"You should have tased him," Kelsey immediately responded to Luna's telling of her recent breakup that happened just about twenty minutes ago. "I mean, come on 'Oh, it was kind of a turn on'. What the hell is that?" She said as they both walked towards the crime scene their boss had called them to see.
"Jones, Garcia! Over here!" Dennis, their boss, had motioned over to them once he spotted them.
"I don't get why you always go for the douche bags, it's literally, like, your go to." Luna looked over at her partner with an eyebrow raised.
"It is not!" She said in a slight high pitched voice to which Kelsey just returned a side glance with both eyebrows raised as if to say 'yeah, okay'. "Special crimes." Luna said as they both flashed their shields, grabbing the gloves that were handed to them.
"911 received a call from his phone at 7:20, no recording." Kelsey briefed as they walked into the hotel lobby.
Luna bent down to the victim and looked for any details or clues. "No wallet or ID and no keys." She said as she took in the surroundings while Kelsey wrote down the details in her notepad.
"A robbery homicide?" Kelsey asks, looking at Luna for confirmation.
"Maybe, but Look at this," She muttered, pointing to the victim's chest and forearms. "Looks like knife wounds, he seems to have put a good fight." Then she noticed the small amount of blood that had seeped through the bottom corner of his shirt. She slowly raised it to see a bullet wound with bits or dried up blood, the skin surrounding the wound was all bruised up.
"No blunt trauma to the head, but he does have a gun shot." Luna said as she got up and looked over to Kelsey. "And since there isn't any bullets around here, my best guess is no exit wound. Internal bleeding. Maybe a meeting gone wrong?"
"Okay, but why take everything else then? This is a pretty public place to rob someone and then shoot them without someone hearing or seeing something." Kelsey responded, a hand at her hip.
"And this is a five star hotel." Said a security guard from behind them to which Kelsey glanced at him with pursed lips, annoyance easily seen on her face.
"Okay then big guy can we maybe get five star hotel service and see some security footage over here? Yeah, okay great." She said not giving the guard time to respond before following him.
****
"We have a problem." Kelsey said walking towards both Luna and Dennis. Dennis tilted his head upward silently asking her what it was.
"So we looked at the security footage and look," She says as she makes her way around the security table, pointing to the small screen on the upper right hand corner. "So at 7:00 we see him enter all perfectly okay and then you can see he turns arounds startled as if he was looking at someone and he backs up a little and then," The small screen turns static, Kelsey motions to the screen.
"Someone erased the footage?" Luna said, crossing her arms over her chest as both her and Dennis furrowed their eyebrows.
"More than likely." Kelsey said before placing her hand back on the table, slightly leaning.
Dennis placed his hands inside the pockets of his suit pants. "So we got nothing on who our bad guy could be?" He asks, looking to Luna.
"No, but," She says, looking up to her boss. "We did manage to ID the vic off his cell records — Kalume Mitchell, a hotel guest."
"The police database says he's a journalist who works for a big time editing company." Dennis looks over at Kelsey once she speaks, nodding to himself.
"Does he have a wife? Girlfriend? Gay lover?" He asks looking between the two detectives.
Luna nods. "Yeah, wife — Alexandra Harcourt. A consultant for some big fashion company. Word is they're some like power couple."
"Okay, so where is Mrs. Powerful now?" He asks to which Kelsey shakes her head.
"Haven't been able to track her down." Kelsey says. Her arms crossed over her chest while one of the CSU walks over to Luna, handing her a zipped bag. A button with a small strip of transparent tape over it that outlines the prints. She nods at him, silently thanking him before she turns back to her boss.
"But our CSU guys did lift a print off a button from his jacket." She says, holding up the bag and handing it to Dennis.
He looks at the bag for a few seconds before turning to Kelsey, giving the bag to her. "Get me the results."
****
Luna sat at her desk, tapping the end of a pen against her desk as she waited for the results of the fingerprint to come through while Dennis, Kelsey who sat on top of her desk, and two other detectives were looking over some the evidence they gathered. "AFIS got a hit," Luna said as the results were finalizing. "and it's not the wife." She said as she dropped the pen and leaned forward a little closer, looking over to the match. "The guy's name is Matthew Davis."
Dennis took a sip of his coffee, one hand on his hip. "What are his priors?" He asks while looking at the IT screens.
"One says here he was put on death row for killing two cops, bastard." Kelsey points out to the middle screen.
Luna looks over his file and becomes astonished at what she sees. "He's dead." Everyone immediately looks at back at her with furrowed eyebrows.
"It says he died seven years back in 2010 the day he was meant to be put down by lethal injection from a," Luna narrows her eyes at the screen when she scrolls down. "heart attack.." She says slowly, confusion evident in her voice. She didn't know why but there something off about that, from his file she can see he was 20 at the time of his death, but according to his record there was nothing wrong with him in terms of health condition and why would he get a heart attack on exactly the day of his death row?
"So how does a dead guy's prints end up on a journalist's button?" He asks, glancing back at the screen then back to his detectives.
"I would say we can talk to someone in his family but look," Luna says, pointing towards the screen next to the one in the middle. "They've all passed as well, he seems to come from a long line of doctors and military though. But it says here he was ex-military and then a doctor so," Luna says as she begins to type into her computer to find out what hospital he worked at. "New York General, ER doctor."
