ArchivedLogs:Treethiefs

Treethiefs
Dramatis Personae Jim, Kyle Whelan	2013-05-07 yoink! (Part of Thunderdome.)
Location
The thing about looking for someone is how easy it is to find people that claim to have seen them - and how /hard/ it is to get people that /have/ to admit it. "I need a fucking secretary," Jim is muttering into his phone, wiping a sooty, charcoal-smeared hand off on his pants. It rings. And rings. And rings. There had been one house collapse, a flooded basement, three house fires in the outer boroughs, one large tenement fire and a car accident, all of which had one witness or another (drunk, underaged, confused or just /sarcastic/) claim to have seen, interacted with, been harassed by or (in the driver's sworn and slurred testimony) /distracted/ by the Spider Dude. Jim hits End to terminate the call and and carefully navigates his way along the parameter of the burnt out room where the floor is more stable, working his way toward the sad, weedy little courtyard behind the tenement building. Of the many happy jokers he'd managed to get a word with, this had been the strongest lead; twitchy kid, goofy goggles, not /terribly/ menacing for a terrorist. A length of Caution tape and a few boards over the window are nothing a little ducking-under and idle crowbarring can't solve. He'd searched for sooty handprints on walls. Maybe even found a few. Maybe that's what he's following now, levering himself through another window and towards a door that has been kicked out by... well. /Something/ with a lot of power behind it. Firemen do have small battering rams. Though the last Jim had heard, they didn't have the slight suggestion of a foot... He comes out into a back alley where all is silent, save the wind rattling through a chain link fence, /fortified/ by a privacy fence on the other side of the alley. Holding the door further ajar, where the sunlight can hit it, Jim is squinting at the faint foot shape - and getting out his camera. The door he is pushing open already contains People on its other side. Sort of sauntering into the alley with the easy confidence (and familiar navy uniforms to back it /up/) of people who Totally Belong Here, they are looking at /Jim/ like he is someone who Totally Doesn't. One of the officers is tall, burly-broad, short-cropped blond hair and the perma-scowl of a through-and-through New Yorker. The other is smaller; still large but next to his companion most people tend to look smaller. Kyle has hands tucked into his jacket pockets, his companion is extending one as he nears in order to push the open door back closed again. "You know, the tape, the boards, they're a pretty clear no-trespassing sign," says the shorter of the policemen. "Yeah?" Jim glimpses the boys in blue from the corner of his eye, still facing into the building with his frontal vision. His face erupts into a wide marveling grin, "Have you /seen/ this place? There's a courtyard in there, got this rusted swingset against the burnt siding, at the right angle--," /now/ he looks, the smile dropping, almost shifting but with his foot wedged in the open door to keep it open. "Oh. Shit. You're police officers. Uh." He drops the camera (it swings and bobbles against his chest from the neck strap) and opens up either empty hand where they can be seen, "Listen, I didn't touch anything." "Yeah?" The shorter officer pushes the door more firmly, bumping up against Jim's wedged foot. He looks Jim over with a quick sweep of gaze, a deep /frown/ for the door. "Do you know this scene was under investigation in a possible connection with terrorist activities?" Kyle is eying the door, the wedged foot, the camera. "I think he might have known," he says gruffly to his partner. And to Jim: "Turn around. Hands against the wall." "What." Jim frowns right back at the shorter officer, the opened door and his foot closing to the crack wedged open by his shoe - though only when it's pushed hard enough to /make/ him, "Dude. My cousin said it was an electrical fire." Keeping his hands raised, he begins the slow, communicatively deliberate steps of the average cooperational citizen of this City of New York. He isn't looking down at his foot; he's watching Kyle, turning his head to keep that eye contact while body rotates away. The blunt confusion in his face isn't /feigned/. The friendly-baffled smile might be, "This some kind of joke?" Not taking his eyes off Kyle, he slams an elbow into the smaller officer's stomach. He is no /small man/ himself, nor a stranger to putting his /weight/ into things, and his aim is either to send the guy curling or in the least away from blocking the door. Whatever his success is with that, he's abruptly bracing a foot against the wall to try and wrap his fingers around the mostly closed door to /yank/ it open. Where he intends to go isn't really a forebrain concern, just diving for it is all he'd hope. The officer, himself, is no stranger to /being/ attacked, but faced with the sudden slam of elbow into gut he does curl, staggering -- though, no stranger to fleeing /suspects/, he also is lifting his own hands even /as/ he staggers to reach /for/ the arm Jim's attacked him with, to try and grab, and /hold/. Kyle reacts with pretty much the same swiftness, though admittedly with an added muttered, "Fucking /Christ/ you /serious/ --" as he unfolds his baton and lunges after Jim. It is expanding even as it's swinging, aimed hard at the back of Jim's knees. Jim lets the nice policeman /have/ his arm. Or rather, his sleeve, in that he's already rolled down his shoulder preemptively to yank free of his jacket like a shed skin. He's matching Kyle for muttering - mostly rapid, tight cursing, along with a inwardly hissed 'not a /good time/, guys' - before his god damn knee crumples and the intended sprint drops like a ton of mobile bricks into a graceless roll -- The rapid swipe he'd made for his back and pockets with either hand is heaving -- a few items into the cool dark shadows of burnt-black building. Something heavy and metal; something light pinwheeling in the shape of a brown rectangle(?), clattering across the dangerous unstable floors. Something can be heard falling through a collapsed hole into the floor below. The last item in hand is his phone. But he's run out of free actions and goes slack, yelling, "Alright! Alright! Alright!" He throws his hands over the back of his head, pressing his forehead against the ground. "Easy!" They don't take it easy. Kyle's baton comes down again towards Jim's back and then the officer is getting out his handcuffs. His partner stands by, taser drawn and pointed at the man on the ground. "You're a real fucking piece of work. This would just have been trespassing but /assaulting/ a /police/ officer? -- Hands behind your back." Where the baton hits, there is... not actually the meaty hollow thump one might expect. More a rough-hard 'thnk', like the sound of hitting a log. Jim grunts from it it regardless because - /thnk!