Chapter Two
There was something sweet about the coffee and it was just the right amount of sweetness it could wake you up in the morning instead of making you wish you had never left your bed. Watching the rain hit the window of my office, I grabbed my cup and lifted it to my lips. It was a weird day, the rain had appeared all of a sudden, although the sun was still shining.
Delicious.
I caught myself patting the new coffee machine the way I saw parents pat their child’s head before they let it go to school.
“We got a case.”
I could feel those words shoot through my body like adrenaline. “Who is it?” I asked, trying to play cool, but I couldn’t keep my nerves running wild on the inside.
Thomas only raised a brow. “Jolie Rae.” “Last name?” I added, putting the cup down. He glanced up at me with the kind of eyes that reminded me within seconds that I might be in a higher position than he was, but nonetheless he was more experienced. On one hand I suffered from his attitude and on the other I benefitted from his knowledge. “Rae isn’t a second name.”
“Can’t believe it,” he whispered as I parked the company car, sliding carefully but not as delicately as I had hoped into the last empty spot.
I glanced up the house and despite the image of the plain white and quite small thing in front of me something about it emanated wealth. “Can’t believe what?”
His voice continued in a whisper. “That it’s her.”
“You know her?” I turned my head to him jerkily.
Thomas stared at me. “You don’t?”
Then, a young police man, only slightly older than me, headed for us and I decided Thomas was old enough to make sure himself he wouldn’t get involved in the case of someone he knew.
The house’s door was heavier than I had expected it and my hand stayed on the door knob for longer than necessary. The feeling of entering a strange woman’s house, even a dead woman’s house, seemed to tie a ribbon around my throat.
“What’s happening here?” The scream was sharp and breathless, making me stumble backwards. I was the one who was called after things had happened, not the one to be in the actual center of the mess.
A young man, maybe eighteen or twenty, ran downstairs. He was blonde, extraordinarily light blonde. Although he looked like one of the guys who would dye their hair, it didn’t look dyed. There was a strange contrast of his childish face with the high voice and the muscles below his white shirt.
Maybe at this moment I screamed, I can’t really remember. The next thing on my mind was that Thomas grabbed the guy and turned him around, so that he was facing the wall and standing with his back to me, until the young police man came to take over.
Suddenly, things were okay again.
“Over there,” Thomas told me, pointing at a door that was marked as the actual scene of the crime, but as he moved on, I was left staring at the now empty spot on the wall. Did I know that guy? I was sure I had never talked to him, I more felt like I knew him from seeing him on a daily basis, maybe someone who went to the bakery each morning at the same time as I did or a runner I met regularly while working out in the park. I couldn’t tell, but his face was familiar.
“Do I need to carry you?” Thomas hissed in my ear and it didn’t take more than his sudden closeness to make me run for the door.
“Jolie Rae,” a police man who was already waiting for us said. It made me feel weird that although I had had this case for almost three hours by now, I had not yet done anything except being told what to do, as if everyone else was eventually expecting me to make the miracle happen and let things be alright again.
I was no longer shocked by seeing a victim. Instead of focusing on the pale skin, the eyes that were what usually made it obvious that in this body there was no life left and the clenched hands, my eyes had automatically begun to focus on more important things. Wounds that were in strange places. Features not everyone had. Positions that spoke for third party negligence.
What did shock me though was the one thing that made her different from the dead bodies I had seen before: She was young, almost still a child, but the longer I looked at her, I felt like those blonde curls and the delicate make-up were only drawing an image while her facials were older.
“Just turned…” the young police man added some basic facts while constantly letting his hand run through that black hair reminding me of a hedgehog.
Suddenly, something outside the window caught my attention. There was a flashlight, only for a second, appearing between the trees and then there was motion, not a human being I could recognize, but the rain had stopped and there was no wind but still the bushes were moving, shoved away.
Who would take a picture of a dead body? There was no specific reason, but in crime there’s never a reason that could be considered reasonable.
“She was found by a young woman called Victoria Armstrong,” the police man added, obviously feeling quite important as he got all the facts.
All of a sudden, I jumped and then I was heading for the door again as the flashlight appeared. I could hear the bushes rustle followed by footsteps that were no longer trying to hide but to run away. I hunted for whoever had found the courage to take a photo of my very first dead body.
As I suddenly found myself standing on a street, there was no one to be seen though.
