"Sir!"
Snapping out of his tunnel vision, Alexei turns to his left.
"I'll take the lady for now. Her husband is currently waiting for her." a police officer says, pointing to the grieving mother.
"What lady?"
"Mrs. Kansaye, the woman you're hugging."
Letting go of the crying woman, Alexei turns back to the white sheet, taking a seat on the cold pavement.
"This can't be real. It can't be." the young man murmurs, covering his face with two hands.
Peeking through two fingers, he stares down at the concrete and smiles a little.
"I still remember the time I tried to race you home and ended up falling head first on a hard concrete surface just like this one."
*BAM!*
After punching the ground, the devasted man looks at his now bloodied knuckles.
"Out of everyone in the world and it had to be you, Amir. Why'd you have to go so soon, Amir? I shouldn't have let you wait for me, Amir."
Looking back up, Alexei stares at the sheet again for a few seconds, his gaze suddenly averting to a lone police officer, who was sipping a cup of coffee and laughing at something one of his co-worker's said.
Raising a brow, he shakes his head in disbelief.
"Is he...is he laughing? Is he seriously laughing while my friend is under that fucking sheet cold and lifeless?!"
Standing up, the young law student walks over to the officer, who takes another sip of his coffee.
"Excuse me."
The man turns to Alexei, and scowls under his breath.
"Can I help you?"
"Yes, yes you can. I need you to help me understand why the hell you're sipping coffee and laughing instead of actually walking around and at least pretending to do something."
The officer chuckles.
"And who might you be?"
Alexei points down to the white sheet.
"I was that man's closest friend, now put your fucking drink down and do your fucking job."
"I will once I'm finished with my coffee. I swear, it's always something you-
Landing onto the hard pavement, the officer looks up as Alexei crosses his arms and moves his foot back towards himself.
"Now that you've finished your drink, you can go get some work done."
Gritting his teeth, the officer reaches down to his side.
"You fucking ba-
"HEY!"
Looking up, Alexei and the officer turn to an older male, who happened to be the young officer's supervisor.
Walking over, the man puts a hand on his hip.
"What?! I know you saw that dumbass trip me and cause me to spill my coffee!"
The supervisor nods.
"So then why didn't you let me finish my job?!"
"You can finish it when there's not a lot of witnesses around. We don't need the station to be sued and drained of every single penny. For now, go inside and check to see if any of the detectives found something useful that we can release to the public."
The officer groans, and walks inside, turning back to Alexei and giving him a disgusted look.
Holding up the middle finger for a few seconds, the young law student sighs and walks back over to his car.
"Alexei."
The law student turns and watches as his newest acquaintance walks over.
"Good morning, Mr. Cizetto. Is there something you need?"
"No, I just wanted to give you my condolences. I'm very sorry about what happened to Amir."
Alexei gives him a saddened smile.
"Thank you. Now I just have to find a way to break the news to Khristina. She was so excited to see him."
Kazimir nods.
"Yes, she was extremely hyper about it during breakfast. It's almost as if she knew something would happen to him and she'd never get another chance."
Reaching into his pocket, the white-haired man pulls out a small piece of paper.
"I don't know if this might bring you some closure but here's what we found so far on his person. According to the coroner, he was killed sometime around four this morning."
Looking down at the piece of paper, the young law student shakes his head in disgust.
"Five bullets. Two in the neck, one in the chest, two in the stomach. What sick bastard wanted him to suffer?"
Alexei hands the paper back to Kazimir and he puts it back in his pocket.
"I should get back to work now. I probably can't do much but you can always call if you need something."
The young law student nods.
"Thank you, I'll keep that in mind."
Watching as Kazimir walks off, Alexei walks back to his car, getting in.
Starting it up, he looks at the house, his eyes widening slightly.
"Cameras. If I'm recalling this correctly, he told me he had cameras inside the house which were all connected to a-
Turning his car off, the young man takes out his phone, dialing each one of his professors and asking them to e-mail him any work that'd he would possibly miss for the week.
