The Arrest.

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"Police! Open up!" The wooden door with its cracked central glass pane rattled dangerously on its hinges as the officers on the other side pulled on the small brass handle.

The once quiet and dark streets outside were lit up with blue and red flashing lights from the police cars. Sirens sounded out over the sleepy neighborhood.

The wounded and badly bleeding hit man Brian managed to drag himself painfully along the ground to the front door where the officers stood behind it, preparing to knock the door down. He reached up a bloody hand to the key and turned it, instantly unlocking the door and allowing the officers their access to the house. After taking care of Elizabeth with the rag soaked in chloroform he had shot himself again in the leg with his shiny silver gun.

With weapons drawn at the ready and several commands being shouted from every direction the armed policemen came running inside with brute force the second they heard the click of the door being unlocked.

One of the last officers through the door holstered his firearm and knelt down to help Brian. "Can you walk?" he asked with a young voice.

"I don't..." Brian winced in severe pain as the rookie officer touched the wound on his leg. "I don't think so, she shot me in the leg."

"Let me get the paramedics in here and help you." The officer stood back up and ran outside, calling for medical assistance.

"We've got her!" Two of the older and obviously more experienced policemen came back towards the doorway they had entered through just moments before, bringing Elizabeth's blood soaked and still unconscious body with them. Another two officers both young and shocked from the sight of what they had just walked into had been ordered to get the deceased photographed and any hard evidence they could collect. They were currently standing over Simon's small and bullet ridden corpse, holding back tears as one snapped several photographs and the other looked around for anything that could be construed as any sort of corroborating evidence.

Brian watched as the two young men worked the job they obviously hadn't been doing very long and fought an emotional battle to separate themselves from the horror of what they were seeing on the ground before them. He guessed another two were doing the same with Jonathon's body.

Two male paramedics dressed in white walked in through the open doorway and carefully lifted Brian onto a collapsed stretcher before gently strapping him in and padding the two bullet wounds.

"What the hell is that?" Brian asked in a fearful tone (and a little too quickly for someone that had just been shot twice) as the older of the two paramedics filled a rather large syringe from a glass vial.

"It's just a light sedative so that we can clean up your wounds without hurting you too much and it will help you go to sleep for a bit sir. Just lay back and relax, you've obviously been through a lot tonight."

"I don't want to fucking sleep," Brian spat angrily at the young medic attempting to clear a spot on his arm to inject the fluid. "I want to kill the damn bitch that shot me."

"Sir, please calm down," the paramedic replied getting ready to restrain Brian if the need arose.

"No I'm not going to fucking calm-" Brian immediately stopped arguing and cringed with a slight shout of pain as the medic jabbed the sharp needle deep into his upper right arm. "Hey! I didn't say I wanted that!"

"Sir." The medic that had just injected him pressed his hand onto Brian's chest to stop him from getting up. "Please just lay back and relax, this will kick in within a few seconds and everything will feel much better."

Brian struggled for a second or two before giving up and laying his head back on the stretcher, letting the sedative take over and dull the excruciating pain in his arm and leg.

* * * * * * * * 

"Sir, I need you to tell me everything you remember about last night," the young detective said to Brian as he sat in a chair next to his hospital bed with a pen and pad of paper. He wore a plain black suit with a white shirt and a striped gray tie. Brian looked him over, he seemed to be in his thirties, his hair still all brown and not thinning in the least, slight wrinkles were forming around the detectives' lips and on his forehead though. Another man stood in the corner of the room with his arms crossed wearing much the same attire but looking much older, possibly nearing 60 with thinning gray hair and deep wrinkles covering his face.

"Well." Brian started thinking about the night before and rubbing the bandaged bullet wound on his arm. "I went out to the local pub last night and caught up with Jonathon. He said his wife as beautiful as she always was, was driving him absolutely crazy. She was always a real bitch that one, Jonathon was just a sucker for the cute ones that treated him bad, there's not many of them around but he always managed to find them. Anyway we sat for a while and had a couple of drinks down at the pub there then we went on back to his place.

