Part 4
"Memories are just where you laid them
Drag the waters 'till the depths give up their dead
What did you expect to find?
Was there something you left behind?
Just fall away, and leave me to myself
Just fall away and leave sorrow bleeding in my hands…"
-Fuel
When the setting sun, glorious and bright in the fading sky, sunk low over the jagged, rugged mountains to the west, darkness descended over the city of Hollenbrooke once more. This was a desperate kind of a darkness, one that brought sorrow, terrible and grievous, with it and slashed the hopes of the lost souls wandering around in the night, searching without abandon for the light at the end of the tunnel.
The rain and the cold of earlier had vanished; leaving a hot, tangibly sticky fog that surrounded the inner city like long-dead ghosts and spirits floating desireless among the merciless world of the mortals. The winds still moaned audibly, their wails echoing around the city in heartless pain and blowing miscellaneous papers that were cluttering the sidewalk. Somewhere, the melodious, steady rhythm of music worked itself up to a frantic, fever pitch, over-flowing into the lonely, dead streets.
The terrifying slap of sneakers on wet pavement sounded far away in one of the twisted, back alleys that were so abundant in the downtown area. A chorus of shouts crescendoed up and over and down, mixing and spiraling into the heavy, distant air. A lone, shrill police siren pierced the fog, resonating sharply within the encasement of the city skyscrapers that glittered and glimmered within their roadside foundations.
The stench of red, gory blood arose from the corner of Rio Vista and Johnson, carrying its lifeless odor on the wings of the wind all across the inner city. There had been a murder committed, something violent and brutal that sent the sensitive senses into revolt and clouded the minds of the weary.
To Cate Ramirez, a nineteen year-old pickpocket working the streets with an expert eye and even quicker hand, it was the only place she would ever want to call home. She was in her element here, in this wasteland of desolates and broken dreams, doing just what she did best- stealing from those who could ill afford to be stolen from.
It mattered little to Cate, the hopeless plights of other people begging for help and dimes, killing themselves day by day in a thousand different little ways. She had learned long ago that there was only one person in this world that truly needed her constant attention and care- and that was her.
She had ambitions, surely, though they were starkly dangerous ones that afforded little thought and even less action, but a great capacity for deception and back-stabbing. Her heart was hard enough to spend her waking nights dreaming of those ambitions, tucked within the safety of the abandoned warehouse that she slept and hated in, her insane fantasies weaving in and out of her depraved, young mind.
She was lost, so dreadfully and woefully lost, she herself did not -could not- even begin to realize the gravity of the situation which she had steadily been falling into all of her life. She was young yet, and thenceforth did not comprehend that all of those ambitions were just that- fleeting dreams that meant nothing and had no bearing on the present reality.
As it was, she walked along the ruined, gap-filled sidewalk, her tall, thin frame carrying itself erectly and proudly in a manner that was completely uncharacteristic in this urban setting. Her long, black hair, curling at the ends, was tied back and tucked erratically under a battered, blue cap and the moth-eaten denim jacket she had bought at a thrift store for twenty-five cents, fell around her frame loosely. Baggy blue jeans concealed an appealingly well-formed figure, and the ill-fitting construction boots she wore made a disturbing, ripping noise against the concrete, as if they were literally cutting the sidewalk beneath them to ribbons.
Tonight, Cate was looking for excitement, that blessedly wonderful feeling that came with taking things that were not yours to take. It was Cate lived for, would in the end die for, and in the between times, would nurse and love it as profoundly as one did with an exceptional lover.
Seeing a golden opportunity in the form of an ancient, hunched over woman wearing a faded, torn dress, she smoothly, and without pause, began to quicken her pace on the barren, deserted sidewalk. A slight pang echoed in her hardened heart, a final pinprick of conscience that inevitably sprang up whenever she "borrowed" from someone so evidently helpless and alone. But when her stomach growled, rather loudly, what was left of her reservations fled with the single-mindedness of destroyed ideals. After all, morals didn't put food on the table or clothes on the back.
Sticking her hands in her jacket pockets, Cate shuddered a bit as the wind began to pick up again, and moved in closer to her marked victim. In less than thirty seconds, all the hard earned money the woman had been saving would vanish, like smoke and mirrors into the hands of a shiftless juvenile delinquent. It was, Cate reflected briefly to herself, a damn shame.
The old woman was in reaching distance now, and with nimble fingers and swift movements, Cate grabbed the woman's over-sized, black purse from her right shoulder and ran as fast as Cate's long, tanned legs would allow. She could hear the cries of the woman, surprised and angry against the backdrop of the star filled sky. Remorse sprung up, quickly and suddenly like a stream of warm regret, but Cate shoved it away to the recesses of her mind. She hadn't eaten anything in a week, and now she had money to buy food with, some hot and delicious meal devoured in the low light of a fast-food dining room. That, not the grief and pain of the old woman, was the only thing that mattered.
She ran until she was sure she was far enough out of sight of the woman; Cate had no desire to see the inside of a jail cell. She took refuge in the dark shadows of an alley next to a small, decrepit, brownstone store with a sign that said 'Madame Crystal's Fortune Telling' in chapped, white letters set against a paint-chipped blue background. The only light that emitted from it was from the gaudy neon sign plastered unnaturally in the window. Cate couldn't see the words clearly, and in truth, she didn't care to.
