| Zeus's Eagle Comin' |
| Summary: | Omar — ahem, Zeus's Eagle — corners Kincaid about the Langer case. |
| Date: | 20 Feb 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | Omar Comin' |
| Players: |
  |
| Ship's Library — Deck 9 — Battlestar Cerberus |
|---|
| Racks of books extend deep into this room, nearly darkening the overhead lights towards the back. The shelves are neatly labeled to each category with nearly everything represented here. Fiction, Sci-Fi, Romance, and everything down to comic books has been loaded up onto the shelves. A smaller research area at the back has a large table for maps to be opened-up. Nearer the door is a small library of movies that covers some of the most recent blockbusters and flows through some of the more campy movies from about two decades before. Next to the door, a Petty Officer can usually be found at a desk to help someone checkout their selections. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #359 |
Some Marines are manly marines. They run and hit things and do physical training and go to the range with rifles. Other Marines are — well, then there's Kincaid. He's holed himself up in the library in his off-duty 'uniform,' and has a book in his lap that he reads rapidly, eyes scanning from right to left. Its title? "Civilian Policing — Theory and Practice." It's a standard criminology text.
Kincaid hasn't made himself particularly hard to find, which suits Petty Officer Second Class Omar Mason just fine. The pudgy orderly tiptoes past a pair of necking ensigns (but not before taking a good long look); then, padding down a row of books with surprising agility, he waddles into the Marine's line of sight, plopping himself down on the opposite side of the table. "Hey," he hisses, wide face breaking into a wider grin. "Hey you. You've got a minute, right? Yeah. Yeah, I know you've got a minute, because you don't go back on duty for another two and a half hours."
Call it the reporter instincts. Kincaid is sitting up at once, laying his book flat on the table. When someone randomly walks up and hisses like that, it usually means one of two things: The person has juicy info or he's a crank. Not that the two are mutually exclusive. "Well," he says finally. "You've got me figured out. But I'm not sure I know who you are, Petty Officer …" Insert your name here.
"Om — " the man begins, before tapping his fingertips against the table with a nervous giggle. "Oh man," he finishes, awkwardly. "Just call me a little bird, okay? Or actually. No, not a little bird. A golden eagle, man, because that eagle's on the side of right and good. And eagles are pretty frakkin' huge. Did you see this video of that eagle picking up a frakking sheep and dropping it off a cliff? Yeah, that's me, Om — " It takes a lot more effort for him to bite back the disclosure this time. "Want to know who my sheep is?" he asks, leaning forward.
Kincaid twitches, as if he wants to reach for pad and paper, but he suppresses it. "Sure, Golden," says the detective with a certain suppressed humor in his voice. "Tell me what you've got in your beak." He pushes the book to the side now, so there's not a barrier between the two of them.
"Golden. I like that. Golden. Better than bald, or two-headed, or Zeus', or - wait. Wait wait wait. Zeus' eagle. I like that better. But anyway." It's almost as if Omar hasn't really heard Kincaid's question, so quickly does he natter on. "You know that smug, tall, oily frak who's been stirring shit up the past few months? That guy, oh, what's his name, what's his - "
"Piers Rene-Marie." Somehow, Kincaid has the fellow's name right on the tip of his tongue. Call the swarthy Virgon his nemesis. "I know him. What's the cliff you've got him over?" Somehow, Kincaid plays along with the ridiculous metaphor.
"Yeah. Yeah, Piers. What a frakking name. Who the frak names their kid Piers? Like, what, one frakking pier wasn't good enough? He needs to be Piers frakking plural? But yeah. Yeah, Piers. That's him." Omar, once sitting, now stands — pushing himself forward on the table so his face is very much in Kincaid's personal space. The faint smell of onions suffuses the air. "If Piers is the sheep, I'm the man who makes the sheep go away. Because I saw him kill that woman."
Wince. "Saw him?" Kincaid manages to keep his nose from wrinkling too much as he asks the question. "No kidding. From what I understood, you just saw them go into the stairwell." He seems to have connected Stavrian's 'source' with the portly person in front of him. Unless, somehow, there just happens to be two witnesses to Marissa Langer's death.
