Little Belle Gone

by Whitlock, Stephanie

  Matt’s voice was low and soft, trying not to let it carry out into the hallway to the ears of his already fragile partner, as he said, “That’s what he called her the day he attacked and murdered her parents. He stabbed her, too, Jack, after he…” Matt couldn’t finish. It was not his horror to share and it felt like a betrayal to even be considering it.

  “After he what?”

  “After he raped me and then forced me to watch my parents bleed to death, Jack.” Elizabeth stood in the doorway. Her voice was still a bit shaky, but the rest of her, her color, her eyes, her face, had taken on a determined hardness. An aura of resolution so profound that Matt found himself stuck dumb by the pure beauty of it.

  “Elizabeth, are you alright? You looked for a moment like you might faint.” Arrons seemed genuinely concerned, something Matt would have appreciated if he hadn’t been so enthralled by the change in her.

  “Yes, I’m alright now. I just needed a moment to process everything, that’s all. Thank you for your concern, Jack.” Her voice had now grown to match her resolve and Matt fell farther into admiration, but he did manage to find his tongue, and his strength. Unable to restrain himself, he reached for her. Catching her small hand, he pulled her close to him. She did not fight the motion, and when she drew against him, he felt her lean in, pressing firmly into him as he leaned his face into her hair. She pulled in a deep breath, and then spoke again, more softly this time, though the same determination and fierceness coated her silky tone. “I’m alright, Matt, I promise. It just startled me. For a minute there I was that fourteen year old girl again, but I’m me again, thanks to you.” Without warning, she tilted her head back and found his mouth. Matt didn’t care that the kiss, fervent and full, left Jack clearing his throat in the awkward silence that surrounded him. All that mattered was Elizabeth.

  Breaking their kiss with a warm smile, she nodded and he released her. It was again time to be serious. “My real first name is Marabella. There are only a few people in the world now who know that, Jack. I’d like to keep it that way.” She waited for him to nod before she continued. “As for you feeling guilty, that’s for me, not for you. If I had simply filled out the paperwork to submit the sample properly none of this would have happened. You would have seen the result and come to arrest him before he even knew what was happening. I didn’t put his name on it because I was afraid to. I was afraid of what would happen to me, to Matt, if I was wrong. This is my doing, not yours.” Matt could feel his chest swelling with pride. Before him was his warrior.

  Arrons looked truly stunned for a fraction of a second, then straightened. “No, I don’t think this falls on you, or myself, as you pointed out. If you had submitted the sample by protocol it never would have been run. We would have refused it without his approval. So the only way to get it run was to do what you did, I’m sad to say. In reality, I think this couldn’t have played out any better than it has.” As he said the last few words, the disappointment and frustration they carried twisting his face, he pulled his phone from his hip holster and dialed. He walked past them into the hallway and began to bark orders into the phone. He ordered a few C.S.I.s and a full workup of the office, stating that this case was now their number one priority and that all other cases were to be put on hold. Then he hung up and dialed again. Matt and Elizabeth had followed him into the hall, waiting for him to finish so that they could move forward together.

  The second call was different. Jack’s voice mellowed and became far less commanding. After several seconds Matt realized why. He had called the commissioner. Matt listened to the awkward, one sided conversation in which Jack’s matter-of-fact tone laid out the truth of the case and the true identity of, the now missing, Harvey Moreano. He finished his exposition with a request for a city wide man hunt. He reasoned into the line that this man had used his position in the department to hunt and murder people, that he was now targeting one of their own and that there was nothing the man would not do to complete his plans. Hearing the calm tone of Arrons’ voice lay out the cruel methods of their former superior made Matt’s blood run cold. As if she could hear his disquiet, Elizabeth’s slim hand came to rest on his forearm. The feel of her gentle touch both reassured him and shattered him at the same time. He couldn’t help looking down at the small hand and smiling ever so subtly. Looking up to meet her stormy eyes, he mouthed the words “I love you.” She blushed and mouthed “and I you” back to him, light flickering in her eyes, before they both heard Jack finish his call.

