not cut out for this

who: december and parker
where: the morgue
when: late

December had gotten onto her shift with a few bodies waiting for her and a ton of paperwork. That was the part of the job she hated the most--paperwork. She needed a goddamn secretary or some shit--she was meant to be looking corpses over and trying to determine how they died among other things. Sure, lately it seemed like it was much more an exercise in 'how fucked up was this person's death' but that was just semantics. The reality of the situation was that she had important work to do, and writing shit down in triplicate in some cases just wasn't a priority for her. She found it not only boring but a true waste of her time.

So she was kind of half looking over paperwork, half looking over a body and sitting on the worktop in front of a half autopsied corpse, her mechanical crow 'Poe' with it's dog collar around it's neck and shiny tag next to her. There was a sharp and repetitive clack that sounded every few moments from her heel bouncing against the cabinet beneath her, not that she seemed to notice. It was late, she was the graveyard shift girl, after all, and the dead guy wasn't complaining. He was staying dead, and the other two had already been autopsied, though she had to go over them herself. A lot of people scoffed at Criminalistics. The daytime coroner wasn’t educated in it like she was, and it was still a new science. A science a lot of people found stupid or useless, and it didn’t help they were getting this from a woman. A young woman at that. But she didn’t really give even a little bit of a damn about what any of them thought, and she kept doing her job.

She just hated the paperwork.

Dead bodies didn’t phase Parker - he was much more uncomfortable around people who were still breathing. So another visit to the morgue wasn’t entirely unwelcome - unexpected, yes, but not unwelcome. There was a sort of calm, reflective quality about the deceased that he found to be not entirely unpleasant - at least, that is, after they were cleaned up and made presentable. Although the bodies at crime scenes had interesting stories of their own to tell. And, he supposed, it was Dr. Trent’s job to tease out those secrets they were keeping - a strange profession for a woman, to be sure. He wondered idly whatever had possessed her to make her interested in what most people would consider such a distasteful trade.

He knocked hesitantly at the door, then let himself in. “You wanted me for something?” His gaze took in the full sweep of the room, pausing briefly on each of the bodies before settling on the only person among them who was still moving.

Glancing up, December laid her eyes on Parker. "Hey, Rookie." she said, not uncommon for her. After all, it was pretty much the thing the cops liked to pull--they always sent rookies down to deal with her. It was like a rite of passage. "Reports." she said. "These guys came in this morning. What do you know about the scene?"

If he was bothered by the greeting, he didn’t let on - it was true enough. He walked over to the nearest body and gave it a cursory once-over before looking back at December. “I took photos. Bloody mess. One of the bodies had some paper attached - a page from a book. It was in his mouth. We were trying to figure out how guys like this got caught unawares.” He moved away, to go look at the other bodies. Cleaned up like this, it was almost strange to think they were the same corpses he’d seen earlier at the scene.

"I'll tell you how." December said without looking up. "Cockiness. These sad bastards are mob affiliates, I think. And mob affiliates tend to think they're super special snowflakes, and won't get caught and killed. Or, some of them are that dim, anyways. Might be different these days, what with the ridiculous amount of murders of mobbies lately." She finally glanced at him again, tapping her pen on her lip ring. "What was the page? What book is it from?"

Maybe he was trying to avoid looking at her too much so he wouldn’t be distracted by the facial piercings. He knew enough to keep his opinions to himself, but he didn’t want to be caught outright staring. The bodies were thankfully interesting enough to give him an excuse not to.

“That wouldn’t surprise me. The cockiness, I mean. Does anyone usually claim bodies like these?” It was a passing thought; he wondered if anyone wanted to claim them. He shook his head as he moved on to another. “I have no idea. It was pretty bloody, and I didn’t get a good look. I could go back and get it for you if you’d like - I’m sort of curious myself, to be honest.” It probably wasn’t any of his business, being so far down on the food chain, but he’d been at the scene, taking photos, so he felt that he deserved at least some answers to satisfy his curiosity.

"Depends. Sometimes. If they have family, they usually get claimed." December answered. And that was pretty much the answer for anyone that wound up on her slab. If they had family, someone came to find them. If not? Then generally they were left to rot. "And yeah, go get it. I need to know what it is. I mean, I would imagine it’s from The Tyger, but assumptions aren’t facts, now are they. So, I need to know if it’s connected or not.”

