Belinda Cabbotry: Alter Number Three (PART 18)

Belinda sat the couch with her keys in her hands. She had one particular key in her hand, her storage unit key. She stared at it's edges, all it's metal creases and divets almost mesmerized her. They had caught the bad guy, played into his preplanned arrest. So why bother putting his key in the man's throat?

And why the key in the first place? It made no sense. It was an unbelievable risk for absolutely no payout.

Belinda recalled the key she pulled out of the corpse's throat. Was it similar or exactly the same as her key?

"Veronica, I need to get back to the station." Belinda called out, she grabbed her cane and her coat.

"What is it?" Veronica yelled from the kitchen. She set down her morning crossword.

"I just need to check something real fast."

"You're not in any immediate danger are you?" Veronica grabbed her keys.

"Will no make you not drive me?"

"No, I just want to make sure-"

"I just had a revelation about the case. It might be important."

***

Daniel scoped out his target. A young blonde barista at the Starbucks down the street. She had no family worth mentioning, no kid, no boyfriend. She was as boring as a rock, and only decent at making coffee.

It wasn't as hard as he imagined it would be. The planning was simple once he got started. WikiHow suggested that he find what method he was most comfortable with. Face to face conflict if you're violent. Poison if you want something quiet. "Accident" if you're cunning. At least it suggested that for writers.

He had decided that since this was his first try at it, he would go with poison. He had watched her long enough to know how she'd react.

All he had to do was carry it out.

He pulled a small bottle out of his bag, and stared at the liquid with concern.

One of Chris's "friends" had gotten him some arsenic from some lab somewhere to act as a tasteless poison. Enough of this stuff and she would be dead in minutes. He opened the top of his coffee three quarters full ice coffee and poured the liquid in it. He stirred carefully then filled the rest of it with water. He set the coffee in his empty backpack under the table. He waited a while, then ordered another ice coffee.

The barista smiled as she handed it to him. He tried his best to smile back, but it was hard.

He went back to his seat in the back, waited to make sure no one was looking, but everyone was too glued to the free internet. He switched the coffees out and made sure the right barista was at the counter before going up.

"Me again, sorry." He smiled through his nervousness.

"What's up?" She asked, through her own facade of annoyance.

"My coffee tastes funny, could you just taste it?"

"Okay." She said annoyed. She sipped the coffee. Daniel's heart sped up. No going back now. "Just a little watery, I'll go make you a new one. The machine must be busted." She rolled her eyes and went into the make him a new coffee. He tapped his feet waiting for her to make his coffee. He checked his watch, fixed his sunglasses, and a minute later she handed him his coffee. He walked out of the Starbucks and started up his car. Letting out a sigh of relief when he was out of the parking lot.

All the way home, any siren he heard was hers.

But he did it. He hoped.

***

"Knick knack!" Belinda yelled as she entered the lab. Emily's scalpel jittered and jabbed an artery of a corpse she was looking at. "Sorry." Belinda shrunk behind her hair.

"It's fine." Emily said shaking her head angrily and dabbing the corpse's foot with a cotton ball.

"You're looking in the wrong place." Belinda said sitting in her rolling chair and pulling on her gloves.

"I think I know where to look for a rusty nail wound."

"You're right, there is a nail wound in her foot." Belinda nodded, plucking a single hair from the corpses red scalp. She pulled a magnifier off the tray and held the hair under it. "The victim is not forty as your previously were led to believe. She's fifty seven, give or take a few months."

"How so?" Emily looked at the face.

"Gray hair, dyed. Teeth, whitened. Wrinkles..."

"Botox." Emily agreed. "Whatcha think Jane Doe? Might go to a different plastic surgeon for your pre-funeral tummy tuck."

Belinda smiled and pulled off her gloves.

"What are you doing back here? You're on break, you should be stuffing ice cream in your face while watching reruns of Sherlock." Emily sat down and jotted down a note on the report.

"That was the plan." Belinda grabbed her cane and walked to the door.

"So what changed? We caught the bad guy. It's over."

"But what about his partners? I need to see the evidence. Where's David?"

"Out. He said he needed to do something. There was something about his brother." Belinda stared at her expectantly, "I'll go get the box off the tall shelf."

"Thank you." Belinda smiled.

***

Daniel sat on his couch, his knees up against his chin. There was something on the TV, but he wasn't watching it anymore. He was just staring at a stain on his wall through his knees.

At the time he couldn't focus on anything. It all seemed like a blur of anxiety and nerves.

But now he could remember every detail. He could see the slight dimples in her cheeks, the brown color of her eyes, even the lilac nail polish that strayed onto the edges of her fingers. She was pretty, he could see that now.

He could see her collapsing on the floor, even though he was gone before she started dying. He could see her being loaded into the ambulance already dead. He could see her parents crying by her coffin. He imagined she looked a lot like her mother. She had her eyes and her face, and her dad's curly blonde hair. Both of them probably lived somewhere up north, so they had that weird accent, he could hear it as they wailed for their daughter. And they probably had a nephew with a weird band, and he was about to go on tour, but heartbroken by her death, he gave up music. And the whole family lost out on millions of dollars, meaning that her crazy aunt Judy couldn't pay for a hip replacement, and she had to live with her parents in the girl's old room. And she'll probably cry every night going to bed. Then when they're at their lowest, the grandfather dies, the grandmother meets an old rich guy who cheats her out of all her savings and she has to go to a homeless shelter. And then their dog dies.

