Nowhere to Run (Stephanie Carovella)

by Nina D'Angelo

  Ben closed his eyes, a lump in his throat. Pulling Stephanie closer, he rested his chin on the top of her head, his body shaking with intense emotion. He loved her so much. More than he had even comprehended. More than he could have ever loved Ana and it made him feel even more guilty, knowing he would have never given Ana all she craved. Tangling his hands through Stephanie’s hair, he pulled her closer, knowing this wasn’t the right time to tell her the truth. Now wasn’t the right time to tell her how he really felt.

  Stephanie felt Ben tremble in her arms and her throat convulsed. Her own eyes closed involuntarily, tears sliding silently down her cheeks. Ana hadn’t deserved to die this way. She hadn’t deserved to die, period.

  She prayed it would soon be all over – this nightmare they were all going through would, hopefully, end with her. She just wanted it to end. She still didn’t completely understand why he killed Ana, other than to show what he was capable of.

  She’d be there for Ben, she vowed. She knew what he was going through. She knew the pain of losing someone she’d loved passionately and the devastation she felt afterwards. Gently pulling back from Ben, she reached out and wiped away his tears, smiling tenderly at him. “If all your female fans could see you now, they’d all wet their panties,” she teased, making him choke with laughter.

  They both turned back to look at the water, drawing their knees close to their chests, and digging their toes in the sand. Stephanie stared out in the darkness, relaxing underneath the peaceful tranquility of the night.

  She quickly looked at Ben, wanting to tell him everything would be okay. She wanted to tell him he would get over the pain he was feeling. She couldn’t do it though. She couldn’t reassure him and tell him he would get over it when she knew it would be a lie. She never had.

  She spoke quietly, her voice filled with anguish. She struggled to say the words, the memories of her loss coming back like it was yesterday. “When Dominic died, I felt like I’d been sucker-punched in the stomach. It felt like my heart was ripped from my chest. The shock, the pain...it almost killed me. Even though we were separated, I never ever stopped loving him. I never stopped thinking about him. I thought of him in almost every waking moment. We weren’t together, but we weren’t completely apart either. He was always there and I took him for granted. Nothing could have prepared me for his death. I didn’t realize just how much I loved him until he died.”

  She closed her eyes, the image of Dominic’s face dancing through her mind. “I loved Dominic so much, Ben, and I walked away from him. Not a day goes by where I don’t wish I could turn back the hands of time. Not a day goes by where I don’t mourn the loss of him and the love we lost. I was so afraid of losing him when we were together that I walked away...and I lost him anyway.”

  Tears slid down her cheeks and she hastily wiped them away. “No matter how much we want to, we can’t turn back time. I can’t bring Dominic back, just as you can’t bring Ana back. There’s no point thinking we should’ve, could’ve or would’ve. It won’t change the fact they’re both gone. All we can do is keep going on, or in my case, pretend to go through the motions of living.”

  She twisted around to face Ben, her voice uneven. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to tell you that it won’t hurt like hell. That it won’t twist your guts inside until you feel like you can barely breathe. That you won’t feel like there’s a gaping hole inside never to be filled again. It will. The only thing you can do is take one day at a time. Remember Ana for who she was and cherish every memory you had with her. Cherish her not just as a lover, girlfriend and a woman but also as your drummer, best friend, and confidante.”

  Stephanie broke off, lapsing into silence. She smiled bitterly at Ben. “Mourn her, but let her go because in the end if you don’t, you have nothing.”

  Ben listened to Stephanie speak in the darkness, hearing for the first time the pain she’d felt when Dominic died. He took her hand in his, tangling his fingers with hers. “You still miss him, don’t you?”

  “Don’t you?” She shot back, and he nodded. Stephanie smiled sadly. “I don’t think I’m capable of loving anyone else. Dominic was the one for me. It was like I’d found the missing piece of me when I found him and I don’t want anyone else. Even after all this time, I still only want him, Ben. I wake up every morning praying it was just one of my nightmares. I pray to God that I dreamed it all,” she confessed, her voice raw with a pain she couldn’t conceal.

