Tellings of the Time: Complete series

12. 12

There’s a beige envelope on my desk on Monday morning. Miranda usually does the morning run of the incoming mail and opens all my correspondence, but this one has a big red ‘confidential’ stamp on it. The look of it makes the hairs on the back of my arms stand up. It’s hinky.

“Ches,” I yell as I stick my head out of the door of my office. He doesn’t respond to me, the volume of his headphones too loud to hear me. “CHES!” I yell again. This time he hears me and jumps up, making him bump his head against the little light that hangs on one of his screens. He pulls the headphones off, asking me a very grumpy ‘what’. I’d laugh if I wasn’t so nervous about the envelope, and I beckon my friend to step into my ivory tower, ugh, office.

He comes over, rubbing the spot on his head where he hit it as I start to tap the tops of my fingertips together. “What?” he repeats.

“There’s an envelope on my desk, it’s giving me serial killer vibes. I don’t want to open it.”

I look up at my oldest friend, knowing my fear is showing in my eyes. He stares at me for the longest moment ever, his baby blue eyes giving me comfort.

“Well, then we’ll do it together. Got some gloves here somewhere?” he asks me when he turns around and makes his way to my desk.

“Of course, I don’t have any gloves here. We never deal with taking evidence at the office.”

“Grab some from my desk, will you? Top drawer, in the back.”

“Why the hell do you have gloves in your drawer at the office?” I ask in confusion. We never use that stuff at the office. That’s out in the field. Gloves are standard in our tac-team kit, which we store in the garage box with the cars, not in hacker-central.

“Just… Don’t ask,” Chester answers, his cheeks reddened.

Oh. My. God. No, now I don’t want to know for sure.

I force myself to think of random stuff, Sesame Street, flamingos, cinnamon rolls and Dalmatian dogs. By the time I’ve found the gloves my mind is back to safer places and I hand them to Chester before I stand behind him so I can look over his shoulder. My heart is racing in my chest in anticipation of what we’re going to find.

He puts the gloves on and picks up the envelope, turning it to see if there’s anything weird on it. Then he opens the envelope, taking a Polaroid picture out.

It’s a girl, a girl with big dark brown eyes, raven colored hair, eyes wide in terror and a black gag in her mouth. Her nostrils are flared and it’s clear she’s fearing for her life.

My stomach sinks. This is a different girl from the girls from the first envelope. Their faces are burned into my memory, and she’s no part of them even if she looks familiar. I guess they all look familiar, because they all look like me. I feel nauseous, my hands slightly trembling. This is a nightmare and I want to wake up from it now please.

Chester turns the picture around, showing a large number one on the back of it.

“The fuck?”

“He’s starting again,” Chester whispers. “He’s starting a new cycle.”

A whiff of lime reaches my nose, and even though I know it’s not there, I smell it. The contents of my stomach land in the little desk bin that I have somehow reached in time. Two gloved hands hold my hair back, as I sit kneeling next to the bin, heaving again.

“What’s the date?” I ask when I’m able to form words again.

He’s starting again. He’s starting again. He’s starting again.

“It’s the twelfth…”

“So three weeks,” I say. “We’ve got three weeks before he takes another girl and kills again.”

Chester sits down on the ground next to me, his back against the desk and his knees to his chest.

“They aren’t our responsibility, Abs,” he starts. “We save kids, we don’t hunt serial killers. This is not what we do.”

“Like hell it isn’t our responsibility. He sends pictures of his victims! Gloating! They look like me!”

“Yeah. But Latoya, Serena and Jo-Anne need us, and the FBI needs to help these women. I found nothing to go on in the FBI files, we don’t have the resources to investigate. But we do have the knowledge and the manpower to hopefully bring those little girls home.”

He’s spinning his thumb ring with his middle finger, looking at the ground between his feet. My heart rate seems to come down a little, and I suck in some big gulps of air.

