Spoilers : Ep 1-16 of Moonlight, season 1, previous chapters of 'Season 2'
Summary : Mick needs to find a client's wife, and Beth prepares to go under-cover at the Legion.
First posted : ff.net, March 2009
Disclaimer : The characters are not mine, no money is being made and no infringement is intended.
Saaidi
Previously on Moonlight:Mick hands Beth back photographs of three young women.
"They're dead. The Cleaners took care of it."
"How do you know?" Beth asks astounded.
"Josef killed them."
Beth and Mick, in a hotel room.
“They asked me if I wanted to join the Legion."
"And what did you say?"
Beth looks at him. "I said yes."
Mick voice-over : In my line of work, more cases stay open than we ever manage to close. People disappear, murderers and child-molesters walk free, and there is no vengeance for their victims. I comfort myself with the thought that every case I solve is a client satisfied, and a life changed. But in the end, that hardly alters the statistics.
Christian Johansen's blackmailer is still out there, and so is Sarah Whitley's killer. I hope Beth can help me find out exactly who in the Legion is responsible for their deaths. And then leave the killing to me.
"Josef killed them."
Beth goes wide-eyed. "Josef...?" she repeats shocked. "How do you..." she breaks off and looks at Mick. "Were you with him?" she asks, and gives him an almost pleading, frightened look.
"No, I wasn't," Mick says, and she visibly relaxes. "It was an accident," Mick goes on to explain, "He was...with them when he got the news about Sarah."
Beth frowns. She remembers that evening. //Flashback // Beth and Mick, naked in a tight embrace, the mirror behind them beginning to fog up // Beth covering herself with her dress, her face flushed, while Mick answers his phone//
"So he called you to help him?" she asks.
"No," Mick says, cocking his head, unsure what she is implying. "The Cleaners called me. They said he might do something drastic."
"Oh, more drastic than killing three freshies?" Beth asks sarcastically. Mick gets up, and walks away.
"I don't know what you want me to say, Beth," he says, looking out of the window. "Do you think I approved of it? Do you want me to turn him in to the police?"
Beth stays silent, chewing her upper lip.
"He knows it was wrong," Mick continues, "and he's sorry. You know, last time I saw him he was drinking blood from the morgue."
"That's not going to bring those girls back to their families," Beth replies sadly. "I talked to one of their mothers. She refuses to believe her daughter is dead. She'll keep looking, always hoping to find her."
Mick nods, frowning in thought. The Cleaners would have made sure the bodies are never found. Their families would never have clarity.
"So, what do I tell Talbot?" Beth asks after a long silence. Mick turns to look at her.
"Beth, if they discover who he is, what he is..."
"I know," Beth interrupts him.
//Flashback// Beth's apartment. Josef is holding paparazzi pictures of Mick getting up after being mortally wounded in a car accident. "Mick has protected me, saved me more times than I can count," Beth says.
"And you're returning the favour?" Josef asks, half amused, half awed.
"Just don't tell him we're doing this-" Beth starts, hesitantly, trying to block out the implications of her actions.
"I can keep a secret," Josef says.//
Beth swallows. "I will lie."
Mick's office. A man is sitting in front of Mick's desk. He has dark skin and black hair and is impeccably dressed. He speaks accent-free.
"I want you to find my wife," he says to Mick, and hands him a photo. A beautiful blonde woman smiles up at him, a baby in her arms. "My children need their mother," the man continues. "She should be at home."
Mick studies the picture. "How long has she been gone?" he asks.
"Three days," the man replies.
"Did she say anything before she left?"
The man shakes his head.
"I'll need some background information; friends, co-workers, anything you can tell me."
"I'll see what I can do," Mick says, putting the picture down. The man gets up and they shake hands. After his client leaves, Mick starts running checks on his pc. On his screen : police files for missing persons. He types in the name 'Sandra Abdel-Aziz'. Nothing comes up. He cross-references the other police files for her name. Nothing. He runs a check for her husband, Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz. Also nothing. Mick stares at the wall of his office, his fingers drumming on his mouse. Then his eyes check the clock.
Beth's apartment. Beth stands with her back towards Mick, holding up her hair. Mick is securing a small recording device behind her ear. The receiver is strapped to her belt. He pats her shoulder, signalling that he's done, and she lowers her hair and turns around.
