Sergeant Wanda Powell threw her cigarette onto the ground, crushing it with her beige boots. She adjusted her jacket and walked away from her car while her boots clicked underneath her with every step she took. Despite the harm that seven years of smoking can do to a person, she still maintained a fresh and young look.
Seth and Walter were sitting at their desks, both giving each other glares. Wanda looked at them oddly from across the room before walking over to them, wondering why they were staring at each other instead of working.
"Whats going on here?" She asked the two men as she clutched on tightly to her purse.
Seth sighed. "Oh its nothing. Just a bit of a... disagreement."
Walter scoffed and rolled his eyes. He looked off the the side. "Yea whatever."
"Well whatever it is, get over it and do your damn jobs. You're not getting paid just to sit on your ass all day. So get going," Wanda said. She walked to her office and left the two detectives alone. Seth stared at Walter with a stink eye but eventually dropped the dirty look.
"Look, I'm sorry I don't think like you. But what you did was disrespectful and completely uncalled for." Seth bit down on his lip. Walter shrugged.
"I have to do what I think is best. I'm trying to look for someone who murdered a poor woman. I'm not so concerned with being nice to peoples feelings."
The silence between them intensified. Seth tapped his fingers against his desk. Walter's eyes had no sign of anger in them. It was like he tried to look angry but Seth could see the way his partner truly felt. He wasn't angry, just upset that he couldn't do his job the way he wanted to.
Seth stood up from his seat, leaning over his desk. "I'm going out to get some coffee. You want one?"
Walter shook his head as he grabbed a pen and the papers in front of him. "Nah."
-x-
Kora and Mitchell were seated in the back seats of Raymond's car as he drove rather recklessly. They both looked at each other with confusion crossing their faces. It felt out of the blue to suddenly go for ice cream at eleven in the morning. But they were little kids so they didn't question much in life.
Raymond could only think about rocky road. He didn't understand what that even meant. Was that code for something? He sighed in frustration as he had been thinking about rocky road for the past hour.
He pulled his car into one of the parking spaces at Betty's Ice Cream Farm. It had a fair amount of people. People just looking for something to cool down from the summer heat.
"I want strawberry!" Kora giggled as she tilted her head back to look up at the menu. Raymond hand her in his arms while Mitchell stood next to him, being able to examine the menu of different flavors.
It was amazing how a little kids mind worked. They could see some horrific shit at a young age but then if you try hard enough they eventually forget and are back to laughing and picking their nose.
Raymond stared at the menu. The sixth item on their list was rocky road. It made him tense up just looking at the name.
"Next!"
"Go on, tell her what you want."
"I want strawberry ice cream with a cherry on top!"
Raymond raised a brow at her. "What do you say?"
Kora smiled with her finger to her lips, looking innocent. "Please?"
Raymond forced himself to smile as he let down his daughter. "Good girl."
The worker smiled and wrote down the order that Kira had given her. She looked back up. "Anything else?"
Raymond picked up Mitchell next. He could tell that his wife had been feeding him real good based on the fact that he was a bit heavier from the last time he picked up his son. And even though Ray was physically in shape—and his body proved that—he had to hold on to his son more tightly and hold him close against himself.
"What do you want, buddy?" Raymond asked his son. Mitchell stared at his dad for a few seconds. It was a complete 180 turn from a couple days ago when he was crying and yelled at his kids to now. He was smiling and buying them ice cream.
"I just want chocolate chip," Mitchell said quietly. The blonde employe wrote down on her notepad the next order. Little kids made her smile to the point where it hurt.
"And anything for you sir?"
Raymond was a plain kind of guy. He liked everything to be simple as possible. Thats why he always ordered vanilla ice cream. His wife always joked with him that he was boring and needed to explore his options. And while he did like other flavors like chocolate (which was his second favorite flavor), strawberry, cookie dough, and many others, he always went back to vanilla. Mainly French vanilla, even though he didn't know what the hell the difference was. He liked to be a jokester whenever he had French vanilla ice cream and put on a French accent which always made his wife laugh and just fall in love with him even more.
"Sir?"
Raymond blinked and realized he had spaced out just thinking about the good times.
"Papa, don't cry." Mitchell whispered. Raymond looked at his son in surprise as he lifted his other hand to wipe away the tears he hadn't realized were coming out.
"Oh, I'm not crying, Mitch." He chuckled and looked back at the blonde worker who looked at him with concern. "I'll have the rocky road."
The girl nodded and wrote down the last order. "Alright so we got a strawberry ice cream, chocolate chip, and rocky road. Will that be all?" Raymond nodded. "Alright your total is nine dollars and fifty cents."
