[A/N: It has literally taken me FOREVER, BUT I finally present to all you wonderful, patient people, an update! This story is not dead, I've just had a lot going on and other fic ideas that took over my ADHD brain and well... yeah, that's what happened.
Eitherwho, there will be a handful of chapters after this so we are VERY close to the end. It's time to start wrapping up this mystery! I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think/what you predict will happen. I'm going to try my DARNDEST to get the rest of the chapters out in a much more reasonable time frame but your reviews are a huge motivation so please leave a comment! Honestly, this story has been ressurrected as a result of an anon who reviewed recently and that was enough to make me say, 'you know what? I need to finish this'. Your feedback is so powerful, guys!
Anywho, I hope you enjoy and once again, thank you for reading and not giving up totally on this fic!]
The sun's rays peeping in through the blinds over Helga's window were what first brought her to stir the following morning. As sleep fell away and her surroundings became familiar, she immediately noticed Arnold's form on the floor beside her bed. He was still hunched over in what appeared to be an uncomfortable position by her bed, one hand still holding hers and his head resting against the other arm that supported itself on the edge of the bed. Helga gently pulled her hand from Arnold's light grasp and watched for any sign that he would soon wake up. He stirred slightly and Helga took advantage of the precious few moments that she could watch him, studying his features, before he would become aware of her gaze.
Arnold grumbled as he slowly lifted his head, his back full of kinks from an awkward sleeping position. They must have been exhausted to have barely moved during the night.
"Hey," He said in a gruff voice as he slowly realized where he was and that Helga was already awake.
"Morning," Helga said softly, still buried under the safety of her blanket.
Arnold yawned as he rubbed his face and turned his gaze to the window. "What time is it?"
Helga grabbed her phone from the night table by her bed. "Almost 11,"
"Hmm," Arnold said, standing up slowly as if he didn't trust his aching muscles to support his weight. "I'm… gonna make breakfast,"
"Okay," Helga said but Arnold had already slipped out of the room.
He stayed there the whole night. Helga thought to herself in wonder as she threw her blanket off of her and closed her bedroom door to get dressed.
When Helga came out of her room ten minutes later, she could already smell the robust scent of bacon sizzling in a pan on the stove. Arnold was stirring a bowl of well-beaten eggs that was destined for another skillet. He didn't immediately notice her as she stood in the doorway separating the main living area from the hallway. She watched his movements, his back facing her and her mind whirring.
Maybe they should consider turning this over to the police. With Rich's death under investigation as a possible, and likely, homicide, and the incident with her getting shot in the woods (maybe it was a hunting accident but her gut told her probably not), staying on this island and continuing the investigation seemed more and more dangerous the longer she thought about it. But then again, the cops had tried years ago and failed… and she'd promised Rich she would help solve this mystery. If she couldn't do anything else for him, didn't she at least owe it to his memory to try? They were so close to cracking it - she could feel it; there were just some pieces of the puzzle remaining. A flickering ember of the girl she once was, still hidden deep inside her, reminded her Helga G. Pataki is no quitter. She couldn't just give up, could she?
Unfortunately, while she may have been an excellent investigative journalist working with one of her best informants and she may have been William's last hope at closure, she still was not a cop. She didn't have authority and she didn't have a weapon or really any training that probably could come in handy if things turned south quickly.
Helga's eyes followed the muscles in Arnold's back as he reached for the cabinets overhead. She studied him without realizing that was what she was doing. She didn't want to put him in danger so that weighed on her mind as well.
She leaned against the doorframe with a sigh. Every day she had to get used to the fact that everything had changed. Arnold was alive and helping her, no less. The idea that the past several years of her life had hinged upon - that Arnold was dead - was completely null and void. So what did that mean in terms of her depression? Her organ donations? Her recent suicidal ideation? At present, she wanted nothing more than to live and take advantage of the time she had with Arnold but was she really okay? With everything going on, if something were to happen to Arnold, would she fall into that same spiral once again?
Helga was pulled out of her thoughts when Arnold turned around, noticing her.
"Oh hey," He said, turning the stove burner off. "I didn't hear you come out. I made scrambled eggs and bacon - hope that's alright?"
