A Blade of Glass

Chapter 4

The second crime scene was down an alley, but the crowds of news crews and onlookers forced Nickie to park the car half a block away, after dropping Julian off as near as she could. Making the way back on foot, she forced their way through the crowd, ignoring the cries from the reporters for a comment.

Eventually getting to the yellow tape, she flashed her badge to get let through. The officer at the tape gave the badge an extra thorough looking at, since he didn't recognize her from his precinct, but let her continue with a "Down that way, can't miss it."

After thanking him, she jogged her way down the grungy alley, complete with knocked over trash cans and its very own rat, which sat on a railing, giving her a disapproving look.

Tempted as she was to shoot it, she let it be and continued on, throwing a glance over her shoulder to make sure it was staying there.

Soon the alley widened out, opening into a small space where the alleys met. It wasn't very large, but it was wide enough that a van could turn around in it, if they were careful. There were dumpsters shoved up, blocking one of the directions and a set of steps leading up to a metal door, other than that, the area was filled with a couple of cops, a fancy car that looked out of place and a corpse that sadly didn't.

She'd heard Julian even before she'd made it to the widening, and what she could hear caused her to hurry up.

"Like I told you, this crime scene is now under my authority, which means that I need everyone to stop what they're doing and vacate the premises."

A few cops were looking at him like he was speaking gibberish, the rest were glaring at him with open hostility. The only one that wasn't was standing near Nickie, with his arms crossed and a perplexed expression on his face. He turned, spotting her and gave her a slight nod.

"I take it you're his partner?" he said in a higher pitched voice then she'd expected.

"Yeah."

"Well, you better get him out of here before he gets himself into real trouble."

"Can't, he's right, this is our scene now."

"You're shittin me." His arms came uncrossed as he fully turned to her. Behind him she could see Julian still trying to get people to leave.

"Sadly, no."

"What, didn't you have enough crime in your district? You had to come to ours to find a case?"

"Nope, we haven't convinced them to take a day off yet."

"So why poach ours?"

"Didn't get a say in it, came from above."

"How far?"

"Top."

"Bullshit. There's no way the commissioner's heard of this yet, let alone gotten involved."

"That's what we were told...aw shit."

Hearing Nickie curse, the other detective spun around and saw Julian headed for the car, and more specifically, the man extracting himself from it.

"Put that back," Julian demanded as he approached, pointing to the phone in the man's hand.

"But it's mine, I dropped it."

"You shouldn't have been in the car in the first place. What do you think you're doing messing up a crime scene like that?"

"Look, I don't know who you are, but I need you to get the hell outta my crime scene." The man said, starting to turn away and pocket the phone, only to stop as Julian's hand moved towards his gun.