ADumbGirl

The following morning, Bishop went back to the house alone.

She took a bite out of her bagel and a long sip from her cup before exiting the car, and looked up towards the front porch. The lights on the porch and inside the house were still off and the curtains were drawn shut. Yellow police tape encircled the lawn and again around the porch, warding off potential intruders and curious onlookers, not that there was another living soul across the entire street besides the detective herself.

That didn’t mean the Sullivans, as they once called themselves, didn’t have any neighbors. Bishop noticed a few pairs of eyes staring at the commotion in the house from a good distance the last time she was here; inevitable, with two police cars and an ambulance parked curbside, with two officers dragging Toby Rogers through the doors in handcuffs, and into one of the cars, and not without significant struggle after the young man had tried to deny them entrance. Then a body bag emerged a few minutes later, and Bishop could only assume what the neighborhood gossip was like after they had left the scene.

But the street, like the house, was abandoned now, leaving Bishop to her own devices as she approached the front lawn and ducked under both police tapes. She produced a pair of latex gloves and a pocket knife, which she used to cut the paper seal pasted on the front door and its frame, making sure not to damage the wood. Stashing the knife away, she twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

Her entrance blew a cloud of dust off the furniture and sent particles dissipating throughout the living room. She coughed involuntarily, a sharp echo that broke the silence in the stagnant air, then waved a hand over her face as her eyes began to scan the interior to see anything out of place, even despite the seal. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary within the house, though, except for the disorderly mess left behind from their last visit. The couch and the coffee table were slightly crooked and out of place from the shaded markings on the floor left behind from where they once were—an aftermath of Toby’s well-fought struggle. The back door was still ajar, and there was a trail of dirt leading from the backyard, disappearing into the kitchen. Through the window, she could see a small rectangular plot left unearthed in the corner, near the edge of the weathered white picket fencing.

She left the front door open with a small gap, hoping it would allow some fresh air to circulate and replace the suffocating atmosphere inside the house. She trod lightly and carefully across the living room; there weren’t many personal effects lying around—no photographs, no house decorations like flower vases or rugs and such, aside from bare bones furniture, at least not in the common spaces. There were a couple of used glasses and dirty dishes left behind in the sink, and an untouched bowl of cereal doused what she quickly determined was curdled milk on the breakfast counter. Not many signs that showed previous occupancy, she thought, leaving her to wonder if the company would have ever considered this place to be a home at all if the past few months had never happened.

The five doors were identical, with nothing to indicate which one led to which room. She tried the lone door to the left of the living room first, but after twisting the knob a few times, realized it was locked. She could break it down, of course, but it would have to be a last resort. Wouldn’t want them to come home to a broken door. The second door she checked was the bathroom, the third being a small storage space that, both surprisingly and unsurprisingly, bore only a few cardboard boxes gathering dust and spider webs in the back corner.

The fourth door finally led her to a bedroom. A queen bed, with floral-patterned duvet and pillow covers, was pushed into the back corner of the wall near the window looking out to the front lawn. Beside it was a wooden nightstand with a ceramic lamp sitting on top, and opposite to the bed was a matching dresser with a handful of bottles and containers sitting on top. Directly beside the door was a bare wooden desk and chair. On top was a reading lamp, a couple of pens and a notebook, and an old paperback novel split open in the middle, with the open pages pressed against the surface of the table.

The dresser was out of the question—a breach of privacy, she thought, and a line she didn’t dare cross, at least not at this time. There weren’t any drawers on the desk either, merely hollow shelves that held nothing but dust. Reluctantly, she crossed the room, keeping her hands to herself, towards the nightstand, and carefully pulled the drawer out without making a single sound.

There were two photographs in there, likely kept hidden from plain sight on purpose. The first one was instantly familiar, because she had seen it before: four people standing side by side with glowing smiles—Jack’s graduation photo, the exact same one she saw on Skye’s lock-screen. The second photo, however, was older, with yellow peeling edges and faded colors, and smaller, about two-thirds of the size of the first one. There were only two people in it: an older gentleman, in about his fifties or sixties with greying hair, grinning widely and fondly at the camera. His arm was slung around the shoulder of a young child, with brown eyes and brown hair tied back into a ponytail, wearing a t-shirt and overalls, a little frail and thinner than the average child should be. Unlike the older man, the child merely offered a semblance of a polite smile, eyes staring almost emotionlessly into the camera.

