The next morning, the Homicide department in Office 450 had returned to its fast-paced atmosphere with each desk occupied by a busy detective and phones ringing off the hook, leaving the Christmas stockings as the sole reminders of a holiday come and gone too fast.
Mike entered the bullpen just after seven, entirely immune to the frenzy of returning to work and catching up after a day or two off. As a matter of fact, he was shamelessly taking his sweet time walking over to his office, hanging his overcoat and fedora on the nearby clothes rack, briefly scanning his desk for any notices and excited to find none, before heading to the coffee machine.
Across from him, Steve had beat him to the office that morning, going through a couple of letters left in the inbox at his desk, so deep in thought that he never noticed his partner's presence until Mike gently tapped his shoulder, receiving a surprised glance and slight nod of the head as his only answer before the young Inspector resumed his intent study.
"By the looks of it, everything was pretty quiet yesterday?", Hassejian asked when he joined Mike by the coffee machine, a thin handprint of powdered sugar on the lapel of his plaid dress coat where the Armenian detective had indulged in his breakfast treat a little bit too much.
"Nothing new.", Mike answered, opening himself up for more questions when Norm raised a curious eyebrow, and decided to cut to the chase, "We did find another leg though. Same park. Slightly different location. From a woman."
"What? That's crazy. You mean to tell me they're making it a regular problem greeting severed body parts up there?"
The enthusiasm with which Norm had said that made a few other detectives raise their weary heads and Mike nodded slowly.
"Bernie is still working on it but yeah, that's what it looks like. I wasn't able to gather any more information on your floater case though. I tried but all the pertaining offices were closed."
With a warm smile, Hassejian slapped his arm, before reaching across to refill his empty coffee cup.
"That's alright. Dan and I can pick it up from here again. Do you want to hand back the severed leg case too, or do you guys want to keep it? I know how much you love disintegrating appendages, Lieutenant."
Mike had opened his mouth to scoff at the remark, when Steve shot up from his desk, his eyes never leaving the contents of a brown envelope in his shaking hands.
"No. We want to keep that one, Norm.", the young Inspector muttered urgently, before rushing out of the bullpen toward the elevators, leaving two stunned detectives behind.