jaebird (jaebird) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2013-06-02 12:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | aaron, aaron and jae, day seventeen, jae |
Square One
Characters: Aaron and Jae
Setting: law enforcement offices, evening
Jae was pretty sure this wasn’t good for her. When she’d taken this job, she’d really thrown herself into it, and it seemed to be consuming her entirely. She’d stopped talking to many people, because of her focus on the cases they had, which fucking sucked because there still wasn’t much evidence of anything ever. Without access to the cameras, this shit was nearly impossible.
It went against the grain in her head. In her estimation, it should be simpler. It was a closed environment. They didn’t have to worry about anyone fleeing. Though the problem with that was that people got removed at seeming random, and no one had any idea why. So, like in the case of the rapist, that motherfucker could be gone. Could have been gone from the start.
Then there was the case of crime scene contamination. By the time they got anywhere, shit was all kinds of jacked up. The only potentially pristine scene had been that girl Violet, and she was gone too--she noticed without any fucking word to the facility at large. She still didn’t know what they should do about that. Jesus.
Oh, and to top it all off--she wasn’t a trained fucking detective, and she knew it. So, for all she knew, even intact crime scenes wouldn’t be any more forthcoming for her.
But that didn’t stop her from trying. She went to take a drink from her water bottle, but it was empty. She realized belatedly that she’d done that at least three times in the last half hour. Awesome. Sighing, she stood up, rubbing at the bridge of her nose--something that alerted her to the fact that her eyes felt tender, and oh. She had a headache.
“That sound - that’s when you know the job’s getting to you,” Aaron said as he walked in through the door. He set a mug of coffee in front of her, keeping the other he was holding for himself. “Didn’t know how you took it, so it’s strong and black,” he told her. When he’d started out as a cop, he’d been told by his far more experienced partner that, even if he didn’t drink it that way now, he’d learn soon enough. Truer words had never been spoken.
Looking up, she was distracted by the coffee he put down. "If you weren't such a dick? I would kiss you right now." she told him, grabbing the coffee to take a drink. "Thank you." she said, her genuine gratitude in her voice. "And yeah. You'd be right. That was the sound of me realizing that this shit blows." Not that she was walking away, which was evident.
Aaron sat down across from her and leaned back in his chair. “They’ve given us an impossible task, but they can wash their hands of shit, because they can say that it’s our job to handle it. And now we’re down to two, since Brady fucked off.”
"Yeah." she said, rubbing at her eyes lightly then she sat back, leaning her head back to stare at the ceiling, hands around the mug still. "Are we telling people?" she asked. "About the nurse. Because they sure as shit didn't."
“I haven’t so far,” Aaron told her. “Talked to Jeremy earlier, who seems to know that something’s happened, but if he knows what, he’s not saying. But - two people found her, right? That kind of shit doesn’t stay a secret for long.”
"I honestly would have thought it would be all over by now." Jae said. "But I don't see a lot of panic, considering a brutal fucking murder happened and no one knows if the culprit is still here or not. Not to mention the rapist never got caught." she looked at him again. "What's the next move?" she asked. "After all the work I've been doing, just consider me your rookie, or whatever, you're the expert here. And right now I'm feeling pretty fucking useless. So, point me in a direction. Or point us in one, or something."
“Yeah, direction would be fucking wonderful, wouldn’t it?” Aaron said, sarcastically. “Let’s see - nurse brutally murdered in the clinic. Nobody saw it happen. Or, at least, nobody’s coming screaming about seeing someone killed. Two people find her after the fact. How long after the fact, I have no idea, because I’m no ME. We need to talk to the Doc, see if we can establish some kind of a window for time of death - when was Violet meant to be there? Was he down there at all? Did she have any patients scheduled? Was she often down there alone? Was there anyone who might want to harm her?
“If we had files on everyone here, we might be able to draw up some kind of suspect list, on past convictions. As it is, we don’t have that. We know that Meg has already stabbed one woman, so at the moment, she’s heading my list of possibles. But we know fuck all about anyone else, and given where we are? Could be anyone. We have no technical support, no evidence, and a facility full of people who are, by their very natures, cautious about talking to cops.”
"From the notes in the clinic, the impression I got was that she was meticulous with the notes, and she was there a lot. I didn't see any 'patients' listed." Jae offered, though she knew that wasn't as pinpointed as she wanted either. She fell quiet as she considered. "I wish we could even come up with a vague motive. But she still had her identification bracelet, which means no one tried to get it to see if they could get meds, or whatever. I don't think she made any enemies."
“And this day just gets better and better, doesn’t it?” Aaron deadpanned. “Okay, putting that aside for a moment - are we intending to tell people what happened to her? Normally, this wouldn’t even be a topic for conversation, but I think we need to talk about it. A closed environment, announcing there’s a killer on the loose - and actually an active one, not one who’s, say, killed his wife in a jealous rage. Well, that might not go well.” Of course, the flip side of that is that it would give people a chance to protect themselves. But, did they even need to do that? Aaron had read things on people’s reactions to the idea of a serial killer, and there was a reason the police tended to try and keep that kind of shit under wraps for as long as possible.