  “You’re not installing me with confidence,” Ben joked, and her smile dimmed.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Ben slipped his arm around her shoulder, drawing her to him. He smiled when she rested her head against his shoulder, and he pulled her into his lap.

  “Don’t be. I loved Ana, but not in the same way you loved Dom. I think this was part of the problem. She didn’t mind that I didn’t love her the way she wanted me to, but I did.”

  “We’re the perfect pair, aren’t we?” she said, her eyes luminous with tears.

  “We’re both incapable of loving a person the way we should love someone, simply because we’re too afraid to let anyone get close again,” Ben finished for her, giving her a bitter smile of his own.

  Stephanie nodded, her thoughts still on Dominic. She’d walked away to protect him and lost him anyway. She’d given up everything that mattered to her because she had loved him so desperately and, in the end, it had been for nothing. A freak accident had ended his life.

  She still remembered the call which shattered her world into pieces. Dominic had been running an errand for Angel when another car had run a red light, hitting him head on.

  Gena had been to the one to break the news to her. She’d found it impossible to breathe, so sure it was a joke. She’d been sure Gena was playing some kind of prank on her and Dominic would spring out from wherever he was hiding. But it hadn’t been a joke and she’d refused to let anyone see how devastated she’d been. She’d refused to show the pain, still vivid to this day. Even now, thinking about it, she could barely breathe.

  “Steph?” Ben interrupted her dark thoughts.

  “Hmmm?” She murmured, forcing both Dominic and the pain out of her mind.

  “Do you really think this...,” he broke off, searching for the right word to describe Ana’s killer, “This animal who murdered Ana really killed Angel and Lyn too?”

  Stephanie contemplated her answer, not wanting to hurt Ben any further, but refusing to lie to him. “I think so, Ben. I wish to God I could tell you he didn’t but Gena said herself that he left a message.”

  “One written in Ana’s blood,” Ben said numbly.

  She nodded, wondering how Gena was dealing with all of this. It couldn’t have been easy for her to face the knowledge that Ana was killed just to taunt her, to prove a point to her.

  “Why is he doing this to us?” he asked, unable to keep the anger out of his voice.

  Stephanie scooped up a handful of sand, letting it fall through her fingers. Her voice was controlled when she replied, “I don’t think it’s got anything to do with Jesse or yourself. You’re just casualties of his destruction, as Ana was. In truth, I’m not sure if it’s Gena or me he wants. The only thing we can do is try and stay one step ahead of him.”

  “How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

  Stephanie’s smile was glacial, her voice cold. “Not we, me. I have to get inside his head.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Gena sat at her desk, open cases spread out in front of her. She rubbed her eyes, trying to concentrate on the report she was reading. Nothing was making sense to her today. Grunting in disgust, she pushed the report away from her and leaned back in her chair.

  Her day had been busier than usual. She’d spent the first half of the morning in meetings. Cynthia’s disappearance had sent ripples throughout the department. The top brass had made it clear Cynthia’s case was top priority. Despite the fact the L.A.P.D dealt with disappearances on a daily basis,
they still hadn’t been prepared for the disappearance of one of their own. Everyone was on edge.

  Gena picked up another file, flipping open the folder. She’d spent the first half of the morning trying to chase up Barbara Madden, but the woman was a ghost, one who’d disappeared without a trace. She’d quit her job on the same day the L.A Times had printed an article about Carolyn Mathers’ murder.

  According to her landlord, Barbara Madden had organized to be released from her lease, packed up her things and moved out. She’d left a forwarding address, one which turned out to be a fake. Gena had looked into the address the landlord provided her with, and it turned out to be an abandoned warehouse in San Pedro.

