Woohoo! All the motivation from the…counts on fingers…zero reviews I got for the last chapter. I would have thought someone would have had a reaction. Maybe I just have to try harder… (Or maybe I just scared away my reviewers with chapter 9, sorry.) Well, we'll see what happens.
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Orange Hope Amongst Grey Defeat
The early morning was cold and quiet. One stray orange tabby walked across the sidewalk to a puddle of water, lapping up the cold liquid from the previous night's rain. It ran off just as a dirty white truck pulled up along the curb, splashing the water over where the cat had been.
A man, dressed in dark, baggy clothes jumped from the driver's side and, without turning off the car or closing the door, went around to the back of the truck. He pulled a large, dark bundle of what looked like old coats from the truck bed and dumped it on the stairs just across the sidewalk with a loud thud. He jumped back in the truck and drove off.
The cat, having watched this sequence from a small tree not too far away, wandered over to the bundle. He sniffed it but it smelled like any bundle of clothing left on the street. He found a crook in the arm of a coat and settled in. The sun would rise in about an hour, and people wouldn't start walking by until shortly after that. He had time to huddle against the warm clothing and relax.
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It had started raining soon after Barek and Logan had left the city. Gabriella had been right—he had taken Alex up state. It took three hours for them to get through the rain and mud up to Ithaca and then through the back roads to the cabin. "Cabin is an overstatement." Logan had said and Barek was inclined to agree. There wasn't much to the rickety structure—only three rooms. Ivy covered the outer walls and spider webs the inner.
The first two rooms, after having been inspected by flashlight, had held nothing much except for small packing boxes and mason jars. Barek moved on, found the light in the hall and turned it on. "There's blood here." In fact there was, though only a little, not enough to be a major wound. It pooled on the wood near a door and splattered against the wall. Much of it had already seeped into the grain. With Logan right behind her, Barek pushed open the last door.
Inside were the same packing boxes, each one full of empty mason jars. There were the same spider webs and the walls and floor were made of the same old wood. But there was an air of difference, something dark and foreboding. Near the center of the room, next to a small wooden pillar, lay another pile of blood. This one was larger and hadn't had a chance to completely seep through the boards. A few feet away, looking on at the infusion of blood in wood, lay the body of a man.
Barek shivered. "You ok?" Logan asked.
"Um, yeah." But she didn't look it. She her eyes averted from him and continued surveying the room with silent alarm. It must have been something that only woman intuition could pick up on.
Logan pulled out his radio. "Detective Eames is not, I repeat, not here. Send up a team. We have a body."
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Carver had slept lightly all night. With his case early the next morning and Detective Eames' disappearance there was enough on his mind that he couldn't relax. Frustrated with staying in bed, he had gotten up extremely early and had decided to head to the Courthouse to fuss over some insignificant details of the case.
With the extra time at his disposal and all the things to worry about floating around his head, he had decided to walk to work. It really wasn't all that far; his wife had been nagging that he should start walking to work more often anyways. He grabbed his dark three quarter length trench coat and walked into the biting morning air. Winter had come, he could feel it in the chilling air and see it in the threat of snow from above. He placed his hat on his head and proceeded off to the Courthouse.
As he drew within sight of the grand stairway leading up to his destination, he became increasingly aware of an odd shape at the bottom. He knew that New York never slept and that, like every major city, it was full of people living on the street, but they never dared to spend their nights on the Courthouse steps. There were warmer places, most of which offered a better chance for food.
His shoes made clipping sounds as they hit the concrete. The figure at the bottom of the stairs must have heard him as it attempted to roll over but gave up part way through. Instead, an orange tabby, previously hidden, slipped up from behind the figure and ran off. Carver was inclined to ignore the person on the ground and continued on his way up the stairs until he heard a pitiful groan. He turned to look back at the body, expecting to see a bum who had spent the night curled up with a cat for warmth begging for food. What he found however, gave him a considerable shock. There, lying at the base of the Courthouse steps, was none other than Detective Alexandra Eames herself.
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The night had been about as cold as she could remember—not that she could remember much at the time. Diego had knocked her unconscious after her conversation with Bobby and the next thing she knew, she was wrapped tightly in folds of heavy cloth in the back of a truck. She didn't care to think about why or how she was there and instead let her head fall back into the coats and drifted off to a much needed sleep.
She was next woken when the truck stopped. Diego, or someone she had assumed was Diego, gently lifted her from the back of the truck and unceremoniously dropped her on the side of the road as if he was trying to get the loudest noise possible from dropping a pile of books. That fall right there was another bruise just to add to the growing pile of reasons to die right then and there. She remembered the cold well enough that she had expected to just freeze to death before morning. In fact, most of her was hoping for it. And then an unexpected being came along. The cat, the only witness to her uncouth return, had chosen to snuggle up with her for the night giving her both the necessary warmth and love to survive through the morning.
It was the feeling of the cat, her savior, leaving that caused her to wake a third time. It was all too much. The initial loss of hope, the slight rejuvenation at talking with Bobby, the passing of all joy again with the early morning air, the unconditional love from the cat and the final termination of all things that were warm and cheerful as the cat left and the sharp clack of dress shoes entered her already painful head. She groaned aloud, finally giving in to her determination to seem strong on the outside. The clacking stopped and she opened her eyes to look upon the bearer of bad tidings. There stood, looking as confused as she felt, ADA Ronald Carver.