capeandcowllogs | Sharpen my body like a pen

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Sharpen my body like a pen

WHO: Bitch and Bitcher aka Sherlock Holmes and Mitchell Hundred
WHERE: City Hall's law offices
WHEN: Friday, March 29th
WARNINGS: Probably just a lot of dirty sassing.
SUMMARY: Sherlock, after checking in on the ADA's autopsy, has decided to investigate her office for further clues. No, he didn't really ask for permission outside of Bradbury. THE POLICE SAY HE'S HELPING SO IT'S FINE RIGHT?
FORMAT: Tagger's choice!

After his last, somewhat disastrous, visit to City Hall in February, Sherlock doesn't entirely relish the idea of going back. However, he hasn't had a murder case this intriguing since arriving in the City. Not that it had been entirely that intriguing until Batwoman gave her insight on it.

Before tackling possible suspects, Sherlock, as always, needs more evidence than what the crime scene and the body themselves represented. That's where City Hall comes in. Charlotte Dunbar's office isn't strictly a crime scene, but reconstructing the events leading up to her untimely death would help in discovering who did it, and why.

As such, anyone passing by the office, left untouched since her murder, will be confused to see a few strips of police tape, strategically borrowed, blocking the entrance as Sherlock scurries about inside, poring over every inch of the place. Currently, he hangs from the shadows on the ceiling, protruding down to his waist, as he examines the tops of her bookshelves.

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The office, for so long, had been unoccupied. The door closed, and locked, and nobody should be going in. There were just some things that you needed to do, for someone's peace of mind. The Mayor, of course, wasn't so sentimental, but he knew people needed that comfort to make sense of the world. He'd been down to the legal area for one thing, or another.

It didn't matter, because immediately after he passed by the door, he stopped, looking at the police tape with consternation. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the investigation, but it was a little late, and nobody in CPD had let him know that they were coming. Normally, the commissioner would call him and let him know. Even back home, Angotti would have, and the current would have done so as well.

So he peered through, looking to see who was in there.

"Hello, who the fuck's in here? Nobody told me you were coming."

Sherlock ran a gloved finger over the dust on the bookshelf. His face scrunched at the residue; clearly no one had scaled this high in some time. Absorbed as he was in the finer details of the shelf, Mitch's voice startled him, causing him to slip a bit from the shadow. His coat fell free, the back unfurling behind him, looking more like the capes he disparaged so often. Sherlock was more than prepared to bellow at another nosy intern, but seeing the mayor is more of a surprise.

"Ah. Mayor Hundred. Your language precedes you." He looks down, or up, from his perspective, and peels off his latex gloves. "And here I was trying to save you the conniption."

A blatant lie, of course. He more wanted to save himself the trouble of Mitch's interference.

"The conniption , he mentioned, his mood souring slightly. It wasn't that he hated Sherlock, but it was that he disliked him a bit. In the sort of way that you respected someone's intelligence and abilities, but thought they were a dick either way. That was the way of things, and Mitchell knew he was hardly the most well-liked man, but there was something about Sherlock that made him worse.

He lifted the police tape slightly, intending to cross it. He was the Mayor, and this was hardly his first crime scene. Actually, he was more than used to them, probably more than most politicians. He was a little unusual for it, he knew.

"What are you up to, Sherlock? Specifically."

Sherlock had no doubt in his mind people probably liked the mayor in spite of his brusque ways. Mitch outwardly displayed redeeming qualities, while Sherlock rarely did. Better then, that he wasn't a politician. He knows from experience back home how misleading those redeeming qualities could be.

"As you're undoubtedly aware, the woman who worked in this office is dead. I'm trying to find out who did it, and why." He knew that still wasn't very specific, but he took his time, disappearing back into the shadows and then emerging from behind a file cabinet.

"I'm working with the police." He hoped that was what Mitch was looking for. The sooner he could go back to work undisturbed, the better.

"Ah, of course," he frowned, stepping through finally, hands coming to rest on his hips as he looked around the room. it was eerie, being in there. This was not a place he felt he should be. The place where someone had died, and he hadn't been able to keep them from dying.

No, he didn't have a misplaced sense of heroism, but instead he had failed them in another way. He didn't admit it, and he never spoke on it, but any deaths laid heavy on his heart, especially one like this.

