Devil’s in the Details (80 page)

James nodded and walked me to a series of chairs right outside of the trauma bay, "Alex, I can't get you in there, so sit here. I'll be right back."

I nodded lazily, I was in shock and felt like I was in a dream state. Everything was numb, my hands were cold and stained in dried blood. I let him guide me to a chair and sit me down, I folded my arms across my chest and started rocking back and forth in the chair. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. It had to be a dream. I would wake up, roll over and see Victoria with Holly on her chest, both asleep.

I smiled softly at the image and closed my eyes, my heart beat slowly as if it didn't want anything more to do with this night. It suddenly stopped for a few seconds, making me open my eyes and clutch at my chest. Something was wrong.

James suddenly pushed through the trauma bay doors, and looked at me with glassy eyes. His face contorted as soon as he saw me, and I saw him swallow hard. I shot to my feet, shaking my head, "Don't you dare." I knew that look, it was the same look he had when one of his friends was killed in the line of duty.

"Alex, I'm sorry." He reached for me.

I shook my head, stepping back, "Get away from me! Don't you dare say it."

James moved quickly and grabbed me by the upper arms, "Alex, she's gone. They couldn't stop the bleeding in time and…" He paused, looking down at the floor as if it would help him in this moment, "Victoria's gone." He looked up at me slowly, his eyes brimming with tears.

"Fuck you! No she's not." I slapped his hands away from me and charged through the trauma bay doors. I saw a tired doctor pull back the curtain, I shouted at him, "Where is Victoria Bancroft?"

The doctor gave me a dirty look, "Excuse me, you shouldn't be back here. Go back out front, a nurse can help you there."

I charged towards him, "Where is Victoria Bancroft! Answer me." I almost shoved him when I heard James two steps behind me.

"Doctor, this is her girlfriend." His voice was somber as he said it.

The young doctor's face changed as he nodded, "In here." He stepped to the side and held the curtain back for me.

I moved through and when my eyes landed on the sight before me, my knees buckled to the point James had to steady me.

"Ms. Bancroft had a severe stabbing wound, two of the three strikes she received bisected her aorta. Causing her to bleed out at a very rapid rate." The doctor continued on in a very clinical monotone voice, "She hung on for a bit, then as we inserted a chest tube to relieve pressure, she crashed."

"No more." I whispered the words out, "I don't want to hear anymore." I took a step towards the bed Victoria laid in. The nurses were starting the process of cleaning her up, they had covered her with a clean white blanket. A stark contrast to all of the red blood on the floor and on her face. There was a tube still in her mouth, taped to the side where the ambulatory bag had been used, and the silenced heart monitors showed a flat line. All hard facts I couldn't deny.

I moved closer, reaching for her hand sitting on top of the blankets with IV needles still inserted in the top of her hand. My fingertips ran over ice cold skin, making me tremble and shake, "Victoria." She was so cold, so lifeless and I felt my heart crack at the sight.

The doctor cleared his throat, "The official time of death was 10:25 p.m. I'll give you a minute.” He squeezed my shoulder as he mumbled to the nurses behind us, wanting to get the cleanup process started.

I stared at her and reached for hand when James gently grabbed my elbow, “Alex, we need to step out. The detectives want to talk to you and the medical examiner is here. They have to take the body for criminal processing.” He frowned at the cold, professional speech.

I looked up at him, “This isn’t real.” I went to step towards Victoria, but was shoved back by a few nurses and two people wearing windbreaker jackets with medical examiner in bold white letters on the back.

James tugged me gently, “The ME promised me I could take you down when they get her situated, but the evidence is still fresh.” He winced again, looking at me, “Please Alex, we need to find who did this.”

I was shoved back and out of the small curtained area. James held onto me and whispered that we should step outside to let them do their job. I was so deep in the grips of shock, that I mindlessly followed him, latching onto the fact that he was right. The evidence was fresh and would get us to who killed Victoria quicker.

Then it clicked in my head. I grabbed James hand, “Angela Diablo. Look her up, she worked at my hospital in D.C. She’s the one who stabbed Victoria, I saw her. I saw her face.” My mind started racing, “I can describe exactly what she looks like.”

James looked in my eyes, nodding and pulled out his phone, “Sit tight. I’ll call it in and get an artist down here.” He smiled tightly and pushed through the bay doors.

I let out a shaky breath and turned back to the curtained area, my heart limping in its chest. I wanted to go back and say my goodbyes. Hold Victoria and tell her everything I didn’t have the chance to. I relented and took a few steps back to the curtain, maybe I could plea with the nurses and the techs to let me have that moment.

The curtain whooshed open and the techs started pushing a stretcher with the ubiquitous black thick plastic body bag on it. I gasped and covered my mouth as my adrenaline was replaced by heartbreak. The nurses scattered away, leaving the two techs to silently roll the woman I loved away. I suddenly found my voice, and rasped out, “Please, can I say goodbye?”

The one tech, a young black male met my eyes then nodded to his partner, a younger woman with thick glasses and her hair tucked up under the ball cap she wore. I stepped closer, “Please, just a minute.” The young man looked at his partner again as I continued to move closer. “She’s my girlfriend.”

I was two steps away when the woman turned around and grabbed my upper arms, ushering me into the corner of the bay. “Alex, leave this.”