"Sounds great," Helga said nonchalantly as she walked over to the dining table and sat down.
Arnold wordlessly placed a plate of food in front of her before returning to the counter to straighten up and bring his own plate over. He was still wearing his night shirt and pajama pants, dark circles under his tired eyes.
Arnold took a bite of bacon, eyes purposefully cast down at his plate as his mind wandered. What was she thinking about? After their tender moment last night, he wasn't sure how to proceed nor did he understand why he felt so inclined to comfort her, hold her… this was more than just being compassionate and deep down, a part of him realized this. But another part of him realized how this could look… how it probably already looked… His wife goes missing and he's under investigation by the cops and then all of a sudden he's shacking up with another woman? A woman he'd been more or less stalking for the past several years… Not that they were doing anything inappropriate per se but it still looked suspicious, he was sure. And after last night, he just felt even more confused. Even if nothing had happened between them, it was becoming more and more difficult to describe his feelings toward her as platonic. That thought alone was bizarre - he'd never given thought as to what stuck out about Helga in particular, never entertained the idea that his compassion toward her, his inclination and drive to be around her, talk to her, know her, and understand her could all be rooted in one thing…
But there was too much going on. And this was too confusing. Or maybe it wasn't confusing but rather, just too overwhelming for him to deal with right now. They had an objective - better to focus on that than to get caught up in something he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop once it started.
Arnold took a swig of the glass of orange juice in front of him. "Okay so, Sara Witt, right?"
"Huh?" Helga seemed to snap out of a daze, realizing she'd been pushing her eggs around her plate and eating phenomenally slowly. "Oh, right. Yeah, Sara,"
"We're checking the barn out today?" Arnold continued as Helga made more of an effort to eat, stuffing a fluffy hunk of egg into her mouth.
"Yup," She murmured, keeping her mouth mostly closed as she nodded.
"Okay," Arnold said, the awkwardness of their conversation beginning to fill the room like an invisible gas. "I'm gonna go get dressed then,"
Helga swallowed. "Sounds good," She said, taking a sip of her juice and keeping her gaze focused on her plate.
. . . . . . . .
The drive up north was a short but painfully quiet one. Despite the sun's brief presence earlier that morning, it'd quickly escaped behind clouds and cast the world around them in a gloomy, grey sheen, leftover from the night's rain. Both Helga and Arnold were lost in their own thoughts and despite their somewhat intimate moment the night before, they weren't sure how to fill the silence without feeling awkward.
The farm looked relatively abandoned, even despite the poor weather. There were no animals in the fields or by the barn and as Arnold pulled up alongside the farmhouse, gravel scraping along the tires and flinging against the metal underside of their vehicle, they both wondered if they had the right address.
"This is it, right?" Helga wondered aloud just as a heavy set man with a prominent bald patch on the top of his head lumbered out of the ramshackle house and made his way to Arnold's side of the car.
Arnold rolled the window down. "Good morning,"
"You're the reporters, right?" The man inquired brusquely.
"Well I'm -" Arnold began but Helga cut him off.
"I'm an investigative journalist," She said, then jerking a thumb at Arnold, "He's my assistant. You're Patrick Witt, right?"
The middle-aged man grunted, nodding in reply. "You can park over there by the fence," He gestured to the right and Arnold slowly peeled away from the house and stopped at the designated post.
"Sara was my sister-in-law," Patrick mused after the two had gotten out of the car and walked within hearing distance. "My brother couldn't sell the farm after what happened," He said wistfully as he led the two young adults down the dirt driveway, crossing a small patch of dirt and grass as they approached the barn. "It's been empty ever since," Arnold and Helga listened quietly, watching his movements as he unlatched the door and led them inside.
The air in the barn was damp yet stale and cobwebs all around indicated the old building hadn't served much use in quite a while.
"This is where she was found?" Helga inquired as they stepped inside, looking around at the hauntingly empty building. Despite the cobwebs and dust, it almost looked as though someone could have been tending to this barn just yesterday. It was too easy to imagine it full of life: horses neighing, chickens clucking as they strutted from pen to pen.
