Penny's house is a mansion in every sense of the word. Palatial columns at the entrance, a gated security system, multiple bedrooms and ghastly photographs of macro images of plant life complete the picture. Penny's kitchen alone opens into a wall of windows overlooking the mountains and forests.
There's a private security system, including cameras.
Avoxes, looking malnourished and quiet even by their standards, skulk around in the corners, unable to clean without disturbing the evidence and unsure what to do with themselves.
The detectives are led to the indoor pool, where the corpse has already been removed. The water and blood that splattered over the edge of the pool is drying. The contents of the pool are pinkish, now that the blood - and there was a lot of it - has mostly dispersed.
Even so, there's clear evidence of a struggle. Blood is splattered across the wall, and a smear leads to the edge of the water, as if Penny was dragged.
The sight of Penny's corpse defines the difference between soulless and dead. She looked the former in life.
Her face is frozen in a pained expression, somewhat bulged and warped by how long she spent facedown in the water. She's still dressed in her pajamas, which are permanently stained. A large scrape rolls down one calf. Her hands are clenched in fists. Her body is bloated slightly, rubbery, almost, on the metal table.
The Peacekeeper's headquarters, normally a creepily-quiet office building, is in disarray with Penny dead. People rush around, trying to reorganize and figure out delegation of responsibility. There are security checkpoints at literally every doorway.
The detectives are given a lounge in which to discuss their results. They have a coffee machine, several couches, hologram projectors and various notepads and digital devices.
In just a few hours, Molly Hooper has plucked, scraped, and brushed every scrap of evidence that could be lifted off poor Penny's corpse. Fibers, odd bits of dust, and debris beneath fingernails had all been bagged and tagged, ready for an analysis that Molly may end up performing herself if nobody else was available. The people of the Capitol were generally awful and certainly not all right in the head, there was no doubt about it--but this woman had still been murdered and that couldn't just be left alone. Besides that, there were innocent people that needed their names cleared.
And people who needed to be found.
Normally, Molly would hum to herself or speak to the person on the slab while collecting evidence and performing an autopsy. But her brow is uncharacteristically furrowed, her lips set in a thin line. John was missing, and she was sure that the Capitol had something to do with it. When they'd come to her "asking" for her help, they hadn't made any threats or bargains, they'd simply smiled and offered her payment for her services. But she could tell that they would resort to less unseemly methods of persuasion if she refused. This was easier. And honestly, this was the right thing to do, as backwards as it seemed.
Molly sighs, and looks at poor Penny's bloated face. "We'll find out what happened, just you wait."
Behind her, Shaggy is having a hard time concealing his disgust and horror at the corpse. He'd dealt with skeletons before. Skeletons were creepy. But it turned out that freshly dead bodies were really, really gross. He was having a few second thoughts about saying yes when the Capitol had asked him to help solve a mystery, even though they'd actually offered to pay him money for the kind of thing he'd used to do for free.
Even if the mystery-solving he'd used to do for free with his friends was more in the line of theft, fraud, embezzlement, or impersonation of weird monsters using rubber suits.
Actually, he's kind of wondering when the monsters in rubber suits are supposed to show up. Or, you know, at least someone in a mask or a homemade robot.
More and more, Helena was finding little things that helped her feel at home, like this crime scene.
And how weird is it that the scene of a crime would feel like home to me? she muses as she crouches down by the blood spatters. Then again, we're at a mansion, and that was home. Even if this place is hideously frou-frou-y.
Every instinct tells Helena that the altercation had gotten ugly there. She's already done an initial walkthrough of the scene, taking mental notes of everything, before doing a second over and coming over to the blood splatters.
Dad would call this a dynamic scene, she thinks to herself. Because of all the movement. And because of the trail of blood leading over to the swimming pool. Helena stands up from the crouch she's been in and follows that smear to the edge of the water, peeking in. The pinkish hue of the pool unsettles her a little bit. It looks like flat watermelon soda.
"My heart goes out to her," Helena says out loud, to no one in particular. "This was grisly."
Molly jumps a bit and turns, brown eyes wide. She hadn't even heard him come into the morgue, so engrossed with her work. "I'm sure we'll find something." The response is automatic, but not insincere. Molly truly believes they'll catch the culprit. After a beat, she asks: "Are you here to look at the body as well? Come on over." Her tone is too chipper for this work. But she knows that two sets of eyes are always better than one--she isn't perfect. There could be something she's missed.
