Morning Will Come Soon
Title: Morning Will Come Soon (World remix)
Rating: PG-13, probably R in the future
Fandom: None.
Words: 1,819
Summary: He is an artist or so he thinks. His legacy? A series of murders based the major arcana of the tarot. Detective Patrick Tanner and his partner, Lionel Davidson, have to try to solve these seemingly unconnected murders before this artist's work is finished.
Richard Beck wasn’t a squeamish man by nature. He had lost some of the muscle that he had when he was at Penn State-he’d be the first to admit that little fact-but he still was a big man, intimidating. He had bones broken and broken quite a few himself. Beck had part of his ear tore off in a bar fight that Daniela still couldn’t believe that happened. There was a lot blood then, a hell of a lot of blood, but a body. Goddamn.
Beck and his wife just wanted a nice relaxing hike. Timothy-Orion if it was in public, boy was a bit too proud for Beck’s taste-had hosted a party a couple of nights before the hike, a rather boring affair if he wanted to be honest. Daniela had insisted on the walk; she was a naturalist at heart. “Richard, if you want to get the environmentalists on your side, you have to gain a sense of where they’re coming from,” Daniela had said to him.
It had been a good hike-a quiet morning with flecks of light of drifting through the trees that he couldn’t even begin to think of the names of. He had just begun wishing that he had worn pants and not shorts; the early summer insects were just coming out in force. Daniela was behind him, walking slowly with a water bottle in her hand. “I’ll catch up!” she was yelling at him as he rounded up the next hill in the path.
Loose clumps and rocks were sloughing off from contact with Beck’s hiking boots, tumbling back from the path as he walked. Lots of insect activity, too, flies mostly. “Damn bugs,” he muttered. “Hun, there’s a lot of bugs up here! You probably should the repellent from your pack before you move up. Smells like shit, too.”
Beck was starting to smell something. They were getting close to a loop in the trail that came near a parking lot; maybe pieces of road kill: a squirrel or maybe a raccoon. “Jesus, that’s ripe.”
Then Richard Beck saw it.
Stretched across one of trees-one of those really old ones that tourists always take pictures of-was a man. Barefoot and wearing a pair of worn blue jeans, the man was bare-chested. No…man wasn’t the right word. It was a boy, probably in his twenties, but not quite a man yet. Kids were always getting tattoos; this one seemed to have one etched in his stomach-
“Oh god,” Beck said. A weight had been forming in his gut once he saw the body, the drips of blood still dripping and swathed in flies. He crossed himself; his parents had been devout Catholics-he had no such belief but he hoped that the Lord wouldn’t care about that detail. The kid was deader than dead; more than that, he was hung up like Jesus Christ himself.
The weight in Beck’s gut turned, making him back away. He wanted to yell at Daniela but his mouth was dry, his tongue slow. Something about the kid, something…about the way he was strung up there made him want to move towards him. Just so he could take the boy down and at least give him a proper burial.
“Richard? Honey?”
He heard Daniela’s voice as if she was yelling from underwater. Beck had noticed something about the face. Something about the bridge of the nose, the way the hair-so sleek with drying blood and white flecks that could only be maggots-was lying across the kid’s face bade Beck to come closer. Just to see.
When he moved within a good ten feet of the corpse the weight in Beck’s gut dropped. It sank lower than he thought existed. He wasn’t used to this, he wasn’t some cop. He was in telecommunications now, for god’s sake! He made big investments; he played polo and tried not to drown in an ocean full of bloodthirsty sharks. With bitter bile filling his mouth Beck emptied his stomach’s contents on the side of the trail.
Beck could hear Daniela running now, alerted by the sound. He straightened his back, his face becoming paler by the minute. “Daniela, don’t-I think I found where Timmy has been! Don’t,” he said while trying to keep from vomiting again. “Just, Daniela, call the police. Use your cell-phone!”
Timothy Smithson, known to the world as Orion Leovitch, was hanging where everyone could see him. Beck thought the kid could go far in the world of business, apparently not.
Beck always hated being wrong, this case in particular-the kid should have just stayed poor if this was what being rich meant to him.
--
“Orion Leovitch: one of the most powerful entrepreneurs in the United States. Born Timothy Smithson, on October 20th, 1980. Graduated top of his class in 1999 and started his own business in 2003 after changing his name to something more ‘powerful’,” Detective Lionel Davidson read out loud, keeping his eyes on the magazine in front of him. His partner, Patrick Tanner, kept his own set of eyes on the forested road in front of him.
