ArchivedLogs:Identifying the Body

Identifying the Body
Dramatis Personae Murphy, Eric	2013-03-11 Murphy and Eric stop by the police station to identify a body. Also, discuss Village Lofts and Jax's kids.
Location NYPD Morgue
Late night when the call comes in. And then Eric's calling Murphy, and Murphy's making a lot of grunting and growling sounds, and then they're /both/ wandering into the New York City morgue. Murphy's clad in casual clothes -- 'casual', for him, consists of an old, tattered black jacket, a ruffled blue-collar shirt, and dress slacks. Boots, too. He looks like he hasn't been sleeping much, and that thin stubble he usually sports is closing in on the home-stretch of actually qualifying as a beard. He seems to know his way about the morgue. He doesn't get lost, anyway; when they get escorted to the 'viewing', he's standing besides Eric, jabbing his knuckles in one eye and digging for gold. When they pull the sheet off the corpse -- exposing a horribly scarred man (hairless; his eyes a bright, tranquil blue), he just grunts again. It /looks/ pretty much like the mutant who attacked Eric. Hell, how many hairless scarred freaks with an X-gene could be in this city? Oddly, though, Murphy gives Eric a subtle nudge of his elbow. Like there's something up. And then: "Yeah, that's him." Eric is dressed much more formally than Murphy is, in the navy uniform of the New York Police Department. His badge and city ID get him past the metal detectors which would, no doubt, have complained bitterly about the handcuffs, baton, and gun at his waist. When he looks down at the corpse laid out on the slab, he nods, once. "Certainly looks familiar. The bullet should verify it. Ballistics has the windings of my service weapon on file." he says, glancing up at their escort. "Hopefully this will clear things up with IAB a little bit." "Already checked," the officer on duty says. "It's a match. This's just a formality. Found him in a 'Quality Motel', bled out. House full of mutant terrorist shit. Lotta articles about that day -- pictures of you, too -- the ticket thing? Looks like he had a thing for you," he tells Eric. "Might want to take it easy for a while. Freaks're out for our blood." He looks a bit angry. "Yeah," Murphy says, and now he's nudging Eric again. "Right. Fuck, I need a coffee or something, you know where that's at, right Eric? Show me where that's at." He's stabbing at his other eye, now, like if he digs deep enough he might manage to scoop out all the exhaustion and throw it away. "Lovely. Just what I need." Eric says, with a sigh. "Still, I'd rather eat my own gun than get desked until this blows over." He glances at Murphy and nods, once. "I've got him," he says, with a wave to their escort. "I'll ggrab some coffee from the break room and we'll get out of your hair." he says, flashing a warm smile to the guard. "You've got better things to do than to escort us around." he jokes, eyes twinkling. "Come on, Murphy. Break room is down the hall." he says, stepping towards the door. The instant they're out of that door, Murphy relaxes. He doesn't look less tired, though. If anything, he looks even /more/ tired. A quick scan to make sure the coast is clear -- and then: "That isn't him." "Fuck." Eric murmurs, quietly, as he heads down the hall towards a little break room. There is a vending machine with some various snacks, most expired, a couple refrigerators, and a pot of cheap coffee the likes of which only police officers can brew so badly. Eric pours himself a cup, and a second for Murphy. "Then there's either a mole in the MEs office, or they somehow faked my gun windings." The police officer looks tired. "The first one is likely easier." Murphy looks at the coffee. Black. Always black. He proceeds to drink, despite it still being too hot for consumption. He /likes/ the burn. "Mole's possible," he grunts. "Faking the windings? Sounds fucking impossible. But remember what you're dealin' with. You nearly got fried by a guy who spits /lightning/. Impossible's the name of the game." Eric frowns at Murphy as he takes a sip of his coffee. Terrible. It doesn't seem to bother him. "Yeah, but, mutant shit is impossible but makes sense. Faking the windings requires engineers. And it would just mean there's a mole in the department anyway. Only IAB and the crime labs have access to the windings on record, and I haven't shot the gun often off of the range, so there's nothing to pick up and pull it out that way." Murphy's gaze is suddenly distant -- just past Eric's head -- as he lowers that coffee. Drawing something out from his memories. "Or access to one of your bullets, post-firing. But fuck, that'd be tricky. It'd also involve a lot more forethought than we're dealing with, here. I don't think the fucker who did this thought it through. It stinks of panic," he says. "But /this/ is a neat trick. I'd like to know how the fuck they managed to put a corpse who looks like Dillon in the morgue, /and/ managed to make it look like your bullet--" He stops, there. /Peering/ at Eric. "You figure it's possible they dug the bullet out of Dillon's guts and just shoved it in /this/ guy?" Eric laughs and shrugs his shoulders. "Certainly would be the simplest solution, I'd think. I don't think that they'd check to make sure that the bullet patterns managed. As long as they can dig all the shards out... hollow point bullets tend to do all sorts of terrible shit once they hit a person." he says, glancing down at the floor and worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth. "I dunno. Possible. Still