PART TWO: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

"…Blood pooling suggest the victim," the detective glanced at his notepad, "Jimmy Portlocker, was killed here."

"Mm," his partner concurred. "The centre's security said that at night this place is pretty well lit up but the area's considered a 'black spot' for the CCTVs."

"It seems odd that someone would do it in such a public place given the time of the murder. What'd the ME say? 6-8 hours ago?" She responded, looking towards the detectives waiting for a response.

One of them looked to his partner then back to Jane. "Yeah," he said quite sarcastically. "Thanks for the input rookie, now ah, why don't you go back to guarding that very special yellow tape," he shooed.
They both had a bit of a chuckle as they swatted her away like a fly.

Jane rolled her eyes slightly before saying "Yes, sir." The words were spoken through intensely gritted teeth. She absolutely hated the way the detectives treated beat cops, but still had high hopes to one day become one. A slightly more encouraging one though, she hoped.
For now, despite being annoyed with their arrogance, she walked back to the edge of the secured perimeter. She inspected the crowd of sparsely position onlookers, - mostly the early birds out to do grocery shopping, - before considering if there was a way she could be useful in a way that wouldn't impede upon the detectives' work.

She once again scanned her surroundings, both the people and the structures, and still was to no avail. Instead of standing around protecting the scene as 5 other cops so tediously were, she decided to have a look around the rest of the carpark.

After ducking under the crime scene tape, she walked out about 20metres. Jane figured that anything closer would probably either be in sight or had already been seen by a police officer. The open parking lot had very few places to hide and relatively good visibility. She also realised though that that probably wasn't too useful considering the only things in the street were light industry offices and warehouses and it was unlikely that anyone would have been around to see it. She paced around pensively, keenly observing everything in her light of sight. It was mostly cigarette butts and little plastic bags up until she came to one spot, approximately 50 metres away from the scene. There was a small pool of, what appeared to be, blood near one side of an outlined parking lot.
"Holy crap," she muttered with genuine surprise. She didn't really expect to find anything but knew that if she had stayed there was going to be a second body after she died of boredom.

Grabbing her phone from her pocket she took a photo of it just in case anything happened in her absence. She took the photo and began walking away when a thought occurred to her. After about three steps she thought, a photo's not enough. Instead she then radioed one of the other uniformed officers to inform the detectives. After contacting them, she stood waiting impatiently, her eyes switching between the blood on the ground and the direction from where the detectives should have been coming.

A few moments later, - actually a minute and a half, she timed it, - one of the detectives arrived barking, "What is it rookie?!"

"Sir, there's blood on the ground," she said a little too eagerly as she pointed downwards.

He all but rolled his eyes at her keenness before he looked to the ground. He's actually a little startled by the idea that she would have brought him over here for something less than monumental, but looking down he realised that it is indeed monumental. That is to say, it remarkably was important enough to have 'bothered' him for as, were it anything less, Jane wouldn't have gotten out of there in one piece. He relented, "Nice catch… Rizzoli, was it?"

She nodded elated. "Yes, sir."

"Nice catch," he repeated, as his voice faded making way for his thoughts.

•••

Miss Isles sits at her dining table sipping a homemade cappuccino staring at a mountain of work to get through. Term three is nearly over which means that, just a few weeks after they return, end-of-year reports will be due. As a result, she and many other teachers are faced with a humungous amount of marking to get through as well as then determining class rankings for both the assessment itself and for the entire year. If that weren't enough, she then had to write the actual reports for each of her students which, depending on the week, averaged at about 150 of them. This means 150 one-hundred word paragraphs of well-thought out and unique compliments and critiques for each of her students.
Most teachers had a generic paragraph that was then simply modified with positive and negative words in the appropriate places, but Miss Isles believed that they deserved more than that. So, whilst she had a brief structure of the paragraph, each sentence was original, - at least, as original as one could be a hundred paragraphs into it.

Reports were never really something she enjoyed. She certainly appreciated the opportunity for growth in her students and herself, she knew the many negative things that could ensue because of a report card, good and bad. She also hated that it was expected that these evaluations would in fact be apt. What if she had made a mistake, or there were unmitigated circumstances that she was unaware of? What if she had developed a bias towards a student that she hadn't yet consciously picked up on? There was no way she could truly be objective, and that was something she'd always found valuable. The largest factor that inundated her was that she really only saw these students 3-4 hours a week. How could anyone really be expected to gather enough information on anyone to judge them?

As, not uncommonly, Miss Isles had once again begun to 'overthink' the situation, as people so often called it, she tried focus on what was important. So, regardless of the plaguing thoughts, she knew that it was simply an unfortunate aspect of teaching that she was just going to have to 'tough out'. And, although it didn't make her much fonder of the whole 'marking' process (or outcome), it was comforting to know that these were the final ones for the year. Well, almost. Some of her classes had one more test but it was mostly multiple choice and, like the children, she found these easier than extended response pieces. She didn't have to think about them as much, and could approach them logically as they had no emotionally motivated responses, at least not that she could decipher from a sheet of randomly coloured in oval shapes.

This is just a quick chapter to set the scene for the second part of this story.

Hope you're happy and well.