The Short Stories of Harry Styles

Shards of Glass: Part 1

Author's Note:

I love psycho Harry....

....here is my attempt.

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION AND SHOULD NOT AND DOES NOT REFLECT OUR SWEET BOY HARRY IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.

-Balletclutz
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The scene is as gruesome as it always is.

You wipe at your brow and look down at the triple homicide sprawled out on the poker table.

Gambling gone bad.

You'd think after five years as a detective, specifically one dealing with death, that you'd get used to it, but it never gets better. Theron Shepherd cannot and will not get used to the blood...or the stench.

Blood has its own unique smell. Copper and rust. The smell makes you gag most days but you cannot allow yourself to look effected in front of your colleagues.

You are almost way too thankful that Sully and Hart are already here, taking this one off of your hands. Your mind is too wrapped up in the piles of paperwork already sitting on your desk back at the office...you don't need more to add onto it.

"Shepherd..." you look to a rookie cop that has just stepped past the yellow caution tape on the door who wants your attention, "we've got a call from 84th street....homicide," your eyebrows lift in anticipation of what you know will come next, "...strangulation."

Your mind is already whirling. This is the third victim over the last year. At first you and your colleagues thought it was a one off. It had been a sloppy scene. Clearly sexual in nature but from the autopsy report on the poor woman, it was ruled an accident. Seemed that mutual kinky sex had gone just a little too far and our unsub had gotten away with it. They had left no trace, no DNA evidence, nothing.

It had all been rather odd.

When time crept away and the file became a cold case, you were angry with yourself. You wanted to avenge the poor angel who had been plucked of her life far too soon, even if it was determined to be accidentally done. You wanted her to find justice and yet....he was gone without a trace.

Six months later and you'd received another call.

Strangulation, non sexual, homicide. This time it was on a college student who was on his way home late at night. It was experimental in nature. You realized upon further examination that you must have missed something from the first crime scene because this time...laying beside the young man, was a flower....a sunflower to be exact... but when you looked back at the older file, there were no flowers at the scene.

So now, as fate would have it, you find yourself driving in your cruiser over to 84th street, an anxious mess, praying, hoping, pleading that a flower would be left behind. Something to connect the murders together.

You practically run out of your vehicle and fly up the steps of the apartment complex like a bat out of hell. The anticipation of what comes next licking at your belly.

"Shepherd, you're not gonna believe this." Your coworker pushes his dark brown hair off of his forehead and looks down at the body somberly. You'd always noticed that he cared too much for the dead, always remorseful, but lately these specific string of murders were effecting him even more so.

"A fucking sunflower." There it was, lying there next to the victim. She was pretty, mid 20s, caucasian, and the only visible wounds were the dark bruises around her fragile neck.

"Yeah...it seems things are escalating with our unsub." You watch as your partner reaches a gloved hand down to point at the injuries.

"Looks cleaner, not quite so frantic as the two before." His accent lulls the vowels of his words in such a way that still sends a tiny ripple of satisfaction through your veins.