seems easier than faking the windings." "The thing is..." Murphy looks back to the morgue. "That guy, in there -- he's two inches too short. Wrong eye-color. Missin' a mole above his left brow. But otherwise, he /looks/ like Dillon. Same nose, same mouth, same chin. Even the scar patterns are the same." Back to Eric: "Back in the military, we had a guy -- mutant, Russian guy -- could morph himself into any person he wanted. Once saw him pull bullet fragments outta his own shoulder and just... patch up the wound." "Metamorphs?" Eric looks surprised, glancing around the room and taking another sip of the coffee. He stands to pace a little bit, circling around a spare table, fingers trailing along the surface of it. "If it was one of those, I imagine it'd be perfect. Why bother to make a close match when the person can make themselves look like anyone?" he muses. He straightens up and puts his coffee cup down on the table to go peer into the vending machine. "Well. Dead or not, he should be out of commission for a while." "Yeah. Would figure it a neat trick to convince a metamorph to let himself get killed like this, but--" Murphy squints at the vending machine as Eric peers at its contents. "There are ways around that, too. Might want to keep an eye on the corpse. Make sure it don't suddenly 'disappear'." Then, Murphy is sighing, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "Fuck," he says. "This is -- you realize what we're talkin' about, right? We're talkin' about a crew. A crew of mutants. Doing /hits/ and /covering them up/." "No." Eric says, shaking his head and looking at the other man in the reflection of the vending machine. "No, we're talking about a company that produces military grade equipment who hired an assassin or group of assassins to murder a New York police officer." he says, turning to look Murphy in the eyes. "That's a much more concerning thought to me, and not just because I was that cop. The kind of people willing to put a hit out on a cop, and have the resources to build military equipment?" he trails off, significantly. Murphy /doesn't/ look Eric back in the eyes. He actually looks... embarassed. Holding that coffee in one hand; fondling his lighter in the other. "Yeah," he says, and he sounds a bit... deflated. "Yeah. It's just -- I've seen some of this shit, back in the military. What you can do when you got a crew of mutants working together, backed by Uncle Sam's muscle. Doing dirty work. It --" He looks, now, at Eric. Making eye-contact. Not happy about it. "You're right, though. Oscorp," he finishes. "Still looking into them." "I don't think it was the military. They don't send people in alone, from what I've seen. Besides - they're not supposed to be operating in the US." Eric points out, leaning his hands down onto the table and looking moodily down into his coffee. "Can you imagine the scandal that would come out if it was found out that our own military was responsible for shooting a cop? Bad enough a company, but the Army?" "Yeah. If the government's involved, they're smart enough to keep their distance. Let Oscorp do the dirty work. Let Oscorp take the fall when shit meets fan. But the fucker who came for you -- he /is/ military. Or, ex-military," Murphy adds. "There were --" Another sneaky look around the hallway. Checking the coast. "-- projects, in the military. To weaponize mutants. He was part of one. Read his file, a while back." Eric blinks and looks over Murphy. His eyes glance around the room, and then he picks up his cup of coffee. "Let's take a walk." he says, suddenly, going quiet. He gives the other man a meaningful look as he leads the two of them out of the crime lab and down the block. He does not speak until they are several blocks away, safely in the mix of the crowds of New York. "There somethin' you want to tell me, Murphy?" Murphy follows. He's operating on very little sleep and a /whole/ lot of coffee; having spent the better part of the day sitting out of an apartment complex and memorizing the faces of everyone around -- along with every car and license plate that passed -- is taking its toll. Not the memorizing part; just the sitting still and /absorbing/ part. It's left him a little twitchy. The caffeine isn't helping. "No," he tells Eric, but then: "I'm gonna tell you anyway. This is all a little close to home for me. Back when I was a Devil Dog, I /worked/ in this shit. Weaponizing... you know what." He doesn't even want to talk about this in crowds. Every so often, Eric might see him glance up to the /sky/ -- as if he's afraid of being spied on by fucking /satellites/. Sometimes, for Murphy, the distance between a healthy sense of paranoia and conspiracy theory porn is not very far. "Seen a lot of it. Know a lot of faces." Then: "And I know I can trust you with this shit, not just because you're gonna keep your mouth shut, but because I /know/ you're..." He sucks in a breath, fumbling for his cigarette as he elbows past someone. "Won't tell, but -- I figure you already know this, but if you want to keep it a secret then partner, you're in the /wrong/ fucking line of work." "The only reason I keep it secret is because of my line of work." Eric points out, gamely, glancing beside him at the other man. He walks on in silence for several moments, teeth worrying at the side of his cheek. He glances around and then lets out a soft sigh. "It's a hell of a time to be alive." he says, nodding politely to a crowd of tourists taking pictures of him, and everything else around. Another, awkward pause. "What are you working