“So our possible vic is some business hotshot?” Tanner asked distractedly, looking briefly at the trees being quickly passed. Tanner didn’t care much for forests-if the trail hadn’t been in his district…He sighed. Davidson probably loved working this case-he was always a bit of a redneck. “That means he probably has a hell full of enemies.”
Davidson flicked the page. “Probably. Christ, this guy’s worth a fortune, Pat. If the murderer didn’t leave his driver’s license it’s going to take a hundred years to narrow down the suspects.”
Tanner tapped one of his fingers against the steering wheel. “If Leovitch is the victim. I keep telling you, Lionel, we can’t make assumptions until we see the scene. We can’t just assume he is just because a couple of traumatized hikers identified the body-”
“One of ‘em was an investor in his company, Pat. I recognize the name in this article. Uh-Richard Beck. He runs Beck Enterprises. Used to be a college football player, too, remember?” Davidson was persistent to a fault and sighed deeply when Tanner didn’t sound impressed.
Tanner nodded vaguely to show interest. “Beck? I think I recognize the name. Used to play linebacker for Penn State, right? Pretty suspicious if you ask me, him finding the body.”
“Maybe-but aren’t you the one who always tell me not to jump to conclusions?”
“Ah, fuck you, Lionel.”
All Davidson did was to throw back his head and laugh. “I love you too, Pat.”
--
Detective Patrick Tanner had seen a lot of homicide scenes before. It came with the job; you couldn’t have a weak stomach for that kind of work. The one thing he hated, though, was crowds. There was a huge one now forming before the police barriers.
He did notice with gratitude that the police that arrived first had used their cars as visual barriers between the scene and the outside world. It wasn’t much of a barrier but it told Tanner and his partner that whatever it was, it was going to ruin their lunch. Nice warning, really.
Tanner looked at himself in the rearview mirror before getting out of the car. Huh, I need a trim, he thought briefly touching his cheek where the stubble was getting just a tad too long. He shook his head once, no need to be thinking of that when going into a horrific murder scene.
“Pat, get a move on!”
Shaking his head once again to clear his thoughts, Tanner opened the door and saw that Davidson-Jesus, he wished that Davidson would shrink a foot so he could catch up one of these days-had already gotten out of the door. That man was a giant but moved with the grace of a jungle cat; Tanner always expressed some jealousy at that. “Slow down for a minute and I’ll catch up.”
Davidson turned and mouthed the words, “yeah right”, before starting to talk to someone who was on the brink of breaking into the crime scene.
Tanner shrugged at this before trudging towards the police line. “Detective Patrick Tanner, Stayhaven Police Department,” he stated and flashed his identification at the nearest cop. They nodded and made no movement to stop him as he moved past the police line.
The scene was a mass of human activity: a hive to find out exactly what happened to the victim. By the constant presence of blood on grass, trail, and concrete this had to be the scene of the murder. Tanner pressed by until he stopped in front of a tree. “Oh hell, this is going to be nasty,” Tanner said.
A young man was stabbed to the tree, wearing only a pair of faded blue jeans. His legs had been crossed but his arms were outspread. His hands and feet-Tanner winced, hoping that the bastard had done this after the poor sap was already dead-were pierced with a knife; no blood was trickling down where the knives were so it was doubtful that the victim was alive when that particular modification happened. The thing that really caught Tanner’s attention was the symbol carved into the lower part of the victims torso. Each detail was (lovingly?) carved into the flesh; he could recognize some of the shapes as those of continents. What the hell where they dealing with?
“Before you ask, Detective, it does go all the way around. I’ve checked.” Tanner looked over his shoulder. The coroner, thin-nosed Doctor Anthony Thane, was standing there. Tanner looked skeptical but Thane had never let him down before.
Tanner looked back to the man on the tree. God, the maggots were already crawling into his nose. “Got a cause of death?”
Thane turned to Tanner with a skeptical look. “There’s a knife wound to the back of the neck at the base of the skull. If I had to guess that’s what killed him,” he said flatly. “But this…map, for lack of a better word, was done while he was still alive. See how these areas have started to scab over?”
Tanner cocked his head. He had seen worse scenes before-but nothing like this. What sort of shit did they stir up this time? “I see them, doc. The guy was tortured?”
The coroner stepped back and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “If this was done involuntarily, it’s probable he was indeed. These markings seem to have happened over a period of days. Some of the team has found bandages that were kept to keep this poor guy from bleeding to death by the look of them.”
“Jesus Christ, Pat, someone turned them into Jesus Christ!”
