Belinda Cabbotry: Alter Number Three (PART 17)

"May I come in?" Chris asked at the door of Daniel's apartment.

"Will saying no get you to leave?"

Chris smiled with her dark purple lips, and walked in. Daniel closed the door and followed Chris to the kitchen table. Today she was sporting a dark purple sleeveless dress and matching heels, with the hugest gold necklace he had ever seen. With the bling and her Coach glasses it was a miracle she hadn't been mugged, but then again no one ever would have the nerve to mess with Chris Lindy.

"What's the plan this week?" Daniel asked, rubbing his 2 AM bed head smooth. "Bank robbery? Mugging old ladies? Murdering children with kittens?"

Chris laughed, "Never petty robberies. But I like the creativity on the last one, tell me, how do you plan on pulling that off?"

"I-I was just kidding."

"Well, I wasn't." Chris stuck a strip of gum in her mouth, as she always did. "You are my second in command, in case you haven't read your contract that involves preforming your favors however you want to."

"I have read my contract. How could I not? You spray painted it on my sheets."

Chris smiled. "You wish I had them use spray paint."

Daniel leaned against the wall. "I have to kill someone."

"By Friday." Chris blew a bubble. Daniel stood up straight.

"That's in two days! I can't-"

"I have all the resources you need, Daniel. Any bribes, loose cameras, or favors you need I have."

"So why don't you just kill someone yourself?" Daniel yelled. Chris stuck the gum under his table, as she always did, and searched through his kitchen cabinets.

"I'm busy. You may not know this, but I have a very tight, unpredictable schedule. I need things done, so I get people to do them for me." She frowned at the cabinets and opened the fridge.

"You need murders to be done?"

"I don't exactly have time to explain my psychopathy to you, Daniel. I do need them done. I would plan them myself, but it's far more satisfying to watch you try your hand."

"I don't understand."

Chris smiled and closed the fridge. She walked to him and brushed the stubble on his jaw with her finger tips. "Have you ever wondered who I am. I mean really, who I am besides a psychopath."

"Do you have a crush on me?" He said brushing her hand away.

"Psychopaths like me don't feel attraction. Not to anyone, so don't delude yourself into thinking you're the exception." She pushed her glasses onto the top of her head. She had stunning dark blue eyes, with no make up around them making them seem more then they were. They were just blue, so unearthly blue. And they just stared, no hint of emotion or humanity. They were beautiful eyes, but they were also the eyes of a person who wanted to kill.

"Why are you showing me this?" Daniel asked, "You never take your glasses off."

"You are my partner. I trust you, as far as I can trust anyone. If you want to know about the job, I have an ex-partner you can talk to." She walked back to the table and wrote something down on a Chinese take-out menu. "He is instructed to tell you what you need to know, but for each murder you commit I will answer one question."

"Why are you doing this? What's the point?"

She shook her head, and pulled the glasses back down. "No, that's two questions, and I can't answer either of them yet. You know who to call when you're ready."

"I can't-"

"You will."

***

David stood outside the police station surrounded by reporters. Each of them wanting a good picture and a unique perspective on the Jogger case.

"Detective Sylvester," asked on reporter as her camera man snapped pictures, "Is the man in custody, Mr. Tobias Flynn, is he in fact the serial killer?"

"Yes, we have multiple confessions and irrefutable evidence pointing to his mental instability and violent tendencies." David tried to look calm amongst all the flashing and questions.

"And this evidence," another reporter asked, "That is the attempted murder of your girlfriend?"

"The strangulation, and successful murder of Officer Belinda Cabbotry, yes. That is one piece of evidence, but we have many pieces of evidence tying him to the murder scenes. Including a testimony provided by the other surviving victim-"

"The second surviving victim being your girlfriend." A reporter declared.

"Yes." David took a deep breath, "Officer Cabbotry was briefly dead, which we are accounting for by declaring her a victim not a murder."

"But your girlfriend does have a medical condition that contributed to the success of the attempted murder?"

"Yes, but it was the strangulation that caused the momentary death, not her condition. And why are you focusing on this so much, he killed three other people."

"You only have his word on the three successful murders," another reporter butted in, "You have no physical evidence tying him to the murders."

"Yes, but I'd say admitting to three more murders than he has to doesn't exactly play into his hand. And it's completed murders not 'successful'."

