Murder in the First - Day 3

If it had been any other time of day when I had walked in Ryan, the sound of him yelling in surprise and fear would have brought all the boys in blue to investigate why people were screaming in Rogers' office when he was elsewhere in the world.

But even at 2am, I wasn't so sure that Ryan screaming wouldn't cause the officers on duty to fly into a panic, find him and arrest him.

So I made sure that my hand was placed firmly over Ryan's mouth when I woke him up.

This seemed like a sensible precaution on the surface, however I had failed to take into account that Ryan had been woken up like this before by men with big guns and malicious intent. So his reaction to a hand over his mouth wasn't exactly normal.

In short, he bit me.

If it had been any other time of day when I had walked in on Ryan, the sound of him yelling in surprise and fear would have brought all the boys in blue to investigate why people were screaming in Rogers' office when he was elsewhere in the world.

But even at 2am, I wasn't so sure that Ryan screaming wouldn't cause the officers on duty to fly into a panic, find him and arrest him.

So I made sure that my hand was placed firmly over Ryan's mouth when I woke him up.

This seemed like a sensible precaution on the surface, however I had failed to take into account that Ryan had been woken up like this before by men with big guns and malicious intent. So his reaction to a hand over his mouth wasn't exactly normal.

In short - he bit me.

And unlike other people my reaction to this wasn't to grip my hand in pain but something slightly more, well violent.

I punched him in the side of the head.

It didn't take long for it to descend into a bit of a brawl, which given the amount of noise we were making, I'm surprised didn't have men pounding up the stairs to investigate.

As it was, it took all of five minutes for Ryan to wake up properly, realize it was me and not one of the seventy-five different people who currently wanted him dead and stop fighting me.

The argument could always be made that if I hadn't fought back then we wouldn't have been brawling for five minutes as he would have stopped and realized it was me much earlier, but then again I hadn't had the chance to fight anyone in a while and it is such a good workout.

Ryan sat down and I told him what Fred had asked me to do. Ryan laughed - a lot and then told me I should leave it alone.

This wasn't completely unexpected.

Ryan had never wanted to get me too involved with his problems. Yes, he'd go to Fred when it was something he thought his older brother could sweep under the carpet, but big things like this were things that he tried to keep us both at arm’s length over.

It took about an hour of us arguing in hushed voices for him to not agree at all to me investigating the murder and me saying in no uncertain terms that I was going to find out who was responsible for Sonya Lesner's death whether he wanted me to or not.

There is just something about the Barlow men that just make me want to tear my hair out at times. I think it is their stubborn, self-sacrificing attitude, but it could be something else.

However I knew that Ryan was safe, well hidden and that I could access the police records through Rogers' computer without too many issues when the moment came for that. But first I needed to investigate what had been left at the crime scene and who had been in the area. Most of the witness probably wouldn't talk to the police, but with a little persuasion would talk to me.

Hunting the Priest Killer - The Aftermath

It turns out that Fred being stupid made me angrier than even Harry expected.

Fred is insisting that I was worried because he was in danger and so was driven to desperate action. I deny this most earnestly since 1) Fred is a moron and 2) He's just plain wrong.

Harry has informed me that our pitch battle against the forces of the underworld i.e. Bill Sykes, was more of a fairly one-sided barrage from me that caused Sykes and the Snake Devils to hide under barrels and tables until the reinforcements arrived...and when I say reinforcements I mean the police arrived to arrest them.

Harry had called them when I started indiscriminately shooting everything that moved, thinking that having back up might be necessary...go figure!

Fred escaped the hail of bullets, though not because I was intentionally not aiming for him. He was rather worse for wear, some minor internal injuries and a concussion that granted was not helped when he was hit round the head with my hand clutching a heavy pistol.

But this is all slightly ahead of where we should be, after all, the last I told of this little misadventure, Harry, Fred and I were all tied to chairs in a domestic setting.

From what Harry relates, the chair I was sitting on I splintered into kindling by leaping and thrashing about in my bonds like I was some form of demented shark crossed with a rabid dog. From this point on I felt that most of his retelling was over-exaggerated so in the interest of preserving my integrity and reputation for only reporting the absolute honest truth, I hand you over to Harry Lee (I apologize for my poor judgement in this matter)

Nicolette Mace: the Raven Siren is not a creature that most men want to cage. There is a small number of people who think that's a good idea, but they tend to be the owners of business, cars, hospitals and cities that want to stem the wide spread destruction that follows in her path.

