Sarah Cederbaum: Forensic Witch Extraordinaire

[browneyedkat]

CHAPTER ONE - SARAH CEDERBAUM

"'Cause I'm,
Gonna make you see,
No one else here,
Nobody like me.
I'm special (special!),
So special (special!),
I gotta have some of your attention,
Give it to me!" I hear, cracking my eyes open as my radio turns on very suddenly, right in the middle of "Brass in Pocket" by The Pretenders. I reach my hand over to turn my alarm off, but I can't seem to find it.

"Aw, screw this," I mutter as I grab my wand and place a silencing charm on my radio. Too early in the morning to care about using magic.

My name is Sarah Cederbaum. As you have probably figured out, I am a witch. Not that I use magic. Well, aside from...just now. And last night, when I really wanted another grapefruit. And last week, when that guy just would not shut up. Oh, and three days before that, when - Okay, so I use magic. I mean, heck, I studied magic for seven years, I might as well use magic occasionally. But not in my work. Definitely not.

You see, I am a forensic scientist for the FBI. But I am NOT a forensic witch. I am a forensic scientist who just happens to be a witch. I never use magic instead of forensics. If I wanted to do that, I would just get a job in the ministry. No, I chose science over magic.

I was muggle-born, and I went to muggle schools until the age of eleven. I excelled in school, and I studied science even outside of school. I studied astrophysics, String theory, Quantum physics, and a lot more subjects. Then I got accepted into Hogwarts. I had always been fascinated by the paranormal, and I did not think for a minute that it was some elaborate scheme or prank. My parents did, my sisters did, but I did not. Behind my parents' backs, I gathered my school supplies and packed for the year. On September first, I got a friend to bring me to Kings Cross station. I trusted the letter and figured out for myself where Platform nine and three quarters was. When I got to Hogwarts, I was amazed. I studied magic enthusiastically, still excelling at school. Yet still I studied science on the side. I remember in fifth year, when McGonagall asked what I planned to do for a living. I said, "I plan to earn my living as a forensic scientist." She looked at me, for one thing not having any idea what I was talking about, also probably knowing that that was a muggle job. And I did as I had planned. I became a forensic specialist.

Actually, to tell the truth, I did not become a forensic specialist until two days ago. I had to go to high school, college, and grad school. But, with a wand at hand, homework was never too hard to get finished. Today is my first day on the job, and - Oh my goodness!! I am going to be late!!
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Please leave feedback!! I know, short chapter, but leave feedback anyway!!!

[browneyedkat]

Okay, I have not gotten to writing chapter two, but I just have to ask - why is it that I have had over fifty views but only one post in feedback? It makes me sad. It just makes me sad. =(

[browneyedkat]

CHAPTER TWO – FIRST DAY

I arrive at work an hour and a half later, having gone for a (slightly shorter than usual) run, done a full upper body workout, done ten minutes of yoga, and taken a shower. Yes, my mornings are very busy. When I get to work, I have no idea where to go. I suppose I should probably ask someone, but no one seems to be here. I guess I could do a little exploring until someone gets here…

I walk around a while, and within a half and hour I know my way around the majority of the building. I sit down on the floor near a window, on the sixth floor. I was told during the job interview that I would be working with a team on the sixth floor, so I figured I had better start there. I close my eyes and wait. I try to meditate, but I keep thinking of food…and coffee.

“Um…Can I help you?” I hear a voice above me say. I look up.

A man of about 5’ 11” with brown hair and a greying beard stands above me. He looks a little confused, but very curious. I suppose it is not every day that someone like me shows up at FBI base. I stand up as fast as I can and hold out my hand for him to shake.

“Sarah Cederbaum, sir,” I say very quickly. He hesitantly reaches out his hand. “And you, sir, are…?” I ask him.

“John Mason…” he says slowly, squinting at me. “What are you here for?”

“Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, I completely forgot. I am the new forensic scientist!” I blurt very loudly, not able to hold in my excitement.

“I see…When did you get here?” He asks, looking at me as though I am insane.

“Um…just after five thirty, sir,” I say.

