ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
By Janine
PROLOGUE
BARRETT GROCERY STORE MONDAY, MARCH 13TH
It was dark, the early hours of the morning, and it was raining hard and fast. To be outside on a night like that-actually a morning like that-you would have to have been nuts...or a cop. As officer O'Brien stepped up to the door way of the grocery store he figured that at least the call wasn't a total bust. He'd probably be able to get a pack of smokes.
Inside the store was a mess. Once you got past the first few stacks you could see the entire scene. One stack was knocked over leaving chips, pretzels and what have you spread all over the floor, but that wasn't where officer O'Brien or officer Stewart's attention was focused. They were concentrating on the two bodies lying in a pool of their own blood on the cold white floor a few meters away from the counter. At a glance Stewart would have put their ages at seventeen, both of them. At the side of the counter were a man and woman. The guy had his arms wrapped around the woman who was visibly shaken up. Both officers knew right away that she was the shooter.
"You go talk to the broad, I'll check out our friends over here," O'Brien said moving towards the bodies.
"Bastard," Stewart muttered as he headed over to the happy couple. He hated it when O'Brien stuck him with people duty. He usually had to ask the same question three times before he got a coherent answer. It was a pain in the ass.
As protocol demanded O'Brien dutifully bent down to check for a pulse on both of the bodies. In cases like these it was a waste of time, since they were clearly dead but he didn't need the man riding his ass because he didn't conduct his investigation the way it said to on the cue card. Everybody was suing everybody these days for everything and he didn't need to be the scapegoat for someone getting off on a technicality because he didn't check the pulse of a corpse. Stupid things like that would get your ass fired, and he didn't need that, he had a family to feed and all that. When he finished with that he made a visual inspection of both the boys then searched their person all the while being careful not to contaminate anything. He could smell beer on them, but they was teenagers and that wasn't anything unusual. The first boy had been shot once through the throat. There was no weapon on or around him, only a coke can off to the side. The second boy had been shot five times all five shots were in the stomach. No weapon on or around him either. Seemed to him what they were looking at here was a double homicide.
"Yeah," Stewart said coming up to O'Brien a moment later, he was holding a plastic bag with a gun in it. "Woman's the trigger, we gotta arrest her."
"You want the pleasure or shall I?" O'Brien asked heading over to the lady.
"She's all yours," Stewart said following his partner.
"You have the right to remain silent," O'Brien started as he grasped her wrist and applied the cuffs. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..."