"What am I looking at?"
"Notice anything out of the ordinary... er, besides your handprint, that is?" The bloodied hamper has been emptied and rolled aside, revealing the gooey puddle Simon slapped his hand into.
Simon crouches down to examine it more closely, unsure what could be so irregular.
And so, he admits, "I don't, no." His eyes stay fixed on the blood, at the streaked imprint of his hand. He is struck with the impulse to, morbid as it is, etch stick legs and a beak to complete a turkey, if only to see how Fulbright would react to it.
"You'd expect there more blood, wouldn't you? But there isn't." Fulbright walks over to the chute door Simon had called down into, pointing to where the Luminol fluid reacted. "Only in these places, with a trail between."
"You don't consider this 'a lot' of blood?" Simon asks, still in a crouch.
Fulbright backtracks to the hamper. "There's a lot in here. What you're looking at—that's all from dripping. It's not consistent with the type of spatter that would be present if say, the victim bled directly from his wound onto the floor. There's no... movement."
"I'm not following."
"What I'm saying, Sir, is this can only be explained is if the victim was in—" Fulbright grabs hold of the hamper and shakes it gently. "—here for an extended period of time."
Simon rises to a standing position, annoyed at how for every answer they find, three new questions replace it. "That doesn't make sense; if the suspect disposed of the corpse down this chute, to then conceal it in the back of his truck, why wait?"
"You know, Sir, I actually might have an answer to that, but I'd like to test something first. I'll need your help on it too, so you'll have to follow me. Gimme a second first, okay? We found a bloody uniform underneath all the packages in there, so let me make sure the tests on it are expedited; I know you need the results by tomorrow or we're in deep trouble!"
As Fulbright checks in with his officers, Simon takes the opportunity to more closely study the hamper, which is now a key piece of evidence. A sizable bloodstain overtakes one, and only one, of the canvas walls. It must have soaked through while tipped on its side. What is also visible now, in the middle of the crimson stain, is a slit about waist-high on Simon.
He runs a gloved finger along it, noting how the smallest traces of blood have reached the outside of the canvas, undoubtedly from when the knife was removed. It is too much of a coincidence for this slit to have been here previous to the murder, and he hopes dearly that this has been notated.
Simon glances up, about to ask this very question when he sees Fulbright at the computer desk, collecting both his and Simon's notebooks. It's then Simon remembers...
"Hoy, detective! Before we take off anywhere, you need to see this." He'd been meaning to show Fulbright the picture on his phone, but that was before he ever expected the crew to be here. As it is, he gives the mouse a swish and within seconds, Mr. Ecsprest's locked log-in screen appears for all to see.
"Here. I bumped the mouse during my search earlier, and this is what I found."
"Oh...! Good catch, Sir. Interesting, too..."
"Indeed. Will it take long to er, 'hack' into this? Ah, you could lift prints from the keyboard to determine the password, right?"
"We could, but considering how often this PC was used, I don't know if matching prints is really efficient. But don't worry, we have personnel here skilled in this sort of thing. Justice is always prepared!"
Simon hardly has the chance to process this statement before Fulbright darts off to the other side of the room, and returns with a female officer in tow. She has a youthful appearance, and both confidence and intelligence radiate from behind her neon green-framed glasses. Her jet-black hair is cut in a jagged style falling right above her shoulder.
She is attractive, although it's less that he actively thinks it so much as Aura's voice in his head pointing it out. This has always been the case, that he's more aware of what his sister would think about women than what he himself does...
It's embarrassing, that he's thinking about it at all. Or that for some reason, he's now looking at Fulbright, as his mind continues to stray along this pointless thread.
"Sir, this is Officer Dakota Ng. She does software programming in her free time, and she's kind of a whiz when it comes to this kind of stuff. "
"I'll make a great criminal someday, if this cop thing doesn't work out." She reinforces this with a cutting smile, and beside her, Fulbright lets out a scandalized gasp.
Simon chuckles at such a bold, and clearly sarcastic, proclamation. "Ah, well, we all have our aspirations."
Saying this aloud makes him wonder, useless as it is, what Fulbright's are. Bah, probably nothing remotely of interest to Simon, that much is certain. He swiftly rids the thought from his mind.
"It's a good thing she's on our side!" Fulbright pats her shoulder approvingly. "Thirty minutes enough time for you, Dakota?"
"Please. Fifteen minutes or less, that's the Dakota Ng guarantee!" She stretches out her arms, interlaced at the fingers and dramatically cracking her knuckles.
Fulbright dismisses Officer Ng to her task with a cheerful salute. After they both dispose of their latex gloves, Simon heeds Fulbright's request and follows him out of the sorting room.
Simon doesn't ask where they're headed, as other curious observations take precedent.
"They seem to like working with you... er, for you, I suppose." He thinks of, from what he can tell, the distinctly different personalities of Officers Stone and Ng and how they both seem friendly and open towards Fulbright. Quickly, so that it doesn't sound as if he means it incredulously, he adds, "That is, you have a knack for... people."