She retreated to the back of the alley, which was swathed in a sort of individual black oblivion, and completely hidden from the street which was just a few feet away. Throwing herself on the ground gleefully, she pried open the treasured purse, examining her new found acquisitions with a perilous, childish joy.
The purse contained two ten-dollar bills and a crisp fifty, all lying chastely within a bank withdrawal envelope, a can of mace, a picture of a young child- the face chubby with baby fat-, a ragged hallmark card signed in some illegible hand, and a thick paperback romance novel, its cover illustration promising plenty of passion and adventure. Ignoring everything but the money, Cate picked up the bills and waved them in her hands, a lightning smile bolting across her sharply angled face. She laughed soundlessly to herself, already picturing the meals she could buy with this forbidden currency. She did not think at all anymore of the old woman whose cries were still alive and plaintive, her anguish still woundingly fresh.
Cate tossed the remnants of the purse into the corner of the alley, a place of forgetfulness, of undiscovery. She kept only the bills, still clutched in her greedy hands like a child holding fast to a well-deserved treat, with petulance and self-righteousness. On a whim, though, she had also kept the romance novel, trashy and indiscreet as it looked. Tucked in the pocket of her denim jacket, it looked clumsy with expectancy and misplacement.
Sensing it was time to leave, she lifted herself off the ground with a resourcefulness that only the very misguided possessed, with a sense of indecision and empowerment.
"So, is she dead?" The smooth, genteel voice floated sweetly to her from the alley opening, freezing Cate to her spot. Unsure who exactly the voice was talking to, she stood absolutely still, uncertain with fear and distrust.
"Believe me, she's dead." A second voice, harder and rougher than the first grated on Cate's nerves and came in the direction of the first voice.
"It got pulled off without a hitch. I was a little surprised, but you were right-again. It worked."
"The only thing that matters is that she's dead and buried- along with her brother. They don't have anything on us anymore." Cate strained her human eyes to detect any movement in the alley opening, but the only thing she could see were two unformed shadows talking in low varied tones.
"No more sleepless nights and worrying."
"You said it." The smooth voice sounded suddenly oddly flat and distant, as if it were contemplating something of great importance.
"What's wrong?"
"You do have the pictures, don't you?"
"Yeah. I hired one of Them to get it. Right now, Williams has it. You know, my contact in the police department? He's going to deliver them to me tomorrow at eleven at the café. He told me he'd update me about the situation."
"That's very good work. Meet me after you meet Williams, at our meeting place. Got it?"
"Got it. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Wait, wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"There's one more to take care of. Do you think you can arrange an 'accident'?
"What? Oh…you mean her. Yes, I can do it."
"By tomorrow night?"
"I'll see what I can do." The rough voice sounded gruff with poorly concealed annoyance.
"All right then. Take care."
"You too."
This seemed to signify the end of the short, unclear conversation, as the two voices dissipated and all was silently calm. Cate did not know what the conversation was about or the hidden, deeper meaning lying beneath the calm, measured tones, but she could grasp, even through all of her terrible shortcomings, that this conversation was something evil, something horribly dangerous and hideously profane. It chilled her deeply, the words of the smooth, nameless voice, the words that it had so cleverly manipulated to sound harmless and unimportant.
She stood there for a bare minute, the fog seeping secretively around her, into her heart, and her eyes. She did not move or even breathe, she just stood, thinking about the smooth voice and the rough one, wondering what kind of fresh death those words would soon bring.
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"Jesus, DeLuca, turn the volume up, will you? I want to hear this." A smattering of people crowded around the small, shabby television set propped haphazardly up on a table in the corner of a sleazy, blue-collar bar named 'The Watchtower', staring at two well-groomed news anchors whose smiles were as artificial as their good looks. The one named DeLuca, a short, over-weight man in his fifties with thinning hair and watery eyes, dutifully twisted the volume knob upwards with a thickly heavy hand.
"This is a special report from Channel Five News, I'm Kelly Atwater."
"And I'm Michael St. James."
"Earlier today the body of Monique LaSaris, a twenty-five year old local woman was found brutally murdered in her suite at The Red Lion Inn. Monique was the sister of the respected businessman, Jonathan Freeman, who was also murdered in a similar fashion just three blocks from The Red Lion Inn last Tuesday. We turn to Lisa Fitzgerald who is live at the crime scene. Lisa?"
"Yes, hello, Kelly. I'm live at the Red Lion Inn, and I have to say, this is a most unusual murder. No one, not even the police spokesman, is talking at this time. The general mood is here is very dark, very mysterious. I've heard the word 'occult' being thrown around quite a bit this afternoon, but I have yet to determine what this means."
"Lisa, can you tell us how she was murdered or the circumstances behind it?"
"No, Michael, I can't. As I've said, nobody here is talking at all. The only thing I've been able to verify is that Monique LaSaris was murdered by an unknown assailant sometime after four this afternoon in her suite. There are, unfortunately, no suspects at this time, and the rumor going around the press is that they have yet to find a murder weapon. That, of course, is simply speculation. Back to you, Kelly."
For a minute, no one said anything, and the bar was still and silent. Someone crossed themselves, a sign of piousness and superstition to ward off the evil that had somehow surely entered the room through this channel of hell, and another murmured a prayer in a foreign, middle-eastern tongue.
"Thank you, Lisa. We will be sure to keep you updated on any new developments as they arise. This is Kelly Atwater and Michael St. James from News Channel Five."
The two television anchors faded from existence in a static of black and gray, becoming obsolete and forgotten.
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