Yaz reached out into the darkness, crawled her fingers across the bedside table until they connected with the cool metal base on her bedside table. Tapping it twice, she groaned as the light flashed on, the too-bright bulb flooded the room and her senses. Leaning over, she checked the bedside table only to find it bare. She blinked, tried to recall where she could have ended up tossing her cell in her exhausted stupor.
She could hear it. Ringing and ringing, someone on the other end insistent that she stopped sleeping and got back to work. There - she could see the dim light from her jeans pocket where she'd let it slide to the floor with her pants when she'd stripped off her work clothes before falling into bed.
Careless, Yaz. Careless.
Still, better here than on the job where it counted.
Hanging half off the bed, she stretched until she could yank the still ringing phone from her jeans pocket and glanced at the screen. Damn. All the exhaustion she had just been feeling, and there had been quite a lot of it after the last week, burned up when that first bit of adrenaline hit her veins. She swiped to unlock the screen, worked herself back onto the bed as she pressed the phone to her ear - trying to brace herself for the words she knew she'd hear, because if it was urgent enough for Jones to call her at three in the morning it must have been about a murder.
"Khan, here," she said, sitting up.
She listened and jotted down the address on her notepad. Thanking Jones, she hung up. Yaz dressed quickly, pulled on her boots, and a jacket that she'd have to shed when the sun had been up long enough to chase off the morning chill. She slid her badge on, adding her gun to her holster last, and headed down the stairs, feeling more like detective Yasmin Khan by the moment. She wore the title, the persona like personal armor, and she knew that it suited her well. There was something comforting about it all, about being able to put it on and leave behind all the feelings she would never allow to follow her to her job.
Once again, she felt thankful for that job. With all the bad she had seen, did see, she tried to remain a beacon of hope. For the victim, and every family member who looked to her with lost eyes, needing answers and feeling shattered...well, she could help mend those broken pieces. She could find those answers, and justice, give a voice back to someone who had theirs taken away. She honored their memories by doing her job, and it drove her to be the best, to put work before everything in her life.
Yaz climbed into her car, forgoing the coffee pot in favor of being the first detective on the scene. She trusted Jones not to call Miles in, even if the case ended up too big for her, but Miles had a habit of showing up places he wasn't wanted or needed in the first place. She refused to let him compromise her work by being arrogant, by not caring enough about the evidence or the witnesses. And sure, maybe some of it stemmed from what had happened, but it didn't make it less true.
She pulled out, drove to the scene in silence, focused on the address. It sounded familiar. Maybe she'd spent time there as a beat cop? Nice neighborhood, she noted as she pulled behind the line of marked cop cars on the side of the road. They'd taped it off already, and she could see light pouring out the open front door, and a group of young people gathered off to the side whispering nervously, some rubbing at their arms, trying to fight back the cold in their too-short sleeves and dresses. Yaz slipped out, headed towards the tape, and flashed her badge. The cop, one she didn't know, lifted up the tape for her. She nodded her thanks, then stopped and looked back at him.
"Get them some blankets," Yaz said, nodding to the group. "We'll get better answers if they aren't freezing."
She turned without another word, heard the officer calling to someone else about blankets and that was enough for her to feel confident that by the time she made it outside she'd have witnesses tired enough, scared enough, and just warm enough to be compliant. She hoped.
"Okay, Jones?" she asked - slipping shoe covers and gloves on before she stepped into the wide hallway.
"Okay," he agreed, waiting on her to move in closer before he shared the details.
He'd already given her the condensed version of course, but she wanted to hear it again, now that she was here and could focus on the scene before her.
She noted the body was about halfway down the hall...nearly exactly half she imagined if she were to measure it out. Was that important? She added it to the list, moved on. There was a staircase to the right, leading up to a second floor, and likely more rooms in the back. The floors were hardwood, and though she couldn't place the type of wood she imagined it hadn't come cheap. There were no pictures on the wall, no art of any sort, no plants or sculptures. No indication that anyone lived here, outside of the scattered and dropped cups, the bottles of beer, some which had been tipped onto their sides - likely when the murder had happened, or when the witnesses had been rounded up after.