"Yeah? Thanks! As you can see, it's a tough job, so why make it any more difficult by being all..." Fulbright glances in his direction.
"Impolite?" Simon provides, half-jokingly referencing Fulbright's chiding of him.
Taking it obversely, Fulbright pauses at the junction where the back hallways meet the front lobby. "Sir, there's no need to... I mean, I don't think you're..."
Fulbright hesitates a moment, lost in thought. He rests a thumb by his own cheek and two fingers atop the bridge of his nose, as if pushing up invisible glasses; clearly, a reflexive action. They're standing so close that he can't help but study Fulbright, and that's the only reason Simon notices two pinkish indents, shape consistent of nosepads. Gods, does Fulbright require spectacles and has forgotten them? Or even, opted not to forego them, for a purely aesthetic purpose?
Hmph, as if Simon cares about this Fool Bright's appearance; he's already proven himself, in many ways, inexplicably odd. Simply, Simon doesn't want to be working with a detective with questionable eyesight, and before he has the opportunity to change the subject and inquire about these missing glasses, Fulbright presses on.
"I don't think you're overall like that, just..."
Simon braces himself, prepared for what's to follow. How, if he could only be more personable. Or, if he were more willing to just get over the sickening unease that arises when thrust into social interaction...
(Or, many other phrases that he ensures Athena never hears, that she never has to even entertain, at least not from him...)
"...you're not a people person, I guess," Fulbright finishes.
Simon can't quite grasp the tenor of this statement—he knows it to be true, himself, but coming from someone else so openly and without scorn? That is, nothing more than an objective fact—he's bewildered, and only distracted when he suddenly notices a light pressure at the top of his thigh.
He then realizes it's the unique texture of Athena's hair tie pressing into the tender skin of his wrist as he rubs it ever-so-slightly back and forth along his dress slacks. He stops this motion, says the words he suspects fit the situation most suitably, though he knows they're futile. "Er, but I... I suppose I should make strides to change that... To be, er... more affable."
"No, don't do that!" Fulbright puts his hands up as if he's literally stopping Simon from acting upon his resolution. "Why, just think about when we're in the courtroom tomorrow! I know you'll have no trouble ripping apart any witness testimony—even my testimony, if need be!"
"Were you not just lecturing me a short time ago how I could stand to be more polite?"
"Yeah, I... I was, but... maybe I could stand to be more accommodating." Fulbright scratches at the back of his head, shoulders sagging as he releases a heavy sigh. "I was thinking about something my training officer told me, back when I started; how I shouldn't forget what it's like to be a rookie. And I guess I kind of did. I mean, there's a lot to remember, and heck, your first case is a homicide, as if it's not stressful enough! So, what I'm saying is that... I'm sorry for being so... so powertrippy, with you. Especially since you've... well, I think you're proving you're up to snuff."
What is Fulbright babbling about? He thinks he was harsh with Simon? Even more so, it's been bothering him?
It must be, as Fulbright is staring at him with large doleful eyes, no doubt concerned about how Simon will, or will not, take his long-winded attempt at a truce.
"Your apology is unnecessary, but I thank you, all the same. Honesty is a trait I respect greatly."
"Oh, I do too, Sir! And you're doing a fantastic job of keeping me, and this investigation, honest with how er... blunt you are! So keep it up, alright?"
"Hm, you're saying I should spare no quarter in distributing the tongue-lashings due you, for even the most minimal transgression?"
"Haha, nope! Fire away!" Fulbright starts walking again, leading Simon to the impossibly long customer service queue and its adjacent counters. "But you do still owe me a handshake. That hasn't changed."
Simon's reply borders between humor and seriousness. "Earn yourself one, Fulbright, and you shall receive it."
"That's the plan!" Fulbright flashes a grin, issuing a sharp salute before opening the door at the far end of the service counter and letting Simon go first into the employee side.
The area they enter is, to put it mildly, disorganized. One can not walk from one end to the other in a straight line, thanks to all the miscellaneous items strewn about. Simon doesn't derive anything negative from this set-up; if anything, it reminds him greatly of Aura's room, and now her lab, when in the midst of another project. Clutter was a sign of genius, of success, she'd tell their father when he'd raise an eyebrow at her chaotic work space.
And as busy as this branch is—by far the highest-trafficked one in all of Los Angeles—Simon can't find fault in this claim. Nor can he find how he, in any fashion, will be of the slightest help.
"Do you really need my assistance in this?" His tone makes it plain that he's not sure he—or anyone—can ably fulfill such a request; where would they even start, in this disarray?
"I need someone's help, yeah. But I'd like yours."
Simon's shell of apprehension cracks and splinters, and emerging from it like a newborn chick from an egg, is a certain calm.
Just hours ago he never would have thought that the luck Athena wished for him could have, in any sense, involved what's transpired today. That is, meeting and being encouraged to help, Detective Bobby Fulbright.
And perhaps it's still to come, because the way Fulbright's face illuminates when Simon nods and asks how he can be of assistance suggests he's the one who's having all the luck.