'Tis the Season for Murder: A Christmas Caper, 5/7

[jackofknaves]

Title: 'Tis the Season for Murder: A Christmas Caper
Author: tripatch
Rating: PG
Pairing: Gen
Summary: A mall Santa is murdered and Nick is on the case. The problem? Monroe seems to think it might be a real Santa.
Notes: Thanks to be_merry for the quick beta and my brother for indulging me when I ask about police procedure for my fics. ♥!
Also, sorry about the delay in updates, real life got in the way--this chapter starts to wrap things up, though, so yay! Savvy readers may notice the name change--it's nothing super important, just me not being able to leave anything alone.

Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3
Chapter 4	Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Author’s Notes	Teaser

"Again?" Monroe said, leaning on the door frame. The air outside seeped into his warm home, cold and dreary, and reminding him a lot of the same depressing sight of Nick standing huddled against the wind in his leather jacket, a tired smile on his face, waiting for an invitation. He sighed heavily and let the man in, ignoring the grateful look Nick gave him at entering the cozy, thankfully heated space. "What do you want this time?"

"I need help."

Monroe snorted. "Every time I tell you that, you ignore me. Congratulations, admitting you have a problem is the first step."

True to form, Nick ignored him entirely and continued in that dogged way of his. "I need to contact a santa. I was wondering if you knew any."

"You can always cruise the malls," Monroe said. "I'm sure one or two of those guys are the real deal."

"Right," Nick rolled his eyes, "And tell them what? 'Hi, I was just wondering if you're this supposedly mythical creature who spreads good cheer around and why are you putting me in this straight jacket?' They'd lock me up faster than you could say 'Merry Christmas'."

"Which would solve my problem, at least," Monroe muttered. He grabbed two beers from the fridge, handing one to Nick and popping the cap on his own to take a long drink. "Listen, I don't know any personally, but..."

He hesitated.

"What?" Nick asked, feeling a little desperate. "Anything at all would be helpful about now."

"I do know of a way to contact one," Monroe muttered. "But you're not going to like it."

"You never know."

"Fine, I'm not going to like it."

"What do we need?" Nick asked. That determined look was in his eyes, the one that always ended up with Monroe being dragged around the woods and being attacked by various things he wanted nothing to do with, and the same look that somehow always ended with Monroe saying, 'yes'.

He sighed. "Let's go to the store."





"You've got to be kidding me," Nick said, staring at the array of mixing bowls and baking ingredients spread out over the tiny island in Monroe's kitchen. The oven was preheating behind him, letting out a tiny beep to let them know it was ready. Monroe rummaged in his pantry and unearthed a half empty can of baking powder, depositing it with the rest of the ingredients.

"Milk and cookies, man, they can't resist them."

"I swear you're making this up," Nick accused him even as he carefully measured out a cup of sugar into one of the larger bowls. Monroe tapped out a quarter-teaspoon of baking soda across from him.

"You're the one who asked," Monroe shot back. He shoved Nick out of the way and snatched up the measuring cup. "Who taught you how to bake?"

"Um, no one?"

"Well, that's obvious," Monroe sniped. "Listen, make yourself useful and spray the pans down."

After a few moments of Monroe embracing his inner cook, and Nick watching amusedly while doing the grunt labor of baking cookies, they had two pans of perfectly rounded chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. It beeped at them loudly and they pulled them out, letting them cool on wire racks before stacking them in a neat arrangement on a serving plate.

"Pour a glass of milk," he ordered Nick, who obeyed. Monroe had a tree up in the living room, decorated with tiny white lights, a golden tinsel garland woven around the branches, and delicate green ornaments hanging from the boughs. A white-lit star stood proudly on the uppermost branch.

"Coffee table," Monroe said, depositing the plate of warm, freshly made cookies in front of him and slipping a coaster underneath the glass of milk before Nick could deposit it directly on the wood surface.

"What next?" Nick asked, glancing around. Monroe shrugged, leaning back onto his comfortable couch and tilting his head back.

"Next, we wait."

"Now I know you're making things up," Nick said, eyeing the comfortable spot next to Monroe anyway. He had been working non-stop on this case for the past few days, morning and days at the station interviewing witnesses, taking statements, and waiting on reports from the lab, and at night, going home to a trailer to dig through the musty old tomes to see what he could find.

With an impatient sigh, Monroe replied without opening his eyes. "Listen, you know those old songs about Santa not coming when you're awake? They're true. They're kind of sneaky little bastards. So we fall asleep on the couch and with any luck, one of them will take the bait."

"Fall asleep?" Nick stared at him. "I've got work to be doing, I can't just hang around, sleeping, while people are getting killed."

"I told you that you weren't going to like it." Monroe shifted to a more comfortable position. “Loosen up. Tell me about your Christmases as a kid.”

