I.
Detective, well, ex-detective Jacob Black was in town. In watching Bella, he saw her go in and out of the police station, talking with those other detectives whom he had judged to be less than a challenge. He was not concerned.
And Jacob Black did not necessarily concern him either, but seeing him brought a flood of memories he did not want.
He had just started work on Bella when there had been a truck at the front of the building. Her tiny screams had been so exciting, so pulse-poundingly arousing he had thought he would have to leave the room to calm down.
But he had just set down his first knife—a nice fillet knife, the one he liked to start with—when the sound of someone in the driveway had echoed through the building. He had to rush, taking her out of the restraints and off the work table, throwing her into the closet place she spent most of her time.
It was that rushing that cost him.
He didn't realize until the man in the truck was gone, a full ten minutes later, that he had not closed and latched the door properly. It had not clicked into its space correctly, and the latched lock had not slid into appropriate place.
And Bella was gone.
He admired her for a moment, the spunk in her he had not expected. He had not thought that a little girl, bleeding, and without her shoes—they were still on the floor of the closet place—would be able to get away as quickly as she did. He followed the droplets and splashes of blood across the floor.
She had climbed up on his tool table, scattering his beautiful instruments across the floor. She had managed to push the window open and wiggle out of it. When he got outside, he saw that she had taken off running. Assuming she had been running for about five minutes, he knew he would need to take the car to catch up to her. He ran to his Buick—no unmarked panel trucks in his possession, it was just so passé—and drove in the direction he was sure she had gone.
But by the time he had caught up with her, she was being scooped up by a police officer, a one Detective Jacob Black. His hands became coated in her blood as he accidentally touched her newly incised wounds. He had been furious. Her blood should not be on this police officer's hands, this pig did not deserve it.
Her blood was for him alone.
He felt the rage boil under his skin as he sat in his car now, watching the ex-detective leaving the police station.
He was willing to temporarily put his plans on hold to deal with this interloper.
II.
The phone rang on a Tuesday afternoon, about a week and a half after the phone call she had gotten from whoever it was that was after her. She had gotten a new cell phone after that, with a new number. Only her family, necessary work contacts and Edward knew that number, and she was planning on keeping it that way until this thing had played out.
Still, when the phone rang, it made her nervous.
When she looked at the phone she sighed in relief. It was Edward. She picked up the phone with a friendly hello.
"Hi Bella, I was just calling to remind you that our plane leaves tomorrow morning at ten, so a patrol car will be by to pick you at around eight. The flight should only take about six hours, so we should be in Seattle around one, local time. Are you packed?"
"Yes; I tried my best not to over-pack, but I am pretty sure there is something about having two x chromosomes that forces you to pack for all occasions, including a natural disaster and an elopement."
Edward laughed. Bella quelled the sunny feeling it gave her hearing him laugh and knowing she had caused that reaction.
"I promise no elopements or natural disasters," he replied with a smile she could hear in his voice. "Is everything else going alright, are you doing okay?"
"Since yesterday when you called?" she asked back.
There was a pause, and Bella could almost feel his chagrin through the phone.
"Considering the things that happen to you on a regular basis, yesterday included, I feel it is my duty as an officer of the law and a protector of the good people of this city to ask," he said back.
"Those groceries, while plummeting down the stairs at breakneck speeds, did not actually injure anyone. And it wouldn't have happened if my building had an elevator. I blame the super."
She heard him laugh again. He had called her the day before right after she had managed to drop her bag of newly bought groceries down every flight of stairs, nearly injuring the old woman on the stairs two flights down. It had been embarrassing to say the least.
She only knew she had been on speakerphone telling that story when she heard Emmett laughing hysterically in the background.
After the hysterics died down, Edward had discussed with her what the phone call had actually been for.
He had followed up on some leads, which had brought him to think he might have found the location she had been held at when she was a child.
"It's been years, Bella. The evidence at the scene was likely negligible at the time, let alone so long after. But it is worth checking out," he had told her. But there was an edge in his voice, like there was something he wasn't saying. So she asked after it, feeling bolder with Edward than she did with anyone else she knew. After a moment, he had answered her, with measured reluctance in her voice.
"I think you should come," he had said.
"Why?"
"Well, for one, if this is the right place, you are one of only two people who are able to say that with any kind of certainty, and the only one who is willing to cooperate. The second thing is that, traumatic as it can be, it would not be the first time being in the right surroundings has jogged someone's memory."