“I just wondered if sometimes people might not want to admit their associations.” He shook away the thought, heading for the door. “Give me a few minutes.” It didn’t take him long to retrieve the item she wanted from the evidence locker - the station was never closed, and had people bustling about at all hours of the day and night, but even so the night shift never quite hummed along with the same intensity of activity that characterized the daylight hours. No one even looked at him twice while he rummaged through the evidence, looking for what he needed. Bag in hand, he locked up and headed back to the morgue.

“Found it.” He held up the bag for December to see.

December glanced up at Parker and arched a brow, giving the guy a 'are you for real?' look. "Seriously? What the fuck kind of family are you used to, who'd just abandon their dead?" she asked. "People don't give a damn what landed them on the slab, they're most of the time just grieving over a loss." She rolled her eyes when he headed to grab the evidence, and looked back up when he got back. She'd been doing paperwork in the meantime. "Hand it over." she said, reaching out for it. "Did you look to see what it was?"

He was totally for real. “It’s only ever been me and my mother, and whatever boyfriend she had at the time. I don’t think she’s one for sentimentality.” He shrugged off her comment. People had come into and out of his life on a regular basis since he was small child. After a while it was hard to look at anyone as anything other than transient. His mother was the only constant in his life, and he sometimes wondered about even that. He handed her the bag, shaking his head no. “I made sure it was the evidence you wanted, but I didn’t look to see what book it might be from. I didn’t want to take that long.”

"Rookie, if you want anything more than to be a beat cop for the short life you'll have, you need to stop being the opposite of helpful." she told him, looking over the evidence. She hopped down from the worktop and brought it over to one of the free slabs she had, turning on the bright, concentrated light there. She leaned over it, looking the page over. "Oh look. Another copy of The Tyger. Only...y'know, more drool covered."

That made Parker blink at her in surprise - he thought he was being helpful. He followed her anyway, curiosity getting the better of him as he peered over her shoulder. “At least he’s a literary criminal.”

"Yes, that definitely makes the fact that he's kinda slaughtered a bunch of people, one in the sickest way I've ever seen--which is saying a lot, by the way--much better. He can read, and has a liking for a poem that was published in the seventeen hundreds. Totally better than your average creep, Rookie, well spotted." December said, shaking her head. She kept looking it over, however, just to be sure there wasn't anything altered from the first. She didn't want to lose a clue, just because people decided something didn't have anything to offer, when it might. Deranged killer types couldn't be expected to be simple.

Parker sucked in a breath, then blew the air out of his cheeks slowly. Maybe it was because he was new. Maybe every rookie was treated this way. He didn’t know, but it was becoming tiresome. It seemed that nearly every conversation he’d had with someone in a position of more authority had ended up with him feeling distinctly humiliated. He was beginning to flounder, becoming more unsure of himself by the day, and he didn’t like it. He sighed, running a hand through his hair, and took another deep breath.

“I have a crazy idea, Dr. Trent, and please, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.” He paused, his eyes flicking from her to the body before them and back again. “Why don’t you teach me? Train me what I need to do in order to be of the most help to you here.”

"I'm not a doctor." December said first. A medical license wasn't actually required to work on a corpse. Any operations she was performing weren't putting anyone in mortal danger, that was for damn sure. She really couldn't make their day any worse, by the time they got to her. "So it's just Miss Trent." She smirked at him. "Or 'Mistress'." she teased. Sort of. "As for training you--that isn't really my job. That's...I don't know. Some jackass upstairs who clearly failed in that endeavor." she said, rolling her eyes. She sighed heavily herself, but leveled her gaze on him again. "Ask a question, Rookie. I can point you in the right direction, if you ask questions. As for how you can be helpful, I need information about the scene. If you don't have it, then okay. But learning how to ask the right questions is a good ninety five percent of your entire job. So, take a look at this guy, or I can pull out another one, and we'll play the 'ask the right question' game. Maybe you'll get a prize." She was serious, though. She’d actually done it before with other green officers, who were flailing around not even knowing what they were missing.

“Oh. I stand corrected, Miss Trent.” His forehead wrinkled and his eyebrows furrowed at the ‘Mistress’, but he didn’t understand the reference so he just let it slide. He shook his head, absorbing the insult. “I know how to be a beat officer, Miss Trent. But I meant here, in the lab. I don’t know what I need to do to be of help to you.” He frowned. “Besides asking questions. But asking the right questions requires knowing more about what you need. I’m more than willing to ask questions, because I want to learn too. But what is it you’re looking for? I was there, I took photos, but I didn’t touch anything. What I was most curious about with this gentleman,” and here he leaned forward again, but was still careful not to touch the body, “was what sort of message was being sent by placing the page in his mouth?”

