Summary:A set of anonymously delivered pictures sets Nick and Isis on a new case. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
  |
Last night, late at night while Nick and Isis were both sleeping, someone slipped a large manila envelope under their door. Inside that envelope was a series of photographs, all of them fairly large, all of them depicting people with obvious cyborg enhancements committing crimes in and around areas populated by mutants. There was no letter with it. No hint as to what this was, when this was or why it had been given to them. No clue as to who sent it. There wasn't even any scent on the envelope. So Nick is rather thoroughly perplexed but has been going over the photos with a fine toothed comb - metaphorically speaking anyway - for the past couple of hours.
Is he any closer to figuring anything out? He's not sure.
It was Isis that had found the envelope and after giving it to Nick, she'd slipped out the door before he could tell her to stay.
She came back an hour or so ago, her frown matching Nicks. "It's impossible to track anything by scent in this city." She'd grumbled. "Did you know that Missus Valente had smoked cod three nights ago?" Don't ask her how she found that out.
"Are these mutants, Nick? In the photo's?"
"Yes, because her smoker leaks and I could smell it when she was making it." Nick says as he puts the photos down. There's ten of them in all, each in a different location, most but not all of them featuring different cyborgs. "Where did you go?"
He suspects he knows, she went to see if she could find any evidence of cyborgs and yes by scent that might be quite difficult. Cities are a riot of scents anyway. So bad that Nick has seriously considered taking up smoking just to dull it all.
"Some of them are yes. Or at least I think some of them are. That ones in M-Town. And that one is down by one of the entrances to the underground. And that one is one of the mutant hangouts in the Bronx." There are a few. Mostly bars and the like. Or clubs.
"Yeah well, she left in her trash can …" Isis grumps, nudging Nick so she can sit on his lap and look at the photos. "I wanted to see if I could find who delivered this and failing that, anything unusual. I should know better, this city stinks."
Literally.
"Do you think they're staged?" Isis asks as she settles. "Or do you think these are things that really happened." She's already reaching for Nicks phone, to pull up a news browser - her target is 'crime in the Bronx', over the last week. "Why send them to us?"
"Good question." Nick had checked to find correlation in the public record too but not every crime makes the news. There are a couple of news articles that MIGHT correspond to some of the pictures but in no case did anyone get a look at who committed the crimes. Or at least no one that filed a police report or spoke to the media.
"I'm inclined to say they really happened because staging them only makes everything make less sense. But if they did really happen, why give these to us? And why anonymously…"
Nick pulls up a Google Maps page where he's pinned six locations.
"I've managed to identify six of the ten locations in the photos. They're spread out over the city but three of them are in M-Town. Whomever did this - if they did - targeted mutants deliberately. Question is… why?"
"Bait" Isis says quietly, scrolling through the news but letting the phone go when Nick takes it. "They know we get involved in things to do with Mutants and they want to draw us out?" She's considering that. "But that then means we have to ask 'why' again … "
Why them, if indeed it is them.
"So, not staged and someone has sent these to us but not told us anything. A concerned observer?" Isis shakes her head, leaning back against Nicks chest and rubbing her ears under his chin. "Why wouldn't someone want to be identified?"
So many questions and Isis doesn't have any answers.
"Maybe we should go visit these places, what do you think, Nick?"
"Maybe they didn't think it was safe to be seen talking to us." Nick says. "On the other hand maybe they didn't want to talk to us because it would spoil the ruse." It's suspicious one way or another but Nick can't say what kind of suspicious. The one thing that is sure is that now they HAVE to investigate. Nick scratches Isis ears as he thinks.
"Yes, we should probably- oh hey… what's this?"
Nick picks up one of the photos and peers at a corner of it. "This is about a block over from the Toliver clinic. Look there. There's the shadow of a winged person on the ground." So it would have had to have come from a night when there was a clear enough sky and a bright enough moon to cast that shadow. Which means that was about three weeks ago. June sixth. Just after the full moon. It was cloudy every other night around that week.
Bird people. Toliver Clinic. This is something they've seen before.
"Maybe… " Isis doesn't sound convinced and Nick can get the edge of her worry about this.
