Tainted Pictures

  Liz let the conversation drift into silence for a little while but took note of Kate. She couldn’t help but feel a kinship to Kate over the last few days of their interactions. Liz had always prided herself to be a strong woman and she hadn’t seen that in Kate when she first met her, although to be fair, they first met while Kate was beaten and bruised in a hospital bed. The woman sitting beside her now wasn’t that same girl though, Kate had become an almost formidable force in her world. She was growing stronger by the day and Liz respected her deeply for that.

  “You know, Kate, I have to tell you that I admire you. The fact that you want to come with me to meet the mother of this other victim, well it just shows a lot of strength. You’re not taking this lying down. You are fighting back and taking control of your life, instead of letting him keep that hold over you. Not a lot of victims gain that kind of insight and strength. It’s so easy to lapse into pity and sorrow and before you know it, you’ve lost years of your life to the perpetrator.” Liz spoke gently but sincerely. Kate didn’t say anything, but blushed when she looked over at Liz. The compliment touched her deeply and she didn’t know how to respond.

  “It’s not an accident that I work these types of cases, Kate.” Liz said after a few moments of silence. This caught Kate’s attention and she turned to look at Liz, curiosity clearly on her face.

  “What do you mean?” She asked Liz, intrigued to learn more about this woman she had begun to like.

  “When I was very young, my mother was attacked. I didn’t see it or understand it, but she crumbled and everything in our lives fell apart. My dad left long before I can remember and so it was all up to me to take care of my mother, the house, pretty much everything.” Liz explained.

  “She wallowed in pity and became a shell of a person. What happened to her was wrong and horrible, I’m not trying to say differently. But she wasn’t able to overcome what happened, ever. She wasn’t my mother anymore. When I was younger I thought that maybe if the police caught her attacker, she would snap back to life.

  But the years went by and it never happened. I decided to become a police officer because of that, because maybe if I could solve cases like hers and put criminals in jail then no one else would get stuck in that rut of sorrow like my mother did. But that’s what is so amazing about you, Kate. We have yet to catch your attacker and yet you are already standing tall.” Liz complimented Kate again as they continued driving north. Kate stared at her, her eyebrows raised, in both shock and intrigue. She fumbled for the best way to respond to the detective.

  “That means a lot, Liz. Thank you. I don’t know if it’s really how I feel deep inside, but I am trying. Some mornings I think that if I just smile enough and pretend, then it will all just go away. Other days I think that it’s over so why let it keep upsetting me. But then there are those times where I remember that he is still out there somewhere and that that bastard took my entire life and altered it. I’ll never be the Kate I was before.” She told the detective, talking slowly.

  Liz just nodded and kept driving. She didn’t have a response for that, she didn’t know how Kate really felt. She only caught glimpses from what her mother went through and what the victims she helped on a daily basis told her. She felt lucky that she didn’t have the first hand experience but she struggled with knowing that there was always going to be another criminal, another case, another victim. No matter how much good she did and how many hours she worked, evil would always be one step ahead.

  “Maybe that’s a good thing.” Kate said, still thinking about her situation.

  “What’s a good thing?” Liz asked, missing the connection to Kate’s statement.

  “That I will never be that Kate again. That I’m new and changed. Maybe being broken down is the only way to build something fresh and wonderful.” Kate said, sighing wistfully as she thought about her path in life.

  “What do you want to do with your future, Kate?” Liz said, picking up on the unrest in Kate’s voice.

  “Not sell furniture forever. I definitely don’t want to do that. I have a degree in psychology and was thinking about going back to school for maybe a social work degree or masters in something psychology related. I don’t know, I’ve always been a bit lost, you know? That’s why maybe this new start, maybe there is something good that can come from it.” Kate wondered out loud.

  “I, for one, think that you would make an excellent social worker or counselor, Kate. You definitely have that inner strength as well as that kindness that a job like that entails. It can also be very rewarding knowing that you are giving back to the world on a daily basis.” Liz encouraged Kate. Kate smiled at her, beginning to feel a bit more positive about her life. She liked talking to Liz, at first she had done everything to avoid the police. Then Liz had just been another face with a badge but over the many phone calls and interviews, Liz had become a friend. Kate had never had many female friends because she never clicked quite right with women. There was drama or unspoken protocols that she just didn’t seem to understand, constantly putting her foot in her mouth. Liz wasn’t like that though. She didn’t get bogged down in the trivial and she looked at the world with an unending optimism that no amount of failure or loss could pull down.

