2020-09-01 - A Distant Glint

She's not a large boat, the Vagabond, but she's not quite as ancient and deprecated as to truly look like she made the crossing from Finland with the vikings as Vic suggested a few days previous. Possibly because she actually dates from the 1970s -- and maybe a little bit because Finland's indigenous population in the Viking Age consisted largely of reindeer herders. Every day, though, she gets to look a little nicer. Now she's been equipped, indeed, with a fridge and a working stove too, she's almost hospitable. And meticulously neat. It appears Ravn Abildgaard wages war on clutter and dirt anywhere he goes -- not just the Twofer's rest rooms.

At the moment, though, he's sitting on the deck staring intently at a rocky outcropping somewhat up the coast, frowning, and absolutely not paying attention to the noise of the pier. At least he's yielded to the summer heat a little, leaving the blazer off and wearing a t-shirt instead of a turtleneck. It's still black and entirely without print, though.

Vic has made it a point to walk the docks daily, checking up on the safety of Abilgaard and Cavanaugh both. Knowing now that Joe had been targeted by Reyes for his relationship to de la Vega, she's decided to keep a weather eye on the sailing author, and the bar-back as well. Being seen with her in the Twofer could put Ravn on Reyes' hitlist as well. Plus she just plain enjoys telling people to piss off who are lurking to get a glimpse of the Russian Spy or the Swedish Chef. As she makes her way to the Vagabond, she can be heard yelling at a cluster of lookie-loos to "Get the fuck out of here, these slips are private property!" Tourists scramble from the tall blonde with the hard eyes.

She's wearing cut off denim shorts in deference to the heat as well, though it isn't as bad as it has been of late. They're paired with a simple white tee bearing the logo for Led Zeppelin's Complete Studio Recordings album. Her hair is in a loose ponytail, and she had converse All-Stars in black on her feet. From one hand dangles a cardboard carrier six pack of Heineken. "Permission to come aboard?" she calls to the man.

Ravn looks back over his shoulder at the pier and the frown on his face is chased off by a smile. "Certainly, boss. Come on over. I was just -- well, Rosencrantz showed me a handy trick the other day but I don't think I can pull it off anyway."

He hops down to the back of the boat where the actual seats are, in an U-shape around the door to below deck. Uncharacteristically, the black cat that seems to have claimed the boat is not lying in the prow today, but down there, indeed, on one of the empty seats. More characteristically, perhaps, it has managed to convince its pet human to give it a turtleneck sweater to lie on. An ear twitches at Vic's approach but she is clearly judged irrelevant.

"Felt like a walk or something up?" Ravn asks, holding out a hand in case the bartender needs assistance making her way around the mast. Some people have the grace of ballet dancers on land and still can't handle the movements of a boat; others stroll from one to the other without little concern.

"I'm not your boss," Vic grumps at the Dane, before she steps onto the Vagabond's deck. She hands over the six pack of bottles with a smirk. "Thought I'd replenish what I drank last time. What trick did he show you?" She's curious, especially since she's unsure where the mechanic stands with Joey Kelly right now, since Ruiz broke up with the yard boss. Vic is more graceful than most land lubbers on a boat. She chalks it up to simply a huge amount of practice walking around while the ground is unstable (or rather, he brain is, because of being drunk off her ass).

She finds a spot to settle on the seats and looks the boat over with a discerning eye. "She's shaping up, Ravn. You've been doing a lot of work on her?"

"I like using my hands. I'm no handyman as such but I've spent a great deal of my misspent youth sailing. The best part about the ocean is that it doesn't give a damn who you think you are -- you either do it right or you swim home." The Dane settles as well, across from Vic -- next to the black cat who doesn't bother to acknowledge his existence.

Then he nods towards the rocky outcrop further up the beach. "See that big rock up there? Every so often the sun hits something up there just right and there's a small flash -- like sunlight in a camera lens. Itzhak came out to play a bit and he did -- something -- a few days back and whoever was hiding up there with a telelens dropped it. We could hear the swearing all the way down there. No idea if it's me or Joe Cavanaugh they're looking at but... Telelens, binocs, something. I've been tempted a few times to do something absolutely ridiculous but I guess that'd just feed the sharks."

