Participants:
| Scene Title | Get Going |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Matt gets a puzzle piece and dishes out some directives to both Audrey and Dante. |
| Date | September 4, 2010 |
This government facility was opened by the Department of Homeland Security in the fall of 2009. As a thirty-story building it rises high over the landscape of Battery Park City, a monochromatic monolith of gray and black set admist manicured trees and a concrete plaza where several flagpoles rise and a granite slab sign displays the building number 663 in serif font face.
Inside, this facility houses department executive offices, holding facilities, interrogation rooms and an armory to supply a standing security force with the necessary firepower to defend the building against terrorist threats on home soil. The lobby of the building features a large seal of the Department of Homeland Security at the center of the ground floor in plain view of balcony tiers of the second and third floor, accessible by stairs flanking the glass facade entrance and security checkpoint.
There are many people working on the Sylar case, and due to her history, Audrey Hanson is still a pillar in the team dedicated to the Midtown Man's capture. That's why she's been pulled in to the office that Matt Parkman has taken possession of during his stay here in New York City. Really, it would make sense for him to have one set aside, with as much work is centralized here, practically on top of ground zero, but it's an allocation of resources that the Secretary is unwilling to make. Time, energy, and money is better used elsewhere.
Carlos Lupinetti, formerly of The Company and now working with The Institute, has also joined them, but the specific reason for the other man's presence hasn't been made clear. Parkman sits behind the desk, but rather than adopt a textbook authoritative behind-the-desk posture, he leans back in his chair, his elbows resting on the arms and his fingers laced beneath his chin.
"We're going to put the Messiah investigation on the back burner," he says flatly, his eyes on the white board that's been requisitioned for this space, with it's various bits of intel tacked up. Once a detective, it seems, always a detective. While there are some possible leads as to Sylar's whereabouts, the majority of the board is covered with pictures of now missing Company agents. Agents who need to be found. "But I still want you to look into that number, Hanson. You tracked it yet? Find out where it's registered?" Even if it's a mobile phone, it has to lead someplace.
"They're still looking" Audrey answers, leaning against a wall, consulting a little leather flip notebook that she tends to keep on her person, jot down notes and the like. Severe cut to her hair, tucked behind her ear, she flicks her gaze from it, back up to matt. "They're still working on it. The moment I know, i'll forward it to you. If what he said was right, we'll want to stick as much of this case on paper and less on computers and over phone lines if this rebel persona has an interest in Sylar as well"
Dante was in the room when Audrey arrived, and hasn't given any extra hints as to the purpose of his presence. He's looking fairly frazzled at the moment, and not likely to make a good first impression. His normally professional attire is all there, but his shirt is wrinkled, collar is slightly askew, and his face is blemished by razor cuts and bags of no-sleep under his eyes. At present, he's staring somewhat blankly at the intel on the whiteboard, lacking any intensity and seeming like he's on the edge of falling asleep. That is, if it weren't for the fact that every noise the office seems to make him flinch and glance over his shoulder to the door.
Holding tight to the chair's arms, like he might be about to fall out, Dante's eyes slowly focus on Audrey as she speaks, like he's just now noticing her. He stays quiet while the two converse, gaze eventually drifting back to the whiteboard.
Parkman nods, then looks from Audrey to Dante. "I know there's apparently been some loss to what the isotope system can do, but I think that's our best bet for tracking these people - and Sylar - down. You can cross reference it with the registry to weed out people the Company bagged and tagged, but it's a place to start." True, the satellite system for finding marked individuals is only accurate to within a couple of blocks, but it's better than just pounding the pavement.
He's about to say something else when there is a knock on the door, and a bespectacled woman with her mouse-brown hair pulled back in a utilitarian ponytail peeks in. Parkman frowns, but he sits up a little straighter, the leather office chair moving with him. "What is it, Miriam?" he asks, the patience in his tone thin. The woman steps into the room, her arms filled with files and papers. "The reports on the last batch of..
Parkman nods, then looks from Audrey to Dante. "I know there's apparently been some loss to what the isotope system can do, but I think that's our best bet for tracking these people - and Sylar - down. You can cross reference it with the registry to weed out people the Company bagged and tagged, but it's a place to start." True, the satellite system for finding marked individuals is only accurate to within a couple of blocks, but it's better than just pounding the pavement.
