"Death Of A Princess" Chapter 3 (Part I)

Chapter 3

 

 

Kayleen retrieved the liquor and a glass from the cabinet and then poured herself another walloping shot.  She downed it quickly, ignoring the all-too-familiar burn at the back of her throat, the watery sting at the corners of her eyes.

‘Screw him,’ she thought to herself as she lit up another cigarette and silently fumed.  Caleb was still bruised over the fact that she’d left right after graduation from high school – running far away to D.C., leaving her pathetic existence here behind, and finally making something out of her life, once and for all.  At least that had been the plan when she’d headed out on the bus alone that dark, rainy morning more than a decade ago.

Yet if Caleb only knew what a mess it had eventually become, how it had so irretrievably gone to hell for her there in the end, then he probably wouldn’t be perched quite so high up on his tall, wounded horse right now after all; blaming her for escaping, blaming her for leaving, and mostly, just blaming her for how she had so carelessly broken his heart.  She was responsible for most of that carnage, sure.  But the balance of the damage that she’d done in this lifetime actually had nothing to do with Caleb at all.

In the twenty-eight years she’d been here on this earth, she’d been in love only two times.  The first boy, she’d simply thrown away; discarded him like a piece of trash although he had meant the world to her then.  The second one, though, now that one was much, much worse.  Because with him, she’d not only taken his heart, but she’d taken his life as well.

Even though she had not been directly responsible for what had happened to Jody that night, the resulting and insurmountable burden of guilt was still hers and hers alone to bear.  And it always would be.  That stigma would follow her wherever she went, for all the rest of her days.  She was a marked woman, the scarlet letter ‘M’ for ‘murderess’ invisibly emblazoned eternally across her left breast; that same exact area, in fact, where Estes had definitively engraved her, gouging deep into her skin so as to create his permanent and sickeningly-unmistakable signature.

He had said he’d done it so that she could never possibly forget who it was that she belonged to.  Not that there was ever any chance in the world as to that.  Kayleen knew exactly who and what it was that owned her:  a monster, a killer, a demon.  A man without a soul.

Which was why, of course, that Caleb - of all the people in this world - could not ever be allowed to get close to her again.  She simply could not stand to lose him, too.  They may not be in love anymore, but he held a place in her heart that even Jody, her sweet, sweet Jody, had never managed to touch.

With that last thought, Kayleen heaved out a strangled sigh, and then she wiped her nose on her sleeve like a little girl.  As she leaned over to set her empty shot glass back on the coffee table, she looked down and noticed a trail of drops splatting against the thigh of her fraying jeans.  Stunned, she reached up with the heel of her hand and brushed away a thin coating of tears from each of her cheeks.  Was she actually crying?  She hadn’t even realized it.  Apparently she hadn’t used up the last of her tears, after all.

Kayleen had been forcing herself to simply be numb inside for nearly an entire month now.  Back when she’d been recovering in the hospital and still freshly mourning Jody’s death, the agony of acknowledging her pain had practically ripped her guts out with the dawn of each new day.  Every single morning that she’d awoken and allowed herself to feel the full-blown agony of it, had become the forerunner to another long and sleepless night where she’d contemplated the depraved depths of a possible suicide.

What Caleb didn’t know was that besides her great-great grandfather Astin, three more of her relatively-close ancestors had also eventually followed suit.  By now, it was practically a family tradition.

Back in the beginning, when she was quite literally drowning, the shrinks had said to let it out, of course; to “grieve Jody’s death so that she could move forward”.  That the only way she’d ever be mentally healthy again was to face it, “head on”.  But when it had finally gotten to the point where she’d put her own service weapon into her mouth and had gently squeezed the trigger, she’d come to the abrupt and unavoidable realization that something had to give.  That was the day when she’d decided that the only way to deal with her grief, shame, and remorse, was to bury every last one of her feelings deep, deep inside.

So, she’d dried the end of the barrel off on her comforter, and then carefully and gently put the gun back into her nightstand drawer.  Less than six seconds later and she’d been kneeling atop the kitchen counter, reaching into the far back of the highest shelf where she kept the vodka.

The Stoli’ bottle had sported heavy circles of dust, wound ‘round and ‘round the neck in tiny rings.  The last time she’d even seen it before that day, had been the night that she’d first slept with Jody.  After last year’s St. Paddy’s Day celebration, when he had left their unit’s chummy, gaily-bedecked, gaudy, gold and green-themed party so as to drive her home because she’d partaken of one too many ‘Irish’ beers.

Their long and brutal winter had still been valiantly clinging on, and so he’d blasted his heater the entire drive, trying to warm their frozen fingers.  Yet deep inside her, Kayleen had somehow sensed what was coming.  As a result, her face had been tingly-tight and scorching-hot, despite the frigid outside temperature, and the densely-falling fresh snow.

