Elizabeth poured herself another generous dose of Merlot and set the rapidly dwindling bottle next to its earlier emptied twin. Following a lengthy sip, she reexamined the photos meticulously arranged on her living room floor.
There were nine. Nine lives tragically cut short. Nine sets of eyes blindly staring up at her in silent questioning. Nine people whose brutal deaths were now hers to solve.
She hated how impersonal an investigation became as their lives were reduced to a single photo and pages of forensics. However, there wasn’t any other way to deal with man’s evil deeds except at arm’s length. Long ago she’d accepted the harsh truth: You got emotional; you lost control, and for Elizabeth, losing control was never an option.
Some mistook her attitude for heartlessness. Yet if these same people walked a mile in her shoes by sliding on a pair of Spanish boots and running down the same twisted path of depravities she had, they would’ve thought twice before passing judgment. Regardless of others’ misconceptions, Elizabeth honored these victims the best way she knew how. Not with tears and sadness, but by bringing their killer to justice.
Setting down her glass, she picked up a dark blue skein from the yarn basket at her feet, measured and cut a ten-inch piece, then attached the ends to Melissa Hartley and Michelle Nguyen’s photos. When done, she stood and stepped back.
“Okay, they both attended UMass but graduated three years apart and in two different majors. Melissa was the first vic, Michelle the fifth—”
With her wine glass back in hand, she drained half while eyeing the network of multi-colored threads connecting one picture to another. Even with the numerous and varying arrays of color, her attention continually returned to the red lengths attaching each of the nine photos to a surveillance shot of the seemingly ordinary brick building of Concentrico.
“What are you hiding?”
As if a closer look might’ve helped, she picked up the picture and through narrowed eyes, examined the photo as if it was giving away its secrets. Coming up empty, she placed it back at the top of this macabre layout and started reviewing all the facts once again from the top.
In the early morning light, Elizabeth soberly gathered the photos and the nine neat piles of forensics from the floor and headed over to the fireplace. She opened the glass doors and started feeding the flames, the entire time solemnly vowing to each person she’d find his or her killer.
Eventually, when everything was reduced to ash, she closed the doors. As the dying flames fought to stay alight, her mind instinctually shifted into her long-established routine.
She entered the kitchen and, after trading wine for water, she settled in front of her laptop set up on the kitchen table. For the next two hours, Elizabeth took care of six months’ worth of bills, and after downloading all her files to a zip-drive, she wiped the memory and hard drive clean.
Promptly at nine, she phoned her stylist, Jon. After promising him carte blanche and bribing him with his junk food Achilles’ heel— Boston crème donuts—he squeezed her in at two.
Afterward, Elizabeth prepared her apartment for her prolonged absence. Over the next two hours, she scrubbed the entire place clean from top to bottom, leaving only the smoldering ashes untouched.
When this was done, she showered until the once scalding water ran cold and her skin was scrubbed almost raw. She then dried off, and wrapped the towel around her upper body, tucking the white linen under her arms to hold it in place. Without the aid of a mirror, Elizabeth dragged a fine-tooth comb through her damp, shoulder-blade length hair, then styled it into her every-day, tight ballerina bun and promptly completed the rest of her ablutions.
Once dressed, she returned to the kitchen for her laptop and the set of keys for the hallway closet.
She unlocked the door, placed the laptop inside and pulled down one of two steel security boxes from the shelf. Placing the zip drive among other important documents, she relocked the box, and returned it to its rightful place.
She next retrieved the second box. Inside was her FBI issued Glock Model 23. With skilled proficiency, she removed the gun and secured it into its leather holster. She gathered several magazine rounds of 40 caliber bullets, relocked both the steel box and the closet door, and returned to her bedroom.
For the next hour or so, Elizabeth carefully secured her gun and ammunition in a hidden compartment fashioned in the side of her luggage and finished packing only the bare necessities. When she was done, she placed the suitcase by the front door.
With everything now in place, there was only one other matter to attend to. Out of everything, this was always the hardest.
Elizabeth had one room in her apartment she entered only prior to embarking on an undercover assignment. Standing at the door, her hand hovered over the knob for several moments while she collected herself. Eventually, she entered, turned on the light, and with slow, measured steps made her way to the closet.
With a slight sheen of sweat dotting her brow and upper lip, Elizabeth opened the door, kneeled, and extended her hands into the darkest recesses of the closet. Even without her sight guiding her, she wrapped her hands around what she sought, another seemingly ordinary steel security box, identical to the one in her hallway closet. Hell, anyone could buy the same one from any local store. Yet what was contained inside was irreplaceable and far beyond priceless.
She placed the box in front of her and after several attempts released the lock before placing her shaky hands to either side and lifting the lid. Her breath hitched as she looked down and stared at the photo of three smiling women.
Eleven years ago
“Really mom, are you serious? I just finished eating and probably have food stuck all in my teeth!” Elizabeth wiped at her mouth with a napkin before trying to check her pearly whites in the blade of her butter knife.
“Yes, I am serious. Now come over here. We are celebrating your getting into college, and I demand a picture.” Joyce stood, gestured for the waiter, then moved her chair between her two daughters and looped her arms around each.
“Ow, mom, you’re pulling my hair.” Dawn shifted trying to remove the chestnut length from the weight of her mother’s arm.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetie.” Joyce placed an apologetic, chaste kiss to her younger daughter’s forehead as the waiter made his way to their table.
“Okay, ladies, let’s see those beautiful smiles!” The waiter cheerfully instructed while pointing the camera in their direction.
“Cheese!”
Present Day
Another steady stream of hot tears slipped down Elizabeth’s cheeks as she set aside the photo and carefully looked through her other precious keepsakes: a bottle of her mother’s favorite perfume and antique pearl necklace, passed down from mother to daughter for generations; her sister’s diary, brimming with untold secrets and unfulfilled dreams, and her well-loved favorite teddy bear, the same one she’d never admitted to when she got older, but still had slept with every night.
