When the van pulled into the FBI headquarters parking lot, Nick shook Agent Bryant awake. "We're theeeerrrre," he sang out into the officer's face, "At the headquarters! We're there!!" Agent Bryant groaned at the sound of Nick's chirpy voice. He wasn't a morning person (or a person who took well to waking up, rather, since it was later afternoon at the time), and he didn't like people who woke up happy. Evidently, he thought, Nick must be one of those people. He grumbled as he sat up, stretching his arms, and yawning loudly, the way a lion might. "You sleeped a lot," Nick informed him.
"Slept," AJ called from the front seat, "The term is slept."
Nick rolled his eyes, "Okay, then you SLEPT a lot."
Agent Bryant nodded, "Yeah." He hadn't felt like he had slept hardly at all. He stretched his neck and looked about. "So this is the French HQ, 'ey?" he asked.
Ivana smiled, "This is it." She opened her door and climbed out.
"It's big," Nick observed as he hopped out of the back sliding door and onto the pavement, "Like a giant..." he tilted his head, looking at the high gray cement walls with darkly tinted office sized picture windows dotting the sides, "...cider block."
"There's a jail inside," Ivana explained.
Agent Bryant whistled as he joined Nick, "Yup, sure is big." He paused, "How long have you worked here?"
Ivana paused, "About three months," she said, "I was transferred. My old HQ was tiny, this one's quite a transition... like going from elementary school to high school overnight," she laughed.
Bryant nodded, "I can see how that could be... It all seems overwhelming, actually."
"You'll get to know it," Ivana said, smiling, "In time."
Bryant's eyes roved over the little gathering on the pavement and nodded, "Well, we're all accounted for, so let's get a move on to the debriefing room and we'll fill these two in so we can start our investigations."
"Right this way," Ivana replied, leading the three boys up the walkway to the looming tinted front doors. Nick squinted, trying to see through them, but it was too dark. When Ivana opened the door, he half expected to see an eerie dimness about the place, but the fluorescent lighting within was the same as any other office. And, to Nick's surprise, once he'd stepped inside and had turned to look back outside the glass no longer appeared tinted at all. He wondered if that stuff was available on cars.
Ivana led the troop through a long corridor, up two small flights of stairs with oddly short steps (Nick almost tripped twice because they were half the drop of normal steps and it was throwing off his balance), through a labyrinth of halls and offices, and finally came to stop by a receptionist's desk. She smiled, "Hallo Raquel," she greeted the woman typing behind it, "Which of the debriefing rooms was prepared for myself and Agent Bryant?"
"Let me see, let me see..." Raquel began typing furiously on her keyboard.
Nick, curious, inched closer to watch. He made his way around the other two guys and sidled up next to Ivana, looking over the lip of the desk at Raquel's computer. She had an apple iBook, he noticed with envy. He'd been thinking about getting one of those for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to it quite yet. Then he noticed the basket of lollipops - tootsie roll pops, his favorite! He reached over, "Can I have one of these?" Agent Bryant's eyebrows went up.
Raquel paused, looking surprised, "Uh.. sure, Agent....?"
"Carter," he said, selecting a blue one from the pile, then thinking and grabbing a second one before withdrawing his hand.
"Agent Carter," Raquel said, "Help yourself," she added, although it didn't seem that he'd have any problem doing that. She turned back to her computer.
"Thanks," he said, unwrapping the pop and balling up the wrapper. He tossed it into Raquel's waste bin and stuck the lollipop into his mouth. "Mmm..."
Raquel looked up finally. "Debriefing room 22 is assigned to your case," she told Agent Focque, handing her a ring of keys, "Do you know where it is? I can show you the way if you'd like."
Agent Focque smiled, "Thank you Raquel. I do believe we'll find it okay, though," she replied.
Onward the troop went down another series of corridors, following Ivana. Nick nudged AJ as they walked and offered him the second blue lollipop, AJ rolled his eyes and pushed Nick's hand away. Nick shrugged and slid the lollipop into his pocket and returned to savoring the one that was already in his mouth. Nick hoped he wouldn't have to remember how to get back to this room again on his own after this long trek they'd taken. He could barely remember how to get to the stairwell from the door and that'd been a moderately straight shot.