“Five thirty?! I wasn’t even awake at five thirty!” he exclaims.

“Well, sir, why not?” I ask. “Why waste the morning sleeping, sir, when you could be out and about?”

He opens his mouth as though to say something, then thinks better of it. “Okay, well, you don’t have to get here till seven o’clock,” He replies.

“Well, am I allowed to get here at six o’clock, sir?” I ask.

“Yeah, of course you’re allowed to get here early. I thought maybe you didn’t want to…” he mutters. I give him (what I think is) a warm smile.

“So,” I say, shrugging. “Could you, sir, tell me where I am to work?”

“Uh, sure. What team are you part of?” he asks.

“Um…I think, sir, that the director said I was to work for the team of a Mr.…N T Lius?” I say uncertainly.

“Oh…I think you mean Lien. Well, isn’t that fortunate? I’m on Lien’s team,” the man replies.

“Oh! that is fortunate! I do beg your pardon, sir, but it seems I have forgotten your name. Could you, sir, if you please, remind me?” I ask, biting my lip. I have never been good at remembering names, and I have always been shy about asking.

“No problem. The name’s John Mason. And, I think I forgot your name too. What is it again?” he asks.

“Sarah, sir. Sarah Cederbaum,” I say with small nod and a smile.

“Great. Now I can show you where you work. Oh, and you can stop calling me sir,” He says, raising one eyebrow. I give a small laugh and rush after him, since he started walking while I was standing still.

We walk to an elevator and go down a floor. We step out of the elevator and come face to face with an “FBI’s Most Wanted” list. I stop in my tracks. I can feel my mouth opening. John notices that I have stopped walking and turns around to find me.

“Ms Cederbaum?” he says. “Sarah? What’re you doing?”

“Sir…I mean, Mr Mason…Who is this man, sir?” I ask him, twice forgetting not to call him sir. I point to a man near the middle of the list, which is really a large cluster of pictures on the wall. The man has a twisted smile on his face, as though he knows something that no one else knows – something that he knows everyone else in the world needs to know. He has sleek, black hair with a bald spot near the front.

“Rick Pablioni,” John said without hesitation. “They call him The Tailor. He’s killed twenty-seven people. We caught his partner, Michael Loos, seven years ago, and he’s been on death row ever since. But we haven’t been able to catch The Tailor. Loos gave away Pablioni in an instant. All we had to do was pull out a gun. We know that Pablioni was the boss of the operation, and that he not only chose the targets but he was the one who actually pulled the trigger – or stuck the knife in the victim’s gut, as the case may be. All Loos did was give him the weapons and get him in the same room as the victim. Pablioni has been on the run ever since – we’ve never even gotten a hint where he might be. But we’ve been searching. Why do you ask?”

“I – I know him,” I whisper, tears springing to my eyes.

“How?” John asks hardly even giving me enough time to finish my sentence.

I am very close to crying, so I look down for a moment and close my eyes. I take a deep breath, then swallow and look up. I have regained my full composure. “He was my boyfriend, sir,” I say very matter-of-factly. “He said his name was Jackson Smurtz.”

“Jackson Smurtz?” John asks incredulously. “That b*****d!” he adds under his breath, trying not to let me hear.

“Why is he a b*****d, sir?” I ask, not bothering to pretend I did not hear. I do, however, seem entirely unfazed.

“Jackson Smurtz was the name of the first man he killed. Jackson Smurtz was his brother-in-law,” John explains angrily.

I nod, then look down. “Well, I suppose we had best continue, sir,” I say.

We walk down the hall to a metal door. John punches in an entry code and the door opens.

“You don’t have to type in the code every time you want to open the door; you can get a manual key if you want,” John says, anticipating that I might ask. I smile gratefully. I step into the room, and gasp as I look around myself.

In that one room, there is more forensic equipment than I have ever seen in my entire life. I walk up to the desk, then over to the mass spectrometer. I slowly walk to the thing for bullet analysis that no one really knows what it is called (at least, I do not), the thing that you shoot into and it slows the bullet down so you can examine the effect of shooting the bullet out without hurting anyone.

