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harlot-of-oblivion · 4 years

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The Devil’s In The Details

You're a detective of the Red Grave City P.D. investigating another strange murder when you find a possible break in the case.

After many months of daydreaming and planning, I'm finally starting a new series featuring Dante/Detective Reader! So, I hope you enjoy the first few chapters! 😘🥰

Warnings: Graphic depictions of a violent crime scenes and cursing.

Chapter 1: Another Day

Another day, another murder, you thought grimly as you arrive at the scene of what is assuredly another grisly crime.

It is early morning. The sun has barely peeked over the horizon, but that is not enough to deter several reporters from crowding around the police tape. You park your motorcycle just on the outskirts of the police barrier, assessing the best possible route to take around the crowd without drawing attention to yourself. A few bright flashes from a numerous camera makes you grumble under your breath as you hop off your ride. You straighten out your riding jacket and jeans before removing your helmet, flipping your hair back as you breath in the crisp morning air.

“Detective! Detective!”

“Is this at all related to the other murders around the city?”

“Does this mean we have a serial killer running rampant through our streets?”

“Detective, please! The citizens of Red Grave deserve some answers!”

The gaggle of clamoring news reporters and journalists greet your ears as you approach the police tape. You keep your head down and turn away from their prying eyes while you press forward, never slowing your pace as you forge ahead. And as soon as you get to the barrier, you quickly duck under and slip through before any of them can surround you with their mics and cameras.

A couple of officers rush forward to calm the crowd as you survey the scene before you: upscale house in the better part of town, no fence, and neighboring houses on either side of the home. You reach into the inside pocket of your jacket and pull out your glasses, quickly sliding them on before whipping out a small sketchbook. Your keen eyes scan around more thoroughly, looking for anything out of place as you walk up the long driveway.

The house looks like your typical suburban home: two stories of brick walls with the usual gothic architecture that is so common around this part of town. The lawn gets cut regularly and only a few stray dog toys sully its pristine state. And the garage is vast, big enough to hold two cars, but there is only one fancy sports car parked in there now.

You slide the pencil stored in the spiral spine of your sketchbook and begin to draw out all the possible inconsistencies you have observed thus far: stray dog toys means either no one’s been around to mow the lawn or that the owners do their own lawn work, the fact that the garage door is open strikes you as odd, and speaking of dog toys…your hand pauses as you double check for any sign of a doghouse in the yard before looking back in the garage, searching for anything might serves as a dog bed.

Hmm…could be an inside dog, you ponder, squinting at your rough drawing of a dog toy that does seem to be quite small. You make a quick note about it by the sketch before moving on, drawing a car with a question mark beside it and a note about the whereabouts of the other car. When you are finished with your preliminary observation, you reach back into your pocket for a pair of rubber gloves and hurriedly slip them as you approach a group of officers waiting by the entrance.

“Good Morning, Detective.”

The officer that greets you at the door is Tyrell Reed if you remember correctly. “Morning,” you mutter back with a nod of your head before following him past his fellow officers through the front entrance of the house. You take in your surroundings, noting that the entrance hall is quaint but still holds an air of old-fashioned wealth. After a few more quick glances over at the side rooms you ask what your colleagues refer to as the universal code for what crazy shit are we dealing with today? in the language of law enforcement.

“What have we got here, Officer?”

“Same shit, different body.”

You chuckle dryly at his matter-of-fact reply before getting down to business. “Victim’s name?”

“Giles Harmon. The husband of Mabel Harmon.”

You scribble down both names on a fresh page of your sketchbook. “And where is our newly widowed wife?” you ask while glancing down at your drawing of the sports car.

“A few of the neighbors saw her leave in the middle of night about a week ago, which just so happens to be how long the victim has been lying here dead.”

“Did they say whether or not she drove away in a car?” you question, looking up at the officer over the frames of your glasses. He nods and you quickly jot down that detail by the appropriate sketch before moving onto the next question. “Any kids?”

