Title: Unconditional 6/?
Author: sharonmjl47
Rating: NC-17
Category: Movieverse./AU
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and no one. Sad, isn’t it!
Feedback: Please, bad or good. If no one tells me it’s bad, I won’t know!
**********************
Thanks to Scott’s fast driving, they fled to an abandoned industrial warehouse near Gowanus Bay docks. They were only a few miles away from Logan’s apartment building next to the park. They arrived without being followed or running into anymore trouble. Logan and Scott knew that the warehouse was safe. An attempted drug deal had faltered here a few months back, and the whole place had been cleared and roped off.
Scott had been on the phone to his wife in the car. He had made sure that she hadn’t told anyone about who Logan had at his apartment, and then he told her to take their daughter to his cousin Bobby’s in Boston and stay there till he contacted her. He had told her he loved her and then passed the phone to Logan. Logan told her to be careful, and after a long pause when she was obviously talking, he had promised to bring Scott back to her in one piece.
Warren sat on some old boxes with his backpack between his legs and his handheld games console happily beeping away. He was unaware of his mother’s torment. Marie watched her son, trying to assess if he was really all right or just trying to act it for her benefit. She had tried very hard to reassure him in the car, telling him that he was safe now, everything would be all right. While she watched him play his game, she paced around him silently and truly hoped that it would be.
Scott had given her some photographs of young girls to look through to see if she recognised any of them. First one was a little Asian girl with cocoa skin and a wide smile. A pale red-haired girl with cute freckles. A girl with brown eyes and jet black hair in a neat little bob, and a Chinese girl with long straight hair that travelled down her shoulders as she sat smiling for the camera.
She looked at the last picture in front of her. A pretty blond girl, huge blue eyes and a brilliantly bright smile. The pale blue sweater she wore matched her eyes. Marie noticed that on the back of each picture was their age, a date and a place. Two of the girls were 13, one was 14 and the other two were 12 - all dead. Her stomach felt tight each time she looked at the pictures. They shouldn’t have died so young, life cut short. Guilt stab at her also, Ethan was responsible for this. She had trusted him in the beginning, they had a son together, but he was nothing but a monster.
Marie looked at Scott and Logan; they had been just outside the main door of the warehouse for the past half an hour or so, talking. By the looks of things, they were trying desperately to figure out what the hell was going on and how their police Captain was involved.
“This doesn’t even make sense. Why would Markham be involved with someone like Palmer? I know the family is connected, but it just doesn’t pan out, yeah cops get bought, but how did Palmer get him involved in the first place?” Logan paced in the sunlight, puffing on his cigar and letting the smoke fill his lungs in an attempt to calm himself. It wasn’t working.
“We must be missing something. Let’s go through what we know, and go from there.”
“We know the only other person who knew where Marie was, was Markham, and we also know that it’s not procedure for him to tell anyone else that for at least 48 hours. We know that Palmer wants her dead, and he willingly uses Creed to do it. We know that Marie’s father used to be his accountant, and then he had a car accident and died. Maybe that’s part of it. We know Marie saw him possibly sell a girl to some unknown guy. We know he’s sick, and he’s selling little fucking girls to equally sick fucking perverts, who use them. Then they disappear, and we find them dead. We know he likes to hit his wife. I know I wanna find that piece of shit, stick three six inch blades in his chest, and rip his…”
Scott put his hands up in front of Logan. “Hey, hey, calm down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this wound up.”
“Doesn’t it wind you up? You’ve got a daughter for fuck’s sake!”
“Yeah, it does. Has from the start. Every time we’ve found one of those girls, I’ve imagined that it could have been Ellie. But this is a case, Logan. Something I do at work, and separate from home. Otherwise I’ll go crazy. You will, too, if you don’t sort it out.”
“It’s her. I can’t think past the thought of him hurting her, getting his sick fucking paws on her.”
“You did sleep with her, didn’t you?” It wasn’t a question; Scott already knew the answer by Logan’s body language and his attitude towards her. “It’s – what – twenty-four hours, but… you love her, don’t you?”
“Can’t help it. She’s… got something, and it just catches me.”
Scott rolled his eyes at the dreamy look in Logan’s eyes. “Ok, moving on. What do we know about Markham?”
“He sweats like a June bride.”
