Dance Studio Flames

4. Missing

Note: Pay close attention to the dates. Please ignore any mistakes I may have made – I'm in a bit of a hurry.

I had a change in plan – I'm lengthening the story.

Disclaimer Applies

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23rd March 2005

2:34 PM

Detective Cato Delfine had been missing for many days now.

Days and days.

Arson Investigator Erica Alan stood just outside where the burned building had been taped off. Cato had set out, certainly, and his squad car that he had driven out parked at the location proved that, but the man himself was missing.

The footprints couldn't be certain anymore, since many cars and people had walked since, so there was no ways of knowing what could really have happened. Of seeing which could be his signs of ever being there.

Cato's disappearance hadn't really been known until 24 hours after he had left Erica in the PD to go organize his thoughts. That had sparked a search and they had gone directly to where Cato had said he would be to look for him. They had found the markings etched in the dirt but not understood. There was a symbol – what looked to be a smudged E – as well as perhaps another letter, but it wasn't clear. The letters had almost been smudged away completely. It was also uncertain whether it had been Cato that had written it. For all they knew he cold have written an F or an L and someone had gone and graffitied it.

It was possible that Cato could have disappeared of his own free will, but Erica didn't think so and Aleron agreed. Cato wasn't that type of person. And if the etched letter was his, then certainly, Cato was probably in trouble.

But without evidence or, indeed, anything really to work with, Erica and Aleron had a problem and here was nothing at all they could do. Not to mention new developments.

The Chief of Police, Isaac Ward, looked up from his desk as Erica and Aleron entered his office. He put down his stack of papers and smiled up at them rather welcomingly.

"How may I help you two today?"

"We would like to ask for the Dance Studio Case to be reopened." Erica took the lead.

Ward hesitated and his smile faded from his face. "We had judged the case be closed. We looked over the evidence that you presented to us, but because nothing can be verified properly and no real conclusions can be drawn as well as the holes you know are in this case; we have decided the trail has gone cold. Not to mention anything Detective Delfine might have known will have gone with him."

"But sir, I believe with time we surely can figure out –"

"I said no." Ward's voice was gentle, but firm. "Firstly we don't have that sort of luxury of time. Also, you cannot catch someone based on assumptions and surely not on instinct either. Instinct can get you to a certain point, say a suspect, but it will not prove anything. Even if you bring in fingerprints, a good attorney could wave it off just like that." He made a sweeping motion. "I'm sorry, but the case is cold because there isn't enough conclusive evidence. Just opinions and also your word on the truth of the smell at the scene."

"A little more time –"

"NO." Ward's voice was fierce now. "Don't you understand? I don't want to lose another detective like this." He took a deep breath. "Until we find more evidence, I don't want more officers sticking their noses into danger. This case is closed. Please leave it alone and leave."

Erica's brow furrowed with her discontent, but she obeyed.

"I don't know how evidence will ever be found if the case is closed." She replied coldly.

"I'm sorry about your friend, but we don't even know if Delfine's disappearance is related." Ward sighed again. "I'm sorry I cannot be of more help, but there is nothing I can do. There is no more evidence for the case, therefore there is nothing else which can be done, but to close it and dismiss it as the work of hooligans because of this shaky evidence."

"We understand, sir." Aleron replied smoothly as the two stood and left the office.

But they didn't really intend to leave the case alone, not really. Erica had grown to like Cato a lot during those two days and Aleron, one of Cato's few friends, felt it was his duty to find out what happened to his friend. They both had a feeling that Cato was right, and for sure, the perp who had killed whoever it was inside that studio had probably come back to silence the officer who would find out the truth. Cato's thirst for truth and justice and his sense of wrong and right was always very strong.

Aleron couldn't work on the case now, however. He had already been assigned a new case, and as everything was still rather quiet on the arson investigating front, Erica decided she would do researching on her own and Aleron would be able to do the computer searching whenever he had a reprieve.

