Duplicity
By Divamercury
Life's still crazy, and will probably be so for a while. I think I'm catching up on all the homework I didn't have last year. The teachers are really piling it on. Anyway, here's a nice long Chapter 12. 13'll be interesting, to say the least) I know, evil DM. Well, read and if you don't review I will hunt you down and sic the serial killer on you—well, not really. I don't want to kill my readers. Then how would I get reviews? Hehehewell, enjoy this latest installment and let me know what you think! Thanks!
~DM
Chapter 12
"Are you sure it's wise for me to be here?" Ian asked for the thousandth time as we pulled up to the building in his car. I was driving, although neither of us were sure that that was the best arrangement.
"It's fine. Just don't cross any yellow tape. Connor wants to meet you anyway. Are you sure this is the right address?" I asked him, and he glanced down to the napkin held in his hand. I'd scribbled it down before we left Trappetto's.
"Is that an 8 or 9?" he asked, pointing. "Your handwriting is atrocious."
I followed his finger. "I was in a hurry, as if you didn't know. And that's an 8."
"Okay. So it's 948 Valley Drive." He glanced around. "Yes, this is it."
"Damn," I said. "Not even churches are sacred anymore."
Our crime scene was the First Episcopal Church, one of the older ones in town. One of the large wooden doors opened and I spotted Connor coming out. Ian and I got out of the car and met him on the stoop.
"Hey, Pez. Glad you're here. Who's your friend?"
"Marcus Connor, meet Ian Nottingham," I said. "He's my mysterious boyfriend. I kinda had to borrow his car, so he came along," I clarified, because he was clearly thinking, Why is she bringing her boyfriend to a crime scene?'
"Nice to meet you, Ian," Connor said after he had been filled in. He eagerly shook hands with Ian, who was obviously surprised by Connor's immediate acceptance of him. Ian threw a quick glance to me and I nodded.
"The feeling is mutual, Detective," Ian replied. "Sara speaks highly of you."
"Please, call me Connor. Detective sounds too formal, and one of the reasons I became a cop was to have people call my by my last name. Marcusdon't know what my parents were thinking."
The three of us chuckled. Connor's face sobered quickly. "Well, enough of the cheer. Better get you in there, Pez, so you can see what's happened." Connor and I walked side by side down the hall, with Ian a step behind us.
"It's clearly the same killermore of the decapitation stuff. But it seems like this time he or she was really pissed off."
"More so than usual," I commented.
We reached the gym and entered. The space underneath the bleachers was the only part roped off by the crime scene tape. Connor and I headed over to where the body was while Ian waited in the main gym beneath the basketball goal. He started talking to two people that I only saw through the corner of my eye. Connor handed me a pair of latex gloves and I put them on, turning to look at the crime scene. I froze, eyes wide.
It looked like the body was a cadaver in an anatomy lab from the way it was displayed. I approached it cautiously. The abdominal cavity was opened and the woman's entrails were hanging out. It was clear that some organs were missing. I gritted my teeth and continued my analysis. The flaps of skin were secured to the floor with hand-made pins, almost like T-pins, probably made out of bent paper clips. I shuddered at the thought of someone sitting around, casually making paper clip T-pins while sitting in their living room watching TV. What a maniac.
The woman had been decapitated, as Connor had said, but the head was with its body this time. There was also a large, bloody hole above the bridge of her nose, indicating she'd been stabbed there with something. I couldn't guess as to what it was. Screwdriver, maybe? I wasn't sure, but the look of surprise, shock, and fear on her face made my stomach clench.
"Forensics is getting ready to take the body down to Vic," Connor said. I had temporarily forgotten that he was even there.
I reached out a latex-encased finger to the woman's face to close her open blue eyes and was instantly assailed with a vision from the Witchblade. Of course I had been dumb enough to use my right hand
The girl, alive, talking to a man, whose face is hidden.
The man gesturing to the bleachers and following her in.
The girl turning around and getting stabbed in the forehead with an ice pick.
The man cutting off her head.
I jumped back from the body, unable to take any more. So it had been an ice pick that did the deed.
"Pez? You okay?" Connor asked. I was breathing extremely heavily, and I had to remind myself that he didn't know about the Witchblade.
"As okay as I can be after seeing this."
A couple of forensics guys came in with a stretcher and picked up the body. But when they maneuvered themselves to lower the body onto the gurney, the man holding her legs gasped.
Apparently the legs weren't attached any more.
