Who: Logan Echolls and Leon Orcot What: Detectives at work When: Mid July Where: Leon's Apartment Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for language Status: Complete
When it came to the new cases in the area, Logan had a few new ideas. He needed to run a few things by Leon. He took a look at the pictures one more time. They were brutal murders that seemed to have a common bond. The necks were ripped open, and there were various other injuries that were consistent with vampires. He didn’t think he would ever have to actually say that. They were not in a movie. Vampires weren’t supposed to exist, but here they were.
He packed up his files and headed for Leon’s place. He was ready to make a case for this, and even had a few plans on how to pursue it. Presenting it to the department later would be challenging, but they needed a rock solid case before that ever came to fruition. That was the last step in many steps.
He knocked at the door, briefcase in one hand and a half-rack in the other. They would need both to take them into the night. Strangely enough, he was just a little excited over working this case.
Leon had been attempting to at least tidy up a bit before Logan had shown up. With Sharon's pregnancy as far along as it was, she'd been coming by and tidying up less than she had been. He had felt a little awkward when she first started doing that, but he hadn't really realizes just how much he had come to rely in it until now. He had managed to throw all his laundry into his bedroom so it wasn't strewn around the apartment like it normally was, and had just been trying to gather up all his empty beer bottles when he heard the knock on the door. "Just a minute," he called, and gave the apartment a quick once over. It was still kind of a mess, with posters of cars and bikini models pinned on his walls, but it was going to have to do.
"Hey man, how's it going?" he greeted Logan when he opened the door. "Sorry the place is such a mess."
Logan looked around and laughed. “Honey, you cleaned for me? Please, I’m not a woman, unless there is something I don’t know about you.” He wiggled a brow at his friend, not caring about the mess at all. Logan was also a bachelor, or had been. Veronica had him cleaning more often, but the mess had a certain charm that only a guy could relate to.
He dropped the files on the table and took the beer to the fridge, removing a couple of cold ones out of the box. He sat at the table, “Are you ready for all the fun to begin?” he asked. He was avoiding talk about his personal life at the moment, in favor of work. That wasn’t always a good thing, but he couldn’t say it was bad either. It was more like a holding pattern.
“Well, sweetheart, I wanted the place to look nice for you,” Leon joked, and sat down at the table, beginning to pull out some of the files. He took the beer from Logan, and cracked it, then held it up for a cheers. “To a fun night of unpaid work,” he offered as a toast. Not that he minded unpaid work. Before Chris had come to stay with him, Leon had definitely been the type to bring home case files and peruse them until he had to sleep.
“What’ve you come up with so far?” he asked. Lucky for Logan, Leon really wasn’t one for small talk when there was work or something else to be discussed.
Logan tapped the bottle against Leon’s. When he wanted to work, he wasn’t one for small talk either, especially when he got an idea in his head. This one had come to him suddenly, and since then, it had occupied his brain. He needed to get the ideas out, run them by someone and Leon was it. He put out several pictures that were bloody, but he was used to that. The wounds to the neck were similar.
“Look at these. The bodies were around the same area, and look at the injuries. It’s all in the neck.” He tapped the middle one whose throat had been torn away. It was the most brutal of the three. “These other two are a step away from that one.” He put out three more. They also had lesser punctures, but the location was similar. “Vampires. I’m pretty sure of it.” He looked up at Leon, waiting for protest to it initially. “All the written reports say teeth marks on the skin.”
Leon all but glowered at the suggestion of vampires of all things. “Oh god, not you too,” he groaned. First Sharon going on about vampires, and now Logan. Leon could buy that the Dreams were, well, something that maybe wasn’t normal, but he was absolutely going to draw the line at vampires.
“What’s the tox screen say? Any strychnine? In my Dreams there was a string of murders made to look like a vampire attacks, but it was really just this delusional lady who pretended to be an FBI agent who poisoned,” everyone in the police force but him, “people.” His fellow cops had been fine, given only enough strychnine to make them pass out, but the rest of her victims had all met their end that way. He had to admit that toward the end of that dream, he had almost begun to believe in vampires, especially with the new bat that D had in his shop immediately after Norma had turned into a bat and flew away disappeared, but that was just D getting inside his head again. “I was thinking maybe a group of psychopaths who formed some vampire worshiping cult.”