Bella had struggled with the idea of it at first. The thought of being back there, the one place she had promised herself in her worst moments of panic and fear that she would never have to go made her freeze in a cold sweat inducing panic.
"I will be right there with you," Edward had assured her.
"I don't know if I can do that," she had replied quietly.
"I know you can."
It had been those words that had persuaded her. She didn't know how he could be so sure of her, but however it was, it worked. She agreed and they finalized the plans for the flight. They would only be gone three days, Wednesday through Friday. Bella had plenty of vacation time to take it off. Edward had offered to call her office and tell them she was helping with a police investigation, but she refused that offer. She didn't want the people at her office to know about this if they didn't already. She didn't want to be a pity case.
So she had talked to her boss about taking the time off, packed her small carry-on suitcase and now, seated at her desk, talking to Edward on her cell phone on her new number she felt another twinge of panic.
He must have sensed her sudden apprehension because he immediately switched gears.
"You can do this, Bella. I know you can. I have faith in you."
"It's going to take more than just faith," she informed him bitterly.
"In that case I'll buy a bottle of tequila for a little liquid courage," he replied.
Bella laughed and thanked him for the offer.
They went over the plan for the next morning one more time and then hung up. When she put her phone down, Bella took a deep breath.
I can do this, she told herself again.
"Do you actually need a drink?" Edward asked her, as they sat in preparation for takeoff. Bella was gripping the arm rests, breathing deeply.
"I'm not good with flying," she answered. "There is something about giant metal objects being propelled through the sky that make me nervous."
Edward chuckled as they began to taxi slowly. Bella continued to breathe, embarrassed by her ridiculous fear of flying. When they began to pick up speed she closed her eyes, trying to keep the panic down.
As they began to take off, Edward covered her clenched fingers with his own. Bella opened her eyes and looked at him. He was looking straight ahead but he squeezed his hand over hers gently. A wave of calm swept through her. The panic quieted. It amazed her that such a little gesture could make her feel so much safer.
The rest of the flight passed with easy conversation. They talked about things unrelated to the case or why they were going to Seattle. Bella learned that Edward's biological parents had died when he was very young and he had been adopted by the Cullen's at the age of four. Esme, his adopted mother, had taught him to cook. Carlisle, his adopted father, was a doctor. He was the one who encouraged Edward to follow the footsteps of his biological father and become a police officer. It was what he had always wanted and Carlisle, compassionate and understanding as he was, knew Edward wanted a way to feel connected to his biological parents, no matter how much he loved the people who had adopted him.
Bella, in turn, told Edward about her family—her neurotic mother who couldn't keep a hobby to save her life, flitted from job to job, but had managed to remain married to her new husband Phil since Bella was sixteen. And of course, about her father, the well meaning chief of a tiny town in Washington State called Forks.
It was incredible that they managed to fill an entire six hour flight with conversation, but it was so easy to talk to Edward. She felt natural sharing details of her life, telling stories about her past and dreams and aspirations for her future. She had almost forgotten the reason she and Edward were on the plane in the first place.
Until they began to descend.
Bella explained, as Edward looked to her, waiting for her panic, that it was only the taking off that made her nervous. Landing didn't bother her so much. But when she realized they were going to be in Seattle in a matter of minutes, she felt a swell of unease.
Her family had moved from Seattle as soon after the kidnapping as they were able, for obvious reasons. She hadn't returned there since she was nine years old, and hadn't thought she ever would. She looked over at Edward through a sideways glance, and reminded herself that he was going to be there with her. She wouldn't be alone.
They didn't talk much on their way out of the airport. Edward picked up their rented car and they drove to the hotel at which they had reserved rooms. Bella was tellingly quiet through the entire ride. When they arrived Edward checked them in and they went to drop off their things in their rooms. They were right next to each other, Bella in 206, Edward in 208. After they had a few moments to unwind, Edward knocked on her door.
Bella came out to find Edward dressed as she was used to seeing him, and realized that he must have planned to go to the police station. Bella nodded and said nothing. He looked at her, a moderately concerned look in his eyes.
