Void: 2

The headache started before I even walked into the building. Maybe it was because I walked three blocks without any food, the sun blazed down on my back, or that it was the middle of July.

As I opened the door to the precinct, a voice called my name just as I stepped inside. I looked around to see Leigh Angler coming toward me, and he looked less than happy. I sighed.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped, running his hands through his brown hair. “You’re supposed to be at the crime scene. Or didn’t you get my text?”

“You’re serious?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You should have called me. That’s not really a text type situation. Wait, why aren’t you out there now?”

“We were on our way when you walked in,” Leigh said. He narrowed his eyes. “Let’s go.”

**

The victim had been dumped in an alleyway behind a bar. I crouched and took out a notepad, hovering over the dead woman.

“What happened?” I asked.

“She died,” Emily Myer said as she came up behind me.

“No shit,” I muttered. “I want to know how.”

Emily looked at me. “She has marks on her neck, so she was probably strangled. But that’s all we see so far.”

“Does she have a name?” Leigh asked. He was on her other side.

“Her name is Maddie Klein, she’s 27, and she worked at Frost.” Emily said.

“What’s Frost?” I asked.

She blinked at me and she laughed. “It’s the name of the bar.” She put her hand on the brick wall. “I guess you really aren’t that observant.”

I glared at her and stood up. She’d been getting under my skin since she started six months ago. But I couldn’t do anything about it.

“You two should be focusing on the dead girl,” Leigh said as he walked in between us. “You can fight each other later.”

I rubbed my temples and looked over at the girl on the ground; her brown hair was cut short, and she wore a dark halter and a pair of denim jeans with holes in the knees. She didn’t have any tattoos, but she had a nose piercing. Her eyes were open, green and blank, gazing at the sky.

“I’ll find out who did this,” I told her. “I will, I promise.”

I think if she could smile, Maddie Klein would have done just that.