The Adventure Continues

[abrightboy]

For thatsfascinating.



The villa Malcolm rented was in the Languedoc, not far from Marseilles, south of Avignon. It was a very historic region, though Malcolm was particularly not interested in visiting Marseilles again. There was a charming village nearby the villa and if they were going to go to an historic city for a day, he'd rather make the trip over to Montpellier, where he'd never been at all, much less with Dr Whitly.

The villa had six bedrooms. As the driver brought their luggage inside the bright and spacious main room, Malcolm handed him some folded Euros and thanked him and shut the door behind him.

"First choice of a room is yours," he told Edrisa with a smile. "But you might want to explore first."

Comments

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looked at her, taking in her own stress responses. But catching killers helped him deal with his own killer-related trauma. It would help her with hers, too, right?

"It's actually our specialty."

[thatsfascinating]

The officer frowned, apparently thinking over, then nodded.

"Will you come to the station with me, and I show you pictures?"

"Absolutely," Edrisa said, glancing at Malcolm.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm nodded, gave her hand a squeeze, and followed the officer to his car, helping Edrisa in, then climbing in behind her.

[thatsfascinating]

She immediately took his hand again once he was next to her in the car, holding it tightly. Her expression, the way she held her body, the set of her jaw...it was all determination. She wanted to find the girl, to find the person who did this to her and to the other women.

But there was also fear, fear that she was shoving way, way down inside herself and bricking over with even more determination.

[abrightboy]

When they got to the police station, Malcolm asked for the case files, setting the coroner's reports in front of Edrisa as he opened the investigators' notes.

[thatsfascinating]

Edrisa took a breath before opening the first file...and her breath caught in her throat when she saw the picture of the naked woman on the autopsy table. She hadn't been back to the morgue since her ordeal, so these were the first images of dead people she'd seen since then. And this was a young woman who displayed obvious signs of strangulation, with red marks on her wrists and ankles to indicate she was bound before she died.

Edrisa swallowed hard.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm heard her breath catch and looked over at her with concern.

"Are you okay?"

[thatsfascinating]

She nodded slowly, forcing herself to steady her breathing.

"Mmhm," she said. "I'm fine."

She was, of course, not fine. But she forced herself to put the photos aside to look at the report.

"Aaaand it's in French." She looked up at Malcolm, a small ghost of a smile playing on her face. "Of course it is."

[abrightboy]

"I don't trust their analysis more than yours," he said. "Are there not enough photos?"

[thatsfascinating]

She shook her head, and made herself look back at the photos. "No...there's enough."

It's not me, she told herself. This is a case. I can work a case.

She separated the photos, her hands shaking slightly, and laid them all out, then opened the next file and did the same thing. Then the next. She laid them all out so she could compare them.

[abrightboy]

She was about halfway through when he started carefully watching her out of the corner of his eye. As she set the last photo down, her stress response still going through the roof, he turned and took both her hands as best he could with his one and a half hands and urged her to face him.

"What. Is. Going. On?" he asked in a low but firm voice.

[thatsfascinating]

Edrisa flinched a little when he touched her, and her expression was stricken when she turned toward him.

It shouldn't matter. She should be fine. How was she going to be able to do her job if she couldn't handle this?

She wanted to tell him she was fine, but she knew he would be able to tell she wasn't. So she whispered the truth.

"That could have been me."

[abrightboy]

He pulled her into his arms and held her for a moment. When he let go, he started gathering up the photos.

"It's too soon," he said.

[thatsfascinating]

She closed her eyes in his arms, taking deep breaths to steady herself. When he let go and started collecting the photos, her eyes widened and she grabbed for the pictures.

"No! I can do this! I have to do this!"

[abrightboy]

"No, you don't," he told her. "You don't." He took her by the shoulders. "It's okay to not be ready for this."

[thatsfascinating]

"But there's a girl who needs our help," she insisted. "She's not like the others yet. But if they don't find her in time..." She shook her head, distressed. "We have to help."

[abrightboy]

"I could help and you could go back to the villa," Malcolm offered urgently. "The point of this trip was to get away from your trauma."

[thatsfascinating]

She shook her head again. "I don't want to be away from you," she insisted. "Bright, please. I can't run from this. I have to face it."

[abrightboy]

He took a deep breath and considered that, then held out the pictures for her to take.

[thatsfascinating]

She took them back with a nod of thanks, and sorted them again, laying them out neatly, then sat back and sighed, wringing her fingers, scanning the images.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm watched her rather than his file for a long, long moment.

"See anything useful?" he prompted.

[thatsfascinating]

Edrisa nodded, stil wringing her fingers. "Um." She took a breath. "They used a really rough rope. There are fibers embedded in the..." She took another breath. She could do this. "In the wrists and ankles and neck. The strangulation wasn't...gradual..." Like hers had been. Another breath. "It was pretty brutal. Took a lot of strength. Um. How...how were they found?"

[abrightboy]

"Naked," he told her. "In a field." He picked up his file. "They were dumped pretty unceremoniously. He's not interested in them after they're dead. He kills for the rush of it. When it's over, they're nothing but an object to him."

[thatsfascinating]

That was different. The killer wasn't trying to turn these women into something like her would-be murderer did. That was good. It was a little bit of distance.

"A field..." She looked more closely at the photographs. "Huh. There seems to be a light-colored dust on the bodies. Maybe from where they were held before death?"

[abrightboy]

He flipped through the file.

"It was identified as.... grain." He looked at Edrisa. "An old silo, maybe?"