"It has a very wide reception," he says. "It should be able to pick up virtually anything indoors." He gives her a concerned look.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Mick asks. "If the Legion finds out you're helping Josef..."
"I'm not doing this for Josef," Beth interrupts. "I'm doing it for you."
Mick is sitting on the couch in the house of Abdel-Aziz. It looks like a regular American home in the suburbs of Los Angeles. On the coffee table stand several small, gold rimmed glasses and a can of tea on a silver tray. Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz sits on a chair next to the couch.
"Thank you for showing me your home, Mr Abdel-Aziz," Mick says politely. "And for the tea." His tea glass sits untouched on the tray. "It often helps to see how the missing person lives, to see if they left anything to trace them."
Abdel-Aziz nods. Mick gets up and walks to a cabinet. In it stand several picture frames. One of them is a wedding photo. The wedding party is very large, with at least 150 people in colourful clothing lined up behind the bride and groom. The backdrop looks exotic. "Your wedding?" Mick asks superfluously.
"Yes," Mr Abdel-Aziz says, sounding proud. "In Luxor."
"Mostly...your family?" Mick asks circumvently. Most of the party are dark haired, the bride with her blonde hair looking a little out of place, but happy.
"Sandra's family could not make it over to Egypt," Mr Abdel-Aziz replies, "The flight would have been too long for them."
Mick looks at the picture next to the wedding photo, which shows an elderly Caucasian couple. The frame has a mourning ribbon over one corner. "But they saw their grandson before they died," Abdel Aziz adds proudly. Mick looks at another picture. It's a family portrait. In front of the adults stand two children with dark hair and bright smiles, looking happily at the camera and wearing pretty Sunday clothes. They are styled like miniature adults, the boy with a vest and a bow-tie, the girl with a lacy dress with frills. They look like a wholesome family.
"Are these your children?" Mick asks.
"My son," Mr Abdel-Aziz says, "Muhammed. And my daughter Mahsa."
"Did you have any marital problems?" Mick asks carefully. "A row maybe, before she left?"
"No," Mr Abdel-Aziz says, "Sandra was happy here. We were happy here."
Mick voice-over : He is lying.
"So no row..."
"No."
"Could I maybe look into her room? Alone? I can...concentrate better that way." Mr Abdel-Aziz nods and shows him the way.
Most of the room looks orderly, though there are piles of laundry on one side of the bed. Mick notices that most if it are men's clothes. The curtains are closed and the room is lit in a pink glow of the sun shining through the cloth in front of the windows. There is a dressing table with a 3-panelled mirror. One panel is missing the mirror glass. Mick breathes in deeply. Flashes of the past appear before his eyes. Sandra, crying. Mr Abdel-Aziz yelling. Violence. Abdel Aziz hitting her. Sandra falling backwards by the impact, against the dressing table, lashing out with her arms and hitting the 3rd mirror panel, breaking the glass. Mick kneels. There are old bloodstains on the carpet. He hears something behind him and turns, swiftly. A little girl stands in the doorway, wearing a scarf with small metal coins tied around her waist. She has a finger in the corner of her mouth, and smiles at Mick. She twists her hips, making the coins jingle.
"Hey," Mick says, smiling at her, and staying crouched to remain at eyelevel with her. "You must be Mahsa."
The girl shakes her head. Mick angles his head, looking surprised. "You're not?" he asks.
She jingles the coins again and takes the finger from her mouth. "I'm mommy," she says in a hushed tone. "I'm a belly dancer."
"Your mommy is a belly dancer?" Mick asks kindly. The girl nods.
"But only at night..." she adds confidentially. "During the day she is a mommy." She puts a finger on her lips.
"Where? Where does she dance?" Mick asks quietly, but at that moment, Mr Abdel-Aziz comes in, sees his daughter, and walks towards her with brisk strides, looking angry. Mick gets up and takes a step forward so that he stands next to the girl, and shields her with one hand protectively.
"Mahsa! what are you doing? Take that off immediately!" Mr Abdel-Aziz grabs her arm, gripping hard. The girl squeals and pulls at her arm. Mr Abdel-Aziz roughly pulls off the scarf and holds it to her face in a fist. Mick frowns, narrowing his eyes, ready to move if the man shows any intention of hitting the child.
"Don't you ever - EVER! - wear something like this again," Mr Abdel-Aziz says angrily. The girl starts to cry. "No daughter of mine will sully herself with that filth," Mr Abdel-Aziz says disgustedly, pulling his daughter out of the room with him. A door slams.