"That's a hell of a thing, Sherlock. Isn't the trail cold by now? She didn't die fucking last week."

Sherlock opened the file cabinet behind him, and began to root through the contents with lightning fast fingers. Former clients and past prosecutions were always a good place to start searching for someone with a motive to kill an attorney.

"I've probably mentioned it before," he said distractedly, "When the police are out of their league, they consult me. This investigation has left them thoroughly baffled. Perhaps a matter of too many suspects more than anything. Not the most popular belle at the ball, Miss Dunbar." He plucked up a file and began to pore over it.

"Take this, for example." He held the file out to the air behind him. It was unclear if he actually expected Mitch to take it, but he'd fallen into a stride. He talked aloud to keep the momentum going, and would keep it up even if Mitch left.

"A murder case from November. I was investigating on the behalf of the accused's family. As they tend to be, they were certain of his innocence. However, as in about one out of ten cases I take from the suspect's side, he actually was. Normally, they want me to perform a miracle of disproving the obvious." He whipped around with a scoff at that idea, and opened the file again, whether Mitch was looking or not. The evidence photos, glossy and clinical, gave a clear enough view of the crime.

"The victim was clearly strangled to death, and mercilessly. The pressure it takes to cause contusions that extensive is immense. The windpipe was completely smashed, and this was not a small man, not someone easily overpowered. Someone with a honed body did this, an athlete's grip. Tennis player, judging by the points of most pressure. The moment I shook the suspect's hand, I knew he was innocent. Weak hold, probably couldn't strangle a chicken if he tried.

I took my findings forward, but the police, on Miss Dunbar's insistence, moved ahead with circumstantial evidence against my client. He starts his sentence for manslaughter at Sing Sing next month." Sherlock shut the file with an air of finality. "It was the victim's cousin, by the way. Competed in the US Open last year. Already been seeded for the next."

Once he wound down to the point, Sherlock seemed to remember who he was talking to, and the manic state receded.

"So, as I said. No shortage of suspects. Miss Dunbar liked her speedy trials, and I imagine the defendants and their loved ones felt differently, innocent or not."

As he went, Mitchell did take the file, and flip through it gingerly. He wasn't exactly intimately aware of the cases she'd been working with, but he had an idea. He kept up with the news as best as anyone else, actually probably better, but that didn't mean he kept with the small details. He didn't have time for that shit, but he could at least appreciate Sherlock's devotion to finding the truth.

As long as he stayed away from him, of course. He could investigate all the murders he wanted, but Sherlock made him nervous. Not enough to make him show it, no, but still nervous. Mitchell was a good fucking liar, drawing away from any thoughts of that by still looking over the facts of the case.

"It makes sense, I guess. There aren't going to be too few, sure, but if you think you can do it, I'll want to see the results," he mentioned, shaking the file to hand it back to him.

"Because honestly? This shit's a cold trail, I can't imagine you getting very far, but I've been surprised before, and if I can be again, I'll be all the happier for it."

Rare, of course, was the man who wanted to be proven wrong, but Mitchell didn't mind, not in this. If someone could be found guilty of something like this? He'd be goddamn happy.

"Christ, I don't see what you're going to find that the police won't, though, they scoured things pretty well when they came through here, didn't they?"

Mitch's facade was an expert one, to the point where Sherlock really didn't know what to think of him. It's rare for the detective not to have an opinion set in stone on someone within a minute of being around them. He wasn't sure if Mitch had anything to do with Bradbury killing Jenny Quantum, and even if he did, wouldn't that be a service? Other than that, all Sherlock sees is a cagey New Yorker who's just as paranoid as any other politician he's met. So far, he had no reason to look deeper than that.

His attention wasn't on the mayor today, at least, but on the challenge he presented. Sherlock was used to people lacking faith in him when they'd never seen him work, but holding out for the opposite to happen wasn't an attitude he normally encountered. Just another thing that made the mayor difficult to read. Even so, if Mitch wanted to be proved wrong, Sherlock wanted to be proved right tenfold. He didn't take credit for much of his work, because that satisfaction of coming to the perfect conclusion trumped it every time.