"If people are even remotely intelligent it won't go down well." Jae said, though she sounded like she had some doubts about how smart their fellow prisoners were. "The other side is whoever did it--if they're still here--gets a freebie, and I hate that idea with every fiber of my being." She took another drink of her coffee. "...okay let's boil it down. Telling everyone. Pros and cons." she put out there, so they could both comment on this logically and in an organized fashion.
"Pros," Aaron started, thinking that through. "People have a right to know what's going on. Other witnesses might come forward - though, honestly, if someone saw something and hasn't already said something to us, in an environment like this? Then we have a worse problem on our hands that's not just this one incident." If there were people who didn't want to be snitches, and who saw them as people who would be snitched to, then they were never going to get anywhere without a real hearts and minds initiative. He left it at that for Jae to add in what she saw as the pros.
"In my experience, which I know is different from this one, if people don't say something of their own volition, you have to twist it out of them. We won't know who to twist." Jae said, staring into a middle distance as she thought over what he said. "Pros, people will be on the look out for shit...immediate con on that being it can go way too far and create paranoia instead." She glanced at him again. "I've met a lot of people here and honestly most of them are alright. There aren't that many who blip on my crazy-o-meter."
"Con - definitely paranoia. If people think there's a murderer on the loose - and an actual active one, rather than just someone convicted for something, then there's always going to be that question. In a closed environment like this, it'll increase tension and make fights more liekly to break out. We have people here with violent tendencies already, and people who have been victims for too long. This could turn into a melting pot of bad pretty quickly, and it'll be up to us to try and keep things from exploding in the worst possible way," Aaron said, shaking his head.
"You know what our problem is going to be, Mr. Fuckoff?" Jae said. "I don't think either one of us is a 'let's look on the bright side' kind of person." she said. "I'm not hearing a lot of pros here. I just can't tell if that's because neither one of us is geared toward it or if it's ridiculously clear that there aren't any."
Aaron leaned back and glared at her, though he didn't actually disagree with anything she was saying. She was right, neither of them were positive-type people. And he was okay with that. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Okay, here's a big pro in the 'telling people someone was murdered' list - because otherwise we're going to have to lie to everyone from here on out. And that doesn't exactly engender trust."
"Not necessarily." Jae said. "It's a fine line, but is anyone going to come right out and ask 'say, has anyone been murdered lately?'" she posed. "No one's going to ask that. People are going to assume if anything like that happened, that the administration would let them know. That said, people do actually know. Matt and Kyle. So, I suppose our final pro is we can get it out there before the accusations come flying in that we're hiding shit."
“Oh no, they won’t come right out and ask. But, then again, I have been asked ‘is there anything going on I need to know about’ from Jeremy,” he said.
"Let's move ahead to the part where I was talking about the people who actually saw the corpse." Jae said. "You can tell me what's up with Jeremy in a minute. That guy..." she shook her head.
“I don’t know either of the guys who actually saw the body,” Aaron said. “But I would imagine they have friends, or people that they’ll tell. I’m kinda surprised it hasn’t been plastered all over the journals by now, actually.”
"Matt, my jury's still out on. He assaulted Pippa, and I'm thinking he did it for a girl he's into or whatever, but still. Also, the girl in question mentioned she's afraid of him. The other guy was Kyle, who I don't know much about at all, beyond I haven't heard anything like 'he scares me' out of anyone." Jae said.
“We think either of them could have killed her?” Aaron asked, considering that. “The only thing I know about Matt is from the trial. Kyle... He’s the artist, right? I’ve read some of his journal posts.” He shook his head, aware they were getting off the topic of whether to tell and onto the topic of who actually killed her. Both were relevant, but for different reasons. “Okay, final opinion. I say we keep it to ourselves for now. We ever get called on it, we say that there was no evidence that this would be a recurring situation and that anyone else was at risk. And we didn’t want to cause panic of chaos for a situation that may already have been resolved - after all, a whole load of people have been removed since then.”
"I don't really rule anything out, though I've seen people faking panic before, and Kyle's either an Oscar worthy actor, or he was just freaked all the way out." Jae said. "Matt, he was a little more calm and such, but I still didn't get a 'I'm the killer, hee!' vibe. I keep wondering about the blood, though. It had to be all over the killer." she said, sighing. She watched him then nodded. "Okay. I'll follow your lead there. For now, we shut the fuck up, and keep trying to figure it out."
“Since we don’t have a real time window for the murder, the killer could have had plenty of time to clean up. And with it being down in the basement, they would have had the choice of directions to go in. Hell, they could have washed up in the infirmary itself. Thrown their clothes down the mail chute. Endless damn possibilities,” he said, frustrated. “But yeah - we shut the fuck up, and try and figure things out.”
Jae was silent for a second. "Welcome to square one. It sucks here."