Foretold

#11

Cole drove me to the police station. We talked on the way. "You sure you can work?" He asked.
"Yeah, Cole. Relax." I said.
"Who was the guy who was talking to you earlier? I saw him. The blond one." He asked.
"Oh, him." I smiled, "He's Josh. We have a date later."

"Oh cool. Now that we're talking of dates, I was thinking I'll finally tell her soon." Cole smiled.
"The mystery girl?" I grinned.
"Yeah. The mystery girl." Cole smiled.
"Cool." I said.
We reached the police station and we got down. I went inside to see everyone in a hurry. I walked down to Hitesh's table, to find him stuffing his revolver under his belt.

"Hitesh?" I said. He turned around and looked surprised to see me. He hugged me and said, "Kaitlyn. Glad to have you back."
"I'm glad to be back too, Hitesh... But what's going on in here?" I asked.
"There's been a murder." He answered. I stared at him. He continued, "See the captain."

I walked into Ivanowski's office. He smiled at me and said, "Welcome back, Miss Wilson."
"Thank you, sir. You wanted to see me?" I said.
"Ah, yes. Just to say that you can withdraw from this case if you want to. Considering what happened down at the victim's house..." He said. I interrupted and said, "No, sir. I'll be fine. I want to work on this case."

"If you say so." He smiled, "Hurry up then, join Hitesh and the team. You've got work to do."
I saluted him and walked out. I wasn't in my cop clothes, I just took my gun and joined Hitesh in the car.
"Where has this happened?" I asked.
"On the river bank." He replied.
"Where's Caroline?" I asked.
"I don't know. Marcus will be joining us soon. He said he'll bring her." He said.

Marcus

She sits in the car and I turn the ignition on.
"Oh, Mark, am I too late?" She asks. I sigh. I tell her, "There's been a murder. At the river bank."
"Oh, god. Just like in the drawing." She said.
"This doesn't make sense. What did he draw?" I ask.
"A dead body. A pale face, blond hair. Brown eyes, pretty girl I'll say." Her tone changes, "Her throat is slit, her eyes staring aimlessly into space."
Caroline looks petrified, her eyes fixed on the road. I choose not to say anything. I drive to the river bank. We spot cops covering an area.

Caroline is dressed in a navy blue jeans and a white sweater. She's terrified, I can see it on her face. I've known Carly for long, too long. She works too hard, I see the dark circles under her glowing chocolaty skin.

After Sienna died and Brian lost sanity, I've not seen Carly happy again. She smiles when I'm around, she laughs when someone cracks a joke. But she's not her carefree self, she's not so happy. Things were the worst for the first year after Sienna's death.

She'd have sudden breakdowns, she'd break things. I'd find her at random bars, drunk out of sense. She'd pass out because of morphine overdose, once it took her to coma for a week. After that, she kept forgetting things, forgetting important dates and meetings, sometimes even the new people she met.

Then I got her Jim. Jim is a good dog, he takes care of her. After she got Jim, she slowly started getting better. I started staying over more, cooking her food, making sure she took her medicines on time, tucking her in bed. And I thank god, she got better. She joined the force again, started working like the brilliant detective she is.

Then she had to start counseling Brian. Everybody just cared about him, about how he needed a good counselor. Nobody cared about what they were making Caroline go through. She's stood strong till now, not faltered once. But seeing that look on her face, seeing her terrified, now I'm afraid. I'm afraid of what all of this will do to her. I'm afraid that she'll go back to craziness.

We reached the river bank, and saw cops crowding over a particular area. We got out of the car, I put on my gloves to go ahead to inspect the body, but saw Kaitlyn talking to a man in his mid-forties and stopped. She turned to me and smiled. I hugged her and said, "So glad to have you back, Kaitlyn."

"Oh, I'm glad to be back. Where's Caroline?" She asked.
"She's right there." I pointed to Caroline and Kaitlyn walked to Caroline, who was just moving around the crime scene aimlessly. From the look of it, I'll say they exchanged some pleasantries, after which they followed me to the body.

I knelt down and started checking the body. The throat was slit, and she did have blond hair and brown eyes. Just like Caroline described. She was very pretty, and her choice of clothes said that she was from a posh neighborhood. I did not find anything on her body except a mobile phone in her back pocket, which I put in a plastic bag and gave in as evidence. The cut was fresh, it hadn't been too long since she'd been killed.

"You know, it's funny. I feel like I've seen her before. I just don't know where." Kaitlyn said, shocking me. I turned to look at her and so did Caroline. Did she know? Had she seen Brian's drawings? No, she couldn't, she was rarely at the asylum... Unless Cole told her. They were best friends. Thoughts started escalating in my mind, and they reached to the point when I thought that Kaitlyn thought Caroline is the murderer, when she broke my chain of thoughts.

"I talked to the man who found her. You see the man there? He's Kevin Adams. He's 43, an architect. His house is right there after taking a turn if we go up those stairs. He takes walks along the river every morning, today he found her..." Kaitlyn started explaining and abruptly came to halt before saying, "Oh, my god. It's her. It's Liliana Shaw, the actress."

I turned to look at the actress and realized why she looked so familiar. It wasn't just because Caroline had described her to me. It was because she was a Netflix star. That made sense of how Kaitlyn thought she'd seen her.

She looked so different in real life, even though pretty, almost unrecognizable. Maybe because her face is mostly caked with make up. I suddenly had a doubt, following a realization when I turned the body over slowly.
"We have a serial killer on hand." I declared, pointing to the ':)' carved on the back of her neck, looking at us, mocking us, saying the killer succeeded again. So, it was a signature, like Caroline had said.