Ellis Boothe

     “On the fly?” he repeated, arching an eyebrow in Boothe’s direction. A part of him would have been half-amused to see what kind of on the fly investigation his partner thought was appropriate for this kind of case, but the larger part of him knew that this could be a matter of life and death. Poisoned potions weren’t the same caliber of case that he knew Boothe had become accustomed to dealing with.

So he shook his head, slipping his telekit into his pocket and wondering why Boothe had even agreed to taking this case in the first place. 

     “The first thing we need is a record of everyone who has purchased potions that include the allegedly poisoned ingredient, from the owner, so we can start contacting anyone who might still have one. See if we can connect any other incidents to this batch of ingredients, and if so, warn them of the danger at hand.”

“Well, that sounds absolutely thrilling,” Ellis deadpans, sighing as he looks at the front door of the establishment. “But sure. I’ll bet they have to have some kind of receipt book, or something to clue us into who all may have bought some spiked love potion.” 

Figuring there wasn’t much else for the two of them to do outside besides squabble some more, Ellis shoves open the door to the apothecary, the small bell above the door jingling to signal anyone inside of their arrival. 

“You do all the talkin’, yeah?” he mutters to Becker, as he hears the telltale sounds of someone stepping out behind a beaded curtain. “I’ll poke around, see if I can find anything while you do.” Eyes wandering around the small shop there a dozen things he could probably pocket without too much notice. He holds back those thoughts though, not until they had a better idea just what could be poisoned. 

“May I help you?” a voice calls out from the front, and only moments later is followed by a witch. “You must be the aurors, yes? Well, just like I told the other aurors, there’s no bother wasting your time here, Mikhailov is the one you should be talking too, not me.”

He’s expecting Boothe to be late.

It wasn’t, exactly, presumptuous of him. Just a fact learned over time. Boothe, it was known, was always late, always unreliable. A damn shame, Becker had once thought, watching the other auror waste away, wasting his talents on low-level cases and wasting his potential to an attitude of resignation and defiance. He used to think Boothe had promise, but it’s clear he was wrong. So when he gets there, ten minutes before the agreed upon time, he’s expecting to be left waiting for at least fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.

Boothe rounding the corner at him, cigarette in hand, would be a shock, if he hadn’t already learned not to let Ellis Booth surprise him.

     “Thought I’d start our partnership off on the right foot,” he intones, deadpan, to the other man. “Meet you halfway and all that. Don’t tell me you got here early just to impress me? I’m honored, but it’ll take more than that.”

“Well I should hope so,” he quips back, his lips slowly curling into a sly grin around his cigarette, “I was actually looking forward to the challenge.” After shooting a quick wink in the other auror’s direction, more just to annoy him than anything, he takes one last drag before stomping out the cigarette on the pavement. 

In all reality he of course had little intention to try to change Becker’s mind about him, seeing no real benefit to, and knowing the cause was a bit lost by this point anyway. Fortunately getting off of Becker Savage’s shit list wasn’t the goal of the case today, but rather figure out who was poisoning the lovesick locals. Looking up at the shop’s sign where it hung over the establishment’s door, he lets out a quiet groan, not exactly looking forward to the task ahead of them. 

“So you got any way you want to run this thing? Or you just want to do it on the fly? I’m open to whatever as long as it doesn’t end up with us spending the night in fuckin’ Pittsburgh.” 

time: 10:50am

status: closed to @beckersavage

By the grace of merlin, morgana, or whoever the hell he’s supposed to be praying to, Ellis has managed to show up early to the dispensary he was supposed to meet the older Savage at that afternoon. Unintended or not, the brief time to himself does give him a minute to case the place out, not that he was planning some grand heist here or anything. He didn’t give too much thought into what he picked from a crime scene, but nicking potentially poisoned supplies was even pushing it for him. Of course the raw ingredients were still fair game, but that was a whole other thing altogether. 

He’s just stepped back out from the alley beside the shop when he hears the pop of someone apparating in front of the store. Stomping out the cigarette that’d been hanging loosely from his lips, he makes himself known with a quick clear of the throat before waving in the wizard’s direction. 

“Better late then never, huh Savage?” 

Fawn nods, considering the case carefully as Ellis talks. She does not need a coven of backbiting witches specializing in Divinations and dodgy magic holding a grudge against her. There are enough shady characters from here to Vegas and back again who have her name on their list. Or, at least, a name she gave them as her own… “Right. Well, I’m not looking for anyone to be making a voodoo doll of me or anything,” she says, eyebrows up. “So we’ll hope that it wasn’t someone else in the group who killed her.”

