Flack left them to work the scene while he finished canvassing the area. "I'll process this side," Charlie said to Mac before moving off to the far end of the warehouse. For a moment Mac just watched her, noting her measured steps and the way she was examining the floor. Charlie went about her work with a practiced ease, as if processing were second nature. Satisfied with the new girl, Mac turned his attention back to the body in front of him.
He checked the pockets first, then examined the victim from head to toe, looking for defensive wounds and trace. He took a swab of white powder off the hemline of the shirt and pulled a drug test from his kit. There were no obvious needle marks on the victim's arms or legs, but the substance was suspect.
"Our victim may have been involved in drugs," Mac said while he used an eyedropper to dampen the swab. It turned a sickly blue almost instantly. "I found cocaine on his clothes, but he doesn't appear to be a user."
"Could have been a drug deal gone wrong," Charlie said. "I found a hundred dollar bill in the corner over here."
"Just one?"
"Just one."
"Maybe our vic has been using this place to stage deals, and the bill was left over from an exchange. I'll have Flack find out how long this warehouse has been vacant."
Charlie nodded, then snapped two more photos of the bill before she bagged it. It only took her another fifteen minutes to work her way through the rest of the warehouse. When she was finished she had only a handful of swabs and two bags of trace to show for it. "This place is clean," she said. "I'm not finding anything."
Mac frowned and left the body to search the warehouse for anything Charlie might have missed. The door handles were devoid of prints, the grey concrete floors lacked even a thin layer of dust.
"Someone cleaned up," Charlie said, giving voice to Mac's thoughts. He looked up from the ground and studied the windows once more and the dust caked over them.
"They missed a spot." Mac nodded to Charlie. "See what you can get from the windows."
They were finished processing the scene before the medical examiner had the body bagged and loaded up. Charlie and Mac found Flack in the parking lot, waiting for them.
The detective raised his eyebrows incredulously. "Done already?"
"There wasn't a lot to go through," Mac said. "Whoever did this was careful, they took the time to cover their tracks."
"You didn't get anything?"
"Some trace, a hundred dollar bill, and prints," Charlie said. "One set, pulled off the window frame."
"We'll head back to the lab and work with what we have," Mac said. "I want you to run the prints first and work on trace in the meantime."
"Alright," Charlie said. Mac's phone rang, and he glanced down at the number.
"Change of plans, there's another body downtown. Flack can drive you back to the lab, I'll catch up with you later," Mac said. "Prints first," he said again before heading towards his truck.
"Driver," Charlie said, the barest hint of a smirk on her face. She waited for Flack to point out which of the cruisers was his, then followed him to the car. The detective popped the trunk of a silver Crown Victoria so Charlie could put her case inside.
"Driver? I thought you were from Florida. Doesn't everybody from there have a car?"
"Isn't everybody from New York in a hurry?" Charlie climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door, her smile still intact.
Flack muttered something about mouthy new girls as he got into the car. The warehouse was out on the fringes of the city, in the center of a flat lot surrounded by identical flat lots. The roads between the lots were beaten down pathways strewn with loose gravel that crunched under the tires. On either side of the street the old, rusted warehouses sat hunched back on their lots. Their grime streaked windows looked like gaping mouths.
"So where are you from, originally?" Flack asked.
"Here, actually."
"Really?"
"Born in Manhattan, raised in Florida," Charlie said.
"What part of Manhattan?"
"Upper west side."
Flack gave an appreciative whistle. "Are you old money, Charlie?"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "My dad was." They bumped their way over a pothole before Flack turned the car onto a two lane road that led downtown. They could see the city slowly taking shape against the sky as they drove toward it.
"Where you from, Flack?"
"Queens," he said. "Born and raised."
"City boy," Charlie said. They could see it now, the blue on blue silhouette of her father's city. "I bet you'd be lost without those buildings."
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