"Are you sure the fact that he tried to murder your girlfriend isn't clouding your judgement?" The first reporter continued.

"As I'm very sure you're aware, and are trying to get me to admit," David said gritting his teeth, "I did engage Tobias when I entered the room and saw him murdering someone. A reaction any good officer would have had, civilian or officer. At the time I could find no other way to incapacitate the suspect other than with brute force, which was, admit-ably, excessive."

"Why did you not have any back up at the time of the attack."

"Are you trying to get me to admit fault? Because everything was done correctly!" David cursed himself silently for raising his voice.

"We just want to get all the facts." A snotty reporter yelled.

"Fine, the hospital room was being monitored by a group of officers, who could not be directly in the room because of the condition of the victim. As every visitor had to be sterilized and the room could be monitored just as well from the outside-"

"So good a murder almost took place." A reporter said under his breath. David ignored him.

"The burn unit had three other patients. Officer Cabbotry and I were visiting the victim in the hopes of gaining anymore information before the victim was to be woken up the next day."

"What kind of information? She was in a drug induced coma."

David ribbed his forehead, "Officer Cabbotry is a forensic scientist at the station, with... unique abilities. Any new information might have been useful for us at that point. As I said before we had come upon a dead end in the case. I left the room to get a drink from the machine, during that time Tobias got cleared as a visitor for another patient-"

"How did he manage that?" A reporter interrupted.

"He passed himself off as a newest in a long line of boyfriends of a patient. He was a regular visitor of her's, and he convinced her because she also had amnesia. Again we are looking into her accident as well, but nothing has turned up. With this preplanning, he got passed the guards and attacked-"

"How did the guards not notice she was being attacked? If they were as secure as you're saying-"

"Belinda didn't scream. She was in the middle of a seizure during the attack, and even if she wasn't her condition wouldn't have made it possible for her to alert anyone any time before."

"So he was just extraordinarily lucky." A reporter mumbled. "Figures that the serial killers get all the luck."

"No, he was extraordinarily well-informed and this preplanning has warranted further investigation."

"And what have you learned?"

"That he is a psychopath, with unknown or insignificant connections that have helped him get the right materials and that he is particularly intelligent with probably years of experience preparing him for the past week and a half."

"If he's so intelligent why did he come back to the murder victim?"

"Yeah, if he knew she had evidence he'd run, change his name, leave the country."

"We believe that Sylvia surviving was no accident. Him preparing a way into the hospital points to him knowing she'd survive for him to have to go back."

"So he wanted to get caught."

"Or to kill Officer Cabbotry. We don't have the full story yet-"

"Why would he want to kill your girlfriend?" One reporter yelled above the increasingly restless gang of reporters.

"As I said before, she has unique abilities, and has helped capture many high profile cases. Someone may have payed him to get revenge."

"But she's just a forensic scientist."

"She prefers the term forensic detective. She consults on cases sometimes, including this one because she has the track record for the quickest, most accurate comprehension of evidence. With her five of the largest gang leaders in the city have been put in jail, it would not be unusual for a criminal to want her dead." David's text alert went off. "Anymore questions?"

"Yes, one more." One reporter in the front squealed, "Many people are calling you a hero for solving this case, and a lot of people are saying that you could have avoided a lot of the murders if you had been quicker. Any comments?"

David checked his phone. "Uh... I guess I would say that unfortunately, though brutal and unnecessary, there was really no way to catch him any earlier, we were lucky to catch him as soon as we did. Also I'm not a hero, any other officer could have caught this guy. I'm going to have to leave."

David walked back to his car with a trail of reporters all asking "one last question."

***

Daniel looked at the note Chris left him. "Tobias Flynn A.K.A. The Midnight Jogger. You can find him yourself. Kisses Christen." Then there was a crude drawing of him with a wicked smile and a bloody knife in his hand.

Daniel had heard of this "Jogger" guy. Who hadn't? He was the city's first serial killer, and he had killed three people this past week alone, let alone anything before hand. But he was Chris's second in command? What if he was completely normal before he met Chris? What did that mean for him?

***

Belinda checked out the bruise on her neck with the mirror in her bathroom. It was dark purple in the vague shape of a hand. Despite what she knew she should be feeling about the bruise, she liked it. She had defeated death, saved a woman's life, and won a few vacation days out of the deal. It was cool to see the bruise snaking around her neck like some sort of sci-fi flick. Mysterious bruises she didn't remember getting, it was like she was abducted.

