Authors: Stephanie Whitlock
“Well? Anything?” He watched as she swallowed hard, following the lump down her narrow neck. As she opened her mouth to answer, the phone on his hip began to ring. As he fumbled to free the device, he didn’t miss the relieved smile that had parted her plump lips, her murky eyes sinking back to the file in her hands. “Barrow...yes...what!? Where? When?....We’re on our way. No one touches anything till we get there, got that!” Standing suddenly, he reach out and grabbed her lightly by the arm, tugging her up, out of her seat. The feel of her flesh in his hands caused an unreasonable tightening in his lower abdomen. Her confusion was tempered with surprise as she tugged her slender, strong arm free of his grasp. Reminiscent of the tension from their first day as partners, the tug had sent fire racing through his blood.
“What? What’s going on?” She stared at him, even as she followed his direction toward the door. Dropping a twenty on the counter, he nodded to the pretty waitress, more to irk Elizabeth than to flirt, and guided her out of the cafe. Rushing to the car, he opened her door. As he went to close it, her leg braced it open. “Barrow, what is going on?” The insistence in her voice forced him to answer.
“There’s been another murder, and it looks like its the same guy. We are headed to the crime scene now.” Her leg pulled back with a jerk and he closed the door. Rushing around to the other side, he started the car, flicked on the lights and turned out into traffic. As he moved through and around the crowded streets, she sat irritatingly still next to him.
“It’s only been a little over a week, what serial killer strikes again that fast? Do they know its the same guy?” He could feel her stormy eyes moving over his face and it very nearly unnerved him. Turning the car down a side street to avoid the back up at a light, he cleared his throat.
“Same M.O. Two victims, found face down, bound and stabbed in the back at a health club near the park. Proximity to the first crime scene, just a couple blocks down, is another indicator.” He whipped the car back onto the main road ahead of the clogged intersection.
“Wha...what health club?” The drawl peaking around the panic in her voice made the hair on his neck stand out. The memory of her personal connection to the first victims popped into his head. Realizing all too slowly that it was likely she could know these as well, he swallowed hard.
“MFG & Combat Training Center.” The ragged gasp next to him told him everything he had feared was true. “It’s your gym, isn’t it?” His heart wrenched for her. At only nine am, this was going to be a long day.
As Elizabeth Walked through the doors of MFG, Grace, the receptionist, who had been trying to answer a uniform’s questions between her sobs, saw her. Without hesitation, she all but ran at Elizabeth, wrapping her slightly larger frame around her and breaking down into a quivering mass of tears. She cried into the dark red wall of Elizabeth’s hair, repeating over and over again, “Where were you Liz, where were you?” Barrow left her to deal with the distraught woman while he went to inspect the scene, returning a few minutes later to find that Grace still clung tightly to Elizabeth’s neck. She struggled in vain to free herself of the woman’s grasp. In truth, she had never been friends with Grace. She was just the receptionist to Elizabeth, but, considering that it must have been Grace who had found the bodies, and that hers was the first familiar face she had found, Elizabeth allowed her to cling. Cooing as best she could, she tried to calm the irate woman, admitting to herself that she needed to spend a little more time practicing her interpersonal skills from now on. It took almost shoving her off to get Grace to come free, but even then she wouldn’t release her hand. The contact felt wrong, awkward, but not wanting to risk another torrent of tears, Elizabeth allowed her the touch.
“Grace, tell me what happened. What do you mean where was I?” Elizabeth sat her down in a chair in the lobby of the familiar gym and took a seat close enough to allow the woman continued access to her small hand. Barrow took up a post standing just behind Grace’s chair. Much to Elizabeth’s discomfort, she could not look at Grace without seeing his questioning, piercing gaze, which seemed focused more on her than Grace.
“You were supposed to teach the advanced class this morning, weren’t you? I mean, that’s what it said on the board.” Grace craned around to point at the large white board where the manager had listed all the classes and events for the month. “Seven am fourth Dan Judo, that’s your class. Where were you?” Her eyes beseeched Elizabeth for an answer. “If you had been here, they would still be alive, I’m sure of it...” Grace’s voice broke when she saw the guilt wash over Liz’s face. “Oh god, I’m sorry! This isn’t your fault! I never meant to say it was your fault! It’s just, well your so good...and Pam and Carl were still learning...”
