EMPIRE: Imperial Police

by Stephanie Osborn

  “Shirts?”

  “Um, ‘bout twice as many of those, more or less.”

  “Can you put together a work wardrobe that resembles what I’m wearing right now?” Gorski asked, standing, so Ashton could see the corduroy jacket, open-collared shirt, and casual slacks he wore. “Without using the uniform trousers?”

  “Yes, sir, I can. Might have to buy another jacket and maybe another pair or two of trousers to get me through, but I think I can. Won’t look quite as nice as what you’re wearing, but you’re a detective, and I’m just an investigator…”

  “Good, and that’ll work. Give Jones your measurements and wardrobe colors, and I’ll have him see about getting the additions for you, since we don’t want you out and about, shopping; he can even use the expense account, since you’re an undercover project of ours. We need to get you some body armor to go under it all, too.”

  “Thank you, sir! I’ll pay back the cost, or you can pull it from my pay.”

  “We’ll worry about that later. For now, go to your locker and put your street clothes back on. If anybody says anything, you’re undercover…which you are. Besides, you’re on the investigations squad now, anyway.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, and start growing out your hair, some. That near-crew cut thing you got, with a little length on the top, is kind of distinctive on you. Meantime, ping Adrian Mott for a wig or some extensions. Maybe even consider a beard or something.”

  “On it, sir.”

  That began Ashton’s tenure as a formal investigator.

  The next day, while Colonel Peterson was still trying to get a feel for him to determine an exact assignment and teaming, she sent Ashton out – complete with blond wig, in plainclothes – with Sergeant Investigator Peter Rassmussen, so that Rassmussen could familiarize him with the jurisdiction, and explain the differences in operation between the Imperial Police and the Imperial City Police.

  They were walking through the arcade, which was moderately crowded at that time of day, as Rassmussen noted the differences in operation between IPD and ICPD, when Ashton stopped dead, staring. Rassmussen stopped as well.

  “Hey, Nick, are you oka—” he began

  “Hey! Oy! You, there! STOP!” Ashton yelled abruptly, then set off running…

  …Just as a thief grabbed a woman’s shopping bags from her arm and ran.

  “HEY!” Rassmussen shouted, and headed after Ashton. “Stop! Police!”

  The thief dared an alarmed glance over his shoulder, then turned around and ran harder.

  “This…is gonna…take…a while,” Ashton said, pacing his speech to his breath, as Rassmussen accelerated until he was alongside him. They managed to keep the thief in sight with difficulty; he was darting in and out of the foot traffic on the arcade.

  “Yup,” was all Rassmussen said in response. They cornered hard, as the thief tried to lose them in a side street of the arcade.

  “Got tranqs?”

  “Nope. Needs a…rifle. We’re…plainclothes. An’ too… many…p’destr’ns…around…to risk…a shot,” Rassmussen panted. “Of any…thing.”

  “Wait. You gotta…baton…stashed…someplace?”

  “Uh, yeah…”

  “Gimme.”

  Rassmussen pulled his baton from its hidden pocket within the left side of his blazer, and passed it to Ashton. Ashton took it, put on a brief burst of speed, then yelled at the top of his lungs, “MOVE!” He hit the extension switch even as he twisted to the side and threw the baton on a low, straight, twirling trajectory.

  Pedestrians instinctively dodged at his cry, and the baton whipped forward, spinning, right into the pumping legs of the fleeing thief, who promptly went down hard onto the pavement, smacking his head and stunning him nearly unconscious. Before he could regain his wits, the two police officers were on him, restraining him and taking him into custody.

  “So he spotted the purse snatcher before you did? And then took him down?” Peterson asked later that day.

  “Yeah, and yeah, he did,” Rassmussen told Peterson and Gorski. “It was a standoff, and looked like it was gonna be a case of who ran outta oomph first. But Nick took the guy out with my baton, without our having to even get close. Damn, though, but the perp is lucky not to have busted a leg or something. Those batons can hurt. And for a split-second, there, he was so tangled up with the baton, he looked like he had three legs!”