"Okay. Let me back up. I didn't actually see him kill her. But I could have. You know what I mean?" Omar winks as he withdraws back to his chair, his smile turning just a bit more sinister. "Look at the picture. Marissa. Beautiful, stunning, gorgeous, with the tightest ass this side of Canceron. Walking down the stairwell, hair going everywhere, saying 'No, no, I'm through with you!' and then. And then that son of a bitch's walking down after her, arms waving, because he's so used to getting his way, saying 'Don't you dare walk away from me!' before BAM she gets crushed. Now all that actually happened. You just need to let me get a little creative about where."
"Uh-huh. Right." Kincaid nods. "So let me just get this straight. You heard her say she's done with him and you heard him say that she shouldn't dare walk away from him. And you saw them walk into the stairwell. You just didn't see what happened after that." A beat. "Do I have this right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that's it." Omar turns his palms up to what passes for a sky aboard a large metal tube. "But I could have seen the rest."
"Right. Of course." Kincaid seems less than impressed by what Omar 'could have seen.' Instead, he tries to redirect the conversation. "You took some photos when Langer was in the morgue, right? I bet you remember them real well, up here." He taps the side of his head. "How could you not, right? A fine specimen like that." He tries not to gag at his own playing into Omar's — psyche.
"Oh yeah. Yeah, she was all busted up. Real frakking shame. Where were her gods then?" Omar actually looks a little abashed at the memory of the dead woman — and just a little embittered. "Look, I don't know nothing about those pictures. That's J's thing, because J's a frakking genius. But J came and told Omar you needed a break in the case, and so Omar comes over and gives you the godsdamned break you need." He's so worked up that he doesn't really notice that he just divulged his name. "She was breaking up with him, okay? He was giving back all her bras and jewelry and clothes when they went into that staircase. What the frak do you call that in law-land — oh, it's on the tip of my — oh yeah. Motive, hel-LO?"
"Yeah. Yeah. I've got that, Zeus's Eagle." If Kincaid noticed the name being dropped — and Kincaid noticed — he doesn't let on, going along with the ridiculous code name. "I got it real good. And that's good. But just one thing that wasn't making sense to me. In one of those photos? It's like she's got a mark on the back of her neck, like an earring or something stabbed there, but Langer's ears? She's not pierced. And man, if I could just figure that out, I bet I could break the damn case wide open."
Omar sits in silence for thirty whole seconds, which in Omar time is the equivalent of about a decade. Eyes squeezed shut, fingers running through dandruff-speckled hair, he forces himself to think back, spinning through his carousel of spank-bank images en route to —
And then —
"Oh my gods," he breathes. "The motherfrakking bangle. He was holding her motherfrakking bangle."
Kincaid can wait. He's patient. He's patient. He just takes it in. "Well, that'll do it," says the military police officer finally. "That would explain the mark. All right." He nods. "You've been a big help. Hey. I just had one other question — the doc that did Langer's autopsy. Anything off about him? You know, queer or any dirt on him or anything?"
"Nah. That guy?" Omar looks a little shaken, his swarthy skin having turned just a bit pale, but his voice at least is back to full-auto. "Just incompetent. CMO dead, Deputy CMO dead, Deputy to the Deputy CMO dead — after the chromeheads hit, it's not like we had our top-notch people."
"Sure. Okay. 'Course." There is a mental scratching out of that part in his list of things to run down. A final pause. "Hey, Eagle. You saw them go into that stairwell. How long was it before the Cylon attack that happened that day?"
"Five minutes, maybe? Tops." Omar giggles again, screwing up his face as his dirty fingernails rise to squeeze a blackhead out from the top of his nose. "Hey. Hey, yeah. Maybe Piers is a skinjob too. Just a thought."
Kincaid wrinkles his nose. Ew. Ew. Ew. "Yeah. Maybe." It's like the thought has occurred to the detective, too. Finally: "Well. Hey. Thanks for finding me, man. I know you're taking a risk doing this. I'll do my best to keep you out of it, okay? Just — if you know anyone in the records department that might owe a debt to this Piers guy or something — someone that might owe him some favors, let me know, okay? Just a few loose ends I want to wrap up."
"Right. Yeah. No problem." Omar pushes himself up from the chair with a balled-up fist. "Remember — you don't know who the frak I am. Unless you hang the guy by his own scarf. If you do that — " The man's dark eyes gleam with amusement. "A medal would be nice."
"I'll see what I can put together, Eagle." There's a wry sound to Kincaid's farewell. "Thanks for not coming by, huh?" And with that, he pulls back his book in front of him, goes back to his reading. Visitor? What visitor?