The Internship Gone Wrong

It was a foggy Saturday morning in London, England, and as I walked towards my internship, I felt a strong sense of foreboding to the day.  I walked past a beautifully earthy park and then crossed the street onto the sidewalk.  I passed a little vintage diner and then a few abandoned alleyways, all leading up to my destination; the Police Station.  My brunette hair was wild in the wind, and the cold frost of the late autumn morning kept me refreshed.  Climbing up the steps and wrapping my jacket tightly around my frail body I slid into the building, signed in, and continued into the break room.  I sat in my cushioned chair, watching the steaming coffee trickle into the pot.  The loud drip, drop was the only sound that filled the silent room. Drip, drip, drip, I listened and waited.  The silence was broken when a voice rung out in the room nextdoor.  “What do you mean you haven’t figured it out?!” the voice yelled. 
Another voice, an older voice joined in, “We are sorry, sir, for your loss, but we need to ask you to stay calm.”  The sound of weeping filled the room, and curious, I checked the big cases that the station was working on today.  One case in particular stood out to me the most.  A woman had been found dead outside a local club, and the station was trying to figure out who the culprit was.  When the coffee was finally ready, I made the chief’s regular, two creams and one sugar, and carried the coffee to his office.  I had been at this internship for almost a whole year and was expecting to be hired for real, hopefully sometime soon.  Opening the door to the office I saw Chief Jones filling out paperwork.  Sitting down in front of him, and handing him his coffee I asked, “Tough case?”
  He sighed deeply, “Oh, you have no idea.”  Running his hands down his face tiredly, and sighing once again, he took a sip of his coffee.  I got up, ready to leave the room, but was soon stopped when the door to the chief’s office flung open and in paced Officer Daniels, his face red and hair disheveled; the color of his skin making the bags under his eyes more prominent. 
“Daniels, you look horrible,”  I chirped.  Turning towards me, glaring, he chuckled humorlessly; he then continued on to talk to Chief, as if I wasn’t even in the room.
“I cannot do this anymore Chief!  I’m overly exhausted and this case is eating me up!”
“How come it’s eating at you, Daniels?”
“It’s just all too much.”  Mumbling incoherently, Daniels walked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.  Chief and I sat in silence for a few minutes thinking deeply about  what had just happened.  I got up, ready to leave the room.  As I walked out that door, I made the decision that I would not let this case negatively affect my job, even if that meant I would have to solve this case by myself, then I, Samantha Greene would do it.
At the end of the day, I was on my way out of the building when my close friend Hannah Lopez pulled me aside.  Hannah and I graduated from Lincoln high school together over in the United States.  We both moved here after high school, and then we took a few months before college to look for internships to help with our college credits.  I studied Forensic Psychology, while Hannah studied Criminal Justice.  That’s when we both decided to try to intern for the Police Station, and we have both been there since.   Hannah is very small like myself, and she stood at a good 5’2”.  She has beautiful blonde hair and dark brown eyes.  She is very shy, quiet, and awkward around people, but she helps out with secretary work at the Police Station.  I looked over what she was wearing today.  She was wearing a pair of black dress pants with a white button up shirt and a pair of black dress shoes.  Hannah had on a full face of makeup, as usual, and she was wearing fake nails, in a bright pink color, but one of the nails were broken off.
She pulled me close and whispered into my ear, “I thought you might want to know that Daniels has just taken a leave of absence from his job here.”
“What?!  How long will he be gone?”
“He hasn’t decided yet.”  I said my goodbyes to Hannah, but before I left the station, I snuck into the filing room and downloaded the files from this case onto a thumb drive.  After that, I continued on my way home.  I lived in an apartment uptown so the walk home wasn’t too long.
When I got into my apartment, I took in the new decorations I had just put up.  There were Christmas lights lining the walls because I was very excited for the upcoming holiday.  I did, however, have some left over Halloween decorations in my two bedroom home.  There were mini pumpkins, warm candles, and fall colors still floating around in the apartment, but I didn’t mind because it made the apartment more cozy.
