Gone After the Wind

Chapter 8: Fuel

THE THREE-STORY apartment building was nowhere near identical to the first time Cara had seen it two months ago. From being neat and well-constructed, it ridiculously transformed into a filthy one. The outside walls painted with white had been smudged with thick moss, and there were pronounced cracks on the side, making it hard for anyone to determine if it was still inhabitable for humans. Its dark and neglected appearance fitted the characteristics of a possible haunted house. Add that up to the dense woodland behind it, any travelers would definitely cross it off from their list.

Despite its derelict state, the owner still has the fortitude to let the 'open' sign remain at the front entrance, giving away further confusion to the people who might come across this lonely road.

When she arrived there, the parking lot was empty, and there are no discernible signs that it had customers before she had made it. She could occupy the ample space all by herself, but her hatred to become comfortable with the place where the killer mercilessly dropped Marco's body had influenced the decision. She chose to park on the sidewalk instead, parallel to the front part of the apartment building, where she gained the perfect spot to study the surroundings without being seen as a suspicious individual.

In contrast to the hastiness she showed earlier while on the road, she didn't go out immediately. She remained sitting idly on the driver's seat, watching and figuring whether her decision to come here was right and would bring her the outcome she was anticipating. To revisit the place where the worst event of her life had taken place, it was genuinely impulsive and plain stupid. She didn't even thoroughly put a thought on the pros and cons of it before she made the decision. And now she's stuck. She couldn't make up her mind because the fear of traveling back to the dark days was embracing her slowly.

'You've got to stand against it,' she thought, berating herself for having such unforgivable fear in her system. 'You already recognized the importance of this visit. It's just a test, why do you have to be this coward?'

Sighing heavily, she shut her eyes and tapped her forehead for a couple of times using her forefinger. Then without having a clear resolution, she finally unlocked the car, pushed the door open, and swept outside. As she did, the southern wind attacked her violently, causing her auburn hair to sway and flip into her face. She recollected it, and with the use of her rubber hair tie, she began fixing it. She walked across the road with extreme caution to her surroundings. Even if the neighborhood tailing this road was a bit isolated, and visitors are rare, she could never tell when a car would pass.

As she got near the building, her heart began to hammer inside her chest. The fear heightened, and her muscles tightened with each step she made. She couldn't control the surge of the memories, and with one blink after she felt the concrete ground against the sole of her boots, the images of that night inexplicably played inside her mind.

She had to shake her head not to let it control her fully. Her hands balled into a fist, and with slow and ragged breathing, she forced herself to calm down.

The reception desk was empty when she got a peek inside the glass double doors of the building. She looked up to the left corner and noticed the security cameras conspicuously glaring back at her. It was an old model, Cara wondered if those actually work. She continued walking as though she wasn't aware of the surveillance. She ambled past the corner, her eyes scanning the series of empty windows up ahead. She shuddered at the way it gazed down upon her. It was like a pair of eyes leering who happened to be passing by. Tall, slender trees and grass enclosed the backside of the apartment, and at some distance, bunches of used car parts and tires were slumped into one place.

Once she spotted the large garbage bin slouching on the wall and dotted with garbage bags, she stopped her tracks. She felt the lump in her throat going larger as she walked closer to the spot where Marco had been disposed horribly. Two months had passed, and yet the vivid image of his pale and bloody body felt like she had seen it just yesterday. Each fiber of remorse, depression, and rage with its overpowering intensity all punctured back to her like an old friend pulling her back for an embrace.

The memories of that night flooded again. And this time, it was uncontrollable and robust. It was too vivid that Cara almost thought she was placed back at that time, that very exact moment when she literally felt her world crumble down.

She remembered it clearly like the back of her hand. Cara was in the middle of the ongoing investigation of Nelia Rasco's murder when she discovered Marco hadn't been home for two days, a trait that anyone never saw in Marco. Incapable of delaying the investigation, Cara shrugged it off, thinking that he fled for another business conference to a nearby state and had just forgotten to alert her. When his absence and silence extended for three days, that's when Cara smelled something was off. But the pressure of the then murder case had absorbed her too much; she never made any attempt to search for him, letting the missing person's unit handle the force to locate her husband.

She never thought she would find him in the state she feared the most.

It was five days after Marco went missing. She received a troubling call that another body was found. Cara wasn't the first one who responded to the scene, for she was monitoring the activities of Nelia Rasco's husband at that time, that's why she had no single idea who the victim was. She recalled how torn she was when that news came to her, not knowing that it was her husband whom she neglected of searching days ago.

It had only been weeks since Nelia Rasco was murdered, yet another victim had shown up. Hearing that an innocent life had been stolen behind their backs was shameful and insulting, not only for Cara and Eric, who led the investigation but all the forces of Albreska PD. But their guilt was soon replaced by terror and shock when they confirmed the victim's identification, and the person who was pursuing the killer and assuring the victim's families had become the widowed one herself.

