The Opening to “Rookie Case”

It wasn’t the first dead body Derek Finley had seen.  He stepped carefully around the blood that pooled next to the corps lying face down on the throw rug with both hands out stretched, as if he tried to crawl away from the attack before taking his last breath.   The victim’s white silk shirt turned a dark crimson from the blood, showed six entry holes in the back.  Derek focused on the holes then clicked the button on the top of the camera causing the flash to fill the low-lit, posh hotel room.  Taking a step to his right, he snapped another picture of the wounds from a different angle.    A cold steel knot laid in the pit of his stomach, but not from the bullet-riddled body, as a patrol officer in Saint Cloud Minnesota, he had responded to several fatality accidents, some very gruesome, bullet holes did not compare to dismemberment.  Then later as a detective assigned to the drug task force, dealing with meth maggots, he had investigated shootings and knifings, it seemed where there were drugs, there was also murder.   No, the body on the floor was not what ate at him.  It was the little girl.   His jaw clinched again as his eyes moved to the photo on the coffee table.  Two jet-black pigtails stuck out from the sides of her little head.  Her face beamed with bright eyes, a large smile and cute dimples on her smooth brown skin.  She looked really happy, he thought.  Not that, smile for the camera cheesy smile but genuine joy, the joy of innocence that only a three-year-old little girl can know.   He felt his jaw clinch tighter as that knot twisted in his gut.  He brought his eyes back to the viewfinder on the camera, stepped to the right again and snapped another picture.   With his next step, now by the victim’s feet, he over exaggerated raising his foot up making sure to clear the empty brass 9mm shell on the glossy, marble tiled floor just off the edge of the rug.   Snap, another picture.