Belinda Cabbotry: A Different Perspective (PART 1)

Belinda Cabbotry held her head. Pain spread through her temple like an atomic bomb. Waves spread through her vision and suddenly the cane she was gripping leaned foreword and she collapsed in a heap on the dirty ground. Her normally jagged breathing turned to a fury of coughs and the taste of blood filled her mouth.

Relax Belinda, she reminded herself, Just lower your heart rate and you'll be fine.

Belinda closed her eyes and relaxed her muscles, allowing her lips to press against the cement floor. In her head she counted the seconds until her ears stopped ringing and the coughing cleared. By that point she heard the sound of sirens flare around her. She gasped and tapped the floor around her blindly for her cane.

Her warm hands closed around the cold metal pole after what seemed like hours. She slowly, but hastily, pulled herself off the ground. The coughing started up again, and she closed her eyes hard. She could hear the sirens growing louder, drowning out the sound of her leaning on her cane as she speed-walked out of the building.

With her spare hand she waved through the air trying to find the back exit. Suddenly her hand tapped something hard and warm. She squinted through the fuzzy light. Through the dim light of the warehouse she could make out the shape of a police uniform with a gun slowly lowering from her chest.

"There is a-" she coughed, "perf-ectly good explanation as to-" she coughed again, the warm blood dribbled down her chin.

"Sure there is." David said, then he turned to the door and waved a group of officers into the warehouse. "Fisher!" he yelled. "Please help Bellie out of the warehouse. We have enough to deal with without her going into a coma." After a second Belinda felt long arm scoot under her right shoulder and the two of them rushed out of the warehouse.

***

"Bellie Cabbotry!" Officer David Sylvester called out as the paramedics finished up their last inspection of her. She sat feet sticking out off the back of the ambulance. Her needle-like arms held an oxygen mask up to her face. Slowly a paramedic helped her out of the breathing apparatus so she could speak.

"How'd I do?" she asked, taking her pulse.

"You tell me." he said. She took a deep breath and rubbed her scalp. She concentrated as hard as she could, but only fuzzy images of Carlos the gang leader and his crew came up in her head. Fractured sentences ran across her mind, but besides that she could not remember the last five hours.

"Not much, but it seems like they underestimated me again." she scratched her head and tapped her earlobe rhythmically.

"This time." David pointed out, "Next time you might not be so lucky."

"Next time it'll probably be the seizure that gets to me first." she sighed. Her head drooped slightly and she leaned against the side of the ambulance.

"Well, we got the gang in custody. I don't know what you did, but you did a great service today." Belinda smiled and grazed his soft brown hair with her eyes.

"I always do."

"Yeah, well not anymore." she perked up slightly his brown eyes looked away from her. "The station wants to put you into early retirement."

"Very early retirement." she commented.

"They figured that with you, twenty-five is more than middle-aged."

"I still have a little kick in me." she sneered, "Just because I can't walk, eat, leave the house, or sleep without hourly super-" she stopped. "Okay they have a point."

"I know how much this job means to you Bellie, but if every day is going to end in an ambulance we're going to have to consider what all this exercise is doing to you." Belinda rolled her head around her neck. "They want you to stay in the forensics lab, where you belong."

"That's just their insurance companies talking. I am perfectly fine out in the field with the rest of you."

David frowned sympathetically. "You have been warned, Bellie. One more 'covert' operation like this and they're pad-locking the forensics lab."

"I pick locks." She muttered.

Five Months Later...

Emily Durkinger, pushed through the doors as quickly as possible. The rain beating down on her blue coat and her hair absorbing the water like a sponge. Just her luck to get assigned to the lab on the first rainy day in a month. She could smell the wet dust and static in the air. It made her sleepy just listening to the rain, working in it would be impossible.

She squeaked through the entrance, showing her brand new ID to the security guard and squeaking further down the hall. She was about to open the door to the lab, number 123, when she heard the sound of a rolling chair followed by a loud bang.

Emily sprang into the room, filled with confusion at what she saw. The lab was small, just big tiny enough for two tiny desks, one with all the standard lab equipment on it, and the other a mess with papers, lab equipment, various candy rappers, and medicine bottles. Sitting in front of the messy desk was a spindly young woman with greasy black hair and almost gray skin. She wore a lab coat over her blue sweatshirt and light jeans. Her cheap purple shoes were worn most at the outer sides and she was sitting in a rolling chair with a cane over her lap.

"Belinda Cabbotry!" she suddenly yelled.

