Taint Me More ☑️

Chapter Twenty Seven

I couldn't will myself to move from the ledge. Still wide eyed and probably in shock, I stared down at Victoria's unmoving body from up. My tears dropping uncontrollably. I was now sobbing hard. I didn't care that the bricks of the ledge was pressing painfully into my stomach. I was now at an awkward angle, and I had to will myself to look away from her.

The distant sound of her body hitting the ground was louder than any other thing I could hear. There was no way she could have survived that fall.

I finally moved away from the ledge and turned around, expecting to find Mr Carter, but he was nowhere in sight.

From a distant, the sound of cop cars approached and I just crouched down. I didn't know for how long I just sat there unmoving. It could've been a few minutes, or maybe a few hours. I sat there and didn't even realize I had company. It was a paramedic.

"Miss?" He called to get my attention, and I slowly looked up at him. "Miss, are you alright?"

I could barely manage a head shake. I still hadn't been able to control my breathing.

"Madam, is this yours?" He asked as he picked up my phone from the floor.

I nodded. Or thought that I did.

He came up to me and started to examine me. "I think she's in shock." He said, speaking to someone over his shoulder.

I couldn't feel my skin, I was too cold to feel anything, I could feel my fast breathing though, and the dizziness.

It wasn't long after the paramedic had covered me with a blanket and asked me basic questions, like what my name was and who Victoria was to me.
They made sure I was no longer in shock before they took me back downstairs and told me Victoria didn't make it.

Of course she didn't.

A cop started to ask me questions, they knew I placed the call and they probably heard everything from when I was calling out to Victoria to try to save her.

When I was finally able to form coherent words, I explained the fall. My mind quickly went to Mr Carter.

"He was here, he was here. He had a gun." I reported.

"Who was here?" The cop asked confused.

"Carter. Ronald Carter." I replied. "He had a gun and he pushed her to her death." I had started to cry again as I replayed every detail as well as I could.

"Do you mean this Ronald Carter?" The cop asked, pointing to his side.

Right there on the pavement was another cop questioning Mr Carter. I hadn't realized he was here all along.

"... the girl was crazy. She came to threaten me with her pregnancy after she called Ms Vitale here. This is my building, Victoria knew I would be here because of the reconstruction work, so she found me here and caused a squabble." He explained.

As I watched and listened to him spit out a bunch of lie, I realized I hadn't put much thought into what people are capable of.

"And the gun?" The cop asked him.

"You mean this gun." He pulled out the gun from his jacket, "it's registered under my name, a man can't go around this city without protection, besides, it's not even loaded. I used it to scare her off." He lied.

"It's not loaded." One of the cops took the gun and confirmed.

The cops were quiet for a few seconds, looking back and forth from me and Ronald.

Finally, "I'm gonna have to ask you both to come with us to the station for an official statement. It won't take much time."

Minutes went by and turned into an hour on getting to the police station. We went over the story again and I was so upset that they were eating up Ronalds lies. That man was a sociopath. Victoria was now dead because of him and there was no other way to prove it.

He claimed to have fled the rooftop and gone down while Victoria was still hanging on to the pole to get help after she had refused the help I offered. So to the cops, it was a case of a voluntary death. They played the recording of the emergency call I placed and came to the conclusion that Vicky was suicidal, according to past reports on her attempts.

Turns out she had a medical record of overdosing on pills and self harm.

***
*

"Well, the police department really don't have much to investigate on." Adrian explained, coming to sit on the kitchen stool beside me.

"How so?" Gabby asked, voicing out the question I was about to ask. She poured me a glass of orange juice.

I ran into Adrian at the police station and he offered me a ride home. So I replayed the whole event from earlier to him and Gabby. Now Adrian was shedding some light on how the police would work on a case like this.

"First, they don't know what happened on or before your arrival to the scene, anything that happened before you placed that call stands as a case of your word against Ronald's." He explained.

"That bastard." Gabby hissed and sipped the orange juice she poured for me. "I knew he couldn't be trusted."

"So," Adrian continued, "both of your stories do add up, if you think of it that way. I obviously know you're not lying, but what you have is not strong enough to hold Ronald on a tough spot, because the victim is dead and was suicidal."

"But what about the bruises on her body before she died?" I asked him.

"Well, it's very possible that Ronald would deny any thing that links him to the girl's past, apart from being her boss. He did agree that they had an affair while she still worked for him, I mean, two young and unmarried people. Which explains the pregnancy, but that doesn't clear Victoria's name of being 'obsessive' as he had reported. Any woman would become hysterical if the man responsible for her pregnancy denies it to her face. He could lie that he was in doubt and didn't believe the pregnancy was his." He shrugged, "Ronald Carter is a very powerful man and can obviously find his way around a case as small as this, no matter how much the evidence points to him."

"Oh God. The system sucks." I rubbed my eyes and tried not to think of what I faced in Portland, with my mom sweeping things under the rug because of her position and because the system was bad enough to be tweaked to your favour, as long as you had strong alibis.

"I'll just tell you one thing, Aria." Adrian offered, "be careful of that man, Carter. It has been rumoured that he is into some dirty business, though there isn't any tangible evidence to prove his involvement and alliance with a lot of powerful men around the world, but because it goes far beyond this city and country, even the NYPD can't exactly conclude on anything. We're talking about CIA operation because of the speculated overseas involvement."

What he said peaked our curiosity. Gabby and I shared a knowing look.

"What could be so deep that the NYPD would consider to be beyond them?" Gabby asked.

"Like I said, it's just rumors and speculations, so I can't say for sure." Adrian shrugged.