Participants:
| Scene Title | Drives Pregnant Women Into Labor |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Audrey questions Pandora on her husbands murder since it's connected to the serial killer. Pandora shows her appreciation by going into labor all over Audrey's shoes. |
| Date | April 1, 2010 |
Random Restaurant, Chinatown
Things are getting stagnant. She needs to talk with the Thatcher woman, that's on a sticky note on her desk, attached to her computer screen. That of course means that she needs to get onto the Petrelli Mansion premises. There's getting with Nakano and Det. Cooper about the other crimescenes. Other things keep coming up and the brunette keeps having to put it to the side. Though, she apologized by sending Cooper a little something something that he'll get before noon. It's amazing what a person will do for money in this climate. It wasn't a stripper gram.
But phonecalls to the PD, and then a woman's shelter which didn't say much even with the invocation of homesec, another call to the PD brought forth a cellphone number to Mrs. Rassmussen. There was a date and time set to meet, a Chinese restaurant out in Chinatown and the offer of lunch. There could really be only one thing that they could want to talk with the widow about.
And so Audrey had a dining room in the back of the restaurant set aside for them (oh the perks of a badge) and waits with a pot of green tea, fingers steepled around the round cups with no handle and waits for Pandora. Or Mizuki as Audrey knows her.
Pandora doesn't even have to introduce herself, or say that she's here to meet someone when she arrives at the restaurant. Being as pregnant as she is, there wasn't much guess work for the host who ushers her into the private dining area.
"Agent Hanson?" Pandora's greeting is tentative at best. It's not paranoia when they are out to get you, right? She offers a smile, the barest twitch of her lips, before taking a seat across from the woman. "You… wanted to talk to me about Archie?" Her expression clouds, she casts a worried look about.
Audrey rises from the table, moving over to offer her hand up to Pandora. Her badge it out on the table, a recorder, file that presumably is 'archie's' and Audrey nods. "Mrs. Rassmussen. I am indeed. I'm working on a case and after a check for other cases pertaining to some evidence at a scene, your husbands murder came up. I understand that the New York PD didn't becomes involved due to jurisdictional murkiness but that the NJPD did. May I talk with you about the murder? It would help greatly in our current investigation and if it's what we think it is, it will help us bring in your husbands murderer"
Pandora takes Audrey's hand hesitantly, but shakes it firmly once she has. She nods her head slowly, sitting down and resting her hands on her swollen stomach, which is vaguely reminiscent of a balloon that might pop if given much more air. "I… Of course. Anything to try and catch his killer." The look in Korean-Japanese woman's eyes is haunted, but understandably so. At least she isn't crying, for Audrey's sake.
Audrey would be able to handle crying. She's interview bawlers before. There's a gesture for Pandora to take a seat, a waitress to get whatever she wants, and to go ahead and order. Lunch was on the department. How long since the woman had likely had a good meal in a restaurant? With what looked like a immanent arrival from her uterus too, might be a long time till she does.
The pre-requisites, name, address, all the other details are gone over with the recorder on. Eventually, Audrey gets down to business. "I need you to go over the night for me. I need any details that you can give me that they didn't take the time to get from you the first time. Could you start from whatever set your husband off?"
Pandora wants to order a huge amount of food, but the subject matter does little for her appetite. She does it anyway, because to-go boxes are a (essentially homeless) woman's best friend. "I don't know what it was," she murmurs after taking a drink of tea to steady herself. "He just started getting agitated. He used to do that a lot, I guess."
Used to. That's still hard to say. "I don't know if it helps you at all, but he was like that shortly before… Midtown." Too soon? It's a touchy subject still, for a lot of people. "It wasn't quite as bad, but he wanted to just get out for days before it happened. The day he died, I guess there was a few hours of warning." Pandora frowns, trying to remember the last day she spent with her husband. "I wasn't feeling well, because of the baby. He tried to get me to go for a walk, and I kept saying no." Most people would probably start blaming themselves about now, but Pandora doesn't. Not outwardly.
"You're husband was known to have what is in official term is Danger Sense. How it works exactly is unknown but, could explain your husbands unease. I want to discuss more, the time just before the incident occurred if you could? It's important to the case that I'm working on and to finding the killer. I understand how this may be for you and I appreciate and homeland appreciates your co-operation and your help in this matter" Gone is the aggression that normally is a pervading sense about her when interrogating. This is questioning and this is a heavily pregnant woman. Lets not add 'driving pregnant women into labor' on her resume.
