2019-07-23 - Favor for a Friend

Ruiz's truck pulls up in front of 13 Elm Street in reverse, after overshooting it by a couple of houses. He parks, kills the ignition, and spends about five minutes just sitting there. Eyes on the house, then eyes on the street, and other parked cars, and passers by. Like he knows how to spot someone whose job it might be to sit there and watch him. Like he's just that paranoid. That, or maybe he's just trying to get a sense for what sort of neighbourhood Alexander lives in. Elm ain't the nice part of town, but this block seems all right.

Eventually he collects his gun and climbs out. It's stowed in its holster again, under his jacket, and he slams the door and ambles on up to the house proper to knock twice and pop the lock. Per his standard operating procedure, he pauses a moment to listen before letting himself in. Sideways, shoulder first, dark eyes furtive as he adjusts to the light level in here.

Doesn't bite, does he? he'd asked about the bird, squinting a little at the man as the instructions were handed over. Now, he tries to spot where the animal might be lurking.

Curtains twitch aside down the street, then are replaced when Ruiz's truck pulls up. It's a small town, gossip is rife, and Alexander doesn't get a lot of visitors. The cop can probably feel the curious stares of a few of the struggling neighbors. Not if you don't put your hand near him, Alexander had replied, along with the bird's name: Luigi. And it's obvious that the bird is in there - as soon as those two sharp knocks hit the door, a couple of shrill bird calls answer it. Luigi sounds pissed.

When he lets himself in, a wave of warmth flows out the door. It smells nicer than one might expect - there's a green, floral scent to the air, mingled with the musty undertone of feathers. It's probably warmer than it usually is, although not dangerously so. Alexander clearly doesn't have AC. The door opens into the living room, which is neat and tidy, if a bit ragged. The furniture doesn't match, but it's well maintained; there's a folded blanket and pillow on one side of the couch, as if waiting for a sleeper. The walls are a soothing blue, and the curtains a deeper blue. The kitchen to the right, with that indoor garden, the hallway to the left.

And in a large cage in a corner, a small green bird with a dark grey-ish head is throwing a hissy fit, flapping its wings, making angry calls, and reaching over with its beak to shake a bell on a rope with excessive force. A glance at the Nintendo hooked up to the TV, with a copy of Super Mario Brothers left on top of the console will likely reveal the source of the bird's name.

The cop sort of looms in the doorway for a while, taking stock of the place like he'd taken stock of the street, and the exterior of the house. He's tempted, perhaps, to leave the door open for some air flow. But opts eventually to tug it shut, and throws the deadbolt for good measure. Not that he isn't perfectly capable of defending himself from ne'er do wells, but he also doesn't believe in taking unnecessary risks.

Easing out of the doorway, he approaches Luigi's cage at a bit of an angle. Like a large, predatory animal that's encountering something small but potentially unexpectedly ferocious, for the first time. He pauses at the shrill sound of the bell being shaken, then ducks his head and gets to detaching the water bottle and feed container from the outside of the cage. As he works, a soft tune is hummed; his voice is scratchy and smoke-roughened but mostly on key:

Duérmete mi niño, duérmete mi amor
duérmete pedazo de mi corazón.
Este niño mío que nació de noche
quiere que lo lleve a pasear en coche.
Este niño mío que nació de día
quiere que lo lleve a la dulcería.
Duérmete mi niño, duérmete mi amor
duérmete pedazo de mi corazón.

It's a neatly kept house, although not excessively so. Even from the doorway he can see small indications that a person really lives here, and did not intend to leave for an extended period. A folded up newspaper on the coffee table. A single plate and silverware in the drying rack by the sink. There are a few photographs on the walls, pictures of an older man and woman - the man's face has definite resemblance to Alexander's, although without either his intensity and with infinitely more warmth. The woman is comfortable rather than beautiful, and probably always was.

When Ruiz approaches, Luigi goes silent, and hops to his highest perch, walking as far away to the back as possible. Ruiz is stared at with black, beady little eyes. The singing draws a small chirrup, but only that. Otherwise, it huddles, watching him with mistrust and defensiveness, as he accesses the food and water dishes. Both definitely need changing - the parrot pellets are in a small bag under the sink, and Alexander's notes say there's a jug of filtered water for the water dish in the fridge. Which is otherwise pretty devoid of food or food-making items - except for some fresh veggies which probably go to the bird. Someone does not cook.