I looked up and gasped when the voice matched the dark eyes of Diablo. She glared at me, holding me tight as I went to shove her back. “No, you fucking murderer!” I clawed at her hands and turned to scream out for help. A strong hand covered my mouth and drew my eyes back to Diablo’s. Her jaw twitched as she held my eyes before leaning in closer and whispering, “Let this go, Alex. Let her die, it’s the only way you and Victoria will come out of this alive.”

I screamed against her palm, scrambling at her hand to remove it. I wanted to shout at her, what the hell did she mean? Victoria was dead, by her hand, and now she was issuing riddles. That’s when it sunk in, the idea that this wasn’t real. This was a plot to allow Victoria to escape. I clawed harder, trying to free my voice so I could ask if this was what this all was. A way for Victoria to leave her second life.

Diablo looked over her shoulder, motioning to her partner. She looked in my eyes, a flicker of recognition of what I might have figured out, as I silently pleaded with her to let me speak. The young man rushed over as she bent to my ear again, “No one will believe you, Alex. Let her die, so you both can live.”

I screamed when I felt a pin prick in the side of my neck. I quickly felt drowsy and limp in Diablo’s arms, barely hearing her call out for a nurse to help her.

The world went hazy as I was handed off to a nurse and James’s voice filled my ears, dragging me out into the fresh air of the city outside.

I made it three wobbly, unassisted steps outside before collapsing onto my knees. The cold concrete biting through my jeans as I broke down again, James rushing to my side and lifting me up.

I looked at him, choking out, "She's not dead. Victoria can’t be dead." It came out in a strange questioning way. I had to question it now, Diablo’s words struck a deep chord inside of my gut. Telling me to accept her words as truth over the facts in front of me.

He nodded slowly, "She is, Alex. I'm sorry." He stopped, not knowing what else to say as I broke apart again, shaking my head and mumbling out words. I was still woozy from whatever injection Diablo gave me.

The only thing that wasn’t woozy in my head, was that I had to prove Victoria wasn’t dead. That it was a lie. Another lie to protect me.

Chapter 26

~Three days later~

"Your mom is already at the house, waiting. She just put the meatloaf in the oven." James looked over at me, setting his cellphone in the middle console. He had small smile on his face before turning back to focus on the road.

I didn't move, I kept my head pressed against the passenger window, blankly staring out at the world passing us by. The three hour drive back to Annapolis had been silent on my part. James tried filling the car with idle conversation but it was fruitless. I wasn't listening no matter what stupid jokes he offered up, the concerned questions about my state, or whatever he just spoke to my mom about for the last fifteen minutes.

I was still numb from the night Victoria died. My mind absorbed all of the facts given to me the next morning by James as I laid in a ball on his couch. He even set down the full medical report on the table in front of me, knowing that it was hard facts that couldn't be denied. Today was the first day that I hadn't started crying out of nowhere, sobbing, screaming and throwing things out of anger, confusion. It grew worse when he told me that an Angela Diablo died in 1946 at the ripe old age of eighty five. There was no trace of the young Hispanic woman who stalked me at the hospital, or the woman I watch stab Victoria. She didn’t exist, even when James reviewed hospital camera footage. He could see the top of her head and then carrying me after I fainted. There was no proof of anything. Angela Diablo was a figment of my imagination.

I now felt completely numb. Numb like I had been sitting in a freezer for days. Numb, cold and empty. My thoughts would drift from it not being real, to being very real when I remembered all of the clinical facts presented to me. The way she looked laying there motionless and pale, but all of those things could be faked. All of those things could be altered and regurgitated in a way that everyone believed it.

I read the final report from the hospital and the medical examiner’s autopsy report. Victoria was dead. She died from massive internal bleeding. She had died within the five minutes it took for the blade to enter her abdomen and fall to the ground where my nursing skills became useless. These were the facts, printed in bold, clinical black and white. Signed off by the New York Medical Examiner’s office.

But I didn’t dare believe those facts, my gut begged me not to.

"Alex? Did you hear me?" James placed a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently to acknowledge him.

I turned, squinting very dry, tired eyes his way. "What?"

He smiled tightly, "I said we're about ten minutes away from home. Is there anywhere you want to stop?"

I shook my head, frowning deeply as I shifted in the seat and sat forward. "Have you heard from Dani?"

He sighed, "Not yet, I left her message and she texted me back this morning. There's some serious fallout from what happened on top of organizing getting Victoria home." He cleared his throat, squeezing my shoulder, "Alex, I know I've said it a million times, but…"

"Just don't, please James." I looked up at him, my voice cracking for the thousandth time in the last three days. I dropped my eyes down to look at my red, sore hands. I had been washing them excessively since James brought me back to his apartment that first night. Sobbing uncontrollably, scrubbing the dried blood off of my hands with boiling hot water and all the soap he had in the house. Every time I looked at my hands for a second too long, I would see all of her blood on them. Staining my skin, the fingernails and they would begin to tremble and my mind would spiral out of control. I was fighting off the shock from losing Victoria and the confusion of the things Diablo said. I couldn’t think straight.

I quickly tucked my hands into the front pockets of my jacket after catching her class ring still on my finger, "Keep calling her, leave her a message that she needs to talk to me." I cleared out the crack in my voice, turning to look at the freeway signs pointing the way home. "I need answers." Dani would know the truth. I would corner her and demand that she tell me what actually happened and why Victoria felt she needed to do it this way.