I then took off my dress shoes and sauntered into the kitchen to start brewing a hot pot of coffee.  I knew that I was going to be up very late tonight working on the case.  I lit a few candles and after taking a long hot shower, I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down in front of my laptop.  Yawning, I knew already that this was going to be a very long night.
It was three a.m.  I was completely exhausted and on my fifth cup of coffee.  I had been thoroughly reading through everything involving the case.  Witness reports, suspects, and the forensics.  So far I had learned the following:  The woman’s name was Taylor Lowe.  She had gone out with friends to a local club.  The club was downtown, and when Taylor had gone out of the back door of the club to get some air, it looks like someone had followed her out and hit her from behind.  The victim had scratches all over her, and her clothes were torn a bit.  This most likely means that the hit from behind hadn’t knocked out Taylor, but just distracted her, and then Taylor continued to put up a heck of a fight.  However, the cause of death was a stab wound to the stomach.  The weapon was a broken piece of glass found near the body, but the weapon was wiped clean of prints.
I looked over at my computer, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  This last part of the files included items found on the scene and on the victim.  The victim had alcohol in her system, and there had been common things surrounding the body:  beer cans, bottles, cigarette butts, her cellphone, and oh my god, this can’t be right!  It just can’t!
I was on the city bus to take me downtown.  I got off of the bus, and then I walked into the Empire Hotel.  Taking the elevator up to floor four, I walked to the first door on the right and knocked.
The door swung open and out walked a very disheveled Daniels.  He had red rimmed eyes and big black bags beneath his eyes.
I stared slyly toward Daniels, “Why is this case bothering you so much?”
“I have a ten month old daughter and...”  His voice broke off, his eyes were watering.  He continued, “This girl that was killed… she was practically a kid, she had family, and parents.  I’m a parent, and I cannot imagine what her parents are feeling right now, and I hope that I never have to feel that way.”  I sighed at his response. 
“I need your help…” 
Daniels turned to me abruptly and said, “You know who killed that girl.”
“Yes.  I do…”
“Then why do you need my help?”
“I need to find evidence that connects the victim to the culprit.” 
Daniels and I, we spent the rest of the morning finding connections.  When we finally came to the conclusion, neither of us had slept that night, and we raced to the station.  Barging into Chief’s office we explained our reasoning.  I explained it to Chief,  “Taylor Lowe had a tan-line on her ring finger.  This means that she was wearing a ring on her left hand.  This implies that she is married.  However, there are no marriage records, so this leads us to believe that it was a promise ring, or a ring given to her by a boyfriend.  However, when the body was found, her ring was not there.”
“What are you getting at guys?”  Chief replied.  I looked at him, astonished that he wasn’t catching on.
“It means that the culprit took the ring with them in order to hide the evidence.”  Daniels then decided to chirp in.
“This was when we decided to look through Taylor’s phone records, and we came across two numbers that she exchanged calls with multiple times for the past year.  The first number belonged to a Mr. Walter Johnson while the second number belonged to his wife.  We believe that Taylor and Mr. Walter Johnson were having an affair, and that was when his wife found out.  Taylor had exchanged many texts with the wife, and the wife had threatened her multiple times.  The wife then called her on the night of Taylor’s death.”
“Who is the wife?!”
“Let us finish Chief, this is where it gets difficult.  On Taylor, along with the many scratches, there had been a single false finger nail laying beside her body.”
“How is this important?”  Asked Chief.
“Well it just so happens that when Taylor was attacked the culprit broke her nail.  Walter's wife is missing a false finger nail, and the wife’s name is Hannah Lopez.”
Three months later, the trial of Lopez vs Lowe was finally finished, and Hannah was found guilty of manslaughter.  She will be in jail for 25 years or more.  Samantha however, was finally hired at the police station as a personal assistant/secretary.  She was also promised a better job in the department as an officer once she finished college and got her degree.  Chief soon retired, and Daniels took over as chief of the department.  Last but not least, the Lowe family mourned and a tribute was made to Taylor.