"You're kinda thick, huh." December noted, though it lacked bite. It was more just an observation. "Look, what I'm getting at here, is observational techniques. Which you need, whether you're on homicide or a beat. You need to have situational awareness, and you need to be able to think in the right directions. This is an exercise in the right directions. If you don't want it, fine. Be on your way. I already told you what I needed was more information about the scene." She watched him get closer to the corpse, but didn't touch him. Which wasn't unusual. It was pretty damn rare for anyone to lay a hand on the dead that didn't have to. "Honestly, if I had to guess, I'd say he didn't have time to gut the guy and stick it in his torso then sew him back up like the last one. So it was a rush job, just the fastest thing that linked back to the original, the whole poem-inside-a-guy thing."

“Fine. I’m ‘thick’. You’ll have to work with what you’ve got, I’m afraid.” He was still looking over the body, more fascinated than he cared to admit by it - but then he looked back at her. “Situational awareness is something I could use more practice with, I’ll give you that. I tend to become too focused on one thing to the exclusion of most everything else at times.” He ran a hand through his hair, brushing the straggly bits out of his face. “This body was the one nearest the entrance, so it was probably a last-minute thing to stuff that paper in his mouth on the way out. Not an after-thought, but this might not have been the body he would have chosen if he’d had more time. I’m guessing. You don’t think he worked alone, do you? Not with all those bodies, surely?”

She considered the question. "I think it is one man. Just...a very very motivated one. Maybe he's got help, but the poem...that seems singular to me. And with the actions, the darkness involved in that, I think it'd be harder to sort of get a lot of people on board for that. I know it's possible, but somehow I just instinctually doubt it." she told him. "Which is entirely baseless, mind. Just my opinion. Now. Without looking over at my crow, what's it's name?" she said.

He shook his head, impressed despite himself at the sheer gutsiness of the man. Wondering how he would have been able to take them all down on his own, trying to run through possible scenarios in his mind. But wait a minute, what? Her crow? She had a crow He blinked at her, frowning. She was joking, right? Trying to trip him up? He couldn’t help himself, he had to take a quick look around the lab to see. “You have a crow,” he stated, as he pointed at it with one eyebrow raised. “Why do you have a crow?” And how had he not noticed it before?

December stared at him. "Wow. You're just going to get utterly eaten alive out there, Rookie." she said. "I have a crow because someone gave him to me." she said, looking back at the mechanical bird. "And if you missed something like him?" She shook her head. "Honey, I'd look into a new line of work. You ain't cut out for this shit."

He stared at her for a long moment, then nodded, defeated. “I know.” He shook his head. “I only wanted to make a difference, y’know?” He stood again, walking over to the bird, fingering it tentatively.

"There's a lot of ways to do that, that totally don't involve potentially dangerous situations, and the ability to make things infinitely worse if you can't actually do your job." December told him, eyes following him as he walked over to Poe, the leather dog collar proclaiming his name. She didn't stop him from looking at the mechanical bird, the statue, or whatever it could be considered. She propped her cheek on her hand and kept watching him for a moment. "Why don't you work at a shelter, or a soup kitchen, or get into politics or something?" she suggested. "Why'd you choose to be a cop, if you aren't cut out for it?" she asked curiously.

“I can do my job.” His voice took on a defensive tone as he shot her an accusing look. But then he shrugged, his shoulders slumping a little. “Respect,” he said immediately, almost as if he’d rehearsed the answer. “Politicians are all corrupt, and all talk. They don’t care about people. They say they do, but they don’t. They don’t know what it’s really like out there, on the streets. I do. I’m going to start volunteering at the Wayward, and I’m looking forward to it, but it’s not enough. Those kids out there need an example. They need to see someone who’s been there and who’s made his way out of the hopelessness. And they need to know that someone is looking out for them.” He stopped poking at the bird and came back to take a seat across from her. He hadn’t meant to even talk this much, but now that he’d started the words kept coming. “For a while I really thought I might go into the priesthood, or try to become a guidance counselor, something like that. They just didn’t seem hands-on enough. I wanted the authority to not only serve the people, but to protect them as well.” He shook his head, gazing over the bodies on the tables. “So far it’s not quite everything I’d dreamed it would be.”

"Don't shoot me a dirty look when I was just agreeing with what you already said, dick." she said first. "Politicians are all corrupt because it's only the corrupt bastards that go for it." December said. "You could be the one straight guy in the bunch. And I don't know if you noticed, but cops don't actually get any respect." she added. "Counselors or priests...those are probably needed too. Not that me and the church get along so well, but that's hardly the point."