"What?" the woman turned, revealing a sick looking face with dark blue eyes and a sort of gentle beauty. She looked to be about six foot, but it was hard to tell as she was bent foreword in a permanent question mark.

"Sorry, I do that sometimes." she cursed. "My name is Belinda Cabbotry."

"Emily Durkinger." Emily said nervously,

"I heard I was getting a new colleague today. I just didn't expect you to be so..." Belinda searched her head for the right word, but it refused to come, "Ribbit Rabbit." she supplied for herself hoping Emily would understand her.

"What?" Emily said, pulling her wet coat off and brushing her curly brown hair behind her head.

"I'm sorry, sometimes I forget words and I replace them with other words. If I'm not making sense feel American to tell me."

"American...free?" Belinda burst into a smile.

"Yes! Thank you!" Belinda spun herself in her chair. "I have a good feeling about you, Dentinger!"

"Durkinger." Emily corrected, pulling a clean lab coat off a rack by the door.

"Sorry." Belinda began to tap her cane in a five beat rhythm. "Say your name again."

"Uh, Emily Durkinger." she said feeling a little uncomfortable. Belinda stopped tapping and smiled.

"Memory technique." Belinda told her. "If I keep forgetting something a create a tune that will remind me when I hear it."

"Right," she said sitting down in her own spinning chair. "And your name is..."

"Belinda." she said calmly. "People call me Bellie, or Linda, or Sicky kid. I prefer Belinda though." Belinda noticed Emily squinting in concern at her. "Don't worry I'm not contagious. It's a genetic issue."

"No, you just look familiar. Belinda Cabbotry... weren't you the girl who snuck into the hide-out of that gang a few months ago?"

"Probably, I don't remember most of it. How did I do it?" Emily leaned back in her chair.

"You mean you have no idea how you caught the gang?" She shook her head.

"They won't tell me. They think it'll give me an argument to get back on the field."

"Why can't you get back in the-" Emily was interrupted with a wet-coughing fit from Belinda.

"I have-" she coughed, "A rare-disa-bili-ty." she cleared her throat again. Some blood dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. "Sorry. I used to let myself on the scene, but because of my coughing they don't want me out there on account of I might die."

"Good to know." Emily said watching Belinda with concerned interest.

"So tell me what happened with they gang five months ago!" Belinda said, her sick, teary eyes filling with excitement. Emily opened her mouth to answer, but before she could the door burst open. An officer with wavy brown hair and gentle brown eyes walked in. Behind him were two officers pushing a body bag on a rolling table.

"Bellie!" he said happily, as they other officers rolled the table in and left.

"What've you got, David?" she asked, taking a pair of rubber gloves out of her lab coat pocket and pulling them on.

"Hispanic, male, roughly thirty-one, murdered just down the street." she pulled her cane off her lap and positioned it over the scratched up height adjustment of the chair. She pumped the lever with a quivering pressure.

"How fresh?"

"Very."

She smiled.

"Good, that will make it easier and I'll be on the crime scene faster." David shook his head.

"No! Crime scenes leads to finding the killer on your own and that leads to ambulances." Belinda smiled.

"Worth a shot." she said. He was about to turn and leave when she suddenly shrieked out, "Wait! No hug?" he turned around smiling. She stretched out her thin, but long arm and he hugged her. After a second he turned his head and kissed her on the cheek.

Emily sat awkwardly in her chair, looking for a pair of gloves to pull on.

"Oh and this is Emily." Belinda said once David released her from his embrace. Her fingers tapped against her cane again.

"Nice to meet you." he said holding out a hand for her to shake, she stopped looking for latex gloves long enough to shake it. He had a firm grip, but a calm smile that screamed charming.

"This is David." Belinda said as he released Emily's hand.

"Your boyfriend?" Emily asked, looking past the handsome man. Belinda turned beet red and began coughing again.

"We-" she paused to cough, "Big raison!" she insisted. David smiled broadly, obviously enjoying Belinda's discomfort.

"Big raison." he smiled. "Well said, Bellie."

Flustered, she punched his arm as hard as she could, but she was so weak that it just bounced off of him. He smiled and patted her on the shoulder.

"Get out of here you big dork." she smiled.

"Fine." he sighed and left. Belinda stared at the zipper of the body bag for a second, then tossed Emily a pair of rubber gloves.

As Emily pulled them on, Belinda pulled the zipper gently down the length of the bag. "So you don't like David as much as he likes you?" Emily asked.

"I have my personal life." Belinda clarified, pulling her dark curtain of hair out of her face. "It would be best for you to keep me on an only work relationship."

