Title: Child Psychology
Rating: T
Summary: Richard has always been very academic, but perhaps he isn't going to learn how to deal with his latest witness from a textbook. Richard/Camille UST.
A/N: Yes, I have decided to just have a million stories on the go. Fed up of not writing what I want to because I think I have to finish a story first. Now I'll just write what comes naturally. It is supposed to be fun after all!
A very loud clang followed by an equally loud curse had Camille rapidly descending the step ladder and rushing into the kitchen.
"Are you okay?" She addressed the legs sticking out from the cupboard under the sink.
"Fine," his voice was a tad higher pitched than normal, and Camille suspected that wasn't true. Well if he didn't want to admit what he'd done that was fine by her, as long as he hadn't broken her sink more…or himself. "Ah ha! Got it! All fixed."
He emerged carefully, grumbling the entire time, "You know, I don't understand what was wrong with your old place."
"I was just a tenant there, I own this house! Well I will once I've paid the mortgage off. And it was such a bargain!"
He was now brushing imaginary dirt off his trousers. Camille knew it was imaginary because of how much time he'd spent cleaning under there before he approached the actual task of fixing the thing. Anyone would think she'd forced him to come over and do it, but he'd volunteered.
"Yes, funny nobody else wanted a house somebody had been murdered in."
Camille shrugged this fact off, "We caught the killer didn't we?"
"Actually, I think it is a rather savvy investment. I mean, most people around here would be worried about the restless spirit of the murder victim remaining in the house…What is that for?" He was referring to the bunch of rosemary and tub of table salt Camille had just removed from a grocery bag.
"What these?" She said, waving the rosemary about dramatically. "Well the salt I'll be applying liberally to the front door step, then we attach a sprig of rosemary above each door and that should protect me from any vengeful sprits. Though I did forget the lemon oil to anoint the windows."
Richard had no words, and before he could find the necessary ones to start berating her, she decided to tell him the truth, "It's for lunch. Now I have a working sink I thought I'd cook. Least I can do since you fixed it, though it was you who broke it originally."
"Retrieving a vital piece of evidence!" he protested. "You aren't making chicken soup are you?"
She rolled her eyes at his enquiry, "Would I do that to you?"
"Yes," he replied shortly. She grinned, because she had actually considered it.
Unfortunately Richard wasn't going to find out what Camille had intended to cook, as before she could tell him his mobile rang, "Hi Fidel."
"Sir, are you still with Camille?"
"Yes, something happened?" Camille stopped unpacking groceries at the tinny sound of her name from the phone and came closer to try and over-hear the conversation.
"Ah good. We've had a report of a body Sir, paramedics are on scene and say it's very likely to be murder."
Fidel provided an address that Richard scrawled on a piece of paper Camille had pulled from somewhere. She was now stuffing food into the fridge, realising lunch was clearly off. Before he'd ventured under the sink he'd removed both his jacket and tie, and though he'd retrieved the former he couldn't locate the tie anywhere.
"Have you seen my tie?" Camille just grinned at him in reply. She'd been painting the coving in the hall all morning and had needed to put her hair up, but couldn't for the life of her remember which bag contained the hair bands. When he'd been distracted she'd whipped his tie off the table and used that instead.
"You haven't hidden it have you, because that's very childish and unprofessional…"
"I've not hidden it," She interrupted him, shaking her head no a little more enthusiastically than was necessary to allow him to spot it. She found the situation very amusing.
"It's not a bloody hair tie Camille," he reached for it but Camille sidestepped him quickly.
"But I think it suits me!" She protested teasingly.
"Be that as it may, I still need it back," another step towards her proved fruitless, as she easily danced out of the way.
"Oh so you think it suits me too?"
Richard had had enough of this, there was a murder to be investigated for Christ's sake. He placed both hands firmly on her shoulders and turned her away from him and told her in his best 'that's-an-order' voice to hold still. She still giggled and squirmed a bit as he tried to retrieve his tie from amongst her curls. Unfortunately she seemed to have utilised a knot previously unknown to man, or at least that was his excuse for why his fingers kept fumbling. Eventually the damn thing came free, but he swore it now smelled of her coconut shampoo. Camille was providing him with one of her best mock-sulking looks, but he just shook her head at her, grabbed his case and headed out of the door.
The crime scene turned out to be in a bungalow in quite a nice area of the island. A little way down the street, a forty-something blonde was crying her eyes out whilst Fidel tried to comfort her and gain some useful information. Dwayne was waiting for them outside.
"Victim is Marie Labelle, a violin teacher. Looks like she took a fatal beating, it's not pretty," he informed them. "Mrs Collier over there had come to pay for her daughter's lessons and stuck her head inside when she saw the door was ajar. Well, I think that is what she said, she seems to be a bit shocked."
The scene was a mess, and Richard felt confident about retrieving physical evidence of the killer, this clearly hadn't been planned. The young woman on the ground had taken a beating, but it made Richard sad to acknowledge he'd actually seen worse in his time.
"Husband? Boyfriend?" Camille asked, clearly seeing the same scene as Richard – one that screamed domestic abuse.
"Mail in the hallway is only addressed to her, but I didn't get here much before you and spent the majority of that time calming Mrs Collier down. Haven't actually checked the rest of the place yet."
"Okay, Camille can you go take over from Fidel and see if you can get something useful out of her? Tell him to start doing door to door inquiries please. Dwayne can you please start photographing? I'm going to look around the rest of the house."
