#ic: general

[officerjacqueline-blog]

date: june 3 time: 11 pm location: saint james ballroom status: open

They had been over and over the case. The detectives were stumped about the man who had gone missing on his way home from the ballroom two weeks ago, and with no leads and no desire to go back to her empty apartment, Jacqueline decided to take the initiative to do her own questioning. There had to have been something they were missing, some key witness that they weren’t quite managing to catch. Eyes scanning the ballroom, she landed on one person sitting alone at the bar and approached with decisive steps. Although clearly not dressed for the ballroom in her leather jacket and work boots, her badge was tucked safely away in her pocket until she assessed how best to handle this situation. “Excuse me,” she said politely, approaching the figure from behind.

[officerjacqueline-blog]

helpful.

date: july 10 time: 1 pm location: the streets of paris status: closed to @sebastianrenard​

After a month in a sling, Jacqueline was more than ready to get back to business as usual. It was infuriating to do things one-handed, always having to take her injury into account. She had gotten the sling off on Friday, and things seemed like they were getting back to normal, but this morning she had woken up at 4 am to the sound of rain pattering against her windowpane and her shoulder aching more than it had in weeks. She heard that injuries did this sometimes, that it probably would continue to do this for years if not the rest of her life, but that didn’t make it any more frustrating.

Determined to pretend like it wasn’t bothering her, she set off to work, planning on catching up on work that Helene had forbid her from doing while she recovered. But they had taken one look at her pale, sweating face and sent her right back home, refusing to even let her take on a simple beat. After some cajoling, they did agree to let her take a box of paperwork home, since she was finally able to write again. If they had known that Jacqueline had walked to work in the rain, expecting to be walking around Paris all day anyways, they might have reconsidered, but Jacqueline didn’t tell them.

Which was how Jacqueline found herself walking through the streets of Paris, balancing the box awkwardly with her good arm, doing her best to hold a shaking umbrella with her aching one. She made it about a quarter of the way home before the precarious situation went tumbling down. The box landed hard (but thankfully on its bottom with the lid still on; the papers remained inside), and the umbrella skittered down the sidewalk. Jacqueline cursed under her breath, dropping to her knees and scooping up the box. The soggy bottom of it bulged and she clapped her bad arm underneath it to support it, aggravating it. She gave out a cry and let the box drop awkwardly into her lap as she cradled her bad arm, eyeing the umbrella and wonder how she was going to support the box well enough to get it home.

[officerjacqueline-blog]

suspicious.

date: july 8 time: 10 pm location: the point of no return status: closed to @sorelli-lisette

Jacqueline leaned against the wall, holding her arm to her chest. The sling had come off yesterday, but after almost a month in it, the habit was hard to break. When she noticed herself doing it, she forced the arm back to her side. The sling was off, and that meant (at least as far as she was concerned) that she was back on the case. She had spent her month of “rest” pouring over the case files, taking into account every call and anonymous tip given about the robbery that fateful night. She had been waiting to come back here and scope out the scene. She had been seeing this place in her dreams.

But now that she was actually here, she had no idea what to do with herself. There was no one here she recognized. She kept thinking she saw people out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned, sure that she was about to face one of the gunmen who had taken two of her own, there was just some innocent patron. Or, well, as innocent as a patron of a gambling den could be. It was enough to make her feel a bit out of her head. There was a flash of blonde hair out of the corner of her eye -- the exact same shade of the gentleman she had watched go down after she fired her gun -- the boy she had killed -- it was self-defense, blood had been dripping -- her shoulder had been screaming, someone was screaming --

There was no screaming. And there was no boy. Just a blonde woman ... but a blonde woman in a rather suspicious position. And, well, one of the anonymous tips had mentioned a blonde woman driving a getaway car. It had been marked as probably unreliable, but Jacqueline believed it. She wanted to believe it right now, anyways, and that amounted to about the same thing. She stalked to the woman confidently, one hand hovering near her hip but not touching. She was on edge, but she was still the good guy, and good guys didn’t pull out their concealed weapons for no reason. “Excuse me,” she said curtly.

[officerjacqueline-blog]

aftermath.

date: june 10 time: 1 am location: hospital status: open

Get some rest, the nurse said. You’ll be released tomorrow, but for now, get some rest. As if she’d be able to sleep. Two of her officers were dead; she herself had watched one of the bandits go down, his eyes turning glassy, blood pouring from the bullet hole she had put in his chest. It had gone in slow motion, watching him drop. He couldn’t have been older than 25, and she had killed him. And he had killed one of their new recruits, a kid not two weeks into his new position. Things went sour sometimes, she had been on the force long enough to know that, but she was still trying to wrap her head around just how wrong it had gotten.

Between that and the pain in her shoulder, how was she supposed to sleep? She wandered the halls of the hospital, feeling more and more like a ghost. She half expected the person she passed by to simply look over her, proving that she wasn’t even there at all ... but that didn’t happen, of course. She was alive. The new kid, the other officer, and five of the bandits, including the kid she killed ... they were gone. She was still here. And so was whoever caused all of this to happen. If she wasn’t going to sleep, shouldn’t she make herself useful?

“Were you involved, tonight?” She didn’t remember the faces of most of the people there. Just the one. But she wasn’t likely to be seeing him unless she took a trip down to the morgue. A shiver tried to work its way up her spine, but she suppressed it.