He's about to say something else when there is a knock on the door, and a bespectacled woman with her mouse-brown hair pulled back in a utilitarian ponytail peeks in. Parkman frowns, but he sits up a little straighter, the leather office chair moving with him. "What is it, Miriam?" he asks, the patience in his tone thin. The woman steps into the room, her arms filled with files and papers. "The reports on the last batch of…visits to ex-agent homes." Raids is such a charged word.
Miriam sets the pile down on Parkman's desk, but when she does, a pile of mail that's been stacked atop it becomes visible. "And the mail from Dorchester." Since Parkman apparently doesn't check his own mailbox. Parkman nods, reaching to pluck at the few envelopes that survived the administrative assistant's junk-mail filter. Miriam departs then, glancing quickly at the board and Hanson and Lupinetti before she ducks back out of the office.
Few people have the right to do what the nerdy looking, one-pay-grade-above-clerical Miriam just did, but even still - the results aren't that great. Distracted by the mail that's been placed on his desk, Parkman's frown deepens as he sorts through it and continues. "It's going to take time, but it's the best we can do with the intel we have at the moment. And hey, if it turns up Sylar, all the better. Get all the ducks in a row on this, and yes, keep it as tech-free as you can. I don't know if Rebel can screw with the satellite or not, so we need to make sure we triple-check against everything we've got before we move. We can't fuck this up."
He scowls at an envelope with no return address, arching an eyebrow. "We've got to be eggshell-careful, even if the media is on our side. Knocking down doors of already registered, law-abiding Evolved citizens is something I do not want to hear about." With a suspicious narrowing of his eyes, he reaches for a letter opener and slides it along one of the envelope's short edges. When he pinches the envelope to separate the edges, he grumbles at the lack of a piece of paper. "Who the hell mails an empty envelope?"
"The problem with this tracking system is that… if he can and we know he does, have more than one of him out and about Parkman, how well does it differentiate between the… three? Does the tracker weaken with his duplication or does it even copy to the others" Matt's talking about Sylar in front of Lupinetti so it must be kosher and she glances to the disheveled agent then to the door. So many questions that stop flowing when someone sticks their head in with files and her notebook with a flick of her wrist is closed.
She knows well the forgetting of ones mail and waits till Miriam's gone before flicking her eye's to the envelope that Matt's opening, realization in her eyes as to the empty envelope.
"If that's a puzzle piece in it…" She looks towards the door then back to parkman and his envelope. "I've tossed mine towards forensics, Agent Cooper got one too" A questioning look sent Dante's way in case maybe he got one too? "He's gonna come the NYPD and see if anyones gotten any too" She hopes that it's a puzzle piece envelope and not an envelope with anthrax.
You never know.
Dante jumps visibly when there's a knock on the door, only to forcibly relax and close his eyes, letting out a slow breath. It's only when Miriam bumps against his shoulder that he opens them again, belatedly raising his hands to help with the load…but too late. Whoops! Except when those files are set down, and a few pieces of mail tumble to the floor, which Dante manages to catch and slip back onto Matt's desk. Miriam gets the briefest of smiles as she departs, though it isn't more than an upward curl of the lips before Dante looks back to the whiteboard. Just listening, trying to catch himself up on current events, without revealing just how lost he is, right now. Sylar can copy himself? What? Since when?
As Parkman futzes with the envelope though, Dante blinks and turns his attention to the envelope with a frown. Audrey gets a surprised look. "I'm not the only one getting random puzzle pieces in the mail, then? Huh. What did Forensics find out?" Holding out a hand, the ex-Company agent offers, "Sir, do you mind if I take a look at it?"
When something happens to more than three people, there is definitely something afoot. Parkman can only hope they've caught whatever it is in the early stages. He looks from Audrey to Dante before he peeks into the envelope, his face pinched as if he suspected something might reach out and bite him if he gets to close to it. But when Dante reaches out his hand, Parkman stands, angling the envelope to shake the roughly four inch square puzzle piece into it. It lands face-up, meeting Dante's inspection with a canvas of dark reddish brown. One corner is slightly lighter.
