Blue Line Detective

It was about 6:45 in the morning on a Saturday. Isobel Callahan was lying in bed half asleep, trying to get a little more sleep, when she heard someone park outside with their loud music blaring.

Blaring this early in the morning? She was due to get up for work at 7 a.m. “Sure, what is fifteen minutes less of sleep going to hurt?” she said as she sat up and turned off her alarm clock.

Isobel then walked over to the window to see exactly what was going on. She looked down at the street, and there sat a red Mustang.

She looked up at the dark clouds rolling in and the wind picking up. She shut her window and sat down at the end of her bed.

As Isobel peered into her closet, her phone rang. She glanced down at her phone and saw it read Detective Scott.

Isobel leaned her head back and closed her eyes before throwing her head down. She answered her phone.

“Callahan.”

“Hey, it’s Scott. Can you get over here to Main Street and Ninth?”

“Yeah, give me ten,” Isobel replied, standing up. She hung up and walked into her closet.

Isobel looked through her clothes and grabbed an outfit. In front of the mirror, she put up her long brown hair and got dressed in a peach, long-sleeved shirt and gray pants.

As she walked out, she grabbed her gun, keys, and handbag.

Isobel was one of the top detectives in the city. She was single with no kids and loved her job. She had a rough childhood, but she made it through her cases.

“Main and Ninth?” Isobel said to herself as she drove, looking at the street signs. “Ahh…there you might be with the dead body.” She pulled over and grabbed her notepad.

After Isobel got out of the car, she walked over to the scene, where Detective Scott lifted the caution tape for her to come under.

“What do we have?” she asked.

“Twenty-one-year-old deceased male, stab wounds to the back, no witnesses in the area, no cameras from what we can see. We are checking with traffic cameras and other cameras,” Scott replied.

“Anyone ID the vic?”

“His name is Wayne Taylor.”

Isobel inspected the victim and went around the crime scene to look for more evidence.

“The knife is over here. Have them collect this knife for prints to get an ID on the perp,” she said while walking away.

Detective Gregory Scott followed Isobel as she walked back to her car.

“Yes?” Isobel said as she opened her door and looked at him.

“Have you had breakfast?” Scott asked.

“No, but I am not starving. Thank you for the offer, though,” Isobel replied before getting into the car and driving to the precinct.

When she arrived, Isobel got in the elevator and pressed the button 3.

“Light up,” she said. She hit it again.

“Well, maybe the light is burned out,” she said, grasping the handles of her handbag tighter.

The elevator stopped on the second floor to let a few officers on, and when one of them pressed 3, it lit up.

“You light up for them,” she said with a sarcastic tone.

One officer replied, “Excuse me?”

“Oh, no. This elevator has a love-hate relationship with me. Especially my floor,” Isobel said with an embarrassed tone while pushing up her sleeve to look at her watch.

The elevator stopped at the third floor, and she got out and stopped in front of the elevator doors, feeling the breeze of the doors slamming closed behind her.

“I felt that,” Isobel said as she smirked and started walking toward her desk, swinging her arm.

When she got to her desk, she made sure it was still clean. Isobel had always been an organized person. If anything was out of place, missing, or touched, she would get really angry.

She arranged the files on her desk a certain way so she knew where they were. If someone needed something, they had to ask her.

Isobel almost had her butt in the chair of her desk when the captain called her into his office.

She peered with squinting eyes through the glass of the office from her desk. She stood halfway back up and brushed off her pants, smiling as she walked over there.

“Yes, sir?” Isobel said as she entered.

“I have an assignment for you and Scott,” Captain Waters replied with a serious look on his face. “It is the T-932 case.”

“Isn’t that a closed case?” Isobel asked while taking the file.

“No, it is a classified case, which you and Scott are working on now,” Captain Waters said with a stern voice. “You’re excused,” he dismissed as he sat back down at his desk.

As Isobel walked back to her desk, she noticed a coffee cup on it. She sighed and stopped in her tracks. She looked around the precinct to see who would have put it there.

She couldn’t see anyone doing anything unusual—everyone was working, interrogating, on the phone, on their computer, or simply not at their desk.

No one was acting unusual. Isobel wasn’t sure who exactly had left it there.

Isobel was so particular about her coffee. Hazelnut. Hot. Nothing more. Nothing less. Everyone here knew her order.

She continued back to her desk, put the file in her locked desk drawer, and turned on her computer to open up her emails.

Staring at the coffee just sitting on her desk, she wonders who to thank. Part of her wondered if it came from Gregory Scott.

Greg would do this kind of thing, but she hadn’t seen him around the office yet today. She hadn’t seen him since the call this morning.

Isobel took a sip of the coffee and smiled. The taste was so rich. Still warm with such a decadent flavor of hazelnut.

She took one more sip and then put it down next to her picture of a quote on her desk.

It read, “The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us, but those who win battles we know nothing about.”