Nick gingerly sat down on the couch, sighing inwardly. He was not one of those people who constantly fretted over things or brought work home with him, but while he was on a case, everything else fell by the wayside. It felt wrong to be relaxing on the couch with his friend like it was the weekend and he had nothing else planned, even if it was for the good of the investigation. Of course, he thought ruefully, how many times could he honestly say that he had baked cookies in the pursuit of justice?

“They were great,” he said with a soft smile, fondly remembering his childhood Christmases. “My mom always wore dresses and fixed her hair every other day, but on Christmas morning, she would just wear her pajama pants and an old T-shirt.” Her shirt always smelled like her perfume, he remembered, and he would run up to her, only six or seven years old, and stand on his tip-toes to hug her waist and breathe in that sweet scent. “My dad would spend ages trying to get the camera to work and would get frustrated by it and try not to cuss in front of me, and Mom and I laughed at him every time until he gave up.”

He remembered his mom's voice, a sweet, melodic alto, singing constantly as she washed dishes or humming lowly as she hung glass ornaments that caught the lights and tossed them back on the walls in a shower of silver, red, and gold. She would make up songs, he remembered, silly little lyrics with made-up words and sing them to him, laughing as she did. He smiled wistfully at the thought. He only remembered a few of them now, time fading the memories until they were jumbled-up between sounds and grainy photographs and the stories Aunt Marie had told him about them.

Monroe was looking at him strangely. “I thought your parents died.”

“They did, when I was ten,” Nick said. He almost added “in a car crash”, before remembering Aunt Marie’s words the night she was attacked. Even their deaths were clouded in mystery now. His smile faltered. “After that, it wasn’t the same, but Aunt Marie always tried her best to make Christmas special for me. I think she was trying to make it up to me.”

They carefully didn’t talk about what she was making up to him; when he was younger, he thought it was his parents dying, but now he wondered if it wasn’t guilt over knowing that he would be the next in line to inherit this curse.

“What were those like?”

“Aunt Marie and I would go pick out a tree,” Nick said. He laughed, thinking back. “It became a running joke that somehow we always picked the worst weather to go out in. We’d both be freezing and arguing over which tree to get. She liked the spruce trees, and I like firs. She always let me win, though. And we’d wake up, and there’d be candy canes in the stockings and chocolate coins and butter cookies. She always was kind of strict about that, but for one night a year, I got to eat myself sick on sweets.”

“It sounds nice,” Monroe said.

Nick smiled and tilted his head to look at him, resting his cheek against his arm lying on the back of the couch. “Yeah. It really was.” He reached out a socked foot and nudged Monroe with it. “How about you?”

“Oh, the usual. Big family, so everyone would come over and there’d be screaming and yelling and laughing. My Uncle James would get drunk off the eggnog and start singing, ‘Deck the Halls’ at the top of his lungs, Mom would yell at him to knock that racket off, and then Dad would join in on the chorus just to annoy her. She’d try to keep up the pretense, but after a while, she’d start laughing and singing along, too. My sister and I shook our presents all the time, so Mom finally started wrapping them in different paper and wouldn’t tell us which was whose until it came time to open them.”

“Sounds like fun,” Nick commented. He sometimes wondered what it would have been like to grow up with siblings, or, when he was younger and angrier, parents; hearing people talk about them so nonchalantly used to roil something bitter inside him, knowing what they were taking for granted. Nowadays it just made him wistful, maybe a shade envious.

“It really is. I kind of miss being a kid, you know?” Monroe said in a hushed voice. There was the faint crackle of the fire he had lit, the sound of shifting logs, and the dim sound of the refrigerator motor humming from inside the kitchen. It was comfortably warm in the living room, the lights mostly out except for the sliver from the entryway and, if Nick craned his neck, he could just see the colorful pattern pouring in from the stained glass window in the door. It shivered on the floor. “It was so much simpler back then. They respect my choice not to—well, do what I used to do, but it’s like I’m disappointing them every time I visit them now. You can just tell.”

“But they still love you,” Nick pointed out.

“Yeah, I guess they kind of have to. Family is family and all.” Monroe shifted uncomfortably before giving Nick a guilty look. “Geez, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay,” Nick said, pushing down the old hurt that welled up inside him. “I’ve had a long time to get used to it.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Really,” Nick forced a smile. “It’s fine.”

“Right,” Monroe said uncertainly.

They sat in silence after that, lost in memories, staring at the fire and the shadows dancing across the floor, the embers sparking up and flickering in a burst of light before falling to the hearth in ashes. The peace finally lulled them away, and they both fell asleep on the couch, staring at the dying flames.



