Rostislav Zelenka (ghostsongs) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2017-11-14 09:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | #september 2017, grady, grady x rostislav, rostislav |
Who: Grady and Rost
When: Saturday, Sept 16, wee hours of the morn
Where: the police station, then the cemetery
Status: Complete
When Rost pulled up to the front of the police station in the work truck that belonged to the cemetery, he was almost in a panic. There was something very, very wrong, and he wanted to talk to the Sheriff himself, not whatever goon would be dispatched if he’d only called. Whatever was terrorizing the graveyard was escalating its activities, and he couldn’t stand by and let the cops take their sweet time figuring it out.
There had been an entire body gone this time, from a grave he’d filled in just two weeks prior. The hole had been massive, the coffin broken open like before. Instead of just a finger missing though, the whole corpse had been removed. And once again, he hadn’t heard or seen a thing between his patrols. Rost couldn’t imagine that meant anything good. Poor Mrs. Mercer. Her husband would be devastated to hear the news, Rost already knew. He’d been to the cemetery faithfully every day since his wife had been buried. The topsoil on her grave hadn’t even fully settled yet. Maybe that was why they’d chosen it, Rost didn’t know.
And then, on top of it all, there was the matter of Naomi. He had a two-fold mission tonight.
He parked haphazardly and got out of the truck, hurrying up the steps and in through the front door of the building. If Sheriff Barrett wasn’t there that night, Rost was determined not to leave until they called him in. “I must speak with the Sheriff,” he said immediately to the cop at the front desk. “It is urgent.”
Grady happened to still be at the station, unable to pull himself away to actually drive home and get some sleep. He had been playing phone tag with the State Police all day, frustrated after a disturbing call he'd had after lunch with one of the deputies about the Rogan case. Between that, and the report he'd gotten back from the body found by the Cooperdale Tunnel, Grady's patience was frayed at the edges. He had just walked out to get another cup of coffee when he heard someone mention wanting to speak with him.
Grady sighed, but poured some coffee into his foam cup before he set the pot down and walked toward the front. He recognized Rost, the cemetery caretaker, and a sense of foreboding had come over Grady. He was aware of the cemetery vandalism, and he was betting Rost wasn't there to inquire about the investigation. Not this late at night... or rather this early in the morning. "I'm here," Grady said, coming up to the front desk, coffee in hand. "What can I do for you?"
As soon as Rost spotted Sheriff Barrett, the other cop completely disappeared to him. He moved so he was standing right in front of the man in charge, his eyes a little while. His hair was a lot wild and his cheeks were stubbly, and the shirt under his jacket was at least halfway unbuttoned. But it was the middle of the night and this was important. “It has happened again,” he told Grady. “Worse this time. They have stolen Mrs. Mercer. This desecration cannot continue, sir, something must be done.” His tone was tight and a little shaky.
Rost knew he was probably running a risk being there. He was the one who was around the graveyard all the time and was supposed to be guarding the thing, but he kept failing somehow to see who was doing this. He knew it was something beyond natural, but he doubted the police would accept that as any kind of real explanation. The big one had certainly been skeptical.
Desecration. Mrs. Mercer. Grady was obviously well aware of the problems going on in the cemetery. He was still of the mind that it was a bunch of kids, or one very sick adult, but they had been thus far unable to find who was responsible. It was something they might have used more resources on if they hadn't had their plates completely full with higher priorities. "Mrs. Mercer?" Grady asked, brows furrowed in confusion. "Mrs. Mercer who died a couple of weeks ago? What do you mean they took her? Who took her?" It had yet to click that perhaps an entire body had been taken from the cemetery. It was such a heinous thing to do. Vandalizing a headstone, digging up a grave... those things were bad enough. But it didn't register in his mind that someone might actually take a body.
Frustration burned in Rost’s gut and his jaw clenched, though he tried to keep his cool. He had enough trouble with the authorities on a day-to-day basis, it would be stupid of him to alienate them now when he needed their help. “I do not know who took her,” he said, looking intently at Grady. “Probably the same person or persons who have been doing this lately. But the grave is dug up, the coffin is broken open like last time, and Mrs. Mercer is gone.” Next came the questions about where he was and why didn’t he hear anything and so on. They could arrest him if they liked -- he was sure it would happen again whether he was there or not. He gripped the edge of the countertop between them, trying not to bounce with excess frustrated energy.