So, a party then? That seemed to be the most likely setting. A group of twenty-somethings who had had too much to drink and just a little bit too much fun last night. Motive? She doubted it was robbery, judging by the vast amount of witnesses and the fact that the large house seemed to be mostly devoid of anything to steal (at least from first impressions). Beyond that though, it was much too early to speculate.
Working her way down the hall, Yaz stepped over the cups and bottles, avoided tracking through the many spills. When she'd reached Jones' side, she knelt by their victim, focused only on getting that first impression of the scene, of the body, before anyone altered it too much, before her mind had time to be drawn into any deeper conclusions. It had always felt much easier to get it right the first time than to shed pieces of false information later.
Their victim was male, young, college-age, or possibly just beyond. His face was pale, lips paler still - blood loss then? He wore a nice button-down shirt, jeans, boots, all of which were tidy and name brand, giving her the impression that he did actually have the money to be living in this neighborhood. The next thing she noticed was the blood, or rather, the lack of it. Normally, in a crime scene like this, it'd be the first thing she noticed. The smell would be hanging sickly in the air, and it would be drying around the body, on too many surfaces, but not here. In fact, the only blood she saw was drying faintly over to the two gashes in his shirt, and she couldn't smell anything beyond the beer and sweat and the many types of perfumes and colognes that hung heavy in the air despite the door being open and the witnesses long outside.
When she felt satisfied with the first pass over the body, she leaned back onto her heels and looked up at Jones, waited until the flipped his notebook over to prompt, "Well?"
"Twenty-two- year old male," Jones said. "Two stab wounds, but they've been covered by some sort of glue...or film, not sure yet. But, I think that's why we're not seeing more blood. Um...the coroner hasn't arrived on the scene...asked them to give you a few minutes first, know how you like to look around. Our victim was holding a party here last night, with about fifty of his closest friends...none of which saw anything but him collapsing here in the hall. I did a preliminary sweep of the house and back garden, didn't find any other blood, but I left the rest for you. Figured you'd rather I man the door in case we had unwanted guests.
"Yeah, thanks," Yaz said, nodding.
She swallowed a few times, refused to throw a glance over her shoulder, no matter how her mind screamed at her to ensure that he hadn't actually shown up. She was safe. She refused to give in to that fear. She refused.
Instead, she studied the body once more, worked her way through the limited facts. No had seen anything...she'd heard the implication in Jones' tone, understood all too well how unlikely it was, even with all the drinking, that the first they'd seen of anything out of sorts was their friend collapsing in the hall. Even if it didn't turn out that one or more of them were the murderers, it was near impossible that one of them didn't see something that would help lead her to the person that was. So, with that in mind, she prepared herself for the arduous task of finding that memory inside her witnesses, that one spark within the inferno of the moments leading up to his death
Well...Yaz had always worked best under pressure anyway...
"Found this."
She looked back up at Jones, who was holding out a small folded piece of paper. She took it, unfolding it carefully. There, in the center of the page was a small, printed, number one. She glanced at Jones, back at the paper, and then back to him once more.
He shrugged.
"Not sure, yet, boss."
She sighed, nodded, and handed the paper back over to him, but kept the image of the one fresh inside her mind.
"Do we have an ID?"
"Remy Callen," said a voice from behind her.
Yaz twisted to see a woman in the doorway, gloving up, and working her way towards Yaz and Jones.
"Remy Callen," Jones repeated. "As in Senator Callen's only son."
Yaz exhaled slowly. She could see her dreams of this being an easy case going up in smoke right before her eyes. A senator's kid would get top priority...would warrant backup whether Yaz agreed to it or not, and she couldn't settle the uneasy feeling she got in her stomach as the woman, a pretty blonde, finished making her way over to them.
"Detective Jo Smith," she said, nodding down to Yaz, meeting Jones' eye. "Just transferred in...and I've been assigned to assist you with the case, assuming you're Yasmin Khan, that is."
"I am," Yaz said, her eyes darting up to Jones who refused to meet her gaze. "Could have mentioned something, Jones..."
"High profile case," Jones said on a shrug.
