Kate dropped the last bag of groceries on the table, looking at the little apartment. It wasn't as large as the place that she'd had in LA, but she was still quite grateful that the department here had arranged it for her before she'd moved. Her chief – the one from LA, that is – had arranged a moving company to send her furniture. All she'd had to do was book her flight, come to New York, and fill out paperwork, lots of paperwork.
She was grateful, and a bit suspicious. Nobody went to this much trouble without a cause, and while she knew that she was a good detective, she wasn't phenomenal. She was an ordinary detective, not a legend like, oh, Batman in the comics or something. There had to be something beyond the desire to get another detective, and she kept waiting to figure out what it was. What they wanted in return.
She still hadn't figured it out by the time she reported for her first orientation shift. Maybe there would be clues in what they told her tonight, the things beyond who her partner would be, where the reports should go and what the procedures were for time off and on-duty injuries. There were always little things, and she'd be watching and listening for them.
The station was busy, not that she'd doubted it would be. Calm stations didn't bring in new personnel from across the country. She nodded and returned hellos to the people that she'd be working with, not really expecting to remember all of the names just yet.
"… you'll be working with Tashir and O'Rourke. You get the left drawers of this desk, and O'Rourke will help you fill out some of the paperwork." Her guide pointed her towards a pair of cops, and retreated.
Kate frowned, unsure as to just why he'd retreated, but certain that he had. Tashir was tall and dark, with a narrow, beak-like nose and piercing eyes that looked at the world and tried to give nothing back. Definitely a different set of ancestors than her own English and Danish. O'Rourke was slightly taller than she was, with red-brown hair and brown eyes that seemed unsettlingly familiar. So did his charming grin.
"He doesn't want me to be here anymore," Tashir hissed, glaring at the door that had slammed.
"Why not?" Kate asked, deciding that if he'd been that blunt, she might as well be just as direct back.
"Before, it was because my parents were from other places, and he disliked that. Now? Now it's a small matter of a gunman at the bank on Waterleigh," Tashir scowled, and looked back up, his eyes capturing her. "I am a detective, and I am not done with my duties."
"You don't have to stay," O'Rourke commented, pouring himself a cup of coffee and offering one to Kate. "You could go at any time."
"I took an oath, and have a duty here. I do not quit," Tashir snarled, glaring at his partner.
Things felt awkward as they explained procedures and who the best person would be to talk to about various things – changing shifts, time off, old records – and sometimes those names weren't the same as the official policy stated. There should have been a tense silence, but the station was too noisy for such melodrama.
Tashir took some of the paperwork, murmuring that he'd turn them in to Jerry, and left the room.
"You're here for when he figures it out," O'Rourke explained, gesturing towards the door. "The Captain said you'd had some experience with weird stuff, though he didn't give me any details."
"What does he need to figure out?" Kate didn't know if she wanted an answer. Suspicion flared, and she whispered, "Does he go places during the day?"
"Yes," O'Rourke was giving her this oddly thoughtful look, like he wanted to protect her from some uncomfortable truth.
In that moment, he reminded her painfully of Angel. But she'd never seen the vampire drinking coffee, or flushed with emotion. But even vampires had to come from somewhere, and maybe Angel'd had some family left behind. Relatives, descendants… something. But now wasn't the time to think about that.
"Look, you're going to find out sooner or later, and it might as well be sooner. Brahim Tashir was my partner for six years, and he was a good cop. I couldn't ask for a better guy to watch my back," O'Rourke began, one hand shaking.
Kate could feel her stomach clenching. There was something strange and weird and possibly ugly here. "You keep saying 'was'. Why not is?"
"He said there was a small matter of a gunman at a bank. It wasn't a small matter. There was a robbery attempt, with hostages. Four officers and seven civilians were shot, and there were three fatalities. One of them was Brahim Tashir."
"But I just saw him here," Kate whispered. "You were talking to him."
"He came in a week later. He's the only one at the station who doesn't seem to know that he died. It was on the scene, he was shot, went down, and the coroner said that he might not have even really felt it. He said something stung his back, and everything went dark. But he's a cop, and he insisted on coming back to work," O'Rourke shook his head, and looked up. "He's a ghost. And sooner or later, he's probably going to go on to wherever ghosts go. Until then, he's a cop, one of our better detectives."
"And if that time is soon, then I'm here?" Kate asked, feeling a bit cold. A ghost cop… was that any stranger than a vampire private investigator?
"Maybe," O'Rourke admitted with a shrug. "But if not, we can still help you adjust to here, and the strangeness that goes on. As the detective with the least seniority, you'll also probably get the message runs."
"Message runs to where?" Kate sipped at her own coffee.
"The old firehouse, where the Ghostbusters headquarters are."
Kate's mouthful of coffee didn't look very good over O'Rourke's uniform.
end part 2.