"What?" Leaning forward, Isis looks at photo and turns it around. "That looks like … wings… Well. That's not good. Were they stealing from the Clinic, do you think?"
Taking the phone from Nick, Isis looks up the Full Moon and the weather from that week when she has it. "June 5 or 6, probably. Maybe we should start there."
"If they had I feel certain we'd have heard about it." Nick muses. Maybe not from the news but through the grapevine. The clinic services a lot of people in M-Town and it being burglarized would make waves. The PI Werewolf thinks a bit more. Hrm. "If not stealing from it though they might have been doing something else. We should check the area. Setting up surveillance possibly? Or just casing the place." He can pretty well figure out where the picture was taken. If they check around and particularly on the rooftops they might get something of use.
"The bigger question is who wants us to look at this. I don't like this whole anonymous tip, and not just because it's hard to bill for that." He does after all have an Isis to feed and lights to keep on. And that's expensive.
"Let's head down there now and ask around. I've got this scratch on my arm that needs tending…." Isis says. Scratch - you can barely see it and she gives Nick the most innocent of looks. "Casing it. Watching. Seeing if a shipment comes in? Or someone comes in… Could be anything really."
"And I don't either, Nick. It feels like we're being herded. I've done enough that with my dreams."
"Yes that looks like that good get infected at any moment." Nick says absolutely deadpan. "Let's go down and take a look. Get you properly seen. No time to loose." He gently prods Isis out of his lap and soon they're in the truck and headed south to M-Town. Traffic is New York-ish so it takes a bit longer than the distance suggests for them to actually GET to M-Town or even anywhere near it. And they have to stop to get Isis some food. At least they only have to do that once.
Eventually though they arrive in the late afternoon near the Toliver Clinic and Nick parks the truck and gets out.
"Well…" He looks around. The buildings in this part of town are lower but there's still plenty of midrise, mostly older construction. Which means plenty of places for someone with wings to perch and a fair few that would have a view of the Clinic if indeed that were the point of this.
Isis just grins at Nick as she slips from his lap and even manages to doze in the truck on their way there. Well, until he stops for cheeseburgers - of which she orders four.
When they get there, she stretches and munches on one of the burgers after offering it to Nick. After looking about herself, she takes the photo out and compares the landscape. "There … that's the area in this photo and the shadow would have been there."
Sliding from the truck, Isis wanders about a bit and then looks up. "They were up there …"
Nick looks about. There aren't any convenient ladders up there. Most places don't actually want people on the street to be able to access the roof. There are fire escapes on a lot of these buildings but going up them always risks being yelled at by the locals. Or having the police called. Which… isn't something Nick wants right now.
"Why don't you climb up there and I'll find a way up and join you." She can get there faster.
The top of the roof looks empty but for once Isis can get relevant scents. Because people aren't up here much their scent lingers for longer. She can sniff the points where people stopped and stood, the paths where they moved around. She can see scuff marks on the roof where someone set something up… on a tripod.
Hrm. Okay. Tripod marks. There's another mark on the nearby metal vent where someone rested something about the size and shape of a cell phone. Hrmmmmmm.
Time for her to Isis Holms a little bit while Nick finds a way up.
Nick looks about. There aren't any convenient ladders up there. Most places don't actually want people on the street to be able to access the roof. There are fire escapes on a lot of these buildings but going up them always risks being yelled at by the locals. Or having the police called. Which… isn't something Nick wants right now.
"Why don't you climb up there and I'll find a way up and join you." She can get there faster.
The top of the roof looks empty but for once Isis can get relevant scents. Because people aren't up here much their scent lingers for longer. She can sniff the points where people stopped and stood, the paths where they moved around. She can see scuff marks on the roof where someone set something up… on a tripod.
Hrm. Okay. Tripod marks. There's another mark on the nearby metal vent where someone rested something about the size and shape of a cell phone. Hrmmmmmm.
Time for her to Isis Holms a little bit while Nick finds a way up.
"Don't be long…" Isis says as she disappears to find her own way up. She is quicker, being able to jump and land more easily and in much more difficult places. When she makes the roof, she crouches and looks around, making sure it really is clear.
The scents are easier to follow, though the scents from the city are still quite strong. When Isis finds the scuff marks, Isis stops and cants her head, looking up and then out and around.