"The police made a good run of this place, even though she wasn't murdered here. They've gone through these files already--" He takes the one he removed from Mitch and replaces it. "And plenty of these people have solid alibis. Like being in prison, for example." Sherlock gave a light shrug and scrunched his nose. "Just a shame they missed virtually everything else."

With a few long strides, Sherlock moved over to the large, decorative globe by the office bay windows. He pressed a button on the metal ring representing the equator, and the top half of the sphere opened, revealing a pair of glass tumblers and a bottle of whiskey.

"Nothing entirely unusual about that. Offices like this always have some sort of liquor cabinet. These contents have already been scrubbed for unfamiliar prints; no luck." A grunt punctuated Sherlock's sentence as he ducked down to the floor and reached under the pedestal holding up the globe. Suddenly, another click sounded, and the panel beneath the drink fixings popped open an inch. On his feet again, Sherlock moved them aside and opened the panel completely. Inside, a panel stuffed with checks rested comfortably out of sight. It had collected a little dust, clearly untouched by anyone but Sherlock since the murder. He'd found it earlier, but left it in place so he could finish the rest of his scouring of the room. He decided now was as good a time as any to inspect them, and only smirked when he did.

"It seems Miss Dunbar liked to dip her glass a bit into the office's mail ordered court fees." He handed the envelope to Mitch. "Could be part of the reason the budget's so tight this year."

"Go figure," he mentioned bitterly, leafing through the checks as he counted down the amounts. "I'm going to need to have someone go through her finances now, apparently. Motherfucker," he groaned, holding onto the envelop. He never put it into his suit jacket, but held onto it, fully intending to put it back where they belonged.

Then again, he was the mayor, and he already made a pretty penny, he didn't have much of a need for stowing away cash illegally. There were some things about him that were more honest than most politicians, and the look on his face said enough about his opinion on the matter. The way his mouth was drawn down in frustration, anger at the waste. He knew it existed, of course, he wasn't that fucking naive to think it didn't, but the fact that it was happening under his nose was something else entirely.

It was goddamn insulting, was what it was.

"Think there's motive in that? Someone found out about the money she was skimming off the top?" he asked, thinking out loud. "Maybe she tried to retaliate, and the inevitable happens?"

He was guessing, and he knew it. He wasn't an investigator, but this was how he'd always worked, questioning and proposing, waiting to be proven wrong. He didn't know if Sherlock would get it, the way that he worked. Angotti had, for all of her flaws, she'd understood it, but he didn't look back at those days with nostalgia anymore. Only bitterness, but he didn't let it show.

"There's a reason you brought it up, unless you just fucking found them."

Sherlock's brow furrowed, his eyes full of what almost looks like the confusion of a child. Of course he'd just found it. The point was simply to prove he didn't miss what everyone else did, wasn't it? He remembered quickly enough that this wasn't one of his usual audience members at a crime scene; Mitch had a stake in the case, however tangential. Even if he didn't believe in Sherlock's abilities, he still wanted the same outcome. So he snapped back to normal, and waved off the suggestion about money being a motive.

"Doubtful. She clearly hadn't been caught yet, or those would have been reclaimed by now, either officially or by a blackmailer." Sherlock gestured towards the checks. "I imagine they're made out for traffic fees, small claims, maybe. Who would suspect an ADA of nicking a fifty from traffic court here and there? No, she was clever about it. Naturally, then, whoever killed her must be even more clever."

He sounded enthralled by the prospect. The mayor may have been the type to avoid these scenes with morbid associations and reminders of mortality, but Sherlock thrived on them.

"A crime scene like hers cries out for a captivated public. The murderer wanted to make an impression. Might not have even known her personally. If someone wanted revenge for a few thousand dollars, which seems unlikely with the incomes around here, they certainly wouldn't have left a spectacle out in the open." He closed the globe and strode over to the window, looking out at the busy street below. "I've been over the security tapes. No one unexpected came to see her in the week leading up to her death. The killer probably never even came within five blocks of here."

He didn't say it aloud, but Dunbar's murder had all the earmarks of a serial killing. The police suspected her ex-husband, but crimes of passion rarely had such setup and concluded with regret, not leaving corpses symbolically strewn around. He'd been keeping an eye on police reports, and wanted to put out a few sniffers on the streets. If there weren't more victims already, there would be soon enough. Unfortunate as that seemed, more victims meant more evidence, and more opportunities to seize on the killer's mistakes.