  “Thanks for this, Liz.” Kate told her. Liz just smiled gently and kept watching the road as they were closing in on their destination. She didn’t need Kate’s thanks but it meant a lot to hear it anyways.

  ~~~~

  “Thanks for agreeing to see us, Mrs. Connelly.” Liz smiled at the older woman as she accepted a cold glass of iced tea from her. Kate was seated on a small sofa with floral print facing an antique coffee table while Liz was seated in a rocking chair diagonally across from the sofa. Mrs. Connelly served Kate a glass as well and then sat on the sofa next to her.

  “Call me Theresa, hun. I don’t get a lot of visitors anymore, it’s nice to have a reason to brew a good pot of fresh iced tea.” She smiled at the women and fiddled with a locket hanging around her neck, almost stroking it as if the movement comforted her.

  “That’s a beautiful necklace, Theresa.” Kate said, noting the jewelry but really wanting to know what was inside of it. The older woman’s face immediately broke into a smile and her entire complexion seemed to glow a bit warmer.

  “It’s a locket with a picture of my little Clara, when she was a teenager. Let me show you, see she was only sixteen years old in this picture. So beautiful, so innocent.” Theresa spoke with nostalgia and hints of sadness as she opened the locket to show the women the photograph. They both leaned in to get a better look. Kate was surprised at how beautiful Clara was, she seemed so full of life even in just a small picture.

  “Absolutely beautiful.” Liz echoed Theresa’s sentiments.

  “Yes, yes she was. So, Clara is why you wanted to talk with me?” Theresa cut right to the chase. At her age, there was no reason to dance around the elephant in the room anymore. She had spent the last few years being the strange old woman whose daughter was murdered. Neighborhood children shied away from her and adults either avoided eye contact with her or stared just a little too long.

  “Of course, I am a detective with Metro Police Department in Washington, DC and we believe we have a similar case down there to your daughters, possibly the same perpetrator. We are hoping that learning more about Clara and her life might help us find any ties or ideas to point us towards this man.” Liz explained to her.

  “It’s my case.” Kate just blurted out. She wasn’t sure why, she just needed Theresa to know. She needed her to look at her and see her daughter, she needed Theresa to see her and love her, she needed Theresa to for one moment be that mother figure she never had. The moment she had seen Clara’s picture and seen the love in Theresa’s eyes, jealousy had seeped in little by little. That had always happened to Kate though, she struggled deeply with the truth of knowing her mother had never loved her, had abandoned her, and was never coming back. In moments like these, she felt these strange urges to plead with som
eone to take that role, fill that vacant spot, and heal her heart.

  Kate realized that she had just gotten lost in thought and that both women were staring at her. Liz didn’t know whether to continue or not, thinking maybe Kate wanted to talk and Theresa just plain didn’t understand. Kate shook her head as if wiping away the ridiculous notions and thoughts that she had just entertained for a fleeting moment.

  “Uhm, sorry, Liz you explain. Please.” Kate said awkwardly in choppy sentences. Liz nodded at her and then continued.

  “Kate was attacked in the same manner as Clara, is what I think she was trying to say. It seems as if the attacker thought she was dead or dying, due to blood loss, but Kate pulled through. There were many signs though that point to the idea that these two cases might be related including matching DNA as well as signatures.” Liz continued explaining, gesturing with her hands. Theresa’s eyes suddenly widened and she whipped her head around to stare at Kate, who jumped back in her seat for a moment, startled.

  “You got a photograph?” Theresa said in a low eerie tone, almost a whisper, as she continued to stare at Kate. Kate couldn’t respond verbally so she just nodded in affirmation. She was frightened even though she couldn’t really pinpoint a reason why. It was as if Theresa had a glimpse into that private moment that only she and her attacker shared.

  Theresa nodded her head slowly as if trying to absorb what she had just heard. She stood up and paused, her face showing a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions running through her mind. Both women watched her as she walked across the room to a bookshelf and opened a small cigar box that was sitting decoratively on the middle shelf. She produced a small instant photograph from the box and looked at it, then quickly turned it away from her view, clearly unable to look at it a moment longer. She walked back over to the women and handed the photograph to Kate.

  It was almost a replica of Kate’s photograph. Even their bruises held the same patterns, blood pooled in the same spot, eyes open and dead. Clara’s were actually dead but in Kate’s photograph, hers were too. Kate wondered if they still were. Sometimes she felt like that, as if she were staring at the world through a film. Participating, but not really there.

  “They found this photograph next to her, she bled out in her apartment. She wasn’t close to her phone and it looked later like she had tried crawling to it, but she never made it. She would have called me, she would have called me and I would have done something...” Theresa paused for a moment, swallowing a large lump in her throat as she talked about it.

  Kate handed the photograph to Liz who glanced at it and then laid it face down on the coffee table. Liz had already read Clara’s file and seen the photograph so she wasn’t eager to look at it again. She wondered why Clara’s mother would want to hold on to a photograph like that but then again, she never did understand mothers.

  “Was Clara acting unusual the days before her murder? Was there anything that seemed out of the ordinary?” Liz asked Theresa while pulling out a small notepad and pen. Theresa shook her head no.

  “She was fine and happy. She was going to school and studying a lot. She had even been talking about possibly starting dating. She was always so shy and studious, she never really got around to it much. She had a study partner though that she had been mentioning to me, we were like best friends, you see, so she told me everything.

  She really liked him and was thinking about accepting his offer for a date because he had asked her out several times. I told her that she should go for it, but she was just always so shy. I told her though, men like playing hard to get but only to a point. She was going to lose Francis if she didn’t say yes to him soon.” Theresa chatted away, reminiscing about the conversations with her daughter and the future her daughter might have had.

  Liz tuned in and out as the cogs in her brain were turning rapidly and she starred one piece of information she gathered, eagerly circling it as she waiting for further details from Theresa. She penned more notes from their conversation into her notebook, attempting to glue more pieces together, whereas Kate sat there just quietly absorbing everything being said. Clara had died when Kate could have too, so listening about her life was as if she was looking into an alternate ending to her own story. She grieved for Clara and somehow grieved for herself at the same time. She realized that she hadn’t done that yet. She hadn’t grieved. Something so simple, so human, so obvious and yet Kate had avoided it at all costs. Facing what had happened was too much and the only way to grieve would be to do just that.

  As she listened to Theresa talk, Kate realized that she hadn’t mourned because she had survived. But part of her had died, Kate wasn’t there anymore. Not the old Kate at least. The old Kate would never be sitting with a detective listening to the life of a murdered woman. She never would have ventured outside her comfort zone or done any of the things she had done the last few weeks.

  The old Kate was gone and she had to grieve that loss in order to celebrate the rebirth of a new and stronger Kate. This one simple conversation opened up a window into Kate’s darkened heart and she felt the light seeping into her, clearing out the cobwebs and dust. It made little sense to her, but she felt happier and freer. In mourning Clara’s death through Theresa’s eyes, she had mourned her own and was one step closer to moving on.

