Just Another Day At Work

     He lifted one foot to avoid the piece of ear on the sidewalk, and shifted his weight again, feeling absently in his coat pocket for the pack of Camels he’d stuck there earlier. Striking a match on the butt of his .38 Police Special, Detective Tom Landsman looked back at the mess that was once a human being and sighed heavily.

     "Want us to process him here? Or move him uptown?" The EMT looked up eagerly at the weary detective, his rookie delight in having worked a homicide scene gleaming in his eyes. Landsman looked down at him, then lifted a brow as he watched a lab tech step over the splatter across the sidewalk.

     "I think we can leave him here. He’s…definately not going to need any medical attention that you can give." It wasn’t deliberately cruel, the slightly sharp note in Landsman’s voice, but dealing with these eager-beaver youngsters was about to make his frayed temper snap. The medic looked slightly off put by the tone and proceeded to pack up his case, gathering up all the medical paraphenelia that the man with less than half a head lying nearby was quite obviously not going to require. Landsman turned away from the dejected man and eyed the remains once more. A deep drag on his cigarette did nothing to dispel the exhaustion that made his shoulders slump, and the smoke he exhaled didn’t cover the acrid smell of burnt gunpowder, or the metallic tinge of blood in the air. He looked again at the battered notepad in his hand, noting that he’d sketched the crime scene properly. There really didn’t seem to be anything to this: just another drunken homicide in the Waterfront District. Tom Landsman had seen several hundred in his years at the Brandenburg Homicide Department, and he was likely to see another hundred or so before the year was out. Glancing at the coroner’s wagon which had just pulled up, he hunched his shoulders a bit more and ground his cigarette out against the sole of his shoe.

     "Hey Tom," the elderly man said as he climbed carefully out of his car. His iron-grey hair was thinning, brushed back over the collar of his white lab coat, and framed a face that still held a faint glee, even after having worked through his retirement several times over. "Shotgun, was it? Yeesh…" The coroner looked past the detective’s form and wrinkled his beaky nose. "What a mess. Those are always hell to clean up. Any of your boys have Coke in their trunks?"

     "City maintenance’ll come by in a few to scrub up, once we’re done here," Landsman said, shaking the bony hand offered to him gently. "How long do you think, Jack? Maybe an hour?" The detective stepped back and let the coroner get to the body. Jack Meyers was one of the best at his job, and his job was dead bodies. If there was anything he could tell Landsman, it would come out in the next ten minutes or so. Landsman stood back, downwind, and reached for another Camel. In the midst of striking a match, he groaned. A dark purple Lexus had just pulled up, and the handsome man getting out looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, a PDA in one hand, a mocha latte in the other.

     "Hi Detective! Busy busy night, huh?" Colt Morgan grinned as he slung his digital camera around his neck, taking a quick sip of his coffee before kicking his car door shut.

     "This isn’t a road show, Morgan," the detective growled, deliberately blowing smoke in the reporter’s direction. "Since when did you get put on anything but photography?"
 
     "Well, you know… After Elyse kind of up and vanished on me, someone had to take her job." The photographer grinned, not seeming particularly worried about the partner who had gotten them a Pulitzer, and waved his camera at Landsman. "I still do the photography, too. I’m a one-man reporting machine!"

     "Still need to work on your damn phrasing," Landsman grumbled, turning his back on the aggravatingly happy man. Colt Morgan didn’t take the hint, and bounded along in the detective’s wake.

     "So whatcha got, Landsman? Oooo, shotgun! Those leave a bit splat, don’t they?" Colt didn’t give it two seconds for a response before he was bounding towards the body, nearly scaring Jack onto his rear, and began snapping photos. The coroner glared, shaking a scolding finger at the reporter.
    
     "Can’t you wait fifteen minutes for me to finish with this man? Gracious, what is wrong with you people? He’s been hardly dead an hour and a half and you’re already here to take pictures? Can’t you find…squirrels or something to photograph?"

     Jack’s rant merely made the photographer laugh as he took another picture. "Squirrels? What kind of front page would that make? Oh, don’t bitch so much. Most of these won’t even make it to the paper. I just take them for reference."

     Landsman frowned, looking at Jack curiously for a moment before his intent gaze darted to pin Colt. "What do you mean by "reference," anyway?"

     Colt paused in the midst of taking another picture and gnawed his lip. "Just…for future reference, you know? Umm…" He put his hand to his hip and touched the cell phone clipped there before backing off a step. "I think I just got another call." Without an attempt at explanation, he turned and dashed to the Lexus, sliding into it and taking off, ignorant of the mocha latte he’d left on the roof of the car. Landsman watched the liquid splatter dangerously close to his crime scene and sighed.

     "Young folk these days," Jack sniffed, shrugging before looking back to the corpse. Landsman eyed the dissolving whipped cream on the asphalt for a moment, and took another drag.

     "Yeah…people these days…" He frowned a bit and tossed his Camel into the coffee puddle, then headed back to the body’s feet. Never much time to linger over a murder scene here in Brandenburg. Never much time at all.