Bill Sykes had just achieved his ambition of leading the Snake Devils gang, some considered them to be the roughest and toughest hombres the city has ever seen, I think the Devil's Hole Gang were more threatening.

Siren and I were tied to chairs in the dining room. There was a lamp in the corner casting long shadows and a cloud of dense cigarette smoke settled at my eye level. Sykes was making the biggest mistake any man can make - he was daring the wrath and scorn of a woman who is bordering on being a psychopath at the best of times. 

"Oh and that precious priest, it was a pleasure to kill him, like it will be your lover boy in the kitchen." 

I'm not sure which part of his statement made her more angrier, whether it was the admission of guilt or if Sykes referring to Fred as Siren's lover. It was probably something like a fifty fifty split, but just one of those in a statement would have been enough to make her lose it. 

She started to strain and thrash as though she was possessed and someone was trying to exorcism demons. The next thing I knew was the chair she was tied to splinted to well splinters. Three gang members tried to rush her but found themselves thrown through the wall and windows. Sykes fled to the kitchen to try and find a shield as Siren picked up some errant guns. For some reason she cut me loose and I thought it wise to phone the station for back-up, after all I was not about to try and calm her down on my own.

She started firing at everything in sight, so I hide behind the sofa as she pelted the windows, walls, furniture and everything but Fred with gunfire.

Sykes ended up surrendering and was arrested the moment that the police cars turned up on the scene and had wrestled the guns from Siren's hands.

Fred made some stupid comment about knowing that she cared and got belted round the head with her fist and 9mm.

There's not much I can say about Siren that she wouldn't threaten to shoot me for, but I can say this - she is nothing but consistent in being so terrifying when defending Fred and adamant that she'd be better off with him dead - women, go figure!

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Snow

Waking up to a world that has become white overnight has never been overly thrilling for me. It's not because that snow is not fun to play in. In fact, last year when there was a complete white out of the city, the police department invited me to join in their city wide snowball fight. The detectives vs. the sergeants and the constables. Naturally as a private detective, I was assigned to the detectives' side, which meant that I was facing off against Fred. I took endless pleasure in pummeling him with snow for all the times he has had me arrested. Equally he took the opportunity to try and bury me in avalanches for causing him so much trouble over the years.

Most satisfying of all the detectives emerged victorious, earning me bragging rights. What I didn't know at the time was that the inspectors didn't know that the snowball fight had taken place and due to their exclusion from the battle, they banned all future such engagements.

It's not that it's cold. It's cold most of the time in my office, especially when I can't afford to pay the heating bill. It's something I have become very gradually acclimatized to and even developed a mild resistance towards it. It's not that it's wet either.

My biggest problem is that the world being white means that I stand out. The shadows are diminished by the light reflecting powder, and so my favourite places to slink around no longer exist. I dress in black, hence my moniker, but black stands out on white. Trying to hide from people trying to kill me becomes infinitely more difficult when you haven't any camouflage.

If this continues much longer I think I will have to change to being the Ivory Siren...as long as I live that long.

Hunting the Priest Killer - Day 1

With the capture of Henry A. Weldon out of the way and no new, interesting work heading my way and by interesting I mean well paying, I now have the time to hunt down the scumbag responsible for killing Patrick.


My first idea was to see what the police knew about the whole affair. There are two ways of learning about what the police know: 1) You take the officer in charge out for dinner or drinks, get him drunk and ask him or 2) You break into the police station and look at the case files. Since the officer in charge of the investigation was Harry Lee, it wasn't a good idea to get him drunk. Mainly because last time we had been in a bar together, Fred may have ended up throwing Harry through the window. We're all keen not to have a repeat of that incident.


Breaking into the police station isn't all that hard if you happen to have the keys of one nameless sergeant, who has always been very careless about where he leaves things lying around.    Not that I got the idea for this from watching Bill & Ted... Still if Fred finds out I have them he, at least, won't send me to military school in Alaska.


There are also perfect times for breaking into case files, namely lunchtime. For some reason the filing room is completely unmanned between the hours of 12 and 1 so it didn't take much to slip in and look over the notes.


All evidence suggested that the killing was gang related. No leads had been found as to which gang was responsible or what the provocation was. It's always so much fun to get so much information. 


Interestingly it was still useful in some small part. No gangs are known to operate in this particular part of town, especially not within spitting distance of my office and flat. There are also only three gangs that could operate in the area as it means they don't have to cross into anybody else's territory to get there. This did help a lot, so I just had to narrow it down to one gang and then maybe two or three morons who had made the biggest mistake of their lives.


Time to go talk and see what my friend Mitch has to say.