Cara would never forget how heartbreaking it was to see Marco lying in there, his eyes had no life and his body bearing apparent signs of torture from his assailant. On top of that, he was killed in the same manner as Nelia Rasco. Cara couldn't understand how that happened. Was it an act of revenge by the killer? Or a form of an insult to indicate that he's invisible and nobody could ever hold him responsible for the atrocities?

No matter how Cara became convinced that both murders were done by the same man, Eric and the other sane detectives believed otherwise. They insisted that Marco's killer was a different man due to the physical evidence they found that didn't match the ones they saw at Nelia Rasco's murder. From the way the cuts had been made up to the type of nylon present in both of the ropes that had been used in the victim's bodies, all of it came out as inconsistent. They do not have enough materials to call it a serial, so Chief Alman and the rest of the homicide unit immediately ruled it out as a duplicated crime from Rasco's case, illustrated by a trying-hard man who sees killing as a way to get up to fame. The killer targeted Marco out of convenience, as they said.

Cara stood her ground, though, and with all the efforts she could do, she tried to disprove their conclusion to the case. She refused to consider it and launched an investigation for herself. Eric did his best to stop her, but Cara shut down all his attempts to get in her way. Their opposing side had created a rift between them. And for the first time since their friendship clicked, Cara found herself loathing him with a different kind of severity that she had almost ended their relationship.

She just couldn't comprehend why all of them had never listened to her. The timestamp between the days they disappeared and were found was identical. Not only that, but the slit on the throat, the stitches that the perp practically placed to join several body parts, and the sack were both existing in the crime scenes. How could she doubt that the same man didn't pull them off? Sure, Marco's murder had been more violent and nasty, but the set-up and all of the factors circling it were not too different from what occurred in Nelia Rasco.

The only thing that could be scrutinized as contrasting was the small yellow dandelion that they found inside Marco's mouth. Whether the killer purposely put it there or it was only circumstantial, Cara believed that it was worth looking at and not should be used as a shred of evidence to separate the two cases. But unfortunately, no one treated that flower as essential. And her request to have it examined had been brushed off by the police, saying it wasn't enough to link Marco's murder to Nelia Rasco's case.

Then, as a result of her hard-headedness and desperation to point the crime to someone, she committed the appalling mistake she had ever done in her entire career, one particular act that the higher-ups had always advised them to avoid. Assaulting a random man was one thing but arresting him for the murder of two people was another. Mainly if he had no clear involvement in both crimes and there was no concrete evidence he had actually done it. But Cara overlooked those facts and continued pointing the finger at that man. Her senses were only knocked out when Chief Alman took the matter in his hands and, well, gave her the justifiable punishment for that.

She had already regretted that. Took some time to reflect on it, and luckily, she succeeded. Lessons were learned, and she finally saw some reasons. She accepted the fact that a drifter killed Marco, and nothing could be done anymore to corroborate that. Except for her strong instinct that it was indeed connected to Nelia Rasco's murder. That idea never left her, always refusing to go away, and has been too persistent to be acknowledged.

That was the reason why she's here. She wanted to know whether she was now ready to face the horror that haunted her for months or she still needed some time to get over the trauma. Because she knew that to reach the closure she craved, she must deal with the one that started it all. She must claim justice for Nelia Rasco and the recent victim first before she could close the door of her past. And to finally extinguish the thing that had been bugging her for so long.

As she stood there for much longer, she could feel the walls of her heart clenching in together. Each beat screamed with pain and anguish. And the fire to take revenge and to bring the justice had relived in her system, and out of a sudden, she felt stupid. Not just for being a coward yesterday but for letting fear dominate her determination to pursue the killer and put an end to this two-month-long nightmare.

And there was it, the go-signal she had been searching for, the switch in her system that had been put away for weeks.

God, what am I doing? It's been two f*****g months. I can't stay like this forever. I need to go back. This is getting ridiculous.

Closing her eyes tightly, she heaved a deep sigh and studied herself. All the questions, doubts lingering inside her head are now gone, replaced by her voices, advising her to go back and claim the justice that was already overdue. Yes, the pain is still alive, and Cara can't change that. However, what she can change is their future—her outcome on her own story and Alex's chance to live a normal life again.

I need to find that motherfucker, and I won't succeed if I let myself be stuck and hopeless like I am now. You're Cara Black, sulking had never been part of your vocabulary.

When she opened her eyes, she could feel her body refreshed and her mind fully activated. Nothing could change that now. Not Eloisa, not the haunting memories of the past, and not even the fear that had taken her sanity for too long. She would go back, and no matter what could be the cost this time, she will never let Alex be part of it.

She walked away from the garbage area and strode towards her car, the ardor to be out on the field conquering her system as the hunger for revenge spread widely in her. Then, without warning, her mother's voice, as well as Marco's from her nightmare, echoed on her ears.

"There's nothing you can do. We're all gone. You can't save us anymore..."

"It's all over. Nothing could be done to bring me back. I'm dead, and you can't change anything. Stop trying anymore, Cara..."

No, I can still change everything. And I'll prove it all to you, she thought, and drove away from the apartment, shrugging off the eerie feeling that she was being watched and focused on hoping that she would arrive at the station of Albreska PD anytime soon.