Every Second Counts

“Hey, Mara,” my boss, Davis Theodore, said to me as he walked into the Chicago Crime Lab, where I was currently sitting, going over some evidence of an open case. “Reed,” he called, referring to my coworker, Reed Van Zandt, who was on the other side of the lab, looking into a microscope. Reed lifted his head, and Davis motioned for him to come over.

“What’s up, Davis,” I asked him, as Reed leaned back against the counter, waiting on Davis to answer.

“I need the two of you to go over to Wrigleyville to check out this crime scene. I’ve got to head over to the south side to look at something over there. Do you think you two can cover this one?” he asked us.

“Of course,” Reed answered, as all three of us exited the lab. Reed and I headed towards the locker room to grab our coats before going to the car.

“Why is it freezing?” I questioned, buttoning up my coat and throwing my scarf around my neck before proceeding to put my gloves on.

“Maybe because it’s December in Chicago,” Reed suggested as he got into the passenger’s seat of the car, and I got in next to him. “I can keep you warm if you’d like,” he added with a wink.

I rolled my eyes at his flirting. Reed always playfully flirted with me, even after I started dating my boyfriend, Kris Versteeg, a few months ago. I knew that Reed was just joking around, as he knew that I’d never date him, even if I wasn’t with Kris. “Just drive,” I told Reed, looking out the window as Reed drove to the address Davis had given us.

As Reed and I walked towards the crime scene, one of the detectives walked over to us. “What do we got?” Reed asked, and the detective gave us a brief rundown. Apparently, a restaurant owner had found a body of a man in the dumpster outside of his restaurant while he had been throwing food into it.

I walked over to the dumpster, a camera in my hand, ready to snap photos. “You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered as I stood on my tiptoes to see inside. Reed came over to me, wondering what all the fuss was about. He glanced inside the dumpster and started laughing, seeing that the body was covered in old, rotten food that the restaurant owner had just dumped.

“Have fun, Mara,” he said, patting me on the back.

“Hold on, Reed,” I said, grabbing the back of his shirt so he couldn’t get too far away from me. “Who says that I’m the one that’s going into that?” I asked, looking back into the dumpster, which had a terrible smell emanating from it. “Why aren’t you?”

“I’m pulling rank,” Reed replied.

“We’re the same rank,” I reminded him.

“But, I’ve worked here longer,” he retorted. “If you really want, we can call up Davis, but we both know he’s going to agree with me, and you’ll be going into the dumpster. But, we can prolong the inevitable a little bit longer if you’d like.”

I sighed knowing Reed was right. Davis would make me go into the dumpster using the same logic Reed had: he had worked there longer than I had. “And, you wonder why I never wanted to go out on a date with you,” I muttered as I turned around to go to our vehicle and grab a pair of boots, overalls, and some gloves out of the back before going into the dumpster.

After we had collected all of the evidence from the scene of the crime, we finally made our way back to the crime lab. I immediately went to my locker, grabbing a change of clothes that I always kept in there and went directly to the showers, not wanting to smell like the rotten food I had swam in while trying to get to the body.

As I walked into the lab, I heard my best friend and coworker, Fiona Bellamont, cry out, “What is that smell?” Her long brown hair flipped around as she turned her head to look at the door that I had just come through. Reed was sitting across from Fiona, laughing, as she just stared at me. “Mara, is that you?” she questioned.

“Yes,” I answered through gritted teeth. “Our vic was buried in a dumpster underneath a bunch of rotten food. Guess who got to go fish him out,” I told her.

“Mar, I love you to death, but you smell so badly right now,” she said, putting her hand over her face, trying to block the smell.

“I just took a shower!” I cried. “Do I really smell that bad? Because I’m supposed to go over to Kris’s after my shift for dinner,” I explained, grabbing my shirt and smelling it, trying to see if I really did smell as bad as Fiona was telling me.

“Let’s just say, I’m pretty sure Parker would kick me out if I ever came to dinner smelling like that,” she told me, referring to her boyfriend, Parker McCabe, who also worked at the crime lab as a crime scene investigator.

“I hate you, Reed,” I glared at him, as he started laughing even harder. “What do you have so far?” I asked him, sitting down next to him.

“I’m looking at the shirt the guy was wearing, but pretty much any clues that would have been left behind were gone as soon as the food was dumped on him,” he explained. “And, I’m waiting on the ME so we can get the bullet since it was lodged in him.”

I nodded my head, looking over all of the things we had found at the scene, trying to see if I could find anything that could point us in the right direction of the killer. Hours later, I walked down to the medical examiner’s office, wanting to see if he was finished with the autopsy or at least had gotten the bullet out of the victim, who we had determined was a twenty-nine year old man named Leo Doxson. “Glen, please tell me you’ve got something for me,” I begged.