The bird is watched occasionally, but otherwise not interacted with; he seems perfectly content with this arrangement, where they each stay out of one another's personal space. Once the dish is cleaned out and refilled with fresh water, and a few handfuls of whatever passes for parrot food dumped in the dish, Ruiz briefly pops open the fridge to add in a small selection of vegetables. Likely inwardly chastising the man for his lack of staples. Or much of anything else, in all honesty. A carrot is chopped up along with some sticks of celery, and both dishes slid back into the cage with a parting glance for the bird.

It's the photograph on the wall that distracts him next. Hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, he meanders on over to take a look at it. Noting the resemblance with slightly furrowed brows. It seems for a moment he might be inclined to touch it, but eventually wanders off again. A detour through the little indoor garden, as if drawn by the scent of greenery and things growing and thriving.

Luigi chirrups once more, when the dishes are replaced. It waits until Ruiz has moved away before fluttering down and drinking and eating. It grumbles to itself as it does.

The indoor garden is a U-shaped arrangement of growing racks, positioned to get the light from the dining room window, which seems to be the largest window in this part of the house. There's a variety of plants here - even some cooking herbs, although only aromatics, and they show no signs of the trimming one would get from harvesting them for cooking. There are also some flowering plants that are in full bloom. It seems to be arranged strictly according to the requirements listed on the soil-tags, rather than with an eye to presentation. Potting soil, liquid fertilizer, and a few other tools are underneath the racks. The soil on several are beginning to dry out, but likely nothing that won't keep for another couple of days.

From the dining area, the hallway can also be seen - it's fairly short, with four doors, three of which are at least partially open, including the bathroom door at the end of the hall.

Ruiz makes his way along the bend of the U slowly, boots heavy on the floor and smudging a little dirt that's spilled from one of the plants. His very presence here is.. out of place. Like he doesn't belong with all this sun-soaked greenery. He extracts a hand from his jacket to touch one or two of the plants. A flicker of glimmer in the wake of each glancing contact of fingertips, like dust shaken from a disused thing.

Then he moves on through the kitchen, opening cupboards, taking stock of what's kept in them. Contents of the fridge, catalogued. Door shut, he prowls for the bathroom to check the medicine cabinet and under the sink.

The cupboards are somewhat pathetic. There are dishes and cups, but only the cups and one of the plates - two if you count the one in the drying rack - seem to see any sort of recent use. The pantry sections have some staples - there's a half a loaf of bread, for example. But mostly it's canned things designed for quick and portable eating, or snacking at odd times of the day or night. The fridge is almost empty. The freezer has a couple of frozen dinners and a pint of ice cream, nothing else but ice trays.

Walking past the open doors to the bathroom, it's easy to see that one is a bedroom, the other a home office. The closed door is closed - the knob has been replaced on it with one that key locks from the hallway. The bathroom is small, clean. A shower/tub combination with cracked ceramic is to the right of the door, a toilet and sink to the left. Under the sink has toiletries - basics, mostly, but there are a couple of feminine items, and space in the dust of the undersink cabinet to suggest others might have been there until recently. There's also a very well-maintained first aid kit, complete with neat rolls of sterile gauze, non-prescription painkillers, and several sorts of disinfectants. It's partially depleted, and Alexander's hand has written expiration dates on various cells - everything's up to date, if it's checked.

The medicine cabinet is also nearly bare. Shaving cream, non-prescription sleeping pills, headache powders, other personal care items, but nothing else.

That locked door is noted on his way by. Because being who and what he is, why wouldn't it pique his curiosity?

Items in the bathroom are rifled through carefully, meticulously. The first aid kit is opened and examined. His fingers brush over a few items with that same lingering, barely-there trace of glimmer where they touch. Then the thing is closed up again and tucked away along with a mental note of how many painkillers are remaining in the package, and its expiration date - along with the others that have been scribbled down. Pushing back to his feet, he finishes rifling around in the medicine cabinet, puts everything back where he found it, and goes to tug the shower curtain aside briefly. If there is one. No bodies in the bathtub? Just making sure.

His next destination? The office.

No bodies in the bathtub! No lingering signs that anyone or thing was butchered or drained in the tub. The first aid kit carries traces of pain, anger, tired resignation, - and most recently, a sort of painful but amused exasperation. The supply is fairly low - maybe about a third of it remains, half-way through the year. Someone has had some ouchies.