“Call Beckett, make sure he gets the picture. We need him to hurry the fuck up before this bastard takes another girl.”

Chester nods, but doesn’t get up. I have no idea how long we sit there, but it’s a long ass time before we finally get up and get into action.

Miranda calls and my door simultaneously opens, Beckett storming in, Chester on his heels. I watch them as I pick up the phone. Miranda doesn’t waste any time in starting to talk to me.

“Special Agent Sanders and Chester are coming up, he did stop by to tell me but said it was urgent and walked through.”

“Thank Miran,” I say before I hang up and look questioningly at Beckett.

“I’m guessing this is urgent,” I say as I point my chin to the chairs in front of my desk.

Chester opts for the windowsill instead. Since it’s only been half a day since we sent the new photo to the FBI, my guess is that something about the photo came up and he’s here because of it.

Beckett sighs. For once his look isn’t like he is severely constipated when he meets me, he actually looks a little deflated. Defeated maybe.

“We need to talk,” he says, his elbows leaning on his wide spread knees as he stares at his feet.

“Yeah, I kind of figured that out when you willingly brought Chester in here.”

He gives me a half smile, but his heart isn’t in it.

“Look, I’m just going to say it. We ran facial recognition on the picture you sent us. Based on the previous pattern of the killer and the number one, we focused on files of missing women who disappeared on the first day of this month. Narrowing the facial recognition speeds things up. We got a hit.”

He falls silent, and I don’t really see the problem. “Yeah, and?”

His sad eyes look at me. “First case you ever solved, two little girls, sisters, got kidnapped and then sold for prostitution. This victim, it’s the oldest girl. It’s Elaine.”

It’s like the room disappears. All I can hear is the rapid thumping of my heart. Somewhere I hear that someone is talking to me, but I don’t hear a word being said. It’s Elaine Borgouis. Fuck it all to fucking hell and top it off with a bunch of screw you’s.

This isn’t happening. She’s supposed to be safe. She’s supposed to have lived through all of this. She’s had enough to handle, being sold as a child prostitute when she was ten. We saved her. I saved her. And now she’s dead, because of me. I didn’t take her life, but I killed her nonetheless.

The look of fear in her eyes is burned on my retinas and it’s like something inside of me breaks, it dies. This last tiny piece of me that believes in the goodness of humankind, despite all the evidence I’ve seen through the years that it’s mostly rotten to the core, it evaporates.

Before I know what’s happening, a hopeless war cry leaves my mouth and it takes me a while for me to recognize it’s me doing it. I swipe all the papers off of my desk, throw my laptop on the ground. The sound of the desk lamp that I throw against the wall somehow reaches my ears.

She’s fucking dead. That motherfucking sicko took her life.

She was supposed to be safe.

When I throw my desk chair to the opposite side of the room, two strong arms wrap around me but I manage to wrangle myself free. The picture frames on my wall are the next things to be thrown through the room. Shards of glass are scattered over the floor but I don’t really care about it.

I’ve managed to live through my parents’ murders, I’ve seen so much evil happening to kids in all kinds of ways, I’ve found the burial site of a serial killer. None of it managed to break me, I still believed I could do some good in this world. Hearing that the new victim is Elaine cracks my soul before it snaps. I’m fuming and suffocating. I don’t think I can breathe.

Where the fuck is her body?

Sending me pictures of her, but not giving her back is torture. He took her. From this life, from her loved ones, again, from me. I’m choking. This isn’t right. This isn’t fucking right. She was supposed to be safe!

The arms wrap around me again, and I don’t have enough power in me left to fight. Beckett’s eyes appear in my eyesight. Suddenly he’s there, smack in the middle of my tunnel vision. His eyes are stern, but alert. And alive. God, they’re so alive it hurts. The last thing Elaine’s eyes showed was terror, and now she’s dead.