Davidson had arrived; Tanner sighed. This was going to be a long day.
Rating: PG-13, probably R in the future
Fandom: None.
Words: 1,819
Summary: He is an artist or so he thinks. His legacy? A series of murders based the major arcana of the tarot. Detective Patrick Tanner and his partner, Lionel Davidson, have to try to solve these seemingly unconnected murders before this artist's work is finished.
Richard Beck wasn’t a squeamish man by nature. He had lost some of the muscle that he had when he was at Penn State-he’d be the first to admit that little fact-but he still was a big man, intimidating. He had bones broken and broken quite a few himself. Beck had part of his ear tore off in a bar fight that Daniela still couldn’t believe that happened. There was a lot blood then, a hell of a lot of blood, but a body. Goddamn.
Beck and his wife just wanted a nice relaxing hike. Timothy-Orion if it was in public, boy was a bit too proud for Beck’s taste-had hosted a party a couple of nights before the hike, a rather boring affair if he wanted to be honest. Daniela had insisted on the walk; she was a naturalist at heart. “Richard, if you want to get the environmentalists on your side, you have to gain a sense of where they’re coming from,” Daniela had said to him.
It had been a good hike-a quiet morning with flecks of light of drifting through the trees that he couldn’t even begin to think of the names of. He had just begun wishing that he had worn pants and not shorts; the early summer insects were just coming out in force. Daniela was behind him, walking slowly with a water bottle in her hand. “I’ll catch up!” she was yelling at him as he rounded up the next hill in the path.
Loose clumps and rocks were sloughing off from contact with Beck’s hiking boots, tumbling back from the path as he walked. Lots of insect activity, too, flies mostly. “Damn bugs,” he muttered. “Hun, there’s a lot of bugs up here! You probably should the repellent from your pack before you move up. Smells like shit, too.”
Beck was starting to smell something. They were getting close to a loop in the trail that came near a parking lot; maybe pieces of road kill: a squirrel or maybe a raccoon. “Jesus, that’s ripe.”
Then Richard Beck saw it.
Stretched across one of trees-one of those really old ones that tourists always take pictures of-was a man. Barefoot and wearing a pair of worn blue jeans, the man was bare-chested. No…man wasn’t the right word. It was a boy, probably in his twenties, but not quite a man yet. Kids were always getting tattoos; this one seemed to have one etched in his stomach-
“Oh god,” Beck said. A weight had been forming in his gut once he saw the body, the drips of blood still dripping and swathed in flies. He crossed himself; his parents had been devout Catholics-he had no such belief but he hoped that the Lord wouldn’t care about that detail. The kid was deader than dead; more than that, he was hung up like Jesus Christ himself.
The weight in Beck’s gut turned, making him back away. He wanted to yell at Daniela but his mouth was dry, his tongue slow. Something about the kid, something…about the way he was strung up there made him want to move towards him. Just so he could take the boy down and at least give him a proper burial.
“Richard? Honey?”
He heard Daniela’s voice as if she was yelling from underwater. Beck had noticed something about the face. Something about the bridge of the nose, the way the hair-so sleek with drying blood and white flecks that could only be maggots-was lying across the kid’s face bade Beck to come closer. Just to see.
When he moved within a good ten feet of the corpse the weight in Beck’s gut dropped. It sank lower than he thought existed. He wasn’t used to this, he wasn’t some cop. He was in telecommunications now, for god’s sake! He made big investments; he played polo and tried not to drown in an ocean full of bloodthirsty sharks. With bitter bile filling his mouth Beck emptied his stomach’s contents on the side of the trail.
Beck could hear Daniela running now, alerted by the sound. He straightened his back, his face becoming paler by the minute. “Daniela, don’t-I think I found where Timmy has been! Don’t,” he said while trying to keep from vomiting again. “Just, Daniela, call the police. Use your cell-phone!”
Timothy Smithson, known to the world as Orion Leovitch, was hanging where everyone could see him. Beck thought the kid could go far in the world of business, apparently not.
Beck always hated being wrong, this case in particular-the kid should have just stayed poor if this was what being rich meant to him.
--
“Orion Leovitch: one of the most powerful entrepreneurs in the United States. Born Timothy Smithson, on October 20th, 1980. Graduated top of his class in 1999 and started his own business in 2003 after changing his name to something more ‘powerful’,” Detective Lionel Davidson read out loud, keeping his eyes on the magazine in front of him. His partner, Patrick Tanner, kept his own set of eyes on the forested road in front of him.
