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smackenzieThursday morning was bright and sunny, if a little cold. Rose Marie slept through her alarm clock for the second time that week, and had to drive herself to work, bitching at herself the entire way. Ana woke up as Rose Marie was leaving the apartment, but since she wasn't working at the Diesel that day, she just went back to sleep. She'd been dreaming about Anderson Cooper, oddly enough, and wanted to get back to it.
Ana didn't watch the news or read the paper, although she did read Salon online and skim the index page of boston.com, the Globe's web site. But she would watch anything for Anderson Cooper. As far as she was concerned, he was the hottest, smartest news correspondent on TV and his boyfriend was a lucky man.
(But after an argument with one of her fellow baristas over the merits of the sexy Mr Cooper vs Rachel Maddow, she'd stopped mentioning it at work. Some things were just not worth finding sliced tomatoes oozing juice all over your jacket pockets.)
Ana dreamed she had to dress him for some event or other - apparently her dream self was a clothes designer - and when she woke up she realized the whole dream was her subconscious' way of telling her she really wanted to design doll clothes. Which was absurd, because she didn't want to design doll clothes. Just doll chainmail. Which was proving difficult, but still an interesting and fun challenge.
She should really be making jewelry she could sell, though, because her Etsy store was starting to look bare and she hated when that happened, so once she'd gotten out of bed and had breakfast and checked her email (some nonsense she wanted to read, some nonsense of the spam variety, some kerfuffle on a mailing list), she went through her design notebook looking for something new she could try. But thinking about chainmail for Jeanne's ball-jointed dolls made her wonder if there really was a viable market for jewelry that size, like Jeanne said there was. It was one thing to make stuff on commission for your friends, but something else entirely to convert that into a whole new market to explore.
So Ana spent some quality time with her boxes of beads and her thinnest wire, trying to see how elaborate she could get with necklaces and headdresses for dolls almost two feet tall.
The answer turned out to be "very". She took some pictures of the crazier results, as well as the one necklace she thought she could easily reproduce, and emailed them to Jeanne. Jeanne was the only person Ana knew who owned these things, so she was turning into Ana's guinea pig for testing designs.
By then Ana figured it was time to take a shower and go for a walk, since it was nice and sunny and not freezing cold. Later she could dick around online, see if there was any interesting local news, and make some earrings while she watched TV. Thursday was Vampire Diaries night (it was fun to mock), and Rose Marie still liked Grey's Anatomy (also fun to mock), and each show required just enough brain power to leave Ana the concentration necessary to make pretty earrings and not cut herself with her wire cutters. If she felt motivated, she could start a cuff bracelet on her loom. She liked the freeform twisted wire designs she usually made, but there was something to be said for making something wide enough for regular patterns of equally-sized, different-colored beads.
She found her iPod, her phone, and her keys, and left the house. It was a good day to walk and plan.
Rose Marie was having a much better day than she'd had so far that week, despite oversleeping and having to navigate downtown traffic in her car rather than on foot. There hadn't been a reappearance of the cute UPS guy, but the clients were all behaving and more importantly, the analysts and financial planners were too. One of the secretaries brought in homemade shortbread cookies and shared them around the office before hiding what was left in the lunch room. There seemed to be general agreement around the office that shortbread cookies were a perfectly acceptable breakfast, not to mention late-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner. Rose Marie wondered if it would be wrong to take a couple home. They were all gone by three that afternoon, so it was kind of a moot point.
At around two o'clock, a grad student in the linguistics department at MIT was sitting in his car behind a red light on Massachusetts Avenue when, according to witnesses sitting in the car right behind him and standing on the sidewalk, someone wearing dark pants and an oversized hoodie walked up to the car, yanked the driver's-side door open, and shot the grad student in the head. The victim's name was David Tsai and he was originally from Houston. He'd been at MIT for three years, studying the linguistic patterns of recent immigrants to the US, and in those years he'd presented at a few conferences, gotten his name on two articles, and TA'd a couple of undergrad classes. If he wasn't the most brilliant PhD candidate his advisor had ever had, he was a dedicated, determined student, and he really liked his field of study and his chosen university, even if he hated the winters and couldn't support the Red Sox.
(David was a diehard Astros fan. He could appreciate a good game from any team, but he could only ever cheer for his hometown boys.)
He was driving an old yellow Toyota when he was shot, and like Augustin Decker and Martin Toro before him, he died instantly. The gunman ran off and disappeared. The casual observer - or David's family - might wonder why none of the witnesses on the sidewalk gave chase, but who's going to risk life and limb chasing after a mysterious assailant who just walked into the street to shoot someone point-blank in the head? No one was willing to risk it, and the one or two who would, were too stunned at first to move. And by the time they shook off their shock, it was too late.