Vic chuckles along with his explanation of why the boat is looking good, but the information about someone spying up on that rock? That chases her smile away and replaces it with a sharp look. "We should go find what they left behind. There are people in this town right now who are," how does she explain this without getting him too involved, "very dangerous, and intent on hurting people in any way related to a few specific folks. Myself included. You could be a target, and not just by paparazzi Ravn."

She peers up at the rock with a sharp frown. "What is the ridiculous thing you were tempted to do?"

"Eh. I hadn't really considered the specifics. The last guy went home to write some drivel about me making out with a mysterious dark-haired violinist who may or may not be a Russian spy." Ravn rolls his grey eyes at the ludicrousness of it all. Then he glances at his co-worker and loses the smile. "Anywhere else, I'd tell you to relax -- I'm no one interesting enough for anyone to have a grudge. But in this town? I'm listening. Why do you think I might be a target for someone, besides the glossy morning magazines?"

Vic grimaces, and almost looks apologetic. Almost. "Because I've been seen on your boat a couple times, and you've been seen working with me at the Twofer. Joe got beaten up really badly for his association with Captain de la Vega for the same reason." Because they were both cops? Maybe? Or something more insidious. "I don't know how much specific information these people have, so they may make assumptions about you that could get you hurt. Better safe than sorry, right? I want to know if whomever was up there had a camera or something else. Whatever they dropped could be a clue." She stares at the spot intently, but she's not as strong as Itzhak in the Physical gift, she can't reach that far with her mind.

"Could always go for a walk," Ravn murmurs. "You and me, a nice stroll by the surf in the sun. Romantic enough, I'm sure, that if our friend up there is the photographer-for-hire I imagine him to be will stick around in the hope of getting a shot of us making out or something."

The look on Vic's face indicates she doesn't believe that. Paparazzi in Gray Harbor aren't all that sneaky. No one needs to conceal themselves that well to snap photos of a celebrity on the deck of his boat. Or a Russian Spy. "I don't want it to look romantic. If it isn't a newshound, that could make it more dangerous for you. So a walk, but nothing that makes us out to be a couple, ok?" She grabs one of the beers because she needs one to steel herself for this.

"If I'm right we don't need to do anything but exist within ten feet of one another, which I think we're capable of without holding hands," Ravn agrees and gets up. "Trust me, if I wanted to hit on you, I'd come up with something less ridiculous. Even if ridiculous seems to be the flavour of this entire identity mix-up. Did you ever find out what those people staring at you the other day were on about?" He too moves around a boat deck with ease, stepping around the mast and out on the pier without much effort.

Vic smirks and sighs. "Yeah, apparently this untrue but believable rumor shit has it going around that I'm in Witness Protection, hiding from my ex-fiance, who is supposedly a serial killer. It's hilarious to anyone that knows Mike. He's fucking Captain America in his good guy-ness. Which is basically why he is no longer my fiance." Because she's not a good guy. She's really not. She may have started out as one, but undercover narcotics work is brutal on a cop. Something went bad there.

She uncaps the beer and drains half of it in one swig, wiping her arm across her mouth after, so ladylike. "Let's go then. Find whatever that thing is, and get some answers."

"I'll try to remember my best Gordon Ramsay quotes for when we find the idiot, but I cannot promise to deliver them in a proper Swedish accent. Please tell me that this -- Mike -- is not a tall, thin man aged about thirty who looks a bit like me," Ravn grouses.

The walk ashore from the pier is not far; this is not the fancy marina where the really big and expensive yachts moor, guarded almost as well as a wealthy people's gated community. Nor is it the equivalent of the Huckleberry Trailer Park but on water, but it's definitely closer to the second than to the former. "Best thing about living here," Ravn notes as they walk, "is that I can literally go from the crowds at the Twofer and the bonfires, to near-silence on the pier in a matter of minutes."

