Chapter Text
They arrive at the place, a derelict garment shop in a part of Brooklyn that hasn't been called a good neighborhood for quite a while. There's an air and smell of decay around the entire area, an effluvia of moldy disintegrated plaster, rotted wood, and garbage. Drifts of trash and debris clog the alleyways between abandoned buildings.
Nite Owl has a bad feeling about this, which has been getting worse and worse the closer they get to the address that Rorschach beat out of their reluctant source an hour ago.
Regardless of what he's afraid they'll find, Dan is glad that Rorschach relented and allowed him to come along on this bust. It's been too many days since the girl disappeared without any communication from her kidnappers, and Rorschach always takes cases involving children so much to heart. He's afraid of what his partner might do if (when) they find the little girl's body.
And to make it so much worse, in this case Rorschach has actually assured her parents that he will find her and return her to them unharmed. Dan's not superstitious, but he'd cringed when he heard his partner make that promise to the Roches because Hollis had already warned him that in most kidnapping cases, if the child's not recovered within the first two days then you're most likely investigating a murder.
Rorschach surges ahead of him when they reach the abandoned dressmakers building, eager to kick the door in, and then pulls up short with a surprised noise. The door is already sprung and hanging open. It’s not as neat a job as Rorschach would have made of it; the door is bowed in the middle and it looks like whoever broke in did it by hurling themselves bodily into the door until it gave.
They slip in through the open door, automatically taking up complementary attack positions on either side of the doorway, but there’s no one in the room. Someone has turned on the lights, though. A single naked light bulb hangs from the ceiling, providing a feeble light and creating unsettling shadows throughout the room. Dan’s heart skips a beat as he sees a headless silhouette leaning in the corner, then he mentally slaps himself. It’s just an old dressmaker’s dummy, canted to one side.
Nite Owl and Rorschach move silently out into the room, then freeze as they both hear someone sigh from within the adjoining room. They approach the open doorway, one to either side of it, and take a quick peek through. When they see who is in the room, they exchange astonished looks and drop out of stealth mode, stepping directly into the room.
One of their own has beaten them to the bust.
Silk Spectre is sitting in an old office chair next to an open window that Dan realizes must overlook the fenced-in side yard they passed on their way to the front door. Her stylish black-and-yellow costume is in a sad state, smeared with soot and darker smears of what Dan's sure is blood; it’s hard to tell for sure in the bad light. He can’t see that she’s injured anywhere, though, and he doubts the blood is hers.
She’s facing away from them, looking out the window. As they come into the room, she tosses something out of the window and Dan hears excited yipping and a few soft growls outside as she turns to face them. Her face stops both of them dead in their tracks, and it’s Rorschach, not Dan, who sucks in a sharp breath and makes an odd, almost frightened noise.
Silk Spectre’s face is white and smooth as polished bone except for the black runnels of mascara that streak her face beneath her eyes, turning it into a Noh mask of grief. The tears that had dissolved her mascara into a web of black smears are long gone, though--whatever spasm of grief produced them has subsided. Her eyes are red-rimmed but dry, and her facial expression is as smooth as an egg. But her eyes are not serene. They have the dark and blasted look of someone who has seen one thing too many, the thing that changes one’s life for good, but never for the better.
The body of a heavyset man lies on the floor a few feet away from the chair. He is really, most sincerely dead, his face nothing but a mass of meat and splintered bone.
There’s not much else in the room; an old-style potbellied stove with its door open and ashes scattered on the floor in front of it, a half-dozen more dressmaker’s forms, some empty boxes and scattered paper.
Dan looks to his left and sees an open cupboard, the interior hung with a dark chef's array of rusty cleavers and carving knives, all dangling from hooks. All, that is, except the cleaver buried in what little is left of the dead man's face and the filleting knife in Silk Spectre's hand.
