To Make a Living in Murder
My first exchange with D. Vale is brief and odd; a colleague had given them my phone number, they call without warning, and give me a time and place to meet. The investigator is notoriously difficult to get ahold of—I had spent the better part of four months attempting to do so—and so I agree without much negotiation.
My first meeting with Vale is much lengthier, though equally odd. I arrive at Ryka University’s Chromoptics Laboratory to find somebody in deep discussion with a police officer and member of staff; that somebody turns out to be Vale (who shall remain without description, owing to a preference for pseudoanonymity). We re-introduce ourselves, and they ask if I would like to accompany them as they examine the crime scene.
(This is how I come to learn that a graduate student is dead, and that I am to be entangled in the surrounding investigation.)
I don’t like blood, but the investigator is notoriously difficult to get ahold of: I agree. I am provided, and struggle with, the sterile gear that permits my presence. Vale wears it like skin.
Emergency services have already been and gone: Chemical Lab 14 is covered in yellow tape, numbered markers, paper labels tied with what looks like dental floss. Subsequently—and, in my mind, mercifully—the body of N. Marley-Petrov has been cleared away. Vale seems to be in two minds about it.
“Normally I like to get here before anything gets moved,” they explain. “Unfortunately they took her to hospital.”
“Unfortunately?”
“Well, for me. Everything people do to help makes my job harder. Helpful people contaminate crime scenes, waste my time, get themselves killed…”
“Do you wish people would leave things as they are?”
Vale almost smiles. “Lord, no. I don’t do the work because it’s easy. If it’s easy, I get suspicious.”
Hang on a tick!
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