Belinda Cabbotry: A Different Perspective (PART 2)

"I've never even heard of a Copple road." Emily said turning onto a sketchy street that her GPS told her to go on. The lawns that had previously been filled with neatly trimmed grass and lawn gnomes, became long and weeded. And the houses became boarded up and old, cheap decorations were hung to cover up old paint chips. Emily's car stumbled over potholes before making a gentle stop in front of 2589, the gem of the street it seemed.

The lawn was weeds and dirt clods. Poison ivy dangled from over the entry way as if to choke the next person to knock on the door. The windows were barred on the outside and bullet holes caused spiderweb cracks on some of them, but you could not see in beyond the black-out curtains. Emily quickly got out of her car and locked it all in three seconds. She had never been somewhere that she really felt like someone was going to steal her car.

Still, she had a job to do. She walked to the front door and rung the doorbell, which made a loud screech, as if stuck on a loop of two notes, then finished the "dong" sound and stopped abruptly. There was a loud thump from inside, followed by the sound of a hand smacking a wall.

Emily tried to look through the door window to see if Belinda had collapsed, but she couldn't see beyond a stack of books in front of the window. Emily would just have to trust that Belinda was okay.

Sure enough, the door slowly creaked open. There was no sign of Belinda, but she could see a yellow lit staircase covered in a strained carpet and a tight hallway, cluttered with stacks of books.

"Name and business." Belinda's crackley voice said from behind the door.

"Uh, Emily Durkinger. I'm here to pick up the forensics report you stole." a cane appeared around the doorway, followed by the rest of Belinda.

"Nice to see you." she said, coughing into her elbow. "Come in, come in." she motioned for Emily to enter the dark hallway.

Immediately Emily wondered if Belinda was some sort of Alchemist. The combination of ancient wood, yellow light, and piles of books and chemicals made it seem somewhat medieval.

The entire house was carpeted, and the main entry way opened up to a staircase with an elevator seat attachment, a small living room, and a partially opened door to a cramped office. In the entryway, piles of books lay on scooters, wagons, and dollies. In between the piles of books were candy wrappers, empty medicine bottles, post-it notes, and more stains than any one person should produce in their lifetime.

"Nice place you got here." Emily lied.

"I know it's gross!" Belinda snapped, then paused staring just passed her head. "Sorry, I yell at people sometimes. I don't know much better. My apologies." Belinda closed the door behind her and toddled into the living room.

Emily followed her nervously. She soared over Belinda by a foot and a half, mostly because Belinda was huddled over her cane forever. It was no question that Emily could fight her off if she needed to, but Belinda was also not quite in the right mind, and the blood stains on the floor did not help her relax.

"Don't mind the blood." Belinda said walking into the strangely carpeted kitchen, "I get nose bleeds after my seizures sometimes. Other times I forget to sleep and it just bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. It's not that often though." Belinda pulled a teapot off a wrapper covered counter and filled it with water.

"Look, I just need the forensics report for David." Belinda looked up blankly. The water spilled out of the top of the pot, but she was lost in a thousand yard stare. "Belinda?" she snapped her fingers, and Belinda dropped the teapot in the sink. "Belinda are you okay?"

"Sorry." Belinda coughed and resumed motion. She turned the faucet off and poured a little water out of the teapot before putting it on the stove. "Micro-seizure. I'm fine."

"Are you sure you should be handling fire?" Belinda clicked the stove on, and shook her head.

"Happens every now and then. The real ones are what I need to worry about." She sniffled a little blood back in her nose. "But what's life without a little risk."

"I guess..." Emily sat down in a kitchen chair. Belinda opened a box of tea packets and brought out two mugs. "What exactly is it that you're suffering from?" Belinda tapped her fingers against the counter as she tried to remember.

"Deffestrium Symptomata." she replied as the teapot whistled.

"And that is?"

"Butter Scotch."

"What?" Belinda poured water into the mugs and brought them over to the kitchen table one at a time.

"I meant BS. They have no idea what's wrong with me, other than symptomatically tired." Belinda sipped from her mug then stuck out her tongue, just remembering that she had forgotten to put the teabag in. She snapped her fingers and pulled a pill bottle out of her pocket.