Scott chuckled, seating himself on the top of an old oil drum. “Apart from that. I don’t think I actually know anything about him.”
“I don’t think anyone really does. He was transferred to us from Seattle six years ago. That’s all I know.”
“Did he request it, or was it just done?”
“Just done, if you believe the grapevine.”
“He’s not married. I asked him once. He said he didn’t get on with women, but hey, who does?” Scott chuckled again.
“He’s shit at poker. Every time we play a few hands at Grady’s, someone manages to clean him out,” Logan laughed, throwing his cigar on the floor and crunching it under his boot.
“You guys do that, what, once a week?”
Logan shrugged. “They do it about twice, three times a week. I only go occasionally. I got better things to do than sit there and lose my money. Why?”
Scott smirked. “Would you say he had a gambling problem?”
Logan smirked too, catching on instantly. “Ahh, like one that he would need to go to a casino for. Right, ok. So if he goes to Palmer’s casino that would connect them.”
“Maybe he owes Palmer a lot of money, so Palmer gets him to give over information in exchange for wiping out his debt.”
“Nah, it doesn’t fit. Markham’s not short of money, Scott. Have you seen his car, his suits, and the jewellery he wears? Beside doesn’t he come from money or something, his father? It has to be something else.”
“Like what?”
“Scott, if we knew that we wouldn’t be standing here discussing it. We’d be kicking his fat sweaty butt.”
“There’s an image I can live without!”
“Who’s got a fat sweaty butt?” Neither of them had noticed Marie walk up to them. She smiled at Logan, and he instantly calmed down. Scott noticed the big sigh he took and the way his shoulders relaxed the minute Logan knew she was near him.
“No one, darlin’.”
She handed a photo to Scott. “This girl. I saw this girl at my husband’s house. It was um… the year before I left him. July, I think. She left with a man. I don’t know who he was. I’d never seen him before, or since.”
“Ok, thanks for looking at them. I know its hard.”
“What is the date and place on the back?”
Scott sighed. “It’s the date that they went missing, and the last place they were seen. These pictures were supplied by the girls’ families.”
She looked back at Warren to make sure he was still playing his game and not anywhere near the conversation. “Did… did Ethan kill this girl?”
“Not personally, but he is connected to her death.”
She frowned at Scott. “How is he connected?”
“Ms. Sutton, I‘m not sure you want to know.”
“Please. Marie.” He smiled at her. “Yes, I do. He’s the father of my child. I know it probably none of my business, but I want to know exactly who he is, what I was involved with and… our son, I… I just need to know.”
Scott nodded, shot a glance at Logan, and decided to tell her everything. “It’s almost certain that he’s been trafficking these girls. Orchestrating their kidnapping from their families. We know of some that have been taken abroad and then sold into prostitution, the porn industry, or as… personal sex slaves, maybe even ferried out at parties to please guests. So far, only these girls have been found – dead – but we know there are others. Maybe still in the trade or have been shipped overseas. We just don’t know. Most probably, Creed has been doing to killing, all of them were found in roughly the same area and in the same *condition*, it fits his M.O. It’s unfortunately a lot of guessing and hearsay, but we know Palmer is behind it, the source from which these children are coming.”
Marie sighed and closed her eyes in horror, her pained emotion evident in her voice as she spoke. “So, that poor little girl was sold for sex, then killed when she wasn’t useful anymore?”
“Yes. All the girls found showed signs of physical and sexual abuse.” He raised the photo in his hand. “She was raped, repeatedly. She was beaten by someone more than three times her size, and then they slit her throat. She was 12.”
“Could I have stopped it, her…?” She couldn’t go on, say it.
Logan wrapped an arm around her. “Darlin’, you didn’t know, and why would you?”
“But I saw him, Logan. He sold that child right in front of my eyes, and I didn’t do anything. I thought it was innocent. That she looked miserable because she was bored, not because she was being abused. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t have any bruises. I just didn’t know!”
“She may not have known where she was going, what was happening. She could have been convinced she was being taken home or brainwashed somehow.”
She pushed away from Logan slightly and looked at Warren again. “He was trying to take Warren out of the country. You don’t think…?”
Scott shook his head and looked at Logan for help. “Darlin’, I don’t know. You said yourself he never bothered with the boy. So it’s possible, but I don’t know.”
