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Scene Title | They Just Fade Away, Part IV |
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Synopsis | Detective Richard Myron goes looking for Ezra Grimes in his off-duty hours, and discovers someone else instead… |
Date | May 7, 2009 |
Detective Ezra Grimes' Apartment
Several knocks in a row resound loudly through the apartment beyond. It's the second string of loud, incessant pounding to come to the door in under a minute. Slowly, a woman lazily draped in a loose button-down shirt slides off of a leather sofa, bare feet touching down on the floor as she straightens to stand, fingers slowly working to fasten the rest of the buttons on her shirt.
The knocking comes again, five heard raps on the door that shakes the frame. Blinking away the blurriness of sleep from her eyes, the woman rounds the corner from the living room, reaching up to rake fingers through auburn hair, dragging the locks back white pulling a scrunchie hair-tie from around her wrist, keeping those curly locks pulled back and away from her face.
"Grimes, open up!" Comes the voice bellowing from the other side of the door, and it causes her to stop in mid-stride. Wary eyes scan the door, then look back down the hall from where she came. Another series of loud knocks though makes it evident that whoever's there isn't going to just get discouraged.
Outside of Ezra Grimes' apartment, a brown trench coat and fedora is the silhouette that Detective Richard Myron casts on the door. Looking away from the apartment, his eyes settle on the young man quietly conversing with a man in the apartment across the hall. "So you saw him leave for work today?" Discouraged is more something that Officer Oliver Wilson gets, and that shows when he pointedly looks back at Myron with furrowed brows and down turned lips. It's just a momentary look, focus quickly turning back to the tenant he was talking to. "Uh— thank you ma'am, you've been very helpful."
"No he hasn't." Myron grumbles, reaching up to pluck that cigarette from behind his ear, rolling it around between his fingers before tucking it back where it came from. Oliver tries to pretend he didn't hear that as the door closes and the tenant leaves he and Myron alone in the hall. "C'mon, Wilson. Stop being such a pusho— "
The sound of rolling tumblers and the click of a lock breaks Myron's attention away as the apartment door he's been pounding on for almost a half an hour finally opens. "Grimes you sorry sack'a shit, where've you— " Ezra Grimes does not have breasts. This is the first through that goes through Myron's head as his eyes are leveled about chest-height to what is decidedly not Ezra.
Looking up, he meets the brown-eyed stare of a woman with reddish brown hair pulled back in a messy bun behind her head, draped in a man's dress shirt and a loose pair of gray sweatpants. "Uh— " the old Detective's eyes track to the number on the door, then back to the woman. "Sorry to uh, disturb you, ma'am…" Richard's eyes wander the darkened apartment behind her, "is uh— Detective Grimes in?" Finally thinking to, Myron withdraws his badge folio, holding up his shield towards her. "Name's Richard Myron, and this is Oliver Wilson. We had some questions for Detective Grimes, but he's been a hard one to get in touch with."
Giving a mild look to the two out in the hall, the dark-eyed woman looks at the badge, the slumps against the doorframe with one shoulder, a single lock of curly hair hanging down in front of her face. "Ezra got called out on a case 'bout two o'clock this morning." Oliver gives a look to Myron at that, but the old detective only tucks an arm behind his back and flips Oliver off out of the woman's line of sight.
"Do you know if Ezra's received any strange phone calls in the last week or so? Anything unusual going on?" Myron looks back to the woman from where he was staring inside of the apartment, "and uh— who're you again?" She tenses at the questions, pushing off of the door casing to give Myron a long, flat look before starting to close the door.
"I'll let him know you came by, Detective. Sorry to waste your— " Her words and the door's closing both stop midway as Myron shoves a foot in its way, pushing his heavy girth against the door as he more determinedly leans in towards the apartment.
"Look, I just have a few questions." Myron slides a hand into his jacket to withdraw a surveillance photo, turning it around to angle towards the woman. "Do you know who this is? Have you seen him anywhere around town, maybe around the apartment?" Brown eyes go wide when she stares at the photograph, looking up to Myron and then over to Oliver like a cow that just heard the word slaughterhouse.
"I— " Her voice chokes back in her throat, and any pretenses of not having a reaction to the photograph are lost. "I-I'm— " she tries to push the door shut again, but for once Myron's round stomach and squat build comes in handy, serving as a remarkably rotund doorstop. "What do you want?" She hisses out.
"I just want a minute of your time, it seems." Myron glances back over his shoulder to Oliver, then over to the woman, "May we come in?" Myron asks with only a touch of irony, as he's already wedged himself about halfway into the apartment. Sighing, the dark-eyed brunette leans away from the door, brushing her hands over her face as she turns on bare feet and begins padding back into the apartment.
