Kitty Winter is moving towards something (towardsomething) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-06-16 13:53:00 |
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And today it was going to the police department to look at cold cases. See if there was anything that might be of use for the current case. Things missed, cases that might have fit but wasn’t in the list of cases they’d already narrowed down or the FBI had. Basically what she and Sherlock did. For Kitty though, she also wanted to see if there were any cases like her own from the Dreams. She knew that it wasn’t the two from New York even though the parallels were there. But with the way people discussed things crossing over…
She wasn’t going to be caught unprepared. What she would do if she found her rapist in this world, regardless of if he were a dreamer or not…. That Kitty hadn’t determined.
So there she was at the Irvine Police Department, going through boxes of cold cases, searching for different types of cases and MOs, though her main focus of course was the serial killer one.
Leon had been spending a lot of time at work since Peggy had told him that she and Captain America were going steady. When his mind was focused on catching criminals, there really wasn’t much room for anything else to sneak in. Not how he’d screwed up with Peggy, not his childhood hero stealing his (almost) girlfriend, not… whatever it was that was going on with his thoughts towards Revy. It was all rifling through garbage and looking for clues and canvassing the neighbourhood for witnesses.
He was nearing the end of his third sixteen hour shift, and all the evidence was swimming around in his head, but none of it was making sense anymore. He needed to reboot his brain, and his fourth cup of coffee wasn’t doing the trick. Sometimes, he found, it helped to look at a different case, and for that he usually turned to the old case files. He wasn’t paying much attention to anything, and definitely not things like boxes on the floor, so he was caught by surprise when he tripped over the box. He managed to catch himself before he fell on the face, but he did slosh luke-warm coffee over his hand. “Who the fuck is leaving boxes just lying around?!” he demanded angrily.
As was often the case, Kitty had been given a room to the side, where people often had to wait or meetings happened, to go through her own boxes. Which admittedly were a bit precariously organised on both the table and some of the empty chairs around it. In there it really didn’t matter given… only person in there. Though it seemed people in the main area weren’t so organised.
Now the question. Stay where she was, or investigate.
Investigate if only because she was getting tired of sitting around in the same uncomfortable chair and while it was sometimes necessary, so was getting up. So instead the brunette pushed herself away from the table and went to lean in the doorway, brow quirked as she took in the scene.
“Obviously someone who wants to trip you.”
After all, she was just a consultant, which meant she wasn’t allowed to be at an actual desk without supervision. Nope. Her ‘interview’ room was more than enough. Camera to keep an eye on her even though the police chief had her file since she and Sherlock did consult there. This was just one of the few times she’d gone alone between him, or Watson, or Carol.
The British accent was the first thing that Leon noticed, and when he turned toward her the brown hair caught his eyes too. His eyes widened slightly in surprise, his first thought turning immediately to Peggy, before he realized that it wasn’t Peggy. She didn’t even really look like Peggy; the only things they had in common were the accent and the hair colour, really. Looking right at this woman he didn’t really recognize, he scowled, more at himself than anything else.
“Obviously,” he muttered, and bent to pick up the box so he could put it away. “Guy can’t even get any goddamn work done without cleaning up after someone else’s mess.” Box in hands, he finally fully turned his attention to the woman. “You don’t work here, do you?” Leon asked. He usually tried to be familiar with most of his coworkers. At least, the ones who were normally working around the same shift he did.
The look of slight surprise caught Kitty off guard, not sure what to make of it. Unless he shared dreams or something and she hadn’t gotten there yet. His voice didn’t set her blood to ice though, so it wasn’t him at least. That was one thing. And nothing that popped out in regards to the cases she’d been looking at as her ‘side’ project.
A slight scoff of understanding was given at the muttering about not being able to do any work without cleaning up after someone. Sherlock was very absent minded in that things that he deemed were menial or took up too much space which could be better used for learning, which meant things getting left all over the place? Or just in really weird places? Kitty was used to working around things like that.
“Consultant. Looking at cold cases for clues on a case my partner and I are working in tandem the department.”
“Consultant, huh?” Leon asked, quickly appraising now that he had the new information. Leon had never had much use for consultants and tried to avoid, well, consulting with them unless he didn’t have a choice. For one, he found them to be insufferable know-it-alls who had one particular area of expertise and thought that that made them better than everyone else. For another, now he really didn’t need one. Between his ability to talk to animals, and Liv’s super helpful psychic visions, he was closing cases faster than he’d ever been able to before.
At least he wasn’t working directly with the consultant. “You want some help?” Leon asked. “I was just coming in here to help reboot after staring at my current case for too long.” His stupid current case that involved neither no eyewitness testimonies from Fido or Liv’s visions.
Insufferable know it all? Sounded just like Sherlock, even if he was right at the end of the day. They all had their specialties, then his reaching out to his irregulars for the information he didn’t have. But between helping both at Scotland Yard and then the NYPD…. It added up.
Still, she wasn’t about to turn away any sort of help. While she had a better idea on what they were looking for since they’d been working on this particular case for weeks (or was it a month plus) now, she also knew that different perspectives also helped.
“Sure. Serial killer. Known and suspected victims single, white, between ages of 25 to 30. Stalked from a bar, subdued by strangulation then killed with single blow to heart with a screwdriver. An appendage removed, rest of body rearranged and pictures of the victim sent by their mobile to their phonebook and now social media sites.”
