Chapter 4 – Adelle
Standing before Dave was a tall, slender, brunette female, hands fiercely placed firmly on her hips. She was about 6 feet tall, donning an all Black and Brown wardrobe. She spoke with a deep British accent and oozed authoritarian appeal. Her eyes narrowed at Dave as he studied her closely.
"No time for pleasantries. Come in."
Lincoln swiftly walked in first, Dave lingering in the doorway. After a few seconds of thought he followed. DeWitt quickly went behind her colossal Oakwood desk and sat down in the executive style chair. Her office was huge, heavily decorated with all sorts of trinkets, yet it looked very sterile. To the right were large window panes allowing a good amount of sunlight inside. To the left Dave noticed a set of double doors that he concluded led to the rest of the Kelencine building.
Adelle shuffled some papers together before offering the gentlemen a seat on the leather couch in front of them. She directed her attention to Dave.
"I don't think we had the pleasure. I'm Adelle DeWitt, Director of The Unit and Administrator of the Dollhouse. From this point forward you will be having direct contact with me regarding your case assignments. Now that that is out of the way, let's get to your first task."
She promptly stood up and grabbed what looked like a remote control from her desk and turned around facing the wall behind her. She pressed a button on the remote and a portion of the wall ascended upward, revealing a large panel of monitors. On the screens displayed a picture of a man with jet black hair.
"This is Justin Gabriel. He was 29 years old when he murdered a custodian at a local engineering firm 2 years ago. The killing occurred in the late hours of the night when everyone else was gone. The murder weapon was a fire axe conveniently located on the wall near the crime scene. Camera footage shows Gabriel heading out of the building when he encountered the janitor making his rounds. He struck him repeatedly with the axe with no remorse."
She pressed the remote several times, changing the screens to display the crime scene photos. Dave studied them intently. They were hard to look at. There was blood everywhere.
"Shortly after the attack Gabriel himself died of a massive heart attack. The crime was handled by the local authorities and declared Gabriel's death a natural, yet ironic one."
"And I assume the case gets a bit more weirder...?" Lincoln chimed in.
"Precisely Mr. Burrios. Last night a similar crime matching the details of this case has surfaced."
Dave shifted in his seat as he continued to listen to DeWitt's briefing.
"Wait. What do you mean exactly?" Dave inquired uneasily.
"What I mean Agent Batista is that we have another strange murder on our hands."
She clicked her remote and displayed a photo of a dead girl.
"This is Margie Hunningbern. 34 years old, born in Russia but raised locally in L.A. She worked as an Assistant Chef at a local Italian restaurant. She died of a heart attack, shortly after murdering a co-worker. 2 crimes where the killer shortly dies after murdering their victim is a bit strange to say the least."
DeWitt continued to cycle through various photos throughout her briefing.
"As you can see this is a crime of abnormal circumstances, thus we've been assigned the case. Agent Batista and Mr. Burrios, you are to gather information about the 2 cases and find a link before a 3rd crime occurs. Before you leave—"
The door to the right opened sharply and in stepped a masculine man, tall in stature wearing a standard issued black suit. He appeared young in age, maybe mid to late 20's with short black hair. He had piercing viper-like eyes and showed little emotion on his well chiseled face. As he walked towards the 3 Dave noticed Lincoln was in good spirits about seeing the stranger. Dave studied the stranger with purpose. He could tell by the way he carried himself he was a fellow agent.
"Agent Batista this is Agent Randall Orton, one of our junior field agents. He will be the consulting agent on the case. Any inquiries you have will be made through him. Now If there aren't any questions he will escort you out to the crime scene."
Orton nodded and turned to the 2 men.
"Follow me please." Agent Orton said unemotionally. Lincoln got up and followed the firm agent to the single door that led back to the elevator. Dave got up and followed. He was still trying to rapidly process everything that was going on. He didn't understand why this was an issue for him. This in theory should be just another day at the FBI, but this was far from it. He felt everything was happening so fast. Things clearly worked differently around here and Dave was going to have a difficult time getting used to it.
As the 3 men entered the elevator, Orton pressed a button on the panel and they descended downward.
"The crime scene is pretty gruesome so try to hold your breakfast." Orton said.
"We'll be fine Randy." Lincoln replied contentedly.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
They rode the elevator back to the 5th floor underground. Lincoln excused himself as he headed to Topher's lab to get a 'Treatment', a code word used for a slightly evasive procedure that the actives used to temporarily boost their psionic abilities. Dave recalled his first encounter with Topher after witnessing Lincoln receiving one of these treatments. He thought the nerdy man was torturing Lincoln and quickly stepped into action, threatening a flabbergasted Topher to stop the treatment and let Lincoln go. Dave believes that incident is why Topher has issues with him. The physical encounter wasn't a pleasant one. Topher has since been constantly reminding Dave of that day and making snide comments about it, something that annoyed him very much.
As Lincoln went to get his treatment, Dave and Randy waited in silence near the elevator. Dave leaned over the railing watching the hub of the dollhouse flood with activity. His thought process was broken up by a laughing Randy.
"How's your head?" He asked with cockiness in his voice.
"Excuse me?" Dave asked insulted.
"Nevermind." Randy replied smirking and turning his attention to something else. Dave narrowed his eyes and began thinking about what Randy meant. After a long period of quietness Dave spoke.