“Oh my goodness…the technology in this room is like nothing I have ever seen…” I say very quietly in awe. “It is like heaven…”

John chuckles quietly in the corner. I look over at him and grin widely.

I could certainly get used to this equipment.

“By the way, is there anywhere that I can get some coffee and an energy bar?” I ask.

John laughs. "You'll fit in here," he says.
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[browneyedkat]

CHAPTER THREE – COFFEE AND CONFUSION

“Come on,” John says. “The coffee is right down the hall.”

“Oh, God bless you!” I say.

John grins at me. “No coffee this morning?”

“Not one drop,” I reply. He chuckles. Together we walk down the hall to the coffee machine. I select a few different types of coffee – mocha, black coffee, espresso, hammerhead, and oliang, which I am surprised, but happy, to find. With a cup of each type of coffee, I make my way back to my new lab, John following behind me in bewilderment. When I get back to the forensics lab, I pull out a large bottle from my bag and pour the coffees in one by one. I then close the bottle and shake it.

“Um…You drink five different types of coffee? …Out of a bottle?” John asks, staring.

“Heck yeah!” I say, taking a large swig from the bottle and almost turning it upside down as I drink. I close my eyes and swallow. “Ahhh…Geez, that is a bit hot,” I say, opening my eyes again.

“And may I ask why you drink coffee from a bottle, instead of just a cup?” John persists.

“Did you know, that caffeine is the most addicting substance in the universe? Far more addicting than alcohol or nicotine. Okay, I totally just made that up; I have no idea if it is true. But caffeine is very addicting. I drink so much coffee. I drink at least two or three bottles a day, always the same mix, and the energy bars that I eat before and after I go running and randomly throughout the day, they have caffeine in them. I need my daily dose of caffeine. I would die without coffee,” I say, walking around the lab and examining the equipment. “Hey, is there a CD player in here?”

“Uh…” John says, caught off guard by my very fast, random tangent and my abrupt change of subject. “No. But you can bring one in, if you want to. You’ve got the whole place to yourself. You can bring in anything to make the lab homier.”

“Oh, thank god. It is sooooo boring right now. In fact, it was kind of getting me down. I am going to have to make a list of everything I want to bring in…But before I do that, when will I be starting my first case?!” I ask excitedly.

“Well, Lien’ll probably be getting here soon, so I should go down and start working. He’ll get mad if I’m not. I’ll probably come up and tell you, or just call you,” he points at the phone on the desk, “As soon as we have a case. It’ll probably be an hour or so after I call you before you’ll actually have to do anything, and you can just associate yourself with the building until then. Oh, by the way, do you have a cell phone? The entire team will have to know your number in case we need to contact you when you’re not in your lab. Remember – never be unreachable.”

“Hee hee…you said my lab…” I say, giggling. I pull myself out of the giddy happiness. “Sorry. Well, I have already associated myself with the building; that was what I did before you showed up. I would like to meet some actual people, though – not that you are not a person! Anyway, I do indeed have a cell phone,” I tell him, and give him my number. “So, when will I get to meet this, ‘team?’” I ask.

John shrugs. “I guess Lien will probably come up to meet you as soon as I tell him you’re here. Speaking of Lien, I had better get out of here. You do not want to see him angry…” he says as he rushes out of the room.

I spin around and take a good look at “my lab.” A large smile spreads over my face. For excitement, I give a small jump and a squeak, then take another large swig of my coffee mix.
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Knock, knock.

I hear two knocks on the door and get up to see who is at the door. I jump up and run to the door. I open the door to a young woman of about thirty years. She is about five feet, six inches, just a few inches taller than myself, and has auburn hair that went down to her shoulder blades. Her eyes are a pure blue, the sort of colour that, if you look at it too long, makes her eyes seem as though she can see right through you. Her face is round, with a slightly pointed chin. Her nose is very short and her lips slightly thinner than the average persons. Her eyes, despite their piercing blue colour, and her face are very gentle. She holds her hand out to me.