Mick's eyes roam the room, and with vampiric speed, he finishes his research, opening desk and cabinet drawers, looking inside. He notices that there's a vacant space on the clothes' rack, and that the drawers are almost empty. Mick voice-over: I think Sandra wanted to leave. I can't blame her. But I can't leave her children here alone. I have to find her.
"I'm glad you convinced me to come along. I was starting to get cabin-fever in my office. So why did we have to leave?" Josef say plaintively. "I was just getting into it." He raises his arms into the air and shakes his shoulders, grinning. They are walking down the street. It is night. Mick is walking fast, already on the other side of the street, and Josef catches up with him in the flash of an eye.
"I admit," Josef continues talking casually, as if he did not just cross the street in half a second, "she wasn't the best belly dancer I ever saw...Mata Hari, now she was a belly dancer! You would have liked her, Mick, she was-" he draws curves on the air. Mick isn't listening and just shakes his head.
"I'm not just looking for any belly dancer, I'm looking for the wife of my client, Josef. There are two more oriental restaurants in this area that have belly dance shows. Come on."
Josef shrugs and puts his hands in his pockets. "So what makes you think she's dancing in a restaurant? She could be doing private gigs," he says.
"I don't know, but it's a start. If we don't find her, the other dancers might know her. I think a blonde haired woman must stand out in that circle," Mick replies.
"Even in California?" Josef asks sceptically.
Several steps behind them, keeping to the shadows, a man is following them.
A woman dances to the sound of an oud, high and shrill. She is gyrating slowly, her hips swaying to the hypnotic rhythm, her arms flowing to the melody. Her movements are both soft and strong- her round curves a promise of trained muscle underneath. The music seems to flow through her like a wave. She spins, her skirt fanning out, the light reflecting off the many stones and sequins on her costume. A tabla drum sets in and her dance changes. With sharp kicks and drops of isolated body parts at the musical accents, dancer and drummer seem of one mind, and it is impossible to see who leads the other. The audience is in rapture, all lost in their own fantasies, transported away to a desert land of magic and dance. Mick and Josef sit at a table in the corner, a plate of baklava untouched in front of them. Mick is studying the dancer's face. Mick voice-over: When I was still mortal, I thought I could lose myself in music. Like every aspiring musician, I felt like the world changed with every song.
The dancer goes into her finale, a hypnotic shimmy rippling her abdomen. She halts in a dramatic pose. The audience applauds.
Mick voice-over: But as soon as the music ended, I realised it was only the illusion of change.
Mick's eyes follow the dancer as she descends from the stage, rapture and delight falling from her face as soon as she's out of the light, making way for a sad expression as she retreats into the dressing room. Mick gets up and makes his way to the men's room, looking around if anyone is looking at him. The band has started playing again, and he is not being watched. He slips into the dressing room. The dancer is sitting in front of the mirror, watching herself. She reaches up, and takes off her dark wig. Blonde hair is matted against her head, and a bandage shows on the back of her head. As she sees Mick's reflection, she turns abruptly, frowning.
"I'll dance again in 30 minutes," she says.
"And when will you go see Muhammed and Mahsa?" Mick asks. The woman goes wide-eyed.
"How do you-?"
"Mahsa wants to be a dancer."
"I know, I was teaching her," Sandra admits, a sad look on her face. "But I have to do this. It was what I was born to do."
"You were born to dance half-naked in a restaurant?" Mick asks incredulously.
"Where there is music, I will dance," she replies stoically. "What business is it of yours?"
"Your husband hired me to find you," Mick says.
"But you're not family," Sandra replies, more to himself than to him. "I didn't think he'd...I don't care," she changes her sentence halfway, lifting her chin defiantly. "I could not stay there. Whatever he's paying you, I'll double it."
Mick's eyes glance at their surroundings. Her costume, though glamorous on the stage, looks shabby under the unrelenting light of the dressing room. There's a mattress in the corner, piled with clothes. It's clear she doesn't have much money to spend on buying off a private detective.
"You don't have to do that," Mick assures her. "I know what he's doing to you."
"He told you about that?" she asks, half surprised, half terrified.
"He didn't have to," Mick replies. His behaviour towards her daughter, as well as her own reaction had only confirmed what his vampire senses had already told him.
"Do you sleep here?" he asks, nodding at the mattress. The woman nods.
