Land Locked

2 - Coincidence

Cal looked at Carden occasionally as she drove. He wasn't angry. He was sad. She took another water bottle out of her bag and drank it.

"Didn't you just drink water a few minutes ago?" he asked.

Another question she couldn't answer. She was half-aquatic. She didn't need the extra water, but having water around her, within her, made her feel more at home.

"It's important to stay hydrated."

He looked through her bag before she could stop him. Carden found it strange that the rookie brought along a tote bag for patrol. He had assumed it was food. It was just more bottles of water. And a conch.

"What's this doing in here?" he asked, pulling it out and showing her.

They were at the police station. She grabbed the conch out of his hands and stuffed it back into her bag.

"I expect two things from you," she said. "One. Mind your own business. Two, do your job and stop questioning how I do mine. I saved that kid, great. You want the credit? You can have it. Just don't keep questioning how I did my job when you didn't."

She got out of the car and stomped back into the station. She looked back at Carden. He was still sitting in the car. She wondered if she hurt him more than she intended. She squared her shoulders and walked into the station.

Carden stared at the receding figure of his strange new rookie partner. He questioned whether she really was better than him. On her first day of duty she had bettered him at his own game. He was the one responsible for Reggie's recovery from heroin. For six months as he saw Reggie complete rehab he thought of himself as the only good cop in Beire Springs. But when another kid was on the verge of dying in front of him, he didn't even notice. He stared like an idiot while the rookie took charge. Serrano was right. He didn't do his job, and he questioned her for doing hers.

He picked up his case files, his thermos filled with coldened coffee, and walked back into the police station. By the time he reached his desk, Cal was doing paperwork. A third empty water bottle stood on her desk.

He dropped his files onto the desk and went to find the sergeant. She was on the phone with the captain, a man that liked PR more than he liked police work. She held up her finger, signalling him to wait. When her call was done, with more obsequiousness on her part than he thought was possible, she motioned for him to sit in the chair next to his desk.

"Tell me about this rookie you've assigned to me."

"What did she do?" Sergeant Cook asked. "I thought she was the best of the new recruits. She looked like the only one that could handle you."

"She didn't do anything. I just wanted to know more about her background."

She finally looked up at him. "What's this about?"

It was her no-nonsense voice. He leaned back into the chair.

"I sorta... underestimated her. It might have blown up in my face."

Sergeant Cook looked through her desk and brought out a manila folder. She put on her reading glasses and scanned the page.

"She's pretty normal on paper. She graduated high school in California. Has a bachelor's degree in criminology from UCLA, joined the police academy right afterwards. Pretty standard resume. She has good letters of recommendation from her instructors at the academy."

"That's it? No medical degree? No special training? No prior experience?"

She closed the folder. "Nope. Just your run-of-the-mill rookie. But you underestimate everyone, Liam."

He nodded and headed back to his desk. His rookie was done with the paperwork. She was playing a game on her phone. The sergeant was probably right. She was just another rookie that did her job while he slacked off. She got lucky on her first day. There was something else bothering him, but he shoved that niggling thought to the back of his head and decided he would make friends with the rookie. She proved she could be an asset on her first day.

Cal looked up at the sight of her partner clearing his throat. Her dark hair was pulled out of her regulation bun and haphazardly pulled back into a ponytail. Liam looked at her mostly empty desk. The same conch from before was placed on the edge of the desk. There were no family photos, no trinkets or knick-knacks or any sign of a personality. The first personal thing she chose to put on her desk was a conch. He looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. Everyone else was busy, preoccupied with their own duties.

"What are you staring at?" she asked.

"Nothing."

She narrowed her eyes and grabbed a couple of files from his desk.

"Those are mine."

"No," she said with a dry smile. "These are the property of the Briar City police department."

They were case files on every murder and manslaughter committed in Briar City, tracing thirty years back. About half of them were cold cases no one cared about, where the victims had no family or friends. Dozens of Jane and John Does, undisturbed until he came along.

"What are you looking for?" She asked.

"I'm not looking for anything. I'm studying these."

"I know you think I'm a lucky idiot. I'm not lucky, and I'm not an idiot. These are all cold cases. Are you hoping to solve one and get a medal?"

"No," he grumbled.

"A promotion then. Instead of Officer Carden, you want to be Detective soon."

He didn't respond immediately. Carden admitted it was true. He wanted to be promoted. But the way she said it made his ambition sound dirty.

"Do you want to be a beat cop your whole life? You don't want to be a detective?"

Cal looked at the desk of the not-so-gentle giant. Humans weren't difficult to understand. Every effort they made had an incentive. Carden was no different. He didn't want to solve the cases for justice or for the dozens of Does that were stuck in judicial limbo. He wanted to get off of beat cop duty and move up to detective. Get out of the polyester outfits and into the big leagues.

"I don't want to be a detective for the sake of being called Detective Serrano. I like solving puzzles, and as a beat cop... it's less puzzles and more petty theft. Being a beat cop for the rest of my life would be boring."

He avoided her eyes and glared at his file as if he could solve cold cases with concentration alone. She looked through the pile she grabbed. The files were from the year nineteen-ninety-five. The first of the files was of the murder of a Jane Doe. In the photographs her body was lying in an alleyway, her limbs splayed in all directions. Her pale skin was covered with dark violet bruises. Crusted blood covered her split lip. Her short hair was matted with more blood. She wore a black sundress and a single strappy sandal. The other was lying a few feet away.

She was young, probably in her teens. Cal hated seeing dead kids. She always imagined the possibilities. Jane Doe's thin girlish body would've filled out with age. She would've traded in her sundresses for capri pants. She looked like a girl that would have one day left behind city life for suburban bliss with the two-point-five kids and white picket fence. If she hadn't been killed by a blow to the head in a dark alleyway, that was.

The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the back of her head. It wasn't the only serious injury she had. There were a couple of broken ribs, internal bleeding, a broken jaw, and the list went on. It was a miracle that she hadn't died before being hit in the head. Although, Cal realized, dying of a hit to the head couldn't be described as a miracle.

Almost everything about the case was normal. As normal as an unsolved murder could be. One thing wasn't. She wore a necklace with a nutmeg seashell hanging from it . Almost identical to the one Cal kept at home.