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[personal profile] wontgraham 2018-02-21 04:50 am (UTC)(link)
Will's been busy.

Which is an important thing to note. Not all cases bring a lot of work. Some bring dead ends; no witnesses to talk to, no friends of the deceased, no surviving family members. Madelyn Rush, 29, had had plenty of commentary from neighbors, coworkers, and friends to sift through - and that was aside from what the crime scene screamed.

And what visitors to the crime scene had whispered.

Will's working on four hours of sleep and three cups of coffee by the time he's heading back into his office after his last class. He's coming to pick up his jacket and his case files, everything else already in his laptop bag.

So he startles right back into his own now-closed office door when a voice speaks. His elbow is a tea kettle-shriek of protest at the contact, and Will absolutely would've dropped his bag if it wasn't over his shoulder and not relying on his hand, which is now on the point of his hip that's noticeably bare of a firearm. Because he's at school, and not in the field.

"It is weird." Will agrees, slowly unfolding from what he would deny was panic. "That might be why the FBI is working on it." Fear, rude. It just goes together.

Will approaches the desk quickly, stops just barely short of Marcus sitting in his chair. "Looking for new career options?" Will doesn't snatch the file back, seeing as Marcus has already dropped the thing, but he does pull it back towards himself, glance at it without opening it again. The images are burned into his eyes by now - he doesn't have to flip through it to remember what it is Marcus must have just seen.
Edited (i changed my mind about pacing, and this is why i shouldn't reply to things past 11:30p) 2018-02-21 16:28 (UTC)
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[personal profile] wontgraham 2018-02-23 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
A rattler. Will's dealt with plenty of those. He sighs and half-sits at the edge of his desk while Marcus speaks, crosses his arms tight and takes stock of the actual room. Nothing is horrendously out of place, but now that he knows to look, Will can see markers of the search that went on prior to this. A drawer fully closed when he'd carelessly left it half-open earlier, his pens shifted to the side because they'd shuddered over with the motion of the desk drawer getting dragged out.

He'd been poking around for those files. Will cares less about the law-breaking and more about the missing motive. He can see it - that human desire to know what happened - but there's a step missing in between, and the wind gasping up from that gap keeps distracting him.

Will stares at him and now, with that face reminding him of a night spent staring at pictures of Jesus and a scribbled-in Bible, Will thinks of the mysterious fibers that had appeared the second day of the crime scene mapping, thinks of the way the door hadn't been forced when that happened, either.

"You. You were-- you contaminated the crime scene." Will's face twists with the realization but then smooths with blank, expectant dread, this next question more important than the accusation of a felony: "What were you looking for?”

Will shifts forward again now, coming back off his desk, standing very close to Marcus sitting in his chair. His voice lowers. “What are you hoping you’ll find?”
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[personal profile] wontgraham 2018-02-23 05:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Will’s laugh is a huffy, brittle thing, all the humor drained out of it. “Wouldn’t be the first time I sounded crazy.” Which is its own thought. Marcus doesn’t sound like he’s done homework on Will, not really, not enough to make him wary or fascinated. So that means it’s genuinely about the victim, about catching this killer. Will perches at the edge of annoyance and disbelief, examining the view over either side.

“Okay.” Will settles more against the top of his desk, no desire for a power play provoking him to have Marcus move out of his chair. Some sort of prey instinct is soothed by being higher up, anyway. Will sighs, shoulders sloping into his hunch. “Tell me about this reckoning of yours that’s worth risking jail time over.”

Will is absolutely not having a chat over coffee for this, blanket-and-tea savior from a week back or not.
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[personal profile] wontgraham 2018-02-24 05:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Will’s demeanor changes at the reminder of the scratches. A hunch that’s driven by something that hurt Marcus is weightier than other confessions Will might’ve expected here, and his aggravation turns to heavy anticipation.

Defense of the woman who hurt Marcus. It’s the instinctive protection of someone keeping civilians clear of the unfortunate, necessary violence of law enforcement work, and it snags Will’s attention. He’s expecting an explanation of a known extremist; someone prone to violence and covering it up with religion. In a sense, he does get that.

Will just hadn’t anticipated that religious extremist to be Marcus.

Will’s entire expression shutters. It’s not an impassive aggravation anymore; he’s trying, with some success, to keep a personal anger off his face.

The more likely explanation, of course, is that Marcus is lying, not that he systematically abuses people in the name of an exorcism and is now confessing this crime to Will. But why lie? Will needs more to go off of, to guess that.

Will wasn’t wearing glasses when he’d showed up on the convent’s doorstep—he’d taken them off as soon as he’d needed to trudge through rain. Now, at work, he’s had them on. He takes them off now, puts them in his shirt pocket. Uninterrupted eye contact once again. “Can you tell me—why a religious man would try to interrupt a murder investigation with a false lead?”
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[personal profile] wontgraham 2018-02-24 07:08 pm (UTC)(link)
It’s the intense, self-assured eye contact of someone who doesn’t believe they’re lying. That’s the thing about perceptions, though—they’re inherently colored by who’s having them. They’re not always the truth as seen by someone else.

And given that Will knows demons, and the exorcisms they’d require, all are generated by regular humans, he feels like he can see the scope of this particular lie.

There’s no point questioning Marcus’s dedication to the end goal. What Will has a sickening, stone-cold suspicion for is the motive that pushes him towards his chosen theory. “And how does listening to you help keep more people from ending up like Madelyn?” Will’s voice is more even than he feels. He sinks into his own lie, a calm that he pulls over like a veil. “We need to find the killer before we do anything else.”

And here it is, the only reason Will’s instinctively playing along. He breathes in like a man considering his options, deciding it’s worth it to reach out and trust: “Do you know how to find them, Marcus?”
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[personal profile] wontgraham 2018-02-28 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)
He's withholding evidence from a police investigation - or, he's lying. Will's eyes don't switch away from Marcus's, intent on seeking out a tell here or a flinch there.

They're playing the same game, for a moment. Humoring each other. Will feels the incidental mirroring like a foreign phenomenon, scrapes against it to try to pry out any reason that isn't 'because Marcus actually thinks he's telling the truth'. Will isn't usually constrained by his own assumption of the narrative, but in this instance, he just can't see past his own certainty of how the world works.

"Are you offering to lead us to where Laura is?" Will clarifies, an incredibly reasonable suggestion from where he's sitting. His face is blankly conflicted, smoothed out with uncertain focus. "Act as a consultant for the FBI."