One day after Apollo's death sentence he was walking back into his grave with a carboard tray of coffee in each hand.

After he had found out that he was assigned to the dashing gentleman called Riptide he had a mini (massive) breakdown and was told to go home and sleep by his sister, and his best friend, and a coworker (Aphrodite) and another coworker who told him about how a good sleep could help him think clearer and process the information with a refreshed mind (Athena) and one of the bosses (Hera) so then he decided that he should probably go home and get a quick nap. That quick nap lasted 11 hours which was well into the day. So he took his time to get back since there was really no rush. He washed his hair and everything and around half 4 ish he headed over to the closest cafe to his work to get coffee. Long story short: he saw a cute guy seemly sobbing, he wasn't he was fine just dramatic, he didn't get his number but he did get coffee so you lose one you win one. And now he was walking back to the hellhole that paid him.

Once he got into the office he asked the first person he saw where he should go for his case board and they pointed over to the spare offices. Only one of them had the door open a slice so he went for that one first.

Apollo stepped into the spare office (now his, that was weird) and saw Artemis arguing with Aphrodite about the colour scheme of the case board. From what he could tell Artemis was going for different colours for each lead or potential link (thats probably what Apollo would've done if he had a choice) and Aphrodite was going for organisation with multiple strings (he didn't know either all he knew was it would end up working if they went for that, Aphrodite is scarily quick at connecting dots when its all laid out her way).

Apollo cleared his throat and the two women fell silent and Artemis slipped something into her pocket (was that a knife?!?!?) as they took in the rested blonde.

Artemis blinked at him, "Did you get much sleep?"

"11 hours and met a cute guy too while getting coffee," Apollo said cheerily. Setting the trays onto the lone desk pushed against the wall, he turned and handed one to each of the women.

Aphrodite's eyes narrowed at him, "Was he single?"

"Didn't ask."

"What was he wearing?"

"A nice shirt that was probably fitted and jeans."

"Shoes?"

"I don't stare at people's feet Aphro," Apollo said dryly, taking a swig of his own coffee.

"And we should be talking about the last murder," Artemis said, cutting through the questioning.

Artemis was then mysteriously on the end of two piercing glares. Artemis didn't care about this and instead drank more coffee and turned away from them.

After a while Apollo signed," Where's the file?" It was passed to him without a word, he automatically began flicking through the papers. "Right so a female called Sarah White was found this morning by her roomate Abigail Quincy, dead in the kitchen. No noise in the night and no signs of struggle or entry found by the police or the detectives on scene. No evidence other than Sarah's phone and the hand print on the fridge." He looked up at the two, "Do they know who the hand print belonged to?"

Aphrodite leaned against the side of an empty armchair, "It belongs to Sarah, its the only sign that she wasn't dead when she went down. Probably fell and tried to catch herself."

"I agree with her, I checked it out like an hour ago. Looks just like a fall and the pictures all still look like that apart from the business card," Artemis said, eyeing the stringless board with distain.

Apollo skimmed through the rest of the pages, "Are we able to get her phone or the business card? Might be able to get something from there."

Artemis threw him a look over her shoulder, "Hermes is arguing right now for her phone, the regular detectives and her family think its private property despite her literally being murdered."

Apollo nodded, turning everything she said over in his head. "Ok ok ok, what about the card?"

"Sitting on top of Riptide's box," Aphrodite supplied while standing up and scribbling something onto a sticky note and pressing it to the board.

Apollo stratched over and grabbed the card, trusting that it had already been checked otherwise he was screwed for tampering with evidence. He flipped it over to see if there was any handwriting but it seemed that Riptide still liked his professional cards.

Work of Riptide, your favourite worldwide assassin. Bet you didn't expect to see me back so soon. Good luck trying to find me :D

"You are nowhere near my favourite you cocky cunt," Apollo muttered to the note. No he wasn't insane by talking to a piece of paper, shut up.

Artemis slurped her coffee, "Ooo alleriation nice. Our english teachers would be proud of you."

"No thanks, also did you decide what type of string to go for?"

After that they fell back into a simple routine of light bickering while sorting through old cases that linked to the assassin. Apollo zoned out the two women as he read through one of the first murders that followed Riptide's pattern. He almost tossed it over into a pile until he saw one tiny little detail.

