Hey everyone! Hope you all had a great Halloween, I know I did, the best weekend of the year. Thousands of candles over the graveyards, partying with my friends and scaring the crap out of kids. How can you not love it? :))
Here we go, chapter 8.
Chapter 8.
"Holy crap." Kelly breathed as she stared into the room.
She had never seen so much blood at once in her life. She put her hand towards her mouth, the stench was making her dizzy. She looked over at Melissa, who was leaning towards an armchair, looking just as nauseas as herself, face very pale.
"Breathe with your mouth Mel, come on, let's get out of here." Kelly said as she began walking out of the room, Melissa quickly following her, taking her advice.
Kelly and Melissa walked out of the house and went down to Kelly's car, calling the cops. About half an hour later, the place was crawling with police officers, coroner and CSIs. Kelly and Melissa decided to walk around in the neighborhood to see if anyone saw anything. Most people who lived in the building, mostly other prostitutes, drunks or drug addicts, hadn't been bothered by the smell. They just didn't care. So Kelly and Melissa decided to at least try and knock doors in the apartments.
They split up to make the progress faster. The first three doors Melissa knocked, no answer came. On the forth door, a young woman, not more than sixteen or seventeen opened the door, wearing nothing but underwear and a T-shirt.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Melissa Bouvier, and I'm a friend of the woman named Tracy on the forth floor."
"What about her?"
"She was murdered this morning."
The coroner had established that the t.o.d was about three hours ago.
The young woman didn't even flinch.
"What does that has to do with me?"
"Nothing. I'm just trying to find out what happened, and I wonder if you saw or heard anything?"
"I don't know anything."
"You didn't see anyone strange in the building a few hours ago?"
"Look. Half of the people in this building is prostitutes or drug addicts. There are always strange people in the stairway. A few hours hours ago, I was asleep."
"Okay. Well, thank you anyway. And be careful out there. Three women have already been killed."
"I will be careful." The girl said, closing the door before Melissa had any chance of asking anything more. Melissa sighed, feeling sorry for the girl. She was so young. She should not be living this type of life.
Melissa was still thinking about the girl next door when she rang the doorbell of the next door, and a man opened a minute later. The man was wearing a pair of very worn jeans, a string vest covering the huge beer belly, holding a bottle of scotch in his hand. Melissa unconsciously backed a step when he opened; the alcohol smell was strong and hit her right in the face when he talked.
"What?" He said angrily when opened up.
He looked her down and up, smiling slightly as his mind undressed her. Melissa felt like turning around and run down to the street. She took a deep breath before to collect herself before she talked.
"I'm a private detective from the Townsend Agency. A woman on the forth floor was murdered a few hours ago and I'm knocking doors to see if anyone saw or heard anything."
"You're a detective?" The man said, rising a surprised eyebrow.
"Yes, I am."
The man bent back his head and began laughing hard. Melissa sighed annoyed, her arms crossed over her chest, eyes rolling. When the man stopped laughing he grinned as he met Melissa's eyes.
"A female detective. Where is the world going? I'm gonna tell you something, that's not a job for a beauty like yourself. You should be in the same profession as the girls in this house. You would get rich."
"Thank you, but I am rich already, and I didn't need to sell my body to get there." Melissa sighed annoyed. "But this is not about me, did you hear or see anything different about three hours ago?"
"No I didn't, if I did I wouldn't have cared. There's so much freaks in this building. You should be careful. It's not a good neighborhood for a fragile woman like you."
"I can take care of myself."
"Now can you?" The man said, grabbing the hold of Melissa's wrist. "Why don't you and I get together a little and we can discuss that further?"
Melissa tried to get lose from his grip, but he was a lot stronger than her. She was just about to grab her gun when he grabbed her other wrist and twisted her around so she landed with her back towards his stomach. He held her close and put his mouth to her ear.
"We can get real close sweetheart."
"Let go of me!" Melissa said sharply, trying to kick away his legs or get a hold of his arms, but there was no use. She was slim, he was heavily overweight. He was steady as a house, and now he dragged her into the house.
"KELLY!!" Melissa screamed, she knew Kelly was on the next floor. "KELLY, HELP ME!"
Just when the man kicked the door close with his foot, Melissa heard someone run down the stair. The man pushed Melissa further into the house when the door was slammed open.
"Let her go." Kelly said sharply, pointing a gun towards the man's temple.
The man immediately let Melissa go and she gave him a hard look before she walked out of the apartment quickly, and begun making her way down the stairs. Kelly rushed after her, catching up with her between the second and first floor. Kelly grabbed Melissa's shoulder, turning her so they stood face to face.
"Mel."
Melissa looked up at Kelly, eyes burning out of anger. Kelly didn't say anything, instead she put her arms around her, and the two women hugged for several minutes before Melissa moved out of Kelly's grip.
