2021-11-16 - Out, Out Damned Spot

Alexander is definitely not driving. For one, he doesn't have a car. For another, he's monitoring police frequencies as they approach the area, checking patrol routes against a map on his phone, making sure the cops aren't hanging on, and that no one mentioned casually dropping into the murder house. He's not a great conversationalist on long drives, particularly ones that are to see if one of his best friends murdered her father.

When they arrive, he pauses, bringing two fingers up to massage at his temple while he does a quick sweep of the house and area, for anyone in the house, or paying attention to the house.

They took Easton's jeep which is aging gracefully to put it kindly. It's not a comfortable ride and the heater is going full blast to try and keep it reasonably warm against the chilly Pacific breeze. Easton doesn't seem to notice the lack of conversation as he's content to drive in silence. He of course came with firearms, a pistol and ammo on him and a shotgun in the trunk. There are other guns 'within reach' if it comes to that but there is no real reason to expect there will be.

When they stop Easton glances over at Alexander as he does his sweep, taking the time to get his pistol, check it (again) and tuck it into his waistband, pulling the oversized Black Rifle Coffee hoodie down over it.

Alexander gives the guns a disapproving look, but doesn't say anything about it. An Easton and his gun are not soon (or ever) parted. He glances down the block, briefly, then lowers his fingers. "Doesn't look like anyone's here. Or paying attention." He opens the door and climbs out. He fits into the neighborhood with his hobo clothes and strung-out weariness. "Should probably use the back door anyway. Don't suppose you know how to pick locks?"

Easton pointedly ignores the look at his guns, as he gets out of the Jeep doing his best to look inconspicuous. He nods at the information trying really hard not to think of it as a sitrep. "I can probably manage something." By which he means turning the knob from the other side of the door. His days of jimmying doors with credit cards is long since over and there is no 'kicking in' doors with one good leg. "I just hope Bennie's not going stir crazy back home.." he hasn't mentioned her the entire drive, but it's clear she's been on his mind even as he's continually scanning the area.

Alexander follows along behind Easton, slouching. He definitely looks like a criminal up to no good. "How's she been handling it?" he asks, quietly, while keeping a lookout himself. "How are you handling things, for that matter?"

Easton does a reasonable job of looking like he's supposed to be here and barely even hesitates at the door as he flips the look and jimmies the chain off nearly as smoothly as if he'd done it with his actual hands. He doesn't pull out his phone for a light or create one with glimmer, at least not yet. There's no need to advertise they are poking around. "She's doing the /pretend it's fine/ which isn't great. Smokin' a bit more, burying herself in work." He stops and closes his eyes, 'looking' for empty spaces in the floor or walls that shouldn't be there with his senses. "Whathcha got hidden scumbag..?"

Alexander does pull out his phone, although at first he's just using the screen light to look around - he lacks the Physicalist's sense of surroundings and space, and would rather not trip and faceplant on the crime scene. "I wish she would stop doing that. It's okay for things not to be fine. It's Gray Harbor. Nothing is ever fucking fine." He keeps his voice low as he starts to do a very professional sort of sweep of the first room, trying to put together a sense of what happened here through his mundane senses, first.

Distracted by the feeling of the floorboard that somehow wants to be noticed, the soldier who isn't standing in formation with the others, Easton misses what Alexander says at first. But it catches up to him and he scowls, "We all have our ways to cope.. and really can't fuckin' blame her for getting thrown for a loop on this one." On the one hand he would like to encourage her to be be healthier, on the other he's a terrible enabler of bad habits. He slowly squats down to his knees, focused on prying up that floorboard, missing the lack of blood splatter.

Alexander goes ahead and activates his flashlight app. He doesn't notice the floorboard, but the lack of blood? That's peculiar. He finds that tiny splotch, and goes down on hands and knees around it, sniffing for cleaning solutions and looking for the kind of discoloration that's hard to get out without replacing the carpet entirely - or the carpet having been replaced, for that matter. "Mm. I don't blame her, Easton. I just wish she wouldn't."

Easton pulls out the can and is surprised to find that he's nervous about opening it. Something like a danger sense starts firing off like it might contain something terrible or dangerous and for a moment he hesitates before looking at Alexander and taking a breath. He cracks it open and pulls out the ids, "Well good news for Bennie is the idiot managed to keep his identity quiet.." He slides those into his 'pocket' in the hoodie stashing them where no one can find them without his say-so. "Let's make sure that never turns up to.." he almost says 'haunt' but corrects to "bite her in her cute little ass." He tosses the bills to Alexander, "Let's consider that payment for the job. Or just give it away to someone." He shakes his head and adds, "Or fuckin' burn it I just... whatever." His frustration is high, as it always is when it comes to everything about Bennie's dad, but he's trying to keep a lid on it.

Alexander's head pops up at the sounds of splintering wood. "Easton, this is a crime scene--" he starts to say, sounding shocked. Like he caught Easton about to take a leak in a basin of holy water, or something. It breaks off as the bills are tossed at him. He catches the roll on reflex, looks at them, then wanders back to look at what Easton's found. "Interesting." There's a pause. "There's not enough blood here, Easton. There's some, but from what Bennie testified, there should be a lot more. If she killed a man in anger, it would be..." his expression is bleak, "messy. Healers always are."

"That we /broke into/" Easton returns easily, mistaking Alexander's objection and acting as if that negates any care that should be taken in preserving evidence. He looks confused, clearly it hasn't actually occurred to him that Bennie didn't snap her dad in half like a twig. For all of his assuring her that she doesn't know what happened and there's memory issues and all that, he expected to find exactly what she feared. "That's ... that's good. Wait. When did he die? I mean did we ever find that out?" Now there's questions that he didn't want to ask before. Before, in his mind, they would have confirmed what Bennie feared, but now they might actually help her heal. "Couldn't she have like popped his heart or broken all his bones..." but if she was 'covered' in blood ... where is it? He starts to look around more, caring more about the state of the surroundings.

