“Have they found anything substantial at the crime scene?” he demanded as soon as Jensen joined him.

Micah had already been there – where a garbage man had discovered Nico’s body near a dumpster in a rough part of Queens. He’d defied Jensen’s orders to head straight to the station that morning and had gone there instead.

Jensen had scowled fiercely when he’d arrived, but Micah was already pissed enough that the man had taken charge of the scene when Micah was the lead detective of Nico’s case.

Nico had been naked, with obvious rope burns around his wrists and ankles. There had also been bruises around his neck, and his abdomen had been colored black and blue from what looked like a vicious beating. Nico’s face, however, had remained almost entirely untouched. If not for his ashen skin and the smudges under his eyes, he could have been sleeping.

Micah could recall vividly the nineteen-year-old’s hazel eyes from the hundreds of pictures he’d gone through on Nico’s Instagram. They’d always been sparkling with life.

(He’d had to excuse himself from the crime scene to vomit around the corner of a nearby abandoned storefront before forcing himself to return.)

Nothing around Nico had looked obviously disturbed, indicating the young man had probably just been dumped there, not killed.

Still, thoroughly searching the area and processing evidence would probably take the rest of the day. Micah had only left to break the news the Nico’s parents. Jensen had insisted on coming with him, asserting that Micah looked “pale”, but Micah knew the man was still in contact with the policemen at the crime scene, hence the question.

Jensen frowned. “They’re finishing up, but it doesn’t look promising. More than likely, it’s just a dump site,” he said, confirming what Micah already suspected. “We just have to hope the perp left evidence somewhere on the body.”

The body.

Just yesterday, he’d been Nico. Micah swallowed hard, forcing himself to focus on what else Jensen had said. “Hope?” he repeated incredulously, shaking his head. “That’s not good enough. We need to nail whoever did this; I promised Mrs. Sanchez I would.”

Jensen frowned. “I heard. You know it’s against policy to be making guarantees like that. We’ll do our best, of course, but you shouldn’t-”

Micah didn’t have the patience to let Jensen finish his reprimand. “I know we can’t get an autopsy done until…” Micah hesitated, “the body is ready to be moved from the scene. Still, I think it’s pretty obvious our cause of death is strangulation.”

Jensen nodded. “Probably.”

“You know what that means, right?”

Jensen raised his eyebrows, clearly at a loss. “That our victim died of asphyxiation?”