The Killing Type

Chapter 1-2

“Yeah,” Vince says sympathetically as he strides over, “shit.”

It’s the space of five minutes to get Lucas down from the crime scene and into a squad car, tweaker cuffed in the back while Vince and the would-be victim watch on.

“That’s so lucky,” Lucas enthuses to their perp, climbing into the drivers’ side. “And there was a warrant out? You’re so, I mean, you’re just shitting horseshoes, at this point.”

“Kevin, don’t antagonize the—never mind,” Vince says. Lucas’ door slams shut as the engine kicks to life, off toward the station in moments. He sighs, rolling his shoulders, then pulls another fag from his inner pocket. “Alright,” he mutters, lighting up while he turns to where he instructed the victim to await a brief questioning on the incident, “why don’t we start with a n—are you okay?”

“Uh,” the victim grates out, wiping at his cheeks hastily with hands that quake, “yeah, I’m just. f**k,” he breathes, exhale trembling like the beat of a sparrow’s wings. “Sorry, I’m—”

“You’re alright,” Vince says quickly. This isn't generally his beat, street crime. Most victims are dead when he meets them. When it becomes apparent the kid isn’t getting his breathing under control, Vince slowly brings a hand up to rest on his arm. His thumb presses faintly into the material of the boy’s jacket—leather, well-maintained, he notes absently—to offer a grounding point. “He’s getting booked, so—”

“Yeah,” the kid cuts him off with that thick northern accent. He is very clearly embarrassed. He leans into the touch, though, even as he presses his fingers over his eyes. “f**k. One sec.”

Vince shakes his head. “It’s alright. That’s not—sorry, I forget that sort of thing isn’t everyday for most people.”

The kid is taking these long, low breaths, bringing himself under control. “Sounds a bit s**t, that as your everyday,” he observes, wobbly tone playing at conversational. He still hasn’t uncovered his eyes.

His words startle a short laugh out of Vince. “There’s…there’s things that might be described as s**t, yeah,” he admits. He thinks of the latest victim’s heart, decaying in his palm meters from the space where she’d breathed and worked and surrounded herself with snapshots of happy moments. “That guy wouldn’t make the list, though, actually.”

Finally, the boy’s stabilized himself to a point of marginal dignity, hands dropping from his face. His eyes are a dark amber under the streetlight, lashes casting heavy curtains of shadow over the defined angles of his cheekbones, his sharp jaw.

“One sec,” he repeats, dragging in a final harsh breath through his nose.

Vince looks him over. He remembers this—being young enough that cutting through back alleys on the way home seemed rakish and romantic, arrogant enough that nothing felt more humiliating than an admission of humanity. He takes in the defiant set of the boy’s lips, the stubborn slant of his brows. Uni kid, probably new to the city.

“Take your time,” he gently tells him. He nearly says, Welcome to London.

Biting at his lip, the kid shrugs. Looks away. “That’s a nasty habit,” he mutters offhandedly, indicating where Vince’s cigarette hangs limp between his fingers. “The carcinogens in that aren’t fit for a landfill.”

As if Vince’s never met a deflection before. “I’ll make this quick so you can get home, yeah?” Vince starts, flicking a bit of ash onto the dirty pavement.

With a sigh, the boy starts talking. “Reza Naim, birthday’s January 7thth—age twenty-two, so you can do the math on that—heading home and wasn’t thinking, I guess—”

“You’ve done this before,” Vince observes.

A cab passes and its light slides over Reza’s face, throwing one half into shadow for an instant. “I like crime procedurals,” he says flatly.

He doesn’t look familiar anyway, not like the kids who make the station their hapless second home. “Alright, Reza Naim,” Vince replies, easy notes scribbled into his notepad with the cigarette tucked between his lips. He takes down other basics, mobile number and any prior relationship with the mugger—nonexistent, unsurprisingly. Then, “Said you were heading home, where is that?”

Reza tells him.

A minute later, Vince is on the phone with Illson, still upstairs at the crime scene.

“You can’t just abandon the scene,” Illson hisses over the line.

“What’s left to close out?” Vince asks. “Actually curious, here.”

“There’s—that’s not—if I’m stuck here at asscrack o’clock, so’re you,” Illson insists. “Vince, come on.”

“Mmm, I’m case lead, though,” Vince says apologetically. “Don’t have to do what the mouthy pathologist tells me.”

There’s a series of faint squeaking noises, Illson indignant and struggling to find the breath and language to make Vince bend to his will. “But I’m your mouthy pathologist,” is what he decides on.

Vince exhales a laugh. “You’re no one’s pathologist.”

“Well now I’m definitely not your pathologist,” Illson grumbles.

The scuffing of leather scraping against concrete has Vince turning to look over his shoulder at Reza as he slides down the wall to fold up neatly on the ground. His forehead is resting on his knees. They look bony where they peek out from his shredded black jeans. His narrow back heaves with deep breaths, like he’s trying to calm himself again.

Vince turns away. “The kid’s really messed up over it,” he murmurs into the receiver. “Look, the tube’s closed, it’s an hour’s walk, I can’t—”

“We have to get all this evidence down to the station—”

“Finley,” Vince interrupts. “Hyde’s not even awake.” Quieter, with another glance at the boy still curled up on the ground, “The body’s been moved, yeah?”

Illson sighs, crisp and defeated through the tiny speaker. “Yeah, it…made it back.”

“And the heart.”

“Mm.”

