Sunday passed slowly and before he knew it, Eli was walking threw the front doors of the precinct. 

    He made his way over to the front desk and quickly got directions to the homicide department. It was not long before he was on the second floor standing in front of the metal plated door, clearing labeled H.U.S.E.. 

    The door sung inward and a rough, shaggy brown haired man barreled out of the room, shoving into Eli. His dark eyes slanted and he glared at Eli before hastily making his way down the hall. 

    “Damn it.” Another man, much more friendly looking than the first, made his way over to the door where Eli was standing. “Oh, hello, sorry about that. Who are you?”

    “Heh, no problem, I’m Eli Kim, nice to meet you.” Eli said, still shaking off the cold vibes he got from that rude guy.

    The friendly one’s eyes widened, “Oh, nice to meet you too. I heard you were just transferred to our unit; sorry I completely forgot you would be arriving today.”

    Eli rubbed the back of his neck, “No worries, I’m here now right? Um...” He chuckled awkwardly. 

    “Ah, sorry, I’m Kevin Woo, I am one of the detectives here. Shall I introduce you to everyone?”

    Eli nodded and they made there way into the room. Eli could easily admit that what he saw was nothing like what he expected from the exclusive H.U.S.E.; all around him were cluttered desks and pushed together white boards. A variety of mismatched people shuffled around the room, all busy with their own assignments. It was a far cry from the classy double o’ seven spy unit he was anticipating. 

    Maybe his expectations were a little high, but this was no where near what a well working homicide unit should look like, or so Eli thought. 

    Kevin led him over to an office off to the far right. “I suppose I’ll introduce you to the big boss first.” 

    Kevin pushed open the door, after knocking twice, “Captain, are you in?”

    In the middle of the room was an aged, balding man siting behind a marble desk working diligently on what Eli assumed were police reports. The office was far cleaner than the room he was just in, but the dusty books that lined the walls and stacks of old file boxes made the room unbearably stuffy. 

    The man looked up, “Ah, you must be my new recruit, Mr. Kim was it?’

    “Eli sir, Eli Kim.” Eli smiled politely and bowed his head in greeting to his new boss. 

    “I see you have meet Detective Woo?”

    Kevin laughed and butted in, “I figured I would take the lead and introduce him to everyone and I thought you were a good place to start Captain.” 

    “Yes, yes, well, I’m sure you know, but I’m Chief Harrison, although, everyone around here,” he shoot a look at Kevin, “just calls me Captain.” 

    Eli smiled and nodded.

    “I’ll go ahead and get back to the introductions then.” Kevin and Eli headed to leave when the captain called out.

    “Did you guys made any head-way on the Ferguson case yet?”

    Kevin turned back for a moment, “The warrant finally came through to search the car, but unfortunately the car was already sent to be impounded. I tried to stop him but Soohyun left to go, presumably, chew out Judge Reynolds.” 

    The Chief sighed and rubbed at his temples, “Damn that kid, he’s only going to irritate Reynolds more, I better call him back.” 

    Kevin nodded and turned around before dragging Eli over to one of the cluttered work stations. “Eli, I am happy to introduce you to Dongho, he is my partner and fellow detective here, and Dongho, I’d love for you to meet Eli, our new member of our team.” 

    The boy was odd looking with large ears that stuck out from his scratchy black hair, and thick brown rimmed glasses that sat crocked on his nose. Out from under them his beady eyes peered up curiously at Eli. “‘Ello,”  he mumbled before turning back to his work. 

    Kevin laughed and ruffled his partner’s hair, earning more annoyed grumbles from the kid, before walking away with Eli. “He’s a little odd, but a good kid. He does a lot better with the researching part of this job than I do, that’s for sure, but we work well as a team so I’m not complaining.”

    Kevin stopped when they made it to the center of the room. “There is always a lot of people in and out of here who work with us from time to time but the people you see right now, minus a few, are the only ones that you really need to know.”

    “I can live with that.” Eli smiled.

    “Okay so lets make this as simple as possible.” Kevin pointed to the only person in a lab coat, “Kiseop Lee, you can just call him Kiseop, our one and only personal lab technician.” 

    Next Kevin pointed at the only long haired man in the room, who appeared to be reading intently from some large book. “Over there is Alex, he is a psychiatrist and he occasionally helps with consulting work when it comes to criminals, but if you ask me,” Kevin lowered his voice, “he is only here for the food.” 

    Eli snorted, surprised by the joke. Kevin laughed and smiled before saying, “There is also AJ who is our prosecutor; he is in and out of here often when he works on  our cases so you’ll meet him eventually.” 

    Eli looked around at the people he would be working with, so far it did not seem so terrible, then he remembered the rude guy from earlier. “What about...?” Eli raised his finger questionably and pointed at the door. 

    Understanding flashed through Kevin’s eyes, “Oh, yeah,” he laughed awkwardly, “that guy from earlier was Detective Shin, Soohyun Shin.” 

    “You mean that guy you and the Captain were talking about?” 

    Again, Kevin laughed stiffly, “Yeah.” 

    “Wow, I wonder what crawled up his ,” Eli chuckled, “what does he do?”

    “Well,” Kevin patted Eli comfortingly on the shoulder, “he is your new partner.” 

