Participants:
| Scene Title | Hello Azrael |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Mortimer sends a message to Azrael, Elisabeth gets to read it. |
| Date | September 5 2009 |
Crown Heights Station
Saturday evening and a man is running down the street with no shoes or anything on, just a trenchcoat like some sort of streaker. He bursts into Crown Heights Station, throws his coat off, revealing a naked body with writing carved into it, looking as terrified as he can be, mouth full of blood.
He holds up a tape recorder, and police immediately train their guns on him, yelling for him to freeze. He does, but he also presses the button on the recorder, which has lots of audio clips from TV shows, movies, songs, all put together to form sentences, like an audio version of a criminal letter with magazine clippings.
"Stop! Don't shoot this man, he killed five people, but I assure you, he is not a streaker. Before this man's head explode, I'd like to say, I am not a serial killer, serial killers are distasteful people with nothing better to do in their lives other than use their "creativity" to hurt other people and make themselves feel special. I'm a spree killer, I kill for all sorts of reasons, never to feel special, but mostly people I dislike. I'm killing this murderer because it's convenient, I'm sending a message to someone, it's written on his body. I'm only killing killers for now, because there's a certain someone who would be very disappointed if I killed innocent people. Have a nice day, everyone!"
Not long after the tape stops, half the man's head messily explodes with a loud pop, and he promptly falls to the floor. His chest has very large words carved into it, a written message:
Hello Azrael. A Brave Man Would Take A Peek Into My Head.
Spree Killers < Serial Killers
Around the man's ankle is a little string necklace of teeth, and smaller words written around it.
I pulled his teeth for identification purposes. You're welcome.
It was the mention of Azrael that got Elisabeth Harrison called in. The precinct's lobby is cordoned off as a crime scene, forensics techs taking everything they possibly can from the body in situ while uniformed officers backtrack the blood trail to see if they can learn anything from witnesses and find the original crime scene. The blonde looks a bit better than she has all week, though most likely wouldn't notice given the situation. "Grace!" she calls from the doorway to Sergeant Charlie Grace, the guy who mans the front desk on the weekends. "Hey Charlie!" She ducks under the tape and skirts the scene, not really having to flash her badge — home office privileges! "What the fuck, man?" She looks at the gore-spattered scene in the main lobby and raises both her eyebrows. "I got a call about an Azrael link on this? What's up?"
When he lets her listen to the tape, Elisabeth's eyes shoot to her hairline. Oh… motherfucker. "Do we have an ID?" she asks the sergeant.
Charlie holds up a baggy with a bit of a grizzled look, revealing the tooth necklace. "This," he notes, pointing down to the message on the ankle, "Goes with that. I'm gonna have these sent to the lab, but so far we have no idea who this man is. We think the perp might be connected to a similar incident a few months ago, another headless body with writing carved into it and a tape recorder." Walking around the body, wearing civies after having to change with everyone else after the explosion, he hunches down and nods to the writing on the torso. "Nothing's conclusive, but the message appears to be a challenge to Azrael, or a game by him."
Gingerly stepping into the scene, sliding booties over her shoes when one of the techs glares at her, Elisabeth walks around the body to get a good look at the message. She glances at the man filling her in and asks, "We got leads on that one?" She reads the message carved in the chest and grimaces. She's not stupid — the signs are obvious. Just… perfect. Better to ask, though. "Seems like Azrael's managed to piss off more than just us," is her only real comment here. "Not hugely surprising… he's a sonuvabitch, that one. What happened to his head?" That's the part that she's having trouble with more than anything…. the imagery here of brains splattered all over the place is turning her stomach. But at least the corpse isn't old enough to stink.
"After the message finished playing, a small explosive went off in his head. It wasn't very powerful, we're guessing it was somehow lodged into his mouth, since the man didn't speak." Charlie stands up straight, back cracking as he hands off the baggy to a tech. "Still no leads on the perp. The major issue is that most of the equipment used is very old, so tracing, if possible at all, won't really get us anywhere. And there's the lack of finger prints. Witnesses say the man was dropped off from an unmarked van about a block away and the man simply started running. Someone managed to get a quick look into the van, and the only thing they saw were around two bikers with red numbers on their helmets."
Elisabeth scratches her head. "All right… have the guys drop their reports on my desk," she says on a sigh. Looks like she's not getting home quite as early as she thought. "I'll follow up on the witness statements first thing in the morning. And Grace?" She glances at the man. "Can you have someone drop the other file on my desk too? Not sure this one's actually technically in my squad's bailiwick, but may as well check it out." She grimaces. "Keep any mention of Azrael's name or the serial killer angle out of the press, if you can. We've actually managed so far to keep the Azrael case under the radar." She shakes her head slightly looking at the victim. "Poor bastard," she comments. "Killers killing other killers…. not entirely sure I even want to care about this one," she adds on a grimace, knowing the veteran cop will understand. She turns to head up to her desk to await the preliminary reports.