"The file states that your husband grabbed you and locked you in the basement?"
Pandora's brows knit as she winces at the description. "It wasn't quite like that," she corrects, massaging the crease between her brows absently. "He said he needed something off one of the shelves - I was taller than him, so it meant he didn't have to find a step ladder or haul out a chair or something. When I got down there, he slammed the door and propped one of the kitchen chairs up against it so I couldn't get out." She drops her hand back to her midsection with a soft sigh. "I don't really know how to describe how his ability would work. I can just tell you how things looked to me. He would just seem on edge. I'm going to digress a little, but I promise it will make sense." Her hand lifts and she takes another sip of tea before she continues.
"I have a cousin that came to pick me up from swim practice when I was sixteen, totally unexpected. He was all jumpy, jittery. It was kind of like he was excited, but he wouldn't tell me why. Kept saying something about having a secret that he couldn't tell me. I figured out in the ten minutes we were in the car together that he was taking me to a surprise birthday party." The smile that touches Pandora's lips is as faint as it is brief. "My husband was kind of like that when his ability kicked in. It was like he was just really bad at throwing a surprise party. Does that make sense at all?"
"It's danger sense. A sixth sense. You can't tell anything specific, but you get uneasy and you know something bad is going to happen. Mrs. Rassmussen, it may be a broad term, but it covers that particular subset of evolveds abilities." Audrey's a bit annoyed that the woman digressed, and tries to steer the conversation back. "Your husband asked you to fetch something from a shelf and locked you in the basement. What can you tell me of what happened between then and before you left the basement?'
There's a longer pause between when Audrey finishes and Pandora begins again. Partly, she's sheepish that she went on a tangent, but the crux of the issue is the memory of what happened while she was fighting to get out of the basement. "It was awful," she says in a tiny voice peppered heavily by her Bronx-Brooklyn accent. "By the time I got to the top of the stairs again to ask Arch' why he'd slammed the door, I heard glass break. I can only assume that that was when the front window broke out. All I heard was things crashing and breaking." The tears glisten in Pandora's eyes, unshed.
"And I could hear Archie screamin'." The pregnant woman buries her face in one hand, taking a moment to gather her composure as she whispers under her breath, "Oh, Archie."
Which makes sense. At this point, the murder hadn't gotten a hold of whatever smoke ability it was that allowed him to go intangible and to not need to break in. Would a vacuum work on the serial killer? If you sucked up half of him, would only half of him reappear?
Audrey does all her thinking while sitting and watching the woman break down a bit, reaching into her purse to proffer a package of travel kleenex. "Take your time Mrs. Rassmussen. I understand that this might be hard for you to recall, but every detail helps. There are things they didn't go over at the time of the attack that we can look over now. I'm enlisting the aid of a post-cognitive evolved to review the scene. When you're ready again, I'll ask my next questions.'
And she does, waits for the woman to be as composed as she'll get. "How did you get out of the basement and what was the state of your husband besides deceased, when you did get out of the basement?"
Pandora snatches up two tissues from the travel pack and uses one to dry her face and the other to blow her nose, leaving both discarded next to her on her seat, rather than in unsightly wads on the table. "I… I think the killer must have knocked the chair loose. Either in the struggle or… intentionally." The idea that her husband's killer more or less let her out of the basement has her stomach churning, but it's not a possibility Pandora will discount entirely. "I was able to finally rattle the door enough that the thing - the chair came loose and I could get it open." She closes her eyes tightly, like it might shut out the images of what she saw, but it only makes it more vivid.
"God… There was blood everywhere. He put up a fight, Archie did. My butcher block was empty, the knives were strewn out on the counter and the floor. I don't know if he got a piece of him or not." Pandora shakes her head, "NJPD didn't tell me if they DNA tested any of the blood to see if it wasn't Archie's. They haven't said much of anything to me since…" There's a half shrug.
The woman across from the FBI agent holds her stomach and holds back a groan, her face screwing up for a moment in pain. "I'm fine," she's quick to assure after a deep breath. Back to the subject at hand. "Archie was… He was almost in pieces." It makes her look vaguely ill. "His arms were… bent funny, and I think one of his knees was dislocated. But his head… God, his head." She opens her eyes again finally and stares grimly at Audrey. "I tried not to look too hard, but I couldn't stop myself. I just…
" That sick fucker took my husband's brain."