  The second half of her morning Gena spent downstairs in the morgue with Detective Delucci and Laura Mathison, the Medical Examiner assigned to Ana’s case. Standing in the morgue, she’d felt a horrible sense of déjà vu, watching the M.E complete Ana’s autopsy. She’d stood in the same morgue, watching Cynthia Mallory complete an almost identical examination on both Angel and Lyn.

  She’d felt the same sense of injustice then and she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from screaming as she watched the M.E poke, prod and dissect Ana, in her effort to determine how she’d died.

  Laura Mathison confirmed Ana had been raped, tortured, then finally her throat was slit. The manner of her death had been identical to Angel and Carolyn's – from the way her throat was slit to the burn marks covering her body and the cuff marks on her wrist and ankles. It only confirmed what she already knew and dreaded. They were now dealing with a serial killer.

  She balled up a sheet of paper in her fist, clenching it tightly. Meshing her teeth in frustration, she took aim at the rubbish bin near the door, watching the ball of paper sail through the air and land neatly in the bin. The same thought kept galloping through her head. He knew how the police worked. He knew their procedures. He was practiced, methodical and intelligent enough to know not to leave any traces of his identity behind.

  The fact that he knew so much about their methods and procedures made her think they were dealing with someone well-read, someone who'd done time or, even worse, someone who was in Law Enforcement. This terrified her more than she was willing to admit to herself.

  She’d been toying with this notion since she’d seen Carolyn Mathers’ crime scene, before she knew they were dealing with a serial killer. Even before she knew both Carolyn and Angel’s murders were linked.

  Her heart ached for Ana, a victim of circumstance. The knowledge Ana was killed simply because of her association with Gena weighed heavily on her conscience. Ana’s murder felt like her killer had taken the knife to Gena’s gut, twisting savagely.

  Gena exhaled. She was finding it increasingly hard to stay strong, to stay neutral. She was struggling to pretend this case wasn’t getting to her. Deep down, she knew this was what he wanted. He wanted her to fall apart. He wanted to mind-fuck her into submission. She needed to keep her wits, needed to keep it together. She could fall apart once she caught him.

  She said a silent prayer they caught him before he killed again, before he killed Cynthia Mallory. She refused to give up on Cynthia, refused to believe she was already dead. She wouldn’t give up until she found Cynthia and brought her home.

  This morning, down in the morgue, there was an ominous feeling in the air. The knowledge that one of their own had been kidnapped, and possibly murdered, by the same serial killer she’d been helping to try and catch, lingered in the air.

  Like both Carolyn and Angel’s murder, there hadn’t been any evidence – or at least nothing they could use to link the crimes to a suspect. Ana’s crime scene was staged, just as Gena knew it would be, just like Angel and Cynthia’s were. The killer was showing them only what he wanted them to see.

  She sighed in frustration. She had no clue as to why he was targeting her or what he wanted. Sooner or later, he would trip up and miss something and they would nail him to the wall, but until then all they could do was create a sketchy profile and gather what little evidence they had. It was almost as if she could reach out and feel him standing there, breathing down her neck.

  Delucci had asked her to return to the crime scene with him. She knew he was hoping she’d pick up something he’d missed – something to solidly link this case to the other two murders. She knew he was hoping to get a break by returning to the scene. Gena was itching to explore the crime scene herself. She wanted to comb over every bit of it, in case something was missed in the initial search.

  Delucci was using her for his own means. She wasn’t stupid enough to believe any differently, but she was just grateful he was including her in the investigation. She wasn’t going to let anyone shut her out of Ana’s murder investigation and was equally determined to continue working her own homicide cases.

  She knew she was risking everything – not just her career, but also the loss of her perspective by not removing herself from the investigation. Her conscience told her to walk away. She should hand the cases over to someone else and let them investigate the murders, someone who didn’t have a personal connection to each crime, but she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it. She needed to be the one to capture him. She was willing to sacrifice everything to do it. She needed justice. Not just for Ana, Angel and Carolyn, but for herself as well.

