Cold Case

The First Case

BAKUGO'S POV

"Let's cut to the chase." Midoriya sighed as he threw the pictures from the crime scene on the table. "We've punched holes through your alibi."

"We have the technology today that we didn't have when your wife was murdered. All we need to do is run a few more tests and send them to the lab." I added.

"I think I'd like a lawyer." He mumbled. Midoriya and I looked at each other and nodded. When people asked for a lawyer or refused a DNA test, they usually tried to keep something from us.

"Do you have one you want us to contact?" I asked as Midoriya, and I made our way to the door.

"No."

"We'll contact one for you. We'll be back when they're here." We walked out the door, shutting it loudly behind us. We've been working on him for over an hour, and he still hasn't broken.

"Hey, did you get the report from the coroner?" Midoriya asked Uraraka, who was watching the interrogation through the window.

"Yeah, it's interesting for sure." She replied.

"How so?" Midoriya asked as he began flipping through the full report.

"She was hit eight times with something that represented a hard frisbee." She scoffed. "She was hit in the chest four times, once in the chin, and then three times on the head."

"There's a lamp in the house that we're pretty sure was the murder weapon." Midoriya mumbled as he continued reading through the report.

"Shinso is calling a lawyer right now. I can stay and keep an eye on him so you guys can go through that."

"When Shinso gets back, have him take over here. I need you to call Cal and see where we are on the search warrant." Midoriya ordered as he shut the file and handed it over to me.

"I can ask Shinso to call Cal." Uraraka shrugged. He turned toward her slowly, clenching his fist by his side.

"You'll call Cal. Shinso will keep an eye on things here. Bakugo and I are going back to our office to figure some more stuff out." He seethed. I'm not going to lie, that was impressive. And kind of hot.

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"So we know the dad did it, but what was his motive?" I laid back on the couch, enjoying the basement's darkness.

"He didn't do it." Midoriya responded simply. I looked at him, confused.

"What do you mean he didn't do it?" I sat up. "We're almost positive the murder weapon is sitting in his living room, and we punched a hole in his alibi."

"She was tall. About six foot two." An open file was handed to me, but I was still all lost as hell. "Stand up for me." I set the file on the couch and pushed myself to my feet. He grabbed the battery-operated lamp from the desk, walked over to me, and dropped to his knees in front of me.

"What the hell are you doing?" I'm sure my voice went up a whole ass octave, but I've never had a partner who dropped to their knees in front of me like this. He grabbed my shirt with his left hand and raised the lamp with his right.

"She was hit on her chest four times." He slowly brought the lamp to my chest, tapping me lightly. "With blows that hard, he would have been holding onto her shirt like I am now. So when she fell, she fell to her knees."

"Do you want me to do that now?" I scoffed.

"Slowly, but yes." I did what he said and slowly fell down to my knees. He tapped the lamp against my chin before tapping it against my head three times. We sat face to face while he continued explaining.

"All the blows to her body had the same amount of force and angle. If she were on a bed, I would say her husband did it for sure. If he sat on his knees like this, he wouldn't have been able to use the same force on her stomach and head because of the angle." He explained. My eyes widened as I realized what he was saying.

"Whoever did this had to be shorter than her by a few feet." I mumbled.

"Why else would her husband lie about the alibi and try his best to make sure he and his son were out of town?" He asked with a cocked brow.

"Because it was her son." I responded. "Her son killed her."

"I can't say yes directly, but I almost guarantee that the DNA that is being retested will be an exact match."

"What do we do now?" I asked.

"When we get the test results back, and it matches, I'm passing it on to my team to make the arrest. They'll take things from there." He pulled his legs out from under him and sat on his ass.

"We don't make the arrest?" It seemed like a lot of work to pass it off at the last minute.

"We can, but I don't care to take the credit. They can have it." He shrugged.

"Why not?" I asked.

"One, I don't want us to be in the paper for cracking a cold case because anyone else we try to talk to will run the other way. Two, I don't need public recognition to know I'm good at what I do. And three, I'm here because I have flaws that I need to work on. I need to focus on that, not what the media says." He explained. I pulled my knees out from under and crossed my legs.

Our knees pressed together gently, but neither of us scooted away.

"You know, cold cases aren't as bad as I thought they would be." I said.

"Same here. Not only am I happy that we'll finally give some people justice and help the families get closure, but I've been thinking a lot about how I run my team." He let out a small sigh as our eyes locked. "I'm sorry for snapping at you when we were watching the house. You were trying to help, and I refused to listen. The truth is, I've known that was a problem for years. I hated that other people noticed it too."

"I'm sorry for not dropping it when you asked me to. I have a problem with pushing people to the edge and making them break."

"That's good for the line of work you're in, but I wouldn't do that to your friends." He laughed. I had a problem with doing that to everybody, and I know I do. I push every person in my life to their breaking point, and I never drop it. That's the exact reason I don't talk to my parents anymore. I've pushed them as far as they could go.

"Are you saying we're friends?" I asked with a smirk. From what I've seen from him today and yesterday, he's not a bad person. He just has trouble standing up for himself and letting the people he cares about get away with anything.

"If we're not, this is going to be one long year." He laughed. I shook my head with a smile. He wasn't wrong.

"How many cases do you think we're going to solve because the original detectives were incompetent?" I asked. It took us two days to solve a homicide that someone else deemed a cold case after working on it for months.

"Probably a few." He shrugged. "Let's get started on a new case while we wait for the DNA results. There's no use in us sitting on the floor and waiting."

"After we grab a bite to eat." We missed lunch and still had a few more hours before leaving for the day. If I don't eat something soon, my stomach will eat itself.

"Deal."