Myron quirks a smile, then turn to look over to Oliver, jerking a nod of his head inside as he steps past the doorway. Oliver hangs his head and sighs heavily, following in behind Myron. Not only were they doing this outside of any official investigation, but this isn't either of their jurisdictions. Oliver can readily feel the noose of career suicide tightening around his neck. But yet somehow, he finds himself compelled to follow after the Detective.
"Nice place Grimes' got here," he notes quietly, glancing into an office just past the door, then around to the dimly lit living room. "You ah— never did introduce yourself, miss. There anything in particular I could be calling you?" She stops halfway into the living room, turning to look back over her shoulder at Myron, then just turns away and cups her hands over her mouth in a moment of stressed silence.
"Elisabeth." She finally murmurs, "Libby— if— whatever." There's no real sense in hiding it now. Oliver quirks a brow up as he looks from Libby to Myron, then starts circling around the periphery of the living room, peering out closed blinds to the street outside.
"Mind if I ask how long you've been staying here, Elisabeth?" It's the first time Oliver's spoken up since she opened the door, and his words are more addressed to the window, since he's staring out through a corner of the blinds to the street below, watching cars pass in the morning light. Myron gives Oliver a quiet stare, and just meanders over to an armchair, standing behind it with his hands resting on the back.
"Whatever," Libby says flippantly, moving to sit down on the soft, pulling one leg up beneath herself as she does. "just— just ask." The tone isn't lost on Oliver, and it makes him look away from the street, finding where Myron's moved to in the interim, then back to Libby.
It takes him a minute to get over the change in her posture and attitude, a nerve's been struck. "Do you know a man by the name of Tyler Case?" Straight, to the point, and drawing an immediate nervous reaction from Libby. The young woman fiddles with the drawstring of her sweatpants, a nervous reaction to the questioning. After a moment of seemingly avoiding answering, she finally closes her eyes and bobs her head into a nod.
Oliver glances up to Myron, who gives the young officer a nod of approval to continue. "The ah— exactly how do you know about him?" Turning away from the window entirely now, Wilson walks over to stand across from the sofa, a cluttered coffee table between he and Libby.
"He's my brother." Those words may have as well been the sound of a gunshot for the way it causes Myron to jump, looking over to Libby with mouth open and brows scrunched into this perfect expression of bewilderment and disbelief.
"Bullshit." It's the first things out of Myron's mouth, and it makes Oliver stumble over whatever it was he was about to say. "Elisabeth Case died on November 8th, 2006. She's got a grave marker at Calvary Cemetary in Queens, I've seen it."
Libby rolls her shoulders forward, eyes unfocused and her gaze distant as she stares at the surface of the coffee table. "It's just a marker," she murmurs, "I— I almost died in the explosion." Libby looks up to Myron with both an emotional, and an angry stare. "I lived with our parents, the apartment they had— it was outside of the area where most of the fatalities occurred, but not outside of the burn zone from the fires."
As Libby speaks, Oliver looks taken aback, hearing those terms is like a burning reminder of that day two years ago. The day when New York was torn apart, and one he personally won't ever forget, after having lived through it. "I— I should have died. After the explosion, I— think I was knocked out. Fumes from smoke or— I don't know. Tyler found us at the apartment, thought we were dead, but— something happened. I— I don't know. Ty's— he's different. He— he did something to me.'
"Pardon?" Myron interjects, still having a hard time believing this. "You might wanna' back up and explain that just a little bit better, because this is a hell of a mouthful to swallow." Libby's stare doesn't soften any as she continues, but her eyes eventually do wander away from Myron.
"I don't know what happened, but— Ty did something to me, it helped me— fuck I don't know— survive. The radiation, it— " Closing her eyes, Libby curls her fingers against her palms, and then as her eyes open, her irises are bleeding out a vibrant blue luminescence. The bones in her hands and down along her forearms begin to glow, as a blue-white light seems to blossom out from her skin, waves of heat and light radiating outwards in bands from her hands.
"Holy shit," Wilson yelps, backing away from the sofa, eyes transfixed on the unearthly blue glow. Even Myron takes a few steps back, looking at Libby with wide eyes as she closes her hands, the bones in her ribs seeming to shed a pale light as well, the brightest seeming to be this white light at the center of her chest that pulses and flutters, as if her heart was irradiating some sort of energy out through her skin, causing her veins to glow brightly.
"I told you he did something to me." The glow begins to subside, Libby's eyes and skin returning to their normal color. "I— I thought Tyler was dead, I had no idea. I only found out he was alive from what Ezra told me. He— he found me living on the streets, found me visiting my own grave, and he— he told me Ty was alive, and in trouble."
