Victor Brannigan (sciomachy) wrote in nevermore_logs, @ 2012-12-23 00:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | michael, miranda lowsley, victor brannigan |
WHO: Victor Brannigan, Michael, a bunch of NPC assholes, Miranda Lowsley and some NPC not assholes.
WHAT: THIS IS A HOSTAGE SITUATION
WHEN: December 22nd
WHERE: A...building...
WARNINGS: Guns n' shit. Oh, and language... :D
Paperwork was all part of his job as detective, and Victor was catching up early on Saturday morning. The office was relatively empty which and it made Victor feel peaceful as he scribbled things on paper and typed up his case files. As he worked, he whistled, glad to know he wasn't disturbing anyone.
Victor glanced up as his partner, Michael Angel, entered their office. "Hey, Mikey! They world didn't end, so that's pretty good, isn't it!"
Michael raised at eyebrow at Victor and he handed the man a coffee. "The world was ending?"
It was not surprising that Michael was out of the pop culture loop and Victor smiled as he took a sip of the coffee his partner had brought him. "Thanks. And it was a Mayan calendar thing. People thought- Never mind." It would take too long to explain. "The good thing is we're all still here." And he started whistling again.
"You whistle a lot lately," Michael said, taking a seat at his desk.
"Oh, sorry! It's a habit."
"On the contrary, Detective Brannigan, I laud your musical prowess and the whimsy with which you present it." Michael didn't notice the amused and befuddled look on Victor's face and he kept speaking. "I was merely attempting to inquire as to why the increase in playing your puccalo."
Victor arched an eyebrow at Michael. "First of all, if I didn't know what you meant by that, I would think you were asking something very inappropriate," he chuckled. "And second, you managed to avoid all the talk of the ongoing fake apocalypse, yet you know what Puccalo is? And Jesus Christ, will you please call me Victor?"
Michael shrugged. "I like jazz."
"Right. Well I guess I should be flattered you consider my silly whistling good enough to be compared to that of Toots Thielemans. As for the reason behind the whistling, it's probably happiness." He took another sip of coffee and he smiled as he thought about Kat.
"Ah, I have heard that can happen on occasion," Michael nodded and he pulled a stack of paperwork over to him."
Victor blinked at his partner and then he leaned on his desk to ask, "what about you, Michael? Have you ever had a special lady? -guy?"
"Everyone is special," Michael replied, not bothering to look up from his paperwork.
"I- No, I know. Michael, have you ever had a significant other?"
Michael did look up at that, and from the expression on his face, he was clearly considering the question carefully. Finally he nodded and said, "God is my most significant Other," before turning back to his work.
There was silence for a moment and Victor struggled to find something to reply to that with. He leaned back in his chair and the subsequent creak was almost enough to make him jump out of his skin. "I mean someone you were in love with, Mikey."
"Oh! Are you in love?"
With an exasperated sigh, Victor gave up trying to get anything out of Michael. He really liked his partner, but he should have known better than to try to ask him questions like a normal person. Michael had absolutely never been normal. He opened his mouth to say something else, when his work cell phone rang. "Hold that thought," he said, answering it. "Brannigan?" His brows creased as he listened to the dispatcher. "No problem. Michael, we have to go."
The drive to the crime scene was quiet, neither of the partners participating in banter. Crime scenes were always worse around Christmas. They almost always meant a family was going to suffer through the holiday and then spend every single Christmas after that being reminded of their lost loved one.
As Victor pulled the car over near the scene, he glanced at the perimeter the uniformed officers had already set up around it. It looked like a construction area and the ring of cops and yellow tape surrounded the body of a young woman. There was a second ring of people standing further away; a collection of onlookers from the area who had heard the commotion or been passing by.
Victor and Michael climbed out of the car and they were immediately greeted by a uniformed officer, also from homicide. "They're trying to determine if it was suicide or homicide," she said, glancing ruefully at the gruesome scene. "Either way, she started from way up there."
The unfinished building towered over them and from the look of the body, the victim had either fallen or jumped from the very top. It made Victor feel a little ill looking up at it, so he concentrated on the ground. "Alright, can we set up a screen to block her from view? I'll go talk to people, see if anyone saw anything. You want to work with forensics, Michael?"
The moment his partner nodded, Victor went to work. He was always better at getting stories out of people anyway. People tended to see him as personable and friendly, whereas Michael was slightly standoffish and quite direct. Victor understood that some people had to warm up to you first, before they would actually admit to seeing anything.
The crowd grew as the morning went on. Victor had lost count of how many people he had spoken too. He stepped aside to take a momentary break as the ambulance finally arrived to take the body of the victim away. Nothing about the case was becoming clear, and Victor really needed a cup of coffee. On bigger scenes like this one, there was occasionally a food or beverage cart which took advantage of the crowd. He find one and purchased a coffee, leaning against the wall of the building to drink it.
His head stared to swim soon after his first drink. If he hadn't been drinking so quickly he might have noticed it was drugged before he had had too much of it, but in his haste to get back to the possible witnesses, he had chugged it very fast indeed. His vision swam and he felt someone take his arm and pull him. It was hard to focus on where he was being dragged and he didn't even struggle he was so addled.
The building the woman had fallen from was part of a bigger construction complex, making up several buildings in different places on the same block. Victor was dragged through an alley and into another building which appeared mostly finished but was still uninhabited.
Except for the men with guns.
Even through the haze in his mind, Victor started to realise this was very bad. He was pulled up more flights of stairs than he could count, his feet stumbling over the steps more often than not. He knew they were high up when they finally left the staircase and entered one of the floors. He was dragged down a hallway and then pushed into a room which had four other people in it.
Victor groaned and he leaned against the wall in an attempt to get his head to stop spinning. A flash from a camera made him squeeze his eyes shut and he groaned. Then a man with a gun said, "now sit the fuck down and do everything we tell you. This should be over soon."
He slid down the wall, ended up in a semi-sitting position on the floor. "W-what?"
The man with the gun just shook his head and left, but someone else moved over to Victor's side and patted his shoulder. "They've taken us hostage," came the voice of an elderly man. Victor turned to look at him and was struck by how much he resembled a clean-cut Santa Claus. "They told us they staged a suicide to gather a crowd. Then they picked a few of us off."
Oh, this was so not good. Victor rubbed at his eyes and he felt the effects of the drug start to abate just a little. He glanced at the rest of the group. There was a middle-aged woman, a younger woman, and a small girl who looked like she was about eight. Seeing her made his heart break. "Okay...okay, I'm a detective. I'll figured something out once...once the room stops spinning. They drugged me."
"They did the same to me," the man said. "My name is Ian, what's yours?"
"Victor Brannigan. Any idea what they want?"
Ian shook his head. "And I am not about to ask."
Victor glanced to the door and he could see the shadow of a man with a gun standing outside the frosted window cut into it. He looked up to see a vent in the ceiling, though the room had no windows. That boded well for air circulation. The room had no furniture and there was no food or water anywhere. He wondered just how long these men intended this to go on for and he fervently hoped the answer was 'one hour' though he doubted it. "We just...have to stay calm," he said, willing his ears to stop ringing. "Talk to me, who are the rest of you?" he asked, trying to bide time for the cobwebs to leave his mind so he could think.