"What the hell do you mean 'How's my head?'. What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Just making sure Maryse wasn't too rough on you during our first encounter..." Randy chuckled as Dave became increasingly irate and wide-eyed. He remembered the incident when Maryse, some blonde French-Canadian tasered him twice during his "Orientation." Dave now suspected that Randy must have been involved. She couldn't have carried Dave herself into that interrogation room and then again back into his apartment. His previous comments now made sense and further pissed Dave off. He clearly didn't like this guy.
As Dave was about to rip into Randy Lincoln returned.
"OK let's go." He said in a perky voice. Both men got into the elevator, Dave following closely, still disturbed.
After riding the elevator, they reached the parking garage and got inside one of the company's standard government black SUVs and headed to the crime scene. On the ride there Dave studied Lincoln and Randy's interactions. They seemed to be sociable.
"So how's John Linc?" Randy inquired.
"He's fine. Everything is great. We had a dinner date last night. It was delicious." Lincoln replied.
"I'm sure. He was a nervous wreck last week you know."
"Why?" Lincoln asked worried.
"He wanted your date to be absolutely perfect. He kept asking me what he should cook for you. It was adorable." Randy smirked.
Lincoln chucked and smiled brightly.
Both men sat in the front, Randy driving while Dave sat quiet in the back. Dave was a pretty good judge of character. Although Randy was pretty friendly to Lincoln, he came off as an arrogant jerk and he didn't know what to think of Adelle. She certainly was a mystery.
After a few minutes of driving and a light conversation they reached their destination.
"Here it is. The Olive Vine."
Randy parked the SUV near some police squad cars on the curb and got out. Lincoln and Dave surveyed the outside of the restaurant before following the higher-ranking agent. Randy showed his 'FBI' credentials to the cops on the scene and was permitted inside. A few crime scene techs wearing run of the mill FBI jackets were surveying the scene with cameras and other forensic equipment.
"Has a medical examiner already examine the bodies?" Lincoln asked.
"Yeah. Don't worry, you'll get a chance to examine the body yourself later. Right now I just want you to you know, 'do your thing.'" Dave didn't quite know what Randy was talking about but Lincoln seemed to understand. He asked Randy where the killing occurred and he led them back into the kitchen area.
"Witnesses say that Margie was quietly working at her station when she complained of being tired, something she did often. Apparently she suffered from insomnia. After that she saw her co-worker arrive to work and that's when she snapped."
Randy walked over to a knife block sitting on one of the counters.
"She took a large butcher knife from here and slit the victim's throat." Randy led them to a body covered by a white sheet near one of the stoves. There was a large blood stain soaked in the sheet. Lincoln knelt down near the body and slowly removed the sheet covering the body, revealing the corpse of a 40-something heavyset blond Caucasian male.
"His name was Bob Whitfield, the Head Chef of the restaurant."
Lincoln nodded and studied the body intently. Dave scanned the crime scene. He saw a few agents chatting with employees and some crime scene techs gathering evidence. He placed his hands on his hips and sighed.
"Where's Margie?" Dave asked, unsure of himself and his position.
"Outside." Randy replied.
He took Dave and Lincoln out back into the alley where another body with a white sheet covering it laid on the cold concrete.
"Like DeWitt must have told you, she died of a massive heart attack just moments later after murdering Whitfield."
"How did she end up out here?" Dave inquired.
"She ran outside after killing Whitfield and going on a rant."
"What Did she say during the attack? What did her co-workers say about the crime as they witnessed it?" Lincoln asked, removing the sheet from the body. Dave noticed that Lincoln was hovering his hands over the body slowly, something that he did just earlier to the murder victim.
'What the hell is he doing?' Dave asked himself.
"The witnesses say that she was screaming as soon as Whitfield entered the kitchen. They say she was calling him a monster and that he needed to die."
Randy walked over to the other side of the body and knelt down near Lincoln before continuing.
"Here's another strange thing. After Whitfield was dead she acted as if she did something noble. When her co-workers looked at her in fear and asked why she did it, she said she was saving them from the monster. She went on to describe Whitfield as some green demon with spikes and a devilish wail. One of them said that Margie claimed to have seen demons walking around in plain sight weeks before. She must have thought she was killing one of them.
"Clearly she wasn't." Lincoln replied unattached. He stopped hovering over the body and stood up.
"I got nothing." Lincoln said.
"That's alright. Maybe you'll get a vision during the autopsy."
Dave now understood what Lincoln was doing with his hands. Apparently he was trying to get a psychic vision from the bodies.
"So what now?" Dave asked.
"Um is this your first time or what?" Randy replied coldly and frigidly. He looked at Dave as if he was a moron.
"NO it's not. I'm just trying to follow YOUR procedure. You are the consulting agent aren't you?" Dave answered just as coldly, if not more so. Dave and Randy got into an intense staring contest, to which Lincoln interrupted them without delay.
"How about we take the bodies back to the Dollhouse lab and let me perform an autopsy on Margie to see if she did indeed die of a heart attack like Gabriel. Then we can go over the details of the 1st case."
"Sounds like a plan." Dave grumbled.
"Alright then." Randy added, still keeping his eye on an apprehensive Dave.
Randy led the way back into the restaurant.
"OK everyone wrap it up! You know the drill." Randy shouted to the agents and investigators as he walked back outside to the vehicle. They got into the SUV and drove back to the Dollhouse.
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