"Like anyone in this podunk town has any clue what a Swedish accent sounds like," Vic quips to Ravn with another smirk. That seems to be her default emotional expression these days. "And no. Mike is shorter than me, dark-haired with a crew cut, and has a perpetual five o'clock shadow." She grins a little and adds, "And he doesn't dress like Steve Jobs picked out his wardrobe." Yes, she's noticed his predilection for black turtlenecks.

She walks alongside him, with one hand in her shorts pocket and the other dangling the Heineken. If someone wants to stop her for open carrying a bottle of beer, they are welcome to get glared at furiously until they go away. "Yeah, I come down here a lot to walk. The trailer park tends to have a couple parties a week in it. People who have nothing, try their best to make something joyful out of it. It's Zen, in a goddamned noisy way."

"... Why does everybody think I'm trying to look like Steve Jobs," Ravn murmurs and then nods. "Good. About Mike, I mean. The police is looking for a serial killer who may or may not look a bit like me. All they've got to look for is, 'tall, thin, looks a bit like me but not me'. Someone like that decides to pay you a visit, consider treating him like you did that bloke the other day who tried to grab your ass. Just, with more prejudice." Who knew that the meek Dane entertained such violent fantasies, indeed.

"You're wrong about the accent, though." Ravn grins at her. "August Røn would know. But I guess you're right about most people here, and I'll fake it like a muppet if I must."

The violent tendencies get a genuine grin out of Vic. One may imagine being in a relationship with her to be...bruising at the very least. She, like Ruiz, has that predatory vibe around her, like she is forever looking for any sign of weakness to mark someone as prey. "Just say 'bork bork bork' and the idiots will buy it. I can almost guarantee that. People here are," she ponders how to put it, "easily influenced if they don't shine like we do. When weird ass shit goes down, their brains just reason it away to something more logical than what actually happened. They did it in Portland too, though the weird wasn't quite as visible there."

"Yeah. The body we found in the dumpster. Homicide with a blunt instrument, indeed." Ravn rolls his grey eyes as they walk up the beach, towards the outcropping. "That woman had been chewed on by small cats until she died from blood loss. But the EMTs didn't have the ... shine thing. Aidan and I both decided to just roll with it because what can you do."

"Jesus fucking Christ, chewed on by cats? What kind of cat would do something like that? I thought they only resorted to eating people when they were starving and trapped in a home with a dead body?" Vic takes another swig from the bottle, as if to wash the taste of "death by cat-induced exsanguination" out of her mouth.

"Beats me. I've been here for three weeks, Vic, and if I've learned anything in those three weeks, it's to nod, smile, and shrug because this town is... Well, everything you said it would be. I've been turned into a tuna, I've been chased by the Headless Horseman. Why not some poor woman getting chewed to death by cats." Ravn looks up at the outcropping. "I'm guessing our friend is up there? You want to go up and confront him, or try to sneak up on him, or what did you have in mind?"

Vic nearly chokes on her beer. "Turned into a tuna? Now that is definitely a story I need to hear, in great detail," she quips. "I just want to know if they were cats from Over There, or if there's a gang of man-eating cats roaming around town, because that is disturbing as all hell."

At the question she shoulder bumps him to move his eyes from the spot. "Don't stare at it, we don't want him to know we're coming. We'll sneak up to the spot. If Rosencrantz made him, and he hasn't picked up that object, chances are he's no longer there, but better safe than sorry."

"If I hear anything more I'll tell you but... If those cats folded a woman up and tossed her in a dumpster after bleeding her out, I'm pretty willing to bet they weren't someone's attention starved little Persians." Somebody mentioned being a former cop and somebody clearly knows what she's doing to an extent that somebody else does indeed not. Ravn follows Vic's lead on this one, staying behind her and keeping his eyes down. "I don't have Itzhak's spatial awareness," he murmurs. "That man is frightening when it comes to being aware what goes on around him. Which does not mean that I will not some day manage to lift his wallet because I am absolutely not going to stop trying."