Police took statements and directed traffic - a couple of the witnesses had called to report the shooting - and once the body was identified, someone was dispatched to MIT administration to let them know one of their students had been killed in a run-by shooting.
David had no enemies, had never been involved in any gang activity, didn't even drive a car worth stealing. (Not that it made a difference, as the shooter hadn't taken anything off David, especially not his car.) He didn't look threatening. There was no reason to assume someone had targeted him specifically. Some bright bulb in the Cambridge police department remembered the equally-random Roxbury shooting that had happened yesterday, called around until he found the cops who'd initially investigated it, and got them to send over their preliminary report. The identical gunmen gave him pause. He went to his supervisor.
"This might be a pattern," he said. "I don't know if it's as random as it looks. We're still waiting on ballistics but if it's the same gun we might have a problem."
"Call Homicide," he was told, so he did.
The Cambridge cop, whose name was Max Barker, spent the rest of the day trying to figure out if there was an actual connection between David Tsai's death and Augustin Decker's. He called the one woman who'd seen Augustin get shot and compared her recollection to the statements taken by cops on the scene in Cambridge. He talked to the cops in Roxbury again. He asked his partner if it was possible they could have a psychopath on the loose in Boston. His partner told him he needed a vacation.
A reporter had been dispatched to the scene of David Tsai's shooting, and when she finally got around to calling the Cambridge PD to get a statement from them, the Cambridge PD gave her Max Barker, which meant that not only did David's death make the evening news, it made better news than Augustin's had.
(This might have annoyed Augustin if he'd known. But then, who only wants to be known for the way they died, and not the way they lived?)
It also made a small amount of panic at an apartment in Somerville, because even if Ana didn't watch the news, sometimes Rose Marie did.
"That's right near the Asgard," Rose Marie said, staring at the TV. The reporter was standing on the sidewalk right by the crossing where David had been shot, and Rose Marie recognized that part of Mass Ave partly because she'd driven it four times last night trying to find a parking spot. "Holy shit."
"Really?" Ana looked up from her loom. "Wow. It is. What happened?" She hadn't been paying attention.
"Some guy got shot while he was sitting in his car. He was just waiting for the light to turn. I told you I hate driving around there."
"You hate driving around there because there's nowhere to park, not because it's dangerous."
"Well now I hate it because it's dangerous too! It's right by MIT, isn't there security or something?"
"Was he on campus?"
"I don't think so."
"That's why there wasn't security. I bet turnout's a little low for the next karaoke Wednesday."
"It's ok if I don't go with you, right? Actually I'd feel better if you didn't go either."
"Maybe they'll catch the guy. We'll see."
words: 1619
total words: 7213
Ana didn't watch the news or read the paper, although she did read Salon online and skim the index page of boston.com, the Globe's web site. But she would watch anything for Anderson Cooper. As far as she was concerned, he was the hottest, smartest news correspondent on TV and his boyfriend was a lucky man.
(But after an argument with one of her fellow baristas over the merits of the sexy Mr Cooper vs Rachel Maddow, she'd stopped mentioning it at work. Some things were just not worth finding sliced tomatoes oozing juice all over your jacket pockets.)
Ana dreamed she had to dress him for some event or other - apparently her dream self was a clothes designer - and when she woke up she realized the whole dream was her subconscious' way of telling her she really wanted to design doll clothes. Which was absurd, because she didn't want to design doll clothes. Just doll chainmail. Which was proving difficult, but still an interesting and fun challenge.
She should really be making jewelry she could sell, though, because her Etsy store was starting to look bare and she hated when that happened, so once she'd gotten out of bed and had breakfast and checked her email (some nonsense she wanted to read, some nonsense of the spam variety, some kerfuffle on a mailing list), she went through her design notebook looking for something new she could try. But thinking about chainmail for Jeanne's ball-jointed dolls made her wonder if there really was a viable market for jewelry that size, like Jeanne said there was. It was one thing to make stuff on commission for your friends, but something else entirely to convert that into a whole new market to explore.
So Ana spent some quality time with her boxes of beads and her thinnest wire, trying to see how elaborate she could get with necklaces and headdresses for dolls almost two feet tall.
The answer turned out to be "very". She took some pictures of the crazier results, as well as the one necklace she thought she could easily reproduce, and emailed them to Jeanne. Jeanne was the only person Ana knew who owned these things, so she was turning into Ana's guinea pig for testing designs.
By then Ana figured it was time to take a shower and go for a walk, since it was nice and sunny and not freezing cold. Later she could dick around online, see if there was any interesting local news, and make some earrings while she watched TV. Thursday was Vampire Diaries night (it was fun to mock), and Rose Marie still liked Grey's Anatomy (also fun to mock), and each show required just enough brain power to leave Ana the concentration necessary to make pretty earrings and not cut herself with her wire cutters. If she felt motivated, she could start a cuff bracelet on her loom. She liked the freeform twisted wire designs she usually made, but there was something to be said for making something wide enough for regular patterns of equally-sized, different-colored beads.