The sound of someone quietly tip-toeing stirred Nick, a light sleeper by habit, from sleep. Beside him, he could hear Monroe grumbling as he reluctantly woke up. Nick had to blink several times, wondering if he were still asleep and dreaming. In front of him stood a diminutive figure, about 5’8”, dressed in a red and green plaid flannel shirt and jeans, downing the glass of milk that had been on the coffee table.

“Who are you?” Nick asked.

The intruder looked up. He had startlingly blue eyes, a rounded nose, and a thick mustache that blended into a short, neatly trimmed beard. “I heard one of you was lookin’ for us,” the man said in a surprisingly deep voice. “You’re the Grimm, right?”

“Yeah,” Nick said, sitting upright and rubbing the remnants of his nap out of his eyes. He tried to collect his thoughts. “I needed to talk to… um, one of you.”

“A santa, you mean?” the man said gruffly. “Well, here I am. Shoot, Grimm.”

“Aren’t you guys usually nicer?” Monroe asked.

The man huffed. “You try bein’ nice when someone’s out there hunting you.”

Nick could feel Monroe’s gaze burning on him. “Yeah, I know the feeling.”

“So you know,” Nick said, cutting that argument off at the pass. “You’ve heard about the others?”

“Stan and Kirk? Yeah, s’all around the grapevine, y’know? Those two get bumped off and suddenly everybody’s lookin’ over their shoulders.” He shook his head sadly. “Just ain’t gonna be Christmas this year.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody wants to do the rounds, not with some looney going around killin’ people. Look, we live to bring cheer and all that jazz, but everybody’s lyin’ low till this thing blows over.”

“Have you heard anything else? Did Stan and Kirk know each other?”

“You kiddin’ me? They was best buds, always pallin’ around together. Damn shame, them goin’ like this.”

“Do you know who’s behind it? Any ideas?” Nick asked.

The man shifted uncomfortably and held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “Don’t look at me, I’m as scared as the rest of us. Listen, kid, I’d love to help ya, but nobody’s talkin’ right now, includin’ me.”

“Please, help me catch this guy,” Nick said, allowing some of his desperation to creep into his voice.

The santa scratched his nose and looked uncomfortable. “Look, all’s I can tell ya is that Stan pulled a few strings he shouldn’t’ve. He was on his way out anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Monroe interrupted. “I thought you guys were the closest to immortal it got.”

“Yeah, pretty much, ‘cept that we get a deal, right? We can grant three miracles, but they each take somethin’ from us. The third one takes your life.”

“And Stan granted a third miracle,” Nick guessed.

“Yeah, Stan… he was a good guy, but a soft touch, if you ask me,” the man shifted uncomfortably. “Look where it got him.”

“What do you mean by miracle?”

“You know, a miracle. Somethin’ bigger than a toy or a new puppy. Somethin’ that changes people’s lives. That’s why they’re limited—if we went around doin’ those all the time, they wouldn’t be miracles no more. And it's got to have a sacrifice. Most people, they shell out $15 on a present, and that's a kind of sacrifice, but miracles take more than money or effort. They gotta take a part of you with it.”

“And Stan granted one. How about Lingers?”

“Nah, he just helped Stan out, since he wasn’t gonna be around to see how it turned out.”

“Do you know what he did?”

The man glanced over his shoulder as if he expected someone to be there. He was nervous, almost jumpy, constantly shifting his gaze, and Nick noticed he had his back against the fireplace, long grown cold, so that he could see the entire room. “I ain’t sayin’. I like my heart still beatin’.”

“Please, Mr…” Nick trailed off.

“Name’s Karl. Karl Tineas.”

“Mr. Tineas,” Nick said. “I can protect you, I just need—”

“Kid,” Karl said sadly, shaking his head. “Not that I don’t know you’re good and all, but nobody’s that good.”

“Please—”

“Sorry, but this ain’t my fight. I gotta take up Stan’s route anyway. I can’t take any risks, what with Christmas bein’ in a week and all.” He hesitated before looking at Nick. “Be careful, kid. I kind of like you. You ain’t like the rest. And ‘cause of that, I’m gonna tell you this: stay away from the woods. It ain’t healthy for anyone right now.”

With that, he put his finger to one side of his nose and seemed to disappear up the chimney.

Nick turned to Monroe, who jumped up from the couch and shook his head furiously.

“No, no, you cannot be serious,” Monroe said. “He just said to stay away from the woods.”

“How did you know that’s what I was going to say?” Nick asked.

Monroe rolled his eyes. “Easy, I thought to myself, ‘Self, what’s the stupidest thing we could possibly do right now?’ and the answer just came to me.”

“Please, Monroe,” Nick pleaded. “You heard him. Christmas is in trouble.”

Monroe stared at him, then started yanking on his jacket, muttering the entire time. “We’ve got to save Christmas, Monroe! That’s just low, like I can really say no to that."