"We aren't going to the warehouse today, Bella. We are going into the police station to talk to the Seattle PD and talk to them about what they have on this lead and get them up to speed on the relevant information from the case. I just assumed you would want to be involved as much as possible. If you would rather stay here and unwind, you can certainly do so," Edward said. Bella heard the detective in him coming out and she shook her head slowly.
"No, Edward, I'm glad you asked me to come along. I asked you to keep me involved; this is what being involved means. I just…I haven't been in Seattle for over a decade. It makes me feel…" she trailed off.
"Like you are that little girl again, back where you started?" Edward finished. Bella nodded. It was like being eight years old again, where all the grownups were asking her questions and not giving her answers and she was afraid to close her eyes in case she would end up back in that closet, or worse, back on that table.
"It's stupid, I know it's stupid, I'm twenty one years old, I graduated college, I'm an editor at a publisher, but when I'm here, it feels like none of that ever happened."
Edward took a step in Bella's direction and took her hands in his.
"Listen to me. You overcame one of the most difficult things any person has ever overcome. And you turned into this strong, beautiful, intelligent, talented, culinary genius of a woman. He did not beat you. You escaped, you survived, you moved on with your life and became successful on your own merits. I will be here, right here, if you need me. But I don't think you do."
Bella got in the car without a problem.
III.
Bella's sudden quiet has unnerved Edward. He realized too late that coming back to Seattle might inspire a kind of fear in her that he had thought would only apply to the warehouse itself. She hadn't been back to the city since she was a child, since the trauma itself. It had become evident in her abrupt silence that something was wrong, and when Edward had realized what it was, he had felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner.
He was asking the poor girl to relive trauma and he couldn't even keep himself on top of what she was going to need from him when it came to support. He wanted to give the girl a good hug, kiss the top of her head and tell her everything was going to be just fine, but he knew that was, first of all incredibly inappropriate, and second, not necessarily the truth. He didn't think he ever felt like quite so much of a failure as when he saw fear in her eyes and knew he should have been able to keep it away.
But he had managed to recover, to talk to her, to ease her off the shaky platform of fear she had been on. She seemed to have calmed down after he talked to her. They listened to the radio on the way to the police station.
Edward had spoken to the captain of the Seattle PD's MCS, Alice Whitlock when he had called with the inquiry. She had assured him that one of her detectives would put some legwork into the question he had and she would get back to him as soon as she could. It had taken a few days, but she had called him with a very promising lead. There was a transfer station near a sector of old warehouses owned by some machine parts making company that had abandoned them twenty years ago, and hadn't used them for anything since then. There was limited security—basically a chain link fence and a no trespassing sign. It wouldn't be hard, with a pair of bolt cutters, to get in and out of the premises. And since it was in a bad part of town, all old industrial warehouses and processing plants, there were never many people around to keep an eye out for suspicious activity, nor had there been in the times of the murders.
"It gets better. Your witness said it smelled like a compost heap, correct? Well this transfer station was owned and operated by some forward thinking men, who sectioned off a large part of the transfer station to be all natural, decomposable materials. If the kid said he smelled a compost heap, he was probably dead on if he was being held in one of those warehouses. My detectives said they could smell it from half a mile away if they car windows were down."
Edward had almost jumped for joy. Finally, there was something, a tiny something, but still something he could say he had a lead on, something that made him feel like he wasn't spinning his wheels. Emmett had clapped him on the back, told him it was 'damn fine detecting' and Edward went to the captain to ask him for the time he would need to go check it out himself. He also asked permission to bring Bella along.
He was given a green light on both.
He knew why he was being given such leeway—it wasn't because he was some wunderkind detective, it was because no one wanted the case in the city, especially not his squad. If there was anything they could do to get rid of the threat and keep the killer from actually committing a serious crime in their city, Edward knew he would get permission to do it. So going to Seattle on an all expenses paid business trip for he and Bella was not out of the question.
And he was glad she had decided to come. It might be good for her to look at the past directly in the eye and see she could handle it. She might have been scared, but Edward knew she could do it. She was stronger than she gave herself credit for.
The police station in Seattle looked eerily similar to the one Edward went to every day for work. He went to the woman at the front and told her that he and Bella had a meeting with Captain Whitlock. She nodded, picked up her phone to call the captain and after a moment told them to go right upstairs and she would be waiting for them.
He and Bella walked in stiff anticipation, climbing the stairs quickly.