  ~~~~

  Liz shook Theresa’s hand as she stepped out onto the front porch in preparation to leave. They had spent about two hours listening to stories of Clara and getting to know Theresa. Liz had a notebook full of things she had written down but only one thing had been starred and circled, and then circled again.

  She couldn’t wait to get back to the precinct and talk to her partner about it. She hadn’t mentioned anything to Kate though because after the let down with Tracy Glen, she didn’t want to build up Kate’s hopes only to potentially dash them.

  Again.

  Kate gave Theresa a hug that lasted a little longer than she would have liked, but knew that Theresa needed it. She promised to keep in touch and then followed Liz to the car as Theresa went back into the house and closed the door. Kate yawned, feeling a bit tired after all that activity and emotion that she had just experienced. She was eager to get back to Derrick and his warm arms and cuddle in for a good nap, as well as other things. Kate smiled to herself as she thought of him. She absentmindedly grabbed the car door handle to open it and then paused seeing an advertisement shoved into the window seal of the passenger side.

  She grabbed it to toss it out but then squinted and looked at it again as something familiar jumped out at her. She suddenly stepped back from the car and let out an audible gasp, causing Liz to turn and look at her quizzically. Kate looked up and her head swiveled around. She took a few more steps back from the car and spun in a circle, looking every direction in a panic.

  “Kate? What? What’s going on?” Liz hurried back to the passenger side of the car and grabbed her by her shoulders to still her. She was shaking so hard that she couldn’t get any words out, she just held up the piece of paper for Liz. Liz grabbed it from her and stared at it.

  This wasn’t just a piece of paper, this was a photograph. An instant photograph of Kate and Liz standing on Theresa McConnelly’s front porch. The door was still closed and Liz’s hand was on the doorbell. Kate was biting her nails and looking nervous, clearly fidgeting. This picture was taken when they had arrived, just a few hours earlier.

  “Get in the car, Kate.” Liz said firmly, it was not unkind but it was also not to be questioned so Kate just nodded and did as she was told. Liz looked at the photograph again and studied the angle to figure out where the Photographer had to have been standing to take it.

  She looked around the yard and surmised that the row of bushes that separated Theresa McConnelly’s yard from the street was the vantage point. She walked over and pulled out her phone, turned it to the camera setting, and took some photographs of the location. She looked around on the ground for anything left behind, any scuff marks, anything suspicious but nothing gl
ared out at her.

  She clenched her jaw angrily, furious at herself for not having seen him there earlier or thinking to check that she could have been followed. She slipped this new photograph into an evidence bag that she always carried on her and then walked back to the car climbing in. Kate still looked pale and ashen, staring forward but clearly lost her thoughts and memories. Liz didn’t say anything, she was so angry at everything and knew that there was nothing helpful that she could say.

  She had failed Kate. Again. This was becoming an ugly pattern.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Kate, come on, I feel like you have practically shut the door on me. You never answer my phone calls, you haven’t come up here to see me. Can I come down there next weekend?” Annie whined to her older sister in the phone. Annie lived in New York City and the sisters normally visited each other once a month, rotating between who traveled. Annie had been in Washington, DC a month earlier during the attack and had stayed several days.

  “It’s only been like three or four weeks since I’ve seen you, even less I think. Don’t be so dramatic.” Kate joked to her sister.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have to be if you picked up your phone every once in a while!” Annie said indignantly.

  “Come down this weekend and we can have all the sister time you want. I have some news I want to tell you anyways.” Kate chuckled into the phone, purposefully being vague.

  “What kind of news? Good or bad?” Annie questioned.

  “Guess you will have to wait and see!” Kate teased her sister. This wasn’t news she was going to tell over the phone so she was definitely going to make her sister wait.