Participants:
| Scene Title | The Devil Himself |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Myron and Liz head out to Chinatown for some answers. |
| Date | February 28, 1009 |
11:48am
Richard Myron always insists on driving, and he always insists on using his car. The old and rusted '88 Buick Century looks like it came out of a scrapyard, not a dealership. The interior has seen better days, but it's holding up better than the peeling, mocha-colored paint on the outside. One hollow slam of the door resounds as Myron steps out, parking on the street in front of a fire hydrant outside of Cho's Fish Market. Flipping up the collar of his long brown trench, there's some resemblance between Myron and the detectives from the Bogart era, even if this isn't quite Casablanca.
Day 10
The front of the market is like most other business in Chinatown, a nondescript storefront plastered with twenty year old sineage in Cantonese with nein accents that proudly proclaim that it's somehow still open for business in a post-bomb world. How does a privately run, family-owned fish market in Chinatown stay open with the economy the way it is in New York? Illicitly is the most likely guess.
Pausing outside of his car, waiting for his company to get out, Richard withdraws the bent cigarette from behind his ear, bringing it up to his lips, running it under his nose, and then… tucks it back behind his ear again, without so much as the intention of lighting it. His weathered hands tuck into the pockets of his long jacket, and his wide frame leans to one side, looking at the alley between the fish market and the adjacent tenement, still marked off with crime scene tape.
Riding in his car is not a problem, so long as the thing is clean. Elisabeth knows well the role of 'junior partner,' AKA 'rookie,' and she doesn't bitch or whine. Instead, she spends the drive reading the case files in her hand intently. By the time they arrive at their destination, she's got a pretty decent handle on what she needs to ask, but no clear idea on whether the answers will even be useful in any fashion.
Getting out of the car, Liz murmurs to Myron, "So tell me… is it required for homicide detectives to actually observe the gore?" She looks at him with a faint grin. "Not so good with that part, I'm tellin' you up front."
Laughing, Myron casts his tired eyes over to Elisabeth as he starts for the front door of the market, "You see a fair share of it. To be honest, you get used to it after a while… Damaris and Grimes, they've got cast-iron stomachs, that poor bastard we fished out of the alley here?" He motions to the crime scene tape, then stops short of opening the market door, "They found some of his insides strung up on clotheslines a floor up." There's a faint, sarcastic smile with those words, and he pulls the door opening, motioning for Elisabeth to go in first, gallantly.
There's a very real grimace at that. "It was bad enough opening a box of severed hands, Myron," she tells the veteran with a sigh. But she'll learn. "That's disgusting. And thanks," she adds as they enter. Looking around the shop, heads for the front where the register is. "Donnie Cho, please?" she asks the young woman standing behind the counter in a businesslike tone.
"Severed Hands?" Myron asks with his brows raised, an impressed smile crossing his lips as he follows Harrison into the market. It's quiet in here, and cold, so many freezers and open ice barrels giving the low-tide smell a nice arctic feel to it. The girl behind the counter, hair wound up into a black net, looks at the two people entering and leans forward, "Donnie not home, come back later." Her eyes flick from Elisabeth to Myron, then back again.
"Ba ba fan lai la!" Comes the bellowing voice of a man from the back room, "San! Ba ba fan lai la!" Stepping through an open doorway, a rail-thin old man with hardly any hair left atop his head comes wandering in carrying a large, brown paper bag with the top rolled. The young woman closes her eyes and exhales a slow, sighing breath, and the older gentleman — Donnie Cho — grimaces upon seeing her expression and the two people waiting.
"Nice t'see you again Mister Cho," Myron unfolds his badge folio, "This is Officer Harrison, an' I think you remember me. We just wanted to go over your statement one more time, if that's alright."
Cho snorts, then shoves the paper bag into the young girl's arms, "/Ye sap chin," he informs her, then points at the ceiling, "Hui. Nei ming baak ma?" She nods to him, slowly, and makes her way out of the front room, through the same door he came in through, slipping out of sight. Donnie Cho then takes up her stool, folding his hands as he gives Myron a very fish-eyed look.
"I told you everythin' I see, Detective. Devil killed your man, you go look for him in Hell, not my shop."
Slanting a glance at Myron, Elisabeth says mildly, "~Mr. Cho, we appreciate your help. Often, though, with a little time and perspective, witnesses remember small things, things they forget in the heat of the moment. I'd like you to think back for me, go over what you saw, step by step, one more time. I want to make very sure I have the description of the person — the devil — you saw down as clearly as we can possibly manage.~" Her voice carries the waves of suggestion that of course he's told us everything, but she knows he wants to help as much as he can, and every little detail helps. "~Your statement on the night in question says you were sleeping, you came running down here. Tell me about your first sight of the devil. I don't want the information you've already given, I want you to go back to that night and think it through, one thing at a time. Start from when you came into the room. What did you see? Tell me what he was wearing. How tall was he? What color was his hair?~"
She's been using this ability far more recently than she ever thought she would, honestly. She has been noticing that the more she talks, the better it works. On some people, that is. Not all.
Cho stares up at Elisabeth, puckering his lips as he rises up from his stool. The old man says nothing, save for circling around a somewhat perplexed looking Myron to move to the front door. Flipping a switch, the illuminated open sign turns off, and Cho twists the deadbolt lock on the front door. "Persistant," he mutters once the door is locked, "I— " His deep brown eyes move to the windows, then back to Elisabeth, "I know who it was I saw, out the window." Out the window?
