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"Sir?" I answer after getting up from my desk and walking over to his open doorway. He's so old school; he has an unlit cigar hanging from his mouth. I discreetly check my watch and know that he's about to go up to the roof for his two-thirty smoke. He's a dick either way but a little less, so he allows himself a day after that one cigar. He was supposed to quit thirty years ago now, but he never did.
"You caught a case," he says. Fuck! There are barely thirty minutes until shift change, so as usual, I caught a case. It couldn't have happened earlier when I was bored out of my mind doing paperwork.
"Lose the look Lieutenant Detective," he growls.
"Sorry, sir. The case?"
"Dead student from the music college. Body found in an off-campus apartment."
"Alright. I'll grab the rookie and head out."
"Very good. Keep me updated. Deceased is an out of towner at a special fall program. Only been here for three days. Parents are due in about three hours. Please have something for them. The beat cops already notified them, and the school made the positive ID. You have to find the scum that did this."
"No problem, sir." I say, taking the offered file folder. I open it and get the details.
Kourtney Denneson, eighteen, from Nebraska. Unknown male, early twenties. As a homicide detective for ten years, you'd think I'd be used to dead bodies, but the truth is I'm not, and I don't think I ever will be. The second it becomes just another day at the office is the second I put in my retirement papers.
"Rook, let's go," I say, grabbing my gun and badge from my locked desk drawer.
"Where are we going?" Dante Hodges asks. He stands from his desk and follows me out the back door to the parking lot.
"Caught a case. Out at the music college," I reply, getting behind the wheel of my police-issue Dodge Charger, pull out of the parking lot, heading down the street, passing Fenway Park as we go.
“What’s the deal?” Hodges asks.
“It’s all in the file,” I say, tossing it into his lap.
“Holy shit,” he says, reading it.
“Yeah. Captain wants a quick closure of this one.”
“I bet," he says quietly.
"What?"
"Nothing, man. Does this thing go any faster?"
"Yeah,” I say as he flips the lights on.
Once we arrive at the scene, Rook is quietly going over the scene, jotting things down until the roommate arrives home.
"Kourt?" the short blonde screams, coming into the room from the open front door.
I watch as Rook's eyes widen. I know that look. I'll let him deal with her.
"Miss?"
"Gaines. Heather," she answers.
"Heather. You can't be here right now."
"I live here. What's going on?"
"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your roommate has died. Where were you?"
"At work. I left here at noon. She was fine, waiting for an online date. Oh God. He did this didn't he?"
"We don’t know yet, but there is a deceased man with her."
