Homicide 101

Who: Jakob and Sam
Where: Police HQ, the coroner's office (basement level)
When: midday

If they'd been shrewder men, Jakob might have liked the coroner's staff. They were certainly smart men and women in most senses; well learned, well spoken, given to critical thought. But they lacked a certain life, a sharpness that Jakob needed to find when he considered someone worth dealing with frequently. At least they were obedient when it came to rank, a fact Jakob appreciated now as he stood alone in one of the examination rooms, walking between six rickety carts that each held a body.

They were the discoveries from Bedlam, and they had to go, so said the chief medical examiner on the police staff. Six unknowns took up too much room in this city, and given that they would likely stay unknown? It was room that could easily be freed up by one shipment to the crematorium and a scattering of ashes in Potter's Field. But Jakob didn't like to let any mystery go unsolved, not easily at least, and after his last talk with Mina he'd begun thinking again. He hadn't visited his desk yet today, instead puttering around the department to pick up files from Vice, Organized Crime, and even a few dusty old entries from Homicide. They were puzzle pieces that he thought might fit, but if he was going to make them do so, he needed freedom from the scrutiny of his lessers.

More than that, he needed a second set of wits that he could rely on, and in this department? There was only one person he'd trust to fill that role. He'd sent one of the clerks from the coroner's department upstairs ten minutes ago now with a simple assignment; find Detective Tyler and have her join him down here. Admittedly, he'd also made them wheel in the radio from the central basement desk, and that was just a bit of hubris on Jakob's part. Sometimes authority could be stretched in plain sight, and other times? It had to be broken apart, but never in public. This was a stretching, but Jakob honestly liked the soft strains of Delta blues coming through the oversized box: they kept him company while he waited.

Sam had been busy going through the case files that were suddenly left in her possession. The fact that the two detectives who had given her the files and had suddenly decided that now was the perfect time to take a leave of absence made her suspect that these were going to need some coordinating with Organized crime, which always gave her that feeling of familial betrayal. So when the pale and vaguely creepy clerk from the freezers came looking for her, Sam was relieved to follow him down to see what on earth it was that Jakob was demanding.

It was oddly appropriate for the strains of 'Hellhounds on My Tail' to be wafting from one of the rooms in the morgue and Sam stepped in with an amused look on her face, watching her partner wait around. "Trying to create a certain mood here, Hollis?" she asked, taking a glance at the six bodies laid out between them. There was something creepier when you looked at cleaned and autopsied bodies versus their initial discovery that was often times brutal and bloody. Sam couldn't be entirely certain which one she preferred.

"Only if I were the hellhound," Jakob answered evenly, unfazed by her arrival. He glanced up to Sam with a faint grin in place, more dressed down than he ever was beyond outside of work. His tie was off, sleeves rolled and hands damp from his most recent washing after handling one of the bodies. "But even then, I'm not sure I'd have a sinner to pursue. Not that I'd have to look far in this city..." He chuckled dryly, moving between two of the benches and lifting one corpse up a bit by the shoulder. The bruising on his back was even sharper with the pallor of death around it, and this close to it? The body was definitely beginning to smell, cooler temperatures or no. "I believe we may have a chance of identifying our dear six strangers who were found outside of Bedlam."

Sam wrinkled her nose a little bit but walked over to stand across the table from him. "So are we thinking that they're not some of Bedlam's boys?" she asked curiously, leaning in a little closer to take a look at the bruising. "Bruising like this can't have happened long before TOD." She looked over at the other bodies before looking at Jakob. "So... new take on the usual dump job?" It wasn't so much of a question, per say, but a stab on the best theory she could come up with on a spot.

Jakob nodded a little, hefting the body a bit higher to show more bruises on the back before he settled the corpse back down. "Something to that effect, yes," he answered, "We'll need confirmation from the coroner, but I've been compiling details between these six. And a faint framework emerged. The bruising, first of all?" He moved to pull the sheet down one man a bit, revealing faint bruises on his ribs and stomach. "These and the shoulder marks are patterns consistent with blunt force trauma, whereas the spinal and pelvic bruising suggest blood pooling both from exposure and post-mortem causes. These men were beaten to death, Tyler," he said grimly, looking her way.

"Baseball bat?" she asked, taking a look at the bruise pattern on the body. "Or a pipe. Were there splinters at all found in the skin?" Sam looked up, noting his grim look. "One person couldn't have done this on their own." There'd certainly be a lot of upheaval the past couple of weeks in gangland. And if there were common injuries, that could help narrow the list to only a few gangs; sects in the larger picture. "So who could be pissed off enough to beat six grown men to death?" It was half-rhetorical. Find out who had a reason to be that angry and the list became even smaller.

"I had wondered that myself," Jakob mused as he rounded one body and walked down a few to stop by another, "And no, no splinters. A pipe would be most likely, for more reasons than just those suggested by the bruises." He pulled the sheet back from the body he stood by to reveal a balding man with a sallow chest dappled with pockmarks. "Measle scarring here, you see?" he asked, nodding to the body between them, "And that one there, though I suggest you skip the sight yourself, has clearly never seen a dentist in his life. These were poor men, I believe, and if their killers were too? They would use whatever implements would be handy. That idea removes the DiGiovanni wholesale from the equation."