She sighed and glanced over at Detective Smith - Jo? - and studied her as she knelt down beside Yaz. She held herself with confidence, had moved over to them with practiced ease, and seemed competent enough of the surface. She wore a light jacket, gray, over a printed shirt that Yaz had only caught a glimpse of, and jeans that half-covered her boots. Casual, but professional, kind of like Yaz's own clothing of choice. Her hair was cut short, nearly shoulder-length, darker at the roots, and she was, as Yaz was slightly alarmed to notice, even prettier up close. She swallowed, darted her eyes away as if one of the other people in the room, one of the people whose job it was to notice other people acting shifty, would somehow latch on to that very thought.
Get it together, Khan.
"Catch me up?"
Yaz ran through the list of facts, watched Jo as she took careful notes, searched the body for herself, and studied the number for a few moments. Yaz withheld nothing from her - if she really had to work with someone, she was sure as hell going to make sure that that someone was as well informed as she was.
When she'd finished, Jo flipped her notebook closed again and gave Yaz a fraction of a smile. For just a moment, she looked as tired as Yaz felt - Yaz wanted to say something, something to help build camaraderie, something to show sympathy, anything, really, but the moment slipped away from her before she could decide on the right order of the words, and Jo was back on task, looking down the hall and then meeting Yaz's eye again.
"Where do you want me?"
Strictly speaking, she wasn't Jo's boss, but she couldn't bear the thought of handing over a fresh crime scene to someone she barely knew. And maybe that made her a bit of a control freak, but she knew the kind of job that she did, she couldn't guarantee the same for anyone else, including Jo...at least not yet. She shifted her weight again, her knees aching from being held in the same position for too long, and finally looked away from where she had felt trapped in those hazel eyes.
"Mind handling witnesses? Maybe we can get some of them cleared and out of the cold."
"You got it," Jo said. Yaz watched her stand out of the corner of her eye, stared at the blank wall in front of her. "Catch up with you after?"
"Right," Yaz said, nodding, not quite ready to think on how much time she'd likely be spending in Jo's company for the next short while. "Thanks."
Jo nodded, worked her way down the hall. When she'd reached the end, Yaz finally trusted herself to look, watched her toss her gloves into the trash, and head out to do her job without so much as a look back at her. Yaz took it as a sign of trust, of good faith, that she would take care of the crime scene to the best of her ability. Yaz owed her the same courtesy. She stood up, nodded at Jones, and started to work body outwards, focused only on her work, on the one thing in the whole universe that made her feel complete.
JO
Jo had spent the next couple hours interviewing the witnesses and ended up feeling half-frozen by the time she'd dismissed the last one - leaving her with far too few answers for both Detective Khan and her. She'd listened carefully to them all, had taken down each detail of their night into her notes, even if those details had largely consisted of them seeing nothing out of the ordinary. No, they'd been far too distracted by the alcohol, the hookups, the music, and so on until Remy had collapsed in the hall and nearly fifty people had shifted from drunk to adrenaline sober in moments.
One of the young men had felt for a pulse, but not a single person reported anything that related to the cause of death being stabbing, nothing about seeing a knife or the wounds, not a single accidental slip to implicate anyone of anything. They had, according to every single one of them, done no investigating of their own, made no attempts at CPR, had only scattered away from their now dead friend, and called emergency services. If this were true, it did, at the very least, decrease the chance that they'd contaminated the scene more than the party itself already had.
She watched the last witness climb into a car, scanned her notes once more while rolling her shoulders. Her whole back had tightened up, felt like a solid wall of muscle from the hours standing there interviewing. She turned back to the door, prepared herself to go back in and continuing working, instead of getting a cup of coffee and finding a warm place to defrost - two things she'd likely not get to enjoy until Detec-
As if on cue, Detective Khan - should she call her Yasmin? Or Khan? How stiff of a professional relationship should she be expecting from her new partner? - stepped outside, rolling her neck and glancing up at the sky. Jo followed her eyes, found the sun inching over the horizon, painting the morning in shades of pink, the faint heat promising that the chill would fade by afternoon. Now, though, she watched Yasmin zip up her jacket, brush the loose strands of hair away from her face, and for just a moment, despite all the horrible things around them, how they were meeting, she couldn't help but notice how beautiful the soft colors of dawn had made Yasmin.