She wiped her eyes with a shaky hand. “How could a person do that to his own son?”
“How could a person do that to anyone? People are unbelievable sometimes.” Scott noticed Logan was staring at his shoes, eyebrows knit together in concentration.
“I mean, fair enough, you want to have sex and you have a few little kinks, but… not kids, not innocent little kids that can’t fight back. It’s just wrong.” She felt a chill run up her, and she wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed her arms.
“I know it’s not any kind of consolation to their families, but we’re catch those responsible, make sure that they pay for it, one way or another.”
Logan was still stood looking at his boots while Marie and Scott talked. Then he paced in front of them a little. He stopped and looked at Scott, about to say something, but then he shut his mouth, sighed and paced again. “What, Logan?”
He stopped again. “Do you still have some of the Christmas party photos on your phone?”
“Yeah, why?” Scott had his hands on his hips and was utterly confused as to why Logan wanted those pictures now.
“Give it here.” Scott noticed that most of the colour had drained from Logan’s face.
Scott rooted in the inside pocket of his jacket and passed his cell phone to Logan. Logan opened it up, found where the photos were stored, and began to flick through them. He stopped, getting the image he wanted. Then he looked at Marie. She looked worried and confused; so did Scott.
“I can’t believe I‘m about to do this… suggest this.” He took a deep breath and then blew it out loudly, realising that if he got the answer he wanted there would be no turning back for any of them. He passed the phone to Marie. “The guy in this picture: do you recognise him?”
She took Scott’s phone from Logan’s shaking hand and instantly gasped and put her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God… he’s…”
“The guy with the girl at Palmer’s house?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to say it, Marie. All of it.” His tone was serious and held a hint of danger.
She turned the phone around and pointed it away from her. Scott saw the image for the first time. “This is the man I saw at my ex’s house. He gave Ethan a briefcase full of money and left with that little blond girl.”
“Shit!” Scott rubbed his hand over his face and pinched the top of his nose like he had just eaten really cold ice cream. “This is wrong, Logan. There must be a mistake. There is no way that… Shit!”
“It’s what the lady says, Scott.”
“But, it can’t be, he’s… Jesus, he’s…”
Marie stepped forward in between them. “Who is he?”
“Our Captain. Simon Markham, Marie. He is the guy who we’ve worked with, for, for six years.” Scott paced with his hands on his hips. “God. I can’t believe this. Logan, that man has been in my house, shook hands with my wife, your sister…” He took a long pause, horror filling his face. He looked like he wanted to be sick. “Met my daughter, joked with her a little.”
He clenched his jaw and walked off, heading for the BMW. As he walked, he took his gun out and checked it was loaded, then replaced it. Just as he opened the door, Logan caught up with him and shut the door again, Marie was close behind. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to kill him.” He tried to open the door again, but again Logan stopped him.
“Scott, calm down. You can’t just…”
“Calm down? Are you crazy?!”
“Scott, I’m on your side.” Logan grabbed his arm again as he tried to turn away.
“So’s my appendix, but scientists have proved I don’t need that either!” Logan chuckled, and Scott sighed, then looked at him pleadingly. “He told me she was pretty, Logan. He stood in my house watching her play in the garden, and he told me she was pretty. What was he thinking when he said that, Logan? What sick little images did he have about *my* little girl?”
Logan nodded. “Ok, we kill him, but we can’t just swan in there and shoot him. We have to figure the rest of this out, and we have to report it. For once, we need to go by the book.”
Marie touched Scott on the arm, and she could see the agony in his eyes as he calmed and leaned against the side of the BMW. He looked at Logan. “What about that Officer from internal affairs you dated last year? Do you still have her number?”
Logan jerked his head towards Marie. “Ya mind?” She giggled. Even Scott smiled.
“Logan, we don’t have time to worry about your philandering. Can you call her, see what info they have on him? Maybe they’re already investigating.”
He rolled his shoulders and got out his cell phone. Scrolling through, he found her number, and as he walked back into the sunshine just outside the warehouse, she picked up.
**************END OF PART SIX
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
Again many hugs and thanks to Gamma.
Summary: “We must be missing something. Let’s go through what we know, and go from there.”
Summary: “We must be missing something. Let’s go through what we know, and go from there.”