"Christ." Myron breathes out the words, one hand covering his mouth. "That's what he was so freaked out about the day— son of a bitch." Myron's eyes wander over to Oliver, giving him an I'll explain it later look, before turning his focus back to Libby.
"Ezra promised me he'd help save Ty, he— " She cuts herself off, fingers curling into the fabric of her sweatpants, arms and shoulders tense. Oliver, though, seems to have a hard time putting the details of the story together, the why's and how's of what happened.
"So wait— why'd you let everyone think you were dead after the bomb? I mean— how the hell did you even survive after social security confirmed you as deceased?" Wilson's words seem to strike a positive reaction from Myron, and the old man gives the young officer a crooked smile.
"The Triads." The answer makes perfect sense to Myron, after the Case investigation. "Ty owed everything to them, and— I just wanted to get away from it. I— I got caught up in the wrong things, and— and dying, it was the only way I could think of to really cut myself loose from them. I— I just wanted to start over again."
Oliver's nod turns into a hanging of his head as the pieces of this puzzle start to come together, little disparate threads all weaving together to form one very depressing picture. With Oliver a bit lost, Myron steps in to pick up the conversational slack. "Your brother's in some deep shit still, Elisabeth. There's something fishy goin' on, and we think he— fuck, I don't even know what to think. But there's somebody out there who looks exactly like your brother, and he's causing a shit-storm of trouble wherever he goes."
Blinking, Elisabeth looks up from where she's been staring back over to Myron. "I— Ezra told me that the Department of Homeland Security picked him up— he— he should be in jail right now, I mean, all those people he hurt." There's a strain in Libby's voice as she says that, jaw trembling as her eyes wander back down to the table, arms wrapping around herself.
"Look, Libby. I don't know exactly what happened to your brother, but I need you to tell me if Ezra's been talking so somebody who goes by the name R.Ajas." That makes Libby look up with a startled expression from the table, eyes wide as she watches Myron with lips parted in some silent gasp.
"He— how'd you— " Myron removes his cell phone from his pocket, waggling it around. Libby's stare doesn't seem to show any recognition, until he flips the phone open and shows her the first text message he had received from the mysterious stranger.
Myron closes the phone, and slowly shakes his head. "Something screwy is goin' on, an' I don't know what. But this guy who looks like your brother? I dunno if he is him, and is some sorta' weird Manchurian Candidate mind-wipe funny-business, or if he's just someone causing shit to get your brother in trouble. Either way, this suspect means that whatever evidence we had that placed Tyler at the scene of a bunch of those crimes a few months ago might not be as exact as we had hoped, if he's got some sort've double out there."
"We don't know for certain if Tyler's still in DHS custody. This— what we're doing here isn't official police business. It's…" Oliver glances over to Myron, then slowly back to Libby. "I'm here to back the old man up, and if he thinks something sour went on with your brother's arrest, than I'm inclined to believe him. So, I need you to tell us if Ezra knows anything that might be able to help, or if you've seen this man before."
Libby's eyes close, head shaking slowly from side to side. "N— no I— I haven't seen my brother, not since before the bomb." Biting down on her lower lip, Libby's expression struggles to remain calm despite how hard this conversation is, and all the things it brings back to the surface. "Ezra got the same messages you did, from that— that Ajas guy. I think he's looking into— fuck, I— I don't know. You should try and talk to him yourselves, but— but I know he's involved in this."
"Grimes… he's been hidin' you here?" Myron's expression is far less accusatory than he might have been a month ago. Libby's slow nod of her head is all the answer Myron needs. He's reluctant to say what he does next; somehow feeling like being on the verge of retirement is turning him soft. "You— just lay low, alright? Tell Grimes we came 'round, and let him know to call me. I promise you," Richard steps out from behind the armchair, "once all'a this is over, once this shit with your brother is settled, we'll do everything in our power to get you your life back. You ain't going to need to hide from those Triad goods anymore, you got me?"
Seeing Myron like this is a whole new side of him to Oliver. The young officer nods his head in agreement to the older detective, echoing his sentiments to Libby. "Yeah, look— it's our job to protect the people of New York. I dunno' what Tyler did to you, or what— I mean, what that ability is. But I promise you, we'll get it all figured out soon, and you'll be able to live a normal life again."
Myron and Oliver look at one another for a moment, then notice how Libby is curling up on herself, hiding her face behind one hand. They've done enough damage here for one day, asked enough questions and dug up enough painful pieces of the past. "We'll… show ourselves out." Myron murmurs, grabbing Oliver by the collar and yanking him away as he started to walk towards Libby, and leads him towards the exit of the apartment.
This rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than either of them expected.