"You are damaging evidence, Easton," Alexander explains. Not patiently; it's a little snappish. He /loves/ evidence like Easton loves guns. But it doesn't stop him from slipping the bills inside his jacket. "And it might be good," he says. "But they did pick up a corpse here, and it was - as best as I can determine - Bennie's father. The timing was poor, so no chance of doing a visual confirmation, but the news articles..." he frowns. "Well. The news articles used his alias. I wonder how they did the identification." He moves back into the living room, studies that bloodstain. "There's a little bit of blood here. I'm going to attempt to read it. It'd be better if it was the murder weapon, but," he shakes his head. "We'll see. Uh. Do you mind screaming?"

"Evidence that I don't want cops to find and or use." Easton scowls back about the destroying evidence. If it were up to him, they would burn this house down when they were done. Easton falls into the 'burn that house down' category far more often than he would care to examine since coming to Gray Harbor. "Well whatever they did I hope it holds up long enough to erase anything that ties him to Bennie. Even if she didn't actually kill the guy the last thing she needs is for this to drag out and hang over her head." He stands up, stiffly, painfully and says "I like a good bit of screaming, but if it gets out of hand I'm shoving a sock in your mouth."

"Evidence that might be useful for us to figure out exactly what the hell went on here," Alexander fires back. "Evidence is important." He grumps to himself, and then slaps his gloved hand onto that little bloodstain. Best to get it over with, whatever it ends up being.

Alexander's eyes widen, his pupils blowing until his eyes are drowned in black. "Nghk," he says, trying to hold it in as the pain hits. It doesn't work; he folds over and hits the floor head first, making a high, keening sound of pain as he clutches at his chest. He twitches like a man having a seizure before he can twist his mind out of the memories, and back into the present moment. He tries to speak again, but it only comes out as a whimper.

Easton grumbles a little but concedes the point that evidence probably is important, even if is his first instinct is to bury it all. He conveniently ignores the fact that things buried often come back to bite you. He approaches Alexander ready to muffle the screaming or knock him away from the blood if necessary.

But even braced for it he's not ready for the reaction. "Fuck!" he tries to catch Alexander as he slumps but he's too slow. He kneels, slowly down, and rolls Alexander, "Hey. Clayton! Snap out of it. Clayton." Easton's tone is normally loud but he's all but shouting at Alexander now, not in panic but in the firm commanding tones of an officer.

Alexander flinches from the feel of hands on his back, but he rolls, blinking up at the dark ceiling in a daze. "Fuck." A gasp of breath. "Fuck, Easton. She's so fucking strong." Then he sags against the floor, his expression bleak. "He's...dead. Bennie...I saw her kill me." A pause. "Him. Kill him." He takes another gasping breath. "Son of a bitch."

"Yeah.." Easton tries not to sound disappointed. He came here prepared to find that she had killed him but for those brief few minutes he allowed himself to think that maybe she didn't and that would be better, for her. But as Alexander dashes those hopes he's saddened, for her and by the fact that he's disappointed. He releases Alexander gently and says, "Shit. Well ... it's an answer." He sighs and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights one up. "What about the blood?" Something darkens his face for a moment and he holds back from asking another follow up question.

Alexander slowly climbs to his feet once he's released, still breathing hard. "Still too little. She crushed...internal organs." He swallows. "Can you find something?" He licks dry lips. "She was holding a ring. A plain gold ring. Maybe a wedding ring. It got knocked away in the--it got knocked away. Can you...feel for it?" His voice is tentative; of all the powers of Glimmer, he knows the least about the physical realm, being utterly incapable in that area himself. "We should take it with us, if we can find it. If we can't, we need to...check with the police, discreetly."

"Her moms.." Easton 'guesses' at the talk of a ring. It's the only one he knows about and it certainly fits that she would bring it. He closes his eyes and reaches out for it, seeing if it's in the house still. It should be a little easier since he knows the exact object he's looking for. Should be.

As Easton searches, Alexander moves restlessly through the living room, trying to shake off the vision. His head swings from one side to the other, frowning as he considers the walls. "But where did the blood...psychosomatic, maybe." There's no condemnation at the idea that Bennie might have hallucinated it. Just rolling the possibility in his mind.

Breathing out a sigh of relief that it's still here Easton pulls the ring to him rather than try and get down on the ground and fish it out the old fashioned way. He can feel the inscription before it's even in his hands but he checks for it anyway. He nods at it and sighs. "Yeah.. sorry Benz." He puts that in his pocket and looks at Alexander, "We done here?" He looks at Alexander and nods, maybe a touch too quickly, "Yeah. I mean figurative blood on her hands might have gotten mixed up.. she was rollin' and obviously upset." Or she might have killed someone else but hey, let's not bring up that possibility.

Alexander hums. "I don't see anything else here that's immediately useful. We should probably use luminol on the wheel, however. When we get back to the Harbor. It will make me feel better if the blood is imaginary. They didn't find any other bodies, that I remember reading, but I don't like it when evidence doesn't match up." A shiver works its way down his back. "Fuck. She's going to want to turn herself in."

"Well that's not /fucking/ happening." Easton shakes his head with a scowl nearly biting his cigarette in two at the prospect. "Seriously what is she gonna do get on the stand and declare she used her mind powers to pop her dad like a balloon? Fuck that. I'll get her declared crazy or.." Easton is not great at plans off the top of his head sometimes. But it's clear he hadn't really thought through some of the repercussions of if she had actually killed her father. So there is going to be a lot of long silences punctuated by angry yelling on the ride home. Buckle up Alexander.