Belinda Cabbotry: The Midnight Jogger and Fire (PART 16)

Alfie whistled as another girl walked by. She looked back at the four of them with a raised eyebrow, then noticing that Alfie was looking at the low cut of her tank top, she sneered and kept walking. He smiled with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

Alfie passed the cigarette pack to Daniel, and Daniel took a new one, lit it and blew out a ring of smoke.

"Yo how you do that?" Zee asked him.

"Trade secret." He told him, puffing out smoke.

"So this dude really just left you two g's for pissing your pants?" Marcus asked, "Cuz I could take up that as a career."

"Ew. And it was a chic, a smokin' hot chic, with a tight skirt."

"And this doctor babe he sent to your apartment?" Zee asked.

"What about 'er?"

"Dude, the freak just sends you two chics. Who just has two on hand to send to random dudes on the street? Dude's got to be some sort of pimp." Marcus chimed in.

"And why would 'some sort of pimp' just send two babes to me?"

Marcus shrugged his huge shoulders. "Gotta have gay prostitutes too."

"Yeah, just one problem. I'm not exactly fabulous, what kind of messed up shit are you thinking with?" For a tree of a guy, Marcus's head didn't have the same strength.

"Male prostitutes too." Alfie defended.

Dan shook his head, "No this chic said she was paying some sort of debt. But seriously, I'm never gonna meet with this Chris guy, so it doesn't matter."

"You sure?" Zee asked, a joint in his fingers, "He already knows where you live."

"Just chill." Dan said, puffing out smoke. "The guy gave me half of five grand, told me not to blow it, I'm buying a plane ticket to stay at my sis's for a while. Then I'll be back to sitting here with you and a grand's worth of joints in no time."

"I wouldn't be so sure." The boys looked up as a tall black haired woman in a fancy beige skirt and jacket and thick expensive heels. She had big Coach sunglasses and bright red lips. "Daniel, I presume."

"Danny K. the very same." He said smiling flirtatiously. She was pretty hot from where he was sitting. Alfie punched him lightly on the shoulder as if to say "Lucky jerk!"

"My employer wants to meet with you." She motioned him forward. "Alone."

"See the thing is..." Daniel breathed in his cigarette smoke again, "I don't plan on meeting with him."

"Okay." She smiled.

"Kay?"

"Kay kay," she reached into her purse and grabbed her phone, "I'll just tell him you had no interest in finding out about Susan."

Daniel swallowed and lowered his cigarette.

"Oh, are you ready to see him now?"

Daniel nodded. "Dude?" Alfie asked as Daniel stood up.

"I'll be a while." He followed the woman to a black SUV, they got into the back and the driver started the car up.

"Daniel." The woman smiled and crossed her legs like a victorian lady. "My name is Christen Lindy."

"You're the big guy?"

"In all senses yes."

Daniel shook that comment off, "What do you want?"

She scratched her nose and shrugged, "I'm a trader."

"What like a drug dealer? Is this about drugs?" Daniel rubbed his hands along his pants nervously.

"No, more like a trader of deeds."

There was a long pause. Confused, Daniel asked cautiously "What kind of deeds?"

"Well, I don't say things, and in return, people do things for me. Like the doctor I sent you. I don't mention to the police her aiding suicides and she helps me out no questions asked."

She pulled out a tube of lipstick. "For some people it's more serious."

"So you blackmail."

"Heavens no." She grabbed his hand, and he tried to twist out of her grip. "Relax, I'm not going to hurt you." He stopped struggling and she rubbed her thumb across his palm. It was cold and Daniel felt the last of what he could call personal space in this strange car disappear. "How does that feel? I've always had an issue feeling things."

"It feels weird."

"Good weird or bad weird." She smiled, but it was hard to tell why with the sunglasses. Was it a flirtatious smile, or was it a smile that was enjoying his discomfort. Certainly with his track record with girls there hadn't been a difference between the two smiles.

"Good weird?"

"Good, now in my business each piece of information is carefully weighed for correct payment. For instance this doctor's secret was worth twenty ticks- that's about twenty small favors- I calculate that the doctor should preform twenty unorthodox procedures, no questions asked, then her secret disappears forever. A petty blackmailer would never let a secret go, and that's where I have my differences. You, however, I have big plans for." She let his hand go and uncapped the lipstick. "My second in command, by a huge gap a assure you."

"Second in command?"

She touched his chin and kissed him on the cheek. Then whispered, "I have so much on you. Most people's blackmail only last a few years, but you... Susan is looking for you." David swallowed again. She drew a heart around the lipstick mark on his cheek.

"You won't tell her where I am. Will you?" Daniel felt the scars on his back grow hot just by the mention of her name.

"No." She smiled. "But I will require some services from you."

"What kind of services."

She leaned back into her seat, she held his hand with both hands. "Now keep in mind, along with protection from Susan, I promise these errands will almost never endanger you."

"What errands?"

"We'll get into the specifics later. Just, for now, I'll contact you soon. Also this meeting with me didn't happen." Chris kissed his hand, tied her hair into a ponytail, and had the driver stop at his apartment. "Toodles, cutie."

When the car was gone, he shivered and tried to rub the lipstick off his cheek and hand.

***

Belinda sat at the bed side of Sylvia Evans, watching the hospital sheets rise and fall with the beeps of the heart monitor. Belinda could only imagine what she looked like before, she probably had long blonde hair, a tanning booth tan, and she probably did a lot of running. Right now she was bald with patches of body without skin at all.

She was healing since the fire. She had tubes in every hole of her body and the skin grafts were set in enough so they could wake her up tomorrow without being in the worst kind of pain. But it still wasn't fun to watch.

