Love Between Law and Life

Chapter 1: The Psychic and the Detective… sounds like the start of a cliché

            Florence yelps and drops her hot cup of coffee on the ground, cursing as the hot liquid splashes over her unprotected feet. The apparition before her just tilts its head emotionlessly, hands clasped in front like some sort of prayer. “For the love of all things good…”

            ‘Please, you must help me.’ It whispers, its voice is rough and raspy. Florence sighs and leans one hand on the front desk of the bookshop, waiting for the burning on her feet to ease a little. She’s well familiar enough with this to know how it goes. It’s not like ghosts care that she has a bookshop to take care of for a living or anything, no it’s all ‘deliver this message’, ‘help me’, or ‘make sure the bastard’s dead’. Never a proper greeting or even a ‘hi, sorry for bothering you, how is life?’

            “And what can I help you with today, my love?” Florence knew that she probably show more emotion than that considering that the apparition – adult female, now that she properly looks – is covered in mud and looked like she went ten rounds with an angry boar before she hit the dirt, but she’s been through this so many times, she’s pretty sure her empathy scale is just gone.

            Florence had seen all types, it didn’t even stick to just humans, there are quite a few animals that either didn’t realised that they weren’t quite among the living or refused to leave without protecting their owner to their end. For humans, it could be adults, kids, old age, or death by other forces. It used to affect her, but too many years and too much stress in her life changed that.

            ‘You have to find me, please. He will hurt others.’ That catches the psychic’s attention, she frowns and takes a slow step closer, tilting her head to catch the hallow eyes of the crying apparition. This was the part that got her every time something like this, it pained her every time she had to learn that someone had lost their life unfairly. It disgusted her how some people could just be so cruel, and people like her had to see the aftereffects of these poor lost souls just trying to make sure that no one else ended up like them.

            “Alright, tell me as much as you can. I’ll do everything I can to get the news to the police.” She ignores the cooling coffee staining the hardwood floors, listening to every word of the shaking being before her. “I’ll do what I can. Thank you very much for coming to me.”

            She says to thin air, literally, as the apparition disappears when the door behind the counter knocks loudly. Florence jumps as the sound pulls her back to reality, head turning to greet her eleven-year-old son with a smile. Kaleo just beams at her, a stolen cookie in his mouth. “Hey mom!” He greets her, crumbles flying everywhere.

            Florence just chuckles and shakes her head, not ready to chase the little ball of energy in hopes of taking away the tooth rotting sugar wedged in his teeth. “What did I say about that?”

            “No cookie until after school?” He says with a grin, knowing full well what he did wrong. Florence snorts, picking up his bag from on top of the counter. He rushes over and patiently puts it on his back, laughing as she runs a hand through his hair.

            “Come on, we’re going to be late for said school that hasn’t even started yet.” She pulls on her well-worn shoes at the side of the door, being careful to lock the store up before she got in the car.

            “Well, it ended yesferday, and I didn’t take any cookies, so I took them today.” He tries to reason with her seriously as he finishes off the snack. Florence barks out a laugh of surprise as he pulls off the curb, heading in the direction of the school.

            “Is that so?”

            “Mmhmm!” People told her that a teenage pregnancy would never work, she needed the support of her family and money she couldn’t even begin to earn. At twenty-eight, having passed through a homeless shelter, back-end apartments, online college, and ridiculous hours of work, she takes one more glance at the bookstore in her mirror. She did damn good on her own.

            Florence runs a hand through her ragged pixie cut hair in hopes of getting it to settle neatly on her head. If the raised eyebrow of a police officer at a desk was indication, it just made her bird nest worse. She was irritated, coffee deprived and late. The bookstore was supposed to open almost an hour ago, but instead she was in a police precinct where half the occupants shot her odd looks and the other half raised their eyebrows at her from stories they must have heard.

            “Captain Akamu, a word if you please.” The psychic nods at the man in question, hands in her jeans pockets. Akamu nods at her, before flashing the officer he was talking to the shaka and walking over to her. Akamu was one of the very few people that Florence could stand to be around. Yes, he made the usual psychic jokes, but it was more out of poking a reaction from her or eliciting another rant on both the supernatural and living having no manners. He usually took her seriously, looking into everything she said, but it doesn’t actually hold up in court if you say the dead guy told you he wanted retribution.

            “What can we do for our resident madhouse?” He tilts his head with a smile.

            “You’re running out of jokes, I think you’ve successfully used that one three times.” Florence returns a shark-like grin, humour laced in her tone. From the sound of a few officers slowing to hear the conversation, they didn’t quite approve of a nobody talking to their Captain so casually.