"Okay, so someone wanted us to get all into this, bring out the details, make this up to be a goddamn spectacle," at least it was only now that Sherlock had been signed into. He felt a drop in his stomach, disgust and frustration pooling there. The unspoken proposition didn't need to be brought to light by Holmes. Now they had fucking Sherlock Holmes on it. This wasn't like the fucking Tidy Bowl killer, or the Son of Sam shithead, this was someone they didn't know about, with an unknown MO, and just Sherlock's word that it might be a killer.

But if it was...theyw ere playing into his hands. Then again, if it wasn't, they would lose the only chance they had at solving it.

"The security tapes aren't going to give you shit, unless it's someone internal, but then we'd have our man. They would've had to come out sometime." He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, looking around the room. He didn't see it like Sherlock did, no. He wasn't excited by this, he was disheartened. Not just because someone under his watch had died, but then learning that their memory couldn't be left to rest without dirty secrets being dug up was another nail in the coffin.

He couldn't defend someone who'd been skimming off the top. It may be chump change to someone like her, or even to him, but Mitchell was tirelessly devoted to making sure government waste didn't happen. Mitchell knew, intellectually, that he was not a good person, and that he'd done some terrible things in the pursuit of power, but he had always done his best, in good faith, to serve the people who'd elected him.

And he was killing himself doing it, he knew that much. He was well aware of how hard he was on himself.

"So are you hoping the killer left clues here? Why come in if you don't think she was killed in this office?"

"Oh, I'm glad you follow." His voice was laced with sarcasm, but he still meant it, in a way. If whoever is subjected to his long discourses is understanding his train of thought, that meant his logical foundations for any theories that might pop up after finding more evidence would be sound. Though of course, he knew they couldn't see the whole picture he did. No one ever would.

"She wasn't killed here, but she was here the day she died. If I can reconstruct what she was doing up until that point, it will be easier to know what led to her death. I already know she was having a night on the town, where she went to eat, and that she met a man. Any present flings had alibis, so more than likely she met with someone new. Thought they had better education here on the perils of strangers." Sherlock put his latex gloves back on and turned to face Dunbar's desk. Absentmindedly, he glances at the office's customary American flag in the corner.

"Speaking of which, I'd have that burned. Respectfully, of course." It'd be more respectful than what he could tell she'd used it for.

Edited 2013-04-08 02:49 (UTC)

His eyes shifted to the flag, and then back to Sherlock, and then back to the flag. He didn't see anything with it, but all of the sudden, he had the urge that he would probably want to do what he said. At least with that. A new flag was a small price to pay, for hopefully not having something desecrated around City Hall. Then again, Mitchell was something of a prude, in his own, odd way.

"So, if she wasn't killed here, what kind of information is going to come up here? Of course she was here that day, think about who she was fucking working for. People tend to come to work, you know?" he asked, not really moving from his spot in the middle of the room. He didn't know if he wanted to move or not, just in case he managed to slid his foot into a half-dried puddle of semen or something.

These were very expensive shoes, after all.

Holding back another eye roll, Sherlock began to root through the papers on Dunbar's desk.

"I know your type is better at talking than listening, but really." That and Mitch seemed particularly preoccupied by the stains he couldn't see, because he hadn't been looking.

"Oh, if it was on the floor, I'm sure even the police would have noticed it," he said with a touch of exasperation. "Regardless, this office is practically a blueprint of Miss Dunbar's thoughts. If she anticipated any danger on the horizon, evidence of that will be found here. Even if she didn't, and I can find out who she had plans with that night, it's a step in the right direction."

"Alright, alright, so what have you found so far? Other than the shit that just makes me either sick or grossed out?" he asked, stepping a little bit more into the room. He didn't touch anything, knowing better than that. Oh, his fingers ached to, and he couldn't help but wince at the sound the still plugged in phone was making. Actually, any machine in the room.

He hadn't been here since her passing, obviously. He wasn't an investigator, and he didn't want to get in the way, or even really interfere at all. It didn't matter if he could have found the latches to the money, or to the hidden liquor cabinet. That wasn't what he was here to do.

He wasn't a cop, so he didn't breach that line. "Obviously there's something here, something you think you can find, other than her fucking dayplanner."