“PAM AND CARL!!” Elizabeth couldn’t hold back the shriek. “
No
...” Standing, she left Grace and ran to the door leading to the studio she used for her classes. She could hear Grace calling after her, feel Barrow trying to run her down, but she was faster. Bursting through the doors, she was met with a horrific sight. The scene could have been a carbon copy of the first if not for the actual woman wearing the dress. The same pattern, same positioning, same stab wounds along the spine. Only this time it wasn’t a casual acquaintance, these people were what she might have called friends. Every inch of her wanted to scream, run to them, run away, vomit in the corner, but she did none of it. Instead, she simply stood, frozen in the doorway. She didn’t even feel Barrow grab her shoulders, only realizing the contact as he turned her so far away from the scene that she couldn’t see it anymore.
“Come on.” His voice was a whisper as he slipped his arm around her shoulders and led her down a hallway. She didn’t pull away, she couldn’t. His arm was the only thing anchoring her to the earth. They walked on that way for seconds, minutes, maybe hours for all she knew, coming to a stop in front of a small, open, supply closet. He leaned her against the wall and moved to stand before her, still bracing her shoulders with his hands, but she barely saw him.
“Elizabeth? Elizabeth! Detective Cord!” He wanted to shake her back to life, jerk her out of the state of shock that gripped her, but he was afraid of what she might do. Settling for calling her name, he tried again, “Liz!” The nickname, one he rather liked, seemed to reach her and her head lolled back to look at him. Her face was blanched and her eyes had gone a cold pale brown. In spite of himself he marveled again at how they could change like that. “Liz, hey, talk to me...” She blinked at him, her soft mouth moving, but no sound came out. He rubbed her arms a bit to warm her, she felt so cold, chilled to the bone.
“How did you know they call me Liz here?” Her voice was so weak and fragile, but she was talking to him. Smiling, he leaned in a little farther.
“That’s what Grace called you in the lobby, remember? I was there.” Staring without seeing, she nodded slowly. “Liz, tell me about your class. Does it always meet on Tuesday mornings at seven? Are Pam and Carl regulars?” He waited for her to gather her thoughts, all the while running his hands along the length of her upper arms. The effect of her skin under his finger tips was profound, but she needed him now more than he needed distance.
“Um, yes, I mean, usually. I started teaching that class ...uh...two months ago I think. Pam and Carl weren’t students, at least not exactly, they were my assistants. They helped me with the group, checking stances and monitoring forms, that sort of thing.” For a long moment she was silent and then, as if hit by a truck, she lurched forward, almost colliding with his chest. “Jesus, Barrow, they were the closest thing I had to friends here. I had dinner with them sometimes! They lived in my building! They had been married for like twenty years! They were so happy...” She leaned back against the wall, her head knocking against it, hard. Her eyes pinched shut and a single tear peeked at the corner of her left eye. Her skin turned a strange pallid color and for a moment Barrow feared she was going to faint. Deciding that she needed to sit down, he looked around for something that would do, finding only a lidded bucket along the wall of the open supply closet next to them. Dragging her up and back into his arms, he supported her through the door way and over to the bucket. Carefully lowering her down, he knelt in front of her, far too close, but necessary at the moment.
“Liz, stay with me. I need you to breath, okay?” Imitating the type of deep breaths he wanted her to take, she began to follow suit as he cradled her pale, delicate, lovely face in the palm of his hand. “Good, good.” After a few minutes she seemed to come around. Now in possession of at least some of her former faculties, she stared at him. Without warning, she reached out and pulled him into a hug. It was so unexpected that he nearly cried out.
“Thank you, Barrow.” She whispered into his neck before releasing him as quickly as she had pulled him in. He staggered in his crouched position, still reeling from the smell of her hair and the warmth of her breath on his neck. Shaking his head a little, he smiled at her and she smiled back.