It seemed a good plan as any, Erica decided as she returned home that day, dumped her handbag on the couch and walked into her study. She pulled open the first drawer, pulling out a pad of paper and a pen and, looking at all she could remember of the case she had written down, she flipped to a blank page and began to write.

--

Not quite 6 Days ago…

Phoenix Hospital

17th March 2005

11:41 PM

"Doctor!" A man rushed into the for-once quiet Emergency room of Phoenix Hospital, alarmed and his voice extremely urgent.

Dr. Nicholas Rutterford turned with a sigh towards the man, hating that the first time he could actually relax, he was being called out again. But a job was a job and his was to save lives, so he made himself move regardless of what he thought. He recognised the man as one of the hospital's cleaning staff that frequently cleaned the Emergency area.

"What's wrong, Nelson?" Nick asked, stepping forward, remembering that Steve Nelson should have left an hour ago.

"I was just driving home when I saw someone just lying there, so, since I was there and the battery in my cell is flat, I turned around and drove right back."

Nick frowned. "And left them there?"

Nelson seemed to want to jump with frustration at Nick's lack of urgency. "Yes, of course. No, duh. He's in the back of my van. He looks pretty bad too. Can you get someone to look at him?"

Nick motioned to some of the nurses who had also been relaxing in the temporary lull and nodded to Nelson that they go and have a look at the man. Something was certainly wrong with him but it was too dark to tell as they maneuvered the man onto a stretcher and brought him inside.

"Stop," Nick ordered, suddenly, turning back to Nelson. "Did you check this man for a pulse or anything first? His neck looks like it was violently broken." He motioned to the nurses and they moved the man immediately into a better position on the stretcher.

"Like that thing they do in those movies?" Nelson asked, face paling.

Nick continued on, "With an injury like this, he's most likely dead, especially with not knowing how long he was exposed out there and not knowing exactly how he was found, I can't tell if he has even the slightest chance of survival."

"I felt the pulse so I brought him to you. It seemed like he would survive." Nelson's voice was anxious. "He looked okay."

Nick frowned again and stepped up beside the patient, feeling for a pulse on the man's neck while noting what looked like a jagged cut on the side of the man's neck. It was true, the man's heartbeat seemed a little slow and sluggish, but was definitely there. But what to do? The man surely was dead even though his heart was still beating. Would it hurt to keep him there for a few days? Heck, the man might even die within the hour.

What should he do?

Nick sighed irritably and rubbed his head. Well, maybe it wouldn't hurt to keep the man there for a little while. They might as well clean him up, but truthfully, Nick didn't know how long the man was going to last.

"Look for any identifying cards or anything." He instructed on of the nurses. "Does he have a wallet?"

The nurse flicked through the pockets of the man's slacks. "No. Or if he did, it probably fell out."

Nick looked over the man's clothing and had to silently agree. The man's simple shirt and slacks were torn and he looked like he had been in a fight or something. In that case, would it be a good idea to call the police? It'd probably be in everyone's best interests … then again, it was hardly like the man was going to get up and start a ruckus here too. Not to mention he wasn't required to call in a fight, just a bullet wound.

"Then let's have him registered as John Doe for now." Nick said, pulling a clipboard off the desk and scribbling the man's new name on the front and flicking it onto John's bed.

At that moment, John's eyes flew open and a strangled gasp escaped from his lips before a suppressed sound of pain. Nick had jumped back in surprise. So much for the man not waking up. He wasn't sure how it could be the man wasn't dead, but that didn't matter right now. From the man's expression, he seemed to be in intense pain.

"Painkiller!" Nick ordered and a nurse dashed off even as an ambulance tore in front of the Emergency and paramedics got out in a hurry. The nurse returned with a bottle and a wrapped needle and dashed off to help the paramedics wheeling in a patient. Nick ripped off the wrapper of the needle, plunged it into the lid of the bottle of painkiller he knew would be an opiate and thought to look at what it was before injecting. It was morphine, so Nick quickly sucked up the right amount in the needle and injected it in John.

John's eyes closed and his features slackened, but Nick had no way of knowing what was happening to him. Nick didn't even understand how John could be alive.