She found her iPod, her phone, and her keys, and left the house. It was a good day to walk and plan.
Rose Marie was having a much better day than she'd had so far that week, despite oversleeping and having to navigate downtown traffic in her car rather than on foot. There hadn't been a reappearance of the cute UPS guy, but the clients were all behaving and more importantly, the analysts and financial planners were too. One of the secretaries brought in homemade shortbread cookies and shared them around the office before hiding what was left in the lunch room. There seemed to be general agreement around the office that shortbread cookies were a perfectly acceptable breakfast, not to mention late-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner. Rose Marie wondered if it would be wrong to take a couple home. They were all gone by three that afternoon, so it was kind of a moot point.
* * * *
At around two o'clock, a grad student in the linguistics department at MIT was sitting in his car behind a red light on Massachusetts Avenue when, according to witnesses sitting in the car right behind him and standing on the sidewalk, someone wearing dark pants and an oversized hoodie walked up to the car, yanked the driver's-side door open, and shot the grad student in the head. The victim's name was David Tsai and he was originally from Houston. He'd been at MIT for three years, studying the linguistic patterns of recent immigrants to the US, and in those years he'd presented at a few conferences, gotten his name on two articles, and TA'd a couple of undergrad classes. If he wasn't the most brilliant PhD candidate his advisor had ever had, he was a dedicated, determined student, and he really liked his field of study and his chosen university, even if he hated the winters and couldn't support the Red Sox.
(David was a diehard Astros fan. He could appreciate a good game from any team, but he could only ever cheer for his hometown boys.)
He was driving an old yellow Toyota when he was shot, and like Augustin Decker and Martin Toro before him, he died instantly. The gunman ran off and disappeared. The casual observer - or David's family - might wonder why none of the witnesses on the sidewalk gave chase, but who's going to risk life and limb chasing after a mysterious assailant who just walked into the street to shoot someone point-blank in the head? No one was willing to risk it, and the one or two who would, were too stunned at first to move. And by the time they shook off their shock, it was too late.
Police took statements and directed traffic - a couple of the witnesses had called to report the shooting - and once the body was identified, someone was dispatched to MIT administration to let them know one of their students had been killed in a run-by shooting.
David had no enemies, had never been involved in any gang activity, didn't even drive a car worth stealing. (Not that it made a difference, as the shooter hadn't taken anything off David, especially not his car.) He didn't look threatening. There was no reason to assume someone had targeted him specifically. Some bright bulb in the Cambridge police department remembered the equally-random Roxbury shooting that had happened yesterday, called around until he found the cops who'd initially investigated it, and got them to send over their preliminary report. The identical gunmen gave him pause. He went to his supervisor.
"This might be a pattern," he said. "I don't know if it's as random as it looks. We're still waiting on ballistics but if it's the same gun we might have a problem."
"Call Homicide," he was told, so he did.
The Cambridge cop, whose name was Max Barker, spent the rest of the day trying to figure out if there was an actual connection between David Tsai's death and Augustin Decker's. He called the one woman who'd seen Augustin get shot and compared her recollection to the statements taken by cops on the scene in Cambridge. He talked to the cops in Roxbury again. He asked his partner if it was possible they could have a psychopath on the loose in Boston. His partner told him he needed a vacation.
A reporter had been dispatched to the scene of David Tsai's shooting, and when she finally got around to calling the Cambridge PD to get a statement from them, the Cambridge PD gave her Max Barker, which meant that not only did David's death make the evening news, it made better news than Augustin's had.
(This might have annoyed Augustin if he'd known. But then, who only wants to be known for the way they died, and not the way they lived?)
It also made a small amount of panic at an apartment in Somerville, because even if Ana didn't watch the news, sometimes Rose Marie did.
"That's right near the Asgard," Rose Marie said, staring at the TV. The reporter was standing on the sidewalk right by the crossing where David had been shot, and Rose Marie recognized that part of Mass Ave partly because she'd driven it four times last night trying to find a parking spot. "Holy shit."
"Really?" Ana looked up from her loom. "Wow. It is. What happened?" She hadn't been paying attention.
"Some guy got shot while he was sitting in his car. He was just waiting for the light to turn. I told you I hate driving around there."
"You hate driving around there because there's nowhere to park, not because it's dangerous."
"Well now I hate it because it's dangerous too! It's right by MIT, isn't there security or something?"
"Was he on campus?"
"I don't think so."
"That's why there wasn't security. I bet turnout's a little low for the next karaoke Wednesday."
"It's ok if I don't go with you, right? Actually I'd feel better if you didn't go either."
"Maybe they'll catch the guy. We'll see."
words: 1619
total words: 7213
no subject
Date: 2009-11-04 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 06:42 pm (UTC)