Chapter Two: It Won't Be Like This For Long

In which we meet our two detectives...

Hastily roping the area off in yellow police tape, the detective team was able to redirect the neighbours, awakened by Ms T Baggins’ screaming (or, in some cases, the flashing lights of the police cars). Surveying the dark scene in front of her, Detective Claire Lappin smirked at the man currently assigned as her ‘partner’. “I suppose you’re going to call this another Bus Driver Killing, Jacko?”

 

The ginger man nodded in response, scarcely taking his eyes off the broken body beside the bus. “Jack. And yes, I do think we’re looking at another bus driver murder; late night, dead person, empty bus.. It looks pretty suspicious. I bet when we look in the bus we’ll find the radio and the cameras have both been turned off, too... “ His voice trailed off, something in his partner’s silence alerting him to something he really should have already known. “...And you don’t believe me. Again.” He looked up, locking his hazel eyes on those of his partner, and rose to the challenge he saw in their depths. “C’mon, Claire. Look around you.”

 

“At what, Jacko,” Claire broke in, frustrated. “The deceased was found under his bus, crushed after it rolled. The idiot forgot to put his handbrake on before he checked... whatever it is that people check under their vehicles when they’re too cheap to pay a mechanic to do it. Nothing here says murder. Not one tiny, little, thing, Jacko.” She gestured as she talked, marking her frustration at his naivety with her arms, her hands, her entire body; wondered if this time she would manage to convince him.

 

“Claire,-“

 

“No, Jacko. Your little daydream might have been amusing at the start, but this. Is. Ridiculous. I can buy that there’s something going on, that someone’s attacking Brisbane bus drivers. I can buy that something’s going on with that; but that all of these drivers we’ve been finding lately are the  victim of the same invisible killer? You’re reaching, Jacko. You’re reaching, and I’m not buying. And even if I were to concede that all these drivers were the victim of one killer; even if I agreed, and trust me, I am not saying I do; but even if I agreed that there was a connection we’re missing,” she coughed, then lowered her voice to a sneer before adding, “There is still no way I would buy into this crazy little fantasy story that you have concocted for yourself about special abilities.”

 

Around them, the rest of the investigating team worked steadily, blocking out the bickering that they were by now quite used to. Claire Lappin, decorated detective with fifteen years experience on the job and ‘no nonsense’ attitude, had not taken well to the fanciful young ring-in from the traffic control department. Nearly two years later, and they seemed to dislike each other at least as much as they had to start with, if not even more. Team members who were around two years ago had already learned to stay out of Lappin’s way on a bad day by the time Firefox joined them; they quickly adjusted to simply staying out of Lappin’s way at all times. And that truly did mean ALL times.  Now that she had Firefox as a partner, the only time it was safe to stand in front of Detective Claire Lappin, was when she asked for you to be there... and even then, there were no guarantees, except that it was safer to be where she had asked you to be than to not be where she had asked you to be. She was like... well, she was like someone you really didn’t want to mess with.

 

“I know you find it hard to believe, Claire,” Jack began. “I did, too, in the beginning. But there’s so much evidence here if you would only look at it. You just have to open your eyes and your mind to what your eyes would tell you, if only you’d let them-“

 

“Jacko. Seriously, enough. This conversation is over. Now. We are not discussing this any further. If you want to research this crazy theory of yours in private, you go right ahead, but at the moment we have a job to do.” She paused, raised her voice again and directed her words at the team of people scurrying around, “I want to know who this guy is, and what he was doing under his bus. I want a definitive cause of death, not just speculation; and I want to know it now!” She turned and in a three point flounce, hurriedly left the scene.

 

In response to her words, a flurry of activity ensued, focusing around the body, and Jack Foxfire stood to extricate himself. He had noticed immediately and often, how poorly their team functioned, how badly morale was down. He made a mental note to himself the lack of camaraderie whenever Detective Lappin was around. Later, he would write it all down in the notebook he kept for this purpose. “Do your best, team,” he encouraged them as he walked over to the bus and stepped inside.

 

As he stepped inside, he shined his flashlight all the way down to the very back, and all the way up to where he stood. He’d expected to see nothing unusual, and he was not at all disappointed in his expectations. The occasional odd belonging or piece of rubbish littered the seats and floor, but he doubted any of it would offer a clue to the case " that is, the case it would be if he could convince Claire that this was more than an unfortunate accident.

 

He focused his attention on the bus’ dashboard and the busy mess of equipment in front of him, letting his eyes adjust gradually to the low light. “Hmm. To Kill A Mockingbird?” He murmured to himself, catching sight of the novel in the drivers’ pocket of the dash. “Really, what was he thinking? That was a very bad, very boring, book. Wonder how far this guy was into it.” He mentally shrugged before dragging his attention back to the things that really mattered; again, another useless piece of information that would no doubt shed no light on what had happened. He would, of course, include mention of it in his case notes, but there seemed little point concentrating his attention there just now.