Bishop stared into the second photograph. It was from a much, much simpler time, she thought, more so than the first photo. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who was the child in the photo, but there was something odd about it—something in the child’s eyes, and the blank look on her face that was nothing like her more expressive present-day self, or even the smile she wore in the first photograph. Something that sent a chill down the detective’s spine before she forcefully tore her eyes away from the photo, and returned them both into the drawer where they belonged.

After another quick scan around the room, she finally headed to the last room she hadn’t checked. It was unsurprisingly another bedroom, with furnishing not unlike Skye’s, but with one glaring difference: the entire space was nothing less than an absolute mess. The bedcovers were halfway across the bed and draping towards the floor. Clothes and books were strewn across the bed, the floor, the top of the dresser and the desk, along with other personal effects including an old PlayStation Vita, a soccer ball, hamper, some cardboard boxes, and an open bag of chips. For as bare as the rest of the house was, whoever this room belonged to clearly made themselves feel comfortable, likely unlike everybody else.

She made sure to exercise more caution as she trod across the room, trying to peer through the disorganization to look for anything that could help her case, but it didn’t help that she didn’t even have the slightest clue of what exactly she should be looking for. Toby didn’t have his cellphone with him when they patted him down at the station, assuming he had one in the first place, but it was a start, and the only thing she could think of for now. He didn’t look like the type to keep sentimental photographs, or a journal of sorts, and though she was prepared to be proven wrong, she wondered if she could even find one at all considering the current state of the room.

At least one other officer had already searched through the room, though. She remembered they had found a pair of hatchets underneath the bed—they were poorly hidden, surprisingly enough, haphazardly stashed there as though he didn’t even bother to properly hide them from plain sight. Gilliam had told her they were the exact same weapons the kid used to kill his father four years prior. The mere thought of it sent another chill down her spine, but she also remembered what Gilliam had said about the victim, about the drinking problem, and the things that happened since then.

Taking a deep breath, she scoured through the small piles of fabric on the bed and on the desk, the likeliest of places where she should be able to find a phone. If she were lucky, she thought, maybe there would be a laptop of sorts, something that she figured would keep the homebound young man occupied while the others weren’t home.

She raised her forearm to wipe the side of her temple as she trudged to the other side of the room, fetching articles of clothing off the floor, and hauling them up to the bed to join the others. When she finally caught a glimpse of the carpet beneath them, she stopped and huffed out a breath. Her eyes zeroed in on the unmistakable discoloration in the beige, and she bent down to gather the remaining items off the floor to set them aside. Sure enough, it was there—a distinct patch of darkened fibres, horizontally flattened towards the south of the room in stark contrast to its lighter-colored neighbors that stood perpendicular in attention. She traced the arching outline of the patch to none other than the dresser, and nodded to herself with a sigh.

With most of Toby’s clothes anywhere but where they belonged, the dresser wasn’t too difficult to move, and her eyes flickered over to her objective before she even finished making a gap wide enough for her to peer through behind it—a white metal vent grille, about the size of an A4 paper, just above the baseboard moulding. She had to crouch down and stretch a little to reach it, but quickly realized it wasn’t even screwed in when her finger bumped against its corner and immediately nudged it loose.

Setting the grille aside, she held her breath as her hand reached into the vent and gently searched around, in fear of anything potentially dangerous in the ducts, but also hoping she might find something without having to shift the dresser more than she already did. Sure enough, the back of her hand brushed against something within a single swiping movement, and her fingers grasped onto it as lightly as she could before extracting it out of the vent duct and into the dim light of the room.

It was a plush toy, standing at about ten inches tall, soft and malleable in her clutch. The vent duct was possibly the worst place to store something like this though; from what the detective could tell, its fur coat was once a warm orange or light brown with darker patches all over, now darkened and desaturated from years of neglect, soot and dust that had embedded themselves into the fabric that no dry cleaners could ever restore it back to its prime state.

Coughing into her flexed elbow, she drew it out from behind the dresser to take a closer look. She could make out its beady little black eyes, a lighter patch of fur to indicate the center of its face and its snout, then its ears, four legs and tail. It had a rather long neck, longer than typical stuffed animals, and two protrusions from its head that resembled horns or antlers.

A stuffed giraffe, she thought, then frowned. Gilliam had mentioned something about a stuffed giraffe before. One of Toby’s possessions, but didn’t belong to him. No, it belonged to his girlfriend, this ‘Clockwork’ individual he mentioned.

“FBI—hands where I can see them.”

