kapital_a (kapital_a) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2013-02-10 14:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | aaron, aaron and susanna, aaron and violet, day eleven, susanna, violet |
Investigations
Characters: Aaron, Susanna, Violet
Setting: Medical Bay
Violet was waiting for Aaron to arrive, pacing back and forth slightly. It wasn't a big arc, but it was present, as she went over in her mind the details. She'd written up a little report for him in the short amount of time she'd had, but it was as thorough as possible. She knew her report wouldn't be nearly as helpful as his talking to Susanna, but she wanted to do her best. She also had her file on Becka's rape, and she planned to hand a copy of that over too.
Aaron was used to having to juggle cases in his head, but with such a small team, and in an environment like this, he figured that he was going to have to be doing more of that. How much more, of course, depended on the quality of what he had to work with. Jae seemed okay, competent and centred. Brady he thought might actually work - at least the guy had been honest about his shortcomings, and if he could carry on that way and listen and learn, hopefully he would be able to do the job.
He didn't know who Violet was, but looking round as he walked in, that much wasn't hard to figure out and he headed towards her. "I'm Aaron - who said there'd been a stabbing." It wasn't a question.
"The victim." Violet told him. "Susanna. She's in exam room one. She's already been treated, I've got a report for you." she said, holding the pages out to him. "I also have a report on another incident."
"Thank you," Aaron said, taking the first report and flipping through it, taking note of injuries. "How's she doing?" he asked, focusing on that ahead of the other report, though he figured that he knew what that one would be and he certainly wanted that one.
"Alright, for someone who was just stabbed. She's been given pain meds and is resting. I recommend you get your questioning in quickly, she isn't in the best of moods, understandably." Violet warned. No one would be in a great mood after something like that, but Susanna had already proven herself to be a rather bitchy patient. Violet didn't particularly care one way or another what sort of attitude Susanna had, her priority was making sure she was alright, but she figured the guy here might want to have a fair warning.
Aaron rolled his eyes. "Noted." Wouldn't be the first time he had dealt with someone with an attitude problem, that was for sure. "Before I go and see her, I'll have that other file as well. Anything you want to add about either matter that you'd prefer not get written down?"
Violet considered that. "Don't agitate my patient in there. Even if the stabbing was shallow, it's never something to mess around with. I didn't ask about the incident itself, just if there were any other injuries going on there. Beyond that, I was the one who performed the kit, I'm waiting for results on it. As soon as I have them, I will bring them over straight away." she assured him.
"Appreciate it," Aaron said with a nod. "Thanks for your time - if you think of anything else, you know where to find me," he told her, as a matter of course.
"I do. Thank you for your prompt response." she told him, with a little smile. She did appreciate having the structure, she appreciated people stepping up to do a job that she was guessing was unpopular. It made her feel a little better about it all.
Susanna was not in the best of moods, but for what was probably the first time since she’d arrived here, she felt justified in not trying harder to disguise it. Being stuck in this room, on this hospital-grade bed had given her plenty of time to think, and she’d realized that with this damn wound in her stomach, she would not be able to do anything: no dancing, no yoga, and worst of all, no creative sex. If she hadn’t already wanted to kill Meg, that realization would have driven the urge home.
She really hadn’t wanted Violet to report the stabbing, but knowing there would be nothing she could say to stop her, she’d just worked on resigning herself to it. And now? Now she was reclined slightly in the bed, waiting to be questioned. Oh joy.
Aaron tucked the two files under his arm and brought out a notebook and pen he’s grabbed from the office on his way out as he headed in to see Susanna. Standing at the end of the bed, he looked her over. “I’m Aaron, I was one of the people designated as law enforcement today. I’m here to take a statement from you,” he told her, officially, though his tone was more gentle than his appearance suggested it would be.
Whatever Cal had done and given her had minimized the swelling in her face so that she could actually see Aaron, and the pain was being managed well enough, though she luckily wasn’t feeling too fuzzy from them. “Wonderful,” she replied to his greeting, voice dripping with sarcasm. “There’s really not much to say. Meg and I were exchanging... pleasantries, and she head-butted my nose, after which I took her down. Reece came in, pulled me off her, and then she stabbed me in the stomach.” And she really didn’t think she could make it any simpler than that. She just didn’t want the law enforcement people dealing with this. Meg was her problem, and she fully intended to take care of it herself.