"Good thinking," Parkman says with a nod to Hanson. "Any pattern to the spread?" If Hanson, Cooper, Dante, and Parkman all received one, did everyone associated with the Department?
"I just tossed it in the other day. Since it's not part of some official case, I don't expect them to get right on it. Probably take a week or more" But with another agent, and… Parkman, maybe this might be something more. Agents getting puzzle pieces. "Others" She offers up. "Mine said others. Agent Coopers said…" Time to consult the notepad.
Flick, flip, flip, flip.
"Cause. That's what Coopers called it. He's gonna check where we reside, since we both live at the Rivage and see if anyone else in the building got one, or whether it was just the two of us. If it was just us, then we got some crackpot with a hard on and a message or something, for the agents. If that's the case then… this might be something else to add to our todo list.
"What's it say? Should be on the back. I put in a request to track down the typewriter that wrote it, if it wasn't a computer with some font instead. DNA if whomever did it licked the envelope, stamp, you get the idea. I can contact them and tell them to put a rush on it"
Dante's frown only deepens as the puzzle piece falls into his palm, forming lines in his face that are already deeply etched. He pinches it carefully by its corners, lifting the piece up into the light for his inspection. "Indiscriminate," he murmurs, reading the word on the back, his eyes losing their tired glaze. Giving the piece a few turns, he raises it to his nose and takes a sniff.
Glancing over to Audrey, Dante gives a small shrug. "Do we know how many of these pieces have been sent out? And if all Agents have received one? I don't know if it's worth classifying as priority, if there isn't a risk of life or safety." He holds out another hand to Matt. "The envelope?" he requests, as politely as he can in his terse manner.
"So there's words and a picture?" Parkman isn't at all pleased with this new distraction - it's the last thing they need, after all. He hands the envelope over without complaint. "See what you can find out about who's gotten them. What they have in common. Hell, even start putting the pieces together." He sighs, rolling his shoulders back and tilting his head to relieve a bit of a crick. "Put a B-team on it. It's something to look into, but it's not priority one."
"I don't know what world you live in Lupinetti, but an envelope with no return address sent to federal agents, with puzzle pieces… Cases have been started on less and no matter how innocuous they may seem, sometimes, it's the innocuous shit that's the start of something more perverted or deadly"
Most serial killers after all, started by killing animals.
"I'll tell cooper to forward whatever he has to someone, I'll figure out who might be best at this" There's a glance to Dante. "Unless you want to do it" She doesn't know exactly why he's here still.
Speaking of that, Audrey gestures to Dante with at hand in a fist, thumb out and jerked at him while looking at Parkman as if to say 'what's his deal?'
Dante glances up to Audrey, eyes narrowing just slightly as he takes in her words, the cogs in his head starting to push away the cobwebs. Glancing over to the mail on Matt's pile, Dante nudges a few aside. "Did this puzzle piece get sent to Matt Parkman, federal agent? Or Matt Parkman, Evolved? Or perhaps just even Matt Parkman, New York resident?" He peers inside the envelope before giving that a sniff as well. "Something to put bored agents on, sure. Depending on how much free time the department has." At Audrey's last question, Dante looks over at her, and then to Parkman, a little nonplussed. "Ah…well, I'm still a little reeling from the job change, if you can call it that. So there's not a whole lot on my plate at the moment…" He's not busy, and he's not happy about it, is the short of it.
Bored and idle DHS agents? Parkman quirks and eyebrow before he stalks toward the blinds that cover the windows of the office. He separates two with a flick of his thumb and forefinger to peer out among the desks that sit beyond his little corner of the floor. Everyone looks busy, and dipping below the static line of surface thoughts would only bring on a niggling headache. So he grunts and turns back around, his hands firmly in his pockets.
"Nobody should have any reason to be bored or not busy," he says with a gruff sternness. "If they are, they're more than welcome to come and see me, and I will find them something to occupy their time while they're sitting here being paid or point them in the direction of a new occupation."