She pushed the thought away at once. Of course, she didn't even mean to think it, had sworn off women in the first place, and she sure didn't intend to take notice of her brand new partner, however attractive said partner might be. Drawing in a long breath, she chalked up the lapse in reason to all the sleepless nights of late, to her recurring bouts of loneliness since Clara had left, and when she felt safe enough with herself to look at Yasmin again she felt almost back to normal.
She let out another long breath, ready to get moving, ready to compare their notes. Maybe after, if she were very lucky, they'd find a few minutes for that cup of coffee after all. She started back across the yard, ducking under the side of the tape at nearly the same time as someone else entered the scene. Jo glanced at him, feeling an immediate sense of discomfort that she couldn't define. He was conventionally handsome, with light eyes, a shadow of a beard, and well-defined muscles beneath his too-tight long-sleeved shirt - apparently caring more for vanity than warmth. He spared her the briefest glance, and then flashed his badge in the direction of the nearest uniformed officer, before heading straight for Yasmin.
Jo's eyes darted to Yasmin, who went rigid at the sight of him. Her eyes flickered around, settled on Jo for only a moment, before looking back at the man, and Jo wasn't sure what message she was supposed to be receiving, if any, but she felt certain that Yasmin was truly and properly afraid of this man. This bothered Jo, for all the obvious reasons, but beyond that, she couldn't line it up with the woman she'd just seen inside, all confidence and strength. What did it take to break that woman? Jo gritted her teeth, certain she knew the answer.
It made her skin prickle, she couldn't sit still. Something about seeing fear in people had always brought out something in her, even when they didn't ask for help, even if they likely wouldn't ask for help, she'd always felt the need to try. It was the reason she'd earned her medical degree, and when that had failed her, it was the reason she'd become a detective. So, drawn in by her very nature, Jo moved closer to the pair of them, her notebook in her hand, pen clicked and ready to use, keeping up a pretense of waiting to report to Yasmin.
She'd missed the first part of the conversation, briefly wondered if she should be interfering in a stranger's business, but then again, wasn't that part of her job...
"This isn't your case, Miles," Yasmin said. "It was assigned to me, and I would appreciate it if you left now."
He reached out, grabbed her arm, his fingertips digging into the leather jacket Yasmin wore. She tensed up, drew in a breath, and Jo watched her throat bob a few times.
"You'll need a partner for this, Yaz," he said, his hand tightening a fraction farther. "You know it's too big for you."
"She has a partner," Jo said, sidestepping him. "It's me, I'm her partner." Relief flooded Yasmin's features, and Jo knew she'd made the right choice. "Detective Khan, I've finished the interviews, can we talk? Only, I'm freezing, maybe we could grab a cup of coffee while we do."
The hand released Yasmin's arm, and Jo stepped in closer to her, standing tall. She'd only planned it out so far as giving him a glare until he left, leading Yasmin off herself, to somewhere that felt safer, getting that coffee, and comparing notes. She'd even refrain from asking about the situation for a solid minute or two before her nosy nature got the best of her, but Miles only smiled at Jo, ran his eyes up and down her.
"Miles Murphy," he said, holding out a hand. "Most just call me Miles. What do they call you?"
"Detective," Jo said, glancing at his hand, the same one that had just been wrapped around Yasmin's arm. She felt a brief, but intense desire to remove it from his person. "Or Doctor. Smith in a pinch."
He looked at Yasmin and shrugged, dropping his hand. "Well, I'll be seeing you. Soon, Yaz. Soon."
And with that, he left, and Jo watched his back until he'd gone out of sight, kept her watch until she heard Yasmin exhale beside her.
"Thanks."
Jo nodded. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not now," Yasmin said, looking at her and smiling. It looked forced; Jo hated the way she blinked a few extra times before speaking again, "Let's get you somewhere warmer, I'll drive to the coffee shop, you can tell me about the witnesses on the way."