It’s a sad Friday, Snowflakes. Leonard Nimoy died. We’ll be watching our Star Trek tonight as a tribute, and of course I’m wearing my “Trek Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself” t-shirt, with Spock on it. It was not the news I wanted for Star Trek Day, let me tell you.
But! There are recaps to be done, so let’s get started, shall we?
Tracy shows up at the antique store crime scene and takes in the headless body. She’s all upset by it, but doesn’t let it show, because she’s young, a woman, and an assistant commissioner’s daughter. Do they ever say on the show that her dad is only an assistant? Because they haven’t in three episodes, and that seems like the sort of distinction we should have been in on already.
She’s the first homicide detective on scene, so she’s in charge. She goes over to the police barrier to get away from the body, and to ask a uniform who all the gawkers are. Neighbors, says the uniform, and we get some exposition about how this is an Eastern European neighborhood, and everyone is all up in everyone else’s grill, so hopefully they’ll get some information out of them. Hate to break it to you, Trace, but people who lived in the Soviet Eastern Bloc are probably not very fond of cops.
She heads toward the door of the shop to start talking to people when Nick shows up on the scene. He’s still wearing that dork duster, which…no, Nick. Stop it. Those coats are awful. And then we get this:
She supposed he was a handsome man, for someone in his thirties.
Which…what? How old are you, Tracy? Because if you’re in your 20s, a dude in his 30s is dateable, right? It’s not just me and my taste in older men talking, is it? No, can’t be – when I was in my 20s, an older man was in his 50s. I’m side-eyeing her estimation big-time here, and it doesn’t get any better:
Not her type. Too old. … She couldn’t help but smile at herself at her assessment of Nick Knight as a male rather than as a coworker. As if the person she was interested in wasn’t a great deal older and more mysterious than Nick Knight could ever be.
SHE STILL DOESN’T KNOW? She never found out in the TV show? Whut. This is one conceit I could definitely live without, especially since I think that it would be way more interesting if Tracy knew about Nick from the get-go.
And also, 30s is not old!
She goes to talk to the looky-loos, and Nick surveys the crime scene. We have another successful head-hop here, due to Tracy taking herself out of the scene, as it were, and Nick stepping into it.
He takes a look around, absorbing the scene, and smells too much blood. There isn’t enough of it on the scene, though, and he thinks two people were murdered, though there’s only one body. He almost talks to one of the forensic techs about it, then remembers himself. He might be able to explain how there’s not enough blood for a decapitation, but he certainly can’t justify his two-body theory.
He’s drawn to the table with the stolen items on it, and recognizes the silver box. He goes to pick it up, but is told that it hasn’t been dusted for prints yet. So he yells at the tech to get it done. Nice, Nick. Real nice.
Tracy comes back in and gives him the lowdown: The vic is Adre Matescu. No priors; suspected of dealing in stolen antiques. Romanian as fuck. I am still convinced it’s Dracula.
Tracy also got the name of the supposed killer: Constantine Drezerdic. Apparently, he just got out of prison for killing his adulterous wife – by decapitating her. A crime of passion doesn’t seem like a setup for this kind of murder, but wevs. People who don’t watch a ton of Forensic Files can be allowed not to know that.
Nick says that’s a lead but not really a suspect, and then some bad punctuation leads to this bizarre little bit:
“Find out about this Drezerdic. Fancy meeting you here,” he said to Natalie as she came up to him.
Um, yeah, no. You need a paragraph break at the very least, but honestly, it should read something like:
“Find out about this Drezerdic.” Tracy nodded and left. Nick turned to Natalie, who’d just come in. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said.
Better, right? But I’d be willing to just see a separation between “Drezerdic” and “Fancy”, because that sentence structure is just fucking weird, yo.
Ha! Nat has a beeper. Oh, the 90s.
Nick senses that she’s troubled by the crime scene, and he wonders why. She asks him if there’s anything she should know before she starts her exam, and he pulls her away, back toward the table with the familiar silver box…which gives us Flashback Time!
“The castle hall was something out of the thirteenth century”, starts this next section, and I’m all Hmmmmm….about it, because if this is Dracula? It was built in the 15th century, by his boyars. No way he wouldn’t be living in that castle, yo. Although Wikipedia tells me it was in ruins by the 1600s, so…I wish Sizemore had told me the actual date of this flashback, so I could know what I’m reading about.
Anyway. Nick takes exception to the decor, which is heavy on swords, arms, and darkness. Lacroix’s all, “Oh, that’s just Radu. We may prefer luxury, but it’s not necessary.” Nick says he prefers progress, and Lacroix says that for Radu, this is. They need to give him time to become more modern. Nick quips that the time appears to be the year 1200.
Janette laughs at his joke, and we’re treated to a paragraph describing her as vaguely as possible:
…dressed in midnight blue and stiff, pure white lace, her shining dark hair elaborately dressed in the latest curled style.
Yawn. Can I have some specifics, please? Just one? Anything? Bueller?
Nick thinks she looks out of place here, though when he met her, it was
…in a great stone hall similar to Radu’s, but devoid even of such amenities as a fireplace, or hangings to cover the cold stone walls.
Oh, man. Where to start with this? Just…the fireplaces and wall hangings were not optional, back in the day. They weren’t “amenities”. They were how people built things, because they were the only way to get slightly warmer than the outside. If you were in “a great stone hall”, there was a fireplace and wall hangings. That’s just the way it was, yo. A peasant’s hut? A ruin? Sure, then I’d buy that it was cold and awful and there was nothing to alleviate the suffering. But not “a great stone hall”. Get your shit together, Sizemore. Libraries had this info in 1997. Hell, novels had this info in 1997, because that’s where I learned most of it. Jeez.
Anyway. More bland description of how Janette turned Nick, and how she always looks appropriate to her time, but seeing her in this weird castle makes him think of the monster he saw last night, though he doesn’t know how they’re connected. Janette observes that Radu seems a barbarian, and Lacroix says that he definitely is. Nick’s got his hands all over some Florentine silver as Radu comes in and asks Lacroix why Nick’s all up in his stuff. “Have you brought me a thief?”
Nat asks Nick what’s bothering him. He says there’s not enough blood, and he thinks two people were killed. Nat doesn’t ask him how he knew, because:
She accepted that he had some psychic knowledge of events. At one time he would have agreed, but in this age of science he knew the truth was that he could taste molecules of blood that still lingered in the air. In this room the blood of two mortals mixed and mingled, with a residue of something else, something other.
My note in the margin, here? WHUT.
Like, come on. This is just…weird. I’d be more willing to accept psychic knowledge than blood molecules just bopping around. Why are they bopping around, anyway? Shouldn’t they have landed somewhere, instead of staying aerosolized? (That’s a word. I totally didn’t make it up just now.) Like, if he could smell the blood, like perfume, I would get that. But tasting it? I think we’ve gone overboard to give a plausible scientific explanation, here, by someone who doesn’t really get how science works.
Anyway. Nat asks if he thinks it’s another vampire, and he says he’s not sure. She then tells him about the vampire with a sword that she saw half an hour ago, two blocks away. She says it could have been her imagination, but Nick’s all, like, “No, it was totes a vamp” and Nat says that they should just do their jobs and see where the evidence takes them.
Nick agrees, and as Nat goes to inspect the body, he slips the silver box into his pocket.
Next Week: Chapter 3.
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