Young Writers Society

"Let's get started." Belinda said, sliding her chair over to the center table. On the table was a black body bag, in fact the table wasn't usually empty. It was however, not usually Belinda who did the examination. Melanie tended to take control at that point, but Emily wasn't complaining. She had been waiting for Belinda to show up so that she could discuss something with her.

Emily pulled on her gloves slowly, as she tried to think of the best way to broach the topic. Belinda anxiously leaned down and pulled the file out from under the table. She pulled the picture out of the file and rolled over to the wall with a pack of push-pins. Since the first day Emily had known Belinda, she had painted the wall over three times. And any case that had required the organizer wall ended like the first one. With an ambulance and Belinda/Melanie solving yet another case.

Belinda pinned a group of pictures on the wall. One picture in the center was of an evidence sign over a pool of blood on a sidewalk by a brick wall. The next was a picture of another, smaller pool of blood next to the first. Then a picture far enough to see both sides of the street. Lastly a large packet of doctor's notes, and a witness's testimony.

"So what do we think?" Emily asked, not really expecting time to figure it out herself.

"I don't know what do you think?"

Emily was surprised, she was so used to Melanie going off on her explanations she had forgotten that she could even try. But it made her happy to think again.

"Well, there was two victims or two bullets." Belinda nodded. "The shooter was standing in the alley across the street. Judging by the lack of bodies in the pictures they both went to the hospital."

"Good, good...." Belinda nodded, "What else?"

"Well, uh, I don't know, am I supposed to know something else?"

Belinda shook her head, "No but it'd be helpful if you did." She said crossing her arms. "There's not a lot of physical evidence here, we'll need an interview later..." Belinda pushed her chair slowly over to the rolling lab table. Emily smiled and opened the body bag.

There were some parts of this job that Emily didn't like, one of them was the bodies. Not the dead part, but the fact that very few of them were clothed. Many of the bodies came from emergency response teams. Meaning that if they didn't survive the hospital they ended up on their table. If they did survive, another forensics team would investigate their case. It was just the station's procedure.

The thing about paramedics that most people don't know is that they stick tubes up just about every opening. Every single one. That means the clothes come off, whether you want to or not. Keeping in mind that that procedure could end up saving your life, it was an okay sacrifice. Still there was no point in clothing the corpse just for her comfort.

Her first case was an anomaly, he was already dead and the wound was only on his neck, which meant that he got to keep the clothes. But this body was, as usual, naked. Emily tried not to think about it.

She was a young woman, with beach blond hair and pale skin. Her light brown eyelashes covered her eyes, giving her the appearance of sleeping. Over her heart was a circular whole covered in drying brown blood.

"You kay?" Belinda asked, noticing that Emily was tense from trying hard to focus on the job at hand. She knew about Emily's dislike of nudity, her best guess was that it made her feel vulnerable, but that was just a guess.

"Mm-hmm." Emily said, thankful it wasn't Melanie making fun of her discomfort. "This looks like a .45 caliber, judging by the size of the entry hole."

"Sure, but the exit hole might be an easier verification." She told her, leaning back in her chair.

Emily lifter the body up an inch to look under for an exit hole. "I think it's still in the body." Emily let the body go and searched her desk for a pair of tweezers.

"Yeah," Belinda said, "Clearly, there's no indication of damage on the wall. But her boyfriend had an exit wound." She pulled another picture out of the folder and rolled over to pin it on the wall."

Emily frowned. "You two just love showing me up, don't you?"

"Two?" Belinda asked in fake mock curiosity. But her voice choked and it sounded like real curiosity.

"I mean too, as in 'you too?' I swear, David would not shut up about that last case of his."

"I solved that single" One, Emily clarified for herself.

"He said he got an anonymous tip." Emily said then immediately felt stupid when she saw that Belinda was staring at her. "Oh, you solved it."

Belinda replied with a smile, for lack of a better word.

"Well, that's....actually fairly obvious now that I think about it." Belinda rolled back to the body and took the tweezers from Emily. She stared with upmost concentration into the hole in the body. Her hands moving gently and steadily despite her above average clumsiness. Emily watched for a few seconds then, as it began to be boring, she decided that now was a good as time as ever to ask.

"Hey, Belinda?"

Belinda nodded, but didn't look up or say anything.

"I have this friend, she's a nurse, and I was wondering if you'd consider-"

Belinda's steady hand suddenly stabbed the tweezer into the corpses heart, releasing a large glob of dark red blood over her forefingers. Her teeth clenched, and her lips pursed into a hard frown that turned her mouth white.