"We were sitting in the lounge room chatting away, it must have been after midnight by then and I had to, well, go, you know? So I got up and went off to the toilet. Then I heard two gunshots go off. Scared the living daylights out of me it did, so I quickly cleaned myself up and quietly walked through to the living room where the big dining table was and looked around the corner onto the landing and up the stairs. No one was there so I walked through to the kitchen. I looked into the living room and saw someone lying on the couch - that was where I had left Jonathon, so I just though he must have fallen asleep and the noise I heard must have come from outside or something. Then I ah," Brian paused for a moment and swallowed hard as thought the memories he was conjuring were disturbing him. "I noticed something felt weird on the carpet under my shoes so I turned around and flicked the kitchen light on. I was standing on blood. I don't know how the blood was there on the floor and he was dead on the couch but he was definitely dead and there was blood all over the carpet between where I was standing and the couch." He stopped and took a few deep breaths, composing himself.

"I turned around in shock and walked back into the kitchen and around to the other side of the little table to go back into the hallway. I turned back around when I remembered where their phone was now and Elizabeth was standing there on the other side of the table with a gun in her hands, blood all over her nightdress, all over her hands and arms, just standing there cool as a cucumber. She just looked at me with her head tilted to one side, a blank look in her eyes and then she smiled this horrible smile that made me feel sick, she held the gun up in her hands and aimed it straight at my chest and shot at me, three times I think. I ducked down as I saw her tighten her finger on the trigger and got out of the way before she could shoot me. I crawled around to the other side of the table so she couldn't shoot me from where she was standing. All of a sudden their little son Simon came running down the stairs screaming for her. She jumped out into the entrance hall and shot him in the back three times as he was looking into the living room, then ran over to him and held him in her arms as he died."

"She held him?" The young detective asked in a choked whisper.

"Yeah, she just sat there in the entrance way and held him as he coughed up blood all over her and she just sat there and cried rocking him back and forth in her arms, it was like she was in a trance or something, it was scary. That's when I called the police and I rummaged through the kitchen cupboard and found the rag and the chloroform. She put her son down when she heard me talking and let another shot off as I turned around and saw her standing there, it hit me in the arm." Brian held out his arm for the detective to have a look who lifted the white gauze slightly and peered underneath, Brian cringed as the young man prodded at his arm.

"So," the detective said sitting back down in his chair. "She shot you in the arm and then what?"

"I ran through to the lounge room and as I did she hit me again in the leg. I hid behind the wall and I heard her rip the phone off of the wall. Then she walked through to the lounge room looking for me. The look of hatred in her eyes was absolutely sickening. I grabbed her from behind as she walked past me and I held the chloroform to her nose. It knocked her out cold."

"Do you have any idea why she killed her husband and child? What willed her to do it?"

"I have been friends with Jonathon for a long time and I can honestly tell you that he was abusive to her and ah, he would hit her, but not very often. Still doesn't make it right though does it. I always told him not to do it, especially with the way Elizabeth was. She had a horrible childhood and a history of violence, the things she's done and seen and been through. I told him that if he kept it up that eventually she would snap and it would send her right over the edge and she would take him with her. 'I've seen it happen before' I told him. I guess she just finally couldn't take it anymore and snapped. She was always a little crazy, 'not right in the head that one' I always told Jonathon but he wouldn't have a bar of it. Despite the abuse he loved her dearly. The look in her eyes when she was doing it though, it was just so...intense, like she knew exactly what she was doing and didn't even want to stop herself. Like she had it planned all along."

The officer raised his dark and strongly shaped eyebrow, he didn't want to believe the story the man in the hospital bed was telling but couldn't see any other way around it. Brian's story matched all the evidence, and all that ruthless evidence pointed directly to Elizabeth as being the perpetrator. "You think it was pre-meditated?"