When they’d gotten there, he had walked her all the way upstairs and down the carpeted, indoor corridor to the entrance of her private, quiet little apartment, ostensibly to make sure that she made it inside safely.  But then he’d asked rather nervously if he could come in just to chat, and maybe even have, perhaps, “a small one for the road”.  One thing had been patently clear; by then, both of them had already known damn-well what he’d truly intended.

Initially, he had accepted only a token beer.  Maintaining, for a little while at least, the charade that he would soon be driving himself home.  But considering the immense pressure they’d been under for so damned long at work, not to mention their growing and undeniable attraction; it hadn’t been long before she’d broken out the still-sealed bottle of Stolichnaya.  Both to squelch their stress and anxieties and lower their nervous inhibitions.

Four shots later for him, two for her, and they’d been tearing frantically into each other on her living room floor.  Shedding clothes as if they were on fire, and making love so ravenously that by the end of the night, both of them had drawn blood.  That had been the exact moment when their personal relationship had started:  five months to the day after they’d first been pulled into the doomed investigation that would ultimately cost Jody his life.

On the previous October 17^th, they’d been assigned a case with only two known victims.  Not even yet termed a serial offender at the time, the killer’s crimes had still been so violent, so vicious, so bewilderingly brutal, that the local jurisdiction had already asked them to step-in and lend a hand.

She’d been with the FBI for six years, the last four of which she’d spent as a profiler, by the time she’d first been introduced to the Blackthorne Butcher.  Of course they hadn’t been calling him that then.  His dreaded moniker took another kill and a heck of a lot more media attention before it finally took and stuck.

Still, by then, she’d already catalogued case after case of young children murdered, pets tortured, and both men and women alike; shot, stabbed, poisoned, strangled, and beaten to a bloody and senseless pulp.  But with this one, this inhuman sadist, although none of them could possibly have known it, the worst was yet to come.  Even so, the initial referral packet had contained the most horrific crime scene photos that Kayleen herself had ever seen.  And oh, dear God, but she had foolishly thought she’d seen them all.

Instantly, Kayleen had sensed something animalistic and undeniably profane in the garishly colorful depictions from the Blackthorne Butcher’s kills – something that went beyond simply “evil”; a vile, despicable wickedness that had spoken to Kayleen’s darkest heart of hearts.  In fact, Kayleen’s near-violent knee-jerk reaction of abhorrence had been the very reason she had asked to be assigned the case.  When Jody had also volunteered, she’d instantly been flooded with relief.

There had been six of them in Kayleen’s team, five teams per unit.  Although her primary assignment was Behavioral Analysis Unit #2, Crimes Against Adults, she had, upon occasion, taken a short tour in #3, Crimes Against Children.  That was one of the most difficult and unsettling assignments imaginable, and as such, she’d had a hard time remaining objective.  It took a certain person, a certain mentality, a certain measure of distance to remain a player in that particular field.  So for the most part, Kayleen had stayed with number Two.

Mostly they each kept to one, main, six-man team, simply rotating between various partners within that group of misfits on almost every single case.  Sometimes, the teams overlapped.  But one thing always remained the same; each individual appointment never lasted any longer than 18 months.  Beyond that, the psychological ‘burn-out’ rate was simply way too high.

The assignments themselves depended upon a number of different factors, mostly in regards to a given BAU member’s specialized strengths in relation to the particulars of whomever they were pursuing.  Sometimes, they were assigned to the investigations based merely on their own inherent brand of inborn wisdom.  Other times, they were assigned based on the classes that they had excelled at in graduate school, paired with experience that they’d carefully cultivated once in the field.

Every so often, they’d even be designated to a certain case based on something as simple as their sex, their socio-economic background, or their home state.  Whatever Dr. Severance thought would give each specific team an edge, he would play them towards that end; like chess pieces wielded skillfully against the ultimate game of life and death.  But on this one, other than Jody and Kayleen, there hadn’t been any takers.  The choice, therefore, had been patently simple.

Yet the case had quickly proven to be even worse than anything Kayleen could have ever imagined.  The sheer level of cunning and intelligence, the extreme peaks of merciless, mind-numbing malevolence, and the chilling depths of callous, degenerate evil, had all made this one stand out immediately from everything else they’d ever faced.  And from the very first moment, this case had consumed them down to their souls.  As a result, their relationship, when it had started, hadn’t been so much ‘falling in love’, as it had been rescuing each other from the gaping abyss.  By the time they’d finally started having sex, physically releasing some of that pent-up agony and grief, Kayleen hadn’t been sleeping more than three or four hours a night in over a month straight.

Kayleen got up and retrieved the ashtray from the dishwasher, and then ground the smoldering butt right in the center.  Crumpling back against the couch, she clenched the empty shot glass tightly in her hand as she slowly rationed out another huge measure.  Glancing up at the bottle with misty eyes, she saw that she had unwittingly grabbed the Stolichnaya brand somehow.  She laughed then, a brittle, painfully sardonic chuckle that stabbed out loudly into the otherwise virgin silence.  Then she closed her eyes and tossed it back.