"Thank you Kell."
"Don't worry. Are you alright?"
"Yeah. Just angry."
"You sure?" Kelly said, looking over Melissa.
"Yeah. Did you get anything?"
"No, no one seemed to have noticed anything."
"Same here. And I know a lot of people just disappeared when the cops pulled up."
"Yeah." Kelly said as they began walking down the rest of the stairs. "Drunks, drug addicts and the ladies of the night usually don't like cops."
"Do you think Janet's father did this?" Melissa asked.
"Maybe, maybe not. Did he kill the other hookers too? I don't know. Could have been him, but in the same time, maybe the only bad thing he's done, except everything he did towards Janet, is stabbing Sandra. He might not have anything to do with the hookers. But I don't know. We don't have any proof at all."
Melissa nodded as they sat down in Kelly's car, and Kelly took her phone and dialed Charlie. She talked to him for a while before hanging up.
"Evidentially Janet's father got a parole. Charlie's looking into it more, he should not have been released yet. We'll get him back, trust me, Charlie has connections and this is his highest priority right now." Kelly told Melissa while she dialed another number. She talked to Jenny for a while before turning to Melissa again.
"A car was stolen outside the hospital this morning, it was reported missing not too long ago. Jenny called the cab companies, but no one seemed to have picked up a woman fitting Janet's description this morning."
Melissa nodded and sighed as she leaned back in the seat. In the same minute, the car phone called. Kelly picked it up.
"Yes?"
"Hello, this is Nurse Margaret from Washington Hospital Center. I'm just calling to let you know that your friend Miss Sandra Olsen woke up a few minutes ago."
"Oh, thank you, that's good news. We'll be right down."
Kelly hung up the phone, and as she turned the car around, the told Melissa what the nurse just told her.
As they walked inside Sandra's room a while later, Sandra was resting with her eyes closed. When she heard someone walk in, she opened her eyes, and then smiled weakly when she noticed who it was. Kelly and Melissa walked up to her bed, sitting down on each side of her.
"Hey girl. How are you feeling?" Melissa said as she carefully stroke Sandra's hair.
"I'm okay." Sandra said groggily, looking around in the room, noticing there was a person missing. "Where's Janet?"
"We don't know. She took off and we haven't found her yet." Melissa said carefully.
"We have to find her!" Sandra blurted out as she shot up into sitting position, and both Kelly and Melissa immediately grabbed her and pushed her back down into the bed, which were completely unnecessary, since Sandra immediately fell back towards the pillows, her hands covering the stitches in her abdomen, closing her eyes in pain. Melissa put one hand on Sandra's shoulder.
"Are you crazy? You have to stay still, you hear me? You just got out of surgery, you'll rip your stitches if you move that fast." Melissa said concerned, removing Sandra's cover and her hands, moving away her gown, looking under the compress to make sure she didn't rip anything. Fine. No blood. Melissa then put everything back and let her hand on Sandra's shoulder again, meeting her eyes.
"Don't worry hon, we'll find her."
"He's going to kill her." Sandra whispered, feeling tears making the pillow wet.
"We won't let him." Kelly said determined.
"He told me… that she was going to… take off, and he knew... where she was going…" Sandra squeezed out, looking from Melissa to Kelly, and then back at Melissa. "I tried to tell her not to go anywhere... but I couldn't stay awake."
Melissa brushed away some of Sandra's tears, meeting her eyes.
"Sssch, honey, don't worry. We will find her."
"Before him." Kelly added.
"Where do you think she is?"
"We don't know, but Jenny is checking all her cards and sees if she can track down the car she's using and so on. If she goes anywhere we will find her." Kelly smiled reassuringly.
"Maybe she went to Tracy?" Sandra said, a glint of hope in her eyes.
Kelly looked up at Melissa, and Melissa met her eyes before she turned to Sandra. She didn't want to tell her everything, but she knew Sandra had every right to know.
"Tracy has been murdered. We don't know if Janet's father did it, but we and the police are looking into it."
Sandra's eyes grew wide, and her mouth dropped slightly, before she swallowed hard.
"What a mess." She then whispered, and Kelly and Melissa agreed.
"Yeah, it is. But don't worry, we're going to figure it out. We have police protection for you outside, and there's an alarm on the window in case someone tries to break it or open it. You're safe here."
"I don't care about me, we have to find Jane."
"Well, I care about you, and you are not going to do anything except staying here until you have recovered, and let us deal with finding Janet." Melissa said firmly. "I've told the cops outside to not let you past the door."
Sandra smiled weakly. She knew she would not win this fight.
"Okay then. I'll stay, if you promise to keep me updated and you'll take care of my babies?"
Melissa smiled.
"The babies are being taken care of, don't worry."
