Once Upon A Time

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

“Agent Donnovan!”, a coarse, older voice boomed from behind her.

A frown erupted on her face, features crinkling to form an expression of anger. The enhancer she had taken gave her every obscure sound extra meaning; extra buzzing to hyper-sensitive ears and to near-shout at spitting distance translated into a whining, sharp pain.

Her mouth opened to blast back rebuke, but a thought had made her lips clasp themselves shut.

Better this than groping at a frigid corpse.

A small sigh escaped the pursed mouth, and she rose herself slowly to turn to the new arrival who had taken long strides towards her, arm outstretched and hands grasping hers without warning. He shook it with an excited vigour.

“At least, I assume you are Agent Donnovan – or you have a very strange fetish indeed.” he said, corniness giving rise to an unamused raise of the eyebrow from her. A smile was plastered onto his face, adding to the inappropriate situation she'd been hurled into.

“Ah – I'm your partner. Grayson Wilks.” he finished, seemingly beaming unto himself.

She looked up at him, a head taller and a generation older. A dark grey patter of stubble engulfed the sides of his face and around his mouth, and hair was short, pointy and unstyled; giving way to an unkempt appearance. 'Half-homeless' was the only way she could describe it.

“Leala Donnovan.” she responded curtly, pulling her hand away after one shake.

“Cross contamination;” she gestured to the gloves and then pointed to the body.

“You're also late.” she phrased questioningly, annoyed at such a lax attitude.

“So; Agent Donnovan, what do we have so far?” he asked, seemingly ignoring her.

She raised a brow. “I assume you've read the briefing. Mikael Schollman, forty-eight, Lead Project and engineer here. Didn't show up for last nights' party for his big speech. No witnesses as we know of - a colleague, John Tompson, found Schollman dead at eleven-thirty-four P.M.”. Taking off the gloves, she shoved them hastily into her pocket whilst explaining her findings.

The interruption to her work had given way to a small miracle. With no gloves left to use, the majority of the gruelling corpse-handling had been undertaken by Wilks, partly making up for his absence as she took down notes. A scan of the crime scene had given way to no obvious evidence, and the body had left no traces to concentrate on – with a hit like this, she expected a crime scene picked clean, and that is what she had been given. She feared, knew that this was big. Her confidence had taken a knock, two field agents simply would not be enough for this case.

She turned the camera off, rolled her sleeves downwards and gave a slanted shrug to herself as Wilks joined her, his bloodied gloves tossed into a zip-lock bag to be disposed of. Spending any more effort here would be useless at this time, Wilks suggested, as there was nothing else to be found; John Tompson was the next step in the investigation. She agreed.

-

John clasped his wine glass with such a grip that veins bulged in his hands. He was nervous; but amongst this crowd of billionaires and scientists, he became just another face in the fray. Sound; people talking to him, congratulating him and his successes were just extra decibels of noise which would pass from one ear and zoom straight out of the other. Beads of sweat were plastered onto his forehead; he aged ten years in the matter of twenty-four hours. At thirty-three years of age, he'd made a success of his life in a relatively short amount of time compared to those around him. He didn't count finances as success, but the breakthrough, scientific achievements and inner-fame he found by being the first one to jump on the bandwagon which was Mikael Schollman. But Mikael wasn't around to witness what was his successes, his investment-laced dinner function. Physical contact broke his otherworldly daze.