“Hi, I’m Elizabeth Jennelle,” the woman said shyly. “I’m on Lien’s team. He sent me down to meet you.”

“Hi. I am Sarah Cederbaum, though you probably already knew that,” I say, smiling. “Why did Lien not come down himself?” I ask curiously.

“He’s down talking to the director. Apparently, there’s a slight…breach in communications. Lien…Lien didn’t know you were coming,” she told me hesitantly.

“Oh…” I say, my spirits dropping. I force a smile and ask Elizabeth how long she had worked for the FBI.

“Only a year. It’s been pretty tough being the newbie on the team. But, I was never pushed around too much by the guys. Not like John – he still gets **** from Jimmy,” Elizabeth said, raising her eyebrows with a “lucky-that’s-not-me” look on her face.

“Jimmy?” I say, having not heard the name before now. Elizabeth answers that he is the senior agent on the team, something which I have already guessed.

“Hmm…What is he like?” I ask, pursuing the topic.

“Well, he’s pretty funny, but he can be really annoying. When he was in high school, he was definitely the class clown,” she answers, with a joking smile. I chuckle.

“And…What is Lien like?” I say, asking the question I have been waiting to ask since I got here.

“Um…Lien is…Pretty hard to describe. Just wait until you meet him. I think you’ll like him,” Elizabeth adds after I raise my eyebrow. “Anyway, I have to get back to work. But, Lien’ll probably be down here in person soon enough. He and the director ought to be done in about ten or twenty minutes, and it’ll probably be no more than another ten or twenty before he comes up to meet you. You could do something to occupy yourself until then…I see you already have coffee, so getting coffee is not really an option to occupy your time, but I’m sure you’ll find something,” she says, hardly skipping a beat at seeing the giant bottle of coffee in my right hand. An idea suddenly pops into my head.

“Yeah, I can think of something to do…” I say, trying to keep a huge smile from spreading across my face at the idea. “So, you should get back to work. It was a please meeting you!” I turn her and push her out the door. Once she is gone, I grab my large coat, which is orange and green striped and has huge shoulder pads, and rush out of the building.
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Ding!

I hear the ding of the elevator reaching the fifth floor and I rush behind the desk. Footsteps approach the desk and I see a pair of legs wearing black slacks.

“Cederbaum?” I hear a voice say, a voice that I have not heard before and that definitely does not sound like a jokester’s voice. It must be Lien.

I pop out from behind the desk and hold up the flowers I carry in my arms.

“Roses?” says Lien, who is a little taller than Elizabeth and has grey, thinning hair and stubble. He seems about five and fifty years old. He is wearing black slacks and a loose fitting white tee-shirt under a black jacket. His mouth is slightly downturned and his blue eyes seem sad. His overall appearance, his square jaw, his almost formal outfit, his sad eyes, seems firm, tough, and deeply troubled.

“Not just any roses!” I say in an upbeat manner. “Yellow roses. They’re symbolic! And, they don’t mean jealousy or infidelity or decrease of love, ‘cause those are what yellow roses historically mean. But, these don’t mean that, because I’m not jealous and I don’t love you less than I did before, so it wouldn’t make sense for these to mean that. Yellow roses mean joy, freedom, and friendship! I’m happy that I got this job, free because…I am, and I’m really hoping we can be friends. And, yellow roses are given to clear misunderstandings and renew friendships, though I guess we can’t really renew our friendship because, I’ve never met you until now, so we weren’t exactly friends before, but maybe we could become friends, and that’s like renewing a non-existent friendship! Just…Read the note,” I say all of this very quickly, pausing at certain times to catch my breath. Lien, who had been staring at me throughout my speech, opens the note in the flowers and reads it.

The card reads:
I apologize for the communication breech.
I really hope that you welcome me into your team with open arms.
Written on the other side of the card is:
So, when is my first case?

Lien looks amused as he reads the question, and then turns the card over to see the list of roses and their meanings on the back.

“This how you knew all about what yellow roses symbolize?” He asks when he sees it.

