8:30 AM - Above Club Carousel
Ashley could tell the woman was nearly hysterical. Hell, anyone could probably tell the woman was nearly hysterical. He kept his face straight and neutral, but couldn’t help inwardly releasing a heavy sigh. Was it so wrong to hope that maybe just once he would question someone fully competent and emotionally stable?
But she was young, so Ashley by some distant connection could loosely understand. She looked scared to death. He briefly considered patting her shoulder as support but ultimately decided against it given the context, a stranger touching her was probably the last thing in the world that she wanted.
As frustrating as it was, the woman’s information was useless, nothing he couldn’t find out with a few minutes of running his eyes over the crime scene, but at least the victims were identified, as were their last known… activities. He offered a curt nod. “I appreciate your time Miss Fitzpatrick. Is there someone you can call?” He paused, considering the apartment thoughtfully, “Somewhere you can stay?” He doubted she would hang around long, not with the look she had in her eyes.
Ashley’s thought process was interrupted. “Hey, Gallagher, get over here.” Smith called from across the apartment.
“Excuse me, Miss.” He passed her, his shoulder brushing hers as he made his way to his partner who was crouched over the dead woman. Julia.
“Gallagher, get a load of this.” With his fingers at her jaw, Smith turned the woman’s face to the side, fully baring the extent of her injuries. Her head was completely, violently bashed in— as in, half of her skull was simply missing.
“Jesus,” Ashley muttered, shoving at Smith’s shoulder until he moved and sliding in to his previous position, crouched over the body. “No basic robbery would end up in this, they’d go for something more perfunctory less… messy.” He pinched her chin, pushing it up to examine her neck and the rest of her body. “Not gratuitous though, no eh…” He gestured to the rest of the body. “Unnecessary wounding.”
“Definitely not a robbery,” Smith murmured, almost to himself. Ashley turned his gaze to what Smith’s attention was focused on. A shiny watch laid neatly on the table. “They’d have pocketed this stuff, it’d get a pretty penny.”
“If they had thought it was a robbery they wouldn’t have called us.”
“Why did they call us? Isn’t this homicide territory?”
“Proximity to the club, probably figured it was gang-related violence…” Ashley began to respond, but trailed off as he noticed something. A faint slip of pure white beneath the blood-painted lips of the victim. “Hey uh, doc?”
The Coroner lofted a brow, stepping away from the other body. “Shoot, Gallagher.”
“Did you by any chance look in her mouth?”
“Not yet, why, you see something?”
Ashley spoke through gritted teeth as he stuck two thumbs into her mouth and attempted to pry it open against the rigor mortis. “Yeah, maybe.” With some effort and a sickening crack her jaw finally popped wide for him. He stuck a gloved finger into the now-dry depths of her mouth. A rose. It was a white rose that he pulled from her red lips, dripping with hours old blood-hinted saliva trapped within the petals. Behind it, slipping from the throat, trailed a long, thorny stem— the spines bloodied and catching on her lips as he gently tugged.
“Jesus, Ashley!” Smith exclaimed. “What the fuck is that?” He quickly knelt down beside the male victim, repeating the process of prying open the jaw, though the masculine bone structure proved significantly harder to crack. Sure enough, Smith pulled out an almost identical rose, with somewhat less care.
Ashley almost grinned. The thrill of it, of the challenge placed before him. This was someone taunting him, this was a mystery laid at his feet and he loved it. He kept his tone monotonous and professional. “Bag them both, see if we can pull prints— anything else? Check the jacket.”
Smith did as instructed, rifling through the various pockets of the suit jacket before patting down the bulge in the breast. Yet again, a rose was revealed from the breast pocket, also white, and also fully intact.
“That’s all I need,” Ashley decided, sharing a nod with Smith for confirmation. “—Wait. Wait.” He jabbed a finger towards the counter in the corner. A single glass of wine sat, half-finished. “A single glass. No lipstick. No, if it was one of them, there would be two. There’s only one.” He leapt from the body and was across the room in an instant, fingers hovering over the curve of the glass. “Blood right here, on the stem, see? This was after the murder. Check this for prints too.” He glanced at Smith, who had appeared beside him. “Get the girl a ride somewhere, she shouldn’t stay here— Make sure those dogs at Homicide don’t take my damn case, and make sure all of this evidence makes it to the station. I have someone I need to see.”
And with that he was out of the apartment in a flurry, headed towards the club and a pair of green eyes that might have seen something that the girl didn’t.
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