Angel - Daylight Fading - Shamus, Gumshoe, Sherlock, P.I.
Canvassing. That's the police term for it. What really boils down to is knocking on doors and asking people questions about what they know or have heard or seen and if they know anyone who might know or have heard or seen something that could be useful. It involves a lot of footwork (okay, back in L.A., it involved a lot of driving around or going apartment door to apartment door), is repetitive, tedious and very often not of a lot of help.
Of course, when you're the LAPD and you can send out twenty patrolmen into a neighborhood to do the canvassing, it's not a problem. When you're the lone vampire detective in the city, things get a little more daunting. It was my least favorite part of the investigations business, and even though I was thousands of miles away from L.A., I was right back to it.
I'd gotten the particulars, as far as Buffy knew them, en route to Abruzzi. A little reluctantly, I split up our group, but since I figured Spike was going to use his fists and not a whole lot of sense to do his part of the job, it seemed like the best idea to do the soft-sell part myself.
A couple of hours in, and I hadn't gained a whole lot of ground, as far as information went. Most everyone knew what the newspapers and television reports had told them-- multiple murders, all confined to the region, every person found with what the medical examiners referred to as 'ligature marks consistent with asphyxiation by rope' on their necks.
Translation: they'd been strangled.
The big mystery surrounding the deaths, though, had to do with the circumstances. Detectives and forensic examiners didn't like to use the word 'impossible'. They preferred 'highly unlikely'.
I was looking for the pattern-- serial killers, natural or supernatural, are obsessed with the details of their murders, and the ritual of it was everything. That extended to the choice of victims, so all that was left was to figure out how to connect the dots. Unfortunately, after the first few stops, there wasn't much new news to add.
Until I got to the little old lady. Rule number one of detective work, I should have remembered, was talk to the neighborhood little old lady, because they usually know nine-tenths of everything going on. The problem was that once she got talking, the story came fast and furious, and my Italian just wasn't up to speed. I had to make do with snippets here and there, phrases I could understand, and hope I could piece together the story later by context.
I heard things like 'ghost' and 'revenge'... she mentioned seeing a dead girl walking down the street two days before. It sounded like a lot of local superstitions and folk tales, but there was never any reason in the world I worked in to completely ignore those things. Once she'd finished rambling, naturally, granny kicked me out.
As I left her place, I couldn't help but think about revenge. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of souls in the ether that would have every right to take their revenge on me, not to mention Darla, Drusilla and Spike. I didn't think any of us would ever make up for all of them, but it was enough, I hoped, to try.
Stepping out into the street, I turned in the direction of the hotel everyone was staying at in Abruzzi. Maybe if heads were put together, then some kind of sense could be made.
That's when I saw her. Black hair, face as pale as a vampires, but I knew immediately she wasn't one. She moved with a kind of floating gait that no one alive would be able to duplicate. When she turned a corner, I followed, only to find an empty street. Shaking my head, I turned back in the hotel's directiong and coaxed just a little more distance out of my aching feet.
Of course, when you're the LAPD and you can send out twenty patrolmen into a neighborhood to do the canvassing, it's not a problem. When you're the lone vampire detective in the city, things get a little more daunting. It was my least favorite part of the investigations business, and even though I was thousands of miles away from L.A., I was right back to it.
I'd gotten the particulars, as far as Buffy knew them, en route to Abruzzi. A little reluctantly, I split up our group, but since I figured Spike was going to use his fists and not a whole lot of sense to do his part of the job, it seemed like the best idea to do the soft-sell part myself.
A couple of hours in, and I hadn't gained a whole lot of ground, as far as information went. Most everyone knew what the newspapers and television reports had told them-- multiple murders, all confined to the region, every person found with what the medical examiners referred to as 'ligature marks consistent with asphyxiation by rope' on their necks.
Translation: they'd been strangled.
The big mystery surrounding the deaths, though, had to do with the circumstances. Detectives and forensic examiners didn't like to use the word 'impossible'. They preferred 'highly unlikely'.
I was looking for the pattern-- serial killers, natural or supernatural, are obsessed with the details of their murders, and the ritual of it was everything. That extended to the choice of victims, so all that was left was to figure out how to connect the dots. Unfortunately, after the first few stops, there wasn't much new news to add.
Until I got to the little old lady. Rule number one of detective work, I should have remembered, was talk to the neighborhood little old lady, because they usually know nine-tenths of everything going on. The problem was that once she got talking, the story came fast and furious, and my Italian just wasn't up to speed. I had to make do with snippets here and there, phrases I could understand, and hope I could piece together the story later by context.
I heard things like 'ghost' and 'revenge'... she mentioned seeing a dead girl walking down the street two days before. It sounded like a lot of local superstitions and folk tales, but there was never any reason in the world I worked in to completely ignore those things. Once she'd finished rambling, naturally, granny kicked me out.
As I left her place, I couldn't help but think about revenge. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of souls in the ether that would have every right to take their revenge on me, not to mention Darla, Drusilla and Spike. I didn't think any of us would ever make up for all of them, but it was enough, I hoped, to try.
Stepping out into the street, I turned in the direction of the hotel everyone was staying at in Abruzzi. Maybe if heads were put together, then some kind of sense could be made.
That's when I saw her. Black hair, face as pale as a vampires, but I knew immediately she wasn't one. She moved with a kind of floating gait that no one alive would be able to duplicate. When she turned a corner, I followed, only to find an empty street. Shaking my head, I turned back in the hotel's directiong and coaxed just a little more distance out of my aching feet.