"Is that what you call it?" Brian asked looking up at the detective with a confused look on his face, the stress from the previous night showing through in his eyes and fatigue set steadfast upon his face.

"Thank you sir, you have been very helpful." The much older and until now silent detective standing like a statue in the corner on the other side of the room stepped forward out of the shadows. His voice was plain and flat and his fingers tucked a pen back into his breast pocket. "We will contact you about the court date."

"Court? You mean I have to see that crazy bitch again?"

"You will most likely be asked to testify sir."

Brian exhaled a great sigh of indignation and grumbled to himself as he slumped sulkily back in the bed, holding the wound on his arm with his left hand. He watched the two detectives as they spoke to one another with nothing more than eye movements.

With a uniformed nod of their heads the detectives walked out of the room together and closed the door behind them. The older one that was standing in the background of the room rubbed his shoulder as the younger one that conducted the interview said, "I don't really see why we even have to interrogate Mrs. Oldin. It seems pretty obvious to me that she did it. His story weighs up with the evidence so clearly that it seems pretty much pointless, don't you agree?"

"Don't you think it's a little hard to believe that a woman could kill her husband and son just like that James? Some people lie, some people tamper with evidence to frame others and some people are just cold blooded killers there's no arguing that. But we have to interview Mrs. Oldin to find out her story because believe it or not Jimmy, her story might just match the evidence too. I've been in this business since before you were born, you wouldn't believe the things I've seen people cover up and hide."

They took long strides side by side as they scoured the hallways for Elizabeth's room.

"Doesn't matter what you or I believe about who did what, does it Mark, it's the evidence people have to listen to."

The older detective nodded his head in respect of his young comrade in satisfaction of what he had obviously learnt over the years they had worked together. "As you well know now Jimmy, if you find the right evidence, it will never lie."

They reached the door of Elizabeth's hospital room and one after the other they stepped inside. "Mrs. Oldin?" the younger one with the pen and paper asked as the older one found his darkened corner to stand silently in. "We need to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?"

"If you take these cuffs off me," Elizabeth replied in a venomous tone, glaring fiercely at the young detective. Elizabeth instantly took in his sharp features and broke him down under her scrutinizing gaze, she could almost see the very molecules of what made the man who he was as he stood before her.

Elizabeth was lying on her side on the bed, she was now dressed in green hospital scrubs, her blood covered nightgown had been taken by the forensic team for investigation as soon as she had been admitted to the hospital. Both of her hands were cuffed to the bed railings on that one side, the metal of the heavy handcuffs was wearing at her already scarred wrists.

"We can't do that ma'am and to be polite you've got no choice but to answer the questions we ask. If you don't, we will be forced to report it as not cooperating and it will most definitely go against you in court." James pulled a chair over to her bedside and sat down, one ankle sitting on his knee and his pen at the ready to scribble down notes on the stiff pad of paper sitting on his leg.

With a shuffle and a grunt of pain at the cramps that had formed in her immobile limbs Elizabeth sat up on the bed and tucked one of her ankles under herself, stretching out the other leg. Her dark hair fell down the sides of her face in knots and tangles with dried blood still matted into it in a few places. "I didn't do it." Her voice was as cool and calm as you could have ever heard it yet slightly raspy from a night of crying. Elizabeth didn't help her case at all by glaring at the younger detective that was interviewing her. "It wasn't me."

"Who was it then?" James asked in a calm and collected manner, ever the detective, looking at Elizabeth as though she were nothing interesting at all. All he wanted to do was leave and have a cold beer.

"Brian. He's a hit man. My husband hired him when he went out last night. He was hired to kill me and Simon."

"He's a hit man? Okay." The detective tried to keep his tone of voice flat and non-judgmental as he nodded his head at this outrageous allegation. "Things didn't happen that way I take it then?"

