At six-thirty A.M. on the button, Gabriella was pulling up to a small townhouse next to a park.  She'd gotten the call at five-fifteen A.M., but due to traffic and wanting to look presentable, it had taken her an hour and fifteen minutes to make it to the location.  

"Morning, Detective!" Oh.  Right.  She didn't even glance over her shoulder as she heard Lawson's loud feet as he approached on her left.

"I, uh, brought you some coffee?  Thought maybe you'd want some?" Finally, she turned to look at him.  He held out a small cup to her.

"I'm fine right now, thank you." The gesture was nice enough, but Gabriella didn't want him thinking that he could win her over with coffee.  

As they approached the front door, they were met with an officer just exiting.

"What's the update?" Lawson asked him.

The officer raised an eyebrow. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm a fuckin' detective, dumbass!" Gabriella grabbed her partner's arm and shot him a look.  So he was that kind of guy, apparently.

"Sorry.  So what's the situation with the vitals?" she questioned, flashing an apologetic expression at the officer.

"We've already checked the vitals multiple times, he's definitely dead," he confirmed quickly, eyes flicking warily towards Lawson every few seconds.

"Thank you." Gabriella walked past him and entered the townhouse, dragging Lawson along with her. 

"What do you think you're doing?!" she demanded. "You better watch your attitude, Lawson."

He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw, but didn't say anything.

"Glad we're on the same page now," she said, releasing his arm and fishing through her bag for a light source.

Lawson squinted as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the building. "Damn.  Guess a vampire lives here or somethin'."

"No," she said flatly as she turned on her flashlight. "This is not the time for joking around."

Lawson said nothing in response until he suddenly made a face. "It smells like decay n' here."

"Perhaps the body is a few days old."

They continued through the house, and the further they made it, the more Gabriella began to pick up on the faint buzz of insects.  She glimpsed a few flies crawling on the walls and ceiling as they made their way into the kitchen.  The first thing she saw were the racks of cooking supplies, jars of sweets, and trays of baked goods against the walls.  The second was the stack of spaghetti sauce cans piled on the dining table.  And the third was the body.  The victim sat slumped at the table, face buried in a bowl.

Lawson lowered his flashlight as he walked up to the body, crouching down to do a closer inspection at eye level. "Yeesh.  Alright..."

He shone his flashlight beneath of the table next, and paused. "Hey Detective?  I got a bucket under here."

"What's in it?" Gabriella asked as she observed the cans upon cans of spaghetti sauce.  There were a startling amount of these cans.

Lawson bent down and ducked his head under the table to look, and a loud bang told her that he'd tried pulling his head back out a little too early.

"Vomit.  A lot of it," he answered. "Wait, give me a second."

Gabriella turned around as he returned once more from beneath the table.

"The victim's wrists and ankles are bound," he said. "If the rest of the scene didn't make it fuckin' obvious enough, this wasn't an accident."

"Please, for the love of god, watch your language," she sighed as she approached to investigate his new discovery. "We aren't children, and we certainly don't have to behave like them."

Either he was ignoring her or simply chose not to respond as she lowered herself beneath the table and shone her flashlight at the sight beneath.  Lawson was right- there was a large bucket filled with vomit, if the smell didn't give it away, and thick rope tied the victim's wrists and ankles together tightly.  

"So what killed 'em?" Lawson asked as she re-emerged. "Poison?"

"This is unusual for a case," Gabriella said, trying to avoid the question for as long as she could.  What had killed this person?

"Well, torture was involved, without a doubt.  But why?  And what's up with all o' the cans?" Lawson turned his head to look at the stack of spaghetti sauce cans. "There's some receipts next to 'em, too.  Whoever bought 'em made several trips."

"How strange."

"So what d'you think killed 'em?"

"I have my suspicions, but we should do an autopsy first," Gabriella lied.  She had no idea what she was looking at.  Whatever this was was unlike anything she'd seen before.

They returned to their respective cars to let the crime scene investigators do their own thing and so they could make their way to the facility where the autopsy would be performed.  Gabriella was grateful for the twenty extra minutes of traffic just so she didn't have to put up with Lawson for a little while longer.  Unfortunately, it seemed to be the one time where the traffic didn't take ages to clear, and she was at the medical offices before she knew it.  Thankfully, she had another few minutes while waiting for him so she could collect her thoughts and remind herself repeatedly to give her work partner another chance.

"Detective Roux?" A medical examiner emerged from a room and beckoned her inside. "We're ready for the autopsy."

Not even thirty seconds after she set foot in the room-

"Detective, I got the case report so far." The voice came from the doorway as Lawson entered, holding a file. "You must've just missed it, 'cause I got it as soon as I arrived.  The owner of the townhouse is a Mrs. Anna-Marie Crenshaw.  Single mother of one Cody Crenshaw.  Mrs. Crenshaw's reported to have been out of town on a business meeting.  The body belongs to her son.  Nineteen years old, well-known pastry chef around here."

Gabriella looked down at the body.  Now that she could see his face properly, he did look quite young.  Boyish face, curly ginger hair, and freckles.  She wasn't looking forward to having to break the news to Mrs. Crenshaw during questioning; he seemed like the kind of son to have a deep love for his mother.

She watched as the examiner began to take a closer look inside of the victim's body.  She'd grown used to seeing the metal tools cut through skin and flesh over the years.  It no longer fazed her, but she did see Lawson wince slightly out of the corner of her eye.  No surprise there.

"Hm, I'm not really seeing a cause of... oh." The examiner paused for a moment, as if puzzled at what he was seeing.

Gabriella looked over his shoulder as he pointed to an organ now on full display and explained, "His stomach... it somehow burst.  He would've had to be eating for a long time for something like this to happen.  I can't even begin to imagine how much he ingested- any sane person would've stopped long before this point."

"Well maybe it's because he was restrained and probably forced to eat," Lawson remarked dryly.

Gabriella glared at him as she said, "We now know that he was not poisoned, I suppose.  But being forced to eat until he died?  What a strange method of murder.  I don't understand it."

"That makes two of us," the examiner agreed. "I'll see what else I can get from this and send any more information to your office."

"Thank you," Gabriella said before turning on her heel and exiting.

She was not liking where this case was going.  It just wasn't laid out like most of her cases were.  usually the murder weapon was a knife, or a gun, or poison.  This?  This was spaghetti.  Who would force feed a young pastry chef spaghetti until his stomach burst?

"Detective!  The examiner just found this, right after you left!" Loud footsteps plus annoying Southern accent meant Lawson was approaching.

Still, Gabriella knew to not be rude, and turned to acknowledge him.  He handed her a small bottle, which seemed to have some sort of metal shavings inside.

"He found 'em in the stomach too."

She wished she hadn't heard those words.

***

(1340 words)