"Okay, find some colleagues and lets see what we can get on this guy." Dennis said, nodding to both Luna and Kelsey before he made his way back to his office. Kelsey got off her desk and began putting her jacket on. Luna found herself staring at the image of the guy that popped up along with his file of the hospital. She didn't know how or why but there was a feeling in her gut that told her there was something not right as to what happened to him, that there was something no one had bothered to properly see. If he had any diagnosis of PTSD they wouldn't have let him enter the medical field so what would lead him to killing two cops? Luna was so focused in her own thoughts she didn't hear Kelsey call out her name.
"Luna!" Kelsey called out a bit louder, making her head snap up at her as she was finally able to grasp her out of her thoughts. "Hospital?" Kelsey reminded her and she signalled towards the exit with her hands.
"Yeah, let's go." Luna said as she got up from her seat and got her jacket as they both made their way to the hospital.
****
"Matthew Davis? Oh yeah, he was one of our best and fairly new. Most of the new doctors we get come in cocky, believing they know everything there is to know, but Davis wasn't like that. Highly motivated and he always wanted to help. Terrible what happened to him." The nurse said to them as she kept scribbling down on some patient files.
"Do you happen to know anyone he hung out with? Someone close to him that he would reach out to?" Luna asked her. The nurse looked at them, bits of confusion on her features.
"I mean, Davis was liked by everyone, but I do know he had a roommate. Don't know if he still lives around here anymore though." Luna and Kelsey looked at each other before telling her thank you and calling in for an evaluation of his roommate.
"Caleb Smith. 26 years old. Computer scientist and biochemist and he apparently works from home at the moment." Kelsey said as she held the file. "Oh, look at this. He's had a DUI done three years ago." Kelsey points out, tilting the file towards Luna. Luna briefly takes her eyes off the road to look and she snickers.
"Just my type." Luna says jokingly making Kelsey look over at her before she let out a laugh and shook her head.
****
"I didn't expect to find this," Luna remarks, looking up at the apartment building after they got out of the car. She looked over at Kelsey with a raised brow.
"Me neither." Kelsey looks down to the file before nodding over to her. "It says he lives on the fifth floor, second apartment to the right." Kelsey said as they both go inside and to the elevator.
"Now I'm thinking I should've become a biochemist." Kelsey said as they got off on the fifth floor. "Holy crap, this is ten times better than my apartment. I mean, look at this," She exclaimed, pointing to the chandelier that hung over the middle of the floor. "Our apartment only offers the occasional rat in the winter." Luna covered her mouth with her hand, muffling a laugh that erupted from her at Kelsey's statement.
"You're too much, you know that?" Luna tells her as they reach his door. Luna raises her fist to knock on the door. "Caleb Smith, NYPD. Open up!"
They wait for a few seconds and then the door opens. "Caleb Smith?" Luna asks and he nods, putting his hands in his pocket. "Hi, I'm Detective Jones and this is Detective Garcia. Do you have a moment?" Luna said, showing him her shield.
"Um, this isn't about that parking ticket right because I'm gonna pay it tomorrow." He says, looking between the two.
Kelsey shakes her head at his response. "We're here to ask you about a former roommate you had, Matthew Davis."
"Matthew Davis.." He repeats, more so to himself than anyone else. Caleb looks back to his apartment and steps back a bit. "Matthew Davis. Sucks what happened, he was so young when he got the, uh, the heart attack." Caleb spoke, looking back at Luna and Kelsey who then looked at each other, a hint of suspicion in both their eyes.
"Mr. Smith, have you by any chance heard from him recently?" Kelsey asked him while he was packing some snacks into a backpack.
Caleb slightly turns back to them. "What do you mean? Like.. voices or something?"
Kelsey tilted her to the side and closed her eyes in annoyance. She had a very small temper. "No, we mean from him."
"Uh, you do know he's dead." His eyebrows furrowed in what seemed like confusion. Luna noticed him putting a shiny flash drive into a side pocket of the bag.
"Yeah, but his fingerprints showed up at a crime scene not too long ago. Just following a lead." Luna said as she continued to look around, she quickly noticed odd but small things like notebooks that had what seemed scribbling of codes and a tablet that she thought said 'debrief' on it. She could hear the spooked sound he made from behind her.
"Oof, sounds like you need some new fingerprint guys."
Luna side glances over to Kelsey before looking back to Caleb. "Do you think we could have a look around?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, I would love to help, but I have to go meet a friend at the moment." He said, lifting the bag strap over his shoulder.
Luna cleared her throat and reached behind to her pocket, fishing for one of their precinct cards. "Okay, well, if you remember anything or have anything that could help us don't hesitate to give us a call." She said as she slid the card over the table to him before her and Kelsey began making their to the door.
Just as she opened the door she saw a man in the elevator. She didn't know if it was her imagination or her crazy detective side trying to make sense of this weird situation, but Luna met his eyes for a brief moment and she could have sworn it was him. There was something in her gut that told her it was him, but her mind tried to rationalize it and told herself she was just imagining it.
****
"Her, that's the detective I saw." Matthew cut in, pointing out when her picture showed up.
"Are you sure it's her?" Silas asks Matthew who nods in response.
"Positive."
Silas gives one nod of his head before turning his attention to Simmons, the main tech guy in the Exhume headquarters, "Very well, Simmons, bring up her file."
Simmons then nods, typing in a code to pull up the woman's full file, her name, age, and occupation.
"Luna Jones." Silas said, his voice low. With his hands in his pockets, Silas turns to Matthew. "Seems like you found your next target."
Comments (0)
See all