Chapter 31

A crowd began to gather around the young lady. Shrill 'oh my gods' and frantic 'call 911s' could be heard as the passers by looked down in fear and horror at the accident victim. She was in bad shape, literally; practically mangled as her body lay in an awkward position on the road where she finally landed nearly ten feet from where the vehicle had actually collided with her.

Pauline had witnessed the whole thing. It felt like it had happened in slow-mo as she saw the vehicle head directly for the girl, speeding up as it aligned itself with its target. That's when the loud screech was made, when the driver floored the gas pedal. The young Kenyan was traumatized; the way that girl's body was thrown up in the air…the way it was hit again, while in mid-air by the hardy blue van when it swerved…and the way the girl landed on the ground on her shoulder with such force that Pauline had heard a snap of the bone…it made her sick.

She watched as the van sped away at a fair rate of knots, disappearing from the scene nearly as quickly as it had arrived there. The driver rounded the corner to his left - Pauline's right - at the next junction, going through two lanes as he did so and very nearly ramming into another vehicle. Pauline's breath caught in her throat as she saw the manic and yet contented look in the driver's face. She quickly lowered her eyes, catching only the last few characters of the vehicle's license number.

She removed her cell phone from her handbag and called 911, not to report the accident, for she had heard one of the people in the crowd down the street scream hysterically into her phone, requesting an ambulance. When the call was answered Pauline asked to be put through to anyone dealing with the Abigail Lincoln case. She waited for a short period of time before someone spoke.

"This is Officer Carlisle," said the voice.

"I think I just saw Kensei!" Pauline replied urgently.

xxx

The rookie cop ran towards his boss's desk. "Sergeant!" he nearly screamed in his excitement.

Sgt. Brady looked up from his papers at Officer Carlisle. He arched his virtually invisible ginger eyebrow at the young officer.

"I think we've finally caught a break!"

That got the sergeant's attention alright. "What?"

"I just received a phone call from a Pauline…something," he said as he looked down at the paper in his hand in which was scrolled Pauline's name. Unable to pronounce her surname, he continued, "She was a witness to an accident at 111 & Coal Street."

Brady gave him an incredulous look. "And that is a break…how?"

Officer Carlisle smiled at the impatience of the sergeant. Gesturing at his boss to zip it, he continued, "It was a hit and run. The perp, according to our eye witness, was Kensei Sanban himself."

Immediately, the sergeant got to his feet, a grin gracing his features. This was the best piece of news he had heard in over 24 hours. So far they had nothing on Kensei. They didn't even know if he was still in the city, let alone the state; until now.

"Wait for it, sergeant," Carlisle said, his grin matching that of his boss. "The witness gave a description of the vehicle; a blue van. AND she got its registration number. Not all of it, but the last three characters."

"That's more than we had before," the sergeant said in excitement. Going around his desk Brady clapped his officer on the back. "Good lad. Let's run what we've got through the database."

"Already on it, sir," Carlisle said as he turned and walked hurriedly towards the IT department.

Sgt. Brady pumped his fist in the air, feeling better than he had a few minutes earlier when he was going through the ballistics report on the bullet recovered from Hoagie's couch. It had yielded no results, for the bullet had matched no gun in the database. But now there was hope. "Yesss!" he hissed as he pumped his fist once again before taking his seat and picking the phone off the receiver.

xxx

Back on the other side of town, Pauline had gone down the street to join the crowd. She pushed her way through until she got to the epicentre of the thirty-plus member crowd. She looked down at the victim, who from her point of view, was not breathing. There was quite a bit of blood on the road, most of it coming from the girl's head. She must have hit it against the road when she fell, mused the African.

Pauline's stomach was starting to churn as she took in the gruesome injuries that the victim had. Her shoulder was definitely busted. Her white arms were tainted by bloody scrapes and bruises. The girl's back was to Pauline as she lay on her side. The mocha skinned girl could tell that the victim had at least one broken rib, for there was an awkward projection from the girl's torso.

Pauline heard the siren of the approaching ambulance, and that prompted her to go around the body to see what other obvious injuries the girl had sustained. "Man," she said under her breath when she saw the state the girl's leg was in, which made her feel queasier. Blood was gushing out of the point at which the leg had made contact with the van's bumper.

The ambulance stopped right next to the crowd, and the paramedics screamed at the people to dissipate and give them access to the victim. Pauline moved a few steps to the right as the paramedics whizzed past her with their gurney.

"Crap, this is bad," one of the paramedics could be heard saying as he knelt and tried to check for a pulse. He and his partner then hurriedly but gingerly checked the rest of her body as they tried to gauge the nature of her injuries before shifting the victim and putting her on the gurney. Satisfied that they could move her, the female paramedic adjusted the height of the collapsible gurney while her partner covered the victims face with an oxygen mask and pumped air into her lungs. As they lifted the girl onto the gurney, her head lolled to the side and back again.