  Elizabeth released Matt’s forearm reluctantly. She wanted to hold him, but she knew she shouldn’t. They had already crossed the line once by kissing in front of Jack, though, at the time, it was all she could think to do to thank Matt for his strength, his presence in her life. If she hadn’t met him, been assigned as his partner, not fallen so utterly, madly in love with him, she never would have been able to survive the revelation of Moreano being the killer. He had never been her favorite person, but he was very much a part of her life. He was her boss, her mentor. He had taught her so much, encouraged her when she was on the verge of giving up. He had pushed her to be in the bait program, something he designed…her mind froze.

  A sickening dread washing over her, though this time she didn’t not falter to it, but rose in rage against it. He hadn’t done those things for her, but for himself. The bait program was not a way for her to take predators off the streets, but a way for him to study her, see her power, appreciate vicariously what it would feel like to assault her again and again without having to act on it. Matt’s words from just over two weeks earlier rang in her ears, “He used you as bait…no decent man would.” She had defended Moreano in the face of these accusations, but only now, knowing what it really felt like to have someone love her the way that Matt loved her, she could see the truth of it. A new resolve to end this filled her, steeling her nerves, even as she reached for Matt again. No matter how strong she was, she would always need him. Not for support, like a crutch, but as something more. Something spiritual.

  “Well, the commissioner isn’t happy, but there is a city wide man hunt in effect as of now. I have techs on their way up for the office. I suggest we head to his apartment. You in?” Elizabeth actually chuckled.

  “Of course.” Matt answered quickly as he took the hand that brushed against his knuckles, weaving their fingers together and squeezing them tightly. Elizabeth saw Jack’s eyes lock onto the small motion. Though she didn’t really care what people thought about their relationship anymore, she couldn’t help but believe the look she saw in his eyes was fondness. It was fleeting however, as he began to bark orders. They were to gather everything they had for his techs who would set up a command center in their absence. The B.O.L.O. was being issued as they spoke, and his cell and bank accounts were going to be monitored within minutes. Elizabeth and Matt both struggled to remember all of the myriad of instructions he rushed at them as he lead them back to the elevators. The last thing he told them, before the doors closed, was to meet him at his truck in the parking garage in ten minutes.

  It wasn’t until they were pulling out of the parking structure that Elizabeth had a moment to breath. She had been so busy trying to accomplish all of their tasks in the ridiculous ten minute time limit that she hadn’t really had a time to think on what was happening. Within seconds of Arrons leaving them at the elevators, the official word was out. The bullpen erupted in furor as the techs descended on his office and carefully collected all of the clues from Liz and Matt’s board for the main conference room. The atmosphere was mixed. Some people were simply shocked while others made their opinions known, loudly and often. Two men, one defending Moreano and the other swearing he had known all along that there was something weird about him, almost came to blows right in the middle of homicide. Elizabeth had been too busy to care at the time, but sitting in the clam quite of Jack’s back seat, she had all the time in the world. This man had touched so many lives. There would be fallout from this, a ripple that would likely chan
ge the city for a long time to come, maybe forever. A serial killer that used his position as a cop to locate, kill, and then cloud the investigations of his victims before he moved on to another city, another state, and did it again.

  Matt and Jack were talking in the front seat, but she wasn’t really listening. The tones of their voices seemed drowned out by the din of her own thoughts in her ears. Questions swirled in her mind. What would his apartment look like? Would it be normal, or some twisted lair? Would he be there, waiting for her, some morbid homecoming? Then her mind turned dark and frightening. Would he have trophies? Would she find herself all over his rooms? Did he have images or videos of her in her apartment? Elizabeth shivered against the chill of her thoughts as the S.U.V. pulled to a stop along the side of a small residential street. They had arrived.