"Nurse Watson." He motioned to the nurse to staunch the blood still leaking slightly from the wound and told her to move him to a room before going over to the other patient who was being wheeled away at that moment. Car accident victim.

It wasn't until much later that Nick returned to where John had been wheeled into. Just like magic right after the accident patient had been looked after, the emergency had gotten busier, with a pregnant mother coming in, a girl who had broken her leg falling down the stairs and a child with half her face swollen like a ball.

Nick looked at the patient with a type of bone weariness. John had been set up with a monitor that showed his heart seemed to be beating just fine and a bandage wound around his neck. He'd had a blood transfusion, as he'd lost quite a bit of blood from the neck wound.

He flopped down a minute on the chair, hoping to think, but the next minute his eyes had flitted shut and he accidentally fell asleep. When he blinked awake a few hours later in surprise, sat up and wondered what had woken him, he looked up at the electrocardiograph and noticed a sudden changing. John made a muffled noise again and Nick could guess that pain had most likely returned. They would need to find out what was wrong – what was causing this pain – and find a way to treat it. For now, they had no idea what kind of accident or event he had been in so that he had been injured. One thought was spinal injury though, it could be looked into.

It wasn't like he was severely injured though – only the wound on the neck and the broken neck, which was now securely held in a neck brace. It seemed that their actions in bringing John to the emergency hadn't had any lasting effects on him, for which Nick was grateful.

Nick was only fairly new at the hospital, really. He'd been a doctor for at least a year, but he'd recently been transferred from a different hospital, so it wasn't quite the same here as it was there. Also the fact that he was one of the few doctors in at this time of the night, it made it a little daunting as the personnel expected instructions from him even though he felt disorientated enough so that he wasn't sure exactly what was happening.

Nick considered for a while. They would have to get some scans to see if John had spinal injuries, but until then Nick was only going to give him codeine. He had given morphine that first time because of the fact that John's pain seemed to be severe, but if –

John made the slightest thrashing movement on the bed and Nick's train of thought stopped. No, scratch that. He seemed to be in genuine intense pain. Although he could still use codeine, would John swallow it? Maybe it was better to use an able to be injected painkiller.

Pulling a bottle he had actually retrieved earlier for John from a pocket, he pulled another needle from a drawer and injected it through a side section of the IV needle already taped to John's arm, but at that moment, not connected to anything and sealed off. Nick wrapped the used needle away before he noticed the dirt under the nails of his right hand. What had that man been doing? Playing in the dirt? Well, he had been found on the road after all – who knew … Nick shook his head after leaving a note and went down to schedule a scanning for John.

He'd have to hurry though, Nick realised as he saw the people in the Emergency room. Time was a-wasting and there were more people than ever even in the later hours of the morning waiting for service.

--

Alan Residence

24th March 2005

9:25 AM

Erica thought that she had about most of the facts Cato had thought of down pat as she looked over her notepad that morning after having talked to Aleron about what he had known. Of course, Cato might have already had an idea of what was going on, but all she had was the facts. Now it was up to her to find what was hidden in the riddle.

Erica poured over the details, and then wondered if there were any sources of information and evidence they might have missed. The investigation had been far from over when Cato had disappeared, which meant there was more to find, only that Cato had yet to find it, as magnificent as he was in his work.

Erica had looked over Cato's file a while ago and seen his high ratio of solved cases. Cato's instincts were good, but he made sure to back up his theories as much as possible. Although his theories had seemed far-fetched to her, he hadn't just been making assumptions, he'd been making theories he could then verify or reject. Cato wasn't the type of person who would close a case without having all the evidence to support, even if he made pretty quick conclusions.

Aleron had finished the background checks and emailed them to her earlier. She was grateful for his help even as she knew he must be very busy with the case he'd been assigned to. She flicked through the notes now. There wasn't anything incriminating as such on the ten men on the pages. A few petty crimes, stolen things from supermarkets, but nothing major apart from a drunken brawl from one of the ten.