"If I get close enough, I can get a sense of...physical things in the area. About 30 yards or so," Vic explains. She begins picking her way off the beaten path for them, trying to put the landscape and various structures between them and the rocky outcropping, so they can circle around to approach it from another angle. "If I signal you like this," She raises her hand up in a fist, with her elbow bent, "You stop cold, ok? Be completely silent, crouch down."

"Gotcha." Ravn is absolutely, definitely not neither ex-cop nor ex-military but he's watched as many American TV movies as the next guy. "Hitting the deck and staying down."

The ex-cop picks her way around to approach the outcropping at an angle that provides them cover. When she's within 100 feet of the spot Ravn indicated, she holds that hand up, crouches down, and extends her senses. She zeroes in on a few things, and her hand comes down again. She straightens. "They're gone, but that stuff is still here." She felt no clothes above the ground which would indicate a presence wearing them. She marches right onto the outcropping and moves to where a few things lay on the ground. "Rosencrantz must have really spooked them to leave this behind." It's a tripod for a camera, meant to steady it for extreme long-distance telephoto photography. Favorite of wildlife photographers and paparazzi who like to nab shots from a great distance of celebrities. "I'm guessing either they were trying to get photos of the Swedish Chef for a gossip rag, or the CIA has sent someone to investigate whether or not Joe is really a Russian Spy." There is also a lens cap left behind. "There are people who can probably get a read off those items, and figure out what they were really after."

"Maybe we shouldn't leave fingerprints all over them then," Ravn says, getting up from the ordered crouch, and then remembers he's talking to an ex-cop. Cue the sheepish look. "I meant -- impressions. If I walk off with this stuff, it's going to clutter things up for whoever does the reading, yes? I'm inclined to take at least the CIA part of this seriously because gossip rags don't get people sent to prison -- spying might, I imagine."

"Only if you touch it physically, I think. Maybe. I'm not an expert on these gift things, but you wear gloves, so," Vic pulls a zip-tie out of her back pocket. That's...creepy. She carries those around on the regular? She carefully threads the plastic through a hole in the aparatus, then secures it, making a handle to carry it without having to touch it with her hands. "Can you get the lens cap there?"

Ravn makes a long arm for it, and as he is a tall man, he doesn't need to exert a lot of that other power to jedi it into his hand. "There we go. Did you have someone specific in mind? I don't do -- object readings. All I do is, you know -- steal stuff."

He plops the lens cap into the zip-tie along with the rest. "I'm probably going to end up mooning this guy or something if he's just a photographer. But on the off chance that it's something more nefarious -- we should probably talk to Cavanaugh if it is. I imagine that if the CIA or someone else in that league is interested in him, he'll want to know about it."

"We can store these somewhere on your boat. I'll let de la Vega know you have them, and he can investigate. If anything, it'll be grounds for a restraining order from the press, invasion of privacy or some shit. This isn't Hollywood, the press doesn't have the same leeway stalking famous people here as they do in a big city." At least she hopes they don't, or she may have to rough up some idiots to make sure they leave the poor Dane alone.

"Sure. I imagine the police around here are pretty hard at work, though, so I won't cry myself to sleep if he's busy. I saw a homicide detective the other day about that beach murder and... Honestly, she looked like she hadn't slept for two days." Ravn's voice is empathic. "This town... Yeah. This town. I'm fine, Vic. Annoyed, sure. I like my privacy. But I'm not about to blow my lid and start beating up photographers or something like that, don't worry."

Vic smiles tightly, and something in that hard-eyed look of hers says it isn't HIM she's expecting to go around beating up photographers. She can strangle the fuckers with their camera straps if she needs to, from a distance. "No one deserves to have their privacy invaded. That shit is just not cool. Come on, let's go have another beer on the boat, stow this stuff, and I'll send Javier a text before I head home." So she won't be there to irritate the cop if he decides to check on it.