| Cop Shows |
| Summary: | Constin grills the alibi of the late Lessa Morgenfield |
| Date: | 15 Jul 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | As Flies to Wanton Boys |
| Players: |
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| Interrogation Room, Security Hub - Deck 6 |
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| This area is devoid of anything but a table, two chairs and a camera up in the corner. The table is bolted to the floor and there are also hooks in the floor to lock chains to the deck, if the person has been placed in custody and is considered dangerous to the crew. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #139 |
Once again, the interrogation has been delayed by circumstance. This has left one Ensign Mark Ambrose quite a bit of time to consider his situation, cut off from the news of the ship at large. Now, at long last said Ensign has been escorted by two marines in battledress blacks into the small room with the wall size one way mirror and large sergeant in his on-duty tans, standing with clipboard in hand. "Ensign Mark Ambrose," Constin drawls, looking from board in hand to the man of the hour. "Have a seat, sir."
"Hey." He hasn't exactly been treated poorly, this Ensign Mark Ambrose, but the flicker of vivacity in his countenance has long since dimmed. Shuffling forward in his boots, he takes his seat, setting his handcuffed wrists in front of him as the Marines direct. "Got the JAG in here? I figure I'm pretty well and frakked truly," he continues, slightly vacant eyes sliding over Constin's features to the camera in the top right-hand corner of the room. "Might as well give him my confession and be done with it, too. Two birds, one stone."
"That's what we have cameras for, sir," Constin answers the Ensign. "Proceed when you are ready, Ensign, and please clarify for the record that what you are about to say has not been forced from you or coerced in any way." The sergeant regards the man, and waits.
"Yeah." The young man shrugs, staring up at the camera and cracking the barest hint of a smile. It's charming, in a way — betraying just a bit of the easy, arrogant confidence of a fraternity boy strutting out of a sorority house on a Saturday morning. "What he said. I'm Ensign Mark Foster Ambrose, twenty-three years old, born in Gloucestershire on Tauron, and I frakked an enlisted soldier six ways from Sunday because she was pretty frakking bomb in the sack, and seeing as she never even bothered to visit me in here, I figure it's her ass or mine, and why cover for her ass anyway?" Breath. "Happy now?"
"Sir," Constin drawls, with that one word carrying the same disdain it would had he called the young man 'Boy', "Violation of Frat Regs is not in dispute at this point. The questions we two will be resolving tonight are these: whether or not you knowingly engaged in acts of sabotage, murder, and high treason against the Twelve Colonies." An unblinking eye fixes on Ambrose. "You are accomplice to some serious shit, Ensign."
"Whoa, whoa. Now hold up." Ambrose tries to raise his hands in a gesture of deliberate helplessness but finds that his chained wrists are less cooperative than he hopes. "She only asked me to say we were getting it on one night, and I figured hey, since we were getting it on like, all those other nights, what's one more?" A desperate shrug. "Said she'd do something special for me the next time we met up, and bro, what was I supposed to do?"
"You were SUPPOSED to tell the truth to the men of the Military Police Corp," Constin barks back sharply, in the by-now familiar tone of a marine drill sergeant. "You were NOT supposed to falsify information and alibis, which resulted in the release of said Petty Officer First-Class Morgenfield, and the deaths of multiple members of this ship's crew!" A hard glare follows those words. "And now that you have admitted misleading an investigation you are party to those crimes, Ensign. Now, if you ever want to turn twenty-four, you will think back real hard and tell me any other instructions, or suggestions, or implications she left with you before that time she spent in lock-up, sir."
"Damn, dude." It takes Ambrose a moment to process the fact that Constin seems genuinely angry, and another moment to uncover the death threat dropped quite casually in there. "Just — just — just hold up, man, no way you're serious. You're going to set me up in front of a frakking firing squad because I thought with my dick? Shit." An incredulous laugh. "Look, I already said I sure as hell don't plan on going down for her, not now. She didn't tell me anything else — just told me to say I was with her that one night, and after I got slapped on the wrist she'd come back and make it all worth my time. So I got led around by the nose by one of those … what. Femme fatalities or something. That was dumb. Now how the hell was I supposed to know she was going to gun down like, three dudes with an assault rifle or whatever she did?"
"We'll get to what *she* did, Ensign," Constin states curtly, letting a bullish breath out through his nose and forcing a measure of calm over his manner. "She's the real bad guy here, ah know. She'd probably have arranged shit so you didn't even know what you were doing.. You didn't want to hurt nobody, did you? She probably mad you think that 'fifth can from the left' thing was perfectly harmless, didn't she?"
"Man, whatever the hell you're smoking, it must be some rank shit." Ironically, Ambrose now finds himself on more solid ground now that he's internally established that he's got absolutely zero clue what the sergeant is blathering on about. He seems to have revived somewhat, color seeping back into his cheeks and palms. "You're right on one thing: I don't know what I was doing beyond making sweet sweet love to a dynamite cougar, and as far as I know, that isn't a crime you get shot for."
"See if this shit smells better, then," Constin growls back. "Oh-Two recirculators. That's your thing, yeah? So when Morgenfield tampers with the trimix and gasses a whole frakking Cap with Cee-Oh-Two, where do you think that leads us back, Ensign? To you. An Ensign who gets three people killed because he got led around by his dick." A snort. "So now, we've got you- who has admitted to conspiring with Morgenfield to obstruct an investigation, with access to the Cee-Oh-Two that your girlfriend used to spike a flight's canisters.. And WHILE she is in lock-up, a pilot dies of Cee-Oh-Two poisoning in the cockpit, following the exact same Em-Oh."
