“You make me happy, Rian. You and only you, I’ll never be able to tell you how much I love you or how much you’ve changed my life.”
“How about I show you how much you’ve changed mine.” Rian stood up from her chair and knelt on one knee next to Ari. She pulled a small velvet bag from the inside pocket of her jacket and slipped a shiny platinum ring with two small diamonds and one large center diamond into her hand. Ari gasped when Rian held the ring between her fingers and presented it to her. “I love you so much, Ari Turner. Please say you will marry me,” Rian reached up and wiped the tears from Ari’s face with her free hand.
“Oh Rian, oh my…yes. Yes I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with you,” she said. She held her left hand out so Rian could place the ring on her finger. She was still crying and Rian wondered if maybe she’d made a mistake.
“Are you okay?” She asked as she got up and wrapped her arms around Ari. Most of the restaurant was closed off to them, but the few people close by were clapping for them.
“Yes,” Ari wiped the remainder of the tears away. “I’m just surprised. That’s all.”
“We don’t have to do anything soon. The length of our engagement is at your discretion. Just let me know when and where and I’ll be standing next to you ready to give you the rest of my life,” Rian kissed her softly and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s get out of here. I’d much rather be naked in bed with you right now.”
They walked out of the restaurant hand in hand. Rian leaned over to whisper in Ari’s ear just as a loud pop sounded in the distance. She immediately went for the gun under her jacket as a car sped off. She had no idea anyone had been hit until she realized Ari was no longer next to her. She turned around to see Ari lying on the side of the curb with the front of her black dress soaking through.
“Oh god no!” she yelled as she dropped to her knees next to Ari and cradled her head against her. “Someone call an ambulance!” she screamed and took her jacket off and pressed it to the bleeding wound in the middle of Ari’s chest just below her breasts. “Please hold on, baby. It’ll be okay, Ari, I promise. Just don’t leave me. Please god, don’t take her from me,” Rian cried.
Ari was barely breathing and her eyes fluttered back and forth. “I’ll always love you, Rian,” she whispered.
Numerous people standing around tried to help her, but she told them not to touch Ari. There was nothing they could really do anyway, unless they were doctors. She quickly fumbled around her neck trying to find a pulse, but felt nothing.
“No…no…don’t do this to me, Ari. Come on.” She checked again, but there was nothing. She opened her eyelids and only saw pupils staring blankly past her. “NO! Damn it you come back to me, Ari,” she cried and held her body tightly against her.
When the EMT’s finally arrived they had to pry Rian away to get a look at Ari. The two young men felt for a pulse and didn’t find one either. They tried CPR for two minutes and decided to pronounce her dead.
“No, you have to save her,” Rian said from nearby. “Isn’t there something in that bag or that god damn truck that will bring her back?” she yelled as she wiped the tears away but they kept falling.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” one of the EMT’s said to her. Just to be certain, they put leads on Ari’s chest and hooked her up to a portable EKG monitor and when it came on the line was completely flat. She was gone.
Two Washington D.C. police officers tried to assist Rian as she watched them load Ari’s body into the ambulance and drive off without the lights and siren. She could barely stand. When the ambulance was out of sight she turned around. Her suit jacket was in a heap on the blood stained curb.
“Is there someone we can call for you, Agent Casey?” one of the officers asked. “Or can we take you to the hospital, or maybe take you home?”
Rian just stared at the large red spot on the white-ash colored sidewalk. She knelt down and put her hand next to the spot subconsciously checking to see if the ground was still warm, looking for some connection to the woman that only minutes ago was smiling in her arms. She folded her legs Indian style and stayed right there next to the spot where Ari laid dying in her arms.
The officers cleared the crowd away as the local detectives arrived. They tried to question Rian, but she was so distraught she could barely tell them her name. One of the officers got her ID out of her jacket when he saw it on the ground just after he arrived. He gave it to the lead detective.
Ten minutes later, Philip Walsh pushed through the crowd with his badge in the air. He spoke to the detective to let him know he had a crew on the way that would take over the case since this was considered a code-blue where one of their own was down. He also retrieved her ID badge before walking over to Rian.
“We need to get you out of here, Agent Casey,” he said as he bent down next to her. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
She looked up at him with a blank stare. Her smoky gray eyes were almost solid black and the tears were starting to dry on her face. Walsh unstrapped her gun from its holster under her arm and tucked it into the back of his pants. She never even felt him touch her as he put his arms under hers and lifted her to her feet. He held her against him as he felt around her pockets for her car keys.
“Can I get one of you officers to follow me in her car, thanks,” he said as he practically carried her to his car. He was thankful he had all of his agent’s home addresses programmed into the GPS on his phone. He never thought he’d need to access that file.
He drove through the dark streets of Washington D.C., passing the Capitol and other monuments in silence. When he first got the call he thought one of his agents had been gunned down. It took him a second to realize it was Agent Casey’s girlfriend. He’d only met Ari once or twice when she came to the office to have lunch with Rian in the restaurant that took up the entire first floor of their building. He didn’t really know what to say to her. He’d prepared the speech in his head a hundred times in case he ever had to go tell a wife that her husband was killed in the line of duty. Somehow, that speech didn’t fit this situation and he was lost for words. The ghost of a person sitting next to him wasn’t helping much. He wondered if maybe he should have taken her to the hospital to get evaluated.
