I actually wrote this awhile back when I first had the idea for it in November, but figured I ought to post it since I haven't made much headway in it. Jane Francisco is a character I came up with in middle school. I know she's a bit of a Mary Sue, so shoot me. It worked for Laurell K. Hamilton.

Prologue

8:45 a.m. Eastern Time.

After a cup of coffee with two creams, two sugars and a Boston cream donut at the nearest Mom and Pop’s, Detective Jane Francisco decided that it was time to face the day. Like most of her days, this would require her looking in the face of death, running down blind alleyways and making it back to a Mom and Pop’s for the 7 o’clock special. Tonight it was Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes with a side of peas. It had all the makings of a home-cooked family meal, even if Jane had never eaten such a thing outside of a Mom and Pop’s.

It was a grey day down by the docks, typical of an Atlantic coastal November, or most of the year for that matter. Everything was grey except for the sticky mess of dark crimson that once was a living person staining the docks. Detective Eddie Peters wasn’t sure what turned his stomach more, watching Jane dumping all that sugar into her coffee followed by devouring the donut in the time it took to rub a stray speck out of his eye or the cold mash of humanity lying in a puddle of blood at his feet. He was glad he had poured a little whiskey from his flask into his coffee that morning. Jane could keep her sugar.

“What a mess.” Eddie pulled the lapel of his trenchcoat across his nose. He hadn’t washed it in weeks so the smell wasn’t that much of an improvement to the smell of rotten fish and rotten human on the docks.

“Heh. I always wondered why you wear those.” Sergeant Marcus O’Reilly smirked, pointing a thick finger at Eddie’s coat. “I just thought you had seen one too many of those old movies on TV.”

“That would be it too, but I do like the practicality of a large coat.” Detective Jane Francisco snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and bent over the corpse. “It’s much easier than carrying a purse around.”

“Right Francisco, because you’d carry your gun right next to your lipstick,” the look Detective Francisco shot O’Reilly was enough for him to barely end the “k” at the end of his sentence.

Jane fished around in the pockets of the John Doe’s windbreaker before checking the back pockets. She pulled out a wallet and glanced at the blood-soaked ID, “John Yossarian.” It was obviously a fake, but at least the guy had a sense of humor, at least concerning the fact he seemed to know that he was meant to die. But why? What could have been so important that he was willing to die for it?

“This wasn’t a robbery.” Jane put the bloody wallet into a plastic evidence bag.

“Then what was it?” O’Reilly coughed and looked away as soon as Detective Francisco turned over the body. Christ, the guy didn’t even have a face left.

“I’m not quite sure.” Jane pried a small plastic bag filled with yellow powder out of the corpse’s cold, stiff fingers.

“Drugs?” Eddie managed to cough out.

“No.” Jane opened the bag and sniffed it slightly before removing a glove and sticking her pinky finger in the powder and tasting it.

O’Reilly nearly threw up on his regulation-black shoes.

“If it isn’t drugs, then what is it?” Eddie stared at the smudge of blood on Jane’s hand from when it brushed against the crimson-stained plastic.

“Turmeric.” An odd smile crossed her face as she stared at the yellow stain left on her little finger.