“One. A son. He goes by Paul and he’s a student over at RGU. He’s also the one who found the body, so he’s currently being held down at the station for questioning.”

“Excellent! What about the dog?”

“Dog?” Officer Reed’s brow furrows. “What dog?”

You flash him your drawing of the stray dog toys. “There’s evidence in the yard that points to them owning at least one dog,” you inform patiently before firing away with follow up questions. “Did you or any of the other officers first at the scene see or hear anything that may have been a dog?”

“Hold on a sec.” Officer Reed excuses himself and peeks his head out the front door. You hear him ask the officers your question and a variety of murmurings before he turns back to you. “No, ma’am. None of us heard no barking, but one of the boys did see some bowls on the kitchen floor.”

“Did any of the neighbors mention hearing a dog bark when Mrs. Harmon left?”

Officer Reed shakes his head. “Not that I recall, but I’ll be sure to send you their statements.”

“Did you see the son with a dog by chance?”

He shakes his head again. “Nope. I saw him myself as he was being escorted from the scene. He wasn’t holding a dog and there wasn’t a dog following after him either.”

“Alright,” you nod, finishing off the last of your notes by the dog toy sketch. “I’ll take it from here, Officer.”

“No problem, Detective. I’ll get outta your way and let ya do your thing.”

Officer Reed tips his hat and heads back outside, leaving you to explore the rest of the house at your leisure. You head towards the kitchen, passing through what looks to be the dining room on the way there. Your eyes instantly spot the bowls previously mentioned on the floor by the end of a countertop. When you go over to inspect them, you see one is filled with water while the other is full of brown chunky pellets that look like your typical dog food. You bend down and pick up a pellet and give it a sniff, confirming that it is indeed dog food before making note of it in your sketchbook.

Your eyes flicker over and pause at the sight of a door. If I am not mistaken…that must lead to the garage, you surmise, slowly rising to your feet as you take note of a mat and a wooden key holder by the door. Multiple pairs of shoes are lined up across the mat, ranging from high heels and loafers to muddy sneakers and running shoes. You flip a page in your sketchbook and begin to draw, taking great care to detail the perfect formation shoes as well as the obvious gap in the middle of the mat…which could have possibly been the pair of shoes Mrs. Harmon put on before fleeing the scene.

As soon as you are done sketching the missing pair of shoes, you glance over to the key holder and instantly notice an empty hook. You look closely at the other hooks, noting the pair of keys that belong with the sports car in the garage along with a couple of other mysterious keys. One of them looks like a key to a lawnmower while the other may be a key to a lock box or a safe. You quickly correct your previous note about the possibility of having hired help to at least not having it for lawncare before taking out a spare evidence bag. You carefully unhook the mystery key and drop it into the bag, making sure it is sealed properly before finishing up in the kitchen.

You open a few drawers and cabinets, casually searching until you find a bag of name brand dog food in a nearby cupboard. The label boasts about being the best dog food on the market for small breeds, confirming your assumption from earlier when you first arrived. You quickly write that detail down and take one last hard look at the whole kitchen, letting what you have discovered so far tell their tale of what happened the night of the murder. All the little details fall into place and form an incomplete picture, but you can still glean some information from what you have gathered thus far:

The numerous pairs of shoes on the mat show no sign of being shoved out of place, which could mean the suspect felt no sense of urgency as they fled the scene. There is evidence that they owned a dog, but it either ran away or it’s hiding somewhere in the house…or perhaps a victim as well. And if it turns out that the latter is true, then the murder may not be the result a lover’s quarrel gone wrong.

The picture in your mind looks more like a preliminary drawing, but you remind yourself that even the best works of art take time to complete.