“No, I wrote that! I used to work at the flower shop where I got these. See, I can recite it: red roses are romantic, white roses represent purity and are romantic, but not as romantic as red roses, black roses can represent hatred or threateningness, but really, they are just plain cool,” I recite, subtracting the section about yellow roses which comes before black roses, and adding my own opinion of black roses. Lien smiles, whether at my calling black roses “just plain cool,” or at my being able to recite the part of the card that no one actually reads, I am uncertain.

“Well, about your first case – you’ll be starting on that right now,” Lien says, holding up a box labeled “Evidence.”

“Yay!” I yelp excitedly.
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[browneyedkat]

CHAPTER FOUR – SKETCH ARTIST

“Hey there, Labbie,” I hear from behind me. I spin around and lean against the table, saying, “Jimmy, stop calling me Labbie! Honestly, how many times do I have to tell you?”

“Alright, alright. Sorry, Rosie,” Jimmy replies.

I sigh. “Jimmy!”

“Okay, I get it. I won’t call you anything but your name. That work for you, Rosie?” he teased.

Jimmy had started out calling me, “The Lab Rat,” which got annoying rather quick, trust me. I finally got him to stop, but within a week he started calling me Labbie. That was even more annoying than The Lab Rat. That had reminded me of my old dog, Rosie, who had been a Labrador. Of course, I made the mistake of telling Jimmy and Elizabeth about her, earning myself yet anther annoying nickname from Jimmy.

It has been two weeks since I’ve started working here at the FBI, and I am really starting to get the hang of things. In fact, I am already on my second case! I am getting into a very normal rhythm, an every day routine. The team treats me like I have always been part of the group. It’s quite nice, actually. Liz was right – Jimmy is annoying. But, he’s pretty funny. However, what she said about him being a jokester in high school – I’m pretty sure he never left.

“Got something for you,” he says, handing me a bottle filled with a brownish grey liquid.

“Coffee!” I cry. So far today, I’ve only had one cup of coffee – not even a bottle! I take a swig from the bottle and sigh. “Wow, nice goin’ Jimmy, you actually got it right this time!” In the past two weeks, every bottle of coffee Jimmy brought me had been mixed wrong. Either he left out one of the types of coffee or put in unequal amounts.

“Well, you’re gonna need loads of it, ‘cause we sure have got a lotta evidence. Oh!” he says, as though suddenly remembering something. “Before you do whatever you do with the evidence, we’ve got a suspect description that we hafta process.” As he says this, Jimmy begins looking slightly nervous – an unusual look for his personality.

“Oh my goodness! You don’t mean the suspect description, do you?! Did she finally give her statement?!” I gasp. Jimmy nods his head.

“Right this way, monsieur!” I say exuberantly, taking his hand and dragging him toward the computer at my desk. I quickly open the “sketch artist” program and a bald, average looking face pops up on the screen. The “sketch artist” program is a computer program that allows one to toggle the features on a face according to a description. Thanks to this program, actual sketch artists have become obsolete, saving the government loads of money. The suspect description that Jimmy spoke of is part of the statement of a woman who claims to have seen her own husband murdered. Unfortunately for her, when the body was found, there were no signs of foul play. She had refused to give a statement until, obviously, today. “Okay, description, please!” I say.

“Well…” Jimmy says hesitantly. I look at him expectantly. “Nose about an inch wide, an inch away from her face, and two inches long,” he says. I tweak the nose on the sketch to match the description, wondering at the use of actual specific measurement. That couldn’t happen too often. “Gold brown eyes, long wavy eyebrows. Five foot five. Round face, thin lips. Nose about an inch wide, an inch away from her face, and two inches long. Ears were covered by her hair, which was light brown, three inches below the shoulders, and straight.” I adjust the face exactly as he says; a growing feeling of dread in my stomach as he does.

I look up at Jimmy, for once the smile gone from my face. Replacing it is a worried and scared expression. I look back down at the monitor, as though looking in a mirror. Staring back at me is the spitting image of my own face.
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Yuh-oh!!! Leave feedback please!! Sorry it's a short chapter, it was just the perfect place to stop. =)