            “Yea, Healani hasn’t found any new ones for me to use yet with how often I see you.” Healani was his wife, a spicy woman that would ensure you left her house with a couple pounds you didn’t arrive with. There were a few times when a particular case had a lot of leads to follow up on and not a lot of time, when that happened, Akamu used to open up his home to Florence so that she could have a place to make sure Kaleo had the chance for a proper sleep. It was the main reason she and Haelani had gotten so close, the woman couldn’t be bothered about her ability to see the beyond. If anything, it gave them more to gossip about.

            A couple years later, Kaleo a little older and the bookstore fully under her name, Florence had basically retired as being a sort-of psychic consultant for the police force. Of course, ghosts don’t exactly retire, but Akamu had taken everything in stride, offering a place of quiet when they needed to talk. She genuinely hated that the only times she saw either of them as of late, was when she had bad news.

            “Tell her I said aloha.”

            “I will, she’d love to hear from you, so what brings you here today?”

            “…a murder case.” She winces as a couple of officers listening on their conversation shakes their head. Akamu shoots all of them a brief glare before waves Florence to his office in the back.

            Florence raises her eyebrows at the woman sitting somewhat haphazardly on the chair in front her Captain’s desk. She’d placed her feet just on the edge and her entire weight was rocking the only two legs of the chair that remained on the ground. The woman turned to face them with an uncaring glaze, only tilting her head curiously as she noticed the new face. Blue eyes analysed her clinically.

            The psychic has to admit that she was a little distracted as she walked in. The woman was definitely from the mainland if the somewhat formal dressing was any indication, who wears black pants and a grey shirt in this heat? That’s basically asking for a heat stroke. The badge at her side meant that she was detective, but her hairstyle didn’t quite suit. It was an undercut, the top was long enough to reach her waist and tied off at the end, two braids starting from the top was clipped off by a silver band.

            “Ah yes, Miss Rhodes, pleasure to see you so early for once.” Akamu nodded at their occupant, moving around Florence to get to his desk. Rhodes just nods and sits up, tossing her empty cup of coffee in the bin. “Your case checked out, all of them will be arrested for the robbery.”

            “Fun.” She takes the case he hands her and stands, nodding at the quiet with a brief smile before walking out. As she passed by, Florence couldn’t help noticing that she was easily a head taller than the psychic, it really put things into perspective. Akamu really needed to stop hiring hot people, or Florence was going to kick a fuss every time she had to walk in his precinct.

She wasn’t looking for a hook-up, especially as Kaleo was still so young and she wasn’t really excited on the whole prospect of introducing someone to him that might not stick around, but it didn’t stop her from looking and admiring. And there was a lot to admire. Florence shook her head, she was here for business. Besides, it was getting later by the minute, she was still coffee deprived and she was starting to get the hives from being in the precinct for too long.

“Who’s that?” Of course, she could help but ask. Akamu laughs as they sit down, grinning at her as though he knew exactly what she was thinking. Sometimes she wondered if the man already knew that she rooted for all sides despite her never telling him. She wouldn’t be surprised though, the man was a detective after all.

            “That was Detective Roberta Rhodes, better known as Bobbie, as she uh, kindly insisted everyone call her. She moved in as one of us after a case went deadly sour a year back in New York. Has good spirit and is honestly one of the best detectives I’ve seen…”

            “But?”

            “But she’s reckless to high hell. It’s a genuine surprise that she’s even alive at this point. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t found a case for her that she hasn’t been able to solve yet, but she keeps scaring off any detective I put as her partner.” Akamu shook his head with a sigh, pulling out a couple file pages from his desk, “But enough of that. I know that you’re late for the bookstore, so let me not take up too much of your time.”

            “Mahalo.” Florence sighed and leaned back in the chair. This was probably going to be one interesting case for Akamu if the increasingly tired look on his face was anything to go on.

            Bobbie walked to the far side of the precinct, nodding her head at the couple off officers standing outside one of the interrogation rooms. She watches as they cart them off with a grim smile on her face. Another case closed and another to be opened in the next hour. At this point, it just felt like an endless cycle of work. She still enjoyed it - the thrill, the mystery, the action, but it wasn’t the same as New York.