She kneels down by the corpse's side and uses the filleting knife to roughly saw off a few chunks of flesh from a gaping hole in the torn arm as the two men watch in silent horror. Then she goes back to the window and leans out of it, making the sort of little kissing noises you make when you’re getting a pet’s attention. Dan hears shuffling paws and some eager whines outside. Laurie tosses the morsels out the window, cooing "Good boys. Good boys."
Crossing to the window, Dan looks out and sees a pair of skinny German Shepherds dancing underneath, looking expectantly up at him. There’s not much else he can see in their barren dark yard except churned muddy earth and the glint of a few well-gnawed white bones.
Pressed against his shoulder, Rorschach looks out at the dogs too. Dan exchanges his own puzzled look for a minute shrug from his partner, both of which say that neither one of them has any idea what’s going on here. Dan turns to look at Silk Spectre and speaks, his voice low and shaky.
"Silk--uh, Laurie? Laurie, what, uh, what the hell happened here? What, " He swallows, because part of him knows that he doesn’t want to know the answer to his question, "What are you doing?" She looks at him with mild inquiry, as if he just asked her what time it was, and seems thoughtful but says nothing.
Rorschach has crossed over to the cupboard and is examining the rusty implements, running his gloved fingers over the butcher-block counter underneath and examining them closely. As Dan waits for Laurie to speak, he faintly hears his partner make a dismayed noise.
Laurie smiles at Dan, her mouth curving into a little Cupid’s bow that drops his blood’s temperature about forty degrees and makes him take a step back. She lifts a finger rusty with dried blood to her lips and says, "Ssh. It's their dessert."
Her face is expressionless as she turns toward Rorschach and says, "She’s dead." After a moment, she adds, "Sorry."
At her words Rorschach visibly slumps, and his voice is hoarse as he asks, "Where is she?"
Laurie calmly stoops to start carving more pieces off the body and gives Rorschach a long, considering look before she answers, her voice flat and monotone. "He killed her a few days ago, soon as he found out her family didn’t have any money. She was dead before you even heard about it." She stops to concentrate on a stubborn bit of sinew. "Gerry--ah," she pauses as the sinew finally parts and comes free, "His told me his name was Gerry Grice. He..."
She pauses for a second, and for that moment her expression is no longer blank but spasms into something gut-wrenching that brings Dan’s hand up involuntarily to cover his mouth. Then it’s gone, and her face is smooth again. "He’s already disposed of her body." She spits on the dead man casually, then stands up and goes back to the window where she tosses the fresh meat out to the eager Shepherds.
No one says anything for a while after that, and the dark thing that is coiled in the room between them becomes unbearable as they watch her serenely feed the dogs.
She finally turns a terrible lopsided grin their way, and in that moment she reminds Dan fiercely of the Comedian.
Before their eyes she is coming back to life, shot through with a new and terrible energy. It’s the look of something irreplaceable being lost, and something raw and demanding and implacable being born to take its place. And if there was ever any pity in her for the circumstances that shaped people like Gerry Grice, it is gone now, Dan can see that. She bares her teeth at them in a wider, even scarier grin.
"Well, I don’t know what you two are going to do, but I’m going to finish feeding the dogs, then I’m going to take that," she points to a square metal can sitting on the floor, "can of kerosene and I’m going to burn this pile of shit to the ground along with what’s left of this fuckstick here." She pokes Grice in the leg with the pointed toe of her boot. "Then I’m going to the hardware store, get a dozen fifty pound bags of Morton’s and come back and salt the fucking earth. Any questions?"
Dan looks at Rorschach. He can’t see his expression of course, but the tilt of his head and the set of his shoulders say that Rorschach doesn’t know what to do either. Dan swallows and takes a few steps toward Laurie, holding out his hand.
"Laurie, come on. Don’t...just don’t. Come with us, please. It’s enough. Let’s just get out of here, OK? I’ll call Jon, and"
She shuts him off mid-sentence, snapping, "Shut the fuck up, Dan. Listen, if you want to make yourselves useful, go get me my fucking salt. Otherwise, just get the fuck out of here, all right?"
They leave to get the salt.