After a few moments, Agent Focque stopped and pointed to the door, "Here we are..." she unlocked the door with one of the keys from the ring and stepped inside. Bryant held the door opened while the two Backstreet Boys stepped inside before entering and closing the door behind himself. The room was similar to a meeting room at Jive Records, Nick thought, only without creepy wallpaper that moves when you stare at it too long. The office also had windows, which was something the Jive meeting rooms also lacked. But the long mahogany table was there, and canary yellow legal pads with pencils that were too short to hold right ("golfing pencils" Brian had called them once). Glasses on coasters sat at each of the four places around the table, filled already with iced water. Nick wondered who'd been there to fill it and when. The ice was still in tact, though, so it hadn't been too long ago.... creepy. The other thing missing, thank God, was plastic fruit. For this, Nick was grateful.
"Have a seat," Ivana waved her hands at the table, then walked across the room to the windows and promptly drew the blinds, grabbing a projector from a rolling stand in the corner Nick hadn't even noticed before. She set the projector at the end of the table and pulled a giant white screen down from the ceiling. She sat in front of the projector. AJ sat next to her, while Nick and Bryant sat on the opposite side of the table.
Nick pulled the lollipop out of his mouth. It was already down to the tootsie roll part and he stuck his tongue out at AJ. "Isth muh thung boo?" he asked.
AJ raised an eyebrow. "Yes, your tongue is blue."
Bryant laughed, "You speak fluent Nick, I see," he said.
AJ nodded, "You learn to after fifteen years around him."
"Sixteen," Nick corrected, biting the tootsie roll off the stick, "Sixteen years around me, AJ."
"Whatever," AJ rolled his eyes, "Too long at any rate." Nick stuck his tongue out again.
"Okay boys," Ivana said in a scolding tone, "Whenever you're through, I'm ready to begin bringing you kids up to date on the case."
"Sorry," AJ muttered.
"Yeah, sorry," Nick added.
Bryant chuckled and leaned back in his chair, "Proceed, Agent Focque," he said, bringing his hands up behind his head and putting his feet up in the chair across from him, reclining back to listen. He always found it interesting to hear what other factions of the FBI had to say about the same case he'd been pouring over for months. Sometimes it was eye-opening, hearing it from another stand point, and had even led to solving cases.
Ivana turned on a laser pointer, and smiled. "We're searching for a killer known solely as the Masquerade Murderer," she stated, "This killer, presumably a male, has murdered six victims in six months, each with similar tactics according to gender." She flicked on the projector, and on the screen appeared a headline from the first murder, which was accompanied by a photo of an average looking guy. "The first victim, twenty-seven year old Marc Brushill of Poughkeepsie, New York, was found killed in his apartment by local authorities." She flipped the photos and a picture of an average apartment filled the screen.. well, average minus the dead body laying in the middle of the floor. Marc Brushill was laying in his apartment, looking as though he'd been flung to the floor by a lightening bolt or something, face down. Agent Focque cleared her throat, "Upon inspection of the body, the victim was shot twice in the back, before the murderer.." she paused, hesitating to say the words, "....neutered him."
AJ blinked. "He cut off the guy's..." His eyes widened. "Are you fucking serious?"
"Cut clean," Bryant confirmed, "Right to the pelvic bone."
Nick's face was pale. "That's.. really.. fucked up actually."
"Poor guy," AJ observed, "Well, at least he was dead when he did it."
"Actually," Ivana broke in, "Autopsy reports showed that the victim had not died from the shots fired, but actually died from blood loss after the -er- operation, so to speak."
"What a way to go," whispered AJ, shocked.
"That's really sick," Nick commented, a horrified expression on his face, "Why'd he do it?"
Ivana shrugged, "Popular suggestion among my colleagues is that the murderer was jealous. Perhaps Marc Brushill had been the other man in an affair or some other misdeed. It's unknown." She turned back to the projector. "However, the next victim was a female." Up on the screen popped a high school yearbook photo of a young girl. "Seventeen year old Amanda Peters of Newark, New Jersey, was murdered in her backyard by a swimming pool while her parents were away on vacation..." The photo flicked to a pool deck with a blackened lounge chair and crime scene tape surrounding the area. "The girl was found in this lounge chair, charred nearly beyond recognition, and then decapitated." Nick was glad Ivana didn't show any pictures of THAT.
"Was she the girl?" he asked.
Ivana shook her head, "We're assuming not because of the age difference between Miss. Peters and Mr. Brushill."
Bryant spoke up, "In the New York office, we're guessing that Peters may have known something about the first killing. How we don't know, but her bedroom was ransacked and her mother reported that her daughter's journal was missing a week later. We're assuming the killer took it."
"The third victim," Ivana continued, "Is more than likely the girl involved in the first victim's story," she flicked the projector screen ahead to show a picture of a classy looking blonde woman with a smile on her face. She had windblown hair and a necklace from Tiffany's around her neck. "Twenty-five year old Beverly Quincy of Manhattan was found shot in her uptown apartment approximately thirty-five minutes after having gotten her nails manicured. Like Miss. Peters, Miss. Quincy was charred beyond recognition and decapitated."