It was maddening how her past life felt so dream-like, yet the past ten years’ endless nightmare was so bitterly real.
It was shortly after Elizabeth had started her first year at UCLA when her mother began suffering from severe headaches. At first, her mother dismissed them as stress, allergies, and the like, but after two months of non-stop migraines, Elizabeth convinced her to see her doctor. Following extensive testing and blood work, her mother was diagnosed with what everyone feared— a brain tumor.
From that moment on, Elizabeth was, for the first time in her life, in charge. Her first act of responsibility was immediately leaving school and returning home to become full time caretaker to the two most important people in her life.
In spite of how diligently she’d made sure her mother ate regularly, took all her prescribed medication, followed through with treatments, and went to every doctor’s appointment, it still wasn’t enough. Tragically four months later, her mom succumbed and lost her brave battle with cancer.
Even though she was just eighteen, Elizabeth was now Dawn’s legal guardian. Astonishingly, with a lot of hard work and a touch of luck, she was able to survive the early trials and tribulations of her new found adult and pseudo parenthood.
She’d taken care of Dawn, doing everything from packing her lunch, to comforting her when she cried or had nightmares. Yet in all that time, Elizabeth hadn’t shed a single tear. Don’t be mistaken, she missed her mom terribly, but she felt then, just as now, the only way to help her sister was to remain strong.
After several months of rare highs and extreme lows, their lives had gone back to some semblance of normalcy. So much so, that Elizabeth planned on going back to college part time while continuing to take care of Dawn.
Then, for the second time in less than six months, her world spun violently off its axis.
It all started with a telephone call from Dawn’s principal. He explained she’d never arrived to school, nor had they received a phone call from Elizabeth reporting her absence. She immediately panicked; there was no reason why Dawn shouldn’t be in school. The next few hours were filled with increasingly frantic phone calls to home, her sister’s friends, and lastly, the police.
At the outset, the police gave her the big brush off, claiming it was common for a teenager to run away—‘an attempt of asserting their independence’ or some bullshit like that. Even though Elizabeth knew they were totally wrong, she waited their instructed twenty-four hours before filing a missing person’s report.
Fortunately, the rest of her experience with the police fared much better. From the moment she filed the report, the police made Dawn’s disappearance their top priority. However, even with their thorough investigations on every lead, Elizabeth never stopped searching for Dawn night and day on her own.
It was after two agonizing weeks, her worse fears were realized.
Dawn’s body was found during a routine disturbing-the-peace call to a local abandoned junkyard. This was where the police came across Ben and Glory Reid, megalomaniac cult leaders and dozen or so of their disciples, in what later was described as a ritualistic human sacrifice.
In spite of all their immediate arrests, over eight months passed before Glory finally stood trial. The first month of testimony was filled with a steady stream of medical and forensic experts. With two weeks devoted solely to the two psychiatrists, who had, after extensive testing, deemed Ben and Glory both sane and competent.
With the start of the second month, the District Attorney called forward the state’s next witness, Glory’s twin brother, Ben. At first, Elizabeth was outraged when she learned of the plea bargain struck between Ben’s Defense Attorney and the District Attorney: for Ben’s testimony against Glory, he would plead guilty and serve life without the possibility of parole.
After Elizabeth’s initial shock, she realized this was for the best. His testimony not only sealed Glory’s fate, but hopefully it also filled in the missing pieces and it answered, at least some of, her questions.
For the next two weeks, Ben testified as to the first time he’d seen Dawn was while working at the hospital where their mother was treated. Then at great length, he explained that he and Glory were trapped gods, and only the blood of an innocent freed them and unlocked their powers. Lastly, in spirit-crushing detail, he revealed how Dawn had suffered long hours of being bound and gagged, before they prepared her for the ritual, tied her to an altar, and slowly bled her to death.
So many times Elizabeth wanted to escape it all. At the very least, covering her ears and squeezing her eyes shut, drowning out everything. There was only one reason preventing her from doing this day after day—her sister. If Dawn had endured this, Elizabeth vowed she would as well.
After Ben’s appalling, but extremely damning testimony, the rest of the trial continued with a parade of forensic psychologists, members of law enforcement, a theologian, and even someone who claimed to be a demonologist. Surprisingly, in spite of all her delusions of grandeur, Glory never took the stand.
Once the trial concluded, it took less than a day for the jury to return with a guilty verdict on all counts. A month later at Glory’s sentencing hearing; she was given life without possibility of parole. Even though Elizabeth really wanted to see the bitch fry, she found some satisfaction with the knowledge of this sadistic, pitiful excuse for a human being spending the rest of her days rotting in a prison cell.
Ultimately, with everything said and done, Elizabeth found no reason to stay in California. When Dawn was finally properly laid to rest next to their mother, she boarded a plane to Boston and never looked back.
~*~
Elizabeth gazed longingly at her keepsakes, before lovingly placing each away until only the picture remained.
“Miss you guys so much. I love you both.” With a lingering kiss to each of their tiny smiling faces, she added the photo to her precious collection, closed the box, and returned it to the deep recesses of the closet.
With a steadying breath, Elizabeth left the room just as quietly as she entered and headed to the front door. After a brief parting glance, she grabbed her luggage, turned off the light, and left.
Author’s Note:
Spanish boots were used for torturing prisoners. “The Spanish boot were high boots made of spongy leather had been placed on the culprit's feet, he was tied on to a table near a large fire, and a quantity of boiling water was poured on the boots, which penetrated the leather, ate away the flesh, and even dissolved the bones of the victim” http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/the-boot-torture.