Chapter 12 -
I texted Katherine I was going to be late while Skye was distracting me trying to do a basic knot on my tie. I walked into the Police Station with a smile on my face although my shift had officially started an hour earlier.
The upside of having no close friends on the Force was that no one asked me why I was smiling. When I got to our desks, I saw my partner's abandoned cup of coffee. It wasn't usual for me to get to work after her, but I could not have a better reason to be late. The note on my desk in Katherine's hurried handwriting just said "Captain's office".
When I stepped through the opened door both of them looked up from the screen with the same guilty expression on their faces, and the Captain slammed closed the lid of the laptop. What the hell were they watching? And why had they left the door open?
"The note said…" I tried to justify myself.
Katherine came next to me, and they both tried to act like nothing out of the ordinary happened.
"We got the DNA results for the skin under the victim's fingernails," Katherine said. "It wasn't Ben Stevenson, but it was a close relative."
"The warrant came from the judge. You have permission to dig up Stevenson's first wife," Captain Jackson said.
We were all adults. If they wanted to pretend there was nothing weird about the two of them huddled up before a computer screen, I wasn't going to make trouble for them. The two of them were the lower part of the top three people in the world I care about.
"We'll get on it," I said and turned to leave.
"Robinson, can you give us the room?"
My partner looked at the Captain with an inquiring 'Are you sure?' look that I knew all too well. He nodded, and Katherine walked out, closing the door behind her.
It didn't seem to be something work related. We'd been working together for almost ten years, but Captain Jackson and I had nothing outside work to talks about.
"I had a call from OCD. You were the lead detective on the murder of Tatiana Urmanova a few months ago. They might have to call you on the stand during the trial of the people who sanctioned her murder."
Not excellent news, but there was no reason for the Captain to tell me this alone. He couldn't know about my relationship with Skye. Could he? The guy had excellent instincts. Excellent for the most part, I amended my assessment thinking about my partner's crush on him.
"Ok," I said and waited for him to go on.
"The OCD sent us recordings of the fights."
"That's nice of them. They said they didn't have anything when we were actually investigating the murder and we were interrogating one of their undercover officers. Ok, I'll look-"
"One of ours," the Captain corrected me. "Detective Walker was under my command. She was only on loan to the OCD."
Detective Walker. Joanna Blanchard. My Skye. The woman was like Russian nesting doll. I wondered who she was under all those covers.
"You don't have to look at the videos at all. They didn't show you the recordings during your investigation, so there's no reason for you to watch any of the fights."
My eyes snapped to the laptop he and Katherine were looking at earlier. Tatiana was a different weight class, but she was on the same circuit as Skye. "Any of the fights." The OCD had sent more than Tatiana's fights. My mind jumped to the conclusion: Skye's fights.
"Walker?" I asked
He nodded.
"You worked closely with her, and I wanted to give you a heads up. The recordings they sent us… they're not just Urmanova's fights. They sent us all the fights they taped. The videos include the fighters' names and the dates in the titles. My advice is not to watch any of them, but if you do, watch only Urmanova's fights. "
"That bad?"
The Captain looked down, uncomfortable. "Yeah."
"Thank you for telling me, Sir."
He pushed a button and popped the DVD out of the laptop. He put it in its case and handed it to me.
At my desk, Katherine had the look of someone who was getting ready to talk a jumper off the ledge. She probably guessed there was something between Skye and me.
"I told him not to give it to you at all," she said.
"Why?"
"Why? Why? Because you're going to watch them."
"Are you seriously suggesting that I shouldn't? There isn't a day in my life when I don't see the results of the violence our fellow humans inflict on each other. I'm sure I can take looking at some fights."
"It's not the same. We don't see people getting killed. We see them when they're beyond fear or pain. And those are not just some fights," she said, looking pointedly at me.
So, she knew about Skye. Then she should also know that there was no way I could just walk away like the see no evil wise monkey.
"Katherine, come on! I was with you when we arrested her after she'd been tortured. When Bachman sew her wounds. I saw her in hospital when that whole mess ended. Why are you treating me like I'm a debutante who might faint at the sight of blood? "
"Because you care about the girl. And once you see that, you'll never be able to unsee it."
I did care about the girl. But I wouldn't be the cop I was if I could refuse to see the truth. And I wouldn't be the man for Skye, if I couldn't handle whatever she'd been through while undercover.
"At least don't watch it here," she said. "Go to our case room and close the door."
She was scaring me. I did as she said, I took the DVD and I walked in the room where we had all the materials for our current case. There was a computer hooked to a screen on the wall. I looked at the video files, and wondered if there was any reason to look at Tatiana's fights. The Captain was right, if I hadn't seen them during the investigation, it would do any good to know about them now. On the stand, I'd talk about my investigation.
I looked for Joanna Blanchard's first fight, and pressed play. It was hard to watch Skye getting hurt, but she won her first fight in under fifteen minutes. She won the second one in five minutes. The third in under ten minutes. I thought I was getting used to seeing her get hit and hit someone else. To see blood on her face. To hear the thud of the full contact between bones and flesh.
During her sixth fight with a woman whom the announcer had called 'The Tigress', Skye got hit really bad. She didn't defend against the kick to the side of her head and she fell to the floor. She got another two vicious elbows to the side of her head before she managed to scramble to her feet. Her opponent lunged at her again, but by some miracle, Skye avoided the punch, and turned the tables. She took the other woman down and they rolled around on the floor until she got behind her opponent. With a level of strength that didn't seem natural, the Tigress stood up, with Skye on her back. Skye stayed there, her arms and legs wrapped around the other's body as if she was glued to her. Despite the numerous and violent attempts she made to throw her off, Skye didn't let go. The Tigress rammed Skye's back into the steel cage again, and again, and again. I could see the pain on Skye's features. I expected her to fall to let go of the woman's neck and fall to the ground.
My eyes were fixed on Skye's face. I was gripping the edges of the desk, praying that it would end soon. The Tigress pushed back with ferocity, pressing Skye's back into the steel cage. Skye went very pale and opened her mouth to scream in agony. I didn't even notice the falling woman tapping Skye's forearm. I just saw that the referee running to them and placing a hand on Skye's forearm. Skye let go and both women fell to the floor. The crowd roared and only Skye stood up. And then I saw that the back of her t-shirt was soaked in blood.
When the referee raised her arms and the voice boomed announcing the winner, I looked at the time stamp, and I felt sick to the stomach. I remembered that night. I had fucked her over the table where I had Sunday dinner with my family. I remembered guessing there was something wrong with her back. I hadn't thought it was anything as bad as what I saw.
That had been her last visit to my house. The last time we had sex until the day before.
Although I didn’t think it was possible, the seventh fight was worse. I watched Skye get beaten to a pulp, and losing her first fight. The eighth fight ended in another loss for Skye, but at least it was mercifully short.