Chapter 3: Chapter One
"Faithful are the wounds of a friend:
But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful."
- Proverbs 27:6
— - —
01 | Arrogance Will Bite
Running a hand through loosely curled auburn hair, I skim through affidavits on file and note the record's address for later processing.
Bright labeled reports and unfolded charts had stacked themselves on my desk sometime late last night. A weary sign that today would be just another stressful day at the office.
I stop to stretch out a kink from in between my shoulder blades, slumping in my office-issued wheeler with a huff.
Stacks of unmarked trial dossiers from last week's solved casing rest on my otherwise spotless desk. I carefully sift through the piles of monotonous inked paper, taking note to read each directory stubbed summaries later tonight.
The day's shift will be long, which means my temperamental mood swings should be soaring.
Another spine popping stretch, and a fierce stare towards a square-framed clock jutting out from the wall above my cubicle. The click-click-clicking of its preset, doing my best to ignore the damned thing.
Placing a hand on my temple to ease the pain, I feel a headache forming at the base of my skull. I groan at the incoming hours of over-the-counter aspirin tablets, and instead try to focus on the state prison's most recently collected data files, written by none other than myself.
It fills me with a sense of accomplishment, to know I can call up so many cases at once and with ease. One in particular catches my eye and I pause, opening the file to graze the summary on the convict's background. I smile when I spot his contact list below the directory of penitence's information.
Reaching for the telephone across my desk with one hand, I pop the cap off a lebbeks pen in the other and quickly punch in a saved number. As the line buzzes, I tap along to a familiar melody, then drop the beat as the phone on the other end picks up.
"Hello?" Asks a quick voice with a mousy nature but since distorted by the company's outdated receiver.
I pull my lips back in a thin line before responding. "Yes, hello there," I say, much more cheerful than needed. "I'm calling to ask Mr. Phillips a few questions." A silent pause. "Is he around?"
"One moment." says the voice, taking in a sharp breath as they scuffle about in the background. I take to handling my Irish crème latte with nervous hands, coffee cooled to room temperature, and sip on it to savor the caffeine while I wait. Nothing like a good cup of caffeine to start off an otherwise unbearable day.
"Here he is." The voice shouts into the receiver, bringing me back to the call on hand.
"Ah, hello?"
I mentally shun myself against the sound of a man's coughing before replying courteously. "Hello, sir." I reply coolly, setting my drink down and rolling out tense shoulders. Again.
"And who is this?" The man sounds impatient, voice gruff and hurried. He reminds me of a big-time lawyer, which I find to make sense given the circumstances of our little chat.
"The name is Anna Meyers, Sir. I work with—"
"Yes, yes. What do you want, is my question?"
Clearing a tight throat, I shove down all witty—and frankly, rude—commentary and remind myself of the office on-call questionnaire obsessively posted around the building.
"Sir, I'm calling to ask you about a previous client. Orville Weaver, sir. Do you have any comments you would like to share on his Jenson-Bright's case?"
I readjust the telephone so it rests against my collarbone while I wait for a response, holding it still with a quick dip of my chin as I reach over for a small notepad in the corner. That's when I catch sight of something flickering in the light, jutting in from an outside window and pause, sucking in a breath. "—Wh- what did you say again, sir?"
Repressing an inaudible sigh, I refrain from the man's long list of complaints, small fingers reaching into the crevice of the sill. I yank up hard on the frame to get it to open, making a quick mental note for the janitors. "Ok yeah. Sure."
Nodding in acknowledgment, I peer out at the patches of cherry blossoms and frilly grass playing in the wind. I watch for a moment, looking for the flash of light that had caught my eyes earlier and see nothing. The wind slaps strands of hair in my face, tickling the side of my chin. Birds chirping faintly suddenly stop as I push back from the windowsill and slam it shut. Irritated, I shake my head in disbelief and wonder if the man on the line hasn't left.
A stationary whirring trips the wires. I imagine the man waving a gloved hand around the air in his smug little office chair. A swivel, I would presume, from the swooshing sound having passed along through the phone for the last ten minutes. I bite the inside of my cheek in amusement at the thought.
" Sir?" I ask, snatching the silence out of our little conversation. "I'll need you to tell me everything you know about Weaver. And don't skimp on the details, if you can." A low clucking shines through the noisy static. "Cooperation is of the highest regards, Mr. Phillips. You know this as well as I."
Paying attention closely, I catch the sound of Phillips coughing before he speaks. "Weaver, yes. He was my third client, four months back, I believe—a bright, young fellow indeed." In the background, someone opens and closes a drawer quickly. "He'd been called into court for assault," He breathed. "The charges, of course, were false.
"They sent him to Jail for nine months, two weeks later charged with battery assault, filed from inside the prison during his time in the cell. As you well know," He pauses, takes a sip of something. Scotch on the rocks. "It had extended his primary sentence another year, and so was released this spring. Released with sixty just days of probation. Can you believe that? Ha!"
"Quite the sentence," I mumble in response.
Finishing up a few notes, I gather the papers together and lay them back in the file, tapping the sides to straighten it out. A door from the back of the grave room bursts open and a pair of footsteps echo down the hall with speed.
"Anybody here?" I ask cautiously.
"Anna? Hey, Anna, get over here—we need your help to sort all this paperwork!"
"One moment!" I yell, covering the receiver with my fingers. Rummaging through running thoughts, I twirl in my chair to face the most generous and homely computer given to me last year as a pay raise.