Bishop immediately shot up from where she was crouched down and spun around towards the direction of the noise—towards the door, outside of the room she was in—immediately drawing the gun from her hip holster, but froze the moment her eyes zeroed in on the figure standing in the doorway. The first thing she noticed was the eyes—bright green in color, almost unnaturally so, as if it was radiating with a strange, unsettling luminescence, but it was only in one eye, because the detective quickly realized the right eye was, in fact, not a human’s eye at all—it was a silver clock face.

The stranger’s arm twitched, and a brief glint of light quickly caught Bishop’s attention, drawing it down to the clean, serrated silver blade in the intruder’s hand.

A gasp left the detective’s throat as she locked eyes with the intruder, tightening her grip on the handle of her gun.

The stranger’s lip twitched, then stretched into a smile—at least, Bishop thought it did, what with the thin black line extending from the corner of the stranger’s mouth up towards their cheek, disappearing behind unkempt locks of mousy brown hair. Without turning their gaze away from the detective, the stranger turned their head at the smallest angle, off beyond the door frame towards the direction of the living room.

“Trespassers,” the stranger murmured under their breath, their single green eye flickering out to the living room, before they slowly lifted their hands to the side of their temple, letting go of their clutch on the knife as they did, sending the blade clattering to the ground. “Or a trap. Came prepared, though. Well, he did, anyway.”

Bishop glared hard at the stranger—a young woman, no older than her early twenties, judging by the sound of her voice and the youth in her face when she tilted her head up towards the glow of the ceiling lamp. As she finally forced herself to take a deep breath, she heard shuffling and noise from outside the room, until finally another person came into view of the doorway—Gilliam, producing a pair of handcuffs as he kicked the knife away, and yanked the stranger’s arms down to handcuff her wrists behind her back.

The detective closed her eyes and drew in another breath, allowing her shoulders to fall as she returned her gun back to its holster. “You scared the shit out of me,” she admitted under her breath then opened her eyes to lock eyes with the stranger again, whose single glowering green eye remained fixated on her, sending an instant shiver down her spine.

“Be thankful I even decided to come check up on you,” Gilliam retorted back, glaring down at the intruder who hissed at him as soon as the handcuffs clicked into place. “I figured it wasn’t too long before this one comes looking for lover-boy right after he disappeared.”

“You mean, right after you took him in?” the intruder sneered as she rolled her head around her shoulder, turning her glare towards the FBI agent behind her. “Missed us already, huh? Don’t you fuckers have anything better to do than stalking us? Wife and kids, crop circles and aliens, golfing—anything?” Then she lazily whipped her head to the side as Gilliam led her back towards the living room, loose brown strands falling over her face as the green eye flickered back at the detective, eyeing the other woman from head to toe. “You’re new, aren’t you? Let me guess, first day on the field?

Gilliam blew a harsh breath through his nose, giving neither woman a chance to respond as he shoved the younger women across the living room then out out the now-ajar front door, leaving Bishop to trail a few steps behind them, her eyes staring at the back of the other woman’s head. A black sedan was parked behind her car, but Gilliam chose to bring their apprehended suspect towards the latter instead, quickly securing her in the back seat with surprisingly minimum struggle. As soon as he threw the door shut, he spun around and heaved a sigh as he turned his head up to look towards the detective still standing on the porch.

“How’d you know where I was?” she questioned him as she lifted her head forward, eyes quickly scanning up and down the soulless street. “I haven’t even stopped by the station this morning.”

He placed his hands on his hips and bowed his head down. “I heard Nichols saying you should take another look around the house.”

“What made you think I would listen to what he had to say?”

“I wouldn’t have, but you would. And you did.”

She threw a glance over her shoulder, through the open door and into the house. “The stuffed giraffe—it’s hers, isn’t it? You said something about it yesterday.”

There was a brief pause before the agent slowly nodded. “Natalie Ouelette, also known as ‘Clockwork’. Rogers’ girlfriend.”

“The third copycat target.”

He nodded again. “I would say she’s also our killer, but I’m more inclined to believe she was also being framed. She’s not exactly the type to be meticulous about her killings. I doubt she would bother going through all the trouble of copying Nichols and Woods for the first two murders.”

She hummed in confirmation, then paused herself. “You weren’t actually trapping her, did you?”

“What?”

“What she said earlier.” Bishop pressed her lips together and turned her gaze down at her partner. “Was that supposed to be a trap, or—”

“I can understand Nichols, but you shouldn’t take the others’ words at face value,” Gilliam immediately interjected, though his voice was light and amicable as he offered her a knowing look, before turning his head down, then his back towards her. “You’ve seen how Woods was like. Ouelette is no more different than him.”