When they arrived at her condo building he thanked the officers for helping him out. They offered to help him get her inside, but he had it under control. He checked the file in his phone for her address again. She was in number five-one-five. He looked around for the elevator. Rian was looking more and more ghastly and hollow. She was no help. Finally, he heard the ding coming from around the corner. He gathered her against him and walked in that direction. The doors opened on the top floor which was the fifth floor and he followed the signs leading to the fifteenth apartment. He fumbled with her keys and opened the door. It was pitch black inside. He left her in the hallway and drew his weapon. He walked inside feeling each wall for the light switches as he cleared the two bedroom loft style apartment one room at a time. As soon as he cleared the apartment and everything was secure he went back into the hallway, brought her inside, and sat her down on the couch.
Philip Walsh had never been in this sort of situation and had no idea what to say or do to try and ease her pain. Instead, he went to the tiny bar in the dining area and poured two glasses of the golden brown liquid in the crystal decanter. He handed one to Rian when he sat down next to her and placed his own glass on the coffee table in front of them. He watched as Rian wiped away silent tears as she took a couple of long swallows. She never looked at him and hadn’t said a single word since he arrived at the crime scene. He knew she was in shock and thought about calling one of the psychologists that they worked with to get some advice on how to help her with this grief, but his cell phone rang changing his mind for him.
“Walsh,” he said when he answered it.
“We just wrapped the crime scene that involved Agent Casey,” a deep male voice said from the other end of the line. “We recovered o
ne shell casing, looks like maybe a .223 caliber. The only witnesses said the vehicle was a dark SUV. Two people said maybe a Chevy Tahoe or Trailblazer, one person said it was a Ford Explorer, and another person said it looked like a Cadillac Escalade. So, we have no vehicle to go on and a spent shell casing isn’t a whole hell of a lot.”
“Well, keep looking. Turn every stone if you have to. The local detective that was on scene said it looked like a through and through so make sure you check the building structure, parked vehicles, anything the bullet could be stuck in. Contact the hospital in the morning and see if the autopsy has been completed, this case is top priority. I’ll make some calls when the sun comes up to make sure the medical examiner knows this is a ‘code blue’. Update me if anything else comes up,” he said before he hung up. Rian was still sitting next to him, her glass was empty and he noticed the one in front of him was empty too.
“I’m very sorry for you loss, Rian. We will do everything we can to catch whoever did this,” he said as he stood up. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll check in with you tomorrow. You’re on bereavement status until further notice.”
Special Agent Walsh was already riding the elevator to the bottom floor when the heavy crystal glass smashed against the door. Rian sobbed uncontrollably when she looked up at the pictures hanging on the wall across from her. Ari was smiling down at her with the light from the lamp dancing over her uniquely beautiful eyes. Her mind raced back to the last second she saw her alive lying in her arms bleeding out, she wasn’t smiling and her eyes were closed. The contrast made her sick to her stomach. She jumped up and hurried to the bathroom down the hall barely making it before she began hurling.
There was no telling how long she puked, or how long the dry heaves lasted. She must have blacked out because she woke up on the cold tile floor. It was still dark outside and her cheeks were wet with fresh tears. Rian splashed cold water on her face. She walked back into the living room, poured another glass of whiskey and sat on the couch.
~
The next day Philip Walsh showed up at lunchtime with a pizza. Rian was still wearing the same clothes when she opened the door. He noticed the smashed glass on the floor crunching under his feet when he walked in. He also noticed the second glass still sitting on the table in front of the couch and the whiskey level in the decanter on the other side of the room was much lower than when he left the night before. He set the pizza on the dining room table and swept the glass up with a broom and dustpan he found in the kitchen.
“You should probably eat something,” he said nodding towards the pizza. Rian just stared blankly at him. He wished she had family for him to call, but he’d been through her file twice in the past few hours and she had very few members listed and they were all in California, so they wouldn’t really be much good to her right now. Besides, he had no idea if they even knew about her private life. He only knew because he’d been introduced to Ari, otherwise Rian pretty much kept her private life private. FBI agents were trained to be reclusive, the less that was known about them the better.
“Call me if you need anything,” he said as moved towards the door.
Rian lie on the couch and curled in a ball as more tears fell. She had no idea how to talk anymore. She felt like her mind shut completely down. She wanted to die too, anything to make the hurting stop. Her head was pounding so hard she could barely see, her stomach was cramping and burning from drinking only aged whiskey and throwing it back up a few times over, and her chest ached with heavy pressure that felt like someone was squishing her to death slowly. For all she knew it could have been a heart attack, but her mind was so blank she’d surely die before she figured it out if that’s what it was. She was mad at Ari for leaving her, then mad at herself for being mad at Ari, followed by a deep sadness that completely contained her and controlled her mind, body, and soul. Every time she closed her eyes she saw her dying body lying in the puddle of blood and every time she was asleep she felt her lifeless body in her arms. Both instances were causing her to relive it all over again.