Camille and Dwayne both nodded in acknowledgement and set off on their assigned tasks.
In the victim's bedroom, there was also no evidence of a man in her life. Clothes in the wardrobe all appeared to be hers. However in the bathroom Richard saw a few things that caused a flare of concern. With a sense of dread, he pushed open the final door and it confirmed what he already knew. This was a child's bedroom. But where was the child?
"Dwayne!" He called out urgently. The officer came out from the living room, camera still around his neck.
"Yes Chief?"
"A child lives here, a girl by the looks of it. We need to find her." Richard checked the wardrobe, praying that the kid had gone to a sleepover or something.
"You think she's still in the house?" Dwayne asked, looking appropriately horrified by the thought.
"I have no clue, but we need to find out if she is. Maybe you should go see how Camille is getting on with Mrs Collier, she may have a better…" Richard trailed off, he'd caught a very quiet rustle from under the bed. Lifting the blanket, he found a pair of terrified brown eyes staring back. In shock, he dropped the blanket back and sat back on his heels.
"She's under the bed," he said quietly to Dwayne. "Can you try and talk her out?"
"Me? What makes you think I'd be any better at it than you?" Dwayne protested equally quietly.
"Because everyone is better at people than I am! Why did I have to send Fidel off? Maybe we should get Camille?" He asked hesitantly.
Dwayne gave him a look of disapproval even Richard could read, "We can't leave her under there!" He knelt down next to him, "Look let's try together."
Richard lifted the blanket back up, only slightly reluctantly, "Hello." Seemed as good a place to start as any, but the child remained silent.
"Salut?" tried Dwayne. She remained silent. He reached into his pocket and produced his police ID, handing it the girl who took it off him polity and stared at it. He doubted she was old enough to read but he hoped the combination of the ID and his uniform may register.
"Look, I know you probably scared, but we're police officers and it is safe to come out from under there," Richard told her as kindly as he could manage. The child remained silent, staring at the ID. Though it felt pointless, Richard also gave her his. "See, both policemen."
He and Dwayne shared a look, and he was about to admit defeat and have Dwayne stay with the child whilst he fetched Camille when she crawled out from under the bed and sat down on the floor in front of them.
Mrs Collier had been inconsolable when Camille reached her. After a lot of things said in a soothing tone, and a bottle of water pulled out of the jeep, the middle aged woman was finally calm enough to speak sense.
"So Marie Labelle was expecting you to come around and pay?" She prompted gently.
"Yes, you see I normally pay her at Carrie's lesson, which was yesterday afternoon, but I forgot my cheque book. Marie said I could stop by today and I knocked and she didn't respond and so I pushed open the door it was ajar and that's when I…" Mrs Collier started to hyperventilate again and Camille placed a hand on her shoulder and encouraged her to calm down.
Once her breathing returned to normal, Camille asked, "How long has your daughter had lessons with Marie?"
"Oh, nearly two years now, she's really good. Carrie loves her, sometimes when I came to pick her up she wouldn't want to leave. She loves playing with Danielle," Mrs Collier still spoke about Marie Labelle in the current tense.
Camille interrupted her, "Sorry, who is Danielle?"
The look on Mrs Collier's face was one of absolute horror, and Camille realised that Danielle probably wasn't a cat.
"Oh my God," Mrs Collier breathed out, before tearing off down the street towards the crime scene.
"Mrs Collier, wait!" Camille caught up with her. "You can't go inside. Tell me who Danielle is."
"Her daughter! How could I forget about her, she's only four, God is she dead as well?" Mrs Collier looked like she was going to disobey Camille and burst into the house, she imagined as a mother she couldn't stand the idea of not knowing what had become of the child. Camille wasn't very comfortable with it either. Mrs Collier wasn't sobbing, but tears streamed down her face and Camille felt her fear.
"Wait here," she told her firmly. She didn't need to enter the house though, as Richard and Dwayne came out at the moment, a small child in tow. Mrs Collier made to rush forward and take the child, but Richard held up a hand to stop her and Camille also held back the woman.
"I understand your concern Madam but I need to take her to a Doctor just to get checked over," Richard told her firmly.
"Oh God, Danielle are you okay?" Mrs Collier asked from where she stood. The child made no reply. "Is she hurt?" she addressed Richard instead.
"She appears to be physically fine," Richard told her.
"Did she…God she was there wasn't she?" Mrs Collier whispered the last statement.
"Dwayne, perhaps you could finish taking Mrs Collier's statement whilst Camille accompanies me to the hospital?"
"Yes Chief," Dwayne led Mrs Collier off down the street again, though the woman still glanced back.
Camille crouched down to introduce herself, "Hi Danielle, I'm Camille." The girl stared solemnly back at her. She looked very vulnerable in her night dress, untamed frizzy hair loose about her face. With a jolt, Camille realised there was a blood stain on the night dress.
"It's not her blood?" She asked her boss, not wanting to ask the actual question in front of the girl.
"No," he confirmed what Camille feared, Danielle must have her mother's blood on her. "She hasn't said a word since we found her. Paramedics are heading back to collect her and we better call Eleanor Patterson." The Commissioner's wife was the head social worker for the island.
Camille thought about the body of the woman, the mother, still lying in the house. This was another day she didn't like her job.
A/N: I know it is very likely police officers or paramedics wouldn't clear the whole house immediately, so let's call it artistic licence please.