BELLA
Bella jerked and sat up with urgency. She gasped from the rush of wind that hit her face when her supervisor, Sergeant Carver, dropped a manila folder on her desk.
“You’re up, Devereaux.”
Bella took a second to gather herself before pushing herself off of her desk. She was dazed and exhausted, trying desperately to focus on her sergeant. She’d been up most of the night combing through video from the hospital. She was looking for leads on Collier’s killer.
Bella rolled her neck to stretch out the kinks and grabbed the file from her desk.
“Sarge, I’m already working a homicide,” Bella grumbled as she opened the folder. “I’m still on the Sanders case.”
“Nobody’s gonna miss that dickhead. Put it aside and go hit the street. This case takes precedence. Besides, didn’t your friend have him taken out?”
Bella rolled her eyes before she could stop herself. Most in the department believed that Taylor was responsible for Collier’s death.
“There is no proof of that.”
“Well, we got three dead girls and no available detectives. Go work the case.”
Bella scanned the file as her sergeant disappeared into his office. Three dead women found near the University of Chicago was all of the preliminary info given. Bella assumed that they were more than likely coeds. She closed the folder and grabbed her leather jacket from the back of her chair. She checked the pocket for the keys to her department-issued, old-school Chevy Caprice, and left out of the very busy homicide division.
Twenty minutes later, Bella hit the scene and hopped out of her car. Uniformed officers were everywhere, no doubt, fucking up her crime scene. She walked past the officers, straight to the beat sergeant. His mood was dismal. Bella hadn’t seen the bodies yet, but his demeanor indicated that she was walking into something grisly.
“Hey, Gary.”
“Bella,” he greeted in a deep rasp.
“What you got for me?”
Gary sighed and turned toward the dilapidated old house. They were in a rundown, but up-and-coming neighborhood near the university. Bella’s crime scene was the only house on the block that wasn’t boarded up.
Bella carefully followed Gary up the porch stairs, praying that they wouldn’t collapse. She frowned as she entered the front door, immediately pissed at the number of cops that were traipsing through her crime scene.
“Everybody out!” Bella shouted, causing the nosy cops to turn in her direction.
A few of the officers knew right away who Bella was and headed out the front door. But there were others who looked her up and down in assessment as if to say, ‘Who the hell are you?’
Bella turned to the sergeant with narrow eyes. She couldn’t believe that he’d allowed such shoddy police work.
“Don’t look at me,” Gary defended. “They were here when I got here.” He turned to the few that remained. “You heard the detective. Out!”
Bella looked around the small house as the uniforms filed out. Luckily, there wasn’t a lot of trash and debris. There was no furniture except for a few crates and a couple of pillows in the living room.
“Where are my bodies?” Bella asked the sergeant.
“Basement.” Gary pointed to a door past the kitchen.
As Bella entered the kitchen, she scanned the floor for blood evidence. In the middle of the room, there was an old wooden table with three flimsy chairs. There was nothing on the table. In the sink, there were six empty beer bottles.
“Sarge!” she called out.
“Yeah,” he responded from the threshold.
“Where’s the E.T.?”
Bella wanted the evidence technician to collect the bottles. There was a possibility that they could extract DNA or fingerprints from them.
“I think he’s in the basement.”