He shot her another look, but this one wasn’t quite so harsh as the first, and he inclined his head in silent acknowledgement that she was correct. “I don’t think so. Politics is all a game. Even if someone starts out straight, in order to get anywhere they have to learn how the rules work, and that means bending to them and manipulating them. Pretty soon I’d be just like everyone else. That’s not me.” He shrugged again, knowing that she was right but not sure what he could do about that. Except try to be different, or to make a difference. “Don’t you need some kind of paper or something that says you know how to be a counselor? I’m not exactly swimming in money. And why don’t you get along with the church?”

"I don't think so. I don't know for sure, but I think people can just kind of do that." December said. "So maybe you should do that. The thing about this job is--it's not an ideal. It's not here so you can make a point. It's here because people need someone who's going to be able to do their job, not someone who's wandering around just trying to play to some internal urge to be a role model. Seriously--that seems to be your whole schtick, and it's the wrong reason to be a cop." she told him. "As for why I don't get along with the church, not really your business. I just don't. Ancient history, but not anything I'm keen to discuss." she said, not unkindly, she just didn't talk about that part of her life. She didn't even know what she'd say.

“Oh.” When he got off his shift later, he might have to sit down with himself and have a serious think. “But still - I made it through training, so I must have been doing something right at some time, right?” Seriously, once he’d decided to become a cop, he hadn’t ever looked back and thought there might be something else he could do. “And I think the dead bodies are sort of interesting. In a non-weird sort of way. I mean, I don’t want to sound weird by saying that. I just think they’re interesting.” He could only nod and make sure not to press about her past with the church, though it did leave him wondering.

December watched him for a moment. "Just because someone can pass a test or two and technically do something doesn't mean they should. I mean, I could memorize bible verses and spit them out at people every day but I wouldn't exactly be doing the job of a priest, now would I?" she posed, offering up the alternative perspective. "You definitely sound weird by saying that." she told him, smirking faintly. "And I don't usually refer to them as 'dead bodies'. I usually just think of them as 'the dead'. And they are interesting. I know why I think so, why do you?"

“My passion is lacking, in other words. You’re not wrong.” Why was he admitting this? And would she tell anyone else? He hoped not. At least not before he’d thought more about it. He shook his head, offering her a tiny, wry smile in return. “That’s about right.” He stood up again, leaning over the closest body. “The dead. More respectful.” He shook his head, trying to find the words. “The mystery. They know what happened to them, but they can’t tell us. We have to figure it out, find out their story using only the clues that were left behind. It’s a puzzle, and it’s almost irresistible.”

"I don't even know if it's your passion alone, I think you're just into this for the wrong reasons. And that'll mean you're doing everything for the wrong reasons, and that won't help in what you're doing. You need to be focused elsewhere, for police work. And idealists in this town die ugly deaths, sweetie." She kept watching him as he spoke. "See, I always see it as they do tell us. We just have to know how to listen. Speak a different language." She drummed her nails on the countertop, just once. "You know most people would consider that creepy. The whole 'yay, puzzle!' point of view." she pointed out, even if it didn't sound like she thought it was.

“You’re not the first person who’s told me I’m going to get myself killed.” He raised his eyebrows at her, amused despite himself. He didn’t doubt it, but it wasn’t something he dwelled on. But maybe there was something to it if more than one person remarked on it. He glanced back at her over his shoulder, now genuinely curious. “How did you learn their language, Miss Trent? I don’t think it’s creepy at all.”

"I went to school for it. Though the interest was there to start with." She answered. "But I've been studying Criminalistics. A lot of people think it's bullshit, that there's nothing that'll beat good old fashioned detective work, but I don't believe that. I think if you know what you're looking for, just studying the departed tells you far more than you'd think."

“That’s what fascinated me about police work in the first place - the idea that one day I might make detective and get to work on the puzzles. How long were you in school?” He still couldn’t afford it, so he had no idea why he was even asking. “The other cops don’t appreciate what you’re doing here? Really?”

"A while." December answered. "And this has barely even started. So yeah, there's a lot of people who don't think it's going to last, or that it'll really help. I'm pretty sure at least half of the reports that I send upstairs are shoved in a file somewhere and no one even reads it. Like the only thing they'd actually take out of it is 'cause of death' which, sure, is important, but so is everything else. Like 'this guy technically died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen, but he was in one hell of a fight before that, and he looks like he got worked over for several hours due to the bruising patterns'."