Isobel smiled as she read the quote and replayed some life events in her head. She closed her eyes and tried to get focused on the case ahead.

She tried to remember why she got into this line of work to begin with. It was for her. It was for her sister.

It was for a better life and to help those around her who had gone through the same thing she’d been through.

“Your time to shine, your time to help, your time to focus,” Isobel said to herself as she smiled.

“Hey, there you are,” Scott said as he walked up from behind.

Isobel swung her chair around. “Hey, here I am,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. She clicked her pen and looked up at Scott with her legs crossed, one elbow on the desk.

“So, any ideas on how you want to approach this case?” Isobel asked while she tapped her pen on the desk.

“Well, we have to get more leads on it first, get a time line going,” Scott said while looking at Isobel’s coffee cup. “Who got you coffee?” he asked with his hands on his hips.

Isobel looked at her coffee cup and pointed at it with her pen.

“This? I don’t know…I thought you or someone here, since it is normally what I get. Jealous of someone else buying me coffee, Scott?” she said while raising one eyebrow.

“No, I was just curious. But I am glad I didn’t buy one on the way here like I was going to,” he replied with concern in his voice.

“Well, I would have drank two coffees. Just so you know, your coffee would have been more important than this one,” she said with a smile.

Isobel stood up, grabbed the file, and walked to the meeting room with Scott.

“Okay, so what do we know so far about this case?” Scott said as he pulled out a chair to sit.

Isobel pulled the top off of a black marker and wrote on a whiteboard as she recapped the details.

“Twenty years ago, two girls were raped, both under the age of thirteen. We thought we had the guy, he wasn’t the right one, and now new cases are popping up. People are afraid to testify, throwing out fake names.”

“Have we spoken yet to the people individually?” asked Scott.

“No, we just got handed this case today,” replied Isobel.

“We start by getting ahold of vics to conduct interviews. Then we will go from there,” Scott replied.

“I’ll start making calls,” replied Isobel as she stood up. She grabbed her coffee cup and file and walked back to her desk.

Isobel sat down slowly at her desk, observing everyone around her, still wondering about that coffee. Isobel’s phone at her desk rang.

“Detective Callahan,” she answered as she finished plopping down in her chair, almost falling back. She grabbed a pen and paper to take down notes.

“Five-one-three-two? We will be there. Thank you,” Isobel replied as she wrote down the address.

Isobel hung up and finished writing down notes pertaining to her call, which read:

5132 Cartel Street

Vic’s Café, meet with Ashley Pelham

T-932

While turning her computer monitor off and organizing her desk quickly before she left, Isobel peered over to the chief’s office and noticed Detective Scott with him.

After dusting off her desk and wondering what discussion was taking place, she stood up and started walking toward his office. She knocked on the door.

“Hey, we have a meetup regarding the case. Ready to head out?” Isobel said while tapping the edge of her folder, making sure not to step foot into the office to avoid any unnecessary delay.

She backed up, turned around, and walked toward the elevator.

At the elevator, she pressed the down button and felt the breeze of Detective Scott from behind her. As he stopped, she noticed he smelled of a heavy cologne, coffee, and aftershave.

“You didn’t have to run,” Isobel said while looking over her shoulder with a soft smile. “I would have waited for you in the lobby.”

She stepped into the elevator while running her fingers through her long brown hair. When she pressed the lobby floor button, again, to her dismay, it did nothing.

“Let me get that,” Scott said while hitting the button.

The button lit up.

“Look, it would have eventually went,” Isobel said while crossing her arms, leaning back against the back of the elevator, and closing her eyes.

“It just takes a bit with me, but I eventually get to where I want to go with this chunk of metal,” she added.

“Well, I would rather get to our meeting with the victim in a timely manner, instead of having the elevator decide when it’ll release us to our job,” Scott replied.

He looked at his watch as the elevator dinged when it arrived at the lobby floor.

As the door swung open, Isobel opened her eyes. She lifted the sleeve of her jacket to check her watch.

“It’s 11:43,” Scott blurted out.

“Well, in that case, let’s get moving a little faster,” Isobel replied while stepping out of the elevator. She nodded at the front desk with a friendly smile.

Isobel always got along with everyone. She had an attitude when you wanted to cock one with her, but mostly she was easy to work with. She had her colleagues’ back, and everyone had hers.

It was cloudy, and it had rained once or twice already today. The air smelled of musky rain, and there were leaves all over the street and twigs on the road.

Cars had lined the narrow street surrounding the Fourth Precinct. There was so much traffic. Isobel wasn’t sure why everyone would want to be out on such a rainy day.

But it was on days like today when most things seemed to happen. Almost like because no one would pay attention on a day like today.

Isobel looked down the street. It was a habit of hers to make sure no one would hit her as she got into the driver’s seat of the car.

“Okay, the address. Cartel Street, Vic’s Café,” Isobel said while buckling up. Then she started the car and drove to the café.