It was enough to make anyone hysterical.

Then he would wonder if he did it right.

Would they find his fingerprints on the cup? Would someone ID him at the crime scene? No one could have, he was wearing sunglasses, and no one was paying attention to him. But did she die?

That was the one question that haunted him.

If she was then his sanity might come undone. If she wasn't, he might be a deadman walking. He would just have to wait and see.

***

"So this key...?" Emily asked. Belinda rifled through the evidence box in the dim light of the evidence locker.

"It's a key." Belinda said blandly.

"I figured as much. And when did we find this?"

"After you left the autopsy." Belinda pulled the little baggie with the key out and frowned.

"When were you going to tell me this?"

"When it became relevant to you." She pulled her keys out of her jacket pocket and held the storage key against the baggie.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Look." Belinda showed her the keys.

"They're identical. What's this key for?"

"My storage unit. So they should be similar, but not identical."

"Sounds like your stuff is now evidence." Emily patted her on the back and stood up.

"Where are you going?" Belinda asked.

"Well apparently I'm not part of this case, so this isn't relevant to me." Emily shrugged.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"It's fine. I know you didn't mean it like that, but it'd be nice to be included in the investigation of the serial killer that killed my friend."

"What you want to be murdered too?" Belinda asked, throwing the key back in the box.

"No, but-"

"But I didn't notice something earlier. Actually two things about the same key. I'm sorry I didn't invite you to smack the jaw off a sewer adjacem-" adjacent, "Corrals-" corpse, "I'm sourry-" sorry, "I said thattttt-" Belinda took a deep breath. Her face was bright red, and her nose was bloody. She rubbed her nose and sighed at the blood.

Emily walked back and handed her a tissue. "Don't get your blood on the evidence."

***

Chris turned the facet on and stepped into the shower. She sat in the edge of the shower where the shower head wasn't pointed and dialed the number into her phone.

"Hello?" The voice asked.

"Good morning, Daniel Killer. How was your weekend?"

"Are you in the shower?"

"Does that make you uncomfortable?"

"Yes."

"Good. I take it you've spoken to Tobias."

"Yeah, he's... A real happy guy."

"Yes he is. Real good kisser to."

"You shouldn't play with his emotions like that. He really likes you." Daniel scolded.

"Said the murderer. I heard the good news." Chris set the phone on the tile floor and opened the shampoo bottle.

"Great..." Daniel said sarcastically.

"So you have one question, don't waste it." Chris lathered her long dark hair with shampoo until it was a mass of white foam.

"Why do you make me murder people? What's in it for you?"

"I thought you'd address the elephant in the room." Chris smiled. She rinsed the shampoo out of her hair, letting her hair fall to her back before she answered. "What if one day you just woke up? One day you just existed, with an impossibly hot football player boyfriend way out of your league and friends and an entire life you just couldn't explain."

"You had Amnesia?"

"Have." Chris leaned over the side of the tub and addressed the phone. "I already had a life, and I couldn't remember any of it. I'm not supposed to exist, Daniel. All those people trying to get me to remember who I supposedly was, and here I am. So I can ask you to murder. So I do."

"But why do you want murders? If you're as messed up as I think you are, why not just murder people yourself?"

"What if I told you that when I was 'born' I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't feel pain or heat or cold. I couldn't love or hate or anything. I can smell, taste, hear, and see. Oh I can see far more than anyone around me... I just can't feel. I'm a numb psychopath. That's just who I am. And you ask me why I do what I do? I'm curious. There are people who will do anything to save someone they share a few good memories with, and there are people who will kill to insure their wellbeing.

"Me I don't need a partner or accomplishment. I can't feel those things. I don't need to insure my wellbeing because I don't exist. You all feel so much. Love, hate, pain, sadness. It's interesting to see how these emotions affect what you do. I do things because I can see what they will do in the future. I can see that giving you one joint will, eventually, leave you somewhere dead. I can see what having you kill people will do to you and the people around you. People do things because they feel they must. And that interests me. Having you suffer intrigues me in a way I can not simulate any other way. See you sometime after next week, babe, and we'll talk about that person you killed before the next Friday." Chris hung up.

She looked down and her feet were bright red, so she turned the heat down. She hadn't been one hundred percent honest with Daniel, but some things were true. Most of it was true, but he'd just have to figure out what was true and what wasn't true himself.

***

David reached into his coat pocket again to make sure it was still there. His thumb rubbed against the spots where the velvet was still on the box. This would be it's third time being out of a box in some closet somewhere. The first was when his dad had proposed before he was born. The second was to propose to J.P.'s mother. That one hadn't ended well. And his dad had gotten it from a pawn shop back in New Orleans, so maybe the ring only seen one good marriage.

But it was his parent's good marriage, so it was something he wanted to use.

There was a knock at the door. David jumped a bit, but then realized that the ring was still in his coat. "Come in."

Emily walked in and sat opposite his desk. "Belinda's looking for you, it's important."

"She's off today." David checked his watch out of habit.

"She found out the key you found is her key."

"What!" David jumped out of his chair.

"David, the jogger's in jail. There's nothing we can do about this now."

"Except kick that SoB's ass if he goes anywhere near her." David picked up the phone on his desk and dialed. "Richie, change of plans, we aren't done with Flynn, I'm moving his court date back until I get everything. And by no means is Belinda allowed anywhere near him."

"Well that might be a problem, Detective."

"Why?"

"Because she's in the interrogation room with him."