“Frankly, I see it as quite the insult you waltzed into my party and requested I hand my case over to you.” Detective Wingrove retorted, taking a step closer to her counterpart in the Vice Division.
“It really isn’t like that,” the last word caught on his lips, his hands twitching against the pockets that held them, “think about it. If we go about it this way you can still work with us and I won’t go to our lieutenant. You know it’s a vice case, just because some poor chap was shot at doesn’t mean he’s a victim. He probably owes somebody money and, frankly, I’m your best bet at figuring out who and why.”
“Something making you nervous?” A step forward closed whatever gap existed, placing them in a standoff within the dingy room that slowly shifted around the two detectives, “see you at the station tomorrow. Make sure your head is on right before you grab your badge, Detective Marshall.”
As Wingrove lifted her hand to touch the nape of her neck, making sure her jumpsuit’s clasp remained sealed, she lost her grasp. Nails caught on skin, tugging into pale flesh as she regained her senses enough to look downwards. Dark, tar-like crimson stained the room around her. It drippled from her fingers, soaked her palm, and smeared across her wrist. The bedroom, once filled with music from the event happening a story below, twisted into a room of stone and brick. A basement, buried beneath miles and miles of dirt and forest atop that.
No soul — except those belonging to her and the crow she clutched in her other hand — had entered, especially not Detective Thomas Marshall’s. The footsteps would have given it away, but she only saw hers embedded in the horrible red tile. The door, the same one she saw moments prior behind Marshall, now creaked with an iron lock. Wingrove felt its key around her neck, her eyes slipping between the heavy clasp and the jingling fixture attached to the door handle.
“I am Detective Wingrove,” she mumbled, pressing the crow into her chest.
“Are you?” It cawed back but remained still, its feathers coated with the same bloom as Wingrove’s hands.
“Yes. I am Detective Nephele Wingrove and,” her voice faltered, like a record player stopped mid-track, “and I have to save him.”
“Save who?”
“That man, the one who left.” The floor came closer, faster than she had anticipated and harsher than she had remembered, “he left the station. We told him,” her murmur became a whisper, “told him he would die. And now, now it will have been by my doing.”
“Perhaps that would not have been so if you refused Detective Marshall.”
“I’m aware.”