The reason for the cessation of what happened at the Hunter condo now makes sense. He had danger sense, the arrival of the cops or Sylar triggered the ability and he fled. But, he broke in. So there a death between then and… Maybe the Jane Doe had the ability? There's a concerned glance down to where hand grips midriff then back up.
"We knew about the brain. It came up after I made a request to see all the files about damage to victims with missing organs or cranial trauma. Mrs. Rassmussen, Mizuki. Maybe we should continue the conversation another day. I'll get more from the post-cognitive than you will possibly be able to tell me. That's not a bad thing, but I wanted to tell you that we are looking into your husbands death since it's become part of a larger case. I'd like to ask that you keep silent on our conversation and what we've discussed"
There's another concerned glance. "Do you need me to drive you anywhere Mizuki? I can take you back to the shelter" Waitress is coming back with the food, and Audrey waves it off,s ending it back to be packaged up.
Pandora wants to snap something about how people should care about her husband's death whether or not it's part of a bigger case, but in the end, all that matters is that it is being given attention, not why. She's slow to nod. "Yes, I think a ride might be nice. The bus gets so crowded. Thank you, Agent Hanson." She swallows down the last of the tea in her cup before the waitress returns with the boxed up food. "I hope I've helped at least some." Tucking the spent Kleenex into her pockets to be tossed in the trash later, Pandora rises from her seat slowly, her hand on the underside of her belly as though to support its weight.
"I never could stand city buses" Audrey commiserates, even as she's laying out the cash to pay for the meal. She sorta lied, she was paying for it. The government wouldn't cough up money for this, they'd expect her to be brought in and questioned there. But the woman is pregnant, and saying the government is paying for something usually makes people a little more relaxed. Audrey rises, her own hand coming to take the elbow that's not supporting belly to help the woman up. "You seem like you're ready to pop" A crack of a smile and hint of a laugh in her voice, trying to ease back down from seriousness and sadness of what just passed. "You got a name yet?"
Pandora shakes her head. "You know, not really. I haven't made a concrete decision. I have some ideas floating around, but no name picked. I figure when he or she comes into the world, something will tell me the right name."
Pandora's steps are halting as she moves toward the exit, slow and somewhat unsteady. "It wouldn't be so bad," she mutters through gritted teeth, "if my back didn't just kill me." A deep breath is taking in slowly, and let out in kind. "How about you, Agent Hanson? Do you have children?"
"No. No, I'm not a mother type, or a children type. I'll leave that to other people and stick to making the country safer for the people who do" But that's not to say that Audrey doesn't take a good long look at the woman. "Mrs. Rassmussen, when are you due, if you don't mind me asking?"
Pandora has to think about that for a moment. "Well, let's see… Today's the first, right? Not this Friday, but the next one. The ninth. That's a Friday, right?" She's babbling a little, but it's through gritted teeth. "I'm fine," she's quick to assure again. "Got a whole 'nother week before I'm due."
But the sound of water splashing on the floor and Audrey's damp shoes say otherwise.
"Oh, shit."
"Good thing I left a big tip" Audrey murmurs as there's that sound and she glances down to her heeled leather boots. "I'd take oh fuck for five hundred Alex. Here's your choice. I can drive you to the nearest hospital, courtesy of my own siren or we can head back into the room and wait for an ambulance Mizuki. But I think your son or daughter didn't take kindly to the questions and wants to come out and give me a what for"
Pandora grabs Audrey's arm and grips it tightly. "I think you may be right." She's scared, perhaps unsurprisingly. "I think I would like to go to the hospital now, rather than later." She lets out a nervous chuckle, "At least it wasn't the food, right?"
"Yeah, I wouldn't have brought you to a place that had food that incites labor" Audrey muttersm getting staff's help to clear the way and ease the woman to the front. The car isn't parked right in front so there's Audrey departing to get the car and pull it up while someone helps her over. The flashing lights for her car are up, wires sneaking out the window and ready to be turned on. Faster to the hospital than waiting for an ambulance in this weather, one can hope that this isn't a fetal april fools joke on mother and homesec agent.