Death of a Chorus Girl (The Delacroix Series Book 1) (12 page)

“Stop the car!” she demands, cutting me short.  “Stop the car, Richard!  Stop it now!”  We are in the middle of New York City traffic.  I can’t just stop, but glancing at her, she looks green and terrified.  The tears are falling and her free hand claws at the door.  “Let me out!  Please, Richard, I have to get out!”

I flip on the lights, directing us into the far-right lane to park the car.  In an instant, she is out and racing to a trash can.  By the time I join her, she’s violently emptying her stomach contents.  I am at a loss for what to do as I watch her beg for water between her heaves.  I don’t have any and I can’t leave her to get some.  She is barely holding herself up.

“I need water!” I holler and flash my badge.  “Em, stay with me.” 
Please don’t have this madness she’s been putting herself through steal her from me.
  Thankfully, a food vendor hands me a bottle.

I help her to the ground and feel helpless as she guzzles about half the bottle before pouring the rest over her head.  I look at the vendor sheepishly as I fish a ten out of my wallet.  He waves it off and offers to bring me more water if she needs it.  I’ve come across enough burn victims suffering from dehydration to recognize the symptoms of fire damage in the woman cowering on the pavement in front of me.  She needs more water.  I press the ten into his hand and gratefully accept his offer.

I give her my full attention while he is gone.  “What happened? What do you need?”  Her eyes aren’t completely clouded over, as if we are on the edge of another trance.

She focuses through the fog and for the briefest moment, she is completely back.  “Get me out of here.  I can’t be in Lower Manhattan.”  The words shake with her fear.  Her body convulses again as it fights the wretched trance threatening to sweep her away from me.  Something about this instance, though, is much worse than all the rest.  I’m afraid it may actually kill her.

There aren’t many options.  I don’t want to leave her, and I can’t leave the car.  She can’t be in Lower Manhattan, but getting her out requires taking her deeper into it first.  It pains me to take the only move I have.  The vendor returns and I waste no time before ordering him to stay with her.  I race to the charger, flip on the lights, and quickly maneuver through traffic to get turned back towards uptown.  By the time I get back to Em, I was gone about fifteen minutes but it was the longest fifteen minutes of my life.

The vendor is still by her side and from the number of bottles on the ground it looks like he was very generous to her.  “You should probably get this one to a hospital, officer,” he comments with sincere concern.

“Thank you, sir.  I’ll take care of her from here.”  The vendor walks back to his cart as I turn back to Em.  The convulsions have stopped but she is soaking wet.  I kneel before her and cup her face to bring her eyes to mine.  There are hints of that damned fog in them, but it hasn’t taken her over yet.  “Em, I’m here.  The car’s at the corner and I’m going to get you out of here.  Can you walk?”  She shakes her head, and I don’t hesitate to scoop her up into my arms.

The further we get from Lower Manhattan, the calmer she becomes.  Never thinking I would consider it normal, but she is back to being the whimpering, shivering, on the verge of tears mess she was before.  The sight brings me great relief, as horrible as that is to think.  At least now, I’m not as concerned about her losing her life.  This time, though, she clings to my hand the entire time we are in the car, constantly running my fingers between hers.

Not knowing where she lives and unsure how she would feel about me taking her to my place, I drive us back to Central Park.  I walk her back to the only section of the park I have any confidence of being safe, where we met this morning.  She is unsteady on her legs and relies heavily on me for balance.  After getting her settled in the grass, I sit down beside her, and she immediately curls into my side and begins sobbing.  My arms wrap around her back on instinct and pull her closer.

Empathy Delacroix: Being an Empath

Even though you know it happened, it didn’t happen to you.  It’s the equivalent of a nightmare.  You have to let it go.  It’s your own fault.  You should’ve paid attention to where we were going.  There was no way he could have known you can’t be there.
  I continue to talk myself off the ledge of insanity while the images and sensations struggle to sweep me away.