They were shocked when, at the top of the stairs, a tiny woman no more than five feet exactly reached out her hand introduced herself as Captain Alice Whitlock.
"A pleasure," Bella said, shaking her hand. Edward said something along the same lines and filed a thought away to tell Emmett that their Seattle PD comrades were under the command of a woman he could bench-press.
"Well Detective Cullen, where are we?" Captain Whitlock asked, as they. Edward launched into a basic overview of the case, how he had come to suspect the location of the place Bella had been held and thanked her profusely for her help in locating a place that fit the description.
"Believe me, Detective, the Seattle PD will be happy to say it did its part in helping to catch this monster when you bag him."
Edward nodded.
"As I told you, my detectives looked into it and found one specific group of warehouses that fits the bill almost perfectly for what you described," she told him. She reached into the pocket of her slacks and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Upon on it was an address.
"That's the place. We secured the key to the locks on the front gates from the offices that own it. So it should be no problem for you to check it out at any time, just remember to give the key back to us when you're done with it. Obviously, if at any point, you require my assistance or that of my detectives, feel free to give us a call."
She and Edward shook hands again. Before he and could leave, Captain Whitlock called after Bella by name.
Bella turned around and the captain, what a little woman she was, all dark pixie hair and startlingly blue eyes was looking right back.
"I remember your case. I was just getting on the force, working vice. I had nothing to do with your case, but I remember it. I heard stories about you, this tiny little eight year old girl, scared to shit but a fighter. I remember thinking you were brave. I can see now that I was right."
"Thank you, Captain Whitlock," Bella said quietly, not out of shyness, Edward thought, more out of an inability to speak.
"You don't need to thank me. I wasn't stroking your ego or bullshitting you with some sort of psychology to make you more likely to help in the investigation. I was just telling you the truth."
Bella nodded, a little fire back in her eyes. Edward was happy to see it.
He and Bella left then, in silence once more. But it wasn't the same kind of scared uncomfortable silence as earlier. It was more relaxed, calm, like a storm had finally passed. Edward watched Bella as they drove back to the hotel and saw her face had returned to its normal color, she didn't look shaken or tense. She looked like the Bella Edward was used to seeing. Apart from when she had received that one phone call, even when scared she had always seemed so much more sure of herself.
So when she smiled at a song on the radio and moved in her lips along with the words Edward felt happy. When later that night she suggested they eat their Chinese take-out in her room and watch lifetime movies together, he felt ecstatic.
They sat at the small faux-wood table in her room, watching Seventeen and a Mom, possibly the worst movie Edward had ever seen. But with Bella making hilarious commentary about the poor character acting and awful plot line between bites of her General Tso's chicken, he hardly noticed. He couldn't remember the last time he had just relaxed, let his guard down and just spent some time with someone without constantly being on the alert, without putting up some kind of wall. He sat there, munching on sweet and sour pork and laughing at Bella's jokes.
When the movie ended Edward collected the empty take-out containers and put them into the large brown bag they had all come in, fishing out the fortune cookies and tossing them on the table before throwing the trash in the large garbage in the hall outside.
When he got back inside they opened the cookies. Edward popped half into his mouth as he read his fortune.
Respect your elders.
He wasn't about to tell Emmett about that. But he read it out loud to Bella, who frowned.
"That isn't very exciting, Edward," she teased.
"Well what does yours say?"
"You would make a great lawyer," she read. Her frown deepened. "Mine is even worse. I take back my teasing."
"Forgiven," Edward chuckled. They stood for a moment, in an unsure quiet.
"I was thinking of heading over to the warehouse tomorrow after breakfast. Is that agreeable?"
"Sure, I like some repressed trauma after breakfast. Its how I try to start every day," she answered. There was a sour edge to her voice, but it was not angry or scared. But Edward didn't want to try and be too serious and ruin the good mood she had been in before.
"Glad to hear it. I'll see you in the morning, Bella."
They said goodnight and Edward left her room to go to his, right next door.
He hardly slept. He tossed and turned, slipping in and out of consciousness, never for long enough to feel like he was getting any rest. He kept thinking about the next day, worrying after Bella, wondering if she was sleeping any better, and how she would fare the next day.
He worried after her, he realized her, a lot more than he had ever worried about anyone.
The next morning they got up around nine, went to a Dunkin Donuts for breakfast and then, key and address in hand, started the drive toward the warehousing district.