AJ puzzled, "Curious. How do you know these murders were all the same guy and not a copy cat, like on TV?"
"Good question," Bryant replied. "We located the bullet's fired on victims one and three and tested the ballistics and found that they were beyond a doubt shot by the same gun."
Nick scrunched up his nose, "What's a ballistics?"
"The ballistics of a gun," Bryant answered, "Are markings found on a bullet, made by the gun's barrell when it's fired. Every gun has slightly different patterns inside from the way the metals solidify, and therefore every gun will shoot a bullet with a different ballistic. The ballistics on the four bullets recovered from the scenes were identical, thus linking them to the same gun."
"Learn something new everyday," Nick commented.
Ivana continued her commentary on the case, "The next victim was a thirty-one year old man, whose name was Vince Lemming." The projector flicked to a personal family photo of a friendly looking guy, whose smile made Nick wish he'd got to know him 'cos he looked like he would've been fun to chill with, sitting in Yankee stadium, wearing a baseball cap and holding up a hot dog proudly. "Vince was a doctor, and he held season tickets to the Yankees." She frowned, and flicked the screen. Nick shielded his eyes from the picture, unable to look at it. Even AJ choked up. Vince Lemming was laying face up, sprawled across a flight of carpeted stairs. The picture graphically depicted what the Masquerade Murderer had done to the victim. Blood was everywhere. "Vince bled to death," Ivana said, her voice tightening, "And was found three days later by his newlywed wife upon her return from a spa he'd paid to send her to while he was supposedly going on a business trip."
"Should've gone on the trip..." AJ mumbled, shaking his head.
"Theory is that he was cheating on the wife," Bryant input. "We're guessing he probably was cheating on his wife with a woman the murderer was seeing as well."
"Jealousy sucks," Nick said, "This is really bad."
"There's more," Ivana interjected, "Including the murder which took place here in France barely over a month ago." She flicked to a picture of a magazine with a beautiful model on the cover. "This is Lorriane Saches," she said, "You probably haven't heard of her, but here in France she's the equivilent to your Tyra Banks... Or was."
Nick bit his lip. "Her, too?"
Ivana nodded, "She was found in the Penthouse suite of the Grande Hilton hotel in Paris." Nick gulped. He'd stayed there once while he was dating Paris Hilton, in that very room. "She, too, was decapitated and burned. Her head was thrown from the balcony of the suite and fell twenty-three stories to the lawn below."
"Damn..." AJ whispered.
Bryant rubbed his chin. He hadn't known that Lorriane Saches was a model. This was new information for him.
"The final victim was thirty year old Eliza Kriscolby, a French woman who was on vacation in Germany. She was killed in her hotel room in front of her husband in the same fashion as Lorriane Saches.. Except her head wasn't thrown out the window."
Nick perked up slightly, "So there's a witness?"
"Well... Sort of," Ivana paused. "See, the Masquerade Murderer is called that because every time that the kill is made, supposedly the murderer wears a mask that makes it impossible to see who it is beneath it."
"Technically then," AJ offered, "The murderer could be a woman?"
"Well, it's possible," Agent Focque relented, "But highly unlikely."
"So... what do you got to work with as far as telling who it is?" Nick asked, confused, "Nobody's seen the guy."
Bryant leaned forward, "We've got the bullet ballistcs, we've identified the weapon as a hand gun. We've also got the knowledge that the murderer is seeking victims ages seventeen to thirty-one, mostly between twenty-five and thirty. This means that more than likely our murderer is that age as well."
Nick paused, "But... how're we gonna find the guy? There's a bunch of people between twenty-five and thirty in the world. Hell, even I'm between twenty-five and thirty."
"That's where it gets tricky, Nick," Bryant replied, "We have to comb the evidence we have, and we've got quite a bit of it gathered so far, and see if we can't find something - anything - with a finger print or a particle of DNA, anything that could lead us to at least narrowing down our scope. Until then, every twenty-five to thirty year old we encounter that has any knowledge whatsoever of the case will be considered a suspect."
Nick shook his head, "This is gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack," he whispered.
Ivana Focque laughed, "Oh far worse Nick..." she smiled, "At least you know what a needle looks like."
Saving the Day for Blondes 2: The Amazing Story of How Nick Apprehended The Infamous Masquerade Murderer Without ANY Caffeine In His Body! by Pengi
