"When everything is over,when the worst has happened,there's still one thing left in Pandora's box: HOPE." - Harold Finch, Person of Interest

CHAPTER 46 - KARMA IS A BITCH, BITCH

When Riley arrived to the beach house, his heart, already on fire, received one horrific blow more.

There were police cars outside, cops swarming around, the way they would at a crime scene. Riley didn't think it twice, he bypassed every officer that tried to stop him and, out of breath, catapulted himself into the main bedroom, where he found four people, two talking between them, two others seemingly recollecting evidence. 

He anxiously scanned the room for any sign of a corpse, but found none, which would have had him heave a sigh of relief, hadn't he noticed the red stain on the wall, just beside him.

Riley turned paler than pale, dropping against the door as his legs gave out, while the four people observed him, muttering things his hazy mind could not possibly comprehend. He'd arrived too late.

"Excuse me? You can't be in here." A gruff voice pointed out in a hiss, but Riley didn't react. His forest green eyes were fixated on that red spot on the wall. Where was she? Where had that psycho taken his Honeybee? A horrific thought crossed his mind as he realized: they were at the beach. The ocean. Had Lydia thrown the corpse into the ocean?

Before the bald man with a worn out brown coat and thin mustache could approach him, Riley took off for the door, bumping into every officer on the way, stumbling out of the house in a frenzy. He didn't even think it through, didn't consider weather wasn't enough good for the water to be even only mildly warm, he didn't even take off his clothes, just ran off and dived in, desperate to find his Honeybee.

He'd spent crazy hours searching, searching and searching, then driving and driving, and he'd only gotten to an empty house with an immaculate bedroom that however sported a red stain on the wall. What else could he think? Ocean, blood on the wall, polices everywhere. What else was there to wonder?

Riley didn't even feel the cold water soaking him, he didn't even care that his eyes saw blurry due to water and contact lenses, he didn't care that his clothes weighed him down, actually, when he realized he was struggling too much, he just struggled once more, but only to take off jeans, sweater, shoes, even socks, which came afloat without him.

Swimming in the chilly water of that portion of the Atlantic Ocean called Quincy Bay, in search of a body, a sign, anything. If Lydia had shot Emily, she'd certainly thrown the corpse into the water. At the cost of having to swim across the whole freaking ocean, if she was there, he would find her.

Standing on the shore, eyes ahead of him, Detective Murtaugh dipped his hands into his pockets, chewing on one of the gums he'd been greedily using as replacement for cigarettes ever since his wife forced him to quit smoking. His dark brown eyes observed the ocean ahead of him, as if able to see the foolish man swimming underneath, in search of who knew what.

His office had received a call for an attempted murder barely an hour before, the coordinates had been given at the speed of light along with the audio of the 911 call. There was a girl inciting her enemy to shoot, one, two, three times, Murtaugh had been in the car, speeding off the streets, his partner cursing him for the reckless driving style for the umpteenth time, as the audio was played. As a matter of fact, he'd heard it all. Until the gunfire.

Murtaugh admired the girl for her guts, he had to be honest, but she'd been very reckless. Provoking a murderer like that, if the killer had brought her here, in the middle of nowhere, the plan had been studied to perfection: hardly would an assassin spoil all those efforts.

But who was the girl? What had she done to attract upon herself the attentions of this calculative psycho? Colleagues at the office were already working on the data coming from the 911 call, hopefully, Murtaugh thought, he'd receive info in a few minutes.

"Who do you think is that guy?" Came Carter's voice as she approached her partner. Murtaugh briefly turned to his side, eyeing her, not exactly nonchalantly neither innocently, if he had to be honest, then shrugged. Carter was a walking temptation, and he was a married man that cared too dearly for his balls to risk them for a fling. Shouldn't have married your boss, his mind soon chided. But hey, what was sexier than a hot police captain?

"Cal?" Carter called, seeing he was spacing out, eyes still on her.

"Huh?"

She rolled hers, crossing her arms.

"Fantasizing about screwing me again, huh? Next time I'm gonna tell Nancy."

He snorted, ignoring the jab, even though, pointing out he was actually thinking of his wife might have saved him. Murtaugh turned back to the ocean, chastising himself. There was a girl to save, not the right time to wonder why had he picked Nancy over Carter.

The girl. She'd had the guts to call 911 right in front of her abductor, and even to keep the phone call on as long as possible, probably knowing it would help in locating her. Clever. There was a red stain on the wall, though, and while forensics would take a couple of hours to tell whom it belonged to, Murtaugh had no doubt it was the girl's.

She was injured, judging by the amount of blood, the wound was quite deep and bad ... hardly she would survive more than three, maximum four hours without being cured. If she'd been left alive, that is. The chances were, the abductor had already killed her and disposed of the body.

However, in Quincy Bay, this time of the year, there weren't many places where you could hide a corpse. Tourists were everywhere, taking advantage of the first sun, it could be hard to carry around a body without being noticed.

Then again, there were also lots of blind areas beyond the residential neighborhoods, the killer just ought to choose wisely. However, if she'd taken such trouble to be sure nobody would be around when she murdered the girl, most probably, she had a quite accurate way to dispose of the body as well.