Glen started coughing as I approached him, asking, “How much perfume do you have on, Mara?” I sighed before telling him about my stroll in the garbage, and he nodded his head. “Okay, you want to know about your victim?” he asked, and I nodded my head. “Here’s the bullet,” he said, handing me the bullet he had gotten out of the victim. “But, that’s not what killed him,” he told me, and I glanced up at him, wondering what the cause of death could be if it wasn’t the bullet. “An impact from a fall killed him. I would say he fell at least fifteen stories up,” he told me.

“The fall,” I said, trying to process the information. “Thanks Glen,” I added as I started walking out of his office. “You just helped us figure out the scene of the crime,” I said, trying to remember the area where we had found the victim and if there were any high buildings around. I distinctly recalled that the building where the restaurant was, along with the building next to it, were over fifteen stories high.

I ran back to the crime lab in search of Reed to tell him the good news that we had a lead. “Reed,” I called out as I opened the door. He lifted his head, looking over at me. “We need to go back to the scene,” I told him. “He wasn’t killed by the bullet. He was killed by an impact from a fall. Glen predicts it was at least fifteen stories. Both buildings around there were over that height,” I said excitedly. “Come on!” I told him, and he immediately stood up following me out of the room.

Two hours later, Reed and I were walking back into the crime lab with new pictures and evidence that we had collected. With Glen’s information, we had found out that the actual crime scene was on the balcony of the building seventeen stories up from the dumpster. We had found the railing of that balcony damaged, and there was definite signs of a struggle. We had recovered fingerprints, and we were now going back to the lab to try to process them to see if we could get anything from them.

Parker walked into the lab, and Reed looked over at me. “Go home,” he told me.

“What?” I asked, looking at him oddly. “I’m not going home. This could be the thing that tells us who the killer is,” I told him.

“Yes, but Parker’s here to take over for one of us. Logan won’t be here for another hour,” he said, referring to our other coworker, Logan Halstead.

“I can wait for Logan,” I told him.

“I thought you had a date with Kris tonight. You might as well be the first one to go then. You wouldn’t want to miss your date.”

“Since when do you care about when I have a date with Kris?” I asked.

“I figured I owed you after your dumpster dive today,” he said, beginning to laugh again at the thought of me digging through the dumpster. “Go,” he repeated.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling at the two men. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I added, walking out of the lab.

I drove to my condo building, waving at the security guard before getting into the elevator and hitting the button for the eleventh floor, deciding to bypass my condo on the tenth floor and head straight to Kris’s place. He and I had met when he moved into the building after finally getting called up to play with the Chicago Blackhawks and found out he would be staying with them instead of going back down to their AHL affiliate in Rockford. After we had found out that he lived directly above me, we had become friends, talking whenever we saw each other. Eventually, Kris had asked me out, and we had been dating ever since.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, I could hear singing from Kris’s apartment, and I smiled to myself as I approached his door. “Dream on, dream on, dream on, dream until your dream comes true. Dream on, dream on, dream on, dream until your dream comes through. Dream on, dream on, dream on, dream on, dream on, dream on, dream on, ahhhhhhhhhh!” I heard Kris do his best Steven Tyler impression, and I started laughing as I knocked on the door.

He opened the door, and I looked up at him, a small smile on my face. “That was a great Aerosmith cover,” I began, and he just shook his head at me.

“Mara, why do I feel like I’ve stepped into a perfume shop?” he asked me, and I sighed before telling him all about my day, including my dumpster dive and trying to cover up the smell afterwards.

He started laughing at me, and I playfully glared at him. “See if you get any action tonight,” I told him.

“I don’t think I want any action from you tonight with the way you smell,” he laughed, and my eyes widened at his comment.

“Fine, let me just leave then,” I said, dramatically turning around and reaching for the door handle.

“Hold on there,” I heard him say as he grabbed my arm and spun me around, kissing me hard on the mouth. By the time we separated, I was completely out of breath. “I have something to tell you.”

“What?” I asked, looking up at him.

“My mom’s coming for Christmas,” he told me. I remained quiet, not knowing what to say. I hadn’t met either one of his parents, and I was nervous as to whether they would like me or not. “Mara?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to say anything?”

“Your mom’s coming?” I asked, and he nodded his head. “Do you think it’s a good idea that she meets me?” I asked him.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head, keeping my fears to myself. He looked at me oddly, but he shook it off. “So, how was practice today?” I asked him, changing subjects, not wanting to discuss his mother coming right now. That was something that I’d have to worry about when the time came.