Beckett’s mouth is moving, but I don’t hear what he says. My knees give out from under me, and before I know it I’m sitting on the floor. Becket has gone down with me, pulling me against him, his strong arms anchoring me to this life, this world, where my Elaine got taken.

Chester appears before me and the heaving breaths I manage to suck in hurt. They hurt so bad I think I want the hurting to end.

“Four,” I hear somewhere in the distance. I blink a couple of times, making Chester appear clearer. The rage inside me dies, and the fire it ignited in me reduced to a gentle simmer.

“Come on Abs, breathe with me. Four in.” He seems to be doing the breathing thing himself. A rational part of my brain knows that it would work, but what is the use of returning back to normal? Nothing matters anymore. No matter how many evils we undo, more will always be done. It’s fucking useless.

Chester lays two hands on my cheeks, forcing me to look at him. His blond hair falls around his face, like he’s some kind of angel. And those blue eyes of his see me. All of me. My broken and shattered soul.

“Come on babe, just try. I need you to pull your act together, come back to your badass self and help me. Come on, four in.” Out of habit I breathe in for four as he counts along. When he says two, I feel like I can’t suck in any more air, but I keep breathing, forcing the oxygen into my body.

“Hold for four,” Chester instructs me, his eyes never leaving mine. Holding my breath feels wrong. The part of my brain that triggers my survival instincts urges me to keep breathing. Jesus fucking Christ, she didn’t survive.

“Out for four.” Did her last breath take this long? Or was it over before she knew it? She knew she was going to die, I saw it in the look in her eyes. God, I miss my parents. I’d give anything for them to be here right now.

“Hold for four.” My hands sting, and my leg hurts. It makes me feel alive. There’s a shard of glass sticking out of my leg. When I reach my hand to pull it out, I notice there’s several little shards in the palms of my hands as well. I stare at them as if they belong to someone else. I used to think they were hands that could do anything, fix all the wrongs. But now they just look small.

Instinctively I follow the breathing pattern and the world starts to return to normal, as far as normal can go. This is one of those defining moments in my life. There will always be a before and an after. Life before a serial killer took one of the first kids I saved and killed her, and life after. Things will never be the same again.

I notice a warm hand stroking my back. I’m practically in Beckett’s lap, and he also has a shard of glass in his leg. Somehow that fires up a part of my brain that makes me want to take care of him, make things better for him, make him hurt less.

It’s my hero complex or something, it’s ingrained in me. It does make me feel slightly more like myself though. The room appears in my view again, and I take in the total carnage I’ve wrecked. I don’t even have it in me to feel ashamed. Sometimes completely overreacting is the exact appropriate reaction.

Chester carefully pulls me out of Beckett’s lap, and sets me down on his windowsill in my room. There’s no glass there, and I let him handle me. If there’s anyone in this world I can trust to take care of me, it’s Chester. A shocked-looking Miranda walks in with the first aid kit. I have no clue who told her to do so and when, but I haven’t noticed much of what’s going on around me since Beckett told me about Elaine. How long ago was it? Minutes? Half an hour? I don’t know.

Chester sits down in front of me, taking out some tweezers to start pulling the shards of glass out of my legs and my hands. I don’t even know if they’re anywhere else. I stare at him while he’s busy, hyper-focused on the task at hand. One corner of my mouth curls up when I notice he’s still doing my calming breathing pattern. I think he hopes I’ll subconsciously follow it, and I have to admit it’s working.

“Is there something we can do right now?” Beckett asks as he stands next to Chester. The glass shard I saw in his leg is no longer sticking out of it, so I guess he took care of that while I wasn’t paying attention.

“Call Remy for me and ask if he wants to come over?”

“Who?” he asks in a more friendly tone than I’m used to from him.

“The dude that sat behind her on the couch after we celebrated saving those kids. Number is in her phone, code is 071217,” Chester answers, and I want to scowl at him for just giving my information out like that, but I don’t have it in me anymore. I’m numb and I’m exhausted, my limbs trembling.