As if on cue, out of breath, a young officer came shouting the detectives' names. They both turned, watching the boy with arched eyebrows as he tried to regain his breaths, hands over his knees.

"You just came out of the academy, for God's sakes, you should be able to run a marathon without wheezing." Carter reproached him, causing her partner to smirk lightly. Hot as hell, but such a bossy type, it could get annoying at times ... never worse than his own wife, though. Then again, he did have a soft spot for tough women, Murtaugh reminded himself.

"We found lye. In a wardrobe. Tons of lye." The officer announced, evidently trying to hold back his wheezes, probably flustered, and who wouldn't be? Carter was quite known in the precinct, not only for her beauty, but also for her skills, her sharp mind, and the ability to keep at bay such a hot-headed old style cop as Murtaugh was, young recruits craved to make a good impression on her, but the boy had just spoiled his main chance. Murtaugh frowned at the statement, though, unsure whether he'd heard it right or not.

"Lye?" Carter repeated, surprised, voicing his own doubts. She turned to her partner, reading the same thought on his face. Definitely, the killer wanted the victim to completely disappear out of this world. Was there some grudge? 

Within nearly 30 years on the job, regrettably, Murtaugh had learnt that there were hundreds of different ways to kill a human being, and the range went from mercifully quick to inhumanly painful. Lye could belong to each of the two ... it just depended on whether it was used before or after.

Murtaugh had investigated unnumbered murders, but only a few of them were enough cruel for him to grimace, yet none of those implied the usage of lye. Sure, he'd seen violent murders, but as far as his expertise went, he'd never met an assassin so hell bent on ending the victim as to use even use lye. Whether the perpetrator used it before or after, it meant the victim was someone particularly hated.

"Do you think it's a professional?" Carter asked, taking Murtaugh off guard, so that he turned to her, frowning. The woman hinted behind her. "Lye. Professionals use it to get rid of the body, in a way that nothing, not a single fiber will remain. I mean, heated at 300 degrees, lye will consume the body in less than three hours, David."

Her partner cracked the smallest smirk as he reached into his pockets for the third chewing gum in an hour – definitely not much of a replacement for cigarettes. "You would know that, wouldn't you?"

Detective Carter sent him a dirty look, not appreciating jokes about her previous job. Officially nobody knew what she'd done before joining the police department, but with a partner like David Murtaugh, it was hard to hide anything, therefore she'd told him quite soon.

Focusing back on the matter at hand, and ignoring the young officer's puzzled face, Carted inhaled deeply, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "A deserted place, lye in the wardrobe. What does that tell you, David?"

He pressed his lips, humming. "Judging by the red stain and the 911 call, I don't think it's a professional. A pro wouldn't have let the victim get to a phone ... however, what matters the most is that whoever that is, they're determined to completely erase the victim."

He turned towards the ocean, pondering, his mind quickly doing the Math. A girl, presumably young, bravely facing her murderer, who presumably was a female herself, given the name Lydia, which they were barely able to hear amongst all the other noises, and finally a guy that barges in on a crime scene and turns paler than pale as soon as he spots the blood on the wall. David Murtaugh let out an exasperated sigh, realizing.

"Get that idiot out of there." He ordered to the young officer, his thumb pointing behind him, towards the ocean, where a frantic Riley still swam. The policeman gaped at his superior, confused, not understanding, which had Murtaugh sigh – young recruits, always so slow. "The guy that'll nearly freeze to death in the freaking ocean, you moron! Get him out of there!"

The officer, recoiling at the detective's gruff and booming voice, scuttled away to obey, while Carter glanced at her partner. "You think ..."

"We have to do with the most cliché of motives to kill, Carter: jealousy. It can bring people to do the craziest things." His jaw clenched. "We gotta find that girl before it's too late."

"You think she's still alive?"

The man stared at the distraught young man that had just been forced out of water by two police officers, and who was frantically fighting to go back into the cold water, and he inhaled deeply. "I hope she is. For her boyfriend's sake."

Carter followed her partner's glance, and she met the sight of that same young man that had barged into the room like a fury, only to lose every bit of strength once he'd spotted that red stain on the wall.

Definitely, he knew who had taken who, she thought, and if Murtaugh was right, then they had no time to waste, any minute now could be the last one that girl still had to breathe.

***

Her sight was starting to blur, she had no idea where she was, all she knew was that it was too dark to see anything, and that she could not quit running, because, was she to give up, her sentence would be signed.

She gripped her left side tightly, trying to contain the damage as much as possible, but, she was well aware, not much time was left before she bled out.

Hearing footsteps nearing, she accelerated, her limbs protesting as much as her muscles for the nth forced effort. She felt her feet getting heavier, as if the ground were swallowing them, chaining them, without any chance to escape.

She could hear sirens in the distance. They were coming, getting closer and closer, and she was exhausted, had no strength to keep going. The wound at her side kept enlarging, no matter how tightly she pressed on it.

Stupid kid, Lydia thought as she crawled to the floor. She just had to go and waste her every plan, hadn't she? Good thing she'd gotten rid of her. Unplanned methods were as much effective as the original schedule, if only that freaking wound would quit bleeding!

Well, Lydia considered with a smirk, at least she was alive. The same could not be said about that stupid girl. Karma is a bitch, bitch.