"So, you have, what, a low blood flow that causes lack of material transport and low brain activity?" Belinda glared at her.

"My brain is a wonderfully productive instrument." she crushed a pill with two spoons she found lying around on the table and let it dissolve in the hot water. "But you are spot on by the first part. By some genetic cruelty I have larger veins than the average person and that does affect how much I can do. It does not how ever affect my brain. The seizures do that." She sipped her tea and furrowed her brow. She forgot the tea bag again.

"So the pills are for the seizures?" Emily asked cautiously. Belinda nodded, letting a tea bag soak in the mug.

"They can only dog biscuit-" Treat, Emily decided, "-my symptoms. If I ever forgot to take my medication there is no telling what I might do. Good thing I never forget." Belinda smiled goofily and Emily couldn't tell if she was being serious or sarcastic.

"Can I just have the forensics report?" Emily asked again, to get Belinda on the right track and keep her from getting distracted again.

"I can't give it to you." Belinda said shaking her head.

"Why not?" Belinda grabbed her cane and used centripetal force to push herself out of the chair.

Belinda motioned her out of the kitchen and through the living room to the little office in the main entrance. She pushed her way in between the door way and an awkwardly placed desk, and Emily followed. She had to duck under precariously placed objects as she was much taller than Belinda and most other people, but she was able to squeeze into the little dim office.

Cardboard boxes filled with manilla folders covered the floor and a bookshelf crowded the sitting room of the desk out. It was full of old books with torn up spines, and bloody pages. Dust created lines where the books were pulled out as if it was never disturbed except for when she needed a book.

Behind the crowded front of the room was a wall covered in messy white paint and a web similar to the one Belinda had created earlier on the forensics lab wall. The blood stains on the floor showed that she had spent the most time staring at the wall, and empty medicine bottles and candy rappers showed that she spent the most time in this room.

Belinda coughed and showed Emily the wall with a proud smile that a child would give to their horrible crayon picture. "What's this?"

"My connections wall." Belinda turned around, looked at the wall for a second, scribbled the words "FOURM: RE: HOW TO GET A MILLION DOLLARS."

"I have a flawless short-term memory, but my long term memory is zilch. So I write everything down and process it over and over until I get the solution." She turned to face Emily again. "This is the case from this morning." she pointed out.

"I got that from the context." Belinda shrugged and turned back to her wall. She re-wrote the words she just scribbled out and drew an arrow from it. "Why?"

"I'm a better detective than the others." she shrugged, writing the words "FISHSCALES49"

"No I mean why are you doing this? It's not in our job description."

"I like it. I used to solve crimes like this everyday before they fired me." she drew a group of arrows from that and began writing again.

"What do you mean fired?"

"I wasn't hired as a detective." Belinda clarified, stepping back from her wall. "What do you see?"

Emily shrugged, not only was Belinda's hand-writing atrocious, but she also wrote things in a short-hand only she seemed to be able to understand. "It's just a bunch of words."

"Precisely." Belinda pulled a box of push-pins from her pocket and a ball of red yarn off the desk. She tied the end of the yarn to a push pin and pressed it into a name "YANA WALSH"

"It's all a jumble of words, everything is a collection of words that we connect on our owns. We all translate things in a certain way we were taught, so if they connect right we accept them as fact. Now if there is a jumble of words that doesn't make sense we have to look through a certain lens to put it together correctly.

"This man is dead. And so are these people," she said blatantly, then jabbed a push-pin into a few other names and twirled the yarn up and down the names, then tied the line off. "Now we have another list of dead people," she pushed pins into the names beneath the previous names. But these names were strange. "FISHSCALES49, DICTATORGIRL2, HOLMES784, OMMNOMM, NOTINKANSAS."

"Now the I.P. addresses match up like this..." she tied the usernames to their real-life counterparts with a zig-zaging yarn. "And it just so happens that Yana Walsh, our friend from the lab, was FISHSCALES49 and he was part of a forum called..." She pressed a pin into "FORUM: RE: HOW TO GET A MILLION DOLLARS"

She connected him to the forum with her yarn and continued on. "As were these people." she motioned to the names she recently connected in yarn. "And..." she pushed a pin into a name circled many times, "BIG-BOSS92"

"The difference is, he's alive."

