Belinda Cabbotry: A Different Perspective (PART 4)

"A medium pizza with...." Emily told the pizza guy. "What do you want Belinda?"

Belinda looked up from where she was staring at the counter.

"What?" She said, shaking her head.

"On the pizza, what toppings?"

"I don't know, whatever you want. I don't really care. Pepperoni, sausage, peppers, onions...Oooo! And mushrooms! Lot's and lot's of mushrooms!"

Emily raised an eyebrow at her. She didn't really care what was on the pizza, but Belinda completely turned 90 degrees in what she was saying. "You don't care? Huh?"

"Okay..." The pizza guy said, "Pepperoni, onions, peppers, sausage, and mushrooms?"

Belinda nodded. He could have said it in the order I said it, she thought.

"Why don't you go sit down?" Emily suggested. Belinda glared at her. "Just while we're waiting for the pizza." Belinda sighed, looked down at her white-knuckled grip on her cane, and went to go sit down at one of the small tables in the pizza shop.

Emily couldn't quite understand why Belinda was upset to be asked to sit down. If she had been in Belinda's position, having such difficulty standing and walking, she'd never want to stand up. Of course if she had been able to solve a murder at a glance she wouldn't be so persistent to confront the murderer alone. Clearly Belinda was not the most logical of people.

Emily sat down in the seat next to her to wait for the pizza.

Belinda looked up, her long black hair tucked behind ear so that her face was visible. She had a small mouth, it couldn't have been much bigger than the diameter of a quarter. At least it looked that small with her slight frown of concentration. She was staring at the wall with those dark blue eyes. Emily followed her gaze to the wall where a dollar was taped.

"The first dollar earned." Belinda told her.

"What?" Emily asked, wondering what the significance was.

"Local business," she explained, her voice clear and intelligent, "The owner was proud of his new business and he taped his first dollar earned on the wall. It's a tradition in some areas to do this."

"So? Everyone knows that."

Belinda taped her cane with her knuckles.

"You remember when we confronted BigBoss? Mr. Avana."

"How could I forget? You almost died." Belinda didn't acknowledge her sarcasm.

"I mentioned that he was stealing money, or rather his victims were. The problem is, I didn't know where they were stealing from..." Belinda was lost in thought. At first Emily thought it was another seizure, but then she realized it wasn't. Belinda just was lost in thought. She muttered under her breath, her words like the hisses of white noise.

"But now you do?" Emily asked, staring at Belinda.

Belinda's small mouth stretched out twice it's size into a smile.

"No one reported any money stolen around the victims, and none of the victims' bank accounts had any significant increase...BUT...all of the victims made large purchases before their death. Yana himself visited Amazon twice before his death. Once to make a large purchase, then again to cancel the purchase. From this I can assume that Mr. Avana not only helped the victims get money, but also stole back the money then killed all witnesses to the theft."

"But how did they steal the money?" Emily asked. Belinda laughed lightly.

"A little bit at a time." She told her, "They each became the best small-scale robbers by exchanging advice through code on the internet. They preyed on the poor, less protected, small businesses. They stole small amounts when they could, maybe they had sticky fingers and stole tips and bills. Maybe they snuck into buildings and took small amounts from their totals for the day. Maybe they took a bit from their bank accounts if they were accountants. The point is that they committed crimes so small that they weren't worth reporting, never noticed, or hard to find a suspect for. Then when there was a significant amount stolen, the boss would swoop down and gather up their loot and kill them. They couldn't say anything because the money was stolen and they'd never be able to catch him. Until..."

"Until you." Emily said reluctantly.

"I have a different perspective than most detectives." Belinda told her, before she could ask "What makes you so special?"

"What do you mean?"

"I am a savant. If you hadn't noticed already." Belinda looked very calm and relaxed, like this information was a topic she had studied and mastered since she was a kid. Emily, however, had a look of suspicion about her. A response Belinda knew to be the absorbing of information she'd never heard of.

"What the heck does that mean?" She said, confirming Belinda's suspicions.

"A savant," Belinda said, donning the serious, proud tone that indicated a long and complicated lecture. "Is a mentally gifted individual, such as myself, specializing in one area of the brain. For me it is the ability to make impossibly fast deductions."

"Like Sherlock Holmes?" Emily said flatly.

"A bit, yes, except he is fictional, and I am real." Emily tried her hardest not to roll her eyes. Belinda seemed to notice that her eyes stopped halfway into the eye roll, and she continued her speech. "You don't believe me? I will prove it."

