Disclaimer: Everything Law & Order related belongs to Dick Wolf and company, as in the show idea and known characters. But I do own the abstract created characters and plot line.
TVCowgurl: Yeah, you will, not for several chapters though.
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Cate Monty had intimidating, yet warm eyes.
They where piecing and seemed to follow you whenever you moved around the room.
Then there was the burn tissue that consumed her throat and etched away at the upper portion of her chin and clung to her left cheek.
She was a model that one time, Cragen remembered reading that somewhere in her file.
She was beautiful at one time, fantastically gorgeous. She still was too; even with the burn tissue and scarring she was still beautiful.
Mickey Blues' sketch was amazing; it put the digitally aged rendering to shame.
Those eyes, penciled fine with gray graphite, strong and psychotic.
The eyes of a killer or vigilante.
Cragen wasn't really sure.
He laid the sketch back down on his desk and peered out to his detectives, each one bustling around like bees.
Searching for any connection between Jack Kershaw, Mark Garston, Christopher Harris and Cate Monty.
Creating timelines, studying reports and accounts again and again.
Taking tips from hotlines after Mickey Blues' rendering started circulating nearly two hours ago.
Tracking down leads, only to find dead ends.
This went on six days; no new murders occurred or at least haven't been discovered, yet.
The next day would shock them all.
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The Ninth Day
August 18, 2005 Thursday
Shit, there she is again!
A stoned David Hebel nearly tripped over a vender's cart in Chinatown, while he glanced behind him on the sidewalk.
He earned a swift curse in English from the vender; he ignored it and continued on the walkway.
First Jack, then Chris…me…she's coming for me!
David stumbled into an alley's mouth, peered behind him, then down the street, searching for her, that bitch, that corpse, Cate Monty.
He stared hard over the heads of the oblivious, not knowing that a dead woman walked among them.
Didn't there? Wasn't she dead?
The various smells of the East filled his nostrils as he inhaled hard and exhaled as equally.
Not according to his contact in the NYPD the press didn't even know about her yet, but that text message on his cell phone was clear enough.
'She's alive. Jack and Chris are dead. Call the others and get out of the city.'
David would too, take care of his business and go.
That was his plan two days ago, now he was high on what pot he had left, pumped with heroin, totally broke save for the two dollar bill in the heel of his shoe and seeing Cate Monty everywhere.
Disfigured and pissed.
Stalking him like an animal.
His paranoia, addiction and imagination where getting the better of him.
Aren't they?
He held his breath again and stepped out of the alleyway, shoulders shrugged, head hid beneath his Bastards from Hell hoody. He walked hard and avoiding curious glances from other pedestrians.
Then there she was.
Intense and hard.
From across the street, her eyes locking with his.
He couldn't take it anymore.
"What the fuck do you want from me!" He screamed feeling the hot tears in his eyes.
People stared at him awkwardly.
She didn't reply, but smiled wickedly.
"Bitch! What do you want?" He screamed, still high, spread his arms in a hostile manner, then he slipped off the curb, a taxi clipped him, flipping him on to the hood, bouncing him against the windshield, causing it to spider-webbed under his weight.
The cab screeched to a halt flinging David off the windshield.
He lay there on the hot, filthy pavement for a moment.
Gasps filled the air and along with several "Oh my God(s)."
People rushed to his side.
David groaned and gathered himself on to his knees. Someone placed a hand on his back; he shrugged it off and stood quickly.
"Get the hell away from me!" He blinked hard and tried to wipe the blur from his eyes.
From his haze he searched for her, then there she was, on the opposite side of the street, she had never moved.
She laughed at him.
Fear consumed David Hebel, he pissed himself and ran, not knowing that his visions where all marijuana induced.
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"He's dead…"
9-1-1 Operator Cynthia Hagen paused, "Ma'am, who's dead?"
"He's dead! My husband's dead! Oh God!"
A child screamed in the background of the phone call, Cynthia cringed at the loud sound.
"Ma'am, ma'am I need you to calm down and tell me where you're at?"
"Oh God—" Deep, resonating sobs and children screams echoed through the connection.
"Ma'am your address—"
"Twenty-six fourteen, Shadow Waters outside of Queens!"
Shadow Waters…the side of the tracks I was never allow on…Cynthia realized.
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"Bensyn Connors." Olivia clicked her tongue in tsk, "This woman is crazier than I thought." She concluded as she viewed the mutilated and broken body of the infamous drug lord, gun runner and entrepreneur.
Although it could never be proved that Bensyn Connors was actually drug lord or gun runner, but it was rumored he was.
The Connors family was very powerful; they were also virtually non-existent until nearly seven years ago. They just appeared out of nowhere and then became a giant blip on the Narcotics division 'radar'.
Nadia Sands had been involved in several sting operations back when she was in Narcotics, trying to nail Bensyn Connors, each one was a bust.