"I take it that's a no." Emily squeaked.

"Get me...." Belinda said softly, but clearly angrily, "A scalpel."

Emily turned and pulled a scalpel from a small box on her desk and handed it to Belinda. She took it and forced the blade down into the right shoulder blade. The blade cut across her collar bone with a red line trailing behind it. Then, with way more force than necessary, Belinda picked up the blade and stabbed it into the middle, separating the skin from the body. She opened up the corpses chest, revealing a bloody rib cage.

"You, uh..." Emily would have continued to point out that Belinda had accidentally carved a niche in the collarbone with the scalpel, but Belinda was glaring at the heart of the corpse.

Belinda poked her tweezers into a hole in the heart. "She died in the ambulance." Belinda said softly.

"Is that a deduction or another sheet of paper your hiding from me?" Emily asked softly, desperate to move the conversation along.

"A deduction." Belinda answered, her shoulders lowering from the release of tension. Tension from anger, Emily thought.

Belinda calmly pulled the shattered bullet out piece by piece. Setting each fractured metal on a small tray that Emily had set down on the corpse's abdomen.

In Belinda's head, each piece sat on the tray as she turned it and shifted it until each piece fit together in the shape of a bullet. Then she knew she had a whole bullet, and set down the tweezers silently. "I'll go wash these off." Belinda said, standing up slowly and holding the metal tray in one shaky hand and the cane in the other.

***

"Could you tell me anything you might have seen at the time of the shooting?" Belinda asked from a large purple armchair of Mr. Smith's house. His arm was in a sling to keep it from moving, as a bullet had gone straight through it a few days ago. Thankfully causing very little damage.

"No, not really." He said shaking his head and letting a few brown hairs fall into his eyes. He tried to blow them a away, but his wife, Christina Smith, pushed it out of the way. He smiled at her and continued. "I blacked out after I fell."

Belinda let this sit in the air for a while, causing a general feeling of anxiousness to fill the room. "Can you tell me what your relationship with Stephanie Walsh was like?"

Rick Smith didn't say anything for a few seconds, then he answered, "She was a friend."

Belinda glanced around the room, seeing the outlines of people in the past around the room. "Just friends?"

"Yes," he said swiftly, "What does this have to do with the shooting?"

Belinda smiled. Deflection, the international sign of a guilty conscience, she thought to herself. "Just trying to get an idea of who would know where you were." Belinda glanced at Christina's fidgeting fingers, then at a fading bruise on her cheek, just over where her lower incisors would be. "Where were you two going?"

"I was walking her home from a movie, it was opening night of that new chic-flick. She really wanted to see it so I bought a copy of the tickets online."

"You were walking her home?" Belinda asked.

"Yeah, she has-" he paused, "Had an apartment in town, a little ways from the theater. Why?"

Belinda coughed, covering a smile. "And why were you having an affair?"

Rick's mouth fell open, and he looked over to Christina apologetically. His wife, surprisingly nodded and hugged him gently. Rick watched her, amazed, then took a deep breath. "I didn't mean to." He explained. "She was a friend, but I guess she didn't know that I was married. The relationship got serious really quickly, and I guess I liked it. Christina and I weren't exactly doing so well as a couple at the time, so I figured we'd be over soon anyway." He bit his lip and watched his wife, who nodded and pulled him into an embrace.

"So you didn't know any of this?" Belinda asked Christina.

"No." She said in an emotionless voice. Her arm still rapped around her husband like he was about to disappear. Belinda had a theory at this point, but she needed to make sure.

"Tanks." Belinda said, standing up and shaking each of their hands before leaving.

***

"Where have you been?" Emily asked as Belinda sat down next to her in the police station cafeteria.

"Where I said." Belinda answered.

"So where's the bullet?" Emily asked, watching carefully for any sign of lying.

Belinda shrugged, "We don't need it."

"Oh no..." Emily more mouthed than said. "You didn't."

Belinda smiled, "Well, I kess, I did."

"What do you mean guess?"

"I sort of blacked out for a whillie. No biggie."

Emily just stared at her. There were no words that could express how much she wanted to tell Belinda about her alter. Still David, as stupid and cowardly as he was, was right. There was just Belinda and Melanie, and both of them were happy just the way they were.

"So you interviewed the victim?" Emily asked, biting back her concerns.

"And interrogated a suspect."

"Wait you solved it?" Emily said, finishing a sandwich.

"In theory, yes. We need evidence."

Emily shook her head. "And we won't be telling David this theory, will we?"

Belinda pretended think about her options, but her mind was already made up.