Joan first noticed the cameras, of course, but quickly dismissed them. If the murder had been captured on them, she and the rest of the investigators wouldn't be there. She did wonder why the Capitol didn't just create footage that implicated whatever rebellious Tribute they wanted to subject to public torture and execution. It wasn't like they hadn't manipulated footage before. Particularly in the Arena.
Each Avox she passed made her more and more angry beneath her steadily calm demeanor. She thought about Punchy, about Cecil, and about how unsurprising it should be that a horrible woman like Penny was just as horrible in private as she was in public. When she got to the kitchen, the first thing she did was go to the fridge and fill her arms with fruit. She went back to the Avoxes she had seen, pressed the food into their hands, looked into their eyes, asked each in a gentle voice if they had seen anything.
Edited (Sorry! I'll let you let me know if the Avoxes give her any info :)) 2014-08-10 01:27 (UTC)
When she reaches the pool, she walks slowly, taking in the blood, the smear, the pool. It looks like torturer had lost a lot of blood before she was dumped in the pool, enough that she was probably dying anyway, and the smear makes Joan wonder if Penny was already, or nearly, dead when the murderer flung her into the water. She wonders what the significance of the water was, then. Maybe a reference to the last mini arena?
Her stomach isn't happy with that thought, her body remembering what it felt like to drown.
"It was relatively quick," Joan says offhand. She glances at the woman. "Compared to what she's put her victims through."
Their keepers can think of that what they want. It's true.
She moves to where the blood is spattered on the wall, and moves her hand along the line of it.
Most of the blood is splattered at around waist-height and lower. None of the blows even reached her chest, it seems - maybe that would have been too quick a death. There are handprints on the floor, where Penny must have crawled, dragging streaks behind her before a puddle indicates she collapsed until she was dragged.
Penny wasn't a large woman. Given that, it's almost surprising that she wasn't carried to the pool, or that it seems she was both pulled and rolled into the water, as if she were difficult to move.
There are no wounds on Penny's back. Whoever attacked her got her while they were facing each other. The work was done with a small knife, one with a mildly curved point, and not handled by experienced hands.
Shaggy goes a little green in the face when he gets closer to the body. Yeah, fresh bodies are even grosser than skeletons. "Zoinks," he says under his breath. "Like, is it normal for dead people to be that puffy?" Oh. Right. Maybe he should introduce himself. "Like, I'm Shaggy. They said to, like, either go here or her house, so I came here."
"It's nice to meet you, Shaggy. I'm Molly." And despite the circumstances, she seems genuinely pleased to introduce herself. Even when it's back to business, she still sounds relatively cheerful. "Anyway, corpses don't generally start to bloat until a few days after death, but since she was in water the process was sped up." She reaches over to pick up a silicone cast of one of the wounds. "The stab wounds helped let water into her body. I can tell from this that it was a small knife--because the cut isn't very deep. And it probably had a curve, so it wasn't your average kitchen blade."
That was, like, definitely more than he ever wanted to know about dead bodies. "So, like, did she get stabbed and pushed into the water? Or, like, was she already in the water? Can you, like, tell that?"
Further exploration will show that Penny has only trace amounts of excess water in her lungs; by the time she hit the water, she was no longer breathing. The cast reveals the blade's size and also how the knife was twisted, not necessarily from cruelty but from the struggle.
Molly nods, and sets the cast aside. "There wasn't much water in her lungs, so she died from the stab wounds and not drowning. She was most likely dead by the time she made it to the water." The small amount of water in her lungs has already been collected and is sitting in a jar on a small metal table with other trace evidence. "She fought, though. There are defensive wounds on her hands and the gashes have odd angles from a struggle."
Shaggy nods. "So, like, whoever attacked her, they didn't surprise her completely, because otherwise there'd be no struggle, right?" He frowns. "Like, do we have any knives to compare the, like, cast to?"
"I didn't know her too well," Helena says softly. "Kind of a newbie here." She'd only been around for half of an arena, and even then she'd died quickly. She stares down at the puddle and the streaks coming out of it, her lips twitching gently. It was her deep-in-thought face. Her fingers curled and uncurled while she calculated something in her mind.
"Did she have an exceptionally strong, fortified skeleton or something? Or, you know, an enmity with a munchkin or something? It feels as though whoever went against her put up as much of a struggle post-death as she did before it."