Chapter Three
Three days had passed since the fatal drive by shooting that took Ari’s life. Rian drank a half gallon of water and ate the two day old pizza that somehow made it into the refrigerator. She finally took the dirty clothes off that she’d been wearing since that night. She threw the bloodstained garments into the trash and forced herself not to look at the rumpled bed sheets as she grabbed a clean suit from the closet and her toiletries from the bathroom. She stood under the hot spray of the shower in the spare bathroom. The tight, tense muscles in her back started to relax slowly as she scrubbed three days worth of human stench from her skin and shampooed the greasy dirt from her short hair.
Special Agent Philip Walsh was surprised to hear Rian’s voice when his phone rang early that morning. She sounded hollow, almost weak, but he understood why she was getting out of the house. She didn’t want to be there in the first place everything was a reminder of the life left behind, a life that died with Ari on that sidewalk. He wondered if he could pick up the pieces of his life in only a few days if he ever experienced that kind of devastation. He told her the name of the hospital that Ari’s body had been taken to. As far as he knew, it was still there in the morgue waiting to be claimed by family and sent to a funeral home. She told him she was Ari’s only family so more than likely it was there waiting for her. She felt cold talking about Ari as an inanimate object.
It had been three very long days since Rian had seen the sun. She felt like the bright rays were going to blind her eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. She stared at the green Toyota Camry parked in the spot next to the empty one her unmarked use to occupy. She took a deep breath and held back the tears threatening to fall. She needed to be strong, there were arrangements that needed to be handled and calls that had to be made. Ari had no family. Her parents died when she was young and she finished her teenage years with her grandmother who passed just before Rian and Ari started dating. Rian had no idea what her final wishes were. Who thinks about that kind of thing at twenty-eight years old? Rian was thirty-three and didn’t even have a will of her own.
Sitting behind the wheel of the Audi sports sedan brought that fateful night right back to her. She was screwed either way. She had two options, drive the Audi or Ari’s Camry. She put her safety belt on and turned the key. With one final glance to the left she reversed out of the parking spot and sped off.
~
Rian’s nose wrinkled when she walked into the hospital morgue. She’d been in morgues and seen dead bodies more times than she’d care to admit during her career, but nothing ever prepared her for the way she would react to walking in there knowing it was Ari’s body she was going to see. She quickly stepped back out and hurried down the hall towards the restroom sign. The bile rose in her throat before she could get to an open stall so she puked in the sink. When the dry heaves finally stopped she moved to the other sink and rinsed her mouth and splashed cold water on her face. It mixed with warm salty tears as it ran down her cheeks and off her chin. She dried her hands and face on a paper towel that felt more like sand paper on her delicate skin. She casually looked under the stalls before standing up and adjusting her suit jacket thankful no one else was in there with her. She looked at herself one more time in the mirror before walking back to the morgue.
“Can I help you?” An older man in light green scrubs and a white lab coat walked over to her. His hair was thinning on the sides and his head was bald on top and shining in the bright lights.
“I’m here to claim the body of a family member so I can have it sent to a funeral home,” she said as she swallowed the lump in her throat.
He pressed a few keys in the laptop sitting on the table. “What’s the name of the deceased?”
“Ari Turner,”
“I don’t see that name here. Are you sure the body was brought here?” he questioned.
“Yes. She was shot Tuesday night and was DOA. I’m an FBI agent and I was told b
y my Agent in Charge that her body was brought here. I’m her only family so I’m sure she hasn’t been claimed,” she sighed and showed him her ID badge.
“I don’t remember seeing her, but as medical examiners we generally float to all of the hospitals.” He typed a few more keys. “Here it is. Ari Turner was transferred into the custody of Capital Funeral Home on Wednesday. I’m not familiar with the M.E. on her record, but as I said anyone could have handled her case. It says here she was DOA with a high caliber gunshot wound. The bullet appeared to have entered the upper quadrant of the torso and exited to the right of the spinal cord. There was not a full autopsy completed.”
Rian took in everything he was saying. Ari had no chance to live through that kind of wound. Her chest was tight and aching thinking of the pain Ari must have felt as she slowly bled out in her arms. She cleared her throat and choked back tears. “Excuse me did you say the body was transferred to a funeral home?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he looked at the screen. “Capital Funeral Home.”
“How can a body be sent to a funeral home if it hasn’t been claimed by a family member?” she asked.
“Sometimes family members don’t come here to claim their relatives. If the body has been positively identified by a driver’s license or other means such as finger prints or law enforcement verification then whatever funeral home they chose calls and we release the body to them for transfer. I’m not sure how she was identified, that information is not in her record.” He simply stated.
Rian nodded and thanked him. She didn’t quite understand their philosophy, but she was at a dead end literally so she headed off in the direction of the funeral home. She knew this process would be difficult, but she never realized it would be so draining. Her body felt like she was carrying around a lead weight around her neck.
Love Loss Revenge Page 2