"My cousin has offered me a place to stay in San Diego. But I didn't want to leave town. I wanted to...stay close to them."
"Why don't you take them with you?" Mick asks. Sandra gives his a sad smile and shakes her head. "He'd find us and take them back. I don't want them to go through that."
"So you just leave? How do you think they feel about that?"
Tears start to well up in Sandra's eyes. "I have no choice! He was killing me." She looks at Mick. "We met when I was on holiday in Luxor. I was taking belly dance workshops with the best of them. He charmed me and made me feel like a princess. We got married, and he came to America with me. I got pregnant, and he asked me to stop dancing until the children were born. I gave up my job as a dance teacher. But when I wanted to pick it up again, he told me I was a mother now, and his wife, and he would not permit it."
Mick nods, and waits for her to continue. "I asked him what he was going to do to stop me-" she brakes off.
Mick gives her a long look.
"I can give your husband a false lead," he says. She nods gratefully.
"Long enough for you to settle the divorce."
Sandra smirks. "That's not going to be be enough. He'll never let me leave."
"He's my client, Sandra. It's all I can do for you. You should go to the police with that-" he nods at the head wound.
"I did," she says bitterly, "They say they can't do anything until it's 'serious and life-threatening'."
Mick frowns in thoughts and then takes a card from his coat pocket.
"Why don't you come by my office in the morning? I might be able to help you after all."
He makes as if to leave. Sandra looks at the card, and back at him.
"Mr St. John?"
"Yes?"
"How are they? My children?"
"They miss you," he says quietly, and goes through the door.
Mick joins Josef back at the table in the restaurant. His friend is looking bored.
"Josef," Mick starts, "when I was in that trouble with Spalding, you said you knew a guy who did relocations."
"I said that," Josef confirms, "He did two of my friends. Passports, bank accounts, digital trail, the works."
"Do you think he'd do a human? And by 'do' I mean relocate, not eat."
Josef closes his mouth, swallowing the quip that is clearly on his tongue.
"For the right incentive, sure," he says instead, rubbing his forefinger and thumb together. At that moment, their vampire hearing picks up a scream. None of the restaurant guests hear anything. They continue eating and listening to the band. Mick and Josef hurry to the dressing room. There, Mr Abdel-Azis is holding a knife to Sandra's throat, his other hand holding her hair, pulling her head back. As he sees Mick, he moves his arm to cut, but with Mick's vampiric speed, he manages to stop the man before he is able to slice his wife's throat. Mick twists the man's arm, wrenching the knife from his grip hard enough to make Abdel-Azis let go of his wife and sink to his knees, whimpering in pain. He looks at Sandra.
"I think this qualifies as 'serious and life-threatning', " Mick says, and keeps hold of the man with one hand while he takes his phone from his pocket with the other. Looking down the woman, who has started crying, Josef sighs and takes out a clean handkerchief, holding it out to her. She takes it gratefully.
"I enjoyed your dancing very much," Josef offers politely, and helps her up. They wait for the police to arrive. As Abdel-Azis is taken away, a female police officer walks up to them, leading Sandra's two children by the hand. The boy is wearing an overly large police hat on his head, grinning proudly. Both are happy to see their mother. As Sandra picks up her daughter and holds her in her arms, she throws Mick a grateful look. He nods and walks away, Josef following.
"You're never going to make money this way, you know," Josef remarks idly as they reach Mick's car. "He's not going to pay you from jail. Pro bono is not going to bring blood to your fridge. You need to pick your clients more carefully, make sure they are bonafide."
Mick nods. Mick Voice-Over : Josef's right - I need to pick my clients more carefully. I lead Abdel-Aziz to his wife like he wanted me to, and it almost got her killed.
Mick's apartment. There's a loud knocking at the door. Mick hurries to open it, and Beth almost tumbles in, falling into his arms.
"Mick! You have to get to the morgue, quickly!"
"What? What do you mean, what happened?" Mick asks urgently, immediately alert.
"The Legion, they are going to raid it. They found out about Guillermo and Terrance. They're going to kill them!"
Mick Voice-Over : A raid on the morgue - a strategic place for the Legion to attack. Many vamps in L.A. are dependant on their blood reserves. Vamps like me, who do not drink from living humans. Without Guillermo's services, bottled blood will be hard to come by. Our thirst will not lessen, and without alternatives, even the most peaceful vamp will attack humans.