Fixing his eyes on Dante, Parkman pauses momentarily. "That was mailed to my place on the Upper West Side," he says with a nod. And it isn't addressed to Secretary Matthew Parkman. Just Matthew Parkman. "My registry file has my D.C. residence listed, last I looked." Not that he's always there - present case in point. "I'm Tier 2," he adds as a final bit of information - meaning all his demographic data is available to the public in the registry.
"What's the postmark?" he asks, lifting his chin slightly.
"There are always toilets to scrub and toilet paper to stock" Murmurs Audrey with a grin. "We are here on a saturday, this job is seven days a week" Surely Lupinetti knows this? "I'll pull someone, a pair of someones and check into this in my spare time" Which will mean that when she's done here at work for the day and goes home, instead of working on the Gray cases, she'll shift her attention to the puzzles. Be a change of pace and maybe a break would help her refocus on Gabriel and Samson.
Dante does know this, though he's keeping his disapproval with the idea of escalating the importance of this little puzzle (pun intended) to a minimum. As Audrey offers to take up work on the puzzle pieces, Dante drops the piece back in the envelope it came in and holds it out to Audrey. "Smells like livestock," he says flatly, "The name and address were typed with a typewriter, not a printer. My best guess is whoever mailed them took a trip into the city from wherever he or she lives, probably out in a rural area somewhere."
Looking over to Parkman again at the mention of his status, Dante frowns thoughtfully before glancing over to Audrey, "Is everyone who's received a puzzle piece Registered?"
Parkman narrows his eyes at Audrey, one eyebrow still arched. "Last I checked, you didn't test as SCL-postive. Somethin' you need to be telling me, Hanson?" There's only a hint of humor in his voice. "I don't think we're looking at someone who's targeting the Evolved, Lupinetti," he adds with a tilt of his head and as he makes his way back toward the desk.
"Again - not priority one. Priority one is finding these agents and rounding them up before they have a chance to align themselves with another, less legal organization." What a group like Messiah could and would do with someone trained to battle the Evolved isn't something Parkman wants to dwell on in his imagination. "You have to remember the history of this thing - they're like roaches. Really egotistical roaches."
"You got me Parkman, I guess I gotta go register my ability to really get into Sylars craw" Dry, oh so dry. She glances to Dante with a smile. "We go way back." Thumb jerked at Parkman. "Back when I was a lowely little Feeb and he was just…" Audrey looks at Matt. "What was your rank? Just officer Parkman? My how time has flown" She means it and says it with as much affection that she gives anyone.
"Spare time, understood. Priority is tracking down these company agents, flushing them out. Is Lupinetti here doing something that you need him to do or do I accession him into my crew and use him?"
Dante gives Audrey a blank look at her explanation of her history with Parkman. "Okay."
He drops the envelope with the puzzle piece on it on the desk in front of Audrey, settling back in his chair again, that tiredness starting to return without anything to distract his mind. Parkman's orders for priority get a curt nod as Dante zones out at the stack of mail Parkman has received, frowning at his inner thoughts. Audrey's question gets Dante to glance curiously up at Parkman. Waiting for an assignment. Something to give him a little direction, after this roller coaster of drama he's been on. When does the ride stop?
"Lupinetti," Parkman continues as he stalks back around to his side of the desk. "You want to work on this…puzzle, go for it." If he can tell by sight that the envelope has been typed on rather than just printed, then maybe he's the man for the job. "But clear it with Harper, or whoever your direct superior is. If he wants you on something else, do you the something else. Understood?"
In that moment, Dante sees the prospect of working on an /important/ case being yanked away from him and is staring down the barrel of loads of mildly interesting "busy work". Just before the disappointment creeps into his expression, he remembers the crushing boredom that finally got him out of the house in the first place.
With a small twist of his lips, he nods to Parkman. "Understood. I'll talk to Harper as soon as he's free." Audrey's given a brief, baleful glance to the side. On the other hand…does he really want to be on the job of hunting down ex-coworkers? Maybe this is for the best.
Parkman nods, setting the mail aside in order to pick up the first file on the stack and open it. After a moment, he looks back up to the two agents and lifts his eyebrows expectantly.
"Well?" he says, looking between them. "You've got work to do. Get going."