Thank you very much for your reviews! I'm glad you liked it. And thanks to PricelessVause for pointing out my mistakes, I tried to correct some of them, but I'm not sure I succeeded very much. :D I decided to change some parts of the story to make it a little bit more logical. If you didn't read the new version of the chapter 1 and don't want to read it again, here's the main point: Alex actually was working for DEA for some time as a consultant, so after police found out her connection with their current case, the government decided it would be a great idea if she could help NYPD too, so Alex was transferred under Piper's responsibility. That's all that I've changed.
Piper was sitting at her desk in the office with Vause reading a book by her side.
Piper sighed deeply, "Can you concentrate for a minute at least? Please?"
"I'm concentrated, detective. I'm all yours."
"Then answer my questions, help me!"
"Alright", Alex closed her book, put it on the desk and looked Piper deep in the eyes. Piper shivered. There was something in these eyes, something she couldn't understand, it attracted her… No, she needed to focus.
"I told you already. I didn't know that Tom of yours, he contacted me, said that he's in trouble and that someone gave him my number, our mutual friend. I have no idea what he meant. All those calls I tried to make, were just to convince him I was out of business and he should stop asking for help. He won't listen though, so I tried to be persistent, end of the story. I hadn't heard from him for a week when you brought me here."
"Then what's the point?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why are you here? You're not helping at all!"
"I'm here to keep you company, detective. I don't know. If you want more, we can fuck in the pantry."
Piper rolled her eyes and put her palms over her face.
"Don't be so nervous, Pipes. I still have an amount of contacts, when your guys find something relevant on this Tom, I'll be able to help."
"Don't call me that. Besides, why did you lie about knowing him?"
"I was having fun. You're cute when you're angry."
Piper closed her eyes, calmed herself, "Read your book, Vause, I'll be back soon."
"Don't leave me, this place is so empty without you."
"Then you should start doing something!"
Piper headed to her chief's office, she knocked on the door.
"May I?"
"Chapman. Come in. Something's wrong?"
"Of course! I can't work with her!"
"What, Vause? Piper, you need to stop that. It's just one case. Solve it and you'll be free."
"But she's not helping! She's not connected to the case at all!"
"She's famous among drug dealers, she knows people. Give her something and she'll help, it's not like she's a cop and can do all of our work."
"She's the most irresponsible, selfish, insolent, self-confident person I've ever met in my life!"
"You know her for three days."
"Why are you defending her?"
"I'm not defending her. I'm just saying, we don't know her story and she can help. That's all. Go and try to do your job, Chapman."
Piper was about to argue, but then she understood there was no point. He was right, she just needed to crack this case and everything would be back to normal.
She left Caputo's office and went to her desk. She was quite surprised to see Vause and her partners sitting at their desk laughing at something like they were old friends.
"Nichols, Bennett! Can I talk to your for a minute?"
"Sure", they came up to Piper's desk.
"What was that?"
"What was what?" Nichols answered.
"What were you three doing?"
"We were… working? Oh God, Piper, she's so funny!"
"She kinda is", Bennett assented.
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
"She's helpful, actually. She gave us an idea how to check whether he stayed everywhere or not", Nikki said.
"Yeah, we figured he stayed at two hotels at the same time, which is weird."
"Why is it weird, John?"
"Well, you see, he occupied one room in a 4 star hotel…"
"And one room in some muddy hotel", Nikki finished. "Why he needed a room in some junkie hotel?"
"Clients, I suppose", they heard Vause saying. "It is easier to work this way for guys like him. A good place is for living and junkie place is for working."
"Guys like him?" Piper asked.
"Small fries. It seems like he was working directly with minor clients."
"Minor clients?" Piper asked again.
"People who can't afford large-scale supplies, as you've said, junkies. But it's weird indeed."
"Why?"
"'Cause people like him are usually attached to a definite district and they aren't allowed to sell in other cities. And you told me he wasn't from NY."
"Finally, some help. Yeah, he arrived about one week before his death."
"You're welcome, detective."
"What about warrants?"
"We'll have them in half an hour from now", Bennett said.
