Thread: Nightfall (Trixie x Iron & Wine)

Even though she'd run the ruse before, it always took the boys in blue a while to catch on anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours could go by before anyone would realize that there was no Officer Whitaker. Then Detective Delaney leading up the Vigilante Investigations Unit VIU would be on it and things would get a lot more efficient from there on out. Evaline Delaney had been a thorn in Nora's father's side, and it look like she had inherited being on the receiving end of the detective's obsession. The watch read 4500 and counting. Better safe than sorry when it came to the cops. The location - dilapidated tenement housing on the corner of 8th and Oak - was on the east side of the city, closer to her hideout than the main precinct. Folks called it the Lower East Dive. It was one of those parts of the City that never got back on its feet since the Navy pulled its base out, and the predominantly African American community was steadily moving away as more Hmong immigrants moved into the poorer areas and the areas closest to the port were being gentrified in the Mayor's campaign to redevelop the forgotten parts of the City, the places that society had let fall thru the cracks. From the looks of it, the tenement building certainly qualified as one of those places. Her green night vision picked up four hoodlums on the opposite side of the street from the tenement housing, milling about and joking with each other, but clearly keeping an eye on the front door. Look-outs, probably. A large black suburban was parked in front of the closed diner a few buildings down, with it's engine still running. A trio of hookers and their pimp were down Oak a ways, chatting with a John in a black sedan. It seemed like just another night in the Lower East Dive. Except for the flickering light on the sixth floor of the tenement building. Nora had enough experience to trust her instincts that the flickering wasn't just some faulty wiring in the old poorly maintained building. Besides, he had used it before to mark his crime scenes. Whoever he was. The police were describing him as Serial Rapist 0, whiipch stood for zero tolerance, a code word among police for don't go to great lengths to keep the perp alive if encountered. The media didn't have a name for him yet, but it was only a matter of time. Four rapes in a month. Getting inside the housing unnoticed would prove easy enough. It was what she would find that made the pit of Nora's stomach queasy. They had a game of cat and mouse, this rapist and Nora every time she felt like she was getting closer to pinning him down, and every time he'd evaded her, as if the crimes were pieces on some twisted chessboard for him, clues he was leaving behind to spur Nightshade on. On some level, it was working to get under her skin. Nightshade could handle it, of course, but the training never prepared her for the visceral terror of those crime scenes. The fire escape got her to the sixth floor unseen. Stopping outside the door to apartment 608, she noticed the flickering of the lights from within 608 coming from under the door and muffled sobs of a woman from within. At least she was alive. The first of these rapes, the victim was killed, her carotid artery cut, suggesting that the perp wanted to kill her quickly but with maximum blood loss, perhaps as a form of intimidation or interrogation. Now, however, he was leaving the girls alive. They'd all been too terrified to consent to rape kits, meaning there was no biological evidence gathered. The door was unlocked. Slipping in, Nora saw a spartan room with a single bed, a chair, and a rather expensive looking monitor and tripod-mounted video camera that looked out of place. A young African American woman was handcuffed to the bed with panties stuffed in her mouth and duct tape around her ankles her pink nightgown was hiked up to her waist. Soft sobs came from her, and judging by the streaking of her mascara... odd that she was wearing mascara before bed. The window was cracked open the perp may have fled that way like last time. Suddenly the monitor snapped on, revealing white fuzz with the vague shape of a pixilated head. So you are Nightshade. It took me a while to set this up. Mrs. Monroe over there isn't the one you should be worried about. The voice was electronically garbled, making it impossible to definitively tell that it was even a man. Then the video camera shifted to three teenage girls chained in a dungeon cell. Stacy, Mindi, and Lauren...they need your help however. I am the man you've been looking for. Are you prepared to negotiate with me?