Thank God for Richard.  He has no idea what transpired but just holds me, speaking tenderly and reminding me I’m not alone.  His hand combs through my hair and periodically cleans up my face.  The sound of children laughing slowly offsets the screams of terror I barely escaped.

It takes me awhile to pull myself together even after crying my final tear.  I feel safe in his arms and can pretend he is my boyfriend.  The thought sends a rushing warmth through my body, erasing the deadly cold I experienced most of the day.  The plan was to subject myself to more than three of his cases, but our detour derailed any remaining stamina I had to endure the visions.

“Em?” his apprehensive voice pierces my thoughts.  It is time to discuss what happened during the afternoon. I take a deep breath and look up into his face.  Anxiety is the primary feature I find.  His eyes search mine as if afraid I will be stolen away from reality at any moment.  “Can you tell me what that was all about?  What it
all
was about?”

I feel strong enough to face this part of our venture without his physical support and make to extricate myself from him.  His arms tense as they lock me in place.  I’m too tired to wrestle against him and relax back into his embrace.  “I don’t know how best to explain.  There are times when I am sucked into a living memory.  Sometimes they’re good, most times they’re not.”

“Are you a medium or psychic?” Richard asks quite calmly.

I tilt my head back to gaze at him in amazement.  He doesn’t seem disturbed at all.  Smiling, he nudges my nose with his.  “There’s a lot in this world I don’t understand; most of it I have to investigate.  In my job, we’ve come across a few people who have been able to help us from time to time on cases.  Although, never have I seen what you seem to go through.  Why didn’t you just say that’s what you are?”

The urge to kiss him is overwhelming.  He so simply puts all my fears to rest.  Resisting it, as difficult as it is, I pull my face back to rest on his chest.  “I don’t think of myself like that.  I don’t commune with the dead, and I don’t see the future.  The only haunting I experience is due to the memory of what I’ve endured.”

“How do you think of yourself then?”

“Are you familiar with the term empath?”  Richard nods against my head.  “I’m sensitive to spaces instead of people.  They share their memories with me, but only the ones born of intense emotions thus making an imprint on the scenery.  I know it sounds like nonsense …”

“It does; but after what I just witnessed, Em, I’m willing to go on a little faith.”  His “faith” eases some of my tension and I’m grateful for his assurance. I slip my arms around his waist and hug him.  He plants a gentle kiss in my hair in return.  “You want to tell me about that last one?  You said you couldn’t be in Lower Manhattan.  Does that mean ever?”

The memories immediately pile on so thickly that I feel suffocated by them, and I can’t help but to cringe.  “Truthfully, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to set foot there.  The space is too raw.  All these years later, the wound is still fresh.”

“Jesus!” Richard exclaims.  “I should have realized.  The Twin Towers.”  He sounds pained and remorseful as if it was his fault.

His sincerity touches me, and I squeeze him even tighter.  “How were you to know?”  There is no way he could and given his reaction I can’t bring myself to share that going there is like drowning in a sea of sorrow.  There are too many images battling to share their story with me.  It is too much, and that’s what makes me nauseous.  It’s never just one experience I suffer, but hundreds all at once.  “I was the one who insisted on illustrating my point multiple times.  Had I listened to you after the first one we would never have been down there.  But my own parents didn’t believe me…”

“What do you mean, didn’t believe you?”  The question brings Richard’s hands to my shoulders and he pushes me off his chest so our eyes meet.  “How long have you been going through this alone?”

I shrug and drop my eyes. “For as long as I can remember.  My father was obsessed with military history.  Over the years, we visited all the great battle sites: Gettysburg, Custards Last Stand, The Alamo.  At each location, a story would unfold in front of my eyes.  I told my parents what I saw, and they would pat my head, calling it an over-active imagination.  When it morphed from just seeing to feeling, I was old enough to know they wouldn’t understand.  So I never told them.”

His voice is tight when Richard says my name, drawing my eyes from the ground, where they were glued, to his.  “I’m sorry they weren’t there for you but you don’t have to go through this alone anymore.  If you’ll let me, I’d like to be the one you depend on now.”