Nick grinned, pulling his own jacket off the rack and grabbing his keys.



“ ‘The woods are lovely, dark, and deep’,” Monroe quoted glumly from the passenger seat. “Emphasis on the ‘dark’ part.”

Looking out the window at the weald of firs and hemlock packed into a dense tangle, Nick was forced to agree. He unbuckled his seat belt and dug out his flashlight from the backseat, hitting it a few times before the bulb flickered uncertainly before flaring into full light. It cast a beam into the night, somehow being swallowed up by the thick face of the woods. He checked his map again and felt Monroe walk up to peer over his shoulder.

“This is the place. It’s about a mile south of here.” he said, looking back into the woods. “Ready?"

“No,” Monroe said shortly, but followed Nick anyway.

The area was underdeveloped, quiet and undisturbed by joggers or hikers. Even the people who maintained it seemed to have abandoned this patch, the copses of trees encroaching further and further onto the trails until they were indistinguishable from the rest of the forest. During the day, it was probably beautiful, the bracken and holly next to the majestic cedars and growing complacently over the fallen logs. At night, with the moon barely penetrating the dense canopy, it seemed spooky. There was the faint rustlings of nocturnal animals brushing through the undergrowth, a few nightbirds issuing lonely songs that went unanswered, and a musty smell of old rain and dying leaves. Even Monroe’s breathing behind him sounded uncertain, foreign and intrusive in the still. Nick felt his shoulders tense and he brushed one hand reassuringly across the butt of his gun.

“This way,” he said, waving the light down a forgotten trail. They walked in silence for a long while before the brush of leaves began to clear, giving way to a meadow that grew thick with grasses that brushed Nick’s knees. Up ahead in the clearing was a small wooden building, little bigger than a shack. Its roof was caving in on one side, ivy climbing up the edges and spreading over the trim and forcing its way into the room between planks. The door sagged to the side, still holding intruders at bay with rusty hinges. The moon reflected off the glints of glass from the broken front window, the inside swallowing up any remnants of light.

“That’s what they want to rebuild?” Monroe hissed.

“It’s a historical landmark,” Nick whispered back.

“Yeah, a history of tetanus. They can put up a plaque made out of rusty nails for authenticity.” Monroe suddenly paused, taking long sniffs of the air. Nick waited patiently, well aware of how useful Monroe’s keen sense of smell could be, particularly when it was too dark to rely on his own sight.

“Well?” he finally asked.

Monroe was busy re-arranging his face into a series of odd expressions, ending with one final whuff. “Sorry,” he sneezed lightly and rubbed his nose. “Got a whiff of a lot of cinnamon.”

Nick’s hand went to his gun. “The cinomolgi?”

“Easy there, Tex, just cinnamon. The scent’s so strong though, it could be covering them up.” Nick looked at him and Monroe shrugged. “But I don’t think so.”

Nick let his hand drop, just in time to hear a loud caw and a flutter of wings. He barely ducked in time to miss razor-sharp talons aimed for his face. They glanced off of his head, leaving a long, bleeding gash on his cheek. Monroe was shouting something beside him. He ignored it, pulling his gun and scanning the skies. The moon had disappeared behind the clouds. Another loud call from his right, and he swung his gun around, aiming at the figure gliding silently toward him. He pulled off a shot and didn’t hear an answering scream.

The second dive caught his arm and he hissed, tucking it into his chest. Gritting his teeth, he aimed again and this time got lucky. The gigantic bird let out a pained cry and its flight faltered as gravity took over. It recovered before it hit the ground, but was slow enough for Nick to catch a glimpse of its face, angry and strikingly beautiful in its terrific fury, the smooth transition between skin and feathers on its arms, ending in the same wicked talons that had torn into his cheek.

The figure’s eyes glinted in the dim light, glaring at him, before the cinomolgus shot up into the sky and disappeared over the tops of the trees. Nick watched it go, still holding his gun at the ready, until it disappeared completely before helping Monroe up from where he had thrown himself.

“Well, that was terrifying,” Monroe complained, brushing dirt off of his shirt. “What was that?”

“A cinomolgus,” Nick said absently, holstering his weapon and letting out a shaky exhale. He touched a hand to his cheek, pulling it away to find it covered in slick blood. It painted his hand black in the night’s dim light.

“I know that, genius,” Monroe said snappishly. “I meant why did it attack us?”

“We got too close,” Nick replied, still staring at the smears of blood slowly following the lines of his palm and crusting between his fingers.

“I guess that means something to you.”

“Yeah, it does,” Nick said, already pushing his way through the brush back to the car. “It means that I need to find out what Ava Spicer was doing the morning Kirk Lingers was killed.”