The killer had cut off the girl's legs and switched them, putting the left one on the right side and vice versa, but no one had caught it because the corpse was still wearing shorts although it was nude from the waist up. It was probably all a big joke to this psycho. Moving away from the gurney, I walked around under the bleachers, seeing if I could find anything clue wise. My search wasn't fruitless.
"Connor! Come over here!"
Connor jogged up. "What did you find, Pez?"
"Look."
He looked.
Written in the thick layer of dust on the floor, accompanied by footprints, was the message:
Are you having fun yet, NYPD? I hope so. Especially you, Sara. I know how you love this kind of thing. Catch me if you can. Or if you dare.
--Bill Craneno known relation to Ichabod, but you never can tell
I was stunned, and the use of my name in this psycho's note made me angry. I turned to my partner.
"Connor, we've got to catch this bastard. I won't let him get away with this. He's getting cocky now, so maybe he'll slip up."
As if on cue, Al stuck his head under the bleachers.
"Hey, Al."
"Pez, you'd better get out here. Someone wants to talk to you."
"Who?"
"We've got a couple of witnesses that are asking for you."
Connor and I exchanged looks. Seemed like we found our slip-up.
I started to go out to see Al but stopped to gesture to Connor to stay put.
"Can I get someone out there to come trace these footprints?" I asked. One of the women on the forensics team grabbed a piece of tracing paper and a pencil and came up to me. "Detective Connor will tell you what to trace," I said. She went in, avoiding the body and turning green, and met up with Connor. He gave me the thumbs-up and I returned to my course to find Al, who was standing on the basketball court. He wasn't aloneIan was there with him, standing with those two other people I'd glancewho happened to be extremely familiar.
"Raven? Jackson?"
Jackson Miller, former head Speaker and current love interest of Raven Cole, who also happened to be present, stood before me.
"Hey, Sara," Jackson said.
"Yo," Raven added with one of her typical sarcastic grins.
"What the hell are you two doing here? Tell me you weren't going vigilante on me."
"We weren't. Call it a bad time to show interest in religion," Jackson said with a sheepish grin.
"And naturally he had to drag me into it," Raven added.
"So what did you see?" I asked.
"Well, we came here to shoot some hoops and I found a basketball and we went to work. Suddenly this guy ran out from under the bleachers, over there—" He pointed to the other end of the bleachers, near another set of double doors, "—and took off."
"I tried to follow him but he was long gone by the time I made it across the gym," Raven said.
"Could you provide a description?"
"Maybe. He was kind of far away and he was hell bent on getting out of here. I can try at least."
"What about you, Raven?" I asked.
"Maybe height, weight, hair color. That's about it. Neither of us saw his face."
I sighed. "So what happened after that?"
"I thought it was kind of weird that someone was under the bleachers, so I put down the basketball and Raven and I looked under the bleachers. That's when we saw heror what's left of her."
"Did you touch anything?" I asked.
"Of course not, Sara."
"Think about our backgrounds for a split second before you ask us that next time," Raven teased.
True. They would know better than thatespecially since they had been on the wrong side of the law before and knew that accidental self-incrimination was just plain dumb.
"Yeah. Sorry. So what then?"
"I found a pay phone in the hall out there and called the cops, and we waited around for them to get here. That's it," Jackson replied.
"I see. Okay, we'll need you to talk to you a little more. Al here knows what to do, so trust him. Give him some physical descriptions of the guy and whatever else you can think of. I've gotta go. Just hope it helps."
"I have every confidence that you will solve this case, Sara," Jackson said.
"Goes double for me," Raven added.
"Thanks. I wish I did. Bye, you two."
"See ya, Sara," he said.
"Later," Raven replied. Ian and I left the pair and headed for the exit.
"Hey Connor?" I called.
"Yeah, Pez?"
"I'm going back to the precinct. I'll probably just stew over paperwork and see if I can find some more similarities between these murders. You think you can handle this?"
"I'm good, Pez. We traced a couple of the footprints and we'll see what we come up with."
"Keep up the good work, rookie. I'll see you back at the 11th."
"See ya, Pez."
"Wonderful," I said as Ian and I went back to the car. "Just spectacular."
"I'd better drive," Ian said, gently taking the keys.
"Sure. I need to think anyway."
After we'd been underway for a few minutes, Ian spoke up. "I'm sorry about this, Sara."
"Me too. Sometimes I really hate this job."
"Jackson was right, though, Sara. You will solve this. You seem to take serial cases like this personally and once it's personal, there's nothing that will stop you. Trust me, I've seen you at it." He smiled slightly. "The clues will eventually fall into place."