From this position, she can see the clinic clearly, though there's not much detail to be made out with normal eyes. Or even cats eyes. But with a telescope - they'd likely see a lot.
The vent draws her attention and Isis judges the distance between that and the tripod, then starts looking for 'brush' marks that indicate that something might have connected the two, physically.
There's a scrape mark that indicates that something long and abrasive brushed against the metal and a scorch mark at the base of the vent. Odd scorch mark though. It's very small. It can't have been from a fire. It might have been from something electrical arcing but there isn't anything powered that runs through this vent. The only way for that scorch mark to be there is if something grounded out on it.
Based on the stance of the tripod marks the tripod probably stood at between chest and eye level. So telescope or camera maybe. Whatever it was, it was heavy and cumbersome enough that when it was broken down the scrape of the tripod left a mark in the coatings on the top of the roof.
Speaking of scrapes, that's the sound of Nick coming up. He'll be there in a minute.
What could they have been looking at? Well, from here they've got a view of the front of the clinic, which would have been closed. But you can ALSO see the parking lot in the back.
AND medical waste disposal unit that's also in the back.
"Find anything Isis?"
"I don't know." Isis says, rubbing her ears against Nicks arm when he arrives. "Look. I think it was a camera - with one of the lenses. Taking photo's of the clinic and…" she squints "… the parking lot. We should go and check that out next." She hasn't connected the dumpster she can see with the medical waste disposal maybe Nick will though.
"But there's also this. Something rested here and … burnt it. It looks like the time I stuck the fork in the toaster. A cable was passed through here, maybe? I … don't know."
Nick looks down at the scorch mark and nods and frowns. Then he stands up and peers in the direction Isis is indicating. And then he does something interesting. He pulls out his phone and uses the zoom function on the camera to look around.
"Alright it would have been night. So not a whole lot going on in the clinic. Parking lot would have been empty. Mmmmmmmmm. Medical waste…" Nick looks down at that and then up at the vent.
"Pretty tall vent. Something went here… about the size of a phone but it was heavy. Heavier than a phone."
Maybe…
"Lighting around here is pretty poor. So if they were taking any pictures they'd have needed some. But you wouldn't want to shine big searchlights. So… you use an infrared light. Put it in the vent. Point it that way…"
He gestures. "And take a photo of the medical waste storage." Why?
"Whatever was there three weeks ago isn't there now. So checking it out probably won't tell us. But if we can figure out what they were doing in the clinic three weeks ago, that might…"
Isis … blinks and looks at Nick. "Infra red? You're going to have to show me how that works. She'll take his word for it though, so there's that.
"Medical waste. And the ones we caught before were doing something with med supplies too, weren't they." beat "Why don't we ask them? They know us and I can always Jedi them …"
Yes, she just said that. Nick might stop her watching the Star Wars Trilogy.
"If we can get in to see them I think that's a good idea." Nick takes a couple of pictures for reference and pockets his phone once more. "If you're sure that they're weak minded enough." That is a joke but Isis probably can get in their heads if only in their dreams. Which will be highly disturbing for them. He knows how dream predators work.
"We still need to figure out how and why this information got to us. And for that… we might need some help. Either tech help or psychic help. Can you think of anyone?"
"I do have this scratch…" Isis reminds Nick. "Not weak minded but … they think I'm scatty and an airhead. I can ask questions that would seem strange if others did it." That's an indication of how far she's come in the last few months. "And you know that I can make people relax and trust me."
Which is horrifying.
"Come on, it's going to take you a while to get down …" Isis gestures, but takes out her phone and takes some photo's. Nick might need to do some … training …. when he sees them. "… Hank or Jean? You know Hank will help us and it's been ages since we saw Jean."
"Well we should definitely get your cut taken care of." Nick smiles. He can look around while Isis asks probing questions that no one realizes she is asking because well, she's Isis. She can make people at ease even when she's acting a bit odd. Nick occasionally wonders how often she does that to him.
"Why don't we see if we can get both of them. We'll head over to the school after your boo-boo is taken care of." The wolfman winks. "Now… we should get down from here…"
Isis Marik nibbles.