You check out the other rooms on the bottom floor only to find more evidence of this family’s luxurious wealth in the form of expensive paintings and furniture. Once again you see no evidence of a rushed exit, but that could simply be because the suspect did not have to enter most of the rooms on the way to the garage. You head back to the entrance hall and climb up the stairs to the second floor. The sight of more police tape blocking entry into one of the rooms tells you that is where you will find the body of the victim as well as the crime scene analyst scouring every inch of that room for crucial evidence.

Before you head in there for a quick debriefing, you take a quick peek into the other rooms and immediately deduce that the scene of crime happens to also be the bedroom. You also take note of just how spotless each room appears to be, which may add more credence to this being premeditative murder. Easy there…don’t wanna jump the gun so soon, you mentally reprimand while nodding at the two officers on guard outside of the bedroom. You squeeze through a large gap in the police tape and your eyes instantly spot a most grisly sight.

Mr. Harmon is lying face up on the bloodstained carpet, dead vacant eyes staring up at the ceiling. You turn to a fresh page in your sketchbook and get to work mapping this horrid scene. The bed sits in the center of the room against the wall and the sheets are all rumpled. One of four pillows is on the floor while the others are strewn across the bed. The victim’s body is lying a couple of feet away from the foot of the bed and he appears to be wearing white cotton pajamas with a baseball theme pattern. Besides the messy bed and dead body, nothing else seems remotely out of place on first inspection. But that just means you need a closer look to add more detail to the sketch forming in your mind.

You draw out some final details before walking across the room towards Carmen Torres, the crime scene analyst currently snapping pictures of the victim. Both of you started out in Red Grave P.D. at the same time and have formed an amicable relationship over the past few years. She does not seem to mind your more serious and sometimes snarky attitude while you tolerate her eccentricities since behind her quirkiness lies a brilliant forensic mind. Plus, you enjoy her attempts at lightening the mood with cheery conversation while poking around a dead body.

The rotten stench of decay wafts under your nose before you can call out to get her attention, causing you to wrinkle your nose as you cough in disgust. Carmen looks back over her shoulder and flashes you a sunny smile. “Good morning, Quickdraw!” she greets, using her fond nickname for you despite all your vehement protests.

“There’s nothing good about it, San Diego,” you retort with a roll of your eyes while waving your hand in front of your face. “But I guess good morning to you too.”

“I see you’re as chipper as always,” Carmen jests as she reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a jar of what she refers to as miracle smelly cream before tossing it your way.

“I’ll be a dazzling ray of sunshine as soon as I get some coffee,” you chortle while catching the jar. You unscrew the cap, scoop a small amount of its contents onto your finger, and smear it beneath your nose. When you give a test sniff to see that the stench is no longer as strong you screw the cap back and toss the jar back to her. “But until then…” you trail off, taking one last look around the bedroom. Carmen waits patiently for you to continue, already aware that this is just part of your investigative routine from all the other times you have worked together. You glance through your sketchbook one last time before asking the age-old universal code once more:

“What have we got here?”

“A little variety for one thing!” Carmen exclaims as she takes a few steps closer to the body. “Not every day that we see the wife beating the shit of her husband before finishing them off!”

“True,” you admit with a tilt of your head. “Domestic violence where the woman is the abuser is not as common, but it still happens.” You follow her and crouch down over the body for closer inspection. Despite being dead, Mr. Harmon’s expression seems quite indifferent to his current state. Multiple injuries mare his face, neck, and chest, indicating that there was physical altercation before his untimely demise. It all points to a classic case of domestic abuse, but all the bruises you see are still black and blue.

“Did you happen to find any more bruises that are older?”

Carmen’s face scrunches up as she ponders your question before answering. “Uhhhh nope. I’ll make a note of it for the medical examiner…Oh!” She sets the camera down on the floor before scooting closer to the head of the body. “You’re gonna love this!” she declares with a confident grin. “As you can see, there’s a real nasty contusion on his head, which could’ve been the cause of death,” she informs while pointing to a bloody spot by the victim’s temple before continuing, “but there’s just one problem with that theory.”