"Belinda! Breakfast!" Veronica yelled up the stairs.

That was another thing Belinda got out of the ordeal. Veronica and her were getting along a lot better.

"Give me a minute!" Belinda yelled back, causing her to break out coughing. Blood dribbled out of her nose by the end, but she wiped her face clean and walked slowly downstairs.

"You're wearing the same thing as yesterday." Veronica pointed out.

"So, I'm on mandatory vacation. I don't have to change." Belinda sat down at the table and brushed Veronica's crossword puzzles aside.

"Technically yes, but please change after breakfast." Veronica pulled waffles out of the iron and tossed them onto a plate.

"But it's all the way upstairs..." Belinda groaned, "And I'm a cwipple!" Cripple.

"Said the girl who doesn't want to go to the doctor's office on saturday." Veronica poured boiling water into a mug with a tea bag and stirred in Belinda's medication in.

"I'm fine. I'll live without all the fuss."

"So I shouldn't make you waffles anymore and you should go change?"

"Irrelevant." Belinda muttered.

***

"He's waiting for you at the end." The police officer told Daniel as he entered the visiting area. He smiled nervously and walked down to the end of the tables in the visiting area. They were gray tables with chains holding the convicts to the table by their hands. Each of them had two matching guards as a precaution.

Way at the end was a table with a black guy in an orange jumpsuit on and wicked smile on his face. He motioned Daniel forward with a fit of laughing.

"Dannie boy." He laughed. "Nice to see ya."

"Hi." Daniel sat down at the other side of the table.

"So you're my replacement." Tobias laughed with a toothy grin.

"I guess. You know Chris?"

"Shhhhh..." Tobias held one finger as close as he could get to his mouth. He was still grinning. "These guards won't say anything, but I wouldn't test them too much. For their own good. Yeah, sweet guy." Tobias muffled his laughs with his hand.

"Yeah, 'he's' really something." It was a widely accepted fact by Chris's ring, that she was a guy. And frankly, if this freak thought it was best to call him a guy, then he figured he better do it too.

"Hot too."

"Yeah..." Daniel grimaced. "So you... Had a relationship with..."

"No, man I wish. 'Cuz he's fine." Tobias's laughing stopped, but his smile widened.

"Yeah, I guess..."

"I take it you needed some information on the job?"

"A bit." Daniel looked uncomfortable, but Tobias didn't seem to notice.

"Okay, so every murder is worth ticks. The more clever the murder the more ticks you get. Depending on what he knows, the ticks will add up and you're done."

"And 'he' forgets about my secret. Like forever. I never have to worry about it again?"

"He'll do you one better. As second in command, you get total problem resolution, as he calls it."

Daniel looked around then back at Tobias, "You're in jail, are you telling me you're going to get out of jail?"

"No, this is my reward." Tobias smiled.

"You're in jail."

"My problem was I needed to hide from the government."

"You're in jail."

"I never said it was this government. Waiting at home, I have years of torture and eventual execution. Here I have more power than the warden. Push comes to shove, this is the best thing that could ever happen to me."

"So... For murdering innocent people I could escape my crazy ex by being sent to prison. Great, wish I'd thought of that."

"Guy before me is in Fiji with 8 mill. Guy before him has three wives and an Italian villa. I just didn't have those options. Right now, I have three life sentences in a prison where I'm king and a fake name. This is pretty much equivalent when you count in that I still have all my finger nails and my skin isn't slowly getting boiled off."

"So what about the murders."

"You get over them." Tobias told him softly. "All the cries and blood. It's just cries and blood. After a while the planning becomes fun. All that power, and you can do anything you want with it. Doesn't this seem the least bit tempting?"

"No. These are human beings!"

"And what are human beings? Little mice that run around in a maze for their lives trying to prolong their lives against the vain pain of existence. If it's that bad to you, pick lonely people. Pick terminal people. The point is it's your suffering vs. their suffering. You're only human."

Daniel rubbed his head.

"Chris might sound crazy right now, just ask her why she does this. It might not seem so crazy then."

***

Daniel had a choice. An unfair, horribly obvious choice. If he did not kill someone, he would be subjected to not only Susan, but also attacks from half the city. They could make his life completely miserable. If he did one person would be dead and so would his morality.

So as a sane human being with his well-being in mind, he picked up the phone and made the call.