"Sir," I say. "If there is anything else, we'd be more than happy to help you sort it out." I sit my pen down and reach for a stapler to attach the newest personnel analysis to Weaver's file. The man coughs into the speaker in response.
"Right. In that case, thank you for your help. If we—"
"Yes, yes. Thank you. Goodbye."
Lonely buzzing ricochets off and into my burning head as I bite back a snarl. "Good day to you too, sir." I reply sarcastically into the phone before tossing it onto the desk.
Sighing, I blow a strand of loose hair out of my eyes. "Only if the director'd permit me to slip you a piece of my mind. Then we'd really see who wears their britches tight enough." Wandering eyes pass over the dim room of file cabinets and borrowed office desks and snags on my previously damaged computer monitor.
I've quite taken a liking to watching the light reflect against the grimy surface. The scathing display of what happens to old things with time and disrespect, it's not much more than a ruddy box that takes forever to turn on. And when it does, all you see is the long dip in the upper left corner of the screen flickering. A glitch that anyone else will probably never notice but me.
I remind myself I'll have to find a better one on the web one of these days. A computer that takes more work to function than can actually be done with will always be a constant struggle. One I intend to drown the first chance I get.
"Hey." Says a low voice, and I raise my head slowly, eyes wide.
Blonde hair, rounded blue eyes; the office-prized intern, Ascher Lee walks in. He strides over to my desk, eyebrows raised at the pile of disregarded sticky notes and scavenged criminal files. He smiles brightly. "You look wasted, kid."
"Maybe I am wasted." I say curtly, furrowing my brows. "And don't call me kid."
He looks at me for a moment, ignores my comment, and then ducks behind the monitor resting between us. His head peers in from the next row. "Not wasted. But tired, maybe?"
Now it's my turn to laugh. "Yeah, right."
Ascher only shrugs, stepping back from the desk-front, and drags his feet towards a nearby empty chair. Groggy and a couple of days' worth of stubble lining his jaw, the boy looks to be the definition of exhaustion. His loose Carhart tee and denim blue jeans, dusty farmhand boots speckled with mud, and light cowlick curls add to the perfect rodeo-wrangler appeal he's sporting this morning.
I settled for a simple striped button up and a pair of dress slacks. Black pumps and my favorite gold hoop earrings to finish the look. A very classy, easy to pair combo that allows for mood switches and still agrees with the San Francisco's Police Department dress code, unlike some people who forget it's their job to look professional at the office.
"So..." Ascher drawls slowly, chasing my thoughts away. "You thinking about attending that team party tonight?"
"Which one was it again?"
"You know, the one I'm literally hosting off campus next Thursday. You're coming right?"
"Oh, I don't know," I say and he dips his head in mutual understanding. I hate parties.
Turning back to my work, Ascher quietly slips a chair to the end of my crowded desk. He sits backwards, arms dangling limply at his sides, chin resting atop the scratchy surface of his new throne. A smile tugs at my lips before shoving my ill tempered-set confrontations to the bottom of a welling tide.
Although the boy appears aloof and relatively mistaken, he placed first in his class. He can be a handful most of the time, but when it comes down to it, he gets his work done. I've found that he doesn't complain much, which is both a blessing and a curse.
I often worry about strangling the boy with my current setup, but I can't help that I've become a mess. What with the added hours I've had to take the last couple of weeks, they have inadvertently dubbed me as the sloppy-sleuth-of-the-year. I have to remind myself that someone has to do it and it might as well be me; I can get my work done on time.
Turning back to the task at hand, I scribble down some more and tie off loose ends for the list of trial case studies for the day. Last-minute decisions that are later taken on after lunch hour, when most of the crew heads up towards Oakland for an evacuee on UCB campus.
"I have that one meeting after eleven," I add thoughtfully, fingers humming against the keyboard as I finish up the last of the reports. "The one Stewart and Leonards led Thursday."
Ascher looks up, fingers brushing against a line-up of ballpoint pens, the corners of his lips dropping slightly. "Another suicide attempt?"
I glare sharply and Ascher's gaze falls, embarrassed by his brass remark. I sigh. "Yeah," I say, dragging a hand through my hair. "That's the one."
Teeth grind as I think about the District's kill numbers and how they'd sky rocketed last year. Right, suicides. These are men—murderers—running around the city, set on their mercy killing sprees. Hundreds of case reports stated homicides because my detectives aren't ballsy enough to stake out a claim at the head director's. And still the people of Fransisco are paying dearly for a cause we have yet to discover as their protectors, no less.
Exasperated—and frankly, overwhelmed, I pick up where others left off. Revising and then transferring documents assigned to Corporal. Coding the references and screening them into the system. Running case numbers under the board's collective status for recognition.
A chair spins, then falls to the floor, wheels sputtering to a stop. I look up from a handful of graded work, watching as Ascher walks back and forth between the cubical halls. He has a limp in his step, from kicking the swivel I presume, and lays out a set of criminal files on one of the abandoned desks. He makes quite the ruckus while flipping through the pages; every loud grunt in response to check something for anything.
Suddenly Ascher angles his crooked neck in my direction, hair falling lopsidedly into the walkway, smiling brightly. "Not to worry, Meyers. I think I may have found something."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
its_morigan
its_morigan Hey guys!
How'd you think about the first chapter?
... No? I thought Asher was quite the catch.
Okay, well, if you AT LEAST enjoyed chapter one, don't forget to vote it up on the charts for others to see!
Mo <3
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