Crime: murder
Entry: front door was open but no sign of forced entry
Evidence: victims phone, blood stain and key chain covered in blood
Security cameras: yes, poor footage quality

Victim: Gabriel Ugliano
Age: 39

Gender: Male
Details: An italian man who isn't well loved by neighbours, coworkers or ex partners.
Cause of death: Stab wounds on chest and slit throat
Potential enemies: Ex-wife's family all shown a hatred for him and offered the investigating detective a drink when he gave them the news
Criminal record: Yes, accusations of domestic abuse and attempted murder. None resulted in jail time (Ex-wife's family says he paid off the court and officers).

Apollo stared at the file with wide eyes, rereading it several times to be sure he saw it right. There was evidence and footage.

He stood up quickly and went to rush out of the room, almost bumping into Hermes, who was rushing into the room.

"Sorry!" Apollo called over his shoulder. "I need a laptop and a box."

A "Huh" came from the room but he ignored it and ran to the evidence room and began frantically looking for the boxes from 6 years ago. Unfortunately the earliest he could find was from 3 years ago.

Tearing apart the room again he managed to get lost in his own head, only to be brought out by a throat clearing behind him.

Apollo whirled around and saw Hera looking at him with an eyebrow raised. "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to find the evidence boxes from 6 years ago, there was evidence in one of Riptide's first cases. But the earliest I can find is from 3 years ago."

Hera pushed off the wall and beckoned for him to follow her, "You can blame Zeus for that, he organises for ones to come in every year a take out the furtherest away stuff. Says that if it's been here that long then it isn't going to be used."

"Thats stupid."

"I agree, you aren't the first to need something but usually its other agencies or the local detectives. For now I would say to try find what you can on the system, that won't be cleared out any time soon." Hera walked him back to his old desk. "By the way, did you manage to get much sleep?"

Apollo picked up his laptop and slipped a few pens into his pockets. "I did actually, I managed to get around 11 hours then I washed my hair."

"Thats good." She lifted some sticky notes and flashcards and set them on top of his laptop. "Remember to take breaks on this case and if you need another set of eyes at any time come to me."

"Yes Ma'am."

"Good, now get back to work."

After that he opened the door to his office and walked in.

Hermes' head snapped up, "Where's the box you nearly sent me flying for?"

Setting down the computer and taking everything off it he said, "Apparently Zeus throws out all evidence thats been here for longer than 3 years." He then sat down and began going through the files.

Artemis scoffed, "Thats stupid."

"Thats what I said, but I still have something else." Grinning he turned his laptop around and showed them the dark and grainy background to his laptop.

Hermes poked him on the side of the head, "Are you ok? Is your laptop broke?"

"Its footage," Aphro said. "For outside the apartment of Gabriel Ugliano. It says here that its from a bad quality camera."

"Footage is footage."

"Exactly," Apollo agreed with his sister.

The three of them crowded around him as he pressed play and they all watched the frankly awful footage. Nothing could be seen at all. Then the video ended.

"Wait, play that again," Hermes said. "Slow it down at the end."

Apollo did as he was told and they watched the video again.

The black and grey moved around, there was a slight dot of colour before the video shut off.

Apollo rewound it back and paused when the colour came up.

A dark green line under a red dot.

They stared for a moment before Apollo broke the silence, "Riptide has green eyes."

"Could be contacts," Aphrodite said hesitantly.

"Its still something, dark green contacts are harder to come by than most colours. Especially that shade. Most green contacts are far lighter. So either Riptide has that colour of eyes or he went to a lot of effort to find a good set."

Hermes rested an arm of Apollo's head, "Not to go against you but contacts are a lot easier to get by nowadays."

Artemis' hands came over and moved the mouse to print the screen. "Not good coloured contacts, single use for rare colours are pretty common. But we looked at a few other things a while back when Riptide was just whoever was unlucky and in a few he has the same colour eye, but we've only ever seen the left one in videos."

The scribbling noise of a pen came from behind them. They turned and faced Aphrodite, "So we have 3 possibilities that can lower our search radius. 1, Riptide has naturally dark green eyes. 2, Riptide buys a lot of cheap contacts and only uses them in the left eye. Or 3, Riptide bought high quality multi-use coloured contacts." She grabbed a tac and stuck the flashcard to a second board with the title 'Appearance'.

Apollo leaned back and looked at the green tac she had used, "We have our first lead."

I just want to say that I did zero research for this chapter, the only thing I know about detectives is Brooklyn 99 and a few books :D

Also idk if the contact thing is true but in this fic it is but if anyone knows more about buying coloured contacts please let me know.