"Okay, when we receive them, you and Nikki will check the 4 stars, me and Vause will take the motel. It will be better this way."
After half an hour Piper wished her partners luck and drove to the motel with Alex.
"So, detective. You've got any theories?"
"I don't like to make theories when I know so little about the case."
"Come on. Isn't it the most interesting part? You have an opportunity to test your intuition, your predicting skills."
"It's not a game, Vause. It's my job. The man was killed."
"Exactly, he was killed. So why do you need to remember yourself that every single moment? You've got a very hard job, you need to distract sometimes from all this chaos."
She had a point, Piper gave her that, but still she Alex's wasn't a person to have a friendly talk with.
"What do you know about my job? You know nothing about life difficulties. You had everything. Money, wealthy life, so on, so on."
Alex sneered, "No, it's you who know nothing about me and life difficulties. You don't know me at all."
It was strange, Piper even thought for a minute that she offended the woman, but with the way she behaved it was really hard to say. Maybe it was only self-defense, but Piper preferred to believe that it was Alex's true face. She threw Alex out of her head as they finally arrived at the place.
"Get out, we're here."
They got out of the car and entered the motel. There was an old woman on reception. And she was… Sleeping? What a beautiful motel.
"How can I help you?" She asked slowly. "A room for two of you or just individual ones?"
"Oh, we want a single one, with a double bad, please", Alex said chuckling.
"I'll kill you one day", Piper snorted at her. "Hello, my name is detective Chapman, we need to search a room where Mr. Raymond was staying, one of your clients" she showed the woman her badge and the warrant, but old lady didn't even blink.
"Go on", was all she answered.
"Uh… We kind of need a key and the number of a room."
Woman looked through some papers and after 5 minutes put a key on the table and without any word continued to doze. Piper took the key.
"Okaaay. That was odd."
"What did you expect from a place like this? All they care about is rent, other things aren't their business. Let's go?"
"Yeah… It says №202 on the key, so it's on the second floor, come on."
They made their way up the stairs, found the room and opened the door with the key. The room wasn't that bad. It was uncomfortable, filthy and cheap, but Piper saw places which were much worse.
"It doesn't look like junkie residence, it's even acceptable for a living" Piper said more to herself looking around.
"That's the point."
"I don't understand."
"It wasn't his place of work. I mean, maybe he had some clients in there, but not much and you won't rent a room, if there's only 2 or 3 clients. It's just a waste of time."
"Let's look around, maybe we'll find something."
"Don't I need gloves or something to help you?"
"I was figurative. Don't touch anything. I'll do my job by myself."
"Come on, Pipes. We're together in it, you need to trust me eventually."
"No, I don't. I'll crack the case, you'll be back to DEA, everyone will be happy", Piper put on the gloves and started to search the room.
"What's your problem, blondie?"
"Except you being a pain in my ass, everything is perfect."
"I mean it, why don't you want to cooperate?"
"You're a criminal."
"A former criminal."
"That doesn't change anyth…"
"What, you're out of your words? That's strange, because you always have them when you talk about how horrible I am."
"No, I think I found something", Piper drugged a metal brief case from under the bed. "Great, it's closed and on the password. We need to get back to the station to open it. I don't think I'll find something more here. Maybe Bennett and Nichols were luckier."
"I can open it", Alex said.
"What?"
"What 'what'? You heard me, I can open it."
"I thought you were a drug dealer, not a burglar."
"Give me that."
"No way, it's illegal."
"How can it be illegal? If you keep your cute little mouth shut, no one will ever know. Besides, it was you who wanted me to be helpful."
Piper was in doubts. It wasn't something terrible, if Alex could open the brief case, she was intrigued by its contents to be truthful, but she didn't trust this self-assured woman.
"Give. Me. That", Alex repeated. Piper gave her the case almost without thinking the things over. Curiosity prevailed over common sense.
Alex cracked it open in a minute which made quite an impression on Piper.
"Where did you learn to do this?"
"I tell you as soon as you'll start to trust me."
Piper hid her smile. Despite the fact that this woman was insufferable, she was quite interesting person. She was good educated and well-read. Maybe Piper should treat her more gentle… Ah, why the fuck she should do that? Bullshit. Piper sat down on the bed where Alex was sitting with the brief case on her lap. They slowly opened it.