  “Sounds like Ashton is sharp-eyed and quick-thinking,” Gorski said, shooting a meaningful glance at Peterson.

  “He is,” Rassmussen averred. “And I thought he was really easy to get along with, too. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, with a good sense of right and wrong. Not to mention sharp eyes and a lotta brains.”

  “I’d have to agree,” Peterson said. “You want him, Stefan?”

  “What, Eugene hasn’t called dibs on him yet? He’s got seniority; he’s an inspector. I’m just a lowly detective.”

  “Not yet. I think he hasn’t really thought about it this early in the game. He’s still winding up that case over on the north side, after all.”

  “Aha! Then yeah, I think I do, Maia,” Gorski agreed with a grin. “Assign him to me. I’ll see he gets those talents honed properly.”

  “Great!” Rassmussen enthused. “He’s gonna be part of our team!”

  “It’s a plan,” Peterson said. She “checked out” for a moment, entering VR, then came back. “Paperwork implemented. Take him under your wing and train that boy to be a detective, Stefan. Hell, train that boy to become an inspector. He’s got it in him.”

  “Consider it done,” Gorski said, pleased.

  First Case

  Ashton started work under Gorski immediately. The experienced detective took him in hand and ascertained what he already knew about investigation, and how experienced he already was. He took the younger man around with him to his various cases as they occurred, essentially smaller things for the time being – burglaries and petty theft, for the most part, in various areas of Imperial Park.

  The crimes were largely near ICPD headquarters, which was in the West quadrant, a few blocks north of the line of the underground commuter train, though many of the investigators lived south of it. Gorski promptly began training Ashton to know what to look for, how to find and interpret clues, how to properly take evidence without contaminating or corrupting it, and how to glean as much information as possible from a victim interview.

  Meanwhile, Ashton was growing his hair out, changing its style, and trying to get a bit of a tan by sunning on the roof of his apartment building – whatever he could think of to change his appearance. This included having his barber add heavy blond highlights as his hair grew. And that image of him, enhanced to make his hair even blonder, became the “official” mug shot of one “Nicholas ‘Nick’ Benton,” investigator for the Imperial City Police Department.

  It all seemed to be working; no one from the Imperial Police bothered him. And he had inadvertently walked right by a couple of Imperial Police officers just the day before.

  The fact that he now had a couple of suits of body armor, one of which he wore each day under his clothing and alternating days, helped him feel a little more confident about the encounter, especially after they failed to recognize him.

  Then the call came in.

  “Come on, Nick,” Gorski said, coming by the young investigator’s desk. “Let’s go. We’ve got a call. Bad situation.”

  “What happened?” Ashton said, grabbing his tweed jacket from the back of his chair as he stood.

  “Not quite sure yet,” Gorski responded, already headed for the door. “Definite assault. Judging by what I was shown of the condition of the victim’s clothes, probable sexual assault. Whether it was attempted or successful rape, I’m still waiting on the docs to decide.”

  “What does the victim say happened?”

  “The victim is unconscious, likely in a coma. Apparently she fought back, and took a nasty knock on the head for her troubles. Her boyf
riend found her on the floor of their apartment when he came home from work, and called for emergency help to get her to the hospital. He was afraid to move her.”

  “Ooo.”

  “Yeah.” By now, they were on the sidewalk outside ICPD headquarters. Gorski stopped dead, holding up a hand. “Wait a minute.”

  The pair stood there for several minutes as Gorski “checked out.” When several groups paused beside them, unable to get by without stepping into the street, Ashton grabbed Gorski’s elbow, gently and unobtrusively pulling him out of the flow of pedestrian traffic – there wasn’t a slidewalk here, directly in front of the headquarters building – into an alcove near the door; he figured his new mentor was in VR, likely getting information, and didn’t want to disturb him. But they were blocking the sidewalk; transport traffic was heavy that time of day, so no one dared step into the street proper. Therefore staying well out of the way of the pedestrian traffic was wise. Finally Gorski came up for air and looked around.