You reach over and examine the wound with your gloved hand, feeling around the injury before looking back at her. “Not even a dent or crack in the skull,” you conclude softly, adding it to your mental sketch of the crime.

Carmen nods excitedly. “Exactly! So maybe he died from blunt force trauma to the head, but we won’t know for sure until the autopsy.” She picks up her camera and switches lenses before snapping a few detailed shots of the injury as she continues. “If anything, I’d say he suffered from a concussion. And if that’s the case, then it’s possible that it played a part in his death. Well, that and the loss of blood.”

“Hmm…seems plausible,” you murmur more to yourself as you withdraw your hand. “Miss Murder beats him up, he falls unconscious, and she probably runs away thinking that he’s dead.” You hold your sketchbook in your lap while you take out another rubber glove to replace the one now sullied with blood. As you carefully pull off the glove and slip a clean one on, you think about the recent cases yet to be solved. None of them are related in terms of how the crime itself happened, but there is one tiny physical detail that connects them. The more you think about it, the more you start to get a hunch that so far has never let you down.

“Is there any indication that he may have been paralyzed?”

Carmen pauses her photo session. “Uhhhh besides getting smacked aside the head? No, not really.” She removes the camera from her face and stares up at the ceiling in thought. “It’s possible that his spinal cord could’ve been hit during the beating, but I dunno if Miss Murder could’ve pull that off.” She turns her head and meets your contemplative gaze. “Ooooh! Are ya getting’ one of your Quickdraw hunches?” she guesses eagerly, eyes growing wide as she leans over in anticipation of your explanation.

You grunt in mild annoyance before indulging her curiosity. “Let’s look at his hands and arms.”

Both of you lift a hand from where you are crouching and push back the sleeve of his pajamas down to the elbow. You splay the victim’s arm out onto the floor and begin to draw out your findings in the sketchbook. The inside of his palm is a bit calloused, perhaps from doing his own yard work, but the rest of his hand is smooth and free from any kind of blemish. You note that Carmen is examining the left hand and that a gold band is around his ring finger. His arm has a sprinkling of freckles among coarse hair as well as some muscle. And again, there are no blemishes of any kind…no cuts, no bruises, no injuries whatsoever.

“No sign of defensive wounds,” Carmen mumbles in awe under her breath.

“It’s human instinct to defend yourself,” you chime in absentmindedly while you make note of your discovery by the depiction of the corpse in your sketchbook. “We still put up a fight even if it seems hopeless.”

You grow quiet as distant memories bubble up from the back of your mind, but you suppress the hurtful images as you reach over and pull the collar of the pajamas away from the victim’s neck. All you see are more bruises and no other injuries, so you follow your gut instinct and move onto to inspect his chest. You peek under the pajama top and see something odd just under his left pectoral. Your fingers make quick work of the buttons on the pajama top and you flick it off his chest for better inspection. And just as you expected, there is a small puncture wound that looks terribly like the other previous murders that have cropped up recently.

“Oh shit!” Carmen gasps as she fumbles for her analyst kit. “I didn’t think about-”

“It’s okay,” you reassure while the corners of your lips quirk into your first smile of the day. “Nobody would’ve expected you to search for injection wounds since-”

“He has obvious signs of blunt force trauma to the head,” Carmen finishes your sentence as she takes out a couple of DNA swabs and tubes. “Do you think this is connected to the other murders? Or is this just one big coincidence?” she asks, quickly catching onto your hunch while you put a big circle around the puncture on your drawing.

“Don’t wanna jump to conclusions just yet,” you respond calmly while readjusting your glasses with the pencil. “Not until we perform an autopsy,” you tack on while Carmen gives you a knowing smirk. You stand back up and flip through your sketchbook, intending to ask her about the missing dog and if she came across a safe in the bedroom, but the sudden ringing of your phone interrupts your train of thought.

