7
Jase
I was pumped that Nick and I would be working on another case together. Nick and I had been friends since way before he even became a detective, back when he was still a part of the mafia. To be honest, I’d been a little afraid of him at first. After I actually got to know him, I realized that he was actually a pretty cool guy, and I felt guilty that I’d initially judged him so harshly.
I knew first-hand just what a good investigator Nick was. I knew that the other agents at the SDCT were wary of him, and I could understand their reservations, since, in all fairness, I’d been afraid of him too when we’d first met. He really was good at reading people and getting results, though, so it wasn’t just because he was my friend that I supported having him as a consultant.
“Hello? Earth to Jase?” Nick was staring at me from the passenger seat with an amused smirk on his face.
“Ah, sorry,” I smiled sheepishly. “I think I zoned out for a minute.”
“Yeah, I think you did you,” he snickered. “You passed the turn a minute ago.”
“Seriously?” I asked as I looked down at the GPS. Sure enough, it was attempting to recalculate a new route.
I pulled into the nearest side street so I could turn around. I had a pretty bad habit of daydreaming and spacing out. Honestly, I’d always suspected that I might have ADHD or something along those lines, but my parents didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. I couldn’t really blame them, considering they obviously had enough on their plates dealing with escaping from an oppressive dictatorship. Most people who defected from North Korea headed to South Korea and stayed there. My parents had gone the extra mile and traveled all the way to the other side of the world to the United States. They’d risked everything for me, and of course, I was grateful, but sometimes I worried that my issues with focusing might affect my job performance.
“It’s up here on the right,” Nick informed me when we were almost to the Senator’s home. I cursed silently as I realized I had drifted off again. It was just so easy to do when I was driving. It was easier for me to stay focused when I was actively investigating a crime scene or pouring over investigative files, but the monotonous motion of driving was just so boring that I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering.
“All right, let’s go.” I nodded as I stepped out of the car.
The senator’s house was enormous, with a big, vibrant garden in the front and a sprawling, well-manicured lawn stretched all around the perimeter. A police car was stationed out front, and I could see yellow police tape and multicolored police markers through the open front door. A uniformed officer stepped out of the car and eyed us warily as we approached.
“How can I help you, gentlemen?” He called as he positioned himself between us and the front door.
“I’m Agent Park with the SDCT.” I introduced myself as I handed over my SDCT credentials. “This is Costa PI. We’re here to have a look at the crime scene.”
“Ah, right,” the officer visibly relaxed. “I heard you’d be coming by. Well, we were just about finished when we got the call that you’d be taking over. Everything is still in place, just as we found it. The kids are with CPS already, though. It’s hard to tell just how much of the scene was damaged by the son.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, the nanny found the kid in there next to the mom’s body,” the officer sighed, a pained grimace on his face. “Such a shame. Anyway, he wouldn’t talk to us, so we don’t know if he touched or moved anything.”
“I see.” I nodded grimly.
“Yeah,” the officer replied. “Well, just let me know when you’re finished, and we’ll get everything bagged up.”
“Thanks.” I nodded before stepping past him and through the door. Nick followed close behind me.
“It’s a pretty big house,” he hummed as he looked up at the high ceilings. “Seems unlikely to me that they didn’t find anything at all, or that they even managed to comb through everything so quickly.”
“Most of the house does seem untouched.” I frowned. “Aside from the kitchen.”
Just a few steps from the front door was the entrance to the kitchen. There were dishes and glasses smashed and shattered all over the countertops and floor. A blender also lay abandoned a few feet away, its base crusted with dried blood. Spatters of red decorated the floor and cabinets on the left side of the kitchen, growing bigger until they culminated into a large pool of blood in the center of the room.
The body of Alexis Rothschild lay face-down and motionless within the pool of red. The back of her head was caved in, and her hair was tangled and matted into the shallow crater.
I grimaced as I took note of the tiny red handprints smeared around the body, and I wondered just how long the victim’s son had sat waiting by his dead mother’s body before he was discovered this morning.
“It was violent,” Nick mused aloud. “The attacker was desperate. The blood here on the floor isn’t spattered. It’s smeared, like the senator was trying to get away.
He leaned down and gingerly turned the victim’s body over so he could inspect it.
“She has a knife wound in her chest,” he muttered. “It’s shallow and messy, like the attacker hesitated. Over here, though, the spatter fans out. The attacker hit her on the back of the