  “Wha? Oh. Yeah, okay. Thanks for getting me out of the way, Nick. Shoulda thought.”

  “No problem. What have you got?”

  “That was the emergency physician at the hospital. It was definitely an attempted rape. Her clothing was shredded up, and she has bruises and scratch marks on breasts and external genitals, but no evidence of penetration, or semen.”

  “Evidence of pen…?”

  “Bruising. Internal or…” Gorski waved a hand, “internal-external, if you get me. Nothing around the vaginal opening.”

  “Oh. But that should mean,” Ashton considered, thinking hard. “She must have hurt her assailant pretty good, or he’d have finished the rape after he knocked her out.”

  “Good reasoning job, son. That’s what I think, too. The hospital has a forensic physician on her case, so if she has any hair or tissue samples on her – under her fingernails, for instance, and by the way, they think they did find some – we’ll get the rundown on that once it’s been processed. Meantime, you and I are going over to the apartment to look for additional clues and evidence.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  The boyfriend, Owen Jackson, was being held in the hallway while three Imp City police beat cops stood guard over the door, when the two investigators arrived. They identified themselves in VR to the waiting police officers and Jackson, and the guards let them inside.

  “Stay behind me, Nick, and keep your eyes peeled,” Gorski told him. “We want to avoid disturbing things, and try to get a picture of what might have happened based on the clues, then we’ll start looking for more details based on that. If we don’t find those details, we back off again and adjust our big picture.”

  “Right,” Ashton confirmed. “I get it.”

  “Good.”

  Gorski entered the apartment slowly, followed by Ashton. They stood by the door and surveyed the apartment, including the door, front and back.

  Before them lay the den, with a couch, coffee table, two end tables with lamps, two armchairs, one on each side of the couch and at right angles to it, and a wet bar in the corner. A couple of bookcases stood on the wall opposite the wet bar, as well as a small rack containing folding tray tables; the complete set of tables remained in the rack.

  The narrow coffee table had been turned over, and one leg was broken; both lamps were on the floor, one broken, both with crushed shades; the couch had been shoved back at one end, twisting the adjacent end table, and the corresponding armchair was forced well to the side, pivoted to face roughly the same direction as the couch. The throw pillows on the disarranged end of the couch had been flung to the floor in various parts of the room, but the ones on the other end still lay tucked into the corner of the couch. The upholstery of the couch had blood smears, and there were two small puddles of blood on the floor near the broken leg of the coffee table, one on each side of the table. Two coffee cups on the twisted end table had been overturned, their contents running over the tabletop and onto the floor in various places.

  “All right, Nick, what happened, and where should we look for what?” Gorski asked, somewhat to Ashton’s surprise.

  “Um, okay, lessee,” he said, quickly collecting his thoughts. “She let a friend in for coffee. She sat on the end of the couch, he sat in the armchair, and they talked for a bit. He made a move, she said no, and he didn’t take no for an answer. He tried to push her down on the couch and rape her, and she fought back, shoving him away. He fell over the coffee table, turning it over and crunching one of its legs, and she tried to get out the end, but he grabbed her – probably by the ankle, with him still down on the floor – and she stumbled and grabbed for the end table. It slid, and she lunged forward for the armchair, managing to kick him, maybe in the face. If she broke his nose, that might explain one puddle of blood on the floor…but so would a head wound, from his fall over the table. But he jumped up and got in front of her – the way the armchair is turned, she couldn’t have gotten it in that position herself, but it could have slid some with her body weight – then shoved her back. She grabbed his arm to keep from falling, but then she probably either kicked or kneed him hard in the groin, and he shoved her down. She hit her head on the broken table leg, and that created the second puddle of blood...and the cranial damage that put her into a coma. But if she hit him hard enough in the groin, he wasn’t going to be doing much with the personal tackle for a while.”

  Gorski raised an impressed eyebrow.