            It wasn’t the same without her partner. She’s been on the great island of Oahu for the last five months, but she still couldn’t seem to fit in anywhere. Being a haole didn’t really help, most people just assumed she was tourist and walked right past her on good days. It was true that she purposely scared off any partner Captain Akamu sent her way – and she was waiting for the day the Captain admitted that he knew what she was doing, I mean, no one loses that many partners that fast -, but it didn’t make sense keeping them around if they couldn’t ensure that they wouldn’t die on her within the first week.

            It wasn’t like she was hurting them, at least. One conveniently had coffee spilled all over him and had to go get a change of shirt. The other couldn’t quite seem to find his glasses. A particular one Bobbie had fun with, was the young woman with a high-pitched voice who accidently got left behind on the side of the road when Bobbie was alerted that there was new evidence. Oh, the disgruntled look plastered on the face of the hair mussed detective when Bobbie finally returned to the precinct with a solved case was too great to give up.

            Elliot was a hell of a man, aside from the endless ranting about police regulations, he could handle himself in a situation, and in New York… well, that spoke for itself. One case went wrong, information got leaked, a badly timed ambush and next thing she knew, she was attending a funeral with Elliot’s husband hardly able to look her in the eye. Of course, she threw herself into her work after that, intent on solving the case even when her Captain took away her badge and gun and told her to go home.

            She’d solved it, she’d put all of them behind bars with a nasty grin on her face but there was no feeling of victory in her chest. She’d lost more than she’d gotten. Bobbie did the next best thing she could think of when her Captain forced her to take a vacation, she applied for a transfer to Hawaii. It was a last second idea, not her best, but it was better than dragging her feet around in a precinct where every cop looked at her with pity.

            She loved Oahu, don’t get her wrong, but the heat. The unpredictable rain, her inability to pick up the slang and the sand that got everywhere. She felt like she was still knocking sand out of her boots at the end of the day even when she’d been far inland for most of it.  Bobbie shook her head and dropped the files on her desk, glancing back at the closed blinds of Captain Akamu’s office.

            The woman that walked in had definitely caught her attention Between the crazy pixie cut that was half grey at the front and her ‘I’m not really in the mood to handle your issues’ look, Bobbie had to admit she was interested. Half a head shorter didn’t stop the level of feisty that seemed to be rolling off her. The detective snorted with a smile, her thoughts were definitely not appropriate ones for someone that was either a close friend of the Captain or a potential victim.

            Besides, at thirty-two, she’d had seventy-one cases under her belt in New York and only ten in Oahu in the last five months. She wasn’t exactly planning to have her life occupied until she’s managed to match the number.

            Florence’s… abilities were not perfect. Years of working with it could attest to that. Yes, she saw ghosts – apparitions, phantoms, whatever ever people decided to call it, but it was more than that. These beings could see her, they could tell that she was different, that she could see. It’d caused her a lot of problems over the years, between a kid version of her trying to explain to the doctor that there was a crying girl sitting on his table to pointing out people on the streets that her parents couldn’t see.

            It wasn’t really apparent to her that this was not normal until she was much older, sitting by a swing on her lonesome after school, waiting for her parents to pick her up. A young boy stayed with her the entire time, telling her cool stories of the big house he used to live in. He was kind, and never seemed angry when she interrupted his story. It was only after explaining the young boy to her parents, a couple of worried looks, to many questions from the police, she’d realised that she’d help them find the body of a boy who’d been missing for weeks.

            Yes, it was creepy, and it did leave her a little deterred, but it didn’t stop there. Visions and dreams were a little rarer unless she went looking for it, but that one came with a painful downside. Visions left her with nose bleeds and pounding headaches, the aftermath of dreams were like a hangover without the alcohol. Auras were up on that list, not perfect, but it was there. If she focused too long, she was going to be dizzy and lightheaded by the end of the day. Most of the time, she just relied on reading people through actions with the auras as a backup.

            Florence had indeed considered joining the police force. Unfortunately, that whole idea had been thwarted by her ex-boyfriend who would receive a very broken nose the next time she saw him. Yes, at seventeen, it was a horrible idea. It didn’t help that the phone call to her parents after she’d realised ended so badly that she’d just picked up and left without much of a word. She hasn’t been home since.

            She didn’t regret Kaleo one bit though. He was the light of her life, the one thing that kept her truly happy. He didn’t quite have the abilities she had, but he had the occasional chance of seeing one of the ‘beyond’ as Florence kindly put it. The one upside of her abilities is that if there were an older adult that could see ghost and easier to communicate with, they generally left the younger one alone.

            Florence gave a little relieved sigh as she finally put the mop away and looked back at her clean store. An hour late, but it was finally time to open the bookstore.