"Oh really, how ordinary. I expected to find information about World War IV or something about aliens. And this is just a laptop."
"Maybe you'll find something like that in its documents."
"Oh, trying to sound funny? It's a good start."
Piper drew her eyes aside from Alex's and opened the laptop.
"Shit. It's on the password too! I won't be surprised this is really about aliens after all."
"Let me."
"What, you can do that too?"
"Kind of…"
It took Alex 15 minutes this time to hack the laptop.
"Bingo."
Piper took the laptop from Vause and started to look through the Word files on the desktop.
"What a mess… There is an amount of different letters and numbers in the files. It makes no sense."
"For now. May I?"
Piper handed the laptop back to Alex.
"Look, there's a file with names of different TV Shows. Your victim is a fangirl, what an irony", Alex laughed.
"Told you, makes no sense."
"No, wait. I think I may know what is it."
"Yeah?"
"In drug dealing you need to be careful, so some people encode names of important wealthy clients or members of the Cartel, the time of supplies and things like that."
"I thought the victim was just a small fry."
"I thought that too. If I'm right, this guy either stole these codes from some dangerous people for God knows why…"
"Or he wasn't as simple as he seemed", Piper finished Alex's suggestion. "Alright, let's go back to the station, I'll hand the computer to our specialists, let's hope they'll be able to crack the codes."
"It will be really hard. Listen…"
"Yes?"
"Can I copy the files?"
"Are you insane?"
"What? I'm part of your team now. Seriously, trust me. I can help with that."
Piper stood up from the bed and started to pace along the room. She wanted to solve this case as soon as possible. It seemed like Vause knew what to do with files. But what if she was still in business? For God's sake, Chapman, you're paranoid.
"Come on, sunshine, this is the perfect time to start building our trust."
"Okay, copy it and be fast, please."
"I prefer to extend the pleasure, but if you want to do it fast…"
Great, a sex joke again, she hated it. She hated that the woman thought she was interested in her sexually. Yeah, she was attractive and stuff… But no. Definitely no. Ten times no. Not with Vause. Yes. She wasn't interested, she hated her.
"You done?"
"Yeah, we can go."
"I'll drop you to your apartment, it's almost end of the work day."
"You're the boss."
They drove all the way to Vause's apartment almost in silence. There was tension between them. Piper started to get used to have this irritable consultant by her side, but Alex was right, there was no trust and it complicated things.
"I'll see you tomorrow, same time."
"Have a nice evening, Pipes", Alex left the car before Piper could protest against Alex calling her that.
She made her way back to the precinct, gave some instructions about the laptop to the specialists and went to her office to learn something new from her partners.
"You found anything?"
"Not really", John replied. "It was like he barely lived there. No documents, no clothes or bags. What about you?"
"We've found a laptop, hope to discover something on it. What about any other leads?"
"We're trying to figure out where he had actually lived before he arrived in NY, but not so much luck so far", Nikki told her.
What a shitty case Piper thought to herself. She hoped to solve it in a week, but now it seemed like some unreal dream.
She left the precinct and went home. She was exhausted as she didn't get much sleep lately. Her life became a mess. She couldn't work with someone who wasn't willing to help, who did this only because it was saving her from being in prison.
Piper had a light dinner, did a paper work for some time and went to get a rest. Surprisingly, she fell asleep almost immediately only to be woken up by a phone call around 3 in the morning.
"What the fuck…" She mumbled.
She picked up not even looking at the name of the caller as her eyes were still sleepy.
"Hello?"
"Rise and shine, detective!"
Piper dropped her head on the pillow with a sigh of irritation.
"It's 3 in the morning, Vause. What do you want?"
"Exactly, in the morning, so time to get up. I think I may have something."
"Wut?"
"The codes, I think I cracked one of them partially."
"You were trying to crack the codes all night long?"
"Kinda. Just wanted you to know, you said it was important for you to solve this case as soon as possible."
Maybe she wasn't such a bad person after all, Piper thought getting up from the bed excited as hell.