Sherlock shrugged nonchalantly before sitting at the desk, picking up the planner Mitch had mentioned.

"Detective work doesn't entirely consist of car chases and grim discoveries, Mayor Hundred. The police are stumped because this case requires a more subtle, diligent analysis they're not trained for." The boring parts, normal people might say. Legwork, as his brother would contemptuously put it.

"I did expect a level of corruption, which the checks prove. But I don't theorize without facts. It muddles the mind into pursuing half truths and leads that go nowhere." As he pages through the planner, looking for entries written in a less steady hand than others, Sherlock's eyes wander towards the desktop computer.

"Don't suppose you could turn that on. While you're here, after all." He makes the request with a tone of almost unnaturally casual politeness. It doesn't at all match the expectant, probing gaze he levels on Mitch. Testing the waters.

Mitch started gently, no comment on Sherlock's need to make himself more valuable, or sound more valuable. He didn't care, as long as the case got solved, honestly. That was what he cared about. Ego was only acceptable when it produced results, and he was at least willing to give anyone with an ego a chance.

Hell, look at Edward.

He started because Sherlock was asking him to use his powers. Use them to aid an investigation. For a moment, it sparked a memory, riding in a car, explaining the relationship between two machines, trying to get Angotti to understand. Master/Slave was a complicated thing to understand, or really understand it, even if you knew computers. Mostly because the way machines called to each other was wholly unique.

He shook it off after a moment, only blinking, before striding closer to the computer, keeping his arms crossed to keep them from touching anything.

"GOOD MORNING, TIME TO GET THE FUCK UP." And like a miracle, obediently, the computer started booting up.

Sherlock's eyes flitted between the monitor and Mitch. The change in the mayor's voice was unlike anything he'd heard before, and this wasn't a power he'd encountered yet in this world. He swerves in the desk chair to move closer to the keyboard and begins testing out possible passwords for her login. However, his attention was only half on his guesses.

"Been able to do that for a while, then?" he asked, not looking at Mitch, sounding distracted, though that was hardly the case. He didn't want to sound too interested, nor did he want to directly ask if that was a power from Lachesis or from home. People tended to get cagey about that line of questioning.

His eye twitched with every incorrect password. The alarm from the PC wasn't just from the soft ping in protest, but also the noise it made that only he could hear. He winced, but followed, looking at the computer with dismay. "Don't try again, it'll lock you out," he looked down at it, before shaking his head.

"OPEN SESAME." he ordered, and the screen shuddered to show the actual desktop.

No need in making it that hard for him. "As we were saying, I got them in '99, so yeah, I've had them for a while."

He didn't mind admitting that he had powers in his own world. The matrix of scars on his face spoke enough about that. It wasn't something he would be able to deny, for long. How far they went, what specifically he could do with them, he left that to the imagination. He wasn't going to tell anyone exactly what he could do, for both their comfort and his. Besides that, he'd never been comfortable with telling anyone the extent of his powers.

He was sure he was about to crack the password, so Sherlock's brow furrowed slightly in annoyance when Mitch commanded the computer to unlock itself. In spite of that, he was still fascinated by this ability to order technology around.

"Not granted by Lachesis, then." Which was hardly uncommon, considering all the other 'metahumans,' as they were apparently called, pulled into the City. "But I imagine not common, either." Bradbury often commented how this was simply a weirder version of New York, implying that their worlds were similarly full of unremarkable people.

"No, not common," he mentioned simply, and didn't elaborate. He crossed his arms, instead, looking down at the computer, like he was concentrating on that instead of anything else. He was listening, if just for a few moments, to clear the air of Sherlock's questioning.

He wouldn't elaborate -- couldn't. There was a story to tell about his powers, sure, about how he was the only one, until Pherson, and then he'd been killed -- by Mitchell -- and was only succeeded by one other.

Both had powers they shouldn't. Both had lost it, listening too much and not just telling the fucks around them to shut up, if at least for a while. Then again, neither one of them would be able to do that like he did. He let his jaw relax, after a few moments.

"What're you looking for?"

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Sharpen my body like a pen

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WOW I DIDN'T REALIZE HOW LONG IT'D BEEN AGFD

IT'S ALL GOOD!