The tarot reader: Safia. Fawn studies the picture of the witch, a little on the younger side, gorgeous. Fawn nods. “Probably a good idea to start with her anyway.” Looking up to Ellis, she goes on, “She’s the whole reason we’re investigating this thing.” If it wasn’t for Safia raising a stick about seeing doom in Maisie’s future or whatever it was, it likely would have been lodged an accidental death and that would have been that. A rough laugh from Ellis has her glancing up at him again, an eyebrow quirked in question. 

She gives her own laugh at his last comment. Shaking her head, she takes a long swallow from the beer. “Oh man, Boothe. You have got some misgivings about Florida if you think it’s the place for a vacation.” Pensacola is better off than someplace like Jacksonville, but not by much. “Anything that close to Alabama is gonna be a bummer, y’know?” Fawn has been in Florida on more than a few occasions: lots of criminals, lots of decay, not a whole lot going for it. Except, maybe, the seafood, but you can get that and the beaches plenty of other places. Places that aren’t Florida.

“That’s fine by me,” he sighs as he looks down at the spread of paperwork and photographs looking up at him. If this really was the Collective then it was going to be a hellish next few days, and that wasn’t considering the Florida heat. “Here’s hoping we got an ex to pin this on, or some unsatisfied customer, pissed off Sparrow couldn’t give them exactly what they wanted.” It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, or last. He remembered quite a few run-ins his mother had with some unsavory customers- and exes as well, now that he was really thinking about it. 

Looking up at Fawn, then down at the photograph on the table, he nods his head. The tarot reader looked like she probably wasn’t even born yet, let alone in the Collective, during the time his mother was a member, so she shouldn’t give them any trouble. Besides, tarot was his language, if anything he may be able to charm some information out of her after doing a little chatting about their shared interest. That was if the thing called for it of course. 

He hooks a grin as she chuckles at his throwaway joke, to be honest he wasn’t all too delighted about going somewhere that far south either, but anywhere was a vacation for him if it meant getting at least two states away from headquarters. “Now, see I bet I could change your mind,” he replies, deciding to double down on his statement rather than agree with her. No matter how right he actually thought she was. “Give me three-no two days, a bottle of tequila, and some shitty beach food, and you’ll be requesting the rest of the week off before we even so much as talk to all three suspects.” 

The file stays closed between them. Fawn has already read it through once, familiar with it enough for this conversation. He counters her question with one of her own but Fawn can tell it’s a ploy. It makes sense that she would ask about his assignment – they both know that. So she just waits him out, blowing mildly at the cloud of steam rising from her bottle to dispel it. With Snow, it was hard to know what to expect, really. Fawn figured that sticking Boothe with this case was an effort to get him off his ass a little, something as simple as that.

She is not, in anyway, expected the story that spills from Boothe – a Seer for a mother and she used to be a part of the very Collective… When he mentions that she was kicked out, though, her eyebrows go up. “Well, hopefully they don’t hold a grudge against your bloodline,” she comments. A frown comes to her face as he dismisses the testimony. It’s always difficult dealing with things of this nature – divination and premonitions and etc. It definitely wasn’t Fawn’s strongest field. But the Collective is known to be…exclusive. She’s hoping that the murder of one of their own will open them a little to the law enforcement. Boothe doesn’t seem to be too convinced though.

“You don’t think we can trust any of the Collective?” she asks. Reaching over, she flips open the file and scans a glance over the photographs of the persons of interest. “What do you suggest for our plan of attack, then? Gonna be pretty hard to do with no witnesses…” There was the witch who was in the room with Maisie when she died, but she claimed it was just a seizure of some kind… Not much to go on. Flicking back a page, she reads over Snow’s note and makes a face. Not much help from him, either.

He can’t help but huff a laugh at her comment, the true irony of her words ringing truer than she’d ever know. The wixes of the Collective were notorious grudge holders, and the older members would no doubt remember his surname. However, little did Fawn know, it was the very nature of his bloodline, and how he came to half of it, that brought about the entire ordeal in the first place. That part of the story she didn’t need to know though. 

“I’m sure there are a few we could trust, but as a whole, I would be careful. If the investigation should threaten the Collective at all, then you’ll see how quickly they’ll turn against us.” He hopes it doesn’t come to that, not only because it’d make the entire process far more complicated than he wanted it to be, but also how much of a bitch it’d be trying to find any evidence to prove such a thing. That was a concern for later though, when they actually had something to pin on the group in the first place. 

“We can try the tarot reader,” he suggests, “she’ll be able to give us an idea on Maisie’s mental state during the days leading up to her death- and fill us in if there was anyone in the Collective that had any reason to want her dead.” Pausing to take a drink, he laughs to himself before swallowing down a good mouthful of the dark brew. He’d been on this case all of forty minutes and already he’d spent more time thinking about it than his last several combined. Why exactly, he couldn’t say for sure, but wasn’t exactly hating it per say. 