/, his torso bouncing against the ground, the baton probably bouncing off with a tremble. "nkk- …Yeah." Jim drags his hands off the back of his head, rolling over his shoulders to reluctantly put them behind his back; he's /fighting/ it, that raw-scratchy texture of defensive treebark darkening and knotting in his knuckles. But the flesh /writhes/ for the effort it takes to pull it back, the warmth of his mammal skin stark where it's present between fissures of hard dry wood. "-- don't know what I was thinking." Kyle takes the phone from Jim's hand, cuffing Jim first and looking at it second; he closes the handcuffs probably considerably tighter than they really /need/ to be. "He threw something," he tells his partner, and as he examines the knotty treebark texture of Jim's hands now /he's/ drawing, not taser but gun as he steps back, away from Jim. "On your fucking knees and don't try shit. -- He tossed something," he tells his partner again. "Two somethings. Might be evidence." He jerks his head towards the inside of the building. His partner disappears inside, swapping taser for flashlight to search the building. Getting to one's knees while face-down with no /hands/ is a task beyond Jim's interest to broach with any grace. "Kh-." He has to roll slightly on side, pull one knee in beneath himself, then push against the sooty, burnt fire-ruined floor with his /face/ to get his other leg in. Oh, he'd somehow forgotten that knee had been hit with a baton. He /remembers now/. There's hisses and quiet swears but... while the knee is handled awkwardly, it's not the stiff bruisey movements a man probably should have after taking a full blow to the back. If anyone could roll around inelegantly face-down to the ground and be casual-snide about it, it's probably Jim. He manages to get up onto knees - only /now/ noticing the gun, with a flat look that /rolls/ up to Kyle's face, like '/really?/' At his angle, his gaze bears out beneath the overhang of his brows in sullen silence. Against a far wall is one object that isn't fire-damaged. It's a wallet, beaten leather, unexpensive, containing a five dollar bill, a few coupons ('Nilla Wafers, a bag of TruValue fertilizer) and a battered Texas ID for one James Murphy, DOB 8/15/73. He is an organ donor! And has Jim's face. Whatever item fell down into the floor below, should Kyle's partner brave the unstable floor to shine the flashlight amongst the collapsed rubble, can't be seen from this vantage. "Got a wallet," Kyle's partner calls back, eventually; he's picked it up not with fingers but with handkerchief, but he's continuing to sweep the: "... fucking asshole make me search this whole damn building," is his next grumble, "Jesus, if I die in here kill him for me." He's picking his careful way through the burned-out building, teeth gritted and frequent grumblings heard. "Think it fell into the fucking basement, great." "Don't fucking die, then, asshole," Kyle is patient. He sets the phone aside on the ground near his foot once he's inspected it, his eyes -- and the barrel of his gun -- not leaving Jim. "We got all day," he mutters to Jim, "think you're real fucking cute, don't you." And so, some waiting. So - waiting. While Kyle's partner has dirty (slightly damp from the hoses) adventures in the land down under. Jim looks mostly bored, wrinkling and unwrinkling at an itch on his nose. He might even ask Kyle if he can /scratch it/ for him. Or if he wants to play word-association games. Or whether he can sit down yet. Or go /pee/. Or otherwise just kind of nodding his head like he's hearing Jeopardy music. Eventually, after somewhere nearing thirty minutes, Kyle's partner will find... well. /A/ gun; a small frame Smith and Wesson revolver, amongst the rubble below. "That's not mine." Jim says it mild and rote. "Uh -- /huh/." Only after this is found does Jim get Mirandized. And then hauled by one arm from knees to his /feet/, baton-bruised knee be damned, to be marched out towards the squad car waiting at the alley's other end. It's all pretty routine, the typical hand-on-head guiding Jim into the back of the car. What's -- probably /less/ routine is the syringe Kyle's partner is slipping to him as Kyle guides Jim in to the car. He's lifting it as he push-head-down-guide-forwards Jim into the car, aiming to inject it into the soft (and probably kind of painful) tissue in the side of Jim's neck. "-the /fuck/," is the cry of a /profound/ paranoiac, Jim half retreating /into/ the police car when Kyle goes near his sweet /neckmeats/ - a half second too late. Jerking away only dislodges the needle roughly, his shoulder bound up against the side of his neck with a 'jnk!' handcuffs being /yanked/ at. He has a one flashing moment of /wildness/ flaring up - tree bark swarms up the sides of his neck, green thickens, flesh hardens, thorns press out of his skin as hindbrain reflexes start drastically hitting switches all at once - in the disbelieving /stare/ fixed on Kyle, "The /hell/ do you think yurbu...durgh." Furious disgruntlement swings left, right, like a bull at the end of its sweet red haze, his bound-back hands making the movement of his shoulders look like a /drunken cobra/ until he kind of... props a shoulder up against the farther interior door. "--'t?" Stooping over, his graying, /greening/ hair falls forward off his rough-textured face, folding over his lap at an odd angle under some sudden thickening weight in his head into a shallow-breathing mass of plant and man. "Jesus," Kyle says to his partner, head shaking. "Fucking took long enough." There is work to be done -- a search of Jim's clothing, confiscation of shoes and other belongings save clothing, eventually a transfer of cars -- but. Eventually. Jim will have a lovely new home.