Well, shit. It was always something, wasn't it? Grady wasn't in the mood to ask a bunch of questions. Not inside the station, anyway. He'd need to see what was going on himself. He took a drink of his coffee, not caring that it burned his tongue. Setting the foam cup to the side, Grady turned and walked away from Rost, to the coat rack hanging outside his office. He grabbed his coat and pulled it on before grabbing the keys to the police truck from a hook hanging on the wall. Grady returned to Rost, grabbing his coffee as he came around the counter top. "Let's go," Grady said. "I'll follow you."
Rost almost protested and insisted they stay for a moment so he could report on Naomi being missing too, but he didn’t. One thing at a time, he supposed, and grave-robbing was the more intense problem. Naomi could have left town on her own, after all ... Rost didn’t think so, but she could have. He gave a sharp nod to the Sheriff and turned to walk back out of the station. Rost kept his speed under control as he led the way back to the cemetery in the truck even though he was antsy as hell to get there. Part of him expected there to be even more trouble, other graves dug up just in the time he’d been gone, or the whole damn place on fire or something.
He took the flashlight out of the truck after they’d parked, and took Grady down the path that led to where Mrs. Mercer had been so recently interred. Nothing else looked out of place to him, though he thought a few more of the angels were staring at him than usual. That could’ve just been paranoia though. Once they reached it, Rost silently pointed his light at the disturbed grave, glancing over at Grady with real dismay on his face.
Grady managed to finish his coffee on the drive over, and once he got out of his car, he pulled his own flashlight from his belt to follow Rost. The cemetery was one of his least favorite places to be. It was a perfectly normal phobia he supposed. How many people truly felt comfortable surrounded by death? But this particular cemetery always gave him an intensely uncomfortable feeling in his gut. There was no comfort, not even from the stone angels watching him. That was part of the problem. He always felt like they were literally watching him. His boots crunched on the grass as he walked behind Rost, keeping his gaze alert of their surroundings, just in case the perpetrator was still nearby. Although if someone stole a corpse, he doubted they were hanging around.
As he came upon the grave, Grady sighed. He shined his light down into the grave. The coffin was open, a few mementos buried with Mrs. Mercer still inside. She, however, was not. Grady crouched at the edge of the grave site and studied the coffin, then the small area surrounding it. "How often do you patrol?" Grady asked, standing and walking around to the other side where Rost stood, his flashlight still shining down into the disturbed earth. "Hourly?"
Rost watched Grady look around, trying to get a handle on his anxiety about all this. It wasn’t even that he felt more in danger in the graveyard -- that was a constant background noise in his life -- it was just a distressing failure. He couldn’t protect his charges against this kind of assault. The witch he was most familiar with had been out of town all week, too, so he couldn’t even have the place properly warded. “Hoursly, yes,” he confirmed to Grady with a nod. He wasn’t sure if the sheriff would believe him, because his deputy hadn’t seemed to, but all he could do was keep insistently telling the truth. “I heard nothing, saw nothing. Again.”
Grady nodded, not doubting Rost. The guy was eccentric, sure, but he had been watching the cemetery for some time now, and this had never happened before. Unless Rost was just creating these problems for attention, Grady could think of no other reason why he would be desecrating graves. And what was he going to do with a body? Grady shined the flashlight over the headstone before checking the grass around the grave. He didn't see any obvious footprints, and even if he had, dozens of people probably walked through this place daily. "I believe you," Grady said, looking back at Rost. "But I need to ask you if I can check your trailer, just to cover the bases before I go any further. You okay with that?"
Just hearing he was believed was a big relief, and Rost’s shoulders sagged a bit. The rest of it though ... made him a little nervous. He and Grady had a mostly-unspoken agreement about his alternate means of earning money. It was kind of an open secret that Rost dealt pot out of his trailer, and the sheriff had never busted him for it. He’d just looked at Rost meaningfully once and said ‘not to my kids’ and that had been it. Even though Barrett knew about it, Rost was still instinctively uncomfortable with him poking around in his home. But if it would clear him of suspicion, what choice did he really have. “Yes,” he answered after a moment’s thought. “But you know what is in there.”