"Okay, so he's the next target in some serial killer rampage?"

"No, he's the killer." Belinda grabbed a chocolate bar off of her desk and swallowed it like a vacuum in front of her computer.

"What do you mean he's the killer?"

Belinda didn't answer she just stared at her computer for a second before she began typing furiously.

"Belinda are you okay?" Emily asked after a minute of watching her hands fly across the keyboard. She reached out and tapped her bony shoulder. Belinda's hands stopped instantly, her right index finger hovered over the enter key. Belinda blinked and turned around in her spinny chair.

"Clearly the forum was creating a plan to rob someplace, and they succeeded. Big boss must have been picking them off one by one to get all the pecuniae for himself... But where did the money come from?"

"Pecuni-what now?"

"That's Latin..." Belinda's voice trailed off, followed closely by her thoughts. "That must mean...CODING!" Belinda turned back to her computer. "Quickly, what button was I hovering over when you woke me up?"

"What?"

"Which button?"

"The enter key, but why does that-"

"IP address 216.27.61.137, thanks yous Emilys."

Emily ignored all the unnecessary plurals. "What just happened?" Belinda pulled herself out of her seat, selecting a cane with a hand clamp from a rack beside her.

"Come on, you're driving." Belinda announced.

"Driving where?" Erika followed her out into the hall.

"7902 David Run road!" Belinda yelled proudly as her cane clicked on the side walk.

***

"STOP HERE!" Belinda yelled, motioning to a spot beside a sidewalk.

"But we still have a few blocks to-"

"Stop the bloody car or I'm turning the wheel into a tree!" Belinda yelled. Emily pulled over in the spot and Belinda shook her head. "Sorry..." she mumbled, and let herself out of the car slowly but hurried. Her arm clamped into the cane for support and she rested heavily on her right side as she walked.

Emily followed her, hurrying to keep up with her.

"Why'd you make me stop?" Emily demanded. Belinda coughed and gasped for air for a second. "You okay?" Emily looked down at her face. She was pale and kept swallowing like she was a fish. "Belinda?"

"What? Oh...fine. I'm fine!"

"You don't look fine."

"Well I am." Belinda coughed.

"Are you sure? You look like you're about to fall over." Belinda's cane trembled in her grasp and her knuckles turned white holding it. "Are you sure you should be walking so much?"

"Is this 7092?" Belinda asked, nodding at a little house.

"Yeah, but don't you think you should go home?" Belinda shook her head. The sheet of black hair covered her thin smile. Belinda stopped in front of driveway of the house. Suddenly Belinda held her breath, then took a large dry gasp of air and held it again. "Belinda! Are you okay?" Belinda repeated the gasping breaths.

"I'm...Agri...vating...my....breathing." Suddenly Belinda collapsed on the ground. "Help...me...over to...the....house." Belinda gasped. Emily's own heart almost stopped, she just stared at her in shock. "Now...plea...se." Emily spun out of her daze and helped her up to the house by awkwardly placing an arm under her's to take the weight off her legs.

Belinda closed her eyes and tried to focus. Her spit felt hot against her front teeth and her legs felt like rocks. If she could just get some water... Images danced across her eyelids and sparks covered her sight when she opened her eyes.

She felt her feet hit the cement stairs and she forced her eyes to stay open. The door was light baby blue.

/Focus, Belinda./ She told herself, /Focus on one thing and keep conscious/. "Scratches." Belinda coughed.

"What?"

"On the...lock." She motioned to the shiny doorknob. "He's a...drunk."

"Why is that what you notice?" Belinda spit some blood out of her mouth and rang the doorbell. She could hear footsteps from inside and the door opened up. He was on the shorter spectrum of tall guys, with brown curly hair and a tan face that Belinda couldn't quite see from the angle she was positioned.

"Hola?" he said in a Mexican accent that was blatantly obvious because he was speaking spanish.

"Hi!" Belinda wheezed, "I'm sorry to bother you, but..." she paused to cough, "Our car broke down and...my....is acting up....Can I sit on you porch...for a little while?"