She frowned though and suddenly dug through her bag coming up with a sheaf of images she had printed out. She pulled them out and flipped through them to find the image she wanted and remembered well as she had taken it. Erica looked at the image of the scratched letter in the dirt and then back at the list of names. If Cato had tried to scratch one last clue in the dirt, then it probably related to this list he had been looking at and thinking over before he died.

Of course she had checked out the place where the letter had been and it hadn't look altered, even if there was a possibility it had been an F say, or an L. Apart from the dirt that the wind must have blown up, there was no sign of anyone scratching at it or adding extra strokes to make it more ambiguous.

Erica pursed her lips and flipped back to the list of names, looking for people with names beginning with or ending with L, F and E. She smiled as she realised there were only 4 people on the list who could fit. She was closing in on a suspect at last.

And then she would take it from there.

--

Phoenix Hospital

19th March 2005

1:32 PM

Doctor Nick Rutterford had never been so baffled in his life. According to the scan they had made, John's neck was not in any way broken and he had no spinal injuries, although there'd been some other things showing up unexpected not on the scan. John was probably still in pain, or at least he was but he couldn't feel it as Nick had given him a large dose of morphine before.

He had the feeling it didn't help very much though, as did their efforts. They'd tried to make John comfortable over the not-quite-yet two days he'd been there but he wasn't particularly responsive and they couldn't find out what was wrong with him.

Nick studied the images from the scan again as he stood inside the room John was currently living – lying – in. His eyes weren't mistaken and neither was the tech's – there was definitely no injuries of the spinal or neck sort, but what was giving John that intense pain then? And he was positive that John had a broken neck when he had been brought in, but injuries of that severe nature didn't heal that quickly.

Did they?

Something certainly seemed fishy about this, as well as the fact that something strange seemed to be happening to John. John hadn't even batted an eyelash since the first day and the amount of morphine given to him there hadn't allowed sedative properties, although the current amount of morphine possibly could have. Even so, he should have at least tried to move an inch by now.

Also, John's heart rate had sped up, to everyone's concern, but it thumped along steadily at that high rate. They didn't know what was wrong with it, once again, but his heart seemed to be happy with the speed, strangely enough. This whole thing was stumping everyone who didn't know what was happening with this patient who, on the outside at least, seemed perfectly fine.

It was a little strange though that John's features seemed a little different each time Nick looked at him. It was a little curious but since there was no real change, it wasn't something they were concerned about. Funny that he looked healthier rather than less as patients usually did. They'd come in sick, but looking rather normal, and leave with stringy hair and tired features.

Another thing Nick had began noticing was John's skin. It'd been harder the past few days to keep the IV needle far enough into John's skin to be able to administer to him his painkiller, although at this point, Nick didn't even know if John really needed it, just that when he wasn't given it, he was in pain.

Nick wasn't sure whether to believe it, but it seemed like John's skin and flesh was getting harder and cooler, like something out of a comic book. He was alive, but behaving in a way surely that of something … not human. Sure, a body getting stiff, he could understand as well as the cooling of the body, but that was Algor mortis and Rigor mortis, conditions the body had after death.

Did that mean he was hallucinating or in a dream? It wasn't possible, right?

Who knew? Nick rubbed his forehead tiredly and not without irritation. He just wished switching to this new hospital was easier, but no, such a case like this already and he felt utterly helpless. It didn't really bode well for the rest of his time here either, did it? Maybe he should make another switch, just in case?

Nick shook his head with a sigh, gathered together all his things, checked patient John one last time and left the hospital room.

--

Okay, so if anyone practices or studies medicine here, you probably think I'm very funny, but in my defense, I have to say, I neither study nor practice either and well, I'm not even out of school yet, so I can't help that.

So all the medical and criminal knowledge is to the best of my ability and that's all I can give you. Reading a lot has its merits, but it doesn't mean everything is correct. It does, however, give you a thrill when you read something else and you know what they're doing is absolutely correct. Haha.

And the next day is the day Bella wakes up… depending on where/when you're counting from. But we're not looking at that anyway. I'm only telling you so you know where we are. Erica is still about 4 days in the future…