She almost wanted to scoff, but didn’t have the heart to. She had hoped it wasn’t true. “You didn’t have to come back, you know,” she said instead, with a small shake of her head as she hardened her gaze on him. “You came here for Nichols and Woods, didn’t you? I could’ve gone on without you.”

“You could,” he quickly agreed, to her surprise, as the corner of his lip twitched upward. “But it’s not just a cover, you know? It is a job. I’m still working for the FBI as much as I am for the Foundation.”

“The FBI doesn’t need to get involved in this.”

“On the contrary.” He clicked his tongue, turning his head up and casting his gaze to the side. “Copycat murders based on prolific serial killers, with a body count of nine and still rising.” He shook his head, lips stretching to form a thin smile. “There’s another pattern here. I can’t confirm what it is yet, but if my assumptions are correct, that means we better start moving before both of us and the morgue have our hands full.”

----------

“What’s the broad doing here?”

Bishop frowned, closing the door behind her as soon as she stepped into the room. “Excuse me?”

A singular green eye glanced back and forth between the blonde and the dark-haired man, before eventually stopping at the latter. “Doesn’t take a genius to tell she’s not one of you white coats, so what’s she still doin’ here, with you?”

Bishop looked towards Gilliam, whose gaze was hard set on the young brunette sitting behind the table at the center of the room. “White coats?”

“You—” Metal handcuffs rattled as the clock-eyed killer raised her right hand, pointing her index finger at the detective. “—are an open book, and you—” She turned to point at Gilliam. “—need something from me, don’t you?” She laid her hand flat on the metal surface and stretched the stitches at the corners of her mouth into a chilling smile. “Yeah, I can tell. I’m in handcuffs, not an electric chair.”

Gilliam turned his head down as he moved to take his place on the other side of the table. “Let’s make this quick. Where were you four nights ago?”

“What’s your offer?”

He set the manila folder down in front of him but stopped to raise his head. “What?”

Natalie Ouelette—Clockwork—leaned back against her chair and shrugged. “What’s the offer?” she repeated, and made a condescending scoff. “I’ve been through this before. You want something from me. I don’t have to tell you shit unless you have something on the table for me.” She nodded forward. “So, out with it, suit.”

From across the room, Bishop positioned herself in the brunette’s blind spot—the clock face that had replaced the latter’s left eye—and studied her. The younger woman’s posture was relaxed, slouching in the chair even with the bindings around her wrists, much unlike most people who have been in that chair before her. Brash, confident, very much the ‘in-your-face’ type. Potentially reckless, clearly outspoken. Dominant. A glaring contrast with her supposed boyfriend, but to each their own, she thought. A tough nut to crack, but not the preferred type of challenge that Bishop would normally welcome.

Ten seconds after she spoke, Gilliam lowered his shoulders. “What do you want?”

“What do you think?”

“We didn’t take him,” he immediately answered. “But we can tell you who did.”

His opponent quirked an eyebrow. “Then spill.”

“Not until you answer the question.”

She closed her eyes—both of them, though there was a noticeably unnatural bulge through the left eyelid—and threw her head back with a groan. “Tulsa. Wait, no.” She hummed to herself in thought. “It was some crappy old town just outside the city. Was heading south, then I got Toby’s text, so I took a detour and made a pit stop. Was there for like three days before I left for here. It was a very long walk, in case you can’t tell.” Then she opened her eyes and the smile returned to her face. “Check the news there. Someone should’ve found the dead bodies by now.”

“Dead bodies?” Bishop repeated, blinking, glaring at the younger woman. “You’re confessing to committing murder?”

“Can’t be any fresher off the factory, can you?” Clockwork retorted back, snapping her head to the detective, smirking. “I mean, look, why bother? You know who I am. You know what I do.” She turned back to Gilliam. “Besides, might as well claim credit for my kills before someone else does. I mean, can you believe kids these days? I’ve seen those little punks, shoving their faces to TV cameras for my kills. Mine! The audacity.”

“All right, enough with that,” Gilliam huffed, taking out a notepad and opening a fresh page to start jotting things down. “So when did you arrive here?”

“I don’t know, last night?” The serial killer scowled and threw her back against the chair. “Toby texted me a couple days ago, told me not to visit. He must’ve got into trouble, so naturally, I came to surprise him.”

Bishop frowned. “He told you not to come, and you decided to anyway?”