"He said that the plans had changed." She looked over at the older detective standing in the corner with his arms crossed over his large chest. Elizabeth's pretty and emotionless face was still darkly bruised in several places from where Jonathon was violently slapping her the night before. "He killed my family." She held back huge tears welling in her eyes and no longer was her face emotionless. Elizabeth looked up at the detective on the other side of the room pleadingly, agonizingly.

"Okay then." James kept his voice low in an attempt to comfort her. Even though the woman before him was being accused of murdering her family he couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for her as his eyes lingered over the blackness of Elizabeth's bruises. It was obvious that Brian's claims of Jonathan's abuse were correct. "Can you start from the beginning and tell us everything about what happened last night?"

Elizabeth closed her bright green eyes and took a few breaths, trying to keep the tears well at bay and thought about what she remembered from the previous night. "Jonathon came home from work at around six." She opened her eyes and looked once again at the interviewing detective. "Which is particularly early for him. We got into an argument as we often do lately when he finally decides to come home from work, he smashed some plates and walked out."

"What were the two of you arguing about?"

"I don't see how that matters at all." A hint of anger rose in Elizabeth's voice and her eyes shot daggers that fell away just as quickly as she realized what that tone of anger and those ice cold daggers could mean as evidence against her in a court. "But we were arguing about him spending less time at work and more time with Simon."

"What happened when he came home afterwards?" James tapped his pen methodically against his paper as he tried to distance himself from the emotional trauma that Elizabeth had been through.

"I was in bed when he finally decided to come home. I heard him sitting downstairs talking to someone, so I went into the hallway upstairs to see if I knew who it was, he often came home late at night with work friends he had met on the way. I didn't know this voice though. I heard Jonathon say 'do you understand what you have to do?' Then Brian said 'yes,' I didn't know what they were talking about but Jonathon invited him to stay 'on the couch until the time comes.' Then Jonathan came upstairs and I went straight back to bed, pretending to be asleep. Jonathon climbed into bed and forced himself on top of me and I..." she stopped suddenly and her eyes clenched tightly closed. Her arms violently flinched a few times as she thought about something much different to what happened last night and tears crept through her eyelids and fell down her cheeks.

"Mrs. Oldin?"

Elizabeth jolted back into reality, shaking slightly from shock and gasping for breath.

"Mrs. Oldin are you okay?" James asked leaning forward and looking slightly taken aback, his emotional walls instantly crumbling around him.

Looking around in shock Elizabeth began to remember where she was again. Her breathing slowly started to calm and she nodded her head to the young detective sitting beside her. "Sorry," she quietly whispered between breaths. "Memories do that to me sometimes. What was I saying?"

"You were just telling us that Jonathon had forced himself on top of you after he got home."

"Oh, of course. He was on top of me and had my hands pinned down. I couldn't do anything to stop him until I managed to free a hand and I punched him as hard as I could. He hated it when I attempted to fight back and it usually just made him madder. After he realized what had just happened he started slapping me. I don't quite know how but I managed to get out from underneath him and ran for the door. He grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me back, I kicked my foot out and hit him in the jaw and I was able to get away."

"Did he beat you often?"

"It was a regular event," Elizabeth whispered avoiding eye contact with both the men for the first time since the detectives had walked in.

"Regular being..."

Elizabeth paused, considering whether she should tell them the truth or not. After a moment she decided that the truth was probably best idea right now considering the position she was in. "Nightly."

The young detective nodded his head in understanding and scribbled down this new fact with the word 'motive' in the same sentence on the pad of paper sitting propped up on his leg.

Watching the detective Elizabeth flinched as she saw his elegantly gold edged pen form this treacherous word on the paper.

"After you ah, allegedly kicked him," James continued with his questioning, "Mrs. Oldin, can you tell us what happened next?"

"He let go of me," Elizabeth continued quietly with her story. "The force of my kick pushed him back and off balance and I managed to get away so I ran

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