Charlie smiled as she woke. Joey was nestled against her, her head on her shoulder, a leg casually draped over her hip and she was still sleeping soundly. The bed sheets were an absolute mess, having been tangled up during their night of lovemaking and she could only imagine what state her hair was in if Joey's was anything to go by. "What a night," she murmured, her body still feeling deliciously exhausted, but she knew it was time to get up, no matter how much she wanted to stay right where she was.
Her girlfriend looked so adorable sleeping though and she didn't want to wake her, so as careful as she could be, Charlie disentangled herself from Joey, pausing briefly when Joey murmured softly and rolled away from her, before Charlie moved off the bed.
By the time Charlie showered, tamed her hair and was in her uniform, she found Joey dressed and making coffee in the kitchen. "Morning sweetheart," Joey greeted her with a kiss and a cup of coffee.
Taking a gulp of coffee, Charlie closed her eyes and sighed happily.
"Well, I guess I know what your preference is in the morning and it's not me," Joey said with false outrage and Charlie grinned.
"I need my cuppa in the morning," Charlie told her. "Otherwise I'm not someone you want to be around."
"I think I can handle you just fine," smirked Joey. "If last night was anything to go by."
"Last night was pretty great."
"Not according to Ruby," Joey said and had a good chuckle at her girlfriend's horrified look. "Relax, she didn't hear anything, but the trail of clothes we left behind was kind of an obvious clue. I found them all neatly folded and sitting on the couch."
"I'd forgotten all about those."
"Well, we did have other things on our mind at the time," Joey said. "Perhaps we should consider one of those 'Do Not Disturb' signs for around here though, before we traumatise poor Ruby," she said, "Or we could just remember to keep ourselves and our things, to the bedroom."
"Don't think that will always be possible," Charlie told her and set her coffee aside as she moved over to her girlfriend and put her arms around her. "You're too irresistible at times and I just can't stop myself."
"Neither can I."
Charlie snuggled closer. "You're so warm and cuddly," she murmured. "But I can't stay like this because I have to get to work."
"I know."
Brushing her lips over Joey's, Charlie stepped back and picked up her coffee.
"About time," she muttered from her vantage point as two cars pulled into the car park. It was dangerous to be spying so close to the cop shop, but her boss was getting impatient. She was also getting bored with all the following around and spying from a distance and decided it might be time for more direct surveillance. "Which one though," she wondered aloud. She knew which one would likely be more enjoyable to get closer to, but this was a job, not play time and her boss wasn't one to let incompetence or failure go unpunished, so personal preference aside, she might need to go with who offered the most benefit to what she needed. "Still," she murmured, "It wouldn't hurt to combine a little fun in with work."
"That's good timing," Joey said as she pulled the car into the parking bay adjacent to where the two visiting Detectives had just parked. "How about we give them a show?" she joked.
"Don't temp me," murmured Charlie. "But I will settle for a kiss." She leant over and pressed her lips to Joey's.
"I'll be by at lunch time to pick you up," Joey said when the kiss finally ended. "I love you."
"I love you too."
Giving her girlfriend another kiss, Charlie hoped out of the car and faced a bemused Robertson.
"Nice of you to join us Charlie," he said. Charlie just rolled her eyes and followed him and Graves into the station.
With everyone now out of sight, she moved away to go and plan her next move.
Charlie made herself another coffee, before joining Robertson and Graves in her office.
"Graves and I had a rather early start to the morning and have some new developments in the investigation," Robertson said and gave Charlie a piece of paper.
"Damn," Charlie muttered as she read it. "I was hoping Bianca's prints wouldn't match any of those found on the driver's side of Angelo's car."
"It is interesting as to where her prints were found and not found inside the car though," Robertson said. "On the gear stick, part of the dashboard and only one side of the steering wheel, while none of hers were found on the door, not even the handle."
Charlie frowned at that. "I can't see Angelo being a gentleman and opening the door for her from the outside, so placement of her prints doesn't make sense."
"It might if you remember the nature of their relationship," Graves quietly interjected and I looked blankly at her. "And that semen was found in the car."
"Oh god," Charlie said as it finally dawned on her and an unfortunate image popped into her mind. She shook that image loose and stared at the young Detective. "You don't think Bianca was giving him a blow job or hand job while he was driving and that's how her fingerprints ended up where they did and why his car was swerving moments before the accident, do you?"