"That's really not ne-" Emily stopped as she noticed that Belinda was staring at her with wide, cold blue eyes. Emily's head jerked back, and she stared at Belinda as well, trying to figure out what she was doing.

Belinda's mouth returned to being abnormally small as she bit the sides of her cheeks. Emily noticed that her small light nose flared out a bit too, causing the tip of her nose to wiggle up and down. Belinda had a delicate face, Emily thought, for lack of something better to do. She had gray skin that was almost like porcelain, and her face was so thin and smooth that she looked like she would crack. It only increased the doll-like quality of her.

"You dropped your original major in favor of forensics." Belinda suddenly said, "Medical student by your vocabulary. My guess is that you were daunted by the prospect of having someone's life in your hands." She paused, "You forgot to brush your teeth this morning." Emily's hand went up to her mouth, "Most people would assume that your forgetful because of that, but I hypothesize that you forgot because you were hurrying to work this morning. You were running late because you couldn't find your hairbrush, which explains your hair..."

Emily grabbed at her hair with and angry look on her face.

"Hmmmm...." Belinda leaned back in her chair.

"What?" Emily said, only slightly worried.

"The football team? Really, not basketball?"

"What?" Emily asked, shocked.

"You were on your high school football team."

"Yeah, so?"

Belinda shrugs, "I just would have thought that you'd play basketball...cause you're tall. That's all."

Emily sighed, it seemed like everyone did. It was the curse of being tall.

"You had a long-term boyfriend in college-" Belinda continued. Emily groaned in her head. "But he left you right before finals your senior year-"

"I broke up with him!" Emily interrupted. Belinda looked up, her face was indifferent.

"I looked up your test scores, they were low, too low. Clearly you understand the material, so the only explanation for having that low of a test score is that you had an emotional issue right before the test. So was it your boyfriend or your fish Mr. Chips?"

"I loved that fish." Emily whined. Emily remembered how he would rush around the tank before she fed him and how he seemed to smile at her in the morning. It was weird to love your fish more than your boyfriend, but Emily honestly did.

Belinda smiled at her, a slight giggle forcing itself out of her.

"Wait a second!" Emily realized, "How did you know my fish's name?"

"You have a facebook page, I have a laptop." Belinda said calmly, "Data is data if I figured it out or read it."

"Less magical though." Emily said, leaning back in her chair.

"I never said I was magic." Belinda said, frowning slightly.

"Yeah, but you made it seem like you just had to glance at something and then you'd know everything about it. Anyone could look me up on the internet and figure out the same stuff."

Belinda stared a Emily, her frown extending as she did.

"Fine," she said finally, "You want to see me do it without extra data? Cause I will, and people don't tend to like it when I do this."

Emily raised an eyebrow, and Belinda took a deep breath. She closed her eyes and tried to remember every detail of the room. But it wasn't just a simple photographic 3D model of the room she was remembering. No, there were ghosts of shapes, sort of rough sketches of people that had gone through the room that day.

She took another deep breath.

Belinda spun the scene through her head, looking at it from all angles and selecting which piece of the scene was easiest to explain. There was an old guy, he'd left behind the most evidence in the form of a sticky mess of soda on the neighboring table. A soccer team in the neighboring table, they'd have the easiest to see evidence. A sick infant who'd sat in Emily's chair, but that was more disgusting than impressive. Perhaps she could explain the-

"What are you doing?" Emily asked, breaking Belinda's train of thought.

"Visualizing." Belinda said, her eyes flicking beneath her eyelids. "It helps me....AH!" Belinda's eyes shot open and her hand slowly waved over toward a chair a few feet to her left. "Lonely, morbidly obese astronomer, about...oh, two minutes before we came in, preparing for his shift at the planetarium."

"What?"

Belinda didn't pause. "One side of the table is covered in crumbs, suggesting only one side was used eating a pizza the tip on the table suggests a large pizza, the ink on the crumpled napkin resembles the moon. It suggests at least a mild interest in astronomy, the fact that this detailed picture is crumpled suggests that he has other diagrams which suggests that he knows a lot on the topic therefore leading me to believe that he has a job in astronomy. The position of the chair next to his chair suggests that he was using it as a foot rest, meaning that he has some knee pain. Meaning that he uses his knees a lot, perhaps climbing the stairs of the planetarium."

Emily nodded, checking all the information to make sure it made sense. "Where'd you get 'morbidly obese'?"

"Large pizza, one middle-aged adult."

"Yeah, but where did you get middle aged?" Emily asked.

"I got all the other crap right, are we really going to keep questioning me?" Belinda rubbed her eyes irritably.

