Still, he takes a few seconds, leaning back in the chair and giving Will a considering, critical sort of look. "Yeah," he says thoughtfully. "Well. I'm hoping I'll be proved wrong, actually. About what this is. But so far, no luck."
He drums his fingers on the desk, and gives a short, decisive nod: yep, good, okay. He's got his direction. "We need to have a chat, you and me," he says. "I reckon I know something you don't. I can do it here, or we can go somewhere else, just so long as no one overhears us — for your sake, as well as mine, because." He shows his teeth, not quite a smile. "It's gonna sound crazy, and when you finally make your mind up to believe me, you're gonna sound crazy. So. Your choice."
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.
Marcus taps his own cheek. Two pink lines interrupt the stubble there: the scratches Will had noticed last week, now healing. "You were worried about these," he says, not because he thinks Will needs the reminder but because he's easing himself into the story.
"The woman who gave them to me, her name is Sister Clara. She told me I could tell you this. Told me she'd talk to you if you wanted to, but between you and me — that's because she's a generous soul. If you need to grill her, fine. But you do it gently, and you come to the convent for it, cos like hell am I gonna see her fretting in a police station." Marcus leans back, settles one of his ankles at his knee. "She wasn't sick. She was possessed. I wasn't ministering." He clicks his tongue, loud in the muted silence of the room and raises his hands, spread wide. Somewhere between surrender and ta-da. "I was exorcising."
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?”
Marcus just stares back, hard and cold. The vestige of a smile on his face is a brutal up-tick, a kind of grimace — emptied out of any feeling except a kind of mean superciliousness.
He's never been good at this bit. He knows it. Unfortunately, his answer to that is to lean into all the nasty suspicions it always arises, in part from a kind of screwed-up pride but also just so that he can feel he has a little bit of control over the proceedings. Because he only has this conversation when he's worried — when something's gone wrong, when something is too big or too complicated for him to handle alone.
"I can't, no," he says. "Because that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is that more people are gonna die if you don't listen to what I'm saying. And as a religious man I'd like to stop that from happening."
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?”
Marcus' eyes narrow, and he leans forward, puts his elbows on his knees. Joins his hands together. His gaze scrapes over Will. For a few moments, he's quiet, considering.
He's being humoured. That's fine. He can be humoured until the seriousness of the situation clicks for Will or until Marcus gets what he needs — whichever comes first.
"Laura," he says. "Yeah. I know where she is. But you ain't thinking I'm going to tell you now so you can rush off without me, right?" His eyebrows quirk up, mouth unhappy-twisted. "Get yourself killed. Get her killed. Or worse, the both of you."
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."
"For the FBI?" Marcus says, eyebrows going up. "No, and I don't think you're in a position to make that offer, either. But I'll work with you."
He glances down again at his own knotted hands, thinks through what needs to happen. "Which, believe me, ain't something I do often. In this case, though." Unlaced his fingers, rubs his palms against his knees. "I'm going to need someone with me, and you...you want to make sure Madelyn's case is solved, you want to make sure more people don't follow her. Well, maybe you deserve to actually come to the right conclusion." Looking up and fixing Will with a hard kind of look, he says, "If you're coming, we should try and make the most of the light." Outside, the light's not yet fading, but it's gone burnt orange, lazy late afternoon colours: give it an hour and a half and it'll start to dim.
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no subject
Still, he takes a few seconds, leaning back in the chair and giving Will a considering, critical sort of look. "Yeah," he says thoughtfully. "Well. I'm hoping I'll be proved wrong, actually. About what this is. But so far, no luck."
He drums his fingers on the desk, and gives a short, decisive nod: yep, good, okay. He's got his direction. "We need to have a chat, you and me," he says. "I reckon I know something you don't. I can do it here, or we can go somewhere else, just so long as no one overhears us — for your sake, as well as mine, because." He shows his teeth, not quite a smile. "It's gonna sound crazy, and when you finally make your mind up to believe me, you're gonna sound crazy. So. Your choice."
no subject
“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.
no subject
"The woman who gave them to me, her name is Sister Clara. She told me I could tell you this. Told me she'd talk to you if you wanted to, but between you and me — that's because she's a generous soul. If you need to grill her, fine. But you do it gently, and you come to the convent for it, cos like hell am I gonna see her fretting in a police station." Marcus leans back, settles one of his ankles at his knee. "She wasn't sick. She was possessed. I wasn't ministering." He clicks his tongue, loud in the muted silence of the room and raises his hands, spread wide. Somewhere between surrender and ta-da. "I was exorcising."
no subject
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?”
no subject
He's never been good at this bit. He knows it. Unfortunately, his answer to that is to lean into all the nasty suspicions it always arises, in part from a kind of screwed-up pride but also just so that he can feel he has a little bit of control over the proceedings. Because he only has this conversation when he's worried — when something's gone wrong, when something is too big or too complicated for him to handle alone.
"I can't, no," he says. "Because that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is that more people are gonna die if you don't listen to what I'm saying. And as a religious man I'd like to stop that from happening."
no subject
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?”
no subject
He's being humoured. That's fine. He can be humoured until the seriousness of the situation clicks for Will or until Marcus gets what he needs — whichever comes first.
"Laura," he says. "Yeah. I know where she is. But you ain't thinking I'm going to tell you now so you can rush off without me, right?" His eyebrows quirk up, mouth unhappy-twisted. "Get yourself killed. Get her killed. Or worse, the both of you."
no subject
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."
OH MY GOD I thought all this time I'd tagged back
He glances down again at his own knotted hands, thinks through what needs to happen. "Which, believe me, ain't something I do often. In this case, though." Unlaced his fingers, rubs his palms against his knees. "I'm going to need someone with me, and you...you want to make sure Madelyn's case is solved, you want to make sure more people don't follow her. Well, maybe you deserve to actually come to the right conclusion." Looking up and fixing Will with a hard kind of look, he says, "If you're coming, we should try and make the most of the light." Outside, the light's not yet fading, but it's gone burnt orange, lazy late afternoon colours: give it an hour and a half and it'll start to dim.