Night 59: Morgue

[tasteoftruth]

[ From here.]

Badd shuddered involuntarily as he stepped into the chilly air of the institute's morgue. No coy macabre tricks so far, it looked like a smaller version of the one his old precinct had used--though it was a horrific enough thought that a mental institution would need a morgue in the first place

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[fourstonewalls]

Lana started at the opposite end, opening the first drawer. "Nor mine. Though it might be unavoidable, at least in part. I don't know that it would be possible to prove his guilt without Detective Goodman's murder."

An early retirement, no questions asked. He might even take it, if she could convince him she was serious. If she could convince herself that she was serious, that she could drag Ema through SL-9 with only a bizarre dream for justification. If she could convince him she meant it, though -- well, the shoe would be on the other foot, now wouldn't it?

She slid another empty drawer shut; it stuck a little, and then gave with a sharp clank.

"He was usually so thorough. Careful without being cautious." He'd had to have taken some risks -- real ones, in the pursuit of truth, not power -- earlier in his career, but it hadn't been until they'd arrived here that she'd seen him move out of desperation instead of calculation.

"He had one of the rings. Moved us instantaneously across the building. Handy, that."

[tasteoftruth]

"Whereever you wanted, or just randomly?" The building wasn't that big, it seemed like a waste. Nothing here made any sense.

Badd paused in his searching to give the room another scan with his flashlight. He'd never been a huge horror buff but he knew a cliche when he saw one. The institute was crawling with monsters and they were in a morgue, it was a perfect setup for zombies.

The beam eventually landed on Lana herself. "We'll stop him, one way or the other. If we can't do it legally we'll find some other way." Byrne would figure it out. He was good like that. And if Byrne couldn't get it...well. Maybe Badd would do what Lana had been too scared or too principled to commit.

[fourstonewalls]

Some other way. That was the key she'd been missing to what Badd had not said; that wasn't hypothetical. She'd wager, oh, what little was left of her career on that. But he didn't seem troubled by it; either it had been a success, or he had learned to hide it. He was a good man -- the latter, then, and well-covered. Had Byrne's death been related? But that was stretching the bounds of reasonable speculation, even for a fishing expedition, and would buy her nothing but his discomfort if she asked

[tasteoftruth]

Badd stepped over and watched in solemn silence as Lana pulled back the body bag. Now that he was face to face with the corpse it was hard to feel joy over his death...always was, really. When it came to criminals he was pleased about punishing the guilty or taking out a threat but the actual act of killing had never made him happy.

"Then it's over," he said, feeling the urge to at least say something over his former chief's corpse. "Here, at least." The weaker members of the institute were safe from his manipulations and Byrne was safe from him running his mouth off. But Badd couldn't feel any particular joy over it.

[fourstonewalls]

"It's...over." Lana tasted the words in her mouth -- it had been over in many senses since the night they'd met with Gumshoe, but now she'd won. A queer sort of victory, this.

She continued her careful inspection, slipping the tag from his toe as a rather gruesome, but important, souvenir. She tucked it in her pocket, rearranged his hair in its trademark look, and zipped the bag shut. "I've seen all I need to. But there's one more thing I wanted," she added, walking over to one of the smaller doors.

[to here]