Starring:
Guest Starring: Officer Jimmy O'Meara + various
Summary: Agent Felix Ivanov drops in on an old friend in the NYPD for more information on the Holly Dennison case. His timing leads to an unexpected field trip.
Date It Happened: May 5th, 2008
Ashes 2 Ashes
Police Station
New York City
"O'Meara!" An authoritative voice yells through the precinct, one man in blue to the other — the other being a narrow-faced man at a desk, whose sharp, dark eyes glare up from his work at his colleague, who seems to be bearing important news. "You broke the coffee machine again, man."
"It was the lieutenant." O'Meara must live on the edge.
As the department bustles around him — a busy evening in a busy part of the city; aren't they all — the police officer ignores it and goes back to reviewing paperwork on the Dennison case.
Fel is in his usual gray suit, getting looks of either recognition tinged with varying degrees of pleasure, or inquiring confusion…..since those that knew him are also aware he joined the Feds. And looms up behind O'Meara, with cheerful menace. "Jimmy," he says, blithely.
O'Meara doesn't turn to look who's behind him — he doesn't even stop working, hunched over his desk. "If it isn't the Bureau breathin' down my neck," he gripes with a tone of joking humour under his heavy Brooklyn accent. "Feeeelix. You comin' around for business or beers?"
"Both," Fel says, reaching over to tug on his collar, get him upright. "You need a break, I wanna stick my nose in on that new case of yours. I know you caught it, and I was sure you'd be -delighted- to have the Bureau's finest helping you."
Jimmy puts up a fuss, grunting and elbowing in Felix's general direction as he's hauled upright. A wry smirk twists his thin features, all the same. "Right. I'm tickled pink as a ballerina on recital night." He swivels about in an office chair that's seen too many swivels of that kind; it creaks and squeaks. He taps the paperwork that's now beside him. "Just so we're clear, I ain't callin' you 'Agent'. What's got the feeb interested in ash girl?"
Felix's smile fades a little. "Remember the weird trick I can do?" he says, more quietly. Since O'Meara is aware of his ability. "I have a creeping suspicion that it's someone with a far more lethal power that did that. Because you and I both know what happened to her isn't something ordinary."
O'Meara makes a face. "Yeah okay, Scully." He eyes the paperwork, though, details of the possible homicide and shakes his head. "Whatever happened to this girl, none of it adds up. We're one failed lead away from sweeping this case under the rug — pun intended, I'm already takin' the fast train to hell."
Uninvited, Fel steals an empty chair from another detective's desk, and settles on it, facing the back towards O'Meara and straddling the seat. "Tell me whatcha got," he says, expansively.
"Girl's roommate finds a pile of ashes in her dorm," O'Meara obliges for story time and makes a sweeping gesture with one hand. "Sweeps it up with a broom 'n' dust pan and dumps it in the trash, no idea it's actually her friend." That part was kept out of the news. "Well, Holly doesn't show up for awhile, uni authorities check out the dorm and one of them's smart enough to think something was suspicious. We get called in, the ashes get sent to forensics and we found Holly. Thing is," the wiry New Yorker reaches for the folder and slips a photo out, passing it to Felix; it's a photo of Holly, or rather, what's left of her, which is fine ash. "Girl's practically cremated and we got 'em saying the incineration was faster than any funeral home can churn and burn."
That's the sort of black humor you have to deal with, when you work as a cop. Felix snorts. "Damn. No sign of combustion there? Like she just went up herself?" Hey, it could happen. Hell of a way to get the first manifestation of your power, but…
O'Meara adds his own snort. "Campus kids are talking about spontaneous human combustion." He gives his head a shake. "Mild signs of heat on one dorm wall, but I mean mild, nothin' the space heater couldn't explain. The working assumption is it didn't happen there, the ashes were dumped. Our best leads are checking out businesses with hardcore incinerators." He raises a dark, wiry brow at Felix, expecting him to have another theory.
Felix prompts, eyeing him, "Any sign of anything else weird. Any college rumors?" There's something more to it, and his spider sense says 'Evolved'
"Like I said, some kids think she just went up in flames," O'Meara says, "But they're just freaked out. You— "
There's a sudden commotion a few desks away. The cop who blamed O'Meara for the coffee maker mishap before Felix's arrival, a tall African American fellow, young, maybe the youngest in the precinct, plants the receiver of his phone down and marches toward O'Meara. "Looks like the Dennison case might not be alone. Just got a call from our boys in Westchester, they got a pile of ashes in the 'burbs looks suspiciously like our NYU girl's."
Felix just gives O'Meara a look. The 'you know I'm right, don't you?' look. "Sounds like you've got a serial killer there," he suggets, trying to keep the eagerness from his voice.
"Get this," the other cop says to O'Meara — and Felix, incidentally, "They got a witness. If it's a homicide, guy might still be in the area."
Jimmy shoves out of his rickety swivel chair and gets his gun out of his desk. He gives Felix a look.
Felix looks utterly bland. Hey, I didn't plan it this way, right? He tugs his lapel aside to show the pistol riding comfortably under his arm. "Shall I ride along?" he suggests, artllessly.
* * *
Westchester, New York
Suburbia looks less picture perfect at night.