Sam nodded, mentally filing the information away. "Do you think it might be a cover up? Like a job was handled and all witnesses were then taken out?" She straightened, going over to the folders that were on the counter by the radio. "What's your theories?"

Moving to join her as he covered a body back up, Jakob reached into her space just enough to tap the edge of a specific folder. "I think they were gangland victims, most definitely," he mused, "This came from Organized Crime, it's an ongoing list of known execution methods. Where they strike on a body, what message certain wounds are supposed to send, so on and so forth. I started trying to draw connections from it to any specific faction? But savage beatings are universal." Jakob frowned in thought, shaking his head slowly as he ruled out options silently before speaking again. "I would've said Bartelucci, for the waterfront losses, but they're known for bombings. Not beatings. Jade Lotus? They wouldn't dare this, and if they did they would do it in a manner that would garner more attention." Stepping back with his arms folded over his chest, a gleam started in Jakob's eye as he looked to Sam. "O'Malley, however..."

"O'Malley has nothing to lose. And if there was anything to lose, you have to keep it quiet before more of them start bailing," Sam continued on his train of thought, although her own eyes didn't hold the gleam that was in his. She looked down at the folder that Jakob had pointed out, taking a look at what was inside. Gruesome. "Right?" Because he was still the experienced detective in this and she was still the trainee.

"Right," Jakob confirmed as he nodded, "Or so it would seem. A theory is no good without confirmation, of course, but we are farther than we were in unraveling this mess. What I've seen in the files, though? It suggests that after their losses and exposure, the O'Malleys would likely turn on each other to grab what can be grabbed." Sighing, he walked back down the row of bodies as he shook his head. "If we don't have anything active waiting, we should gather the coroner's headshots of these men," he said as he walked, "Sweep some of the local bars, see if anyone can put a name to a--" He'd been about to say more, of course, but that had been before Jakob accidentally bumped the foot of one of the corpses, before a sharp crack echoed in the small room and the foot flopped loosely from the ankle.

Sam had been listening closely, nodding at appropriate intervals as she made a mental list of what they knew and what they didn't but then Jakob bumped the body and she stared, eyes widening in surprise, actually gasping. That was -- that foot was flopping. Sam went a little green and she swallowed down the taste of bile in the back of her throat. "Please tell me he had a broken ankle before that," she squeaked, unable to help it. It was different than the usual corpse at the crime scene.

Jakob crouched low to investigate the dangling foot as his brow creased. "Not according to the coroner's reports," he murmured, "Though it was shoddy, to be sure." Tugging the sheet back a bit, Jakob scowled at the deep blotches of bruising covering the back of the calves and ankles, pushing the broken foot lightly and listening to the scrape of bone. He didn't move for a moment after that, considering this new anomaly. "Find the Organized Crime file, please," he suddenly said, "Look up the known O'Malley signature techniques." And with that request, Jakob moved to another body, gingerly twisting each foot and grimacing when one of them cracked and ground like the ankle of the first.

"Can I leave while you do that?" Sam asked, turning even more green. "Because that is really, seriously sick." Still, she was going through the files, finding the right one. She flipped through the pages, skipping past the pictures because now she just really couldn't handle that. She skimmed down the list curiously, focusing on the words and not on Jakob messing around with the broken ankles on corpses. "Are they all on the same foot?" she asked, looking down the O'Malley list.

He smirked to himself, leaving the other bodies alone and moving to wash his hands yet again. "The two I've checked weren't, and a further comparison would mean you needed to leave the room," he pointed out easily, as if none of it bothered him in the least. It didn't, really, and that was a mixture of his own clinical detachment and his long career investigating murders. "But they're clean breaks for certain, though not terribly precise. Still, a lack of bone fragments or lacerated skin makes the injury fit with our blunt force trauma scenario," Jakob noted as he turned on the handsink, looking Sam's way, "And the files?"

Sam lifted the appropriate page and set it on top of the file as she came over to him, holding it up so he could see it while he washed his hands. "I think the O'Malley's were certainly pissed enough to break some bones." Ew, broken bones. She resolutely kept her eyes from the corpses, focusing on Jakob's face. "And it's in their track record."

Jakob's eyes darted across the page as he washed, nodding just a touch as if it confirmed enough for him. "So it is," he agreed readily, "Such brutality. This definitely makes it more than possible that these men were O'Malley, but we'll need confirmation. Luckily, I know of a few former members of their ranks who may be able to identify the deceased." And the way he saw it, Brett Trent still owed him one for delivering everything he had. The fact that Jakob had been undoing his own work was irrelevant; he'd done a job and now he had need of a far smaller favor in return. "But I believe we should return the workspace to its' rightful owners, though I'll skip on my thought of treating for lunch," he mused with a smirk, turning off the faucet, "Your pallor suggest that eating isn't a high priority just yet."

Sam nodded readily, quite prepared to leave because damn, it gave her the creeps, especially with the music still playing in the background. The morgue was an unsettling place to begin with, but to add music and broken ankles was getting too much for her. "You can buy the coffee today," Sam suggested as she boxed the files back up. "So you can go with your contacts, I can do some cross-referencing in open cases, see if anyone was reported missing, those at large. The usual." A slim chance, especially if they were mob boys, but there was always a chance.