Grady inhaled softly and tilted his head back and forth for a thoughtful moment before he nodded, gaze ticking back to Rost. "Yeah, I know. I don't care, as long as there's not a corpse sharing space with it. I'll do a quick sweep and get out of your hair so I can take care of this problem." It was probably irresponsible of him as a police officer to turn a blind eye to the drugs Rost was dealing, but he found it difficult to care as long as it wasn't narcotics. And as long as Rost wasn't selling to Hunter or Jen. He'd made that clear, and as far as he could tell, Rost had been holding up his end of the bargain. Grady motioned away from the grave with the flashlight. "I'm going to section of this portion of the cemetery before I leave. I don't want anybody walking through here tomorrow until we've had a chance to look around in the daylight. You included."
“Understood,” Rost murmured. While he did feel a tiny bit better that the man in charge was going to ‘take care’ of this problem, he couldn’t help but question whether that was even possible. They were all so human, and this whole thing seemed so beyond human. But maybe he was wrong and just being paranoid. He turned to lead the way to the back of the cemetery where his trailer was. Rost trusted Grady enough to not think he would go back on his word and end up arresting him, but it was still uncomfortable. He didn’t like anyone in his space that he hadn’t specifically invited there before.
He walked up the rickety steps to the door and opened it. The Sheriff had seen the outside of it before, of course, with all its painted symbols on the cheaply paneled sides, but he’d never been inside. The scent of incense hung sweetly in the air, and there were talismans and religious iconography of all types lining the walls and shelves. The rest of the small trailer was cluttered with colorful blankets and empty liquor bottles and half-finished junk-art projects. “I was not anticipating company,” Rost murmured as a half-hearted joke.
Grady knew he couldn't go through Rost's things without permission, and he had no intention of doing so. He didn't honestly believe Rost had anything to do with the cemetery desecration, and he highly doubted that he'd hide Mrs. Mercer's corpse in his trailer even if he had. But he wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't take a cursory look around. Grady stepped up into the trailer after Rost, cocking a brow briefly at the inside before he began to walk through it, glancing around at his surroundings. The smell of a rotting corpse would be too difficult to mask, even with the incense. "I've seen worse," Grady murmured. Satisfied with what he found, or rather, didn't find, Grady turned back toward Rost and took out his pen and small notepad. "What time did you find Mrs. Mercer's grave disturbed?" he asked, needing to take a few notes before he continued.
The trailer was barely big enough for him and his stuff, much less a rotting body stowed away somewhere. If Rost was going to hide her somewhere, this would not be the place. But he would never do it to start with, so it was moot. He respected the dead, that was the whole point of his life. He knew what happened when respect wasn’t given, and it wasn’t pretty. “It was ah ... approximately an hour ago,” he said, glancing at the clock in the kitchen. “I came straight to the station. This escalation ... Sheriff, it is not good.” Rost moved away -- but not far, moving far was kind of impossible in that place -- to the kitchen to pour himself a drink. He needed one tonight.
Grady scribbled the time down. "I'm aware," Grady murmured as he looked up from this notepad to watch Rost. "When was the last time you patrolled the area prior to finding the grave disturbed?" He was trying to figure out a timeline as to when this could have happened. The cemetery wasn't huge, but Rost was the only caretaker, and Grady was sure it took the man sometime to walk the entire area. That wasn't to say that it offered a perpetrator plenty of time to dig up a grave without being seen, but that's what Grady was trying to figure out. The disturbances had been escalating, and Grady had no idea if the same person was behind the incidents, or if they had more than one problem on their hands.
Rost knocked back half a short glass of vodka, turning to face Grady again and leaning back against the cheap counter. “I go hourly until 2AM,” he explained. “So ... an hour, perhaps hour and half. I walk in different directions every time. It takes me thirty minutes to walk whole cemetery.” It all made him wish he could talk with the angels; surely they had seen who or what was doing this. Whether they would tell him was a completely different story, of course; they seemed to be letting it happen, whatever it was. “Your deputy suggested cameras last time. I have requested, but who knows.” Rost made a vague gesture with his glass before taking another sip. That was beyond his pay grade to decide and implement.
Grady marked the times down in his notepad. Thirty minutes, every hour. Even if Rost didn't take the same route every time, Grady wasn't sure that was enough time to dig up a six foot grave, open a coffin and take a body without being seen. He tapped his pen against the notepad thoughtfully. Headstones had been painted on. A grave dug up with the coffin cracked open, although nothing had been taken but a finger - assuming the finger had been there when the person in question had been buried. Mrs. Mercer. Slipping the pen behind his ear, Grady slid the notepad into the pocket inside his jacket as he walked toward the trailer door. "I'm going to tape off the area around Mrs. Mercer's grave, and then I'm going to go speak with her husband. If you see anything unusual, or remember anything else, call me. Until you hear otherwise, no one is to go near that section of the cemetery. If we've got to close the cemetery for a few days to figure this out, we will."