"Hold on to her head, dammit!" The female paramedic screamed.

Pauline, whose eyes had been stuck on the goings-on before her, let out a shocked gasp when the victim's head had lolled to the side, for the curtain of hair that had hidden her face swung away, revealing her identity.

"Oh, shit," Pauline whispered as she brought her hands to her face. Right then her stomach could no longer accommodate its contents, and she threw up violently on the road.

xxx

"Jamie, where's your mother?"

'I don't know," he replied rudely without even looking up at his father, his eyes trained on the TV. Cree, who had arrived when their dad was down at the station, stared at her baby brother in shock. He had never been so ill-mannered before.

David's jaw twitched slightly in irritation. This game his son was playing was starting to get old. "Look," he said sternly, "you're going to have to change your attitude, and fast. You're starting to piss me off."

"Good!" said Jamie just as sternly before walking off to his room, leaving a seething father and flabbergasted sister in his wake.

Cree looked sympathetically up at her father. "Sorry dad. I'll talk to him."

His gaze softened as he looked at his daughter. He sighed and looked towards the corridor his son had just disappeared through. "Thanks." He went into the kitchen to serve the muffins he had bought into a bowl. Walking back to the living room, he sat beside his eldest child and held the bowl between them. She picked a muffin and bit into it gratefully.

Genviéve walked in a few minutes later, drenched in sweat as she had gone for a morning jog to help ease her worries. "You're back," she said in reference to Dave, who held out the bowl to her. Shaking her head, she said she would have a muffin after her shower.

Fifteen minutes later, she walked into the living room all fresh and rejuvenated. She picked a muffin and sat on the couch next to her husband.

"Can I get you some coffee?" Cree asked, already rising to her feet.

Mrs. Lincoln nodded. "Mm, thank you," she said as her daughter went into the kitchen. "These are really good," she told David as she finished the muffin. He smiled at her and silently offered her another one. Craving some form of physical contact, he inclined his knee toward hers until they touched. It was such a subtle action, but he didn't want to push it. The previous day he had held her in his arms, but that was because he was comforting her, because they had received bad news. Trying to go for something more could be disastrous, so he settled for touching his knee to hers.

She immediately spoke up. "David." It wasn't harsh, they she called him, but his knee jerked away from hers at the speed of light. What was I thinking? Of course she wouldn't want that, he chastised himself. He looked into her eyes, hoping that she would see how sorry he was for doing that just then. She gave him a small smile as she studied his features before looking down at his knee. She stretched her hand to it and returned it to the spot it had been in before she had spoken up. He watched as his knee was guided back to hers, and he could feel the tension in his body start to release.

Just then Cree brought her mother's coffee, and then went back into the kitchen to fix herself some cereal.

"I was going to say that I think we should go by the hospital and visit Hoagie."

"Oh," Dave said, seeming somewhat confounded. "Yeah, of course."

She smiled again. He was so handsome when he was clueless.

…

Genviéve was in the library, looking for an empty seat. It was mid semester, thus the library was full of students who were studying for their midterms. She spotted a table with one empty chair, and she made a beeline for it before some other student saw it. Argh, the table was at the corner of the hall. She hated sitting at corner tables, but she didn't really have much of a say that time around. As she approached the table she could see one of the students whose back was to her had his nose so deep in his book that she would not have been surprised if he had fallen asleep.

She walked round the table and laid her books on the table before pulling back the chair. As she sat she looked at the student seated directly opposite her, the one whose face was almost coming into contact with his book. She couldn't help but giggle. He was indeed dozing. Poor guy, she thought, he must have been up all night. As she sat she dragged the chair forward, and it made a short dull noise which was enough to get the sleepy student to jump. His eyes were still glazed over as he looked at the student across from him. He looked like he was trying to process something in his head; trying and failing. He seemed confused, and Genviévesmiled at him. He was so cute, looking all clueless like that. She remembered him from the cafeteria many weeks ago. She gave him a small wave, and he just stared at her for a few more seconds before having the brains to wave back.

He suddenly came alive when recognition finally set in. He looked embarrassed, and she could see a bit of a blush spread over his cheeks before he quickly buried his face in his book. He remembered her, the beauty from the cafeteria. He felt like such an idiot. She must think I'm an idiot, he thought as he dared to steal a glance at her.