You shuffle the sketchbook in your arms, carefully trying to remove the rubber glove from one hand. Carmen watches you for a bit while you struggle before offering to slip the glove off for you when an annoyed huff leaves your lips. As soon as your hand is free from its protective barrier, you pull out your cellphone to see who is disturbing your investigation. “Huh…speak of the devil,” you mumble, seeing the name of the medical examiner before swiping the screen to answer.

“Hello?”

“Detective!” he greets you back enthusiastically. “I finally have the test results you wanted!”

“Excellent!” you exclaim while closing your sketchbook. “Mind if I swing by your office?”

“Oh gods yes! Please!”

You hear the definite sound of worry within his pleading voice. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, everything is fine! It’s just uh,” he pauses for a moment. “It’d probably be better if I just explain it to you in person.”

“Alright. I’ll head on over shortly,” you reply, arching a brow at his curious behavior, but you are not too surprised since he is known for being a little paranoid at times.

“Very good, Detective,” he sighs in relief. “See you then!”

When the end of the line cuts off, you check the time on your phone before slipping it back into your pocket. “You got a break in the case?” Carmen asks inquisitively as she snaps a few more close ups of the body.

“I sure fucking hope so,” you grumble morosely, “or else the Lieutenant will have my ass for leaving so soon.” You take out the evidence bag with the mysterious key. “I found this hanging on a key holder in the kitchen. Looks like it can open a safe or a lock box. Have you-”

“Nope, but I’m not quite done here,” she quickly answers while taking the bag from your grasp. “I’ll keep my eyes open for it though.”

You nod. “Also, have you seen any sign of their dog in the house?”

Carmen shakes her head. “No…but I did collect some small fibers from the bedsheets that could’ve been dog hair. Now get outta here!” She gestures towards the door with her head. “And don’t worry, I’ll cover for ya,” she reassures with a friendly smile. “It did sound like Graves was a little spooked by something…well, more so than usual.”

“Yeah,” you murmur while stuffing your gloveless hand into your jacket pocket. “Don’t know what that’s about.”

“Maybe…” she trails off in thought before her eyes suddenly grow wide. “One of the body’s came to life and confessed their love to him!”

“Oh my god,” you groan, staring up at the ceiling as she expands her ridiculous speculation.

“And he, so overtaken by their confession of undying love, asked them to be their lawfully wedded zombie!”

“Okay! I’m leaving now,” you announce with an indignant huff while walking towards the exit, glancing over your shoulder at the very exhilarated crime scene analyst.

“Aww!!! He probably wants to ask you to be his best woman at the undead wedding!”

“See ya, San Diego!” you bark back with a half-hearted wave of your sketchbook before rushing out of the bedroom, shaking your head in exasperation at her facetious claims while climbing down the stairs.

You remove the other rubber glove and your glasses as you head out the front door. The officers standing outside bid you farewell as you make your way down the long driveway, steeling yourself with every step as the clamor of news reporters rings out in the morning air. You are once again bombarded with various questions as you cross under the police tape. Your eyes narrow as you walk up to your motorcycle, which is currently surrounded by a small group of journalists from the local newspaper.

Damn press! you seethe, but their presence is not enough to stop you from blocking their incessant inquiries by putting on your helmet before mounting your ride. The group spreads out and tries to block your only exit, but you call their buff by revving your engine a couple of times in warning. They all jump back at the blaring purr of the bike, giving you an opening to take off from the crime scene with a loud roar.

Another day, another murder…but I’m also another day closer to solving this case, you resolve with a determined grin while turning down the road towards your next destination.

Read Chapter 2

My Ao3

My Masterlist if you want more 💖

Tagging: @bettybattaglia @drusoona and @exsultry

#dante x reader #dante #devil may cry #detective reader #murder mystery #crime drama #eventual romance #the devil's in the details #i hope this set the stage for some crime solving fun!#harlot writes

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