The office is small and cramped with the desk and a full sized filing cabinet and a rolly chair and bookcases all crammed together in the space that was probably meant to be a very small bedroom. The desk is a corner desk, cheap pressboard, but with a nice veneer, supporting an older desktop computer. It's in sleeping mode, and if woken up, is password protected. There are neat stacks of file folders on the top of the desk - clippings from the newspaper, sorted by week. Crime, mostly, although some other events find their way in there, as well. The filing cabinet has three drawers - the topmost appears to have course materials for courses on crime and research methods, all sorted meticulously. Copies of handouts, student rolls, copies of e-mails, all the sort of documentation one would expect. The second has his files from his investigations, sorted by client initial, year, and date. He doesn't get a lot of cases. And if some of them are looked through, they're generally the sort of thing that no PI who has any other option would take - alien abduction, sightings of monsters, accusations of one's girlfriend being a member of the Illuminati. But his reports are meticulous and thorough, and aside from their subject matter, would be appropriate for any actual detective. The bottom-most cabinet has its internal space entirely taken up by a home safe; a fairly mediocre model with a standard locking mechanism.

The bookshelves are stuffed with mostly non-fiction: true crime, textbooks (including several used by police academies), a few academic journals, and history texts. The dictionaries for Latin and Greek are somewhat odd outliers, and they're near the only shelf of fiction, which is mostly classics, poetry, and classical occult texts like The Golden Bough and the Lesser Key of Solomon.

Thump, thump, thump. The captain is not a delicate sort as he moves about Alexander's residence. He fingers the filing cabinet briefly, tugging open a drawer or two if he can find any unlocked. Papers rifled through, organizational scheme noted. What type of books does Alexander read? That's checked, too. Dust on the covers, anything obviously out of print or esoteric. Glimmer; filament-fine streamers of it wherever his touch lands. Then he's distracted by the newspaper clippings stacked on top of the desk. And flips through a few of them to get a sense for what the man's been nosing around in lately. Not that most of it comes as any surprise; he seems to make the captain's business his business, amongst other things.

File folders re-stacked, he jiggles the computer mouse and his brows stoop slightly when he sees the password dialog pop up. Pushing up off the desk, he sends one last look about the room before prowling back out to the hall, and giving that locked door a bit of a jiggle.

There are a lot of emotional impressions here - this seems to be where Alexander spends a fair amount of his time, and has for a while. Strongest at the computer is concentration, focus, and the occasional burst of frustration. The books share these impressions, but harder on the concentration and focus. Many of them have bookmarks, notes, highlights - he's taken notes on gross anatomy, blood splatter analysis, police procedure. The textbooks are consulted fairly frequently judging by the lack of dust on them, in contrast to the true crime books, which have been read thoroughly, with many underlines and marks on various parts of victimology and investigation, but then seem to have been left without returning to them. The fiction section has more pleasure, a sense of comfort and warmth, the empathic equivalent of a blanket drawn around one's shoulders. The cases and class notes carry only traces of satisfaction or frustration, the same one might find in any person's work papers. The safe at the bottom has worry, determination, the press of concern that's carried for years.

The locked door jiggles obediently, but does not open. The lock itself isn't a heavy duty one - if it's meant to keep someone locked in this room, it probably hasn't done a good job if they're in any shape to resist at all. No noises can be heard from the other side in response to the jiggle.

The office, fairly drowning in emotional offgassing, is left behind, the cop's breathing quickened a fraction like he's relieved to be getting out of there. After his attempt to jiggle the handle on the door, he brings his knuckles to his nose briefly. They come away slightly bloody, and it's wiped off on the thigh of his jeans before he takes a moment with that lock. Just looking at it this way and that, before deciding it's flimsy enough that it likely won't stand up to 190 pounds of Mexican busting into it full force.

And he's right. It only takes a single, well-placed shoulder to bust it open, snapping the lock and shredding the mechanism from the doorframe with a sharp splintering that echoes dully through the hall. "Lo siento," he murmurs, as if the man could hear him, and lets himself in at a slow, feral prowl.

Well, if Ruiz was looking for evidence that Alexander Clayton is not an entirely sane man, this room would be that evidence by most standards. It's probably meant to be the second-largest bedroom. Instead, it's been turned into what, on first look, appears to be a shrine to murder and other violent crime. There are boxes stacked against the walls to about knee height, but everywhere there isn't a box has been turned into a giant, interconnected murder board. There are themes: the wall to the left of the door, partially obscured by the open door, has documentation of historical violent crimes in the area. Antique crime scene photos, sepia and black, show murderous bar fights, throat cuttings, organized crime hits in uncompromising detail. Fragments of reproduced court reports, depositions, newspaper articles, and all the assorted documentation of death spider out from the photos, tracking the course of old investigations. Things are highlighted, post-it notes have comments on the limitations of the investigations, signs of cover-ups, and occasionally the ominious: SHADOWS.