It's fairly easy to see the oh shit expression writ large on the young man's handsome face, though it still takes a moment before his cocky smirk fades into a more appropriate parting of lips. "I didn't join up for that, man!" Ambrose protests, his hands falling limply onto the table. "Dude, for real, I'm not in the business of killing dudes — frak, that's why I went Engineering in the first place, you know? Most chicks back on Tauron can't tell the difference between a pilot's uniform and mine since they don't bother looking for wings, so like, it's like you roll up into a bar looking fly and bam, five numbers on five napkins in five minutes, yeah?" His words are coming quickly, rapidly; his eyes now flick back up to the camera, as if beseeching whatever kind soul might be viewing the live feed to save him from the raving lunatic conspiracy theorist sitting in front of him. "Isn't it obvious, man? She played me, and I don't mean like, played me, she did all that back in the day, that's how we met, but like — dude. Come on!" Apparently, that's the most coherent plea he's capable of giving.
"Just when DID you meet Petty Officer Morgenfield, Ensign?" Constin asks flatly. "Tell me everything you can about this individual that DOESN'T involve frakking. Who her friends were, who she bitched about, who pissed her off. Who ELSE she might have leaned on to set you up for taking this fall, sir. Help me out here."
"Before the ship even launched." Ambrose's fingers link together as he leans forward, forearms resting against the edge of the table. "I was sent here after graduating from CFA Picon to work with Captain Gabrieli on our build. She was here, too, helping out by running Deck. Before she was put onto the reservists' birds, that is. Just getting everything in order before all the Mark IIs arrived. There weren't many MPs around, you know, back then, and — " A wan smile. "You know. Peacetime. We met at, like, a bar or something on the surface. One thing led to another, and I figure man, I'll just go with it. Hell of a thing to brag about to my mates." As far as the other stuff? "Wouldn't know the rest, man." Despite himself, a vaguely absent grin reappears on his face as he casts about his memory. "Didn't really do much talking."
"Who else knew about you two, then?" Constin wonders with narrowed eyes a moment later. "Anybody who might've helped keep folks looking the other way? Doing you a favor, that kinda thing." A slowly drawn breath, before the topic shifts, "You know anything about a Pee-Oh-Two John Borenstein, sir?"
The young man shakes his head, expression momentarily confused — as it's wont to be. One gets the impression he's really not the sharpest tool in the shed. "Never heard the name. As far as who knew, it was just like me, her, and a couple of guys I used to go out on the town with, that's about it." A faint snort of derision escapes his nostrils. The man rattles off a list of names; then: "Oh. Man, there was this one dude, Goob — Todd Goubeck, but that's what we called him, he's a Deckie too — Goob was, basically, like, all about Lessa. I remember this one time we stole this frakking see-through red bra from the laundry room and stuck it under his pillow with a note we forged — " Ambrose's expression is both amused and … cruel. "Goob bought us all like, three rounds or some shit the next day, being like 'You'll never guess what went down' and — " The memory fades; the ensign sits back in his chair with a contemptuous smirk. "Nice guy. Shit for brains."
"Yeah, not everybody's as smart as you, sir," Constin drawls, bone-dry. "And what about Emile Villon, is that a name you've heard before?" the sergeant wonders, flat in tone. He jots down a note to himself as Ambrose babbles on about the good old days. "Lauren Coll?" he continues prompting names, looking for something to spark in the soup of testosterone and libido that occupies the space between Ambrose's ears.
Ambrose has the good sense to realize that might have been a dig — a second or two after perhaps necessary. "Never heard of either," he says in the meantime. "Probably not my type."
"Alright, sir," Constin mutters, looking up from the clipboard to eye the young Ensign. "As it stands now, you're staring down at leaat one count of Dereliction of Duty, another count of Obstruction of Justice, which- on top of the Frat regs? is bad enough. As it all stands now, you're still the primary suspect in conspiracy to murder, so if anything in regards to this sparks in that mess of hormones you call a brain, you be REAL sure to holler. For now," he looks to the two other marines, "Escort the Ensign back to his cell."
"This is bullshit!" Ambrose proclaims as he's rather forcibly removed from his position by the chair. "Man, all the cop shows I used to watch were lying — if you just come clean, you don't get reamed if you didn't do any important shit like shoot somebody or you know, something like that — " But the rest of his rambling is forestalled when one of the Marines suddenly sends his head into the side of the hatch through which he's exiting.
"Oops," the burly corporal snarls over his whine of protest, a sneer on her homely face as her partner pushes forward too quickly for Ambrose to keep up. Only the wrenching force of their hands keeps the ensign on his feet. "Hey, sarge, think we can say this asshole was resisting arrest or something?" A harsh, brutal laugh. "It's what they did on them cop shows."
Constin looks sharply back up at Ambrose complains of not having done anything 'important'. A flash of genuine anger in his hard, narrowed stare. He can't muster the good humor to chuckle at the handling Ambrose gets on his way out the hatch as Constin lets his breath out in a low curse and regards the clipboard once again. Another thwarted run at resolution, the frustration creeping into his wooden tone as the marine rises and recites the time to the camera, before muttering, "End session."