“So our possible vic is some business hotshot?” Tanner asked distractedly, looking briefly at the trees being quickly passed. Tanner didn’t care much for forests-if the trail hadn’t been in his district…He sighed. Davidson probably loved working this case-he was always a bit of a redneck. “That means he probably has a hell full of enemies.”
Davidson flicked the page. “Probably. Christ, this guy’s worth a fortune, Pat. If the murderer didn’t leave his driver’s license it’s going to take a hundred years to narrow down the suspects.”
Tanner tapped one of his fingers against the steering wheel. “If Leovitch is the victim. I keep telling you, Lionel, we can’t make assumptions until we see the scene. We can’t just assume he is just because a couple of traumatized hikers identified the body-”
“One of ‘em was an investor in his company, Pat. I recognize the name in this article. Uh-Richard Beck. He runs Beck Enterprises. Used to be a college football player, too, remember?” Davidson was persistent to a fault and sighed deeply when Tanner didn’t sound impressed.
Tanner nodded vaguely to show interest. “Beck? I think I recognize the name. Used to play linebacker for Penn State, right? Pretty suspicious if you ask me, him finding the body.”
“Maybe-but aren’t you the one who always tell me not to jump to conclusions?”
“Ah, fuck you, Lionel.”
All Davidson did was to throw back his head and laugh. “I love you too, Pat.”
--
Detective Patrick Tanner had seen a lot of homicide scenes before. It came with the job; you couldn’t have a weak stomach for that kind of work. The one thing he hated, though, was crowds. There was a huge one now forming before the police barriers.
He did notice with gratitude that the police that arrived first had used their cars as visual barriers between the scene and the outside world. It wasn’t much of a barrier but it told Tanner and his partner that whatever it was, it was going to ruin their lunch. Nice warning, really.
Tanner looked at himself in the rearview mirror before getting out of the car. Huh, I need a trim, he thought briefly touching his cheek where the stubble was getting just a tad too long. He shook his head once, no need to be thinking of that when going into a horrific murder scene.
“Pat, get a move on!”
Shaking his head once again to clear his thoughts, Tanner opened the door and saw that Davidson-Jesus, he wished that Davidson would shrink a foot so he could catch up one of these days-had already gotten out of the door. That man was a giant but moved with the grace of a jungle cat; Tanner always expressed some jealousy at that. “Slow down for a minute and I’ll catch up.”
Davidson turned and mouthed the words, “yeah right”, before starting to talk to someone who was on the brink of breaking into the crime scene.
Tanner shrugged at this before trudging towards the police line. “Detective Patrick Tanner, Stayhaven Police Department,” he stated and flashed his identification at the nearest cop. They nodded and made no movement to stop him as he moved past the police line.
The scene was a mass of human activity: a hive to find out exactly what happened to the victim. By the constant presence of blood on grass, trail, and concrete this had to be the scene of the murder. Tanner pressed by until he stopped in front of a tree. “Oh hell, this is going to be nasty,” Tanner said.
A young man was stabbed to the tree, wearing only a pair of faded blue jeans. His legs had been crossed but his arms were outspread. His hands and feet-Tanner winced, hoping that the bastard had done this after the poor sap was already dead-were pierced with a knife; no blood was trickling down where the knives were so it was doubtful that the victim was alive when that particular modification happened. The thing that really caught Tanner’s attention was the symbol carved into the lower part of the victims torso. Each detail was (lovingly?) carved into the flesh; he could recognize some of the shapes as those of continents. What the hell where they dealing with?
“Before you ask, Detective, it does go all the way around. I’ve checked.” Tanner looked over his shoulder. The coroner, thin-nosed Doctor Anthony Thane, was standing there. Tanner looked skeptical but Thane had never let him down before.
Tanner looked back to the man on the tree. God, the maggots were already crawling into his nose. “Got a cause of death?”
Thane turned to Tanner with a skeptical look. “There’s a knife wound to the back of the neck at the base of the skull. If I had to guess that’s what killed him,” he said flatly. “But this…map, for lack of a better word, was done while he was still alive. See how these areas have started to scab over?”
Tanner cocked his head. He had seen worse scenes before-but nothing like this. What sort of shit did they stir up this time? “I see them, doc. The guy was tortured?”
The coroner stepped back and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “If this was done involuntarily, it’s probable he was indeed. These markings seem to have happened over a period of days. Some of the team has found bandages that were kept to keep this poor guy from bleeding to death by the look of them.”
“Jesus Christ, Pat, someone turned them into Jesus Christ!”
Davidson had arrived; Tanner sighed. This was going to be a long day.