He could see Bella getting more and more tense as the miles passed on. He could see it in her face and hear it in her voice, as it seemed to wind up and tighten. When they arrived outside the collection of grey buildings, Edward stopped the car almost reluctantly.
They both got out of the car, doors closing with an ominous click, locked behind them. Edward went to the chain link fence, with a large menacing looking padlock strung upon it. He inserted the key into the lock, felt it tumble and pulled it off, prying the fence open enough for a person to squeeze between.
"Are you ready?" he asked. Bella nodded. She looked calm, fear swallowed down. Edward stepped through the fence first and held it open for Bella. Once she was through he closed and locked it from the inside.
"Which one of these is supposed to be the one?" she asked, looking at all the buildings, which he could tell she thought looked all the same. And mostly, they did look too similar to really tell apart. But Edward had spoken to Captain Whitlock's detectives before he retrieved Bella that morning, and they said the building closest to the transfer station, with the easiest route to the road was at the far left corner of the fenced in lot. When Edward asked how the hell a little girl would have been able to climb a chain link fence, they told him that the part of the fence that would have been in need of climbing had been hit by a delivery truck during the time of the abductions and wasn't replaced until six months after Bella was found. So it was to the back left corner they went.
The building they were looking for stood on its own, with at least six yards of free space in every direction. There were weeds growing up through the pavement all around it, broken boarded up windows on every level of the building. Whatever its purpose had been, it had not been used for a very long time. They walked around the outside of the building, not speaking. There was nothing outside for him or Bella to pick up on. It was, location wise, very convenient for the way her escape had occurred as far as she was able to describe it. But other than its perfect fit into a story she herself wasn't really very good at remembering, there was nothing on the exterior of the building.
They paused at the door.
Bella was the one who opened it.
They took the first steps together, and the second. She didn't leave his side as they passed through the threshold, as they slowly went through every inch of the first floor of the building. There were no side rooms with heavy doors and latches to keep it closed.
However, there was a heavy door that led to a set of cement stairs that disappeared into darkness.
Edward looked to Bella, who swallowed hard. He reached to his belt and pulled out his small LED flashlight.
"You are like Swiss army Edward," she said, trying to force a joke out of her mouth. But her tone was all wrong. It was strained. He opened his mouth to reassure her again but instead of needing his words she took his free hand and squeezed tightly. He squeezed back.
The stairs were cement, sturdy and untouched by time. Their steps sounded dull and shuffling as they descended, Edward's flashlight cutting a section into the dark. When the stepped off the last stair onto the solid concrete floor, Edward shine his flashlight to the surrounding walls and found a small light switch. He did not let go of Bella's hand to reach over and flip it on.
The room was bathed in spotty, uninformed florescent light but poorly lit as it was Edward felt Bella stiffen.
"I'm right here, Bella," he told her again, squeezing her hand in his once more. She nodded silently.
She was the one who took the first step, further into the room, more into the light. She looked around slowly, eyes scanning right to left. He watched as her gaze moved over the room and saw when it stopped on a door all the way in the back left corner. He wanted to take it slowly, but she rushed across the room, dragging him with her, almost pulling his arm out of the socket. He didn't know where the sudden urgency came from, but he wasn't going to waste time asking her about it. He would just follow her lead for as long as wanted to be taking the first steps.
She threw open the door, which had been partly ajar and stared into the small space for a long moment. After her pause she let go of Edward's hand and he watched her as she stepped into the closet-like room. She reached out to the wall and touched the tips of her fingers against the cement, immediately pulling them back like she had been burned.
"There is still adhesive on the walls from where he put up the pictures. All those pictures…of the other children, he hung them up in here, with me. I remember this place," she said quietly.
"Bella," he said quietly. She kept her back to him as though she hadn't heard him.
"I bled in this room. So did the others, I imagine. I'm sure he washed it away, but it was here. I know it was here."
"How do you know?" Edward asked quietly.
Then she did turn back around. There were tears in her eyes, her bottom lip between her teeth.
"I can feel it. Bad things happened here, Edward. Bad things happened to seven other children and bad things happened to me. Just trust me."
"I trust you, Bella, I do. If you say it was here, I believe you."
