Nefarious {Harry Styles A.U}

Two

Detective Harry Styles hadn't been up this early in a few weeks. Work was moving slowly and there weren't a lot of cases coming through his desk, so he had taken the liberty of having a few days off, spending time with his sister as she had visited so kindly from her new home in Los Angeles.

However, there was always something that would come up and early one Tuesday morning, Harry's last day off, his phone had rung several times, vibrating wildly on the dark wooden side table, waking him from his much needed sleep.

His partner had called him several times before Harry had finally decided to pick up and was informed of a case they had been assigned to and he now had to 'get he ass down to 44th street'. Liam Payne was never one to put things eloquently.

Harry had managed, in record time, to tidy his hair into a normal looking bun on the back of his head. As a detective, they were a little more lenient on what he could do with his shoulder length brown hair. Although as long as it was tied up, the chief had no problem with it. Harry had decided to quickly throw on a simple black suit complete with a white dress shirt underneath.

Finally, he arrived at the scene in his sleek Ford Mustang, cutting off the engine and stepping outside of the vehicle onto the gravel. He took careful steps forwards onto the grass and walked up the to cordon; showing the officer at the tape his badge as his partner walked quickly over.

"Glad you could finally make it." Liam grinned as he appeared, Harry pulling on his blue latex gloves.

"Always a pleasure to see you, Payne." Harry shot back, a sarcastic smile on his face.

"Well, you can't always hope for the easy ones." Liam shot back, lifting up the crime tape to allow his partner under.

"I'm assuming forensics is done with this part of the scene?" Harry stopped mid stride in hopes the contamination factor of the evidence would be kept to the minimum.

"Wouldn't be standing here if they hadn't." Liam shrugged, following his partner towards the body that was currently being seen to by the coroner, Dr Ashton Irwin, a relatively young doctor with an abundance of sandy blond curls on top of his head. He may have looked young, but the man had about three PhDs to his name and an incredible font of knowledge in his head.

"Morning Doctor." Harry sent just a hint of a smile towards the kneeling man. "What happened?" He looked over the body in front of him, being hit with a sense of déjà vu, although it was one he couldn't place.

It wasn't the worst thing he had ever seen, but it wasn't exactly the nicest either. Holes were covering the man's dark skin. Most of which were pitted and foam surrounded his mouth. His eyes were completely dull, clouded over in white. "Does anyone want to tell me what the hell did this?" Harry muttered, careful of the fact that there were already a few people standing outside the cordon, all standing on their toes and craning their necks to try and get a better view of the body.

"That would be Sodium Hydroxide." The Doctor responded whilst giving the body his preliminary exam.
"Sodium Hydroxide did that?" Liam asked, writing everything down in his little notebook that was usually kept in the inside pocket of his black suit jacket.

"I won't know for sure until the lab results come back and until I've done the autopsy, but it looks that way, and smells like it."

"Smells like it?" Liam questioned again.

"Sodium Hydroxide can be found in a lot of different house hold items, most commonly in paint stripper and oven cleaners." Dr Irwin replied again, not taking his attention away from the body in front of him.

The look on Harry's face was one that he hadn't worn in a long time. In his entire career, there weren't a lot of things that tended to shock him any more. He had seen the majority of crimes build up over his three years as a Homicide detective, but this was just a little to much for his brain to handle and if it hadn't have been for the fact there were several news crews gathering around the scene, he probably would have thrown up.

"How long until you can tell us exactly what happened here?" Harry asked, distain showing in his voice.

"After I get her back to my lab, probably a couple of hours." Harry nodded, satisfied with the response and knelt down beside the body, looking over the young mans face as best as he could. "But there is something I've noticed that I know you're not going to like." The sandy blond doctor looked at Harry with something in his eyes. Harry could have sworn it was fear.

"You gonna tell us what that is or do we have to play twenty questions?" Liam asked, never one for being patient.

"Inside the left wrist." Dr Irwin stood up and moved to the other side of the body, turning it over in his hand and showing the two detectives the symbol.

"An 'X'?" Liam questioned, raising an eyebrow to both the Doctor and to his partner. "Styles?"

Harry wasn't looking at Liam, or even the body. He had stood back up and turned around, running a hand over his face as the stress and realisation had finally hit him.

"Back when I first became a detective, myself and my old partner, Karen Wick, we worked this case together. Serial killer had been going killing these random people. Different races, ages, gender, height, weight, class. You name it. They were the hardest person to profile, the FBI had no luck but left us with a small profile that we could work with.

They used to kill every few weeks, but then they suddenly stopped. We figured they'd either died or gone to prison for something else. There were no other reported crimes like this so we gave up looking. I thought it was actually over." Harry sighed and knelt down again beside the body. "Do we have an ID yet?" He turned to his partner, seeing him flick through his notebook. He so desperately wanted to get rid of the subject of the previous cases.

"Carl Wainscot, twenty five." Liam read out, taking in the information his partner had just given him. "They didn't find any license on him," Of course not, he's naked Harry thought but kept it to himself and let his partner continue "But his medical bracelet had his name on it." Liam pointed towards the body where a small silver ID bracelet was on the young mans wrist, name inscribed on the side.

"Why did he need that?" Harry asked, staring down at the object.

"He was a diabetic." Dr Irwin read off the tag as he carried on looking over the body. "The others had a medical bracelet right?" Ashton had only just started out himself in the third case that Harry worked. He was shadowing the chief examiner back in those days.

Harry nodded to the doctor before taking it upon himself to look around the area they were currently standing, waiting for something to stand out.

Nothing out of the ordinary was in the park, other than the homeless man three benches down that was still fast asleep on the wooden frame.

The grass was open area, so there was a higher chance that someone could have seen something, although Harry's gut told him that no one had. Even the slumbering homeless man probably hadn't seen anything. Two uniforms were currently making their way over to him to interview him, after all; he was a potential witness.

"We'll head back to the station, give me a call when you're done with the autopsy." Liam motioned to Dr Irwin and tapped Harry on his shoulder, motioning for them to leave, both tearing off their gloves when they reached the other side of the cordon tape.

They had to quickly manoeuvre their way through the crowd of reporters that had gathered, all questions either being ignored or answered with the simple response of 'No comment'. They had the same questions thrown at them all the time on every case and with every case, the answer was always the same until the Captain decided it was time to make a press release.

"This case isn't going to be an easy one." Harry sighed as he got into his car and Liam leant on the open door, looking in at him.

"Cases are never easy, Styles. Whether they're this case or not." He shrugged, running his right hand through his neatly spiked short brown hair.

"I'll meet you back at the station." Harry sighed and closed the door once Liam had removed himself from the metal.