Red Star

Before The Fire Part 5

Lo and behold, there was a massacre at the coordinates attached to the dart that killed Vanessa The Parrot.

Blood everywhere, the colour of rubies.

The NYPD have beaten them to it and are swabbing, photographing and bagging every piece of evidence they can find.

"Fuck off, Waters!" Sounds through the living room, and she looks up and meets the eyes of Officer Burns.

"You're all done here, I'm coming in," Rosa pulls on a pair of latex gloves and hands pairs to Ralph, who them distributes them to Douglas and Brandon. "Unless you guys have a signed note from the killers too, I think we have a little more merit to being here." She doesn't get any reply apart from a few grunts, so she begins to look around.

She looks around the deceased family's living room for anything that jumps out at her instantly.

"Hey, Douglas, come look at this." She calls. Douglas noisily pulls on his gloves and slaps Brandon's ass as he passes.

Someone's in a good mood.

"What you got?"

"Cameras."

"Burns!" Douglas summons, poking his head through the hallway to hail him from the kitchen. Burns slithers into the room, eyebrows arched and ready to judge.

Kevin Burns is a hateful man. Assumes rather than deduces. Rosa doesn't like him. At all. He's always stealing her cases. And smiles whilst doing it. Anyone who does that is bad in her book.

"Oh, are you still here?" He drawls out once he sees Rosa again, but tenses and composes himself once he sees she's brought Douglas with her. "Sir, it's a pleasure. Anything we can help you with?"

Douglas has a lot of sway in the system. Head of the FBI tends to do that. He can strike fear into anyone who is below him. Which is everyone. 

"Where do these security cameras go to?" Douglas asks, hoping for a study or something, just a computer that can connect to the cameras and tell them who did this.

"There's an iPad we found in a bedroom that might have what you're looking for." Burns even divulges a smile when he's finished.

Rosa nods at Brandon to go retrieve it and throws him her badge. He always forgets his, and a wave of hers will evacuate the bedroom of the NYPD.

Douglas leaves the room with Burns, asking him to show him around.

"Castano, wh-"

"Ralph."

"Whatever. You wanna have a go?" Rosa asks, gesturing to the crime scene.

"Yeah! I've been practising," He moves across the room, between the guarded off areas and towards the stereo. He plugs in his phone and 'Hooked on a Feeling' by Blue Swede begins to fill the room. "Don't ask, this is what I did in Chicago."

"Why haven't you done it so far?" She asks, half out of curiosity and the rest to humour him.

"Because I haven't really got the chance," He replies casually, as if he isn't trying to make a big deal out of it, rolling his hips slightly and sashaying around the room, sniffing and touching things, his eyes eerily focused. "I'm never as good without the music."

This kid is constantly surprising me.

When the song finishes, Ralph pockets the phone and looks at Rosa.

"Poison."

Rosa looks at the gunshot wounds on the victims that lay in a pool of blood in disbelief, then at Ralph.