CHAPTER 2 – WOMAN VS POLICEWOMAN
1393 Words
CHAPTER 2 – WOMAN VS POLICEWOMAN
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THE POLICEWOMAN WALKED to her car with long strides. Now that she’d finished there, she was in a hurry to get back to the office and check on a few things.
She especially wanted to verify the emergency call that told them where they could find the victim. The caller had described the surroundings and events with too much accuracy, and that couldn’t be considered a mere coincidence.
Leah was certain that the man must have witnessed everything first hand and she considered him an obvious suspect. Her palms were itching because of her strong desire to retain him and ask him a few questions.
When she opened the car door, Leah noticed that Mark, her partner, had already sprawled in the passenger seat and she grimaced. She’d been looking for him earlier, but she hadn’t seen him.
He had a real talent of making himself scarce. What astounded her was that he managed to do his job despite all that sneaking and she couldn’t understand how.
Mark glanced at Leah and relaxed back in his seat. His hand, which held the iPad he was reading when she opened the car door, fell in his lap.
Leah noticed Mark’s rebel lock of hair and a twinkle appeared in her eyes. That was so Mark. His distinctive sign, she thought. If she had been asked to describe the officer, she’d have begun with that.
Mark was already over thirty, but that particular lock of hair made him look much younger. He would always blow it away because it hindered his sight, but it had a life of its own and stubbornly fell back on the exact same spot.
Mark seemed completely unaware of his behavior. He had done that so many times that it became a habit, which he couldn’t shake off.
That absent-minded gesture amused Leah and yet, puzzled her at the same time. The young woman failed to understand why Mark didn’t merely change his haircut to get rid of that pesky lock. It was evident that it bothered him a lot, and in her book, when something didn’t work, then it was time to make a change.
Leah shook her head and put the thought to rest. It wasn’t for her to tell Mark what to do.
She had learned early that people disliked nothing more than unsolicited advice. Besides, she had more pressing things to discuss with Mark, and she had already wasted enough time ruminating about things which had no relation to the case they had to solve. Time didn’t stand still for anyone, Leah recalled.
The woman sat down in her car seat and closed the door with a resounding thump. She made a weary face when she heard the sound reverberate inside the car. Leah seldom allowed her dissatisfaction to control her attitude and she felt every slip like a slap in her face.
“Tough day, boss?” Mark asked with a reluctant smile on his lips.
Leah glanced at him and noticed that he seemed unwilling to provoke a discussion or worse, a scolding, even though Leah rarely showed her claws.
That didn’t mean she didn’t have any. The policeman had felt those claws a few times over the years and apparently, didn’t feel like repeating the experience.
Leah cast a stern look in his direction. While it was true that she outranked him, she had never got used to his calling her ‘boss’. She had asked him to use her name several times and she expected him to have learned his lesson by then. The detective was weary of reminding him about it all the time and sometimes, she wondered if he didn’t do it on purpose, just to test her restraint. Yet, the strain around his eyes and the vibes that came from Mark disagreed with her assumption and she preferred to let it go.
She looked out the window and saw that the sun had already reached up in the sky, a definite sign that dawn had come and gone. A black bird, maybe a hawk or a raven, sailed above, with its wings outstretched, and a piercing shout followed.
Leah knew very little about birds. Maybe she just knew that they flew and ate worms.
Her eyes followed the arrogant bird for a few seconds and then, her eyes swept over the people gathered about twenty paces away from the yellow band.
Leah could read a broad array of feelings from the small crowd. She felt dismay, fear, and pity. And indeed, there it was, smug satisfaction.
It wasn’t unexpected. Despite the saying ‘Never speak ill about the dead,’ there was always at least one person who disliked the dead with a passion, and the satisfaction at the news of the victim’s demise overrode their common sense.
Leah never frowned upon making such a discovery. She understood people better than normal people did, and she allowed room for such petty thoughts. She’d come to terms with the knowledge that humankind was actually anything but kind.
Still, there was something else there. The sensation was indefinite. It was just a probing tentacle, which touched her mind and aroused her restlessness.
The young woman scanned the faces again carefully with the trained eyes of a police officer. At the same time, she tried to probe their minds, as well, using the skills she had honed over many years.
A man turned his back toward her slowly, before her eyes could have reached him and seen his features. He started toward the house, and she could see that his fists were clenched in the pockets of his white linen cotton pants.
His stride was long and lazy, as if he hadn’t had a worry in the world. Still, Leah would have bet the shirt on her back that tension defined the lines of his back muscles.
Her eyes lingered on his back and she tried to assess him objectively, yet she couldn’t note anything distinctive, but his curvy raven hair, which reached the collar of his white shirt, and the strong line of his shoulders. She didn’t fail to notice the movement of his muscles under the loose shirt, though.
The man reminded her of an elegant and yet, ferocious feline cut loose out in the wild, absorbed in the mission of checking out its personal hunting grounds.
Leah focused on him until he disappeared behind the line of decorative trees. She hadn’t watched him with the eyes of a woman and yet, to her distress, she had to admit that, unwillingly, the woman inside her had peeked.
That thought formed a line between her eyebrows, and that line deepened when the woman realized that she hadn’t felt anything from the unknown man. She’d experienced some tension and the peripheral edges of worry, but nothing else.
Now, Leah worried. That had happened to her only once in the past, when she had been confronted with a psychopath during her first years in the police force.
She had been puzzled at the time, as well, but then her mother showed her that the explanation was at hand. It was perfectly normal not to sense a thing from a psychopath. They don’t experience any kind of emotions, and therefore there are no vibes for Leah to catch.
She had made her business to know everything about psychopaths at the time, and nothing she had learned encouraged her when it came to dealing with such people.
That was Leah’s main concern there. Her inability to reach out to that man’s emotions could mean only one thing and that wasn’t very encouraging.
“Shouldn’t we be going, Leah?” Mark asked.
At the same time, his eyes were surveying the garden. He was trying to find out what had upset Leah so much that she’d frowned like that and forgotten about leaving the premises.
Leah glanced at him and barely managed to hide her surprise when she heard his voice. She had been so lost in her thoughts that she had forgotten all about Mark’s presence.
She glanced back in the direction that the man had taken, but of course he had already disappeared. She showed Mark a crooked smile and nodded.
“Yeah, I think we should be going, Mark,” she agreed and then started the car.
Leah followed the alley leading to the other end of the garden, her eyes attentive to the curves in the road. Yet, her mind was still on the man that she hadn’t been able to read and that had swiftly disappeared before she could have a glimpse at his face.
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