He was very, very smart and always one step ahead of everyone else.
Bensyn was also rumored to have some of most popular and powerful 'movers and shakers' of New York City and the greater world in his back pocket.
When ever a problem occurred within his realm of enterprise he could always buy off the concerned parties with money or political promises.
Even with all that wealth and power he couldn't buy off the angel of death, Cate Monty.
Olivia noted the broken bottle of aftershave in the sink, the expensive kind too, a shaving can cap floated and bobbed in the bidet. Its can wedged in the pipes behind it. The strong fragrance loomed overhead in the large master bathroom, covering up the smell of blood and human defecation.
Then there was the frantic, bloody footsteps on the bathroom floor, some bare and others foot soled and their respectable counterparts smeared along the walls; red looming handprints.
She focused on a particularly clear footprint on the ebony marble floor.
About a size nine, maybe ten? She made a mental note.
The shoes where print-less, no intricate or complicated design to follow.
Smooth bottoms, very little traction, the quiet kind of shoes for 'creeping'. Assassin…
The modest schoolteacher and mother turned murder/vigilante knew her stuff.
Or someone's helping her…
Olivia glanced at the threshold where the bathroom and bedroom met, there where thick bloody footprints made from the same kind of sole, where Cate Monty wiped her feet clean, she didn't want to leave bloody tracks.
So now her tracks beyond the bathroom where invisible to the naked eye, but not to an ultraviolet light.
Nadia and Andrew along with a CSU where tracking her 'exit path' while her and Elliot observed the crime scene.
But surely Cate knew they'd find her trail, eventually. Unless she just wanted to slow them down, at least temporally.
Cate was sloppy when it came to the evidence she left behind, but it didn't really matter and she knew that.
What good is evidence you can even find the woman who was leaving it?
She was registered as a dead woman in the United States and the rest of the world.
The fantastically manicured bathroom was in shambles. There was a shattered mirror, tossed toiletries, wrenched cabinet doors and blood, that human fluidly, blush was every where.
It had sprayed on the ceiling, the adjoining walls and doors, along the floor, just every where. In bold prints and wide smears, without the broken bottle of aftershave the smell of blood would have been unbearable for her.
She had noticed her sense of smell had seemed heighten lately.
Allergies. She brushed her newly intensified scent to that.
Olivia had never realized there was that much blood in the human body.
Bensyn Connors was nude, he laid torso down and head turned upward in a pool of his own blood on the fine, ebony marble floor.
His neck's been broken, Olivia understood.
She viewed his head, turned in an awkward matter, the stretches of skin around his neck pulled into a sick twist. His skin didn't even look real; it looked like pale plastic and dully fake.
There where several stab wounds and wicked lacerations all over his Da Vinci sculpted-like body.
Bensyn Connors was fit and very attractive when he was alive.
She noted the murder weapon, an old fashioned straight-edge shaving razor. It must have belonged to Bensyn; she recalled the can of shaving cream.
He probably had just taken it out.
The blade had broken in two when it clattered on the marble floor; Cate must have dropped it when she was satisfied with her work, her 'twisted masterpiece', 'her business'.
The gleaming manufactured tool, her recent appendage, now useless to her, it was discarded, forsaken, used and was deposited as just on the floor.
Olivia leered at the broken blade, Does Cate even carry weapons?
Every weapon they found at every crime scene belonged to the victim or was a fixture in the room. She never brought her own party favors.
Elliot glanced at the a crumpled bath towel that hung on the toilet rim, dipped into the cool, pink water, no doubt the one Bensyn had been wearing when Cate attacked him.
He was careful of the blood droplets that where here and there, spatters that ranged from furious to the more subtle and meek.
Then just like at the other two premeditated crime scenes there was Cate Monty's bloody calling card:
"ITS JUST BUSINESS"
This time it was written on the distorted shower glass door, with slight frosting of the glass, humidity emitting from Bensyn Connors's still warm body.
Same tone too; frantic, agitated, enraged and deranged.
CSU cameras flickered and clicked around the bathroom and the adjoining bedroom.
Elliot glanced at Olivia, speaking with only a look, she nodded.
Nothing more they could do here, CSU had the field now.
They peeled the powdered lined latex gloves off and dropped them into a CSU trash receptacle in the bedroom and followed the feminine cries down the hall.
The newly widowed Josephine Dawn Connors sobbed with hectic and frantic breaths into her silk, floral embroidered handkerchief.
John and Fin waited patiently for Josephine to compose herself at her own pace.
Josephine breathed hard again and the wiped the stingy snot away from her red, raw nose, discreetly.
"God, I'm sorry—I know you have your investigation and questions to ask, just—just bear with me." She murmured her eyes red and raccoon-like from the non-water proof mascara.
