ANGEL BLUE [1]

PREFACE

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice, he is the worst.” ― Aristotle 

      • • •

      I stared at the case files in front of me; I stared at them so hard that my eyebrow probably twitched. I tried to convince myself that these cases would make sense―but they didn’t. The evidence was all inconclusive and the bodies (if there was anything left of them) were mangled and strewn across Manhattan.

      The coroner’s report stated that cause of death was: inconclusive. How could mangled pieces of patrol officers placed all over New York be inconclusive? The tapping of my pen grew so harsh that the ballpoint bled through the first three pages of evidence.

      “Shit,” I frowned and tried to scratch away the ink with my fingernail.

      “That’s the second file you’ve done that to,” whispered my partner, Officer Banks. She was the only person I liked on my side of the ‘Desk Squad’ since she didn’t criticize me for being the Deputy Chief’s daughter. Banks was about twenty-one and her dad was actually Chief―so we had a lot in common.

      “Yeah well if these cases didn’t frustrate me so much, the pen wouldn’t have slipped,” I replied with a pout. However, unlike me, Banks had the respect of the men across the aisle who were also a part of the ‘Desk Squad’―the group of low training cops that basically read, filed, logged, repeat.   

      “Got the shakes again, Akira?” taunted NYPD’s biggest prat, Jax Sinclair―twenty-five with no sense of authority unless they flashed a badge, among other things. His black hair spiked up as he ran a hand through it.

      Banks had his respect, I didn’t.

      I simply ignored him and started to log the case, filing it into our system. The murders of the patrol officers became more frequent, at least two every three months. There were no distinguishing traits with any of the officers but the MO’s have all been the same, deep gash to the abdomen, severing the artery while they slowly bleed out in an alley way to simply be found by the common prostitute.

      I frowned as the ringing in my ears grew louder. It’d been happening ever since I got into the precinct at the end of my eighteenth birthday, which was six months ago. Dad simply brushed it off and said that I had acute hearing that caused the reverberation of sounds in my eardrum. But something inside me nagged that it was something else, the ringing only ever happened when I was working or in public.  

      Dad’s theory was plausible, I never used to wear earmuffs at the shooting range back in England so perhaps that impaired my hearing slightly―but it had never affected me in such a way to make me shake and take meds for ADHD. I knew I didn’t have ADHD, but that’s the only conclusion Dad could come to when I wouldn’t stop complaining. So now, Jax thinks I’m a nervous wreck all the time.

      “So are you going to come to the diner tonight with me and―” Banks cut herself off short, her eyes trailed over my shoulder as she rolled her wheely chair closer to me. I caught the faint scent of her Rexona deodorant on her blue pressed shirt and black slacks. Her shoulder badge glistens in the flickering lights of the precinct. “My FED-dar is going off the charts.”

      I didn’t get what everyone was gawking at until I spun in my chair so my back was to Banks. I looked like a guppy as I tried to form words. I wasn’t sure what I was shocked about, the fact that the FBI had sent an agent to our covert piece of suburbia or the fact that the FBI Agent looked like he’d strutted straight off the catwalk―I didn’t like him one bit.