"Sorry." Emily muttered.

"How familiar are you with forensic science?" Belinda asked pulling the bag open.

"I was the top of my class last year." Emily said attempting to open the crack between the zipper. Belinda tossed her arms in front of the bag, preventing her opening the bag. "What the heck, Belinda?"

"How much actual experience, is what I meant." Belinda's eyes observed her coldly, as if they were choking an answer out of Emily.

"Only what we did in class, it is my first day." Belinda shook her head.

"They don't teach any good techniques in those schools. Alright I'm going to have to teach you all over again." Emily stared at the disabled woman skeptically. "First step, we assemble rough picture of where the body was." she ducked under the table and pulled a orange-yellow folder and then pushed herself back to her desk. Somehow she managed to find a black sharpie, post-it notes, a roll of red yarn, and a box of push-pins amongst the mess.

She pulled a large picture out of the folder and pinned it to the wall. It was a young hispanic man lying face-down on a a desk next to a plug in keyboard for a PC. A bloody spot on the back of his neck. He had black curly hair and tan skin. He wore a white flannel shirt and and a tie loose around his neck.

"What am I supposed to be getting from this?" Emily asked, leaning back in her chair. Her curly hair falls back behind her shoulders.

"Look carefully, sometimes you see things you wouldn't have by just looking at the body."

"Like that he got hit in the head by a blunt object." Emily said shaking her head.

"Pathetic!" Belinda uncapped her marker and began circling things. "Now pay attention. I'm going to show you how to look at a crime scene without looking at a crime scene." Belinda drew a circle around a part of the desk with her pen and then dragged out a line onto the wall. Above her line she wrote, in chicken scratches and all Caps, the words "DUST BUILD-UP"

"Are you sure you should be writing on the wall?" Belinda ignored her and drew a line from a circle around a desk-top organizer and wrote "OCD." Then she drew a line from a spot on the keyboard "MISSING DELETE KEY"

"I'll paint it over later. I just need an organizer for my long-term memory." she said writing a note on the way far side of the wall. "OCD ~> D B-UP"

"Why are we doing this?" Emily asked, leaning farther back in her chair.

"Why am I doing this." Belinda corrected as she pushed herself off the wall to the body bag. Quickly, as if afraid it was going to get up and walk away, she unzipped it. He was thin with curly hair and a slight mustache. He was still wearing the same white shirt as the picture and his endlessly staring eyes seemed to make the room colder. "Lift him up so I can get to the neck."

"Why?" Emily said nervously, still remembering the cold feeling she got from touching dead flesh.

"Just do it!" Belinda snapped, and rolled herself back to her desk. She grabbed a pair of tweezers and rolled back. Emily grabbed his cold shoulders and lifted the dead weight up so Belinda could see his neck.

Belinda delicately pushed her tweezers into the bloody hole in his neck and twirled them around until she hit a small solid object. She fished it out and Emily put the body down.

"Is that a computer key?" Emily asked, looking at the plastic square.

Belinda nodded and set it down on the man's chest. "This man was hit in the neck with his own keyboard."

"Amazing." Emily said, trying not to mention that it was Belinda's insistence on looking at the crime scene first that led them to discover the key.

"Makes our job easier, now we just need a culprit and we'll be done." Belinda pulled her gloves off and scribbled something on a post-it note.

"Isn't that the detectives' job?" But Belinda wouldn't acknowledge her question.

***

"Night." Emily said as Belinda hobbled off, leaning heavily on her cane.

"Not free." Belinda yelled back down the hall. Bye, Emily clarified in her head.

Unlike Belinda, Emily was in no hurry to leave the police station. She knew it'd be raining cats and dogs out there, and she wasn't quite ready to get her hair wet again. So she slowly pulled her rain coat on and wiped down her work station with a wet paper towel.

The door opened behind her, and David walked back in. Emily looked up.

"Is Bellie still around?" he asked.

"She just left." he nodded.

"Well could you pick up the forensics report from her house?" Emily frowned.

"Didn't she give it to you on her way out?"

"She forgets sometimes, where do you live?" Emily threw away her paper towel.

"On Pod road." David thought for a second.

"Her house is on the way."

"Can't you do it?" she asked, she wasn't eager to find out where her new colleague lived.

"She'd never give it to me, and I have to pick up my son for his piano lesson."

"Your son?" Emily frowned.

"Yeah, I'm not cheating on his mom or anything." He defended, "She left me with him... Could you just pick up the file?" Emily nodded reluctantly.

"Where does she live?"