“And the rest is nonperishable,” Vince verifies.

“Yeah,” Illson admits.

“And Peters’s back at the station already.”

“Yes.”

“And Lucas is back at the station already.”

“I get it,” snaps Illson. Then, “Sorry, just—don’t keep me waiting, alright? I haven’t slept more than two consecutive hours this week. Month, maybe.”

Vince nods pointlessly. “I’ll beat you back.”

“No you won’t,” Illson says, disgruntled expression nearly visible before Vince’s eyes, and the line goes dead.

When Vince nudges at Reza’s boot with one of his own, the kid looks up. He still has that frightened rabbit air about him, Vince notes, but he doesn’t look as though he’s about to be ill or anything as he raises an eyebrow in query.

“Taking you home,” Vince informs him. “C’mon then.”

Reza wobbles to his feet, silent. He places spindly fingers on the wall as he moves his combat boots to support him; Vince resists the thrumming, sudden urge to assist.

“Y’know,” Reza says, shuffling behind him to the vehicle, “generally when guys take me home, their approach has a little more finesse.”

Vince’s hand falters on his keys. “You’re throwing around words like finesse at half two in the morning,” he says, pulling on the door handle.

Reza might snort as he climbs into the car. Vince isn’t paying him any attention. Decidedly.

The drive is twenty minutes and silent for nearly all of them.

“You at the uni, then?” Vince can’t help but ask.

He sees Reza, slumped slightly against the door, peer over at him. His hair is cropped on the sides and messy at the crown, inky black in the light that filters from the shops they glide past. “Yeah.” The word is heavy with fatigue. Probably on the back end of an adrenal spike from fear.

Vince nods. “And what are you studying,” he asks in wry almost-singsong, determined to keep the boy awake through the drive. He changes lanes, controlled.

“Neuroscience. Biology.”

Damn. “Ambitious.” He chances a quick glance at the kid. “You think you want to push for advanced study in one of those, or—?”

“I’m in the doctoral program,” Reza says wearily.

Damn. “That’s…” Vince shifts in his seat, tongue tracing the backs of his teeth. “Your parents must love that.”

Reza doesn’t dignify that with an answer.

By the time they pull in front of the flat Reza specifies, he’s blinking his large eyes like a drowsing owl, exhaustion slackening his features.

And he was going to walk back here. “You alright getting in?” Vince asks. He notices Reza’s seatbelt, already undone. The detective casts back, trying to remember if the boy had fastened it at all.

“Yes, officer, thank you, officer,” Reza says, but the sarcastic simper is too rumpled by sleepiness to hold any real sting. He unlocks his door, swaying unsteadily on his feet when he exits. Shrugs his jacket up toward his ears, burrowing in while he walks around to the sidewalk.

Vince feels his lips pulling up at the corners. Exhaustion is taking its toll on him as well, it seems. He leans out his window to address Reza on the pavement. “Please don’t wander through alleys late at night anymore.”

“Yes sir,” Reza says dully.

“Please don’t wander through alleys at all, actually.”

“Yes sir,” he repeats, eyes verging on glassy.

“You’re knackered,” Vince says quietly. “Alright, get some rest. Off with you.”

Reza mumbles something that might be another yes sir, body moving with the same tired slur as his speech toward the entrance of the building. It’s set back on a green that shows painfully bright under the well-maintained lighting.

Vince waits until he sees the front door close to move the car out of park.

There’s this thing called the Baader Meinhof Complex. Vince could swear he still has notes on it from some college psych class tucked in with other adolescent detritus at his parents’ house. It’s the phenomenon of noticing something more when it’s first realized as a reality by the mind. Patterns pulled from thin air, eyes slightly more open.

Not knowledge Vince is asked to call upon with any real frequency, but he’s been thinking of it lately. Of why the brain is the world’s most reluctant spectator, considering only what it’s forced to acknowledge. Believing to see.

There’s a lot he would do to see, right now.

“Again,” he requests, flat and grudging. He twirls his pen in his fingers.

Hepburn opens her mouth to protest. Decides against doing so. Her legs dig a bit more into the table’s edge where she hovers over it, staring down at them all. “We've covered everything.”

“And now I need you to cover everything again,” Vince tells her, maybe a bit impatiently. In response to the unimpressed set of her face, “We're missing something, alright? This is how we’re going to deal with it.”

Hepburn’s eyes flash with irritation, tan jaw set like she wants to argue the point against her superior. She'd moved to England in her teens but never quite lost the contrariness Vince's come to associate with Americans. An officer had once jokingly referred to her as a Yankee import.

Only the once, though.

“Eight victims as of early Tuesday morning,” she begins, teeth clenching. “First body found December 19th. Victims range from twenty-one to thirty-eight years of age, both male and female.” Everyone around the table remains quiet—the only way to take in this sort of information, even when it’s old—as she continues. “All found with their chest cavities bisected, held open with the same brand of Dritz pins. All found with ribs cracked to reveal organs. All found with a rather, uh, ardent note card secured in their left hand naming Detective Inspector Bennett—that's you, by the way,” she inclines her head to Vince slightly. “All found with their heart removed and secured in their right hand by crafting twine.”

Hepburn’s posture is straight where she stands and speaks. Militant. Vince spares a nanosecond to be distantly amused by the contrast between her and Detective Sergeant Rubio. Rubio sits directly to Hepburn’s left, slumped in a chair with her pen doodling lazy, meandering spirals as she listens to the grudging recap.