    Before Eli could even respond, said rude detective came storming back through the door, followed by a taller man in a suit. 

    “Damn it AJ, we were this ing close to getting him, this close,” he flung his arms around, “and what does Judge Reynolds's do? Waits until the very last possible moment, hours after the car has been sent to be impounded, to sign the warrant.” 

    “Listen,” the taller guys said, “we may not have the car but we still have the DNA evidence that links him to the scene of the crime and we have the motive.”

    “But, we don't’ have the murder weapon.” Soohyun slumped down into his desk chair. “And without the victim’s statement he is going to get away with it.”

    “Why don’t you have to victim’s statement?” Eli suddenly felt very small as all the eyes in the room turned to him.

    “Uh, you again.” Soohyun grumbled. “What are you doing here?”

    “Uh...” Eli did not reply, unsure of how to answer the rude detective without setting him off. 

    “Well Soohyun,” Kevin chirped, a stained smile on his face, “this is Eli Kim, and he is your new partner.” 

    Across the room, the tall man, who Eli now recognized as AJ, their prosecutor, muffled a laugh at his friends misfortune. 

    “Great,” Soohyun barked dryly.

    Trying his question once more, Eli awkwardly asked, “So why don’t you have the-” he paused seeing Soohyun’s sharp glare, “...um, victim’s statement?” 

    Knowing the other two weren’t likely to answer, Kevin turned to Eli and quickly explained. “As you may or may not have assumed, we do use the RCM here when we are working on cases like this. In some of these cases it proves quite useful to have the victim’s statement and in others it is simply not needed as we may have enough DNA evidence.” 

    “So wouldn’t the victim’s statement be helpful here?”

    “Yes, it would, but we don’t have the body. It is up to the family of the victim to decide if they want the RCM to be used or not. In this case, the family is quite adamant about not using it, no matter how helpful it may be.”

    Eli nodded, it did make sense. 

    “You get it now?” Eli turned to look back at his fuming partner. “I have a right to be pissed off. With out the car and her testimony, we are basically out of luck.”

    Eli watched as Soohyun continued to grumble to himself. “Can’t we go and talk to the family again? I mean, maybe if we show our--”

    “How desperate we are?”

    Eli ignored Soohyun. “Our concern,” Eli stressed, “then they will reconsider.”

    “But what are we going to tell them? That we have run out of options and if we don’t get a statement then Ferguson is going to walk free?” Kevin inquired. 

    Before Eli could reply Chief Harrison, or now Captain to Eli, strutted into the conversation, apparently having entered the room earlier. “I think that is a wonderful idea, what else can we do?”

    “Great, I thought-” Eli began. 

     “Eli, wonderful, why don’t you go over there right now then?”

    “But I-” Soohyun snorted. 

    “And take Soohyun with you.” With that the Captain turned around and reentered his office, leaving behind a desperate looking Eli and a grumbling Soohyun.

    That is how Eli found himself ten minutes later in a silent car with his new partner. 

    The awkward silence hung stiff in the air for the dreadfully long ride over to the Eun’s residence. When they arrived Eli was all to eager to jump out of the car and approach the lightly below average white washed door. 

    The neighborhood itself was one of the quieter ones in Sector Eight; it sat right outside the central city New Boston, and contrary to its lively neighbor, the town of Hamitch was ordinary. 

    The residences weren’t overly wealthy, nor were they overly poor. From an outsiders point of the, the neighborhood seemed relatively pleasant; nothing exciting ever seemed to happen and likewise nothing terrible either. That is, until Amy Eun, youngest daughter of the Eun family was found murdered in her car two weeks ago. 

    The woman that opened the door was, according to the files Eli reviewed in the car on the drive over, Mrs. Eun. 

    “Good afternoon ma’am, I’m Eli-”

    “Mom, who’s at the door?” A thin red head popped around the corner. “Who are you?” 

    “I’m Detective Eli-”

    “Jia, who’s here?” Another person appeared at the door; this time it was a young, short haired man. “Who are you?”
    Eli cleared his throat before once again saying, “I’m Detective Eli Kim, I’m hear about your daughter, Amy-”

    “What do you want this time, haven’t we told you everything already?” The man barked.

    “It’s actually about the RCM-”

    “You are not using that thing on my sister, you hear me?” This time it was the feisty redhead that exploded. “We have told you people again and again, the answer is no.”
    She glared at him before hastily moving to slam the door in his face, but was stopped by Soohyun. 

    “I’m sorry about my partner,” his gaze turned to meet Mrs. Eun’s directly, “I’m afraid Mrs. Eun, we really need to speak with you.” 

    Eli felt frustration build up in his stomach as Mrs. Eun pushed the door back open and invited them in. He couldn't help but think that he totally blew his first chance to prove himself, especially to his jack of a partner.  

    Reluctantly he made his way inside, flinching slightly as he passed the fuming younger couple: Amy Eun’s older sister Jia, and her fiancé Shi Kyung. 

    After much explaining, mostly on Soohyun’s behalf, Mrs. Eun finally gave her permission to use the RCM, much to her other daughters distaste. Eli spent the majority of the ride back to the base brooding in silence. 

    As far as first days go, Eli could easily say that his was pretty horrendous. The others back at the base were ecstatic with the news, but the rest was up to them. Eli had lost his chance to help any more with the case.