The wall directly across from the door, the first thing to see, really, are more recent cases. Gray Harbor has a lot of murders and disappearances, and someone clearly has been allowing Alexander to buy copies of police reports, autopsies, and other things he shouldn't be having. String and post-it notes spiral around the cases, filled with notes on probable methodology, follow-ups. There are hand-written notes of interviews, heavily highlighted and linked. Some of these have been solved, of course, and where that's so, there's a pin-up of the newspaper article about the arrests. Some of them aren't considered 'cases' at all - suicides and disappearances ruled to be an adult choosing to leave, or people no one cared enough to file reports about. The work is more extensive on these. Some of them have sticky notes: resolved, and a date. Many more do not, and stand as silent memorials to those who were lost, in their own minds or darker places, and never found.

The next wall used to have a window, until Alexander put a giant whiteboard over it. This is, perhaps, the craziest wall, since it's all about the monsters. Frenetic speculation on the 'shadows that hunt', and 'lost places' in ramblings that seem quite insane for anyone who doesn't know about Gray Harbor, and probably still a little...concerning for those who do. There are some geneologies drawn on the whiteboard, tracing Baxter and Addington lineages. There's one space that has WILLIAM GOHL written in bold letters, with the Addington murder victims' names coming off it, Penny's name (with question marks), the phrase "mind and healing at distance", and CARR coming off, with question marks. ASYLUM is also there, in bold letters, and "how do you get in?" In one corner, Alexander has his own geneology, but just his parents names, and then a spidery, empty tree rising from his father's side, with question marks all over it.

The final wall is less frenetic. Compared to the other three, it's almost relaxed, and it's certainly less extensive. Probably because it's filled with observations on the crime network of Gray Harbor. It's mostly speculation, tracking newspaper articles of certain arrests that go nowhere, linking them to buildings, to other people. Exonerations, ruined evidence, certain subsets of murders and disappearances. The triple homicide on the docks has a place here, with one of Alexander's "resolved" notes (which would come as a surprise to the GHPD, perhaps). The arrest of certain machine thieves also has a copy up there, with names highlighted. Sometimes cops' names are highlighted a lot, if they come up often over time in these cases. But it's mostly speculation, supplemented by what looks like a few depositions and other documentation that 'somehow' got tossed in a shredder and painstakingly reconstructed.

Oh, and in one corner, there's an odd canvas bag that really WANTS to be buried.

For a long, long while, the captain just stands there in the doorway, drinking in the madness of this shrine to grisly, horrific things. Not that most of it is surprising per se, but that does not detract from its shock value. Not even a little.

The door's nudged almost shut, until only a crack of light is visible between it and the frame, and he starts moving about the room slowly. Touching this and that; the boxes, the corkboards. A particularly graphic image of a woman with her throat cut open, and god knows how the man got his hands on this. His eyes darken a fraction as glimmer is summoned; first in dribs and drabs, like a tap someone's left dripping. Then in force. Who touched this. And, Where did it come from. His fingers drag over the name WILLIAM GOHL, lips parted like he's trying to taste it. Who. How are you significant.

After some time - minutes, hours, it passes strangely whilst he's so absorbed - the man pulls back and notices the final wall with its crime mapping. Another swipe at his nose, the bleeding more profuse now; it darkens his knuckles as he tries to staunch it. The notes on that triple homicide gain a furrowing of his brow as he keeps the heel of his palm pressed to his nose, dark eyes flickered over the resolved notes. The names of cops. The speculation and internal memos that.. apparently weren't properly destroyed.

His hand is wiped off on his pants again, and he digs out his phone to start taking pictures of everything. Click, click, click.

The emotional impressions here are strong, almost overwhelming, like the room is filled almost to the top with some sort of dark fluid, and when Ruiz opens himself to it, floods in:

Sorrow for the losses documented here, an aching and painful empathy for the suffering and anger on behalf of its victims. But also fascination, dark and tinged with disgust, but there none the less - WHY does this happen to people, how does it happen, how is it discovered, how is it stopped - how is it NOT stopped? As if Alexander - and this room feels like him and no one else - has stood here for God only knows how long trying to deconstruct the existential question of WHY MURDER. Towards the Shadow wall, the emotions eddy darker, sharper, hot with hatred and fury and confusion. When he brushes the name, there's a sort of electric spark of 'eureka' that bounces him back to the historical wall, to a newspaper article reproduction from the early 1900s about William Gohl, "Billy the Ghoul", responsible for upward of 140 murders in the Gray Harbor area. Convicted, and surely long dead, by now.