Given the nature of the other cases she was looking at and how it tied more to dreams and while she was pretty sure she recognised Leon from the network, Kitty wasn’t positive, so those cases would be ignored now that she had help. As she gave the basic run down of the serial killer, she split up the files she hadn’t gone through yet to hand to Leon until he felt recharged and went back to his own case.
“Spring and winters of 2010 to 2012, then 2016 to now.”
Leon gave a low whistle. He’d heard a bit of the case, but he hadn’t been assigned to it. Part of him was a little annoyed about that, but he tried to remind himself that even though he wasn’t working a serial killer case didn’t mean that his work was less important. And hey, he got to do a bit of work for it now which was pretty great.
Leon took the case files that Kitty offered to him and fell into one of the chairs in the conference room. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs at his ankles. “It’s sick what some of these people do,” Leon muttered as he perused the file. “I can’t imagine what it’d be like to find out someone you cared about because of a goddamn Facebook photo.”
Kitty didn’t really pay attention to why one detective might be assigned while another wasn’t. She was there to consult and work with Sherlock. It was a bunch of hierarchy things as far as she was aware, which meant she stayed out of it. Besides, it didn’t mean people couldn’t help. It seemed to be a lot of red tape in a way. But no matter.
“Neither can I.”
And she could imagine a lot, whether she wanted to or not. So for now, it was going through different files. Honestly she was losing track of time and the different murders or attempted murders was dizzying but she had long since steeled herself the best she could. But it was in this that she found something that caught her attention. It was sloppy, but had the hallmarks of what would become the known MO. Set before the first known murder.
“Tell me what you think about this one.” With that, she handed the file over to Leon. After all, she’d been at this for hours already, and having someone who wasn’t so mired in the case might help to see if she was onto something with the case.
Leon took the file from her, then he leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up on the table. The guy was Leon’s age, single, white, but that was a common victim profile in general. Still, there was something about the file that tipped something off in Leon. It was more than the attempted asphyxiation. It was a gut feeling. And in his decade of working for the Irvine Police Department, there was nothing Leon trusted more than his gut.
“I’d say yeah,” he said, frowning thoughtfully as he flipped through the pages. “Looks like this poor bastard might’ve been one of your guy’s first attempts.”
And Leon verified what she had thought. There was clearly a reason it had piqued her interest even if she couldn’t place it. Then again, she’d been convinced before of angles missed by the police only to be right, or just enough that a case was solved. That was how Sherlock had ‘discovered’ her, so to speak. So she did trust herself. But she also knew the importance of a second, or third, opinion just to make sure.
Still, she nodded.
“I’ll let Sherlock know.” Maybe the potential break, or at least more clues to look through from earlier on before the MO was solidified would spark something. Get him out of the strange slump he was in thanks to Irene… Jamie. Yeah, that was still weird.
Sherlock. Leon almost started laughing at the pompous ass who decided to go with that name, before he remembered that Captain America had stolen his girlfriend. Maybe it was the actual Sherlock. His look of amusement quickly faded into a half-scowl.
That was insane. Right? “Sherlock, huh? What’s his last name? I used to know a Sherlock.” Kind of. Leon had certainly read all the Sherlock books he could get his hands on when he was a kid. That kind of counted as knowing someone.
If Kitty noticed the look of amusement, she didn’t say anything. She knew the name seemed ridiculous, to her it was nothing about a character from a book or television or movie series. Sherlock was just… Sherlock. That and he worked as a consultant for the Irvine PD. Though why he was asking for the last name?
“Holmes….”
The notion that someone else was named Sherlock was… well, it was feasible, but Kitty just didn’t think there would be that many people with the name. Stranger things had happened though, such as her volunteering with a woman Sherlock had known in the past.
Leon paled a little. “Different Sherlock then,” Leon muttered, turning back to the other files Kitty had given him. Not because it was a different Sherlock, but because Sherlock obviously didn’t know him. He was kind of at odds with himself - on one hand, he really hated the this place for making everything so fucking weird. On the other hand… Man, he kind of wished he was working a case with Sherlock Holmes.
Leon cleared his throat, and then found that he couldn’t focus on the files in his hand because he was thinking about Sherlock Holmes, and Captain America, and the fact that Robin had some Japanese cartoon that she was a character in. Maybe he should go home. He wasn’t likely to be doing much more police work tonight. “Thanks for letting me help out,” he said, gathering the files into a slightly neater stack then what they’d fallen into. “I think it’s about time for me to hit the hay though.”
Quirking a brow at the paling, Kitty shrugged it off. Still a strange name to have but it would have definitely been more weird if he had said something as, well, Sherlock wouldn’t know who he was. So she just let it go because there were more pressing matters at hand. Like this case.
“Yeah, of course. Thanks for being an extra set of eyes.” See, she could be nice. Between her and Sherlock it was a toss up on who had the better social skills. Reasons Watson around was probably a good thing, really. Still, she appreciated it. Though she also should probably get back to her grumpy and distant flatmate. New clues to parse over after all. Her own side project would have to wait. It had really only been when she needed to take a break from murders anyway.