Beckett grabs my phone and starts tapping, until he presses the phone against his ear. It doesn’t take long for Remy to answer, and for some reason it’s making Beckett look extremely confused.

“Did you just call me a cherry?” is the first thing he says, making me chuckle. I think Remy answered the phone with ma chère, but I don’t think Beckett speaks French.

“This is Special Agent Sanders from the FBI. Abigail just got some bad news and she’s asked me to ask if you can come over.” He keeps silent for a moment. “Yeah, at the office. Okay. Thanks. Bye.” Then, when he hangs up, he addresses me. “He’s on his way.”

Meanwhile, Chester is putting bandages on me. I don’t think it’s really necessary, but I let him fuss over me for a bit. Looking around, seeing the mess I’ve made of my room, a little shame starts to trickle in after all. Chester saved her too, and he didn’t throw his screens through the office. Then again, he didn’t sit in the car with two little girls tucked away under his arm, getting them home to their parents. God, I still remember her little scared face like it was yesterday. Was that why she looked familiar in the pictures? Or was it recognizing myself?

“That reaction was very…” Beckett starts.

“Over the top?” I fill in for him.

“I was going to say passionate.”

I actually turn my head to look at him, but he isn’t joking. He looks impressed that I just smashed my office to pieces after hearing the name of a victim.

The thing is, it isn’t just a victim to me anymore. It’s Elaine. My Elaine. God, she’s been the driving force behind my perseverance for years. The moments I thought about giving up and pursuing a different line of work? Her face and the face of all those other kids we saved reminded me that we’re doing something good.

And now, this killer, he’s taken that. He’s changed her face into a bad memory. He’s taken my pride and has turned it into fear he’ll do it again. Which one of the kids I saved is next? Or will it just be some random girl, who looks like me? Does that make it any less bad? No. No, it does not.

“Have you informed her family yet?” I ask quietly.

“Winny is going over there now, they moved to Washington a while back. I don’t think she’ll be there before nightfall.” His face seems to age ten years in about ten seconds. I do not envy Winny.

God, poor Bianca, her little sister. Fuck. My heart breaks for her.

“Was it a coincidence that she lives right where the number one on the killer’s clock is?” Chester asks.

Beckett sighs. “I don’t know. I can’t make any judgment calls on it. I’ve got access to all the resources there are, I’ve got experience aplenty, but I really don’t know if it’s a coincidence or if he searched just as long as he had to find someone from your past that looks like you that comes from that specific spot on the map.”

He looks… lost. And I don’t think he’s supposed to look like that. My phone starts ringing. I have no idea where it is, I lost it somewhere in my tantrum until Beckett picked it up. Or maybe Beckett still has it after calling Remy? Before me or anybody else in the room can look for it, the door to my office opens, and Remy storms in. He takes in the state of my office, raising an eyebrow. Without asking questions he walks over, picks me up from the windowsill and puts me down in his lap.

Beckett and Chester back off, which wasn’t my intention when I asked them to call for Remy. I just wanted to feel the comfort of his nearness, not make the others go away. I don’t know when or how it happened that I’m relying so much on this man I practically know nothing about, but I do.

“That was quick,” is the first thing I manage to say to him. But maybe the way I’m experiencing time is a little off right now.

“I was in the neighborhood,” he says, his eyes studying me. His body feels colder than mine, which would make sense if he came from outside, but somehow noticing it surprises me. “You had some bad news?”

I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to talk about it. I want it to not be true.

“One of the kids we saved was murdered by the killer,” Chester says in a tone devoid of any emotion.

“That’s classified information!” Beckett snaps.

“Oh fuck that. Have you seen this room? She needs an outlet, she needs to be able to talk, or she’s going to break the whole goddamn building down,” my friend snaps at the agent. His green eyes are fuming, but he doesn’t fight Chester on it. And Remy? He doesn’t care about either of them. His thumb is stroking over the back of my hand, gently caressing it.

