"What a bloody mess," Kalinda said.
Burgess was slowing their car down as they approached an intersection that had been closed down by the CFD, and now by CPD uniforms also. There had been a nasty traffic accident. One car sat in the middle of the intersection with its front end caved in, leaking some kind fluid onto the road. The driver's side had been cut away by CFD in order to extract an injured driver, who was now nowhere to be seen.
The car that had obviously been impacted by the one with the mangled front end had been spun out across the intersection and gone sideways into the light poles at the opposite corner to where Burgess now parked. The car was smashed up, and a couple of light poles were down. One of them had fallen onto another car, adding to the overall destruction at the scene.
"Someone ran a red light," Burgess commented. "But I can't see why that would have anything to do with us. Let's see what Severide has got for us."
"He's the firefighter who called you? I take it you know him?"
"Yeah," Burgess said as they both got out of the car. "He's out of Firehouse 51, local to us at the 21st. They're a good bunch of people over there."
"Good to know," Kalinda said, following Kim towards one of the fire trucks. She noted that Kim had a thicker coat on than her own, and warmer-looking boots – not bad ideas as Chicago's weather was starting to turn colder. Kalinda decided a shopping trip would be in order soon.
"Severide. What have you got?" Burgess asked.
Kalinda approached the handsome firefighter Burgess had called out to, who was standing with a couple of his colleagues. They all looked at her, wondering who Intelligence's new face was. Burgess picked up on it and remembered to make introductions.
"Oh, Kelly this is Kalinda Rai. She started with us today. Kalinda, meet Kelly Severide, Joe Cruz and Blake Gallo. Get used to seeing them, we all go to the same bar – Molly's."
"Nice to meet you. I'll look forward to scoping out the bar. They'd better have good tequila," Kalinda said with a grin.
"They do," Cruz said. "That accent by the way. Wow."
Kalinda was used to that kind of reaction. As one of her former colleagues had put it, she could charm the birds out of the trees with it. In all seriousness, having a well-spoken English accent had made her life in America easier, she knew that for a fact. People's attitudes often changed as soon as they heard it.
"Okay, let me show you why I called you," Severide said. Kim and Kalinda walked with him across the intersection, past the wrecked car in the middle of it and over to the one that had taken out the light poles.
"Which one caused the accident?" Burgess asked out of interest.
"That one," Severide said, nodding back towards the one in the middle of the intersection. "An old woman was driving. According to Brett, she was having a heart attack when she blew the red light and T-boned this car. It's what's in the trunk that you're going to want to see. Capp, pop that trunk again," he ordered a firefighter who was standing at the back of the wrecked car with a uniformed officer.
When the trunk was opened, Kalinda saw that inside were three AK-47 assault rifles and several boxes of ammunition. "Bloody hell, someone was tooled up. Where's the driver?" she asked the uniform.
"Fled the scene, ma'am, according to witnesses. They described a white man, blonde hair, wearing a black hoodie and blue jeans."
"I'll call it in to Voight," Burgess said, obviously thinking that there might be something worth looking into here.
Kalinda agreed. Three AKs and a crap load of ammunition was highly suspicious. With mass shootings so frequent, who knew, the guy who had been driving this car might have been on his way to carry one out before the accident happened. Hell, he had fled the scene and may well be armed. She put in a call to dispatch, giving the man's description and saying he was wanted for leaving the scene of an accident and should be considered armed and possibly dangerous.
"Voight's coming over. He doesn't like the sound of this and says we're taking it."
"Good," Kalinda said. "Why don't you see what you can find out about the car while I check these things out?" She spoke as a partner suggesting a way to work efficiently, not as someone trying to throw orders around. She wanted to make friends within her new unit, not enemies.
"Alright," Burgess said. While she called in the car's licence plate, Kalinda took a pair of black nitrile gloves out of her pocket and put them on. She picked up one of the guns and examined it closely. She was hardly a firearms expert, but she knew enough to know what she was looking at.