on right now?" he asks, glancing back at Murphy. "You're awful twitchy, and I don't think it's just this." Murphy's eyes narrow at those tourists. Eric can almost /feel/ the man's paranoia mounting as those cameras flash. Fuuuuuuuuck, what if one of them is a... calm down Murphy. The coffee. He gulps it, growling. "Village Lofts," Murphy says. "Keeping an eye on it. Worried there's gonna be a hit there soon. Something bad." Then, he looks to Eric. "Maybe a cooked up police raid. Maybe someone comin' to take away kids. Some excuse, /something/. Trying to..." Murphy rubs at his brow again. "Trying to swallow /all/ the information I can find. Make sense of it. Makes me twitchy. Paranoid. Hard to sort." "A raid?" Eric sounds surprised - and not a little bit worried. He frowns, running a hand up through his hair as he lifts his hat with his other hand. "I haven't heard anything, and that stuff tends to get through the force pretty quick if it's not being organized by the rat squad." he says. His fingers tap against his belt, sucking on his lip for a moment. "I've got a couple friends in ESU. I'll see if they know anything. At least I can cover that front." "I'd appreciate that. There's a lot of people there, right now. People who are..." He nods at Eric. "Lot of them hurt. Lot of them brain-fried. They've pissed off a lot of people. Maybe Oscorp. I think..." Again, with the eyebrows. "Might make a move on them. Nothing too flashy. Police raid would be good cover. Claim there's a human trafficking ring. Or drugs. Chaos, bullets, people die. Life goes on." Murphy makes a growling sound in his throat, as if to indicate that he does not, in fact, agree with this assessment. "If they're /really/ nasty," he adds, "they might go through Child Protective Services. /FUCK/, there are so many angles. And if they're smart, they're going to move fast." At this point, Murphy's almost babbling. A little hunched. "Slow your horses, Murphy." Eric says, reaching up and clapping a hand heavily on the other man's shoulder. "If it's going to be a police raid, then, yeah, that's the only cover they could have for actually doing some damage. Anything else would just be a ton of paperwork... and ESU gets brought in on most large ACS raids. If anything like that is gonna happen, my buddies will know. I'll ask them, alright? Take a breath before you stroke out, old man." he says, a smirk tugging at his lips. Murphy does, in fact, slow his horses. The shoulder clasp is enough to arrest his forward motion; the hunch straightens out a bit. He's still rubbing at the bridge of his nose, but he's also pulling himself back together. "Yeah. I appreciate it. I'm fine. Sometimes get a little too deep. Information overload. Lose myself in the intel. Just need a few hours sleep and some food and I'll be good. Actually," Murphy now /peers/ at Eric, and it's clear he's emerging from whatever fog he's been keeping at himself, as that stare has a certain /edge/ of it. "There's somethin' else I could ask you to do for me. Jax's kids." Is that a hint of /venom/ in his tone? Well, the next words don't carry it through: "Find out if they've got pedigrees. Find out if someone who really wanted to could /take them away/. And if so, find out how you could stop them." He doesn't mention how he knows that Eric knows Jackson. Eric's eyebrows raise and he frowns, glancing down at the ground. "I'm not sure I can do that for you, Murphy." he says, softly. He sighs, looking up at the sky for a moment. "I was his citing officer on that ticket. I might be able to do some digging, real quiet-like, but... ACS doesn't like cops that much." he shrugs his shoulders once, finger and thumb running over his chin. "I mean, are they even his, yet? If he's got them adopted, it'll be hard. If not..." he trails off, letting that speak for itself. "I dunno if he's adopted them. I don't even know if they got SSNs," Murphy says, and then he growls: "FUCK, this might be -- alright. It's alright. I got somebody I can call. Old lawyer. Bit of a bitch. Helped me get out of the military. Hates my fucking guts, but she gets all weepy when it comes to kids. I'll put her in contact with him. Might help him with the ticket, too. She's worked with the ACLU." Rub, rub. "Alright, alright. I'm fine," he says, for what might be the fifth time -- it sounds more like he's trying to assure himself than Eric. "I gotta go. Gotta get back to... stake-out. Intel gathering. I'll give her a call. You hear anything, /anything/ about Village Lofts comin' down the pipeline, you call -- you call me, and then you call Jax. No," he says, suddenly thinking better of it: "You call Jax /first/." "I don't know if Jax will take my call," Eric says, bemusedly. "But I'll get the message to him somehow. And then I'll call you, just in case. And... see what I can do to stall." he offers, clapping Murphy on the shoulder once more. "You should go home and get some sleep before you go stake out again, Murphy. You're jittery as all hell." he says, a note of concern in his voice. "You need some sleep." "Enngh," Murphy responds to Eric's advice, along with the slap. "I'll sleep," he tells him, but he doesn't attach a time or a place. He will probably sleep in his car. "Alright. Be careful. Thanks." Again. And then Murphy's heading off, back toward his car, stationed in the parking lot. Back to /STARING AT LICENSE PLATES/. Eric watches the other man as he leaves, then frowns, deeper. "Mm. He's not gonna sleep." he mutters to himself, then turnsr the other way and heads down into the subway to go back to work.