Three hours later, Genviéve picked up her books and left the table. She was out in the school grounds when she heard someone calling behind her. "Excuse me! Excuse me! Hey?" She turned to see the guy from the library jogging towards her, his huge course texts balancing precariously one on top of the other. She looked at him curiously as he approached. "Your pen," he said breathlessly as he held out the stationery to her. "I saw it on the floor just after you left."

"Oh, thank you," she said in that French accent that just made him want to melt. She smiled at him and reiterated, "Thank you."

"No problem," he said as he tried to catch his breath.

She began to walk away but quickly stopped and turned to face him again. "I'm Genviéve," she said as she held her hand out to him.

"Genviéve," he said slowly as he let the name roll off his tongue. He shook her hand gently. "Nice to meet you. I'm David…Dave," he said with a shrug. "Whichever you prefer."

She smiled. "Nice to meet you, too, David."

Wow,he thought. He never knew his name could sound so awesome. The way she said his name; David, with the 'A' pronounced as 'ah' instead of 'ay'. As he was still enthralled by the reverberation of his name in his ears, she walked off. When he came back to the land of the living, she had already covered quite a few metres. He moved quickly to walk in stride with her. "Uh…" just do it, he encouraged himself. "…would you like to grab something to eat? Right now…unless you wanna hang out with your friends or something," he said rather hurriedly.

"Or something," she replied with a grin. When he seemed confused, she added, "Yes, I would like to…grab…something to eat?"

He smiled down at her. There was this twinkle in her eye that just captivated him.

xxx

Nigel sat slumped in a chair in the casualty area. Lizzie walked into the large hall and when she saw him her heart broke into a million little pieces. She walked slowly up to him and took the seat beside him. His eyes were fixed on the ground, and he hadn't realized who was sitting beside him until she put her hand on his shoulder. He jumped in surprise before his hazel eyes met hers. He could see that she was worried, and as she looked at his tear-streaked face and red-rimmed eyes, he could see realization dawn on her.

"No, please," she said as a sob escaped her mouth. Her eyes welled with tears as Nigel took one of her hands in his. It was all he could do. He had no strength for a more substantial gesture. Her sobs were becoming uncontrollable, and she slumped over in the chair and brought a fist to her mouth as she tried to stifle her cries. Nigel felt like it was becoming more and more difficult to breathe as he saw his girlfriend break down. His windpipe seemed to clamp down as he felt an overwhelming wave of despair wash over him. He tightened the muscles in his jaw in an attempt to bury the raw emotion that was threatening to erupt through him. How much more can he take; they take, he wondered as he began to tear again.

He leaned towards Lizzie and draped his arm over her shoulder. Her body was shaking violently, and he coaxed her into sitting up so that she could cry into his shoulder. She moved her face to the crook of his neck where her tears cascaded down his skin into the hollow of the clavicle. He held her head to him, stroking her hair gently as his chest heaved every once in a while in a choked sob.

After a while they left together arm in arm. On their way to the parking lot they met Abby's parents who were heading for the north wing of the hospital.

xxx

"What's wrong, is it Abby?" Hoagie asked in fear as he sat up as quickly as he could when he saw the expression on Mrs. Lincoln's face.

"No, no dear," she said soothingly as she got to his bedside and gingerly placed her hand on his arm. "Be careful. We wouldn't you to hurt yourself," she added as he winced in pain when he tried to lie back again.

"On the contrary," said Mr. Lincoln as he came to stand on the opposite side of his wife. He looked down at Hoagie, his face lighting up a bit. "I just received a call from the police man who's in charge of Abby's case. He says they've ID'd the vehicle he most likely used during the kidnapping. They have sent word around the department so that everyone can keep an eye out for it."

"Oh, ok. That's good," Hoagie replied quietly. But when he turned his head to look at Abby's mum, she still had that troubled expression. He immediately knew that she was like that because she blamed him for her daughter's kidnapping. He couldn't blame her. If he was in her position he'd probably feel the same way. He swallowed a lump in his throat. "I'm sorry," he said as he looked into her eyes. Turning to Abby's dad, he added, "I'm sorry, to both of you. I should have done more to protect Abby."

"Don't say that," Genviéve said in a disapproving yet loving tone. "You did your best. That's all anyone can ask for. The police will find her; I am confident about that," she said as she held her hand to Hoagie's face to comfort him. As she looked into his eyes, he seemed so conflicted.

"Then why…why do you look at me like that? If you don't blame me...?" He asked in desperation.

The two parents exchanged a look before returning their gaze to the convalescing boy. "We have just met Nigel on his way out."

"Way out from where? He hasn't been here yet," said Hoagie, looking slightly confused.

"Yes, um, he did not know how to see you…to tell you…"

"Tell me what?" he asked, now sitting up again and ignoring the pain in his stomach as he did so.

"He says that…Eva…has passed away."