“Matthew. My first name is Matthew.” Her smile widened and suddenly their proximity was far beyond just being an issue. He had held his attraction at bay when she had been distressed, but seeing her almost completely righted again was allowing all sorts of sensations to pop up, most notably the knot in his gut and the fire in his veins. Deciding that he couldn’t stay crouched in front of her like that, he stood up and took a step back, into the center of the small towel closet. “Ready for another question?” he asked gently. When she nodded, he asked, “Why weren’t you here this morning? You didn’t meet me until almost eight thirty, so you could have taught your class.”
She nodded again and, as her eyes fell to the floor, she began, “Well, I was planning to, but last night I got caught up rereading the reports again and it was well after two am before I realized it. So, I called Bruce, he’s the night manager here, and asked him to change the board. I figured Pam and Carl could handle the class without me. He said he’d call them for me in the morning and that was that. I went to bed. I didn’t think to call up here this morning...” Her voice cracked and when her head lifted to face him again, a fresh batch of tears hovered behind her eyes. “They are dead because of me...he came here looking for me and now they are dead...it’s all my fault...” To her credit, she didn’t break down and cry, just stared at him with those heavy, stormy eyes.
“Listen to me, it’s not your fault. Those people are dead because some asshole with too much crazy in him decided that they should be. It’s his fault, not yours.”
He was right. That man did this. That horrible man had taken yet another of her pleasures and destroyed it. First her family, then her home, now her meager social life, after all, the gym was the only thing outside of work she actually enjoyed. The anger that these truths produced gave her her strength back. Piecing her calm back together, she stood up. Barrow, Matthew, was standing just a few feet from her in the dimly lit closet and for a split second she wanted to hug him again. The first one had been involuntary, a remnant of her childhood, ‘the need for physical contact when experiencing extreme emotional turmoil’, at least that was the way it was described in her psychology books. What she wanted now was far less impulsive. She wanted to thank him, not for simply being there, but for saving her from the pit of hopelessness that seeing Pam and Carl had opened up in her heart. He had brought her back, saved her from the abyss. In that one act, she had conceeded to the idea of being friends, truly friends, with him despite his sex...and her attraction. Trust, and reliance, spread through her like sunshine on a clear day. She stood for a moment trying to decide if she had it in her, what his reaction might be, wondering what her reaction might be, but the moment passed too quickly. Before she could act, he turned and moved to the door.
“Come on, I’ll get a uniform to take you home. Once the scene’s been processed I’ll call you with the details, you don’t need to be here.” The concern in his voice warmed the icy wall around her heart, melting it a bit, but she was determined now.
“Thank you, Matthew,” at the use of his first name he turned to look sheepishly at her. The shy smile on his lips made her thighs tense, forcing her to take a step toward him. “But I’m quite all right now. I can stay.” Seeing the rebuttal forming in his throat, she continued, “You’re right. He did this, and I intend to see him pay for it. The best way to grieve for Pam and Carl is to catch him. I can handle it. At least, I think I can. Besides, there would be nothing for me to do at home but sit and wonder about what you were finding out here. So, let’s just go.” He stared at her for a second and she braced herself for an argument, but one did not come. With a heavy breath, he nodded and stepped though the door. She followed and they made their way back down the hallway to the studio together.
The first glimpse of the bodies made her sway a little, but she recovered quickly. Reaching down deep inside herself for that cold intellectual facade, she steeled her mind and body and approached the scene as if it were a classroom experiment. A test. Together, she and Barrow moved over the room, careful not to touch the bodies or their blood pools. The bodies were positioned directly in front of the raised platform where she would have been standing had she been teaching that morning. Remembering the previous victims had been squared in front of the tenant board in a similar fashion, she made a note of it. Aside from the sizable blood pools, the rest of the room seemed completely untouched. As she moved past the small podium at the corner of the platform, something caught her eye. Backing up, she crouched down next to the thin wooden structure and took a closer look. There, tucked into one of the shelves near the bottom, was a wad of dark, polyester like, cloth.