  He didn’t live in an apartment in the conventional sense. Moreano owned a narrow, three floor condo unit that started on the first floor of a imposing looking building. The dark stone walls and gothic style architecture only seemed to heighten Elizabeth’s tension. As she followed Matt, they made their way up the front steps and into the lobby. His was the first apartment on the right, according to Jack, who, without warning, simply kicked the door in. Elizabeth smiled slightly at the crack in his professional veneer, but the smile faded fast. It’s hard to be professional when you feel you have been betrayed, and by someone you would have called a friend. She felt immediately guilty, nothing about this was funny in the slightest.

  As the door swung open, the smell of stale cigar smoke flooded the hallway. Elizabeth’s nose railed against the familiar smell, but she forced herself to remain calm. Matt, on the other hand, turned away from the stench. His eyes found her. She could see the revulsion in his expression. Nodding, she reached for him again. He looked down at her hand sadly before taking it. The second his fingers engulfed hers, he seemed to straighten, grow more determined, and she realized that she had the same stabilizing effect on him that he had on her. Squeezing his hand, she moved past him into the home of her own, personal, boogie man. Matt following along behind, just as stalwart as she.

  The rooms within seemed mundane and ordinary at first. A living room, kitchen and office, all well appointed and thoroughly used. Two guest rooms and a bathroom rounded out the second floor of his, so far, uneventful residence. Elizabeth’s heart began to sink. If he wasn’t here and the last floor of his space provided them with as little as the first two, it was entirely possible that they would never find him. He was smart, exceedingly so, and he had managed to run successfully many times in the past. A name change and a relocation and he would simply pick up where he left off. Perhaps he would give up on her, but she doubted it. If he wasn’t caught he would haunt her steps for the rest of her life. She would never be completely safe, never feel completely comfortable again. Catching sight of Matt across the room, she decided that was simply unacceptable. Squaring her shoulders, she turned and moved back out into the stairwell, mounting the steps headed for the last floor. She was going to find him, period. As her foot landed on the fifth step, she heard the familiar sound of shoes behind her. Matt must have seen her and gathered Arrons. Her theory was proven correct as he bound up the stairs to join her.

  “Not without me you don’t.” Winking slightly, he pulled ahead of her on the stairs as they crested the final landing. Guns still drawn, they announced their presence one last time, but only silence greeted them. Three closed doors lay ahead of them, one in the center of each wall encasing the stairs’ landing. Heading to the center door, directly ahead of her, Elizabeth took a position along the side. Matt flanked the door and Arrons hunkered down in the stairs. Matt turned the knob and swung the door open. A tense pause followed before Arrons shook his head. Elizabeth glanced into what was a large, ordinary bathroom. Moving to the next door, they took up similar stances and repeated their technique. This time, Arrons’ face looked pallid as he gave them the all clear nod. Matt, not seeing the pained look on his face, and not bothering to look into the room they had just opened, moved as if to go on to the third door. Finding Moreano was his number one priority right now, not searching the fiend’s home, but Elizabeth ventured a look before joining him. She wanted to know what had left Jack so disturbed.

  “Oh god…” Her voice was little more than a croak. What, in any other condo, would have been a guest room or a nursery, was a trophy room. It wasn’t taxidermied animals or golden goblets and plaques that he collected over the years from sports and hobbies, however; it wasn’t that sort of trophy room. The walls were lines with photographs and pages from autopsy reports. Entire sections were devoted to each of his victims, all five scenes spread out for him to appreciate. In the center of the wall directly ahead of the door was a map of the United States, not very unlike the one they had hung next to their board a couple of hours earlier. In true police fashion, a pin was placed at each crime scene, but there was something different about this map. Instead of each state being a different color, like theirs, entire sections were shaded.

  “Regions.” She mumbled.

  “What?” Jack was right behind her.

  “Each of us came from a different region. Angelica from the West, Phoenix from the South West, Danielle from the Mid West, me from the South East, and Patricia from the North East. His collection. He was gathering pieces of the country like most people collect refrigerator magnets, shot glasses, or those stupid little spoons.” As she spoke, her eyes drifted over each the sections flanking the map. In the center of each sickening montage was a section of bare wall where he had recreated the phrase, the twisted nursery rhyme, that had marred each girl’s home forever. Images of the girl’s faces, twisted in fear, hung below the phrases. He must have photographed them before he took them, she thought coldly as she lowered her weapon and entered farther into the horrific shrine.