I know he means to be kind, but his words hurt.  “My parents didn’t fail me,” I say tartly.  “They couldn’t comprehend what I was going through.  How could they?  I don’t fault them for it.”

“That’s not what I meant to imply,” he apologizes.  “Please, forgive my poor choice in wording.”  Now I’m the one being clung too.  All we are is a web of misunderstanding that continues to end disastrously when left unchecked.

I let go of my anger and chastise myself.  I am just as guilty of jumping to conclusions as he is, and it stems from the fact that we truly know nothing of the other.  Our relationship came on swiftly out of nowhere, blindsiding us both.  We got ahead of ourselves, thinking we were ready for something we obviously weren’t.  I remove his hands from my shoulders and take them in my own.  “No, Richard, please forgive me.  It’s been a long afternoon, and I wasn’t fully prepared for all I ended up living through.”

I can’t tell if it’s fear or hope that drives him, but he steals my intentions from me.  “Let’s drop it.  We’re both guilty of making assumptions about the other.  This is going to sound ridiculous.  I want you but I don’t want what I think we have to be snuffed out because we rushed it.”  Heat courses through my body, almost erasing the pains from the day.  “I don’t know if either of us is ready for whatever this is,
now
.  Currently, I’d like to be your friend.  One you can call day or night.  One you can confide in, turn to, and trust with anything.  So if the option is available to you, when you go through this, what do you think you need from
your friend
?”

A great sense of indebtedness washes over me.  He so delicately said what I couldn’t find the words for.  I stand, smile, and pull him to his feet.  “Dinner.”

Richard Giordano: Harry Cipriani

We sit across from each other in my favorite restaurant, Harry Cipriani. I can’t believe the events of the day.  I woke up this morning in despair, lost without Em.  Now, while we aren’t exactly where I want to be romantically, she is at least no longer avoiding me.  The tragedies of the day demand that I be someone she can depend on.

I deliberately avoid the subject of her visions.  Though there isn’t visual evidence of it, there are signs of the major traumas she had suffered.  Her posture is broken and her eyes are dull; her breathing is controlled and measured.  We spend the meal talking about the upcoming opening night of her show.

She asks for another glass of wine when the waiter picks up our dinner plates, so she isn’t in a hurry to escape my company.  She surprises me by bringing the visions up herself.  “How come you haven’t asked the obvious question yet,
detective
?”  There is a teasing tenor to her tone, letting me know we haven’t moved backward.  A smile rests on her lips, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

I take a risk and reach a hand out across the table.  “It’s been a trying day.  There’s no need to discuss that as well.”

Her fingers graze over mine when she takes my hand, sending my pulse racing.  The emotions are so strong I almost confess my feelings for her.  “Ask it, Richard.”

My hand closes around hers, and my thumb runs across the back of her hand.  In response, she takes a deep breath, smiles, and settles into an ease that hasn’t been there at all today.  “Did you have a vision of Annie, Em?”

The waiter deposits her wine at the table, and she takes a sip before confessing to her vision.  “I did -
before
the event occurred.”  The statement hangs in the air like a lead balloon. 
Before
?  It makes no sense.  Everything she told me today centered on the past, memories of the past.  She said she isn’t psychic.  “I can’t explain it either.  It’s the first time that has ever happened which is why I didn’t apprehend it was Annie.  In the body of the victim, the other parties are just nondescript figures.  One moment I was watching the choreography, the next a black shadow has its hands clenched around my throat.  It happened fast, and came out of nowhere.”

“It’s why you took the break.” I assume that is the elusive reason why she deviated from her typical schedule. “You needed to recover.”  She nods.  “What did you see in the interrogation room?”

She sighs and closes her eyes.  “An awful confession from a mother …”

“No need to continue,” I cut her off.  That case sucked.  She flashes me a grateful smile.  I stare at her then remember the other fog she had in my company, one I don’t think is a bad vision.  “Your office then?”