 

Everything, as he had suspected, was off. Including the hand brake " no wonder the guy had been run over. Sticking his head out the bus window, he called for Stanley to come and take photographs as soon as he was done photographing the body, then moved down towards the back of the bus. Thoughtfully, he sat on an empty seat and took out a notebook to jot down some basic notes while he waited. With Stanley’s job done, he’d be able to take a closer look at the instruments and equipment on the dash, and maybe this time find some evidence that even Claire Lappin couldn’t deny.

 

He pondered that he’d not noticed a GPS tracker when he’d looked before, unfortunately. Damn shame this wasn’t one of the newly outfitted busses with GPS tracking on it. He could have checked to see if the bus had been started since he’d stopped for... well, for whatever it was he had stopped for. Doubtless the cameras would show up nothing. He’d gone through them and through them, the driver was always sitting by him, or her, self when they turned off the radio, and the same for the camera, which was usually the second thing they shut off. He suspected he knew what was going on, but Claire would never go for it, not without better proof. A GPS tracker would have been useful for that, but they were so few and far between on Brisbane and Logan buses that it was very unlikely he’d get lucky enough to grab a bus with that on.

 

As Stanley finished up and exited the vehicle, Jack returned to the driver’s seat, pulling on his gloves and sitting carefully on the chair. He’d have to get the specialists to check and remove the tape from the cameras, and he’d definitely have to get both it and the radio checked for malfunctions. Those showed up sporadically in, what he believed, was a portion of the killings they were investigating.

 

There wasn’t much else to see, everything was as it should be, as he had known it would be. Although he had a hunch that this was more than it seemed, if he closed his mind to that feeling, all he was left with was facts that pointed to a horrible accident. Bus driver stops his vehicle, forgets to put his handbrake on, climbs down to take a look underneath and is run over by his own vehicle. It wasn’t uncommon for a stone to flick up beneath a vehicle and damage the undercarriage, and if that happened, it certainly wasn’t uncommon for the bus driver to be required to stay and explain the damage. It really wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for him to want to check it on his own before heading back to the depot, where, should there be no damage, he could head straight home for the night, instead of waiting around for a mechanic to be free to check it out properly. No case there, that’s for sure; not on its own merits.

 

Jack sighed and scrubbed a hand across his face. Hunch aside, there was very little to support him in this, and nothing that Claire Lappin was going to be willing to run with. Even if she wasn’t such a b***h, she was still too solidly grounded to believe in his theories, especially not with the kind of miniscule and jelly-like consistency of proof that he could offer her. He was just pondering this when she swung herself in the door, holding out a cup of coffee for him. “Figured you’d need this when you realised you still haven’t got any proof,” she grinned at him. Accepting it gratefully, he inhaled deeply before he drank. “Thanks.”

 

If his voice was a little gruff, it was with surprise. Detective Claire Lappin was widely known as a man-eater and a vicious b***h... the kind of woman who would pour the coffee over your head, or go and get herself one so that she could drink it in front of you; not the kind who’d supply you with a cup. He knew she hadn’t warmed to him, that partially it was just her way, and partially it was that they were not complementary to each other, and that partially she resented his transfer from another department. He wondered if she suspected his real position now; then brushed off his idle musings. Most likely she just felt guilty about being so hard on him " even the narkiest of the narky sometimes had a moment of weakness.

 

“Everything in here is exactly the way I expected to find it, Claire, you’re right. But I still say you’re wrong about this being an accident. I’ve got a hunch that tells me this is connected to the other killings.”

 

“Jacko. I’m saying this for the last time. Until you bring me hard evidence that your bullshit theory is going to take us somewhere in this case, that it’s even possible in the real world, then we are not investigating this together. You want to follow this bullshit about empathy and telepathy up on your own, you go for it, but we are not investigating this officially.” She glared at him, and he involuntarily took a step back.

 

If that was the way she wanted to play it, then fine. He could go with that, and he would. He’d investigate all of these on his own, in his spare time or when he was off duty. He knew he’d find the killer long before she did, doing that, but that was all the better. He’d love showing her how wrong she was, even more than he’d enjoy it when she found out his real position on her team. Not just her little sidekick or lackey, that’s for sure. He was really looking forward to this.

Author's Note

Please bear in mind this is a very rough first draft as I'm throwing together 50,000 words in a month. Feel free to add reviews and comments/fix grammar and spelling/find plot holes and problems (these things are heavily encouraged!), but please do be gentle on this, as well as bearing in mind that part of the NaNo experience means unnecessary padding and/or weird moments/dares.

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[Penulis Kecil]

Notes to self (in case I ever go back to this to finish it):

* Detectives should dust for fingerprints on the handbrake
* Does Firefox have red hair?