He wasn't just trying to make her feel better. This would be a perfect location for the work the perp did, it fit in with the other identifying details provided by the investigation both he and the Seattle detectives did, and if Bella said she could feel this was right, he wasn't about to question her. He knew what it was like to just feel the answer, to know in your gut what was what. She was the one who had been kept here, if she said this was the place, then this was it.
Edward knew he was going to have to make some calls to get people to come to where they were, so he suggested that he and Bella go outside so he could do so. She paused a moment, staring back into the closet, at the heavy door with a latch up at the top that would lock immediately. She looked at it the way someone would look at a car accident, a mix of horror and curiosity. Eventually he had to gently put his hand on her arm to pull her out of her trance. She started a little at his touch, but when her eyes met his she instantly relaxed.
He let her lean on him as they went back up the stairs and out of the building. The echoing of their steps didn't seem so ominous now, only strange and unwelcome. When they got outside and breathed air that hadn't been locked in an old building for so long Edward felt like his heart was beating harder and he could feel his blood rushing through his veins. It was as though he had been vacuum sealed in that warehouse, like he had stopped just like time.
They walked back to the car without speaking and Edward realized that since coming to Seattle, they had spent more of their time in silence than they had speaking. He made a mental note to himself that before they left Seattle they would go out and do something non case related, almost like their movie and Chinese food marathon the night before. When they arrived at the rental car, Bella sat in the passenger seat with the door open, and Edward leaned against the car, and called the Seattle PD. After a short conversation with Captain Whitlock she agreed to call up their forensics team and send them right out to look at the basement of the warehouse, on the slim chance there was anything to pick up after all the time that had gone by. Edward agreed to stay and wait for them and her detectives, whom she was also sending out.
"Not as some sort of bullshit turf war or anything, Edward. I just think it would be good to keep everyone who is involved here up to date," she assured him. He didn't argue with her on it. Once he hung up, informed he would have to wait about a half hour, he put the phone back in his pocket and went to talk to Bella.
When he looked at her, she still had a strange empty look on her face. She was so distracted she didn't realize he was looking at her. He called her name three times before she heard him.
"Bella, I just spoke to Captain Whitlock. She is sending her detectives over as well as a forensics team. It is going to be a while before they get here, and they will take quite a while to comb through the warehouse once they get here. If you want, I can call you a cab back to the hotel and you can stay there and I'll call you if they find anything."
She looked at him with bewilderment until he talked about sending her away.
"No, I'm not going anywhere, Edward. I am seeing this through until it's over. I am done being a victim."
Edward didn't say anything, but he nodded.
"Thank you, for bringing me here. I was so afraid of coming back, of having to come here and face this again. But I'm glad I did. I'm so tired of all of this, so tired of being scared. But I feel strong being a part of something that is going to put him away."
"You're welcome," was all he could think to say. Bella got up out of the car and took the step between them and hugged him. He heard her thank him again.
He couldn't speak, so he just put his arms around her and embraced her back. He didn't know how a simple hug could make all of his internal organs feel like they were rearranging themselves, but his stomach flipped just like it did when he had his first crush in high school. It was totally inappropriate and he knew he should squash down the way he was feeling, but he wasn't sure he could, even if he tried.
"Edward?" her tiny voice asked, not letting go of him.
"Yes Bella?"
"All of this is really scary and weird and it makes me feel awful half the time. But even with all that, I'm glad I met you."
Edward leaned away from her and looked down into her face for a moment.
His body screamed, kiss her.
His mind screamed, don't you dare.
"I'm glad I met you too," he answered, falling somewhere in-between what he wanted to do and what he knew should be the proper interactions between them. She smiled and there was something victorious in her expression, like she had won something. She seemed pleased with herself, confident and comfortable in a way he hadn't ever noticed before. Did facing her past really change so much in so little time?
But he thought about it, and reasoned with himself that perhaps, after all the time she had spent living in fear of the entire world, not sure who had taken her and so not sure who to trust, visibly suspect of everyone around her until they had earned her difficult to ascertain trust, going back to the place that had instilled such fear in her, knowing she had survived and that she had lived might make her feel stronger. He had always seen the strength in her, but he didn't know if she ever had, until she had walked into the tiny basement closet and walked back out again without breaking.