"Yep," Patrick replied concisely, leading them through the barn and passing several stalls until they came to the end. "She was lying right there," Patrick pointed to a stall in the corner, still covered in hay. His brow was furrowed and his voice tight as though even talking about it was still painful. "'Pinioned and tortured', the papers said," He recalled sadly as the trio stood by the empty stall. "My brother was the one who found her… It really took a toll on him," He sighed. "Cops seemed to have gave up on the case a long time ago,"
Helga could almost envision the image of the young woman from the newspaper article, tied up and bleeding, her eyes vacant and lifeless. She shook away the thought as the bible verse popped into her head.
If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Patrick was saying something about how Sara used to help his brother manage the care of the horses when Helga emerged from her thoughts, cutting him off.
"Were any of the animals harmed?"
"Excuse me?" Patrick turned to her, caught off-guard. Arnold looked at her with interest as realization dawned on his face.
"When you found her," Helga repeated emphatically. "Were any of the animals hurt?"
Patrick furrowed his brow at her, "That was never - how did you know?"
. . . . . . . .
Arnold and Helga settled back into the rental car, buckling their seatbelts and sitting in silence as they processed the information they'd just received.
"It could just be a coincidence," Arnold offered after a few moments. "The verse matching up with the case like that,"
Helga's distant facial expression morphed into a challenging glare, one eyebrow raised. "That's bull and you know it," She said solemnly.
Arnold leaned back against his seat, swallowing that thought for a moment. The weight of this potential connection felt heavy on his chest. "Can you imagine… if the other verses fit, too?"
Helga didn't respond. The heaviness in the air in the car was enough to answer and communicate what they both were thinking. This case was proving to be bigger than either had originally imagined. Helga had spent much of her career exposing corruption in business and getting involved in social commentary. Unraveling a murder case had never been on her list of things to do until now.
As Arnold drove the car off the property, Helga did research on her phone, trying to find other potential links to the names in Marguerite's journal. The sky had become fully overcast and a light drizzle covered the roads in a slick sheen. Arnold put the windshield wipers on, the only sound in the otherwise quiet car.
"I can't find anything for B.J.," Helga said after twenty long minutes. They were almost back to the cottage at this point. "But I might have something for L.I."
"What is it?" Arnold asked curiously as they turned onto the bridge that would take them away from the mainland and back to the island.
Helga read directly from the dated article on her phone. "'1954 - Liv Igielski, a prostitute from Dover, found murdered on a construction site,"
"Wow," Arnold breathed. "Dover… that's like 45 minutes in the direction we just came from,"
"Well," Helga smirked, giving him a pointed look. "I guess you better turn around then, huh?"
. . . . . . . .
Their venture into Dover had only left them with more questions than answers. After arriving at the public library, they'd set out in search of any additional documents they could find on the old case. They'd found a handful that included gruesome pictures of the woman but much of the text was similar from paper to paper.
"What's the reference for L.I.?" Arnold asked, his voice tight as willed himself to look away from the image of the bound and bloodied woman in the paper.
Helga retrieved her phone from her pocket, pulling up the saved list. "'But if she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way, the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean."
Arnold furrowed his brow. "What does that even mean? Are there birds involved in this one, do you think?"
Helga shrugged. "Maybe 'clean' is in reference to her being a prostitute?" She suggested, adding, "But wait a minute," She pointed to the date at the top of the article. "This happened in 1954,"
Arnold followed the direction of her pointer finger. "Yeah, okay," He nodded.
Helga sighed impatiently. "Okay, so Marguerite disappeared in the summer of 1971," She spaced each sentence out pointedly as Arnold listened, waiting for the connection. "She was 16… so…"
"In 1954, she wasn't even born yet!" Arnold exclaimed, his eyes widening with realization.
"Exactly," Helga nodded, her mind whirring with a dozen thoughts consuming her at once. "She was born in 1955. Now the question is -"
"Hold on, Helga," Arnold put up a hand, cutting her off and earning himself an indignant look from the blonde, though it quickly faded. "Regardless of the dates, Marguerite was listing women who'd been killed and then she disappeared," He met Helga's gaze. "What does that tell you?"
"Shit," Helga breathed. "She knew who the killer was,"