“Pleasantries? I take it they weren’t all that pleasant,” Aaron commented, writing down the names of those involved. It seemed fairly straightforward, but if there was one thing he knew it was that there was always two sides to every story. Even if one side vastly outweighed the other. “How about you go through what happened, from the beginning, in detail.” He hooked a chair with his foot and dragged it nearer to the side of the bed so he could sit down.
“How astute of you to pick up on the sarcasm,” Susanna snapped in reply, resisting the urge to roll her eyes, though it was strong. Although she couldn’t say she was surprised that he directed her to go through it again in detail, she was far from pleased and had no intention of doing so. “I’ve told you what happened. Everything else is irrelevant,” she replied.
Aaron fixed her enough, entirely unmoved by the sarcasm. “You can start at the beginning. I’ll stop you if I have any questions,” he told her, also ignoring the fact that she had basically refused to answer his question.
Oh, but he was stubborn. His repetitious insistence gave her the impression that he was a man used to having his questions answered and orders followed. Well, he’d never met her before, had he? “We exchanged pleasantries. She head-butted my nose. I took her down. Reece pulled me off. She stabbed me,” she repeated her earlier summary in short, concise statements, even going so far as to smile at him.
So, she was one of those. Aaron kept his eyes directed down towards his pad. “What’s your full name?” he asked her, keeping his tone neutral.
“Susanna Langdon,” she answered briefly, intentionally leaving her middle name out. The administration had released only their first and last names for the voting, so she saw no reason to give him more than that.
He wrote that down. “Right. Miss Langdon-” He glanced up “-Why, exactly, did... Meg... see fit to headbutt you?” he asked.
She nearly protested being called ‘Miss’ but let it go as it was hardly important right now. Ahh, so he was going to ask more specific questions to try to get out just what pleasantries had led to the fight. “Because she didn’t like hearing the truth,” she replied, both honest and vague.
“And what truth would that be?” Aaron said. She could be vague all she liked, he could play this game all day. Actually, that wasn’t true - he had better things to be doing that this, but she didn’t know that and he would play this game all day, if that’s what it took to get questions out of her and prove from the get go that this position was not just some token. Their team had to work from the start, if it was going to work at all.
“I don’t see the relevance,” Susanna replied shortly. It was no one’s business what she and Meg had discussed.
“Well, it’s a good thing that I do,” Aaron said, making no move to offer that explanation to her. “So, let me rephrase the question - what exactly did you say to her that resulted in her headbutting you?”
“What I said is between her and I and not of relevance.” He could rephrase the question all he wanted - she was not going to be giving him any specifics of what was said.
“Given that I’m sure that when I go and talk to Meg, she’s going to argue that she was provoked, possibly even self defence for some of this, actually, what you said is very much of relevance. Now, you don’t have to tell me full details of your conversation, but if you choose not to, that will be noted and I will just have to assume that you have something to hide,” he said, conversationally, giving her a smile that didn’t actually reach his eyes. “Neither of us actually want that.” He closed his notebook and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Look, Susanna. I know you don’t want to be here. You’ve been stabbed. You’ve been hurt. And you have me sitting here asking you a load of inane questions instead of just going out and dealing with the person who did this to you. I get that. And I will be talking to everyone else. And I will be dealing with this. And I can get to that much more quickly and I can leave you alone far sooner if you would just cooperate with me. Because, for this to work, it needs to be done a certain way. And you trying to dodge me at every turn, for no good reason, is just getting in your own way,” he told her, more gently than his earlier statement.
It was cute, the way he thought provoking her to jump to her own defense would get her to spill just what had been said. He just kept on talking though, so she waited him out, listening to what he was saying more to observe him than interest in what he was saying. And what he had to say next gave her the impression that he was either a very good actor who had thrown himself into this role of law enforcement, or he’d had plenty of experience questioning people. She was leaning heavily toward believing the second option. As he finished speaking, she leaned forward a little as well, biting back a groan.
“And just what kind of verbal provocation would justify physical violence? I did not threaten her. I made no move to attack her in any way.” Truly, she’d set herself up for a clear case of self defense against Meg’s attack, if only Reece had not intervened.
Aaron sat back, wondering why this woman was trying so hard to avoid answering any of his questions. It set all of his alarm bells ringing. What should have been a clear cut case of one woman stabbing another now felt like there was more to it. “Noted. What did you say to her, just before she headbutted you? What did you say that was apparently ‘the truth’?” he asked her, again. And he would ask her again. And again, until she answered.
