The Academy

One year later

Being a detective was not  like they made it out to be in the movies or books. There wasn't a gun fight every other week, or a stunning girl coming to your office looking for help and it wasn't always as easy to find the evidence to make the arrests stick. Honestly, it was piles and piles of paperwork and a lot of sleepless nights. Endless games of cat and mouse, some won and some lost. It was the wins that gave you hope for after the losses. It all depended on how full you saw the glass. 

Detective Arthur Williams was one of the ones who decided that the best way to look at the glass was half full. He was a dedicated man who, if left to his own devices, would drown in his work and neglect his health. Thankfully, he had enough friends at the station who knew how to drag him back to the land of the living, just as he had done for them on occasion. 

Arthur was a third generation detective. His grandfather dying  after spending his last few years in blissful retirement. His father was not so lucky. Being shot in the line of duty when Arthur was twelfth. Raised by a single mother, Arthur grew up with a fierce determination to do what the men in his family were best at; serve and protect the people. Now at the age of thirty- three, he was a credit to his family and the uniform. 

It was a typical night, a coffee going cold as the detective poured over his files. He was lost in witness statements and crime scene photos when a news paper was slammed on his desk. The smiling face of a young woman with dark hair stared back at him. Arthur looked up to see his colleague, detective Baxter, looking down at him. 

Benjamin Baxter was a surly looking man who spent his time either at his desk or down at the local pub. Apparently he did his best work while nursing a pint. So far that theory had proven to be true as he had one of the highest number of closed cases at the precinct. The two would butt heads but he wasn't the worst person in the world to work with. He picked the paper up and shoved it in Arthur's face. 

"Did you see this?" He scowled. 

"The third one in as many weeks. I know but what do you want me to say?" Arthur asked, waiting for a response. 

"The chief is riding all our asses and the press is making us out to be incompetent." Benjamin yelled, tossing the paper back on the desk. "There must be a leak because they knew about the message and we managed to keep that one out of the papers for the first two." 

"Non fraudants ut restituest. To pilfer is to restore. Wonder what that means?" 

"Ravings of a mad man is what it means, now do you have anything?" Benjamin asked impatiently. 

"No DNA, but the bullets are all the same so they came from the same gun but that's it. None of the victims knew each other from what we can find. We don't have much to go on at the moment." Arthur explained. 

"Well find something." Benjamin demanded. 

Arthur stood up and leaned forward, his hands firmly on his desk as he looked his fellow detective in the eye. He could see that the years on the job (and the drink) were catching up with him. The grey hairs springing up and the wrinkles making him look older then his thirty- eight years.  

"What are you doing then?" Arthur demanded. "Nursing a pint and thinking doesn't seem to be helping us right now." 

"You have your methods and I have mine. Let's leave it at that." Benjamin growled before heading to his desk, grabbing his coat and heading out the door. Slamming it as he went. Arthur sat back down and rubbed  his hand over his face.

"Here I thought I was the one who was supposed to give you a hard time." Arthur looked up to see Chief Decker smiling at him. 

Lucy Decker was an attractive woman who, despite working in a male dominated field which would make most women sacrifice their femininity to appear as one of the boys, she had been able to gain the respect of her colleagues without doing so. A woman who could shoot you right between the eyes while wearing heels. One day she would be a hard ass telling them all to get their acts together and make an arrest. Then the next day she would be bring them cookies she made with her daughter Amelia the night before. She was tough but fair, and was always able to see when her officers were giving too much. She had pulled Arthur out of the rabbit hole many times over the years when he got too deep.

"Bet it's times like this that you wish you were still looking for you cat burglar." She said, glancing at the files on his desk. 

"You mean Phantom, she loves that name." Arthur supplied, neither confirming or denning her statement, without taking his eyes off the paper work in front of him. 

"Well it did take you two years to see her face. What was her real name again?"

"Maria Lewis, she was twenty- three when we arrested her." 

"Very talented, thank goodness she was only a thieve." Lucy picked up the coffee cup and took a sip, making a face when she tasted how cold it was. She put it down with a loud thud. "Go home Williams, I doubt anything is going to change over night." 

"It might." Arthur argued. 

"Well either way a good night sleep is always a good idea. Now get out." Her tone leaving no room for argument. Accepting defeat, Arthur organised his files and bid the chief goodnight.    

Arthur lived in a single bedroom flat that he shared with his goldfish and extensive book collection. His goldfish allowing him to talk to outload and not appear crazy  while the books provided him with less taxing mysteries to solve. The flat was facing a car park which, most people would consider this to be a put off, he found to be quite stimulating.   

Arthur's argument being that the view was always changing. Different cars of different makes and colours. Each belonging to a unique individual with an original story. The red hatchback parked in the far right corner belonged to a mother of three who worked for the local drug dealers. When her husband thinks she's at the spar, she's really exchanging the drugs for money at five start hotels as she caters to a much more sophisticated clientele. The blue coupe parked in the middle belonged to a lawyer who had started taking bribes from his clients and was waiting for the right time to buy a more expensive car without it looking too suspicious. The silver convertible with the top down was bought for a young girl for her sixteenth birthday by her parents who were trying to make her feel better about their divorce. They didn't know it but she knew that the reason for their divorce was that they were both sleeping with the gardener.  Of course he had no way of knowing if any of this was true, but it was a fun game to play in the morning while he let his coffee go cold. He rarely got round to drinking the coffee he made but the ritual was comforting.  

He changed into a pair of  grey pyjama bottoms and a white shirt, kneeling down in front of the fish bowl. Sandy swan happily (he assumed happily anyway) around his bowl, swirling around the plastic seaweed and sunken ship. 

"One man and two women. No clear connection. All of them shot in the head, right between the eyes. All of them with the same message left at the crime scene." He said as he watched Sandy continue to swim around in his little world. " Non fraudabtes ut retituest. Did you know that means, to pilfer is to restore?" Before he had a chance to fill in Sandy's answer, the phone rang. When he answered the phone, surprised did not even begin to cover it when he heard whose voice it was on the other end. 

"Good evening detective. I was hoping you were still awake, you always struck me as someone who burnt the midnight oil." The voice said. 

"How did you get a phone at this time of night Maria?" 

"Warden's office and you should probably change your number." She answered, as if it as the most obvious thing in the world. Maria had some how acquired his home number during the early months of their acquaintance and had called him every once in awhile to congratulate him whenever he was close to catching her. 

"The warden let you use his phone?" 

"Obviously not, but that's not why I'm calling. I borrowed a paper from a guard. To pilfer is to restore. You're working on it right?" To anyone else it would seem like she was asking a genuine question, but Arthur knew better then that. She rarely asked a question that she didn't already know the answer to.   

"You know I am, now why are you calling?" 

"I can help." Maria replied with confidence. "Remember when I told you that night you arrested me that I might tell you where I learned it all?"

"How is you telling me how you learned to be a thieve going to help solve these murders?" 

"I think the killer and I went to the same school. Only they're not using what we learned the way they should be."