That was exactly the answer that Logan expected and he shook his head. “Tox is clear, so no conspiracy theories. This guy apparently liked to smoke weed, and the other one had traces of cocaine,” he said, tapping the pictures accordingly. It wasn’t enough to kill either of them. “Also, cultists like puncture wounds that are clear. They want people to think of a vampire right away, not have to look at nasty wounds with throats removed. They like the romance of the vampire legend, not gore.”
He took a drink of his beer and sat back in his chair. “I wouldn’t believe this either, but look at the network, the dream gifts, and people saying they are turning into vampires. They are out there, and they aren’t all quiet about it. We had demons in Disneyland, and look at the black lightning and that was just icing on the cake for all the OC weirdness. There has to be something here.”
"There are vampires on the Network," Leon deadpanned. "Of course there are fucking vampires on the fucking Network." When he had first joined up, he had kind if ignored all the posts that were clearly delusional. Elbows on the table, Leon buried his head in his hands, and after a couple moments, he brought his head up and dragged his hands down his face. "Next you're going to be telling me that there's fucking unicorns and leprechauns too."
But Logan really wasn't wrong with anything that he said (well, minus demons at Disneyland. That he actually could have put off to LSD and a collective hallucination), and really if Leon could buy that things that he dreamed about could bleed through to the real world, not believing in vampires seemed like a bit of an arbitrary line to draw. "But okay, let's pretend vampires do exist. What are we supposed to do about them? Arrest them? They'd just turn into a bat and fly away."
“I have never seen a leprechaun or a unicorn on the network. I know it sounds crazy, and a year ago, I would have laughed my ass off and signed me up for rehab or some shit, but explain all that shit that went down at Disney, or these dream gifts that people get. I got a necklace from my dreams. I woke up and there it was.” He couldn’t start second guessing himself now, especially when this was the only lead they had.
“The only place that I know they exist is on the network, and if that is the only place, and these attacks are vampires - the person who did it is on the network.” That was really the point, and it was a risky point. However, maybe they were closer to answers than they thought. He took a drink of the beer, sitting back in his chair. “We don’t have anything else.”
“We really don’t, do we,” Leon muttered. And they needed to do something. Leon had always gone to the funerals of the victims whose cases he was investigating, making sure to hang back and just observe so as to not disturb their families, but he hadn’t even been able to keep up with just stopping in during the spree they had had. “Fuck. Okay, okay, we’ll try this your way. Do you have a list of suspects yet?”
So Leon was listening, and as crazy as it sounded, there was logic that couldn’t be denied. “I haven’t really kept track, but one of us could pretend to have dreams of a vampire, or being a vampire, and ask about it on the network and see who shows up. We can start with them, compare the pictures with the pictures we have of the scenes and the surveillance video on the cameras.” He looked up at Leon, worried that he wasn’t going to go for it. Logan needed help on this long shot of an idea. Long-shots win from time to time.
“My dreams already got some weird supernatural stuff,” Leon said, frowning because he didn’t really want to admit that small fact to himself. But, well, he did hear Chris’ thoughts and D did talk to animals in the dreams, and those were things he couldn’t really deny. “And I don’t share them with anyone else. Not that I can see Veronica screwing it up, but people who know her would probably know that your dreams aren’t so weird too. I guess I could give it a shot.” He chugged back a few large gulps of beer, and all but scowled at Logan. “I can’t believe I’m going vampire hunting on the internet. That’s probably the nerdiest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Even with bloody crime scene photos in front of him, Logan laughed. “Yep, you are going trolling, and then I will pay attention, and then we will put all this information together, and we might even have a suspect of five.” He grabbed the bottle, polishing off most of the first one. “I think that high school is actually full of vampires, but not this kind. I would trade you any day for anything.” Being around his girlfriend all the time wasn’t so bad, but he could really do without her distrust. “I’m ready to start whenever you are. Toss something out there and see what bites - with sharp, pointy teeth.” Vampire hunting trolls they were.
"Vampires is a pretty good way to describe teenagers," Leon said, grinning. For the most part he had enjoyed high school, but there had been times looking back where he'd been a little shit. "I'm feeling pretty good about this though. Assuming your whole vampire theory holds water," Leon was pretty much sold on the idea, but he held onto that shred of doubt like a security blanket. "We'll definitely catch the fuckers who did this. Cheers " he said, going to clinking his bottle against Logan's.