  Her main focus was what they would find in Ana and Ben’s apartment, which she believed was the scene of Ana’s abduction. She could feel the blood surging through her body in anticipation of what they might find there. She had the upper hand over Delucci. She knew the apartment. She’d spent countless hours inside their apartment over the years, and knew it almost as well as her own. She would know if anything was missing or if the killer had changed anything.

  She was eager to find out whether the killer had left some form of a calling card, or whether the bloodied message on Cynthia’s bedroom wall would be their only link. Everyone was hoping Cynthia was still alive, and Gena hoped she was too. She knew from the profile she’d created with Stephanie that Cynthia’s fate could go either way. He could kill her within hours of taking her, as he’d done with Angel, or he could keep her for days like he’d done with Carolyn. He was unpredictable and had them all guessing. The only thing she knew for certain was that if they didn’t locate Cynthia soon, she was going to die.

  Rubbing her eyes again, she thought about what the M.E had told her after Ana’s autopsy. Ana’s death was quick. Laura Mathison believed Ana had only been dead eight hours when Jase discovered her body. She’d been killed somewhere between 3am-4am. While Gena knew her death was quick, she couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d been tortured before the killer slit her throat. She hoped for Ana’s sake it had been just as quick.

  Laura Mathison had also confirmed Ana had been repeatedly raped, once by the killer and twice with a foreign object. Gena’s stomach churned, still shaken up over the fact the M.E had told her a foreign object had been left lodged within Ana.

  Her skin had crawled at the revelation that a drumstick had been the killer’s weapon of choice for penetration. It was yet another indication he studied his victims before killing them. It hit her hard the knowledge Ana wasn’t a random kill. He’d taken the time to know her profession, to study her before he murdered her.

  She still didn’t know the reason why he’d chosen Ana, but there was a pattern to his madness. She just needed to figure it out. Her eyes welled with tears. Clearing her throat, she quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, hastily looking around her office. This wasn’t the time for sentimentality. She’d broken down enough last night in the surrounding comfort of her friends. She would wait until she was home alone before she broke down again.

  Ben had called her earlier, demanding to know what happened to Ana. He’d wanted her to tell him if Ana suffered. She couldn’t tell him, she’d refused to. Instead she lied. She wasn’t going to put him through the horror of knowing everything in the M.E report. He didn’t need those emotional scars
.

  She picked up her copy of the M.E’s report, scanning it. Tossing it onto the desk, she placed her elbows on the desk, resting her head in her hands. She didn’t need to read what the report said. She knew the cold and sterile words as if they were permanently burned into her brain.

  The victim was restrained with handcuffs. The fresh welts on her body imply she was whipped. The markings suggest a cat ‘o nines. Each of the victim’s fingers was broken. Bruising to the throat suggests she was repeatedly placed into a chokehold.

  The victim was repeatedly raped. Vaginal tearing indicates the victim was assaulted with a foreign object. A drumstick was found still within the victim’s vagina. The cause of death was a deep laceration to the throat.

  No. She wouldn’t let Ben know what Ana went through, nor would she allow him to see Ana; see what was left of her, what had been done to her.

  The bruises covering her body showed Ana’s death had not been a pleasant one. She’d suffered greatly. In the end, her death would have been a blessing in disguise. While the killer hadn’t lingered in the torture, as he had with Carolyn, the brutality had still been practiced, methodical and just as cruel. Ana’s killer was a sadist. He’d enjoyed breaking her spirit. He’d enjoyed breaking all of them.

  Had he stalked Ana? How long had he watched her? Had he waited for the right time to take her? Had he envisioned the torture he would inflict upon her? Had Ben’s leaving given him the perfect opportunity?

  She wearily lifted her head from her hands. She had so many questions, none of which she could answer. Then there was the bloodied message left at the crime scene. The crime scene itself confused her. Why had he left Ana at Cynthia’s place?

  The bloodied message had been left for her. He’d written her name on the wall in blood. DNA testing had confirmed the blood was Ana’s. It had been a personal message, a killer inviting her to catch him before he killed again. Before he killed her? He was taunting her.