The alarm didn't sound like usual. The first – What was it? Two? – two times it rang, at 6:30, then at 6:35, it had a calming tone; sweet notes arranged in a crystalline melody slowly rising in volume until they became just loud enough to bother a deep sleeper; but now, the alarm was blaring like a tornado siren.
Detective Jones – for hire – groaned and shifted in her chair; the loud creaks of wood and old leather and the cracks and snaps of rusty old bones were all drowned out by the sharp and violent alarm. She grimaced and reached over, not even bothering to open her eyes, and tried to press on her phone screen. There should've been a big snooze button popping up in the middle of the cracked touchscreen display, but she kept missing it. Her grimace flashed into a display of unbridled fury, but it subsided almost immediately, leaving behind a peaceful expression. She leaned back on her chair, for a moment, allowing the cacophony to assault her ears for a couple more seconds, before finally opening her eyes.
Her office looked like a mess; a pig sty, really. Endless cups of coffee piled up on the desk and the floor, notes and smoke-stained files littering every surface; the walls had been white, once, but the tobacco had rendered them a sickly yellow; dead bugs crowding a thin strip of fly paper hanging from the ceiling were certain to be filling the room with the filthy odour of rotting chitin, but at least her vices were managing to fight it with a vile stench of their own. The wooden boards forming the tiny office's floor were, at least, too dark to let the grime show, and her metal desk was actually new, since the old one had collapsed only a week prior after the rust had eaten through all four legs. Even the detective herself, sprawling on her wooden chair with a leather cushion – the only luxury she allowed herself, these days – looked like she'd seen better days. Her leather overcoat was stained with coffee, smoke, booze, grime, and dried blood; her black jeans weren't much better, but at least they didn't show it as easily, though the various rips and tears did let through a raggedy image of her deathly pale complexion; her shoes, too – casual leather loafers in a brown that matched her coat – were seemingly on the precipice of falling apart as soon as she took her next step. The only saving grace in her attire was that, for one, she couldn't see her face without a single mirror in the whole room – though, if she could, she would've seen her black hair in a messy bun matted with dirt and her brown eyes crowning two cavernous eye bags –, and also her filthy shirt had a twin that had just been picked up from the laundromat the day prior, so it could be replaced as soon as she got up.
Well, that would be the next problem facing the brilliant investigator. How to get up? Interestingly, in the midst of her eyes meandering across the office, the alarm had turned off by itself. For a moment, she pondered going back to sleep, but her intuition told her something terrible was afoot in the tiny office; and it was proven right before long, as a siren started blaring from her phone once again, disturbing the eerie silence that had settled over the gloomy room.
Somewhat surprisingly, she realized, her headache that morning wasn't from what must've been a night of excessive drinking – at least she assumed as much, considering her spotty memory – but instead was a symptom much more easily attributed to the piercing sound her phone was throwing at her. As such – as any human would do, caring for the well-being of her body – she grabbed her phone and peered at the screen. Her eyes widened slightly. There was no big snooze button in the middle of the screen; instead, she found two smaller buttons near the bottom corners – one green, one red – and a name written across.
«Michlae? What?» She thought, scratching her head and plucking pieces of grime from her hair.
Still getting up to speed, her brain slowly put the pieces together and solved the case on the spot. That annoying, terrible, grating sound that had caused her to develop such a terrible headache hadn't been an alarm at all, but rather, an elusive phone call from a certain "Michlae," certainly someone she'd interfaced with on some occasion. Furthermore, considering Michlae was not her sister's name, this mysterious individual must be either a client or an advanced spam call that had somehow managed to add a new entry to her contact's list while she slept. She briefly pondered the safety of her office and glanced at the door – a simple, old wooden door with a lock that didn't work, and two additional locks that barely worked, as well as an open padlock hanging loosely from a rusted out loop. She dismissed the possibility of the spam call and shook her head slightly, before letting a crooked smile crawl it's way to her lips.
«Jackpot.»
She dragged the green icon across the screen, causing it to change after a second, revealing a timer. Before a single second passed, she took a deep breath and made an attempt at a happy expression while raising the phone to the side of her head.
"Good morning, Michlae! Glad you called, what can I do for you?"
Her voice sounded hoarse and laboured, like she'd just woken up after 20 years of chain-smoking and alcoholism, but her words carried an odd levity to them that couldn't quite be quantified. At least she hoped it did, as she was trying very hard to sound like she had her shit together for one of her precious clients.
She was met with silence. Her smile shook, but didn't falter. She quickly glanced at the timer on the screen and saw the number indicating the seconds that had passed since the start of the call tick up from 5 to 6, before placing the phone back near her ear.
"H— Hello? Michlae? Are you—"
"Detective Jones, this is Captain Michael Francis, New Town Police Department. We spoke, yesterday?"
A deep, rumbling voice calmly interrupted her question, bringing with it the memories of a seemingly innocuous day and a feeling of deep, overwhelming dread. Captain Michael Francis, yes, she remember something like that. Well, it had been... A week, maybe, since they last spoke. He had come up to her office and asked if she would be willing to collaborate with the homicide squad on a case that would be coming up. She thought it was weird that they were contacting a haruspex like her when they seemingly already had access to some sort of divination, but money was money, so she accepted it without much thought.
«What was it that he said, back then?»
"I asked you to be here by 7, detective. I expected you here by 6:30."
His voice was as calm as before, though Jones' intuition did flinch at his words. Surely, the man couldn't read minds, at least not through the phone. Punctuality wasn't her best quality – something she always blamed on her nighttime habits and abundant foresight – but military people cared about it much more than she had expected, evidently. She leaned back on her chair, almost toppling over. She spoke with a strained voice and her back cracked.
"Yes, Captain, of course. I wa— am on my way, as we speak. By 7, right, I have it noted right here!" She noisily shuffled around some pieces of paper randomly strewed over her desk. "We'll meet again before long, I'm sure."
"Don't make me wait, Detective."
Before she could fake some more nonchalant disinterest in her impending tardiness, the background static of the call suddenly stopped, leaving a half-formed response hanging from her parted lips.
«Fuck.»
Detective Jones – employed? – ran out of her office, barely remembering to grab her briefcase, and ran to the bus stop, hoping to all that was sacred that she would make it to the station in record time.