  “Could you elaborate on the rationale for your deductions?” he asked.

  “Sure, sir. There’s no evidence the door was forced; she let him in. Ergo, she knew him. There may or may not be latents on the door; we probably need to check. There are two cups of coffee, one black, one with cream, so she offered him coffee; she wasn’t drinking alone. Which also means there’s probably the remains where she made the coffee in the kitchen someplace. There’s not enough coffee spilled for the mugs to have been full when he attacked, so they sat and talked for a while. They were friends. Or at least, she thought so.

  “The end of the couch next to the coffee mugs is shoved back hard enough to scratch the finish on the floor; that argues for some weight on it. He was trying to push her down and force her. That, in turn, caused the far end of the couch to smack that end table, toppling its lamp – notice how it fell away from the couch, and parallel with it? But she fought back, and probably managed to get a foot into his belly or the like and shove hard. That sent him back and over the coffee table, which turned over – I’d say he got a leg or a foot hung under it – and his weight snapped one of the legs. He hit hard, and the puddle over there,” he pointed, “is either where his nose bled, or more probably his scalp, likely split under the force of the impact. That would have dazed him, and she would seize the opportunity to jump up and run. He grabbed for her ankle and tripped her up, so she lunged for the nearest piece of furniture, the end table. That’s probably when the coffee mugs turned over and spilled, and that lamp fell – it fell back roughly perpendicular to the direction of the couch, in turn indicating the approximate direction of force, which was greater than the other end, because this lamp broke.” He glanced at Gorski, uncertain.

  “Good so far,” Gorski murmured. “Keep going.”

  “She instinctively kicked back, probably caught him in the face, and that’s how the pillow there got a blood spatter on it.” Ashton pointed. “Note the angle of the spray, pointing to the location of the source. Chances are, she smashed his nose with her heel. If it wasn’t broken already, it would be by then.”

  “Good...”

  “He shook his head to clear it, sending more blood spatters from his nose and possibly the back of his head and hair, then jumped up, leaping over the coffee table and getting in front of her, fending her off with the chair from the back; he could keep her from running for help, or into the bedroom and locking the door, that way.” Ashton paused, thinking. “She may have turned to run around the other end of the couch at that point. Then he shoved the chair aside
and came after her before she could. Oh! I meant to ask; did she have any blood on her knuckles?”

  “She did,” Gorski confirmed. “The forensic doctor noted that, and her knuckles were bruised, but the skin wasn’t broken. And yes, he took samples of the blood for analysis.”

  “So she punched him in the busted nose,” Ashton said with a wolfish grin. “Good for her! But that’s what made him good and mad, so he shoved her down, probably with the intent to pin her and rape her at that point...when she kicked upward. If it was deliberate intent combined with her body being off-balance as she started to fall, then her foot...maybe her knee, but if she was falling, probably foot or shin...clobbered him in the family jewels pretty hard. In turn, she hit her head on the broken table leg and it rendered her unconscious.” Ashton shook his head, wincing despite himself. “That wouldn’t do any favors for her skull or brain, I’d think. Anyway, the scalp laceration from the broken table leg created that puddle.” He pointed to the second congealing blood pool. “But we already know that she wasn’t actually penetrated. He was in too much pain from the head blow, the broken nose, and the kick in the crotch to finish his intended job, so he left...probably walking funny.”

  “And based on this scenario, what should we do, and what should we look for?”

  “We get in situ imagery, then grab samples of all the blood stains for the lab, both coffee mugs for DNA, and look for any latents on the mugs and the front door, as well as on the tabletops. Also any hair – pubic or head – on the armchair and possibly the couch.” Ashton, who had been studying the crime scene intently, now looked up at Gorski. “And we need to contact the hospitals, looking for a man of around average height – judging by the location of the coffee table to the pool of blood his head left – with a probable concussion and skull laceration, probable broken nose but certainly a couple of black eyes and facial bruising, with nosebleed, scratches somewhere on his body, and severe bruising to the family jewels.”