, and the girls looked toward the door warily, and then back at Kyle. Wren nodded again, and two of the girls nodded in return, a tentative acquiescence. Jess’ mattress was obvious, empty and covered in mementos and tokens left by the other girls that had worked corners with the teenager. Wren didn’t mean to, but she held on to Kyle’s arm a little tighter. She never came into these places, these rooms the girl’s lived in, which were so different from her own home, her own bed, her own life. It made her grateful for what she had, and it made her sorry she wasn’t doing more for them, that she hadn’t done more for Jess. It was a little bit of failure, and it hit very, very close to home. She thought of the three vials on her coffee table, the ones promising to enhance abilities without weaknesses, and she focused on them, on what she could do with them.
He smiled softly at the faces in the room and cleared his throat, “How long have you known Jess?” he asked curiously. It was as good a starting point as any, it wasn’t like he had a series of happy fluffy questions to ask about the girl that had been brutally murdered practically right before his very eyes. Regardless of it was in his vision or not, it was too close for comfort and he’d been able to do nothing to stop it.
The girls began speaking in a tumble of words, as if they’d been waiting for the opportunity to discuss their friend, to remember her. They told him that Jess had moved to Seattle from Ohio, and that she’d been running from her stepfather. That she liked sneaking into the local bookstore and reading comics without paying, and she would save up her money to sit at the diner on Saturday morning and watch cartoons while she had coffee and pancakes. She was in love with a boy named Tommy once, but he’d moved away with his family, and she still kept his picture by her bed. She wanted to grow up and be a painter, the girls told them, and one of them dragged over a sketch pad that was old and water stained, the charcoal already smudged on the pages. They hadn’t seen the man Jess had gone off with that night; they’d already been working, and Jess usually got picked last (she was shy).
Everything else they said Wren already knew. The killer liked the girls young, fresh faced. Word was out on the street for all the girls to dress up, to look older with makeup and heels, to stay safe that way. Wren didn’t tell them that makeup couldn’t hide innocence, because there wasn’t any point. These girls had nowhere to go, no other life to lead, and there was no getting away from a pimp and the needles that marred their arms. She just listened; listened to her own failure in finding this man and marking him, marking him so they would know and not go with him.
Kyle listened to every word they said, he hung onto everything, not missing a single detail and while he wasn’t sure it was giving him any more information on the man who was killing these girls, he didn’t stop them or act bored at all. It was clear they wanted to talk, and he wasn’t going to begrudge them that. He doubted they had many opportunities to talk candidly, or to talk with someone who actually cared what they had to say.
He looked through the sketchbook, he had one too, he used it mostly post-vision, but he appreciated people who could wield a talent like that recreationally. “Thank you,” he said smiling at each of them. “Listen, if you remember anything, or you see anything, or you need anything, anything at all,” he started seriously, “she knows how to get hold of me,” he said nodding towards Wren, “I’m happy to give you that information too, but don’t get caught with it,” he said refusing to put them in any more danger than they put themselves in just by living their lives. He wanted to tell them to stay off the streets, but they wouldn’t be able to adhere to that. He wanted to tell them to be a little more choosy with their clientele, but how would they know? He supposed he could teach the group of them how to SING and maybe give them enough knowledge to temporarily disable a perp long enough to get away. It was an option. He smirked a little, but it wasn’t anything but innocent amusement, at the prospect of it. “You girls know how to get yourselves out of trouble?” The last thing he wanted to do was put them in a position that got them hurt, but if it was a matter of life and death...He’d take life for any of them.
Wren watched as the girls all looked at each other uncertainly, as if they weren’t sure whether to take Kyle up on his offer. She gave them a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, knowing they would trust her because she was, in their minds, one of them (even if she saw herself differently). She was older than any of the girls in the room by about three years, and it felt like an eternity more than that. She wished, not for the first time in her life, for the sort of money that didn’t come from charity or handouts, for the ability to make more of a difference than she did.
In the end, she moved away from Kyle and cleared some space in the center of the room, making the choice for them. Then, she pulled her blade from beneath her dress, and she went to watch the door, in case the pimp showed up during the impromptu self defense lesson.
Kyle nodded and started speaking almost immediately while Wren started clearing a space. “I’m not showing you this to get you into more trouble. You’ll know when to use it,” he said clearly from the beginning.
“There are certain parts of a person’s body that are pretty sensitive, and by sensitive I mean if you hit someone there hard enough you can actually do lasting damage, what they teach you in basic self defense is to “SING.”” He went through the basics then, explaining what a solar plexus was, how to stomp the instep of someone’s foot, how to break someone’s nose, the difference between a regular kick to the groin and an effective kick to the groin. He showed them how to jab someone in the throat, how to fend off an attacker from behind, how to fend off an attacker from the front, and how to get out of a few other more vulnerable situations.
He let them do all the practicing on him that they wanted, Wren was instrumental in both her guarding of the door and letting him have it a time or two, thank God she didn’t demonstrate a groin kick with him, he was pretty sure she’d have inflicted lasting damage. It took a while to go through what they needed to, but it still wasn’t as long as he’d liked to have spent, but at least they had something they didn’t have before. “I can’t stress enough that the most important thing you can do is use your gut, you girls know when something is wrong, I know you do. And if you come to a situation where you need to use what I just taught you, and you get away safely...Call me first. I’ll take care of what needs taking care of. I promise.” He didn’t know how much it meant, and he didn’t know how lucky they’d be, or if they’d end up just the same no matter what. But they couldn’t save them, until they had more information. The best they could do was help them save themselves.
Wren took as much from the lesson as the girl’s did. She knew how to wield her switchblades, but she didn’t know how to do any of the basic self defense things that Kyle taught the girls. She smiled up at him when he was done, and she rubbed her hand over his upper arm in thanks. She did something she’d never done, then; she gave the girls her cellphone numbers. It was something she never did, it was a risk to have the girls carrying her number around, but she did it anyway.
Outside, it was getting later, and she tugged on Kyle’s sleeve. “We better go,” she said, knowing the pimp would be around soon to usher the girls to work. She didn’t want Kyle around for that, not with the earnestness on his face, his obvious interest in helping these girls written all over him. It was a recipe for disaster, the pimp showing up, and so she tugged on Kyle’s sleeve again, and she walked toward the door.
Kyle nodded, “Ladies, be careful alright?” he said, and not just to the girls they’d come to see. He meant that for Wren as much as he did for any of them. “She knows how to get hold of me,” he said seriously.
He put his hand gently on Wren’s back as she walked out of the door and he closed it behind them. “Thanks,” he said seriously. “This guy needs to be found,” he said stating the obvious, but still feeling like it needed to be said.
Wren waited until she was outside to look up at him, and she gave him an honest and open smile. “You were really terrific in there,” she said candidly, her blue-gray gaze fond. She looked back toward a movement on the sidewalk - the pimp making his rounds for the evening - and she tugged Kyle away and away, clear of the building before the man had ever entered it. “Tell me if you find anything?” she asked him. “I’ll do the same.” There was no question about who or what she meant. The man who was killing these girls, he had to be found, and he had to be found soon.
She stretched up onto her tiptoes, and she kissed his cheek. “Goodnight, Kyle.”