Wringing hi shands together, the old man shuffles back towards where the two stand, looking over his shouldr, "I woke up, heard screaming. Not from the man who died though, it was a white boy," he gestures with a motion of his nose to the back door. "Han, one of Chang's men was here, white boy owed Chang a lot of money and was late on payment, so Han — " Han, the guy who wound up dead? " — Han was giving him lessons in payment plan." To emulate the lessons, Mister Cho slaps one fist into an open palm.
"This happen all the time around here, Chang owns this place, I owe him too much money — So he use shop for his work when I close, and I look other way," His english is poor, but the point is gotten across clear enough. "Han drags white boy outside, he the one I told other lady cop about." Likely he means Kaydence, and the white boy is probably Tyler Case. "I go back upstairs, to go back to bed, and I hear horrible sound, like — crackling thunder." His eyes squint, "I look out window, and I see Han running, holding his stomach. Devil chasing him." His eyes go wide, emphasizing the point, "Horns and claws, wild, screaming." His brows lower, "It must have been boy, devil in disguise, getting revenge on Han."
Well now…. that wasn't quite what he said the last time. Elisabeth purses her lips thoughtfully, glancing at Detective Myron. If the Big Lady is looking at Liz for a promotion, it's entirely possible that Myron just figured out why. Chang's attack is not on Elisabeth's radar, though she'll put in a call to check out anything related to him as soon as they get back and see what Damaris and Grimes may have found, but the description of 'crackling thunder' piques her interest. In all the cases, the sound of electrical discharge. And right after the sound, the 'demon' running loose. "~Mr. Cho,~" she says soothingly, "~Have there been other incidents with this creature? Other people who have seen it? I know how stories pass so quickly.~"
Cho shakes his head slowly, eyes diverting, "No, none." He seems rather certain of that as he comes to settle down on his stool again, hands folded in his lap, shoulders sloped. "I… I watched. The— that demon. It ripped Han… it ripped him apart." There's a narrow squint of the old man's eyes, "Like he was an animal. I— I hid. I took my granddaughter and hid and called the police." That explains the timing of the phone call.
"Triads, they have… powerful connections to the Underworld," From the tone of Donnie's voice, it's obvious he doesn't mean a criminal underworld. Myron rolls his eyes, pacing around the market as he looks Donnie up and down, for now remaining a silent and stoic figure looming behind Elisabeth. "But this devil, it killed Han. It kept— I could hear him hitting Han, even where I hid." Coroner's reports say Han's face was caved-in posthumously, by a man wearing flat-soled shoes. Apparently the Devil wears wingtips.
A questioning look is shot toward Myron. Any other questions? Elisabeth is uncertain — certainly they've confirmed two things they came to try to check into: that Tyler Case is probably the Evolved 'demon', and that the electrocutoin case is tied in.
"What was in that bag?" Myron immediately quips, motioning to the back door he sent his granddaughter through. The question makes Cho bristle, and the old man breathes in a slow, tired breath before shooting a very stern stare towards Elisabeth, "I answer your questions," he states, rising up from his chair before circling around to the front door again, unlocking it in a very telling way.
"Go, please. I am busy man." Myron's lips downturn into a frown, one hand rubbing at the side of his face as he looks sidelong to Elisabeth.
How does she do it?
Taking Myron's question as 'not serious', and not wanting to get Cho into trouble with the Triads, Elisabeth gestures for Myron to go ahead and pecede her. Age before beauty, right? Once they're outside, she murmurs to him, "Do we have the coroner's report in Nadler's file?"
Myron nods slowly, moving to his side of the car before glancing back into the taped up alley, "Yeah, yeah it's in the folder. That's what's biting my nails on this— Nadler was fried with over ten-thousand volts of electricity, Coroner's report says most of it was internal injuries. But there weren't any burn marks on Han's corpse, or at the scene of this crime— yet— " His eyes narrow behind his glasses, "We're missing something," he murmurs, opening the door to his car to settle down inside, the shocks creaking as his weight settles behind the wheel.
Elisabeth climbs into the other side and picks the file up, skimming through it for a point of contact with the electrical discharge — whether it was hands, or whether the coroner just plain couldn't tell, or what. "I'm wondering if he's got a bodymorph ability of some kind that's preceded by the discharge. And maybe Nadler was just too close to the discharge when it happened — like if the kid was attacking him for some reason. It would help if we could ID the third vic. All three of them are tied to Case, but do we know *why* Nadler and Case were fighting? Han, I get. Especially if the kid owes the Triads money. Nadler isn't fitting for me."
"No idea on that," Myron says as the car starts up with a clunk and a rattle, pulling out of his I can because I'm a cop parking space in front of the fire hydrant. As Elisabeth peruses the file, it's clear there is no contact point for the electricity, which baffled the coroners. Nadler was electrocuted internally, in what according to the files, was localized around his spine, boiling his internal organs and cooking him like a hard-boiled egg on the inside.
"Bartender said Case came in, went straight to the bathroom, and Nadler got up to go a moment after. They were gone a minute, and Case came out in a hurry and went straight for the back door," He turns out off of east broadway, headin gback to the city center, "and Nadler followed right on after him, pissing and moaning about something. Only Case'd know what happened once Nadler got out into the alley." Myron motions to the report, "There was a little blood found at the scene in the snow, it wasn't Nadlers, it might be Case's, but there's no DNA of his on record."
"I'd suggest that Case and Nadler were working together — that Nadler's ability was the electricity and he basically burned himself up — but that doesn't fit what we've got," Elisabeth says mildly. "The thing that's suggesting itself here is that Case has more than one ability. Which is going to make it a little tricky, and it's all supposition." She closes the file and frowns out the car's window.
 February 28th: Good Cop, Hot Cop |
Previously in this storyline… Next in this storyline… |
 February 28th: A Lack Of Subtlety |