"It's possible that is how things went down," Robertson said. Charlie wasn't sure if he was aware of the pun he'd just made or not. "Or he could have just been high on drugs, but unfortunately for us, because of the time it took us to catch up to Angelo and then get access to his car, there's no way to prove if he had drugs in his system at the time of the accident or what Miss Scott may have been doing to him. The prosecution can certainly speculate about what he and Miss Scott may have been up to at the time and also about Angelo's known drug use by introducing those photos, but it's mostly circumstantial evidence and guess work as things stand at the moment."
"Her prints on the steering wheel doesn't help matters either," said Graves, "As it provides Angelo with some ammunition to argue that Miss Scott was driving that day and I'm sure even a half-decent lawyer could come up with an argument to explain the absence of her prints elsewhere."
"Shit," Charlie muttered.
"There's still a chance Martha's memory will come back before this even makes it to trial and she may be able to provide us with some new information," Graves said.
"Assuming it even gets as far as a trial," muttered Charlie.
"Not all is lost," Robertson said and his sudden smugness irritated Charlie under the circumstances and even Graves seemed annoyed, though it was hard to tell with her as she never seemed to display much emotion or reveal much with her body language. "Because we do have a potential witness."
"Who?"
"Bianca Scott."
"What?" Charlie said, unsure if she'd heard right.
"It appears she might not be as dead as we might have thought," Robertson said and opened the folder in front of him. He took a photo from the pile. "Officers in the city followed up on the prescription the doctor wrote to Miss Scott and they found the pharmacy where she had her prescription filled." He pushed the photo across the desk to Charlie. "I printed that out from the CCTV footage from inside the pharmacy."
"Bianca is alive," Charlie said with a mixture of relief and disbelief as she stared at the photo.
"We requested Miss Scott's bank records and they show she withdrew ten grand an hour after she picked up her prescription and she hasn't been seen or heard from since, which suggests she's lying low and doesn't want to be found."
"Bianca took out ten grand?" Charlie said in disbelief. "She had that much money?"
"More," Roberson said. "Blackmail can be a profitable business and we have no way of knowing how many others, besides Angelo, she had been blackmailing or for how long."
"After seeing her bank balance, her activities are something that is going to need to be investigated further," Graves said. "While we're still certain her disappearance is connected to the accident, we need to cover all bases and make sure she had no other reasons to leave or possible threats against her from someone else she might have been blackmailing."
"And since I'm sure Angelo's lawyers will soon be becoming involved, they're going to want to stop this even going to trial and so they'll be looking for ways to discredit Miss Scott's character in their bid to paint her as the heartless driver who fled the scene, so we need to know as much about her as we can, to counter any move they might make," Robertson said.
"Angelo was a married man and police officer, who was doing drugs and screwing Bianca, even after she was blackmailing him," Charlie said, "So what's that say about his character?"
Robertson smiled at her. "I daresay his lawyers will be painting a very different picture of what his character is and I'm sure they'll make good use of this little detail about Miss Scott's extracurricular activities," he said. "And that is why introducing the blackmail photos could end up being a two-edge sword; it shows Angelo's drug use and infidelity, but it could also be used to assassinate Miss Scott's character and raise a lot of questions as to why she might have run."
"It certainly doesn't help us that Miss Scott isn't here to testify in her own defence," added Graves. "And by running, it makes her look guilty."
"I'm finding it hard to believe that Bianca would just run and leave April behind like that," Charlie said. "At the very least, I would have expected her to have contacted April by now."
"April did seem generally upset about her sister's disappearance when we spoke to her, so unless she's an incredibly good actress, she genuinely believes her sister is missing and possibly dead, which is why she gave us the photos to use against Angelo," Robertson said to them, "So I'd assume for Miss Scott to disappear like she has, then she had a very good reason for doing so and it's not because she was the driver that caused the accident."
"You think Angelo threatened her?" Charlie asked him.
"That's just one of the questions we need to ask Miss Scott," he stated.
"And why we need to find her as soon as possible and get her version of events," said Graves.
Charlie glanced at the photo again. "If Bianca is alive, then where the hell is she?"