After about ten minutes, he throws his phone in the passenger seat, stepping out of his car.
Careful not to be seen, Alexei sneaks around to the back of the house, climbing inside through an open window.
Waiting for a couple of detectives to clear from the living room, he quickly runs upstairs.
"Which room did he say it was again?"
Looking into the final room, the young man nods, entering it and locking the door behind him.
Inside were a stack of video game discs, a few gaming consoles, and a large desktop computer.
Turning on the computer, Alexei waits for it to load, shaking the desktop a couple of times then stopping once he sees the word "enter".
Clicking the screen, he immediately clicks on the menu section, multiple applications quickly filling the screen.
"Files. Where's the files?"
Scrolling down a bit, he clicks on an application which had an icon of a file folder.
Clicking on the search bar, he quickly types in the name of the camera, clicking on a video with the current date.
An error box pops up and the young man groans.
"Can't play video?! Maybe it'll play if I disconnect the cameras from the Wi-Fi."
Heading to the security camera application, Alexei clicks on a section labeled "settings", selecting a box which says "disconnect".
Heading back to the files app, he clicks on the same video again, sighing in relief as it begins to play.
"Alright, let's see this bastard." he mutters, skipping the video to the 4th hour mark.
Stopping, the video plays through and the young law student pauses it as an unknown man breaks one of the kitchen windows, crawling in.
He skips it by a few seconds, before pausing the video again as the man cluelessly looks up towards one of the cameras.
Eyes widening, Alexei begins to smirk from ear to ear.
Taking out his phone, he snaps a few pictures of the computer screen.
"Well then. It looks as if I'll have to organize a fun game of tag, hmm?"
--- 2:44 P.M.; Claiza City Special Forces Department ---
"Mr. Cizetto!"
The man yawns as he lifts himself up, blinking a couple of times.
He looks up to see his new co-worker, Nia, sit down next to him.
"My bad, I didn't get much sleep this morning you see."
She smiles and nods.
"I understand. I don't mind staying here late, so if there's anything you need help with, then I'll look into it for you."
"Ah, it isn't safe for a young woman such as you to stay out past dark. I mean, what if there's some weirdo who slashes your car tires in an attempt to get you stuck here?" Caio chimes in. "Besides, you wouldn't want to worry your husband, would you?"
She gives the teal-eyed man a slight smile as he takes a sip of his soda.
"Well, my husband usually takes the car to work and he doesn't arrive back home until later than I."
Caio puts his soda down and raises a brow.
"He does what?"
Shaking her hands, she gives both men a warm smile.
"No, no. You have to understand that his job is farther away than mine."
"That may be true, but it'd still be quite courteous of him to let you borrow the car." Kazimir says, looking up from writing something down.
"I'll drop you off from now on." Caio adds.
"Oh, that's alright. I'm fine with walking, my house is only twenty minutes away so it isn't that far. Uh, anyway, we should get back to reviewing this current case. I'll go grab some extra sheets of paper for us to write on!"
The two men watch as the young woman quickly walks out of the room, Kazimir slightly jumping as Caio slams a fist on the table.
"Who the hell is her husband?!"
"Maybe we should ask her-
Kazimir stops mid-sentence as Caio turns to him, a blank but demonic look plastered across his face.
"Don't you suppose you have a bit too much on your plate? I mean, from school to this job to worrying about a woman. It's too much for a young man like you to handle."
He smiles and leans his chair back, taking another sip of his soda.
"I'll take care of whatever the problem is with Nia, okay?"
Kazimir shrugs.
"True, but I don't think one more problem should hurt me."
Putting the chair down with a loud thud, Caio gives Kazimir a threatening smile.
"I don't think you understand what I'm trying to say, so I'll put it bluntly."
His smile quickly fades and Kazimir raises a brow.
"When we're not working, stay away from Nia. We wouldn't want little Khristina-Bella visiting your grave every week, would we?"
Caio's smile quickly returns as the young woman enters back into the room, taking her seat in between the two men.
She smiles and picks up an ink pen.
"Okay! Let's get started!"