The last wall feels heavy with resignation and a sense of helplessness. If a part of Alexander believes he can somehow challenge the monsters of hell and make them pay for what they've done, he seems to have little such hope when it comes to the more mundane and stable crimes of the town. There's disappointment here, resignation, a sense of duty, an underlying frustration.

By the time he's finished with this room, Ruiz is shaking slightly. More blood is wiped off his nose with the sleeve of his jacket, more pictures taken with his phone. Once he's catalogued everything to his satisfaction, the man shoves his phone back into his pocket and tugs the door open to head out. He's almost made it, too, when he notices that canvas bag in the corner. Hesitation, then his booted feet carry him that way, and he crouches to tug the thing open and take a look inside.

Why, hello there, bag of human bones. Not enough for a complete skeleton, to be sure, but definitely human bones. And they want to be buried! They really want to be buried, Ruiz. They waaaaaant it.

They're also fairly old, yellowed but still strong. Likely older than Alexander himself, so at least he PROBABLY didn't kill whoever this was? Probably.

Pictures, too, of the bones. Brows furrowed at.. whatever the fuck that is that just slid through his mind. They belong in the ground. He pauses a moment, then touches one of the long ones. Tibia, maybe. Fingertips, a breath of glimmer, a trickle of blood that begins anew and is wiped off again with the crook of his elbow.

There is...no emotional impression on these bones. Aside from the desire to BE BURIED, they have nothing attached to them at all - no memory, no feeling, no whisper of history. More, he can tell that someone has deliberately cleansed the bones of these things.

"What the fuck have you been doing, Clayton?" is whispered as he touches that bone. A caress, like one might give a lover. It lingers, and is finally withdrawn. Hands to his thighs, then a grunt as he pushes to his feet. A brief check of his weapon stuffed into the waistband of his pants, for whatever reason. Then with a slight swallow, he turns and moves for the door, head bowed as he shoulders his way out.

The bedroom is the last room he visits. Ostensibly, to find some clothing for his friend. His friend who keeps a wall of crime scene photographs and appropriates classified information from the PD. He takes stock, of course, while he moves through the room and rifles about in either dresser or hamper (whichever looks more likely to contain clean clothing) for the requested items.

No one was using that classified information, Captain. No one was using it correctly, anyway.

The bedroom is either a relief or a disappointment, in that it is entirely normal. A small, cheap bedroom set, with what can't be more than a twin-sized bed, which is made up with careful precision. Everything neat and dusted. There's a stereo stack on the bedside table, set up to play everything from cassette tapes on to modern media, and a small rack of music next to that. Classic metal and rock, mostly, but anything loud or passionate seems to have a place in his small but well-used collection. The headphones coiled neatly by the stack are possibly one of the most expensive things in the house, sealing out all sound but the music.

His closets are mostly filled with...clothes. A ragged collection of what looks mostly like consignment clothes, not all in the same size. They're clean, but half of them are about ready to fall apart. A few nicer, cleaner, newer outfits - button up shirts and dress slacks - are exiled to the far end of the closet, clearly rarely worn. The dresser holds very generic underthings: briefs, undershirts, socks. No secrets buried under the socks, no freaky sex toys under the bed. There are a few pictures on the walls - paintings likely scavenged from rummage sales, as some of them have small bits of damage. They're calming scenes - the ocean, a distant ruin, a field of flowers. No attempt to coordinate color or style, only theme.

Oddly enough, he makes little attempt to unearth any secrets that might be present in this room. Sure, he'll sift through some clothing and check out the type of music the man likes to listen to, but he does seem to have some semblance of restraint where his sleeping quarters are concerned. A few shirts and pairs of pants are collected. Underthings too, which he might be amused about later on account of how oddly intimate it is. The pictures on the wall are given a quick once-over, but everything else is left alone, and he steps back out with his cargo.

Back in the main living area, the parrot is given a bit of sideeye as he passes, and then he tugs the front door open in preparation to leave. Clayton? Has got some 'splainin' to do.

Luigi returns that sideeye with beady, beady little eyes. He sees you, copper. He knows what you did.

But since you fed him, he doesn't really care.