“Really?” His eyebrows crept up again, this time from surprise. “Several hours? And you can tell all that from... what did you say? His bruises? How?” She had piqued his interest now, to the point where he was actually tempted to poke at the body. “I don’t know what happens to the reports, I’m afraid. I don’t get to see them - I’m not important enough. But I would, if I could.”

December walked over to one of her drawers, and after glancing at the information on the outside, she opened one up and pulled out a corpse. "Coloring." she said. "See how some of these are really dark, and some aren't? That'll give me a timeline. And y'know, some people have healing bruises and the like, or have scars or other old injuries that can tell you what kind of life they happened to live before they got here. Like people in the Sprawl? They tend to have more scars than people coming from uptown." She leaned back against the door. "And it's not that you aren't important enough, rookie, it's that it isn't your job. Quit the self deprecating bullshit. It won't help you in life. You stand up straight or you get kicked in the balls and robbed--don't give anyone a target."

He nodded, knowing full well that he was an anomaly in that regard, as far as not having any scars. No visible ones, anyway. “Oh. I thought I just wasn’t high enough on the totem pole.” He hadn’t meant to be self-deprecating, not in this instance. But that was still good advice. “Don’t be a target - people have said that to me before, too.” But back to business. “Okay, the coloring - the darker ones are fresher, right? And you can still tell that after someone is dead?”

Man, this guy was going to be dead fast. He was going to wind up on her slab, she just knew it. "You aren't, but it doesn't have anything to do with importance. You aren't a homicide detective. Therefore it isn't your job unless someone says it is." she explained. "There are degrees." December answered. "And there's the part where blood settles at the lowest point, so there'll be bruising that's got nothing to do with injury, it's just how they've been positioned. But yeah, you can tell that sort of thing after death. Like after the heart stops, blood stops flowing, so I can generally tell if someone's been mutilated after death too. Like we get some pretty bad corpses on the night shift, but a lot of times it's all stuff that's happened post-mortem."

“Oh. I guess it’s the whole ‘rookie’ thing. Making me paranoid.” He listened carefully to what she was saying, taking it all in with an almost childlike fascination. “So if they get injured after death, there won’t be any blood? I hadn’t even thought about that before.” He wondered what sort of people would continue to attack a corpse after it was... well, dead. Or... “Can you tell if a person or an animal messed with a body?”

"There'll be some blood--just not a lot. Not like a wound will produce while the person's still breathing." she explained. So if I get someone in on my slab here and they've got fourteen stab wounds, but most of them are pretty unimpressive, blood-wise? It's a good chance that that one in the kidney was the first one to land. And yeah, sure. Animals tend not to stab people. Or hit them with pipes or shoot people. If there's bite marks and chewed bits? Animals have messed with a body." she smirked at him lightly.

“That’s amazing. It really is. I don’t understand why other people wouldn’t take this seriously.” If he noticed the smirk, he didn’t make mention of it - he was still too interested in looking over the body and trying to see what she saw on it. “So you can tell what type of weapon was used, too? I mean besides the obvious guns and knives. You can tell if someone was hit with a pipe?”

"Yeah. They crush bone a lot, or leave indentations, or just the really clear long thin mark on someone. Or y'know, you get a whole field full of people who were impaled by them." December said, since she'd had that recently and all. Not a fun time.

He winced at the thought, making a face. “Ouch. Do you have any help down here, Miss Trent? It sounds like a lot of work.”

"Not really. There's me, and the guy during the day. That's about it, at the moment." she told him. "Usually it's not so much to deal with. But lately? Yeah. Not so much. Lately it's been a flood down here." she admitted.

“If you needed any help, I... I mean, that is, if you wanted me to, I might be able to. I could see if I could get reassigned on some shifts. To help you out. If you wanted, that is.” Good lord, it sounded like he was a stammering schoolgirl. He wasn’t trying to ask her out, for goodness’ sake. He was just offering some help, with the opportunity for some learning for himself. “I want to learn the language.”

Arching a brow, December considered. Then she sighed. "If that's what you want, Rookie, I wouldn't turn down help." she said. "But for now, get your ass out of here. Go, find something to do, and see if you can get assigned to some nights."

“It’s what I want.” He was interested, it would help her out, and best of all - he might not get himself killed out on the streets. He might even make himself useful to her and the force. “I’ll talk to my supervisor.” He headed for the door, but stopped just after he opened it, turning back to her. “Thank you, Miss Trent. For a few things.” He nodded at her, then left to head back upstairs. Maybe he’d see what Danny was up to.

"Have a good night, Rookie." December called, then turned back to her work, wondering just how long this one was going to last.