Susanna was sorely tempted to call Violet into the room and claim that she was no longer feeling up to talking, certain that the nurse would get rid of the cop for her, but she forced herself to sit back and try to think clearly. As much as she wanted to take care of Meg herself, the fact was that the newly appointed law enforcement team were now involved, and there was no way to avoid that. “I do not care for the idea of others getting involved. This is between her and I, however I know that now it is not. So, what I said right before she attacked me was that it was clear on her face that she felt guilty for her husband’s removal from the facility.”
“I realise that this is in no way a pleasant experience for you,” Aaron said, giving her a smile that softened his face in way which was unexpected. He tilted his head to the side a little. “Why do you think she’s guilty for that?” he asked, sounding genuinely interested. He was back on the nice guy track and he would really rather stay on that. She didn’t want him there, and he didn’t want to be there. He would much prefer that people who would usually be labelled ‘victim’ would work with him. But maybe as well, someone else would have taken her at her word more. Unfortunately, Aaron wasn’t that person. He knew that ‘victim’ wasn’t always the case. No matter what the physical evidence. No matter how hard he was going to work to ensure that his personal prejudices didn’t colour his judgment in his professional work.
Susanna really didn’t need the reassurance that he knew this wasn’t pleasant, though she had to wonder if he could guess at why it was so unpleasant. It wasn’t the injuries - it was how the injuries prevented her from tracking the bitch down and killing her now. “I did not say I think she’s guilty for that. I said that she appeared to feel guilty for it,” she corrected, not appreciating in the least the way he’d twisted her statement around.
“Who brought the subject up?” he asked her, noting that down, along with the fact she hadn’t missed his change around.
Although she thought about lying, Susanna opted to go with the truth but with a bit of a spin to it. “I did. I witnessed his removal, and it stayed with me. They tasered him and dragged him out of here like a dog with no explanation to the rest of us just why he was removed, beyond that he’d been deemed unfit. I asked her if she’d found out why because I wanted to know what would get that kind of treatment from the Administration,” she explained, looking the part of concerned and disgusted at the treatment while keeping any glee at the memory of Dominic receiving said treatment from her expression and tone.
Aaron raised an eyebrow at that and noted it down. That was something he had heard nothing about before. “And what did she say to that?” he asked her, figuring that there must have been some exchange between bringing the subject up and Meg headbutting her.
Again, Susanna decided to stick as close to the truth as she could, resigned at this point to answering Aaron’s questions, if only to get him to go away. “She became very defensive, overly so, yelling at me that he hadn’t done anything. And she just looked so damn guilty that I went out on a limb and asked her what she’d done, and that’s when she attacked me,” she explained, hoping that he would leave it at that.
“She headbutted you,” Aaron confirmed, glad that he’d managed to actually get this woman answering his questions, though he still couldn’t understand why she was so reluctant to do so in the first place. “And you fought back,” he said, encouraging her to continue to talk.
“No, first she scratched my face, and then she pulled on my dress toward her, throwing off my balance and bringing me down to her level - she’s very short - and headbutted me. That’s when I fought back. We went down to the floor, she kicked me, and then I straddled her. I punched her once, and I was about to punch her again, in the hopes of knocking her out to keep her from attacking me further,” she lied smoothly, “only then Reece came in and grabbed my arm. So, I started choking her with my other hand. She grabbed my pinky and pulled it back - she was going to break it, so when Reece tried pulling me off of her, I let him. He picked me up around the middle and didn’t even think about what she might do. We’d barely moved away before she was up and charging us with that fucking knitting needle. She stabbed me with it, and if I hadn’t kicked her in the process, she probably would have done a lot more damage.” As she explained just what happened in the rest of the fight, her anger became more and more apparent so that by the time she’d finished, she needed to take a moment to breathe and try to get her emotions in check.
“Knitting needle?” Aaron asked, catching that. That was the first time the actual weapon had been mentioned.
Susanna snorted derisively. “Yes, knitting needle. I imagine she sharpened it into a more effective weapon, considering how easily she stabbed me with it.” Speculation, of course, as Susanna had never handled knitting needles in her life. But they weren’t usually that sharp, were they? “Violet should have it for you.”
He knew that was the case - he had skimmed the report before coming in here, but he wanted to hear it fresh from her. Especially now that she had been being so evasive. He wasn’t going to be filling in the gaps for her, not now. “Thank you,” he said, after a moment or two. He figured he had what he was going to get from her. “I’ll go and talk to Reece and Meg,” he added, standing.
It still frustrated her that the newly appointed law enforcement were involved at all, but it was unavoidable. “You do that,” she said, relaxing back again. She was confident, at least, that she’d told enough of the truth that anything Reece or even Meg might add would only corroborate her version of events.