They waited together in the car making easy conversation until the detectives and the forensics team arrived. The detectives—Jessica Stanley and Tyler Crowley—showed up first and introduced themselves. They went back to the warehouse immediately to make sure nothing was disturbed until the forensics team arrived. Edward was sure that they really just didn't like the idea of being overshadowed by a BPD detective in front of their own forensics people, but he didn't argue with their decision to go.
The forensics people showed up not long after, two large vans filled with twelve forensic specialists. Most of them brushed past Edward and Bella and went right back to the warehouse to get right to work. One man stopped, a tall blond gentleman whose twang revealed him to be mildly southern when he introduced himself.
"I'm Jasper Whitlock, the head forensics investigator. You must be Detective Cullen and Ms. Swan," he said, reaching his hand out to shake with the both of them.
"Whitlock? Is Alice Whitlock…" Edward trailed off.
"My wife? Yes."
"That must make for some interesting interdepartmental feuds."
"Sometimes," Whitlock laughed, "mostly we try to keep things as professional as possible. I just wanted to assure the both of you that my team and I are going to do everything we possibly can to help you catch your man. If there is something there, we'll find it."
Edward nodded in thanks before watching him follow the rest of his team off to the warehouse.
"Well, I think there is only one thing left to do," Bella said quietly.
"What is that?"
"Get lunch," she said. Edward was just too surprised to laugh.
Edward and Bella sat on the trunk of the rental car eating sandwiches they had gotten from a deli down the street. Edward had offered to take Bella down to the warehouse after they ate, but she politely declined. She said she didn't want to get in the way of forensics guys. Edward was glad she made that choice. He thought it was better that after going into the warehouse once, they avoid it altogether unless it was absolutely necessary to go back into it.
So they ate at a leisurely pace, sipping on ice teas, talking about the crappy Seattle weather. The sun hadn't broken out in the two days they had been there and Bella admitted that she remembered more rain and clouds than sunny days when she was a child.
Idle chat was enough to fill the time they sat together, waiting for some news. They got it three hours later, once forensics was done sweeping the warehouse.
As most of them filed into the vans, buzzing about what they had found, evidence and equipment in hand, Whitlock came to them, handing off his black bag of equipment to someone else who walked past Edward and Bella.
"Well, as I am sure you expected, we didn't find much. The entire basement was bleached, so if there was blood on any surface, which we imagine with that degree of cleaning there must have been its gone now. However, there was evidence of some kind of adhesive substance on the walls on the small closet in the basement, like glue or tape, which we will catalogue. And there was also a long, dark brown hair caught in part of the window frame, likely from when you climbed through it, Ms. Swan."
"Is that it?" Edward asked. He had known there wouldn't be much, but of course he had held out one flicker of hope that there would be something more substantial. Whitlock smiled broadly and shook his head.
"We found a handprint on the closet door. He must have wiped down the handle and the latch, but skipped over the door itself. Once we analyze the print, we can put it in the system. If his prints are in the system, we'll find him."
Edward's jaw dropped.
"You're serious?"
"Completely. I'll do the print analysis myself and I'll call you first if I find anything out."
Edward wanted to hug the man, but he settled for a very enthusiastic handshake.
As he and Bella were driving back to the hotel, they were talking in excitement.
"Don't get me wrong, I couldn't be happier to have found such great evidence, but I don't see how it happened. Someone so meticulous would be careful enough to remember where he touched on the door with his bare hands and wipe that down."
"He was rushing," Bella said. Her voice was soft and when he glanced at her, she was looking out the window. "It was the night I escaped, I'm sure. Someone was there, at the warehouse, and he wasn't expecting it, so he was rushing, to make everything look normal and get me to a place I couldn't get away. He must have just pushed the door closed with his hand. After he abducted that boy and got rid of him he must have been desperate to scrub the place down in case the boy could identify it. He is human—he just made a mistake."
"Well, his mistake is our good luck," Edward said, feeling triumphant. They continued to talk as they drove. They had just pulled into the parking lot at the hotel when Edward's phone rang. The number from Emmett's work phone showed on his caller ID.
"Hey Emmett, what can I do for you?" he answered.
"Edward," Emmett replied. Edward could tell in that one word that something bad had happened. He didn't know what, but if it was bad enough that Emmett didn't wait for him to get back to hear it, Edward was almost afraid to find out.
"What is it?" Bella asked, noticing Edward's change in expression. He shrugged waiting for Emmett to continue.
"Edward, Jacob Black was murdered."