Partners
Gotham.
The city never seems to see any form of light. Its streets are known for insanity. Only the brave and the bold dare to try and raise a family in this city, and those that do tend to regret it. It’s even worse when you’re a single mother who works in the police force. She even keeps her past underwraps to everyone but her sister.
“Hey, I dropped Seth off at school. Are you ready to check on that lead?” Melanie inquires over the phone as she’s driving down the street close to her work.
“Yep, yep,” came the response, “hope you have my samples.”
“Of course I do,” Melanie says. She pulls into the Gotham City Police Department parking lot knowing she has better things to dwell on. She secures a parking space, looking around the nearly vacated parking lot. “I’m here.”
“Then meet me in the office,” Maurice answers before ending the call.
Melanie plucks the samples from the back seat. After she enters the building, she nods in greeting to those she passes till she enters the office. “Morning.”
The area Melanie and Maurice considered an office was a mash-up of a crime lab and regular office. The lack of space called for an old storage room to be converted into what it now was. One wall had a mix of white cabinets and file cabinets, with a small desk sitting in between them. The other side of the room held the lab equipment, while the table in the middle of the room was decorated with multiple test tubes containing highly dangerous chemicals.
“Morning,” Maurice nods to her from his seat at the work area on the opposite side of the room. His eyes looking over a blood slide from the victims of the latest case.
“I brought the samples.” She says before sitting them down on the desk.
Melanie has also brought Maurice breakfast, since he hasn’t eaten yet. As usual.
Maurice spares them a glance before pushing back in his swivel chair, rolling over so he could grab the samples and return to the lab setup.
“Mel, you know I don’t like food in the lab,” he said in his strict voice that came out from time to time.
“And you know you have to eat to live,” she refuted before giving him a look, daring him to say otherwise.
“Yes, that’s a basic bodily function.” Maurice pries open one of the samples then, slipping it under the microscope as he adjusts the settings.
“Then maybe you should partake in the muffin.” Melanie glances over at him from the file she’d begun to read standing by the desk.
“Later,” he dismisses her concern. His hand messing with the microscope, while taking notes with his other hand - not even glancing toward the paper.
“Mhmm, you said that last time,” Melanie points out.
“And I meant it.”
Maurice slides back before rolling his chair over and grabbing some goggles from the wall. He pulls them over his face and glasses. Melanie sighs, shaking her head at him as she finished up with the papers, placing them back where they belonged.
“Can you run the blood samples in those bags through the computer along with the hair samples?”
“Sure.” Melanie picks up the blood bags. She hooks them up to the machine to see what might be in the blood that wasn’t supposed to be.
Maurice nods, going back to his own work on one of the hair samples and splitting it.
Melanie watches the screen as different equations flash by while the analysis happened.
Maurice pushes his chair back before standing and walking over. He picked the keys from her pocket before quickly going back over to the table and using them to open a container of fluid. He then puts the handle to them in his mouth as he works with both of his hands.
Melanie glances over at him as the machine stops, it starts to print out everything it found in the samples of blood, along with who the blood belonged to.
Maurice finishes before taking the keys back in his hand. “Catch.” He tosses them back to her.
“Got ’em,” Melanie calls back, catching them with ease and looking over the paper that had just finished printing.
Maurice nods. “Who were they?”
“They were both O-positive blood type. Let’s see… The blood matched up with a young married couple whose names were Symphie and Dylan.”
“Relations?” Maurice moves away from the computer so she can use it before wheeling back across the room.
“Looks like they might have been expecting, but miscarried a few months ago.” Melanie continues. “Let’s see … She had a sister, a year younger, and he was a fraternal twin. Both of their parents have passed from varying incidents. Their names were Ronnie and Michael Sander, Kellmer and Mekina Breller,” Melanie explained while glancing over their history and family trees.
“Sibling names?” He moves on, having written down their parents with one hand and still surveying and documenting with the other. It helped to be ambidextrous.
“Liona Rizler was Symphie’s younger sister, his sister’s name is Mara Kellmer.”
“Housing locations?” he asks, creating a quick family tree before going back to the blood samples.
“The Rizler couple is still located in Gotham down by the bay on Polk Street, and his sister left Gotham a few years back and is located in Manhattan, New York,” Melanie looks for the place in New York where the other sibling lives.
“Schedule a meeting with Rizler and get me an open viewing of the bodies. I need their records to see if they let their bodies be scheduled for cremation or donations.” He writes it down then pulls away. “Then I need to know cause of death and what kind of weapon used, if any.”
Melanie rolls her eyes as she writes everything down on a scrap piece of paper. “Anything else?” she asks sarcastically, picking up the phone and dialing Rizler’s home number on the screen.
“Yes, a cup of coffee.” He nods, winking at her before going back to his work.
Melanie sticks her tongue out at him before hearing the voicemail pick up. She frowns, leaving a message. Next, she tries both cell phone numbers, but gets the same result. “Huh. That’s odd.” She hangs up the phone.
“What’s wrong?” He turned to her before wheeling over to use the computer himself.
“They didn’t answer a single phone call on any of their devices.”
“Here, can you write this down?” He asks, pulling up their addresses. Then, he made a separate tab so as not to mess up the addresses while pulling up the crime files. “We need to get to the scene...” he muttered under his breath.
Melanie agreed, quickly writing down the address on the sheet with the other tasks. “Then let’s go to the scene” Melanie states, looking over at the files he was going through.
Maurice hummed in agreement, adding some random notes before clicking out. “Let’s stop by the morgue on the way so we can see the bodies.” He pulls away, having raccoon eyes from them being pressed into the microscope for too long. He rubs them.
“All right, but you better eat the muffin when we get in the car,” she reminds him and grabs her jacket off the coat stand, smiling to herself over his appearance.
Maurice rolls his eyes, pulling off his lab coat in trade for his vest and badge. He pulls it on only to avoid running into trouble again in the morgue for not having his ID- even though everyone in that division should know him by name. Last time that had happened, Maurice was tasered and yelled at by Detective Bullock for trying to enter without the correct ID.
Melanie picks up her purse, making sure to have the muffin even if it meant she would have to force him to eat the damn thing. Maurice grabs the rest of his papers, stuffing the files into his satchel before pulling it on over the shoulder as he gets everything he needs together in case of an inspection on site.
“Ready?” She takes one more quick look around and spots the camera, deciding it would be a good idea to bring it incase they needed to take a photo of something at the scene.
“Yep.” He nods, adjusting the satchel’s strap crossed over his torso before straightening his glasses.
“Let’s get going.”