Rost followed along to walk him out as much as was possible in the trailer. He was beyond exhausted now, ready to have a few more drinks and let himself slip into oblivion for a while. Everything felt so beyond his control at the moment, he could wake up to the entire graveyard dug up and robbed, and what could he do about it? “Yes, I will call,” he agreed. “And I will ensure no one goes there.” That might be a big challenging if Mr. Mercer insisted on seeing the hole where his wife’s body was supposed to be resting, but Rost would do his best. He hesitated, then reached out to touch Grady’s arm. “There is ... something else,” he said, sounding almost apologetic about it. “Unrelated. But you know Naomi, yes? She lives in a boat ...” His expression turned a little distressed as he couldn’t remember Naomi’s last name, or if they’d ever even exchanged last names, but he knew she’d had plenty of run-ins with the police, so the Sheriff probably knew her. Rost hoped, anyway.
Grady was sure Mr. Mercer would have something to say about what had happened early this morning, but Grady had dealt with angry and upset family members before. He wasn't concerned. Grady paused in the doorway when Rost touched his arm, and he resisted the sigh that threatened, because there always seemed to be something else. Always. It took a moment for Grady to remember who Naomi was. It was late and he had been awake and working for longer than he probably should have been. But when it clicked into his head who Rost was talking about, Grady nodded. Naomi on the boat. She was a strange person, and one the PPPD were plenty familiar with. She was an odd one. Not as odd as Rost, but odd. "What about her?" Grady asked, not entirely sure he was going to like where this conversation was going, based on the look on Rost's face.
He was grateful that he didn’t have to try and describe Naomi to trigger some memory. Rost knew nothing would probably come of this, that his concerns would be dismissed. It was always that way with odd, transient people. It was always possible that Naomi had just moved on with her life and gone somewhere else to live -- he couldn’t blame her, honestly -- but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. “She is missing,” he told Grady. “I have gone three times this week to find her, no answer. Her work says she has not been in, but they are unconcerned. Could you just ... keep an eye out for her? Please. I know I am not family, but she has no one here, and ... who will watch out for the lost if we do not watch out for ourselves?” He gave Grady a faint, lopsided smile.
Missing. It was a familiar word for Grady. For a lot of people in town. People went missing often, and rarely did they turn back up. Oh, it happened from time to time, but it was a rarity. It was difficult to justify using their resources to look for missing adults. They were old enough to do whatever they wanted, to go wherever they wanted. It was harder when the person had no real family in town to advocate for them. Grady had several files in his office of missing people, many of them kids, from years ago with no new leads. It was frustrating. Still, he didn't want to dismiss Rost's concern. Grady had come to find that someone's gut instinct in this town was usually correct. "When was the last time you spoke to her?" Grady asked, pulling out his notepad again to flip to a new page and write Naomi's name down. "And where does she work?" He could do the leg work from there if Rost provided him with a few details.
“Last week,” Rost answered, his eyes ticking down to Grady’s notepad. He was writing things down, that was a good sign. Rost knew that people went missing in this area all the time, and some of them probably just left on their own. But Naomi’s boat was still docked at the marina. Her paranoia didn’t allow for him to peer into any windows, they were all covered, but why would she just leave a major mode of transportation like that? It was possible he just kept missing her, but she hadn’t been going to work either? At least the cops could do a welfare check or something. “Around the first vandalism time. Not since. She works at the museum, giving tours.”
Grady nodded, scribbling the information down. "I'll check on her," he promised. He slipped the notepad away again and stepped down the trailer steps to the ground. He'd have to grab the police tape from the car to quarantine off a substantial area near Mrs. Mercer's grave. Grady considered calling in Ty or Jared, but decided against it. He could finish up and take care of things. And then hopefully drive home and try to get a few hours of sleep before returning to the station. "I'll be in touch," Grady told Rost.
“Thank you, sir,” Rost said, moving to hover in the trailer doorway. He meant it, too; his relationship with the cops of Point Pleasant might not have been the best, but he could appreciate their help. Grady seemed dedicated to actually doing something about this. Rost didn’t know yet if mundane work would help, but it was best to cover all bases, right? Right. He watched the sheriff walk away, then turned and closed himself up in his trailer, a weary sigh escaping as he headed to have another drink.