Morning Shadows III...

And oh look there’s some more.

With her witness stowed in the back of a black-and-white with a couple of uniforms as his babysitters, Isobel was finally able to walk onto her crime scene. She strode past the privacy screens with a calm confidence that belied her earlier fragility. Whilst Thorne had pried into territory she considered deeply personal, she recognised that she had been the one to screw up. And she hated screwing up.  Still, she wasn’t going to have a hissy fit about it. She would do her job, which is what she really should have been doing before.

“What do we have Nicole?” Her voice was brisk and level as she addressed the medical examiner. With her gaze steady she nodded an acknowledgement at Thorne.

“What happened to you? I didn’t know you were wrestling tigers as well as thieves and murderers now.” Isobel touched an absentminded finger to the scratch that decorated her jaw-line.

“The guy’s a possible witness. He looked more upset when I told him that he fights like a girl than when I charged him for assaulting an officer.”

“Huh. Men.” The doctor gave an amused snort as she wrote something on her clipboard. To Isobel Dr Nicole Allen was not only the most meticulous medical examiner in the city, she was also a good friend. Of a similar age they shared the same ambition that had driven their professional success. They had also shared many shots of tequila after shift whilst discussing mayhem, murder and men. On the surface, however, they couldn’t have been more different. Nicole flaunted her femininity and then proceeded to knock a man senseless with it. Despite the early hour her cosmetics were still applied with precision. She wore one of her typically short and bold suits, the matching skirt and jacket in an eye-popping red. Her hair was pulled back into a high sleek tail that swung as she spoke.

“This one’s pretty straight forward and neat as far as deaths go. Our victim is a white female in her mid twenties. She was strangled, I’d say probably by a man just from eyeballing the size of the marks around her neck. Time of death is between 1am and 3am. Apart from the cause of death this was a pretty and healthy young woman. There are no obvious defensive marks on the body and her fingernails are clean.”

“She knew him.” Isobel stated the unspoken conclusion as she crouched beside the prone body to get a closer look. “She’d been on a date – probably a second or third date – so she felt comfortable enough that she wouldn’t think twice about turning her back on him.” Her shoulders tightened as she felt Thorne’s watchful assessment. She swallowed back her irritation and endeavoured to verbalise her instinctive reasoning. “She’s wearing fuck-me heels. They’re the kind of shoe that a woman wears if she knows she’ll be shimmying out of that dress at some point during the evening. A first date is about impressions and she’d already decided what she thought of him and was going to act on it.”

“And since when were you such an authority on shoes?” Nicole glanced at Isobel’s battered and ugly boots with wry amusement.

“I interviewed this guy once on an old case. He had an outrageous collection of shoes that he’d ‘borrowed’ from women. It was quite an education.”

Ghoulish banter was an accepted part of crime scene procedure, a necessary tool to keep any kind of perspective. Thorne was, however, uncharacteristically subdued as he addressed the gathered personnel.

“She’s the daughter of a senator. There’s going to be a lot of pressure to solve this one fast and the media will be sure to get in our faces about it.” Stern and charismatic he made sure everyone heard and understood him. “I don’t want any leaks. There are always concerns about sensitive information in cases such as these. I don’t want to give them any rope with which to hang us. We will do our jobs efficiently and with due consideration.”

Isobel stood, stepping forward to speak. Usually the first to protest against the interference of politics in an investigation, she surprised them both by presenting a united front.

“Whatever we might think about these measures, a young woman is dead.  It is for her that we stand now and we owe it to her to do a good job and find justice.” Isobel’s eyes met Thorne’s fleetingly as they stood shrouded in the morning shadows and together kept guard over the dead.