Belinda muttered under her breath. "What do you know? You were a Cashier at Walmart. You had lunch with a friend, bought new headphones after work, found a dollar on the street, went home, ate some leftovers, but who did you see? Who killed you? And why? There has to be a reason. What did you do?"

"You a friend of Sylvia's?" A dark man in a T-shirt and jeans with tears in his eyes approached. He had thick biceps and skin so black you could barely tell the pupils of his eyes from his skin.

"Ah, no." Belinda held a hand up for him to shake as he walked closer and loomed above her. "Officer Cabbotry, I'm working her case."

"I didn't know she was being woken up today." Belinda eyed the guy, he had suddenly become far more interesting than the drugged up victim. He watched her, out of the corner of his eye like she reminded him of something, but he didn't want her to know until he was sure what it was.

"No, I'm a forensics scientist. Me and Detective Sylvester were hoping to learn something important by coming to visit her, but nothing so far. Are you her boyfriend?"

"Yeah. I just can't believe this happened, she was just so..." He touched her hand.

"We're very sorry, if it helps, she's the first victim to survive."

He smiled, revealing the tips of his pearly white canines. "Oh that's Syl, always stronger than she looks."

"You know what else?" Belinda asked cautiously.

"What?"

"She didn't have a boyfriend."

His smile widened, a wild glint in his eyes, and Belinda smiled back proudly. He looked like a wolf, his smooth muscles and his intelligent smile. He walked closer slowly, like a dog approaching it's trapped prey. He slipped his left hand into a rubber glove that had been sitting on the table close by.

"Oh how I wish you hadn't said that." The Midnight Jogger said with a hint of sarcasm. He was waiting for her to say it. Hoping she knew, hoping for a chance to do this.

Belinda was still, all she could do was watch. Her mind was blank and she couldn't even process what was happening, let alone be afraid. His gloved hand slowly brushed against her neck. The jogger smiled as he watched her absently smiling face. Then his fingers slowly closed around her throat, choking the woman who wasn't really there. Belinda wheezed as her windpipe desperately tried to grab breaths. Her head lolled to the side after a second.

David, who had just made it back into the room in time to watch his girlfriend take her last breath, leaped onto the murderer. The jogger, released the already dead Belinda and grasped his own throat as David clenched his fingers around his throat. "NURSE! NURSE! HELP!" He yelled. He pulled the man to the ground and thrusted his thumbs into his esophagus. And if the security guard had not come in and mistaken him for the murderer, he would have killed him. They dragged him out of the room, away from the fainted jogger and away from Belinda as they tried to restart her heart.

He stopped fighting the guard out in the hall and allowed him to take him as he explained through sobs who he was and what had happened. "Please, Please, just please take me back." The security guard agreed and took him back to the burn unit where Belinda was lying on the floor surrounded by two doctors pushing down on her chest. David watched in silence, his mouth wide open.

She was grayer than usual. There was a smile on her face like she was still alive, and her a bright red ribbon of flesh around her neck where the jogger had choked her. Then one of the doctors stopped the other and David fell to the ground and clutched his eyes. He thought, This is it. She can't be brought back. She's gone. I always knew that she'd... But not now...

David looked up again, but one of the doctors wasn't there anymore. He ran across the room and grabbed the oxygen and placed the mask on Belinda's mouth. David watched, wiping his face, as the doctors helped Belinda sit up and breathe. David smiled, and looked down at the unconscious body of the serial killer that had been pushed aside in all the excitement. A doctor was checking him over, but she didn't seem too happy about it.

The security guard handcuffed David to a bench outside the burn unit, and called 911. But David didn't mind, he understood that what he did was insane, and also that the jogger had deserved to be strangled.

"Belinda" brushed her hair behind her ear and waved to David. David smiled at Melanie and waved back.

***

"You were legally dead for half a minute." David told Melanie from the drivers seat of the car. "Whatever it is that you said, you really-"

"David." Melanie said, she was looking out the window of the car.

"You don't want to go home do you?"

"Not really." Melanie fiddled with her cane.

"And you don't really want to go to my house."

"Well, maybe..."

"You don't. Whatever you're thinking right now, it's 'I don't really want to go to David's house'." Melanie brushed the purple skin around her neck where the jogger had choked her. "Why did you agree to come to my house in the first place, and I'm talking to both of you right now. You never agree to come over, so why did you this week?"

"I don't-"

"Yes you do. You always do. I know you both are the same person, somewhere inside of you, so why do you not know the answer?"

Melanie closed her eyes. "Veronica... doesn't like me."

David sighed and pulled the car over into a Arby's parking lot. "So you don't want to stay at my house to avoid my son, and you've driven yourself out of your own home to avoid your nurse. Did you at least take the time to consider that you're the one who doesn't want to be near them."

"They don't like me, either of them." Melanie sulked in her chair, clutching her cane hard.

"Mels..." David shook his head, "I know it's scary. Living with someone new. Meeting someone new. You especially, and I'm talking to you specifically Mel, you are horrible with people." Melanie smiled. "I don't know what it is about you, but always manage to annoy the crap out of people. Now I don't know if that's just what you say, or your demeanor or..." David cleared his throat. "But obviously not everyone hates you." David rubbed her shoulder, and she let him.

David almost took his hand away, he wasn't used to Belinda letting him touch her. He wasn't used to touching her as Melanie.

"You have to at least try to get along with people. Let them know they have a chance at being your friend. And that goes for both of you."

Melanie smiled and wiped a tear from her eye. "Take me home please. I'll deal with the consequences of getting myself strangled."

David was partially let down, he was sort of hoping she'd choose to try being friends with J.P. But then again, he couldn't be mad at her for choosing to try the private nurse thing.

David drove her home, all the while the tiny voice in his head was telling him that something was off about the guy they just arrested. But perhaps it wasn't so off that he had to get Melanie excited. Not right now.