“What do you need?” he softly asks me.

“For this whole mess to be cleaned up,” I whisper.

“I can get the cleaners in,” Chester says as he looks around and starts patting himself for his phone.

“I think she was being metaphorical,” Beckett answers, rubbing his stubble. And I guess I was, a little. I really need my office cleaned up too.

“Both,” I say. “I think I need to go home for the day.”

Remy gets up, making sure I’m standing sturdy on my feet before he lets go of me. We all make our way to the door, where Miranda is standing. When I walk past her, she pulls me close and hugs me tight.

“Take care of yourself sweetie, I’ll sort this mess out.”

God, how I’d love for her to be able to do that.

“Hey girlie, what’s up?” my aunt Viv answers the phone.

“Do you remember what Mom put in the cinnamon rolls to make them extra delicious?” I say, flour in my hair and sugar everywhere.

“Uh, I’d say cinnamon.”

I chuckle. “Yeah, I got that. But there was always something in it to give it a little spunk.”

“Nutmeg maybe?”

Thinking about it for a second, I figure she might be right.

“I’ll try some nutmeg. Thanks. Say hi to Peter and the kids for me?” Now that I know what I’m searching for, I want to get back to baking as quickly as possible.

“Hold up, hold up, not so fast, young missy. What’s going on? Why are you baking?” I forgot the woman knows me too well. I sigh, putting the phone between my shoulder and my ear, walking to the pantry to grab some fresh nutmeg.

“Something bad happened today. And I can’t talk about it, but I just… needed to get into the kitchen.”

Remy drove Chester and me home, where I immediately ran to the kitchen. I have no clue what the boys are doing, but I know I’ve got a roast in the oven, some sides on the stove and dessert in the fridge. Figured I’d get started on the cinnamon rolls for breakfast tomorrow. We could possibly invite the entire office over and still have food to spare, but that’s not the point. The point was to get in the kitchen, to create something, get my mind off of murdered women and feel close to my mom.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” my aunt asks.

“Tell me something good,” I whisper.

The line stays silent for a moment before she starts talking. “When I was tiny and your mom was a teenager, she had a boyfriend sneaking into the house one night. I was supposed to be asleep, but I heard a noise and I thought it might have been a monster.”

I start grating fresh nutmeg through my cinnamon bun dough when she talks. I don’t think I’ve ever heard this story, which is odd, because aunt Viv always told me everything I wanted to know about Mom.

“When I walked into the hallway, I walked past your mom’s room, and I remember feeling a cold draft on my feet. I was scared the monster was in her room, but I was also reading Mathilda at the time, so I told myself to be brave. I opened her door a little, and someone was sitting in the windowsill, one foot inside, one foot outside. My heart started racing, because I thought it was the monster. Your mom was right beside him, leaning towards him. I asked her what she was doing, and she giggled. She said she was whispering the magic words to him. What magic words, I asked her. And she told me he needed magic words to take the moon out of the sky and bring it back to her, because that would be the prize to win her heart. The monster, who turned out to be just a boy, said hi, waved at me, and then climbed out of the window.”

I don’t know why, but the story is making me smile. That sounds like my mom.

“I remember looking outside every evening since that night, looking up at the sky, seeing if the boy had managed to snatch the moon and then win my sister’s heart. I also remember for a small moment in time after that, I wondered when I would learn the magic words, so that if I ever ran into someone I was willing to give my heart to, I could give him, or her, the magic words.”

“When did you find out there were no magic words?”

“Not long after. I wasn’t the kind of kid to believe in fairy tales for very long. And besides, when I found Peter I realized that I never wanted someone to give me the moon, I wanted them to give me the world.”

“Fuck, you make love sound romantic.” Somehow her story is making me think of dancing in a candlelit room with Remy, and how his blue eyes looked up at me from beneath his eyelashes when he lifted me up above him.

“Whatever you do kiddo, aim for the stars, just like your mom did.”