"Ms. Connors, take all the time you need. Just take your time and tell us what happened from the beginning." John said in genuine comfort, placing a hand on her lovely, pale shoulder, her strapless party dress looked so dreary and large on her now.
They must have had a terrific evening planned, it's been foiled now.
Josephine nodded and readjusted herself on the white plush sofa, Olivia and Elliot came in her line of sight. She stared at them for a moment then looked away.
"Bensyn and I—we where going to a friends party tonight, some garden party. We couldn't have been separated for more than an hour. I already put my face on and was playing with the twins in their room on the ground level," she huffed some, then felt her tears threaten to run, "My girls—our girls, they've really gotten into this tea-party kind of stage."
She laughed at the ridiculousness of her last statement, then cried some uncomfortably.
Josephine composed herself and continued, "So I was playing with them and kind of lost track of time. I glanced at their little tea set clock and saw we should had left nearly ten minutes ago. I called up stairs to him saying we where late and I'd meet him at the door."
She paused and wiped her face, "I was going over things with Nadine, our children's nanny. And he still didn't come down the stairs. So I went to check and I found him…" She trailed off, Fin made a few more notes on his memo he produced only moments ago.
She focused on the floor, not knowing what to say next.
"Thank you very much Ms. Connors. You have our deepest condolences. You've been such a great help, we just need to know, did you see anyone or hear anything?" John asked in fear that she would shatter before his eyes.
She shook her head slightly, tousling her black, strewn hair from the expensive clip, "Nothing…no one."
Just then Nadia appeared out of nowhere and placed a quiet hand on Olivia's shoulder, as she and Elliot stood in the walk way watching John and Fin finish with Josephine.
Olivia shuddered at her touch, then turned to the rookie.
"We've found her entrance and exit."
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"She was running as you can tell," Nadia indicated to the small orange markers in the pattern of long running strides, down the hall just outside the crime scene.
They continued down winding corridors lined with CSU markers till they reached a flight of stairs that would lead them to the roof top.
The markers became less frequent; Cate had taken the steps two at a time. She must have buckled along the away, two distinct bloody, but faint hand prints that where plastered on each side of wall on stairwell.
Not as good as you thought…Elliot thought to himself.
They exited the stairwell to the roof top, the cool night breeze struck them and Olivia tugged at her jacket. Gravel crunching beneath their footfalls on the rooftop.
"She picked the lock on the door," Nadia gestured to the door they just exited, "probably used a pick like this one." She produced a small instrument from her breast pocket.
Various CSU specialists buzzed around the roof top, dusting this, photographing that, efficiency their reputation.
Before Olivia could question why she carried a pick, Nadia was already changing the subject and returned the pick back to her pocket.
"We found tracks from her landing here and from her take-off tracks here." She pointed to more orange markers in gravel-craters, distanced very far apart.
"Take-off? Landing?" Elliot questioned with puzzlement, "What is she? A plane?"
Nadia smiled, "See that roof top?" She pointed across the wide roof top to another building's roof top.
They nodded.
"She jumped from there to here." Nadia said in a matter of fact sort of attitude.
Elliot looked at her in disbelief; Olivia had the same sort of look on her face as the two swiftly walked over to the building's edge, followed closely by Nadia.
Elliot looked over the edge; the Shadow Waters building was forty stories high.
Long way down…No way…no ones that agile…
Olivia recoiled from the edge, swift vertigo nibbled at her temples; she gripped her abdomen feeling a churn.
"That's—what a twelve, fifteen foot stretch?" Olivia said trying to regain composure as she gestured at the huge gap of space between the buildings.
She couldn't hide her nerves.
"Fifteen at least. She must have pole-vaulted or something, no one could jump that." Elliot said in doubt.
"Not necessarily," Nadia murmured crossing her arms, her superiors looked at her with question, "Well, you know….ok, back in Italy and Rome, Paris and even here, when I was a kid, my brothers and I would…well…building jump. It was a game, sort of."
Elliot gaped at her, "Did you grow up hard or something?"
"Naw, we just…look it can be done. I could jump this without a pole-vault, anyway. Besides she didn't use one. There's no indention of one." She motioned at the gravel.
Olivia rubbed her temples then shook it off, "Where Gage?"
"He took a CSU team over to the next building to gain access to the roof and security film."
"Why didn't you just jump over there?" Elliot said still not believing that she played such games as a young girl.
What ever happened to basket-ball, jump rope or soccer? Games he played in that Catholic schoolyard. He never got so bored he jumped from building top to building top.
"And fuck-up a crime scene?" Nadia retorted and walked away annoyed.
"She has a point." The queasy Olivia Benson murmured when Nadia was out of earshot, then turned and followed her.
"No way, no one could jump that." Elliot muttered to the night as the access door opened from the other building top, Andrew and the CSU team swarmed the rooftop carefully.
"No way."
(End Chapter 5)
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