  Next to the photos of the victims were images of his own torso. He had granted each of his girls, his dolls, a portion of his own flesh. Into his own body he had carved their rhyme, the phrase that he associated with each case. What was worse was that in each case, separated by years, a full decade in one instance, the carvings all looked fresh, as if they were no more than a few hours old. That explains the smell of blood, she thought harshly. He maintained his wounds, kept them open and bleeding. As if as long as he bled for them they were still bleeding for him.

  “His own blood…”She had only been thinking out loud, but Jack, still close behind her, responded quickly.

  “What? His own blood? You mean on his office wall?” She nodded slightly as she moved farther into the space.

  “Blood means something to him.” As she spoke, she noticed a box, simple and unassuming, sitting on the lone desk in the center of the eerie shrine. As she reached for the lid, a hand descended on hers, stopping her progress. The hand was not Matt’s, but Arrons’. He had followed her mesmerized entrance into this room of horrors and had apparently read her intentions in their short exchange. But he couldn’t just let her wander into this house of terrors alone. Matt, who only now was realizing that they were no longer behind them, rushed to the door. He had been in the middle of calling her name, when she heard his voice give way to a curse.

  Freeing her hand lightly from Arrons’ grip, she continued her quest to open the box. She could feel Jack tense beside her, heard Matt rushing to her aid, but she didn’t care. Sliding the lid off, she peered inside. No body parts or jars of preserved pieces were hidden within it, much to her relief, but it did contain large file folders. Four to be exact. The case files. The original case files of the other four murders lay neatly cataloged and painfully official before her. All but mine, she thought coldly as she reached in and pulled the most recent from up-state New York from the stack. “Matt, this is why he wanted my case file. He didn’t have it. The one piece of his collection that eluded him. There wasn’t something in it he didn’t want me to see, but something he wanted to have. He needed it, the missing piece of my provenance.” The word spilled from he
r mouth like venom as she dropped the file in her hands back into the box.

  Turning to face him, her eyes drifted over the wall to her right, the one she had not seen as she had entered the room. Before she could reach the security of Matt’s eyes, she found her own staring back at her. There, below the phrase that haunted her dreams, was her own face staring in terror. She couldn’t move. Her body betrayed her as she began to sway, her knees turning to jelly under the weight of a memory she had long since blocked out. Until that moment, she had forgotten about the pictures he had taken. Forgotten how he told her to smile as she sat, bound, between her parents, pleading for their lives, and her own. The stormy gray of her tear soaked eyes opened a flood gate that threatened to consume her as she sank to the floor, Matt trying desperately to catch her.

  “Elizabeth, what’s wrong?” His voice was frantic, but she could not assuage him. She was simply too frightened and lost to try.

  “Matt, get her out of here.” Arrons command was beyond insistent, almost tragic. Matt turned his head to see what had her so terrified and almost joined her in despair. His color left him as she sank into his arms, his shoulders still trying valiantly to support her weight, began to shake. “I said get her out of here!” Arrons soon joined Matt, freeing him from the oblivion he was teetering on the verge of, and together they carried her out into the stairwell. “You take her back down stairs. I’ll check the last room, but it’s pretty clear to me he’s not here. I’ll get the lab guys in here as fast as I can, but you need to get her into protective custody. Now!”

  Elizabeth struggled to clear her mind. The memory of those snapshots had left her reeling, but as Jack’s voice drifted through the cloudy darkness of her thoughts, she began to come around. He was removing her from the case, ordering her into a cage. A helpless canary while they hunted for the elusive cat. Her spirit railed against the offense of it all. No, she was not going to hide away while someone else attained her closure for her. Yet again, she had been taken to the brink of madness and managed to return emboldened as she straightened in their arms. Matt, familiar with her strength, lessened his grasp on her, his hands becoming a gentle caress against her flesh. She could feel the wave of pride that ran through him as he realized she was back, his warrior.