As mentioned in the previous chapter, this story is now taking a darker turn; more of the sex is on the non-consensual side, and it starts to verge on Erotic Horror in places. However, because of the central theme I'm still classifying it as "NonHuman". If you want to know other specific elements of the story, please review the tags.
This chapter in particular is a bit longer than the others; there's more setup before the "action," but there wasn't a better place to break it up, I don't think.
As always, thanks to those who rate and comment on the stories.
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"Riley!"
The shout rang out across the office and shocked Riley into dropping the bottle into her desk drawer with a clang. As of a week ago it had seemed like the best place to stash the whiskey for when she needed to refill her flask.
The days since her stakeout fell apart had been torture for her, and pushed her as close as she'd ever come to quitting the force. Her captain and a few of the kinder veterans had told her not to sweat it and everyone had leads that didn't pan out, but the cases assigned to her now were shit work and her peers had been less than kind, throwing her own enthusiasm in her face and all but accusing her of chasing headlines. As her former partner Ben had pointed out "hot coeds become insatiable sluts" worked even better as a headline than it did as a porn title, and if she'd been the lead detective on such a case, she was guaranteed her 15 minutes of fame, if not more.
She and Ben had officially parted ways earlier in the week, but she thought his claim it wasn't personal was bullshit. Ben had never liked her wild, irreverent attitude and she knew he'd stuck with her just because she closed cases. Now she was being asked to follow up on home robberies or auto break-ins. She knew he was off to chase someone who had even the remotest chance of being handed a homicide or assault case.
The other men in her life were no help either. She'd invited Brett over a few more times, but after last weekend he'd blown her off, claiming he wasn't going to help her destroy herself. She
had
asked him if he had any contacts on campus for something harder than alcohol, assuring him it wasn't a sting, but apparently his ego was too big to let him carry on with a woman almost 10 years older than him who got a little wilder than he did. She was still probably on good terms with Jim, but their work schedules were wildly incompatible; it wasn't literally a case of him starting when she finished her shift, but it was close enough. She had hopes she might be able to put something together that night, but it was an even bet her captain was about to hand her a weekend shift babysitting a construction site.
She composed herself and walked into the captain's office, where he threw a folder across his desk to her.
"You're still technically lead on this case, and with what happened to you a couple weeks ago nobody's going to touch it," he said.
She picked up the folder and skimmed the complaint. It described a disturbance at a firm downtown where a man claimed he was sexually assaulted by a female colleague, but as she read on to the descriptions of the woman's behavior and her resistance to arrest, she got excited.
"There's another one," she said, trying to keep an "I told you so" tone out of her voice.
"I'm sending you down alone," her captain said, "The scene isn't dangerous, the suspect's on her way to the hospital like the others. Figure this shit out! It seemed like you made a mountain out of a molehill with this before but if you didn't then you need to get some goddamned answers. It won't be long before someone in the press starts connecting this."
The captain had to practically shout the last bit at her as Riley was already turning to run back to her desk and get her keys. She ignored the questioning stares and looks of her colleagues and clamped down on her desire to lord it over them; this could still blow up in her face. As the captain said, if this was a legitimate problem she didn't get credit for identifying it early unless she also came up with a solution.
She dialed Doctor Shevade as she drove.
"I heard," Shevade said.
"Hi to you too, Doc," Riley quipped.
"You need to be thorough over there. Take samples, interview people for silly details," Shevade insisted.
"I know how to do my job, thank you," Riley said, still too excited to be annoyed at the doctor, "And samples of what? It's not a murder, we've got witnesses, the victim can still talk, what do we need DNA for?"
"Detective," Shevade said, "Did you read the initial report?"
"I skimmed it."
"This woman was in work the night before. This is the soonest we've had access to one of the victims. She might actually recall something about being infected."
"I thought you said it wasn't an infection."
"Fine, what do you want to call it?" the Doctor snapped.
"Easy doc," Riley said.
"Apologies," Doctor Shevade said, "But you're not the only one that's been getting pressure related to this issue. As you can imagine the families are frantic. They have sick daughters with no known malady, much less a cure. Ordinarily people like them would band together and start a foundation or something to fund research but what can they say?"
"Yeah, 'please help our daughters who are catatonic nymphos' doesn't play well on Oprah," Riley said.
"Come by the hospital after you're done at the scene," Dr. Shevade suggested, "I might have something."
Riley arrived at the office building and found the firm's name on the directory list. The security guard on the lower floor seemed a bit perkier than most, probably because of the parade of police that would have gone through. She knew from the report he wasn't involved with the incident; the people in the firm's office had called the police directly.
Up on the actual floor, there was a buzz of activity. It was just after ten in the morning and while the incident had happened at something like 7am, the combination of text and social media communication to coworkers, plus the wide variety of starting times that featured in a modern office, meant every ten minutes since the incident someone new had walked through the door to see what was going on. Based on the looks she saw pass between people and some of the greetings, there were people in the office today that usually either worked from home or had the day off.
Rather than making immediately for the victim, Riley wandered the office and listened to the chatter. She found in situations like this the crowd often pointed out avenues of investigation that could guide her interrogations.
After taking notes for 30 minutes or so she started with Mike Callahan, the director the victim attacked. The guy was older but kept himself in decent shape; Riley guessed if a girl decided to fuck her way to the top, this guy would be a tolerable step in that direction.
"Look Mr. Callahan, it took me five minutes of simply listening to the gossip in your office to figure out you two were an item. Nobody is surprised you two were lovers, they're just shocked because your attacker-"
"Heidi," Callahan interrupted.
"-Heidi was so blatant about it and seemed to be manic when she was escorted out. So what happened? Did you break it off after one last ride and she flipped? Did you play the 'I'm working it out with my wife' card the other day and she ambushed you?"
"No!" Callahan said, "We...It....look this is confidential, right?"