"True," I said. "At the first murder, there wasn't a shred of evidence, DNA or otherwise, except all the victim's blood, not to mention my present. But nowhe must know we're closing in slowly but surely. He seemed harried to start with and Jackson and Raven being there surely didn't help him any. He'd probably just finished with the victim when they got there because he had time to gather all his stuff together and run out. Now we've got footprints to work with, we know for sure that it's a man, and maybe we'll get lucky and find some fingerprints on something."
"I wouldn't count on that, Sara. His only prints would probably be on his own supplies that he used for killing her. If he had any semblance of criminal logic he'd wear gloves when he was setting her up like he was."
"Good point." I had to remember who I was talking to. Why was Mac my only friend not wanted by some organization?
Ian pulled into Trappetto's lot and I opened my door.
"You sure you're okay? You seem a little pale."
"Vision. Got the highlights of the killing but this damned thing won't let me see the guy's face! It's really pissing me off. But I'll be fine. I'll call you if anything comes up, okay?"
"All right," he said reluctantly. "I'll see you tonight."
"Bye, baby."
"Bye."
My thoughts were a huge jumble as I got on my Buell, waved a final goodbye to Ian, and streaked off towards the precinct. I was trying to narrow down a suspect list in my head and my paranoia wasn't helping me at all. I parked in my usual space right by the door of the precinct, still milling things over in my mind, and went to my office, falling into my desk chair and trying to concentrate on the paperwork I had left. Connor hadn't gotten back yet, so I opened a file and flipped through it, signing off in several places and putting it on the top of the stack with the others.
it's gonna be one long day," I thought.
* * *
I flipped through the files that had been brought to me and put on Father's desk. Most of them held no interest for me, since they had to do with the innermost financial workings of Vorschlagthat's what accountants were for. What captured my attention was the series of repetitive references to one "Witchblade." Something with a name like that was hard to ignore. Many photographs were in that one bulky folder with the heading Witchblade on it, most of them pieces of art in Father's collection that could bear further scrutiny. I then came across a photo of a gauntlet and another of a dainty bracelet, both labeled with the letters WB.
Interesting,' I thought. These must be forms of my new little friend.' The clincher was a snapshot of a woman, obviously candid from her expression, labeled Sara Pezzini. She seemed familiar and I thought about her for a moment until I remembered.
*"Ms. Avilla, what happened this morning is very much our business. I'm Detective Pezzini and this is my partner Detective Connor. We're with the NYPD, Homicide. Mr. Irons was found dead in his office about half an hour ago."*
So that meddling, impertinent detective was the Wielder of the Witchblade. Howinteresting. I finished with that folder and came to another one labeled Nottingham. Opening it, I came face to face with a highly handsome specimen. Written in red ink at the bottom of this photo was Security threat; history of disloyalty on part of the Wielder. Hmmm. Ian Nottingham. I believe I just found the Wielder's weakest link. Now how can I use that to my advantage?" I grinned wickedly. That shouldn't be too hard.'
* * *
I was lost in a sea of reports when a timid knock came at my door.
"It's open," I said. Expecting Connor, I looked up to instead see Gina Ramirez standing in my doorway.
"Gina! Have they finally let you out?"
"Yes. It seems that they decided that there was nothing they could actually pin on me. Took them long enough."
"Well, I'm glad. Sorry it took so long, though. We may not know who killed Irons for a while, if things keep going the way they are now. Guess it's another unsolved mystery."
"Can I tell you something?"
This caught my attention. "Sure. Fire away."
"Personally, I don't care if they ever find out why he died. Irons was a bastard and the only reason I stayed there was because I needed the cash and I couldn't find a job anywhere else. I just hope it's there when I get back."
"I bet it is. And if it isn't, we could probably find you something here without a whole lot of trouble if you really need the work."
"Thanks, but no thanks. This place gives me the creeps. Don't know how you work here."
"Same way you work at Vorschlag and stay sane." I smiled. "Keep in touch, Gina."
"I will, Sara. I appreciate your help. If you need any help where Vorschlag is concerned in the future, let me know and I'll see what I can do."
"Sure thing. Thanks, Gina."
"Bye, Sara."
So now I had an operative inside Vorschlaghow interesting. Could definitely come in handyperhaps a visit to Ms. Avilla was in order. I was convinced that she had something to do with Irons's death, considering the fact that the day she crawled out of the woodwork Irons died and she got everything. Too much of a coincidence, even in my Witchblade-affected mind. Wonder if an arrest warrant is too forward a housewarming gift?'