"Sure." he said, "Do you want me to call an ambulance or...?" Belinda shook her head and allowed Emily to set her down on the cement steps.

"No, I just need a second to catch my-" she was cut off by a sudden choking sensation. She grabbed her throat and tried to remember what she was supposed to do. /Was it wait for my throat to clear or that injection I was supposed to keep with me at all times?/

"Belinda?" Emily asked watching Belinda struggle to breathe, "Belinda!" Emily kneeled down and felt Belinda's pulse. It was fast, but slowing quickly.

"I'm calling 911." the man said, turning to leave.

"No!" Belinda yelled out of nowhere. She gulped in air and her head relaxed. She had a splitting headache, but she could breathe again and she had him right where she wanted him.

Belinda could hear someone say something, but it was all mudded together and drowned out by the pounding in her forehead. /Breath one breath two, breath three breath four. What are you...doing this for? Breath five breath six, breath seven breath eight. Don't move, don't talk, or you'll be at Heaven's gate./

Belinda fought hard to keep herself up, the sparks in her eyes became black and her breathing became normal, but Belinda was stuck staring across the street.

"Is she still breathing?" the man asked.

"I'm not sure. Belinda?" Emily touched her shoulder and Belinda shook awake. Her eyes flew open and she looked back at them.

"For god's sake Emily I'm awake! You act like you've never seen me have a seizure." Emily couldn't decide why exactly, but she sounded differently. "Pass me my cane." Belinda held out a hand and Emily gave her the long metal. Swiftly, Belinda stood up with a creak and leaned half on the cane and half on the wall on the house so that she could stand straight up.

"So you girls are good? Do you want a phone to call a tow service. We don't want this one to start choking again."

"Oh I won't," Belinda said cryptically, "But Sonja Keeler did." The man stopped moving and stared at Belinda with cold brown eyes. "Very skilled murderer you are. Out of five murders only one person ever solved one of them."

"What gave it away?" he said coldly.

"The keyboard. Not usually the weapon people choose for murder, but if you spent a lot of time on the computer the keyboard would be more comfortable than a baseball bat. Simple case of psychological evidence. You were worried about the computer giving you away so I searched through the evidence the police collected and took the computer out than searched through the favorites to find the forum in the deleted box. Did you know that the police can pull things from your computer even after they've been deleted? This led me to the other cases of murder and then to you."

He smiled at her respectfully. "Very smart, miss. And who are you?"

"Belinda Cabbotry, forensics detective." Belinda tucked the sheet of black hair behind her ear and smiled venomously.

"Well, Belinda I have only one thing to say to that." He looked very confident for a second then ran past the two girls, pushing Emily to the ground as he rushed out into the street.

"Shist!" Belinda exclaimed, slowly coming down the stairs and clicking down the sidewalk. "Well, run after him Emily!" Emily groaned from her spot at the bottom of the steps where she had fallen.

"You do it." Emily moaned, rubbing her head.

"Ah, we lost him anyway." She clicked back to the stairs. "Nice going!"

"I got pushed down the stairs!" Emily pulled herself off the moist grass and glared at Belinda.

"You should have seen that coming. I did."

"You could have warned me!" Emily wiped mud off of her pants.

"Slow reflexes." Belinda defended. "You could have figured it out yourself. It wasn't that hard."

"Really?" Emily asked accusingly.

"It's all in the eye movement. The speed of the speech." Belinda looked up at the tall woman, "You need to know these responses if you're going to be my partner."

"How about I drive you home and don't roll you out of the door while I'm on the interstate instead?"

"Simple issue of reading." Belinda continued without noticing her comment, "It could be very useful knowledge on it's own. Boyfriends and crap like that would be much easier."

"Again I bring up the car in motion plan." Belinda looked up at her confused.

"And what was the car in motion plan?" Emily looked at her equally confused.

"Is your hearing selective or something? I just threatened you."

"Oh? Never mind, it's an impossible feat. If I could survive what I just did, I can survive rolling down the interstate." Emily rolled her eyes. "Would I by any chance get a second to prepare myself before you roll me?"

"Whatever, are we going to contact the police now?" Belinda shook her head.

"What would the fun in that be?"

"Living?"

Belinda smiled cruelly. "Living or /Living/?"