[OOC: Oh god, I'm so sorry. GMail was sending all of my DW notifies to Junk and I didn't even find out until now. :|]
Another nod--it's always nice when other people show interest in her work! Even if it's a sort of begrudging, masochistic interest. But really, all she notices is that he's asking questions and making deductions. It's almost like being home. "There are plenty of knives lying around the training grounds, and I'm sure there's a database. We'll figure it out soon enough."
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thecapitol2014-08-06 10:55 pm
Scene of the Crime
There's a private security system, including cameras.
Avoxes, looking malnourished and quiet even by their standards, skulk around in the corners, unable to clean without disturbing the evidence and unsure what to do with themselves.
The detectives are led to the indoor pool, where the corpse has already been removed. The water and blood that splattered over the edge of the pool is drying. The contents of the pool are pinkish, now that the blood - and there was a lot of it - has mostly dispersed.
Even so, there's clear evidence of a struggle. Blood is splattered across the wall, and a smear leads to the edge of the water, as if Penny was dragged.
The Morgue
Her face is frozen in a pained expression, somewhat bulged and warped by how long she spent facedown in the water. She's still dressed in her pajamas, which are permanently stained. A large scrape rolls down one calf. Her hands are clenched in fists. Her body is bloated slightly, rubbery, almost, on the metal table.
She has six stab wounds in her abdomen.
The Lounge
The detectives are given a lounge in which to discuss their results. They have a coffee machine, several couches, hologram projectors and various notepads and digital devices.
open!!
And people who needed to be found.
Normally, Molly would hum to herself or speak to the person on the slab while collecting evidence and performing an autopsy. But her brow is uncharacteristically furrowed, her lips set in a thin line. John was missing, and she was sure that the Capitol had something to do with it. When they'd come to her "asking" for her help, they hadn't made any threats or bargains, they'd simply smiled and offered her payment for her services. But she could tell that they would resort to less unseemly methods of persuasion if she refused. This was easier. And honestly, this was the right thing to do, as backwards as it seemed.
Molly sighs, and looks at poor Penny's bloated face. "We'll find out what happened, just you wait."
Re: open!!
Even if the mystery-solving he'd used to do for free with his friends was more in the line of theft, fraud, embezzlement, or impersonation of weird monsters using rubber suits.
Actually, he's kind of wondering when the monsters in rubber suits are supposed to show up. Or, you know, at least someone in a mask or a homemade robot.
"Like, I hope you're right," he says.
no subject
And how weird is it that the scene of a crime would feel like home to me? she muses as she crouches down by the blood spatters. Then again, we're at a mansion, and that was home. Even if this place is hideously frou-frou-y.
Every instinct tells Helena that the altercation had gotten ugly there. She's already done an initial walkthrough of the scene, taking mental notes of everything, before doing a second over and coming over to the blood splatters.
Dad would call this a dynamic scene, she thinks to herself. Because of all the movement. And because of the trail of blood leading over to the swimming pool. Helena stands up from the crouch she's been in and follows that smear to the edge of the water, peeking in. The pinkish hue of the pool unsettles her a little bit. It looks like flat watermelon soda.
"My heart goes out to her," Helena says out loud, to no one in particular. "This was grisly."
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Re: Scene of the Crime
Each Avox she passed made her more and more angry beneath her steadily calm demeanor. She thought about Punchy, about Cecil, and about how unsurprising it should be that a horrible woman like Penny was just as horrible in private as she was in public. When she got to the kitchen, the first thing she did was go to the fridge and fill her arms with fruit. She went back to the Avoxes she had seen, pressed the food into their hands, looked into their eyes, asked each in a gentle voice if they had seen anything.
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Her stomach isn't happy with that thought, her body remembering what it felt like to drown.
"It was relatively quick," Joan says offhand. She glances at the woman. "Compared to what she's put her victims through."
Their keepers can think of that what they want. It's true.
She moves to where the blood is spattered on the wall, and moves her hand along the line of it.
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Penny wasn't a large woman. Given that, it's almost surprising that she wasn't carried to the pool, or that it seems she was both pulled and rolled into the water, as if she were difficult to move.
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"Did she have an exceptionally strong, fortified skeleton or something? Or, you know, an enmity with a munchkin or something? It feels as though whoever went against her put up as much of a struggle post-death as she did before it."
[OOC: Oh god, I'm so sorry. GMail was sending all of my DW notifies to Junk and I didn't even find out until now. :|]
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