Epilogue

backstory 6. the fourth lady killed

Zalia stood by the doorway, waiting. Waiting for the culprit to burst through, trying to escape from the grasp of justice. For Sorin to walk out, with a prideful smirk on his lips and playfully arrogant words to roll off his tongue. For any sign of movement or sound; the wait was driving her insane.

The air was just the right mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and tension for her fears to plague her mind with dark thoughts and painful doubts. She felt like she was trapped in a movie theater inside her own head, handcuffed to a red velvet seat and being forced to watch as montages of the worst case scenarios flashed by in 4D.

Finally, the door swung open.

"He got away," Sorin informed her curtly, his jaw clenched and his hands curled into tight fists. "Through the fucking window."

"How are Cassandra and Violet?" Zalia asked worriedly, though she could already feel that something was wrong.

Sorin merely grimaced, stepping aside to let her in.

Zalia rushed inside, a black hole of fear gnawing in her stomach as all the possibilities rushed by in her mind. But nothing could prepare her for what was actually in the room.

Cassandra was lying on her back on top of the living room table, but her body wasn't like the rest of the other Lady Killer victims. It seemed as if the killer didn't have enough time to steal her heart as Cassandra's sternum was sawed, but the organ was still sitting in the cavity of her chest, unmoving. Wine red blood blossomed from the open wound and dripped all over the hotel room's carpets, creating a scene Zalia only thought she would see in horror movies.

Zalia could only put a hand over her gaping mouth and gasp in terror.

"Where the hell is Violet?" She demanded, turning to Sorin with frantic, pleading eyes.

"She's in the bathroom," he whispered absentmindedly, eyes still latched upon Cassandra's corpse.

Zalia's head was spinning like the tornado in the Wizard of Oz, sucking all logic and reason into the center and mixing it with all of her worst fears and apprehensions. She could only wish she had a pair of red slippers to click the heels of thrice so she could snap out of this nightmare.

But when she burst through the bathroom door, she could only sigh in relief when there wasn't a drop of red in sight.

"Violet," Zalia cried out, wrapping her arms around the girl.

Even though she was alive, Violet seemed just as corpse-like as Cassandra; the blood was drained from her face, her eyes permanently widened in fright, and she was rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her knees.

"I saw him kill her," Violet whispered, a single tear slipping down her deathly pale cheek.
Zalia's features hardened, suddenly realizing that she wasn't the one who should be crying; Violet was the one who was nearly a victim, and Zalia needed to be her rock, her anchor, her shoulder to lean on during this time.

"We're going to catch him, okay?" Zalia reassured her, her jaw clenched. "And we're going to put him behind bars for all of his fucking lifetime."

☄︎. *. ⋆
⋆·˚ ༘ * 🔭

Sorin watched Zalia carefully as she worked on the crime scene, snapping pictures of anything that could be counted as evidence. Ever since she exited the bathroom, she'd been emotionless, focused entirely upon doing her job as a forensic pathologist. Even her partners (who Sorin learned was named Gertrude and Dean) glanced worriedly at her; when they told her she could go home and get some rest since this case was starting to get a bit personal, she dismissed their concerns and kept working diligently.