Raymond put down his son and pulled out a ten dollar bill he had ready in his pocket and handed it to the girl, telling her to keep the change.
"Yay we get ice cream!" Kora shouted with her arms in the air. Mitchell smiled as well and stood close to his sister, hugging her tightly as they were both excited for something sweet. The employe chuckled at the happy children.
"And may I have a name for the order?"
"Raymond Hunter."
The girl's smile dropped. She stared up at the tall man. "I... I'm so sorry about your wife."
Everyone knew who Raymond was since the news came out about his dead wife. But no one really approached him because of how intimidating he looked. He was six feet and four inches tall with a blind eye and dark circles under his eyes.
He sighed and nodded, thanking her for being sentimental. He watched her walk away to get their orders.
"Papa, no ice cream for mama?"
Raymond looked down at Kora and furrowed his eyebrows. She quickly took a couple steps back, afraid of what he would do based on his facial expression. It came off as angry. Instead he just ignored her. She out of all people should know that she was dead and now six feet under ground. She was the very first person to walk in on her own dead mother's lifeless corpse. When he ushered his daughter to go get her mother to tell her that he had brought her ice cream—well, gelato actually since that was her favorite—he didn't hear any commotion upstairs in the master bedroom. So curious, he had walked up the stairs only to discover his daughter standing at the entrance, staring at the most horrific crime scene.
The blonde employee had the three cups of ice cream balancing in her hands. Two of them were kids sizes while the other one was a normal size meant for Raymond.
"Thank you," He whispered. The girl smiled sadly as she watched his giving his two unaware children their cups of ice cream. Kora stared at the cup of ice cream in her hand while Mitchell smiled with excitement. "Oh by the way," Raymond said while pulling out the picture of the ice cream shop with the employee that was in it who was unaware he was even being photographed, "do you know who this is?"
The employe squinted at the picture, examining it closely. She tilted her head to the side.
"Oh of course I do. He's actually here working. Thats Kevin. Did you want me to go look for him?"
Raymond tapped his foot against the floor. What would he ask the boy? He didn't have the mind of a detective so he wasn't sure what to even ask him. But regardless, he nodded his head and watched the young girl walking to the back of the shop. Seconds later she came back with the teen boy who seemed like your typical nineties moody teen. Raymond identified him as the same boy in the picture.
"What do you want sir?" The teen boy asked with a monotone voice. The girl slapped him on the chest, telling him to be nicer before walking away.
"I just want to ask a a few questions," Raymond whispered. The boy rolled his eyes. Raymond had no frigging clue what to ask the kid. Thinking back to when he first met Seth and Walter, he asked him a question that they asked him. "On July thirtieth, do you know where you were from one to six in the afternoon?"
Kevin stared at Raymond. He straighten out his posture and gave him a more serious look.
"Um, yea." Kevin rubbed his arm nervously. "I was here, working."
"Did anyone suspicious come up to you during that time?"
"I don't know. I never really pay attention to the customers cause I just don't give a damn. No wait, there was someone acting really weird. It spooked me actually."
Raymond perked up with interest. He clutched his cup of ice cream tightly. He turned to look at his two children who had ice cream all over their face. "Kora, Mitch, why don't you guys take a seat over there?" He pointed to a seat that was nearby to where they were standing. Kora practically skipped over to the table while Mitchell walked over, trying his best to scoop out the ice cream with the flimsy spoon.
"Moo!" Kora shouted with a giggle. Everyone else laughed at her cuteness.
Raymond turned back to look at Kevin who was unimpressed. It was like he hated life.
"Can you describe to me what this person looked like?" He asked while placing his cup on the counter and pulled out a small notepad with a pen, just like Walter would do.
"Man, let me try to remember. He was white, really tall, like six foot six or something. He looked to be in shape too. I didn't really get a good look at his face. He was wearing a baseball hat the entire time and it was covering his hair and face. He was extremely polite. Maybe thats not weird to others, but to me it is. I'm always suspicious of people who are overly nice," Kevin said.
Raymond wrote down all the information in bulletin points. It felt weird to him to be doing something like this. Acting like a detective.
"No I understand. I feel the same way. What did he order?"
Kevin held up a finger to him as he took out a pile of papers that he had stuffed in his waist apron. He kept shuffling through all of them until he found the one he was looking for.
"One order of chocolate ice cream and rocky road."
Raymond nodded. It was defiantly him. He wrote it down in bold. "And a name for the order?"
Kevin looked back down at the piece of paper in his hand. "Jack Reed."