Wolf in sheep's clothing || There was a girl, and there was a wolf ~

5. Tristan

Simone gives me a file and I lazily take my hands out of my pockets to grab it.
I notice the young girl with black hair looking at me and I flash a smile, she smiles back.
"We'll meet with you in half an hour," says my partner before walking off with Sheila.

I watch them walk away until they turn around a corner and disappear in the meetings room.
I was right last night, Sheila has gold blond hair and it does match perfectly with her light blue eyes and the fair skin.
"How old are you?" I turn my attention to Gaia, standing before me while playing with a strand of hair.
"I'm twenty four, what about you?" I say.
Her gaze brightens, is she trying to hit on me?

"I'm twenty," her answer makes me smile.
My thoughts travel back to last night, when I called blondie a liar for telling me she had the same age.
"You're really young to be a detective," Gaia says with an innocent, doe-eyed look and I raise a brow.
She is hitting on me. No doubt here.
"As soon as I finished my training in the academy, I followed an investigative program that got me here pretty quick." I don't like talking about this.
It sounds like I'm flexing when I'm not. I'm annoyed by my own response.

"You must be really smart," she is smiling.
I look away and clear my throat.
"We have work to do, come on."
I sit down at my desk and open the file that Simone gave me.
Giving the black haired girl a pile of papers to organise for me, I begin annotating and searching through the pictures taken at the crime scene in the subway.

It was a student, a teenager girl aged eighteen.
The cause of death shocks me, it's one single stab wound on the back of the neck which reached the oesophagus and succeeded in ending her life.
When I got the call from Mr. Gale at two in the morning, I thought it would be one of those usual calls of homeless' deaths but when I got there, even if the body was already taken by the forensics team, the blood pool made me want to throw up.

The victim was clearly hit from behind, most certainly not expecting any of it.
"Is it bad?" Gaia's question makes me realise I was having flashbacks of the scene and she looks worried.
"It always is." I tell her with a small smile so she wouldn't think I'm too affected by the case.
"It's that girl that was found in the subway, right?" She asks.
I nod and sigh, "yes."
"Do you have any suspects, yet?"
"It could be anyone from her family to her friends, or school mates."
"Did she have a phone with her? You could check her text messages," the suggestion is useful but we already thought of that and nothing seems to look out of place for now.

"We're just at the start and there's a long way to go before we find the culprit, Gaia."
"So what are you going to do about it?"
"We're going to visit the crime scene and see if we can get a hold of the camera footage. We should find something on there."
To be honest, I'm only hoping that the cameras caught a good image of the killer or it will be much harder to put an end to it.

In that half an hour I make a list of suspects that we can contact and Gaia finishes organising a few of the papers I gave her.
Simone comes out of the meetings room followed by Sheila and I get ready to leave.
"Everyone ready?" Asks Simone touching Gaia's shoulder and glancing at me.
"I've waited my whole life for an adventure, let's go!" The girl's enthusiasm makes the rest of us laugh and I catch Sheila smiling genuinely.
Our eyes meet, she's beautiful.

Simone leads the way out and I let the girls follow her, I stay behind. We take my private car and drive to destination, the traffic is hallucinating and the subway must be packed too.
I have a hard time finding a good parking spot and let my partner go ahead with Gaia and Sheila to try and ask for the cameras' recordings from the security team.
I'm about to lose my patience, I've been circling the same roundabout five times without succeeding to finding anything but as soon as I see a granny drive off, I steal the parking spot immediately.

I take a deep breath to calm down a little and then finally walk to the subway. I take the stairs to the underground and as I said, it is packed.
I look around and then keeping near the wall I see our interns sat on a bench near the door to what, I'm guessing, is the security office.
"Tristan!" Gaia calls out to me and smiles brightly.
"Is Simone in there?" I ask looking at the door and then around the place.
"She went with some dudes to check the cameras, I think," she shrugs and I look at Sheila.

She's silent, is this how she usually is?
She has a hand on her stomach, may she feel sick?
"Are you ok?" I ask her and she looks up at me, nodding.
"She didn't have breakfast." Says Gaia picking at her sparkly outfit while blondie gives her a side eye.
"Jayden burned his own breakfast and you were drinking coffee, I went to the bakery but it was closed..."

I don't get the time to say anything to her that Simone comes out of the security room and calls me in. I go without hesitation, I need this case to be solved as soon as possible.
"Tristan, they have nothing." My partner looks stressed and my expression morphs into an uncertain one.
"What do you mean with 'they have nothing'?" I ask with concern in my voice.
I can't control it, this is exactly what I didn't want to be happening.
"The cameras don't work, the only functional ones are on the outside of the subway."