"Hey are you okay?" Emily asked, as Belinda's hands fell from her eyes revealing a stream of tears running from them.

"The lights..." Belinda said, her voice suddenly croaky like she couldn't swallow quite right. "They're hurting my head." She coughed slightly and squeezed her eyes shut.

Emily watched her, a new sense of responsibility coming over her as she worried about Belinda's health. "Do you want to wait in the car while I get the pizza?"

Belinda's head slipped between her fingers as she rubbed the sides of her skull.

"Belinda?"

"I'll wait in the car." Belinda said, untangling her fingers from her hair and grabbing her cane to stand. Emily watched her leave, and when she was sure she was in the car, Emily walked up to the cashier to grab her pizza.

"Hey," she said softly, "The guy sitting at the table over there," She pointed over her shoulder to the table waiting to be cleared. "What do you remember about him?"

The teenage employee shrugged. "I don't know, fat old guy. Why?"

"Do you know if he was an astronomer."

The kid smiled proudly, "Yeah, he had one of those planetarium shirts with the rings around the name. I suppose you could say he was an astronomer. Might be a tour guide for all I know."

Emily took in this information, her brow lowered in concentration. She was right. She was absolutely freaking right. "Thanks. Uh, how much do I owe you?"

Emily walked outside into the humid night. From the glare of the windshield of her car she could only see Belinda's hand move a tissue under her nose. That at least meant that exposure to the florescent lights hadn't killed her or stunned her nervous system.

Could that actually happen? Emily wondered.

With any other person Emily would have called the, a baby for complaining about the lights, but with Belinda Emily didn't feel like she could count out that possibility. She had only known Belinda for two days, a sense of responsibility, as well as annoyance had begun to dominate their relationship.

Emily closed the car door behind her.

"Feel any better?" Emily asked, handing the pizza to Belinda's free hand. The other hand was dabbing a tissue to her nose.

"A smidge, my head still pains." Hurts.

"Yeah, well don't get any blood on my car....it's new."

Belinda looked up. Emily did not look like she was unfriendly, rather worried. It was a face Belinda knew by heart. It was the "God, please let this chic not die and let it be all my fault." face. Belinda looked down at the cartoon Italian chef on their pizza box.

She decided that she might actually prefer it if Emily would just say that instead of trying to spare her feelings. Then at least they could get their anger out and talk about something.

Curse people's inborn goodness! Belinda thought.

For a second, Belinda's mouth opened and closed like a fish. Her face grew red and her throat felt like it was closing in on itself. But then, out of some divine pity her voice came back.

"Eep..." She squealed.

It came back slowly.

"You don't have to..." She swallowed what felt like a five pound lump in her throat. "Could you not do that?"

Emily glanced over at her. She was flustered, her pale face red and her hands squeezing together. "Do what?"

"Talk to me like you have to buzz-" be, "Careful not to make me feels weakins."

Belinda squeezed her eyes shut and tried to keep her words straight.

"I wasn't-"

"Yes, you were." Belinda interrupted, which was a struggle for her that brought unimaginable pleasure to accomplish. "Consciously or not, you were."

Emily went silent.

"I mean, I nose-" know, "I'm not exactly a stable person. But I'm not brain-dead. I'm not waiting around for some part-time nurse to wipe the spit off of my mouth. I have a hard time communicating, but I can answer more than 'How are you today?', 'Are you feeling okay?', or 'Do you like this?'. For god's sake I can think just as well as anyone else! So don't treat me like I-" Belinda's voice stopped abruptly.

Emily glanced over, she was still mouthing the words but it seemed that her voice had failed her. Her eyes sparkled as the beginnings of tears filled the corners of her eyes.

"I know you can, Belinda." Emily said softly.

"So don't treat me lichen-" like, "You need to pretend you don't notice. I know, you know, everyone knows I'm not-" her voice left her again, but returned quickly, "Could you at least have the decency to tell me when you're worried? Then I vould," could, "At least have a reason to be angry at you!"

"What?" Emily said, smiling awkwardly as the situation went from tense to just giddy.

"I can't be angry at you for carebearing-" caring, Emily hoped she meant "It's just your nature, so please try to let me argue every now and then."

Emily let the silence fill the car for a second as she nodded, "What do you mean it's my nature?"

"It's human nature to care. To feel. To love. We don't really want to kill each other. We want to save the lives we know."

Emily couldn't help but to snort.

"It's true, I'm living proof. I wouldn't be alive today if people didn't care enough to try to keep me alive."

Emily gave the only reasonable reaction to such a statement. She nodded and kept her eyes on the road.