“But I’m fine either way, you’re the sergeant, I’m just here for the free vacation.” 

At first, Fawn balked at the case when it landed on her desk. Psychics, and all of them living on some kind of commune, in Florida… It sounded like a nightmare, honestly. But it piqued her interest and the more she read, the more interested she gets. There is something fishy about only having one witness. And Fawn isn’t really one to believe in premonitions but there might be something to this foul play claim.

Plus, Snow dropped a partner in her lap along with the case and she has long been intrigued by Corporal Ellis Boothe. He’s an utter disaster as an auror, legendarily lazy, but something about his rough-around-the-edges quality reminds Fawn of her time undercover. Not every good person is shiny and unblemished she’s found. And when he waves her out of the office and leads her off to the Moaning Maiden, Fawn finds herself smiling. Anyone who wants to work over a drink is good in her book.

She’s never been to the Moaning Maiden but is immediately comfortable in the slightly shady interior, the low-slung rafters and the patrons hunched over their drinks. She laughs at Boothe’s comment about the figurehead. “She’s got quite the vocabulary, she quips quietly, raising an eyebrow. The figurehead continues to rant about Boothe’s slimy face as the door swings shut, making Fawn chuckle. She heads for the bar without waiting and orders a Simison’s – it was a little early for mead after all. 

Once they’re both settled, Fawn opens with the most prominent question on her mind: “Why is is that Snow pushed you on this case?”

With his own draft of Stimson’s in one hand, and the case file in the other, Ellis slides into the nearest booth, and plops the file down between them. He makes no move to open the thing though, already having a pretty good idea of what it was going to say based off the short description alone. Murdered psychic, no one in the Collective knows who could have done it or why, he was sure probably at least one of them mentioned the old saying “no one in the Collective has enemies.” He can practically hear his mother laughing now, even from where she lay six feet in the ground back in Mississippi. 

“And what makes you ask that?”, he questions, tilting his head as he shoots the witch a look of mock suspicion. “You think him wanting me on a case is so unbelievable he has to have some reason to?” Shaking his head he chuckles to himself before taking a drink of the still magically steaming stout. He does get it, all teasing aside, if he were in her shoes and actually gave a shit about his job, he’d want to know why his chief threw someone like him on a higher profile case like this. 

Looking back up towards her he shrugs his shoulders, figuring she might as well know the truth before some Collective member spills the beans first. “Believe it or not, I apparently am the resident divination expert- at least until they find someone better suited for the job anyway. My mom used to make a living off of it, she was once even a part of this fun little group” he adds, nodding towards the file between them, “that is until they kicked her ass out anyway. I don’t know what all they said in that file of your’s but half of it is bullshit, even I can tell you that.” 

time: 2:30pm, tuesday afternoon 

status: closed to @fawnward​

During his time in the Eastern Squad, Ellis had adopted a particular set of rules when it came to what cases he’d pick up, and which ones he’d pass down to the next poor bastard in line. Well, there was just two rules really, the first being to never pick up a case that couldn’t be solved easily either one way or the other, the second was to not take one that involved going anywhere where the heat index could climb into the triple digits. 

This case broke both of those rules.  

It intrigued him though, for more reasons than one. The Sagittarius Collective was not unknown to him, due to his mother’s run-ins with the infamous group of witches, both good and bad, although largely the latter. And then their was the lead auror, Ward was her name if he remember right. It wasn’t the rumors surrounding her colorful history that piqued his interest about her though, but more her own seeming interest in having him as her assisting. That was something he hadn’t experienced in quite some time, usually when an auror came to his desk it was with a look of mild annoyance, or if he played his cards particularly right, complete distaste. Which was by design more often than not, working solo always favored his particular methods of solving cases, partners tended to ask too many questions, both directed towards him and towards their witnesses. 

His curiosity gets the better of him with Ward though, and after a quick flip through the file she hands him, he stands up rather unceremoniously and motions her to follow him. If he was actually going to dig into this thing for real, he was going to need a drink- or several. And what better place to find a drink on a Tuesday afternoon than at the Maiden? 

Stepping under the bar’s figurehead that hung outside the establishment, he immediately hears what he can only assume to be a slew of French obscenities from the wooden beauty herself as he holds the door open for the blonde behind him. “Don’t know why they call it the Moaning Maiden,” he chuckles as he looks up at the figurehead, “I’ve been a regular here for about five years, and all she ever does is yell her head off.”