first work

She was so young.  Could not be more than 15 or 16 years old.  It was hard to tell her exact age because I was standing so far away but she looked as if she was the same age as my little girl.  She lay there on the side of the road.  Her pants and under garments were missing, but her shirt remained on her person.  I walked over closer to her lifeless body.  As I inched closer and closer to her it started getting harder and harder to breathe.  This being my first case as a detective, I wanted to maintain a professional composure.  But seeing this young girl from a distance was hard enough.  When I finally got over to her lifeless body, I felt like I was going to be sick.  My body felt like it was going to shut down because of the horror that this poor girl must have went through.  I just wanted to walk away.  But I started thinking of my daughter and if it was her lying there, I would do whatever I could to catch this son of bitch.
         So with that in mind I was able to work the crime scene.  When I knelt down next to her body, I felt my knees pop and my ankles crack.  My hands were trebling because this was the first time I ever had to be this close to a dead body.  Sure I have seen them before when I was a patrol officer, but this was totally different.  Her hands were tied with a bright yellow rope.  But there was something about this rope that bothered me.  I felt like I had seen this type of material somewhere before, but I could not put my finger on it.  I made a note about the rope in my book and then proceeded to examine the body for stab wounds.  The blood that was surrounding this girl made it look like twelve people had been brutally shot here.  But this girl was not shot.  She was stabbed multiple times with a fairly large blade.  She also had cuts on her face from the perp taking the knife and slashing at her.  I noticed that she was still wearing her shoes, which struck me as being very odd.  The shoes were untied which told me that someone may have removed them and then placed them back on her feet. As I started to reach for her feet, a man came from behind me and said,” what the hell are you doing rookie?”  I turned and stood up.  He got even closer to my face and blew the smoke from his cigarette directly at me.  I took a step or two back and I said, “Who are you?”  “I’m detective Shear.  I am in charge here,” he said.  I could see right now that he and I were going to struggle to get along. He was a tall man, about 6’2.  Clean cut and well dressed.  His shoes were shined to perfection and his gun so clean I could see my reflection.  He wore his hair parted down the middle like my son did when he was in junior high.  He looked like a nice man, up until he opened his mouth to speak.
         “Well detective Shear, I think that we need to take a look at the girl’s feet.”  “What for rookie?  Do you think that I missed something?  I have been doing this job for eight years now.  We don’t need to check her feet.  What purpose could that serve?”  I just wanted to grab that cigarette he was sucking on and jam it in his eye.  But I was sure that the girl’s feet would add something to the investigation.  “Well sir,” I said with a smartass attitude.  “If you will notice, her shoes are on but both of them are untied.”  “So what the fuck is your point rookie?”  “I think that our perp removed her shoes for some reason and then replaced them on her feet before he fled the scene.” “Why would he do that do you suppose”  “Well we wont know unless we check now will we.”  “Alright rookie, you made your point.  Take her shoes off very carefully and take a look.  Don’t bother me unless it’s important, I don’t have time to be wasting on you.”  “Asshole,” I mumbled under my breath as he walked away.  I bent down to the girl’s feet.  I carefully removed her rigidity old shoes from her feet.  And what I saw on her right foot confirmed what I had thought all along.  Her big toe had been cut off.


Chapter 2: Past Memories

         As I pulled up my driveway that night when I returned home, I could not wait until I saw my daughter. Of coarse she was asleep already, but I just wanted to watch her sleep.  I closed the garage door behind me and put my keys on the key rack.  My wife had made chicken and left some out for me, but I was in no mood to eat.  So I covered it up and stuck it back in the fridge.  I made my way down the hallway glancing at all the pictures we had on the wall of my son when he played football, family pictures of all four of us, and my beautiful 14 year old daughter, Emma.  When I got to bed my wife was already asleep.  I gave her a kiss and stroked her hair for a couple minutes.  As I laid there trying to fall asleep, I kept thinking about Emma and when she about 5 or six years old.  She had this obsession with our swing set that we had in our back yard.  The set consisted of two swings but for some reason, Emma liked to favor the right one.  I used to spend hours at a time pushing her on that swing.  Her and I used that swing so much over the years, that the yellow rope was starting to tear and the wooden seat was starting to rot.  When we had to get a new one, everything changed.  Emma didn’t want to swing as much anymore and it felt like a big piece of my heart was missing since her and I didn’t share that quality time anymore.  Now that she is 14, we don’t spend as much time together anymore.  She is busy with school, friends, and her soccer.  I just wish we could relive those times that we spent on the swings.