Red-and-blue flashing lights lend a surreal, dreamy quality to the wide dead end street flanked by homes and lawns. The police cars cluster around the very end of the street where there's less housing development, where it curves and broadens to allow turning. Yellow DO NOT CROSS is set up, and around it, numerous people in uniform. Off to the side is an elderly woman talking to one of the officers. Adding to the slew, O'Meara's car comes to a halt and he gets out, briefly flashing his badge to the assembled. He glances back, expecting Felix to be close behind. "You do what you do."
Behind the police tape, beyond the road, in the grass, is not one pile of ashes, but two. Beside the second — part of it, in fact — is half of a charred bush, some form of small shrubbery.
Fel does not flash his badge. No faster way to set an ordinary cop's back up than having the Feds come in like bulls into a china shop. "Which is what, here?" he says, giving O'Meara a dry look. "Looks like you got two vics there," he says, nodding at the two piles of ash.
Before O'Meara can answer, one of the local cops, quite their elder, interjects as he meets the pair. "Edmonds," he introduces himself with a brisk handshake for each. "Only two vics if you're a tree hugger. Won't know for sure until it's all analyzed, but we have a lady here swears up and down that first pile's her neighbour."
The lady, now alone and clutching at her housecoat as she peers over the police tape, looks understandably distressed.
"Ivanov," Fel says, crisply. Happily, Edmonds -isn't- one of the guys he managed to piss off back when he worked in the NYPD. "She saw it happen?" he says, eagerly, already heading for the unfortunate lady.
"I'll be…" Over there. O'Meara watches Felix head toward the woman, whose nerves seem as frazzled as her greying hair. He'll get her report later— for now, he veers off to check in with the other officers.
The old lady doesn't notice Felix's approach, transfixed as she is on the crime scene. A woman is in there taking pictures, and the witness cringes at every nearby flash. It's a wonder someone hasn't forcibly removed her from the area yet.
Felix touches her arm, very gently. "Pardon me, ma'am," he says, keeping his voice as low as he can. "My name's Felix Ivanov - I'm told you saw what happened?" he prompts, even as he offers a hand to her.
"Oh," the elderly woman exclaims softly, turning away from the scene to look up (way up; she's a tiny thing) at Felix. "I — yes— my name's Louise. Louise Byrd. It was my neighbour— Ms. Thatcher! Oh, poor dear. I was taking out the trash, it's garbage night, and well, so was she, just across the way," she points down and across at the last house on the road. It occurs to her, then, to ask: "I told them, I told them what happened already, who did you say you were with…?"
Someone killed the former prime minister of the UK? Levity, however, is not appropriate, so Fel summons the suitable expression of sympathy. "The FBI," he says, quietly. Why lie about it?
"…oh," Mrs. Byrd says, and that's enough. Thankfully for Felix, she's a talkative old… Byrd. "Well you should know, then, what happened." She clutches at her housecoat, wrapping frail arms about herself as she stares off toward Ms. Thatcher's house, which is all dark. "She was taking the garbage out, like I said. Then someone comes running up to her, I don't know where he came from — he comes running up to her, and they get in an argument, and it gets violent. She starts to run away. Well, doesn't my Gunther — that's my Himalayan — knock over my trash can, so I look away to get it…"
Felix nods, expression curious and prompting. "You glanced away to tend to your cat," he says, helpfully…."And looked back to see what?" He's got his best 'I am totally a clean cut boy, here from the Government to help you' expression on.
"That," Mrs. Byrd replies, tenuously keen eyes (there may be cataracts behind those glasses) moving toward the crime scene. The ashes. "Ms. Thatcher, I heard her scream, as I was picking up Gunther, heavy boy, and she was just gone. Just gone. And the man ran away, straight into the trees."
"What did the man look like?" Fel persists, tone as gentle as he can keep it. "Did she seem to know him? Was he young or old?"
"He was… lanky. Older… older than Ms. Thatcher but a good deal younger than me, I'd say," the woman replies. "I think he had glasses. I couldn't get a good look. It was dark. I remember her shouting, 'I hardly even know you!' That was all I could make out, but it made him pretty angry."
"Dark hair, light?" He's prompting her again, trying to keep his impatience under wraps at the same time he gets all the information out of her he can, before someone comes along and shoos him off.
"L… light… I think light. Long," the woman manages to get out. "I don't understand… How that could happen to Ms. Thatcher!"
Edmonds approaches Felix and the witness. "Your uh, your pal's driving away with the squad car you came in," he points out — indeed, O'Meara is on the move. "He's joining the hunt for the suspect." He looks to the woman next, "Hey there now, Mrs. Bryd. Why don't you go inside and calm your nerves. We'll be in touch."
Felix looks desperately as if he'd like to argue. But really, he's there on sufferance, so he merely says, "Good evening, Mrs. Byrd. I'm sure they'll have more questions for you later."
Mrs. Byrd nods, pained eyes and frazzled nerves turning away and shuffling off toward home. Edmonds flanks Felix. If he suspects him to be anything other than O'Meara's colleague, he says nothing. "Funny stuff," he comments, humourless, shaking his head as he looks back at the ashen crime scene. "Guess you're getting your own way home unless you'd like to wait around for … O'Meara, did he say?"
"Looks like," Felix says, lips twisted a little wryly. "That's Jimmy for you. Too hot on a lead to give anything else a second thought." The ashes……it's a somber subject to consider, save for Fel's persistent and inappropriate sense of humor.
"Well. Good luck on your end. Let's hope we don't see this happen again."
Behind them, a woman from the M.E.'s office starts to sweep the ashes of — presumably — Ms. Thatcher into a plastic evidence bag.