The first two weeks after Estes had come for her, it’d been impossible to staunch her emotions.  She had cried and cried until the suffering had consumed her.  Insanity seemed to dog her heels at that point, with all the anguish trapped inside her, and no outlet left to purge it.  But soon, the liquor had stepped in and methodically taken over.

And from that night on, when she had finally decided to drown her sorrows in the sweet solace of hard spirits, she’d somehow managed to keep staunching it more and more.  Then, not only were the tears dwindling, but so was the balance of her emotions.  Thereafter, she truly was becoming numb inside.  Well, as numb as one could be who had literally lost everything.

Her third psychologist had immediately caught on.  That dried up windbag had, of course, strongly warned her against what she was doing.  But his dire predictions of what her grief would invariably do to her if she didn’t face up to it and work through it right then and there, had merely fallen on stone-deaf ears.  She didn’t give a damn what it might one day do to her, if she happened to live that long.  All she cared about was what it had been doing to her right that very moment.

So, the alcohol had somehow become her eventual savior.  And then, not only had her tears dried up, but her heart had gradually been anesthetized, too.  Now, with the help of that succor on a daily basis, she typically felt next to nothing at all.

When they had broadcast the fact that the girl’s dead body had been found over the police radio a little while earlier, it was almost as if she’d been hearing it all from a cottony and muffling distance.  Thankfully, she’d figured that the alcohol was apparently still holding strong.  She guessed she just had to keep getting blind-stinking drunk around the clock; granting herself the almost uncanny ability to achieve a perspective as insulated and as blank as death, itself.  Her recent batch of tears only told her that she simply wasn’t drinking enough.

These past few weeks, with her new crutch, Kayleen had even been able to fool a different FBI staff psychologist – a woman who she’d been referred to when her superiors had realized that the last one, just like the well-meaning but ineffective first and the debacle of a second, hadn’t been making any headway at all.

This woman, a kindly, heavy-sounding, older lady, had insisted on keeping in touch with Kayleen at least once a week.  Which Kayleen would have never agreed to except for the fact that Dr. Severance had told her specifically that she could not come back to work when she was ready, unless she submitted to the grueling indignity of these regular ‘check-ups’ in the interim.  And regardless of the fact that Kayleen wasn’t even sure that she actually was going back to work, she still clung to the idea of her old life enough to at least try and play along.

So, what did she do exactly to fool the old bat?  Two full glasses of vodka, straight up over crushed ice, Vivaldi playing softly in the background, and her eyes screwed tightly closed while she jammed the phone into her ear hard enough to crush the cartilage as she proceeded to lie, lie, lie.  Do not talk about it.  Do not think about it.  Do not let it out.

Of course the psychologist had tried, but whenever she forced Kayleen to speak of that night, Kayleen only said two or three innocuous sentences before deftly changing the subject.  And then she’d quickly slam down another drink.

It had been working, too.  The shrink thought she was “handling her personal issues”, no one had yet stuck her in a mental ward, and she’d managed to keep the once-relentless tears at bay.  That was, at least, until tonight.

Seeing Caleb, her first love and her first loss, had been like a sucker punch to the gut.  And then discussing her theories about the girl’s death...dear God, it had been too much.  Truth be known, she had wanted to help him out so damned badly.  But she just couldn’t do it anymore.  The Kayleen that Caleb needed to assist him with this case, well, she was dead and gone.  And this pathetic, piss-drunk shell of a woman, was all that was left anymore.

Working with Caleb would mean too many memories, too many thoughts, too much pain seeping up from the cracks deep within her.  No.  Helping him on this case could only mean opening herself back up to the hurt, fear and guilt that she had worked so hard to shroud from her wounded psyche.  She just couldn’t bring herself to do it.  At least not now.  Not yet.  Maybe not ever again.

Kayleen reached out with one shaky hand, overcome with sudden desperation.  Angrily swiping at the neck of the bottle, she poured out yet another shot and then slammed it back – again, then again.  Ready to drink all night if that was what it took to drown out the fire that was just now beginning to rage to life inside of her.  She had to stop it, before it consumed her whole.

But without warning the tears came once more, clogging her throat and pricking the backs of her eyes.  Stifled sobs wrenched through her in grudging hitches, until before she knew it, she was crying so hard that her entire body was quaking.  The tears had no seeming end.  They just continued to course through her entire being in bottomless, wracking spasms, as if she’d been born and bred merely to weep.

It went on and on, into the deepest dark of the pit of night until finally, she cried herself to sleep.  She curled tightly on the soft, over-stuffed couch cushions, the bottle by her side, the glass clasped weakly in her hand.  She spent hour upon hour, sweating and moaning her way through restless, grisly dreams; hunched protectively into herself like a baby drifting amidst a womb of broken glass...