"My guess is this gun has never been fired," she said to Burgess when Kim was done on her call.
"Oh. We'll check that out, on all three of them. The car was stolen three days ago, at night from outside the owner's house."
It wasn't long before Hank showed up, along with Kevin Atwater. Kalinda smiled at Hank, but reminded herself to keep it professional while they were working.
"What have you got?" Hank asked, although he had already heard Kim's initial report.
Kalinda passed on a description of the accident and her suspicion about the guns being unused, and Kim relayed the information on the stolen car and the fleeing driver, who she already had a BOLO out for.
"Review all the CCTV from around this area," Voight ordered. "I want to know where this guy came from, and I want to know where he went. Something feels off about this."
By the end of the shift, Kalinda was thoroughly sick of looking at her computer screen. While the rest of the unit worked the other ongoing case, she and Burgess had been given the job of reviewing the CCTV to establish the movements of the man who had fled the traffic accident, leaving behind the guns and ammunition. It had been tedious work, loading up the footage from each camera, finding the right time of day, then trying to identify and zoom in on the man they were looking for. So far they hadn't tracked him to either the start of his journey or the end of it. Uniform had also had no joy with the BOLO. The suspect was in the wind.
"Let's call it a day," Burgess said tiredly. "At least we got some good images to send off for enhancement. We might get facial recognition from them."
"Hope so. I've got a feeling that this guy needs finding, that something bad was going to happen today before that accident intervened."
"Agreed. We'll pick it up tomorrow. Oh, here's Voight."
Indeed, Hank had just walked up the stairs to the bullpen, minus the rest of the team. "I sent the guys home," he began, before telling them about the progress on the case. "How are you getting on?"
Burgess updated him.
"Right," Voight said in disappointment. "Well, go home and get some rest. We'll find him tomorrow."
"We will," Burgess said confidently. She said goodnight to both of them and headed for the locker room.
"A frustrating day," Hank commented, sitting down at the desk opposite Kalinda's.
"Yes, exactly," she said, taking off her reading glasses and rubbing her eyes. "A better day than yesterday though."
"I, uh, I'm out of practice doing this. But would you join me for a drink?"
Kalinda looked at him for a moment, figuring out that his awkwardness came from the fact that he didn't mean two colleagues going for a drink after a shift. He meant Hank and Kalinda going for a drink to make an evening of it. Part of her still thought it wasn't a good idea to start getting personally involved with her new boss. But then, she had already started. Now the question was whether to continue or not. She knew the answer.
"A drink? No. But you can give me an hour to go home and change, then you can pick me up and we can go for dinner. If you want?"
"Okay," Hank said, still with the obviously uncharacteristic hesitance. He wasn't used to having any kind of personal life, Kalinda could tell. That trap was easier to fall into than people might expect when you worked for the police. "I'll have a think where we can go, and I'll pick you up in an hour."
"See you then," Kalinda said, giving him a little smile as she got up to leave.
Half an hour later, Hank was at home. He had taken a quick shower, and was putting a smart light grey shirt on. He was already wearing black pants and shoes. For the past couple of minutes he had been fretting over whether to wear a tie or not. Not, he had eventually decided, thinking he might look overdressed.
Going out to dinner with a woman filled him with a sense if youthful excitement and nervousness that he hadn't felt for a long time. The main reason for that was that he found Kalinda truly beautiful, and after their evening together the previous day, he felt a spark between them too. That kind of spark was something he had been resolved to never experiencing again for some time. But now he was experiencing it. Kalinda Rai was someone he needed to get to know; someone he needed to let into his life. Maybe, just maybe, he didn't have to live with nobody, and with nothing but a job and an empty house. Or maybe they were just going out for dinner and it wouldn't lead anywhere.
Hank looked at himself in the mirror. He saw a man who had suffered a lot in life. That had to change one day, didn't it?
A/N: Kalinda had a better second day with Intelligence than her first, ending with arranging a dinner date. Could something good be coming Hank's way at last?