Clockwork narrowed her eyes at the detective. “Why are you trying to rationalize what I do? Even I don’t.” She huffed a breath through her nose and glanced to the side. “Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?” Her smirk returned. “Anything else? I don’t have all day, you know.”

Gilliam opened the case file to the page with the portraits of the victims, then turned it around to face the serial killer. “Do you recognize any of these people?”

Clockwork merely gave the page a quick glance before lifting her gaze back at the agent. “Nah, can’t say I do,” she said. “Not that I would tell you if I did, but I don’t.”

“What about these?” This time, Gilliam flipped over to the page with photographs of the autopsies and crime scenes, laying some of them out between him and the younger woman.

A wide smile slowly crept its way back up to Clockwork’s disfigured face. “Now you’re speaking my language,” she said, almost too delightedly, before peering over to look more thoroughly at them. She pointed to the photo in the furthest left. “This one’s too clean. Too planned. Like one of those psycho killers in books and movies.” She moved her finger to the furthest right. “This one’s a frenzy. Someone really got off from this one.” She waved her finger around the photos in the bottom of the triad cluster. “These are still a bit too sloppy for my taste. Needs more finesse to it. A little feminine touch, if you know what I mean.”

“But you’ve never seen these before?” Gilliam asked, and Clockwork shook her head.

“I remember my kills,” she stated with confidence. “Like I said, I’ll gladly take credit for the ones I did, but these aren’t mine. Besides, Toby said this place’s off-limits, and I’m not having another argument with him about this.” She leaned back against the chair again, slowly this time. “If those happened here, it wasn’t me.”

Bishop nodded once to herself. Another copycat killing. Of course, Clockwork could be lying—these people could always lie about anything—but as the detective listened to her tone of voice and studied the younger woman’s face, in short bursts to not attract the latter’s irritation towards her, it didn’t seem like Clockwork had much to hide, not for this case at least.

“Do you know anybody who would do something like this?” she asked softly. “Any acquaintances, any mutuals?”

“What, you think we have some kind of group chat or something?” Clockwork sneered, and scoffed. “In case you can’t tell, I don’t like people. I like Toby. He has friends. We’re not friendly, but I know them, and they know me. That’s it.” Her eye flitted back to Gilliam. “Jack probably knows more than I do. He was with Jeff once. That fucker’s been around. Ask them.”

Gilliam shot a brief glance at Bishop and she pursed her lips, nodding to the side. Without another word, the man gathered the photos and stashed them back to the folder. He then stood up from his chair and turned his back to the younger woman, and Bishop took a step forward to join him at his side.

“Hey! Hey! We’re not done here!”

Bishop turned around first, to look back at Clockwork. The green-eyed killer didn’t care about her, though; her eye glowed and glowered at the back of the agent’s head.

“You said you didn’t take him,” she growled, leaning forward against the table with a shadow across her face. “So, where is he? Who took him?”

Gilliam peered over his shoulder, briefly glancing at his partner, before finally turning his body at a small angle to look back at the serial killer. His expression was blank.

“The Operator did.”

Something changed within the younger woman. It was like a steel ball bearing barely striking the surface of the invisible wall that the green-eyed woman had built in front of her, shielding her from the other two in the room and likely everybody else in the world long before she even entered this enclosed room. But the second the ball bearing touched it, the wall instantly turned into glass, and shattered right before Bishop’s very eyes.

“No,” she whispered, voice cracking. “Bullshit.”

Gilliam looked almost remorseful when he turned his head down to the floor for a brief second, before looking back up again. “I was there. We both were.”

When he glanced to his side at Bishop, the detective gave them both a single solemn nod.

“No, no.” A shaky smile broke across the younger woman’s stitched mouth. “You’re lying.”

“I have no reason to lie,” Gilliam said before sighing. His voice was low and steady, very much unlike how he spoke to her mere minutes ago. “It happened here, almost 24 hours ago. We would show you the camera footage, but you know how he works.”

“No.” Clockwork closed her eyes and shook her head. “You’re lying to me. You’re lying.”

Bishop drew in a harsh breath. “Natalie—”

“Do not get familiar with me!” the other woman suddenly snapped, shooting up from her seat and slamming her clenched fists against the table, almost startling the other two in the room. Her eyes narrowed dangerously at the detective, but the latter took another deep breath, swallowed hard and tried not to waver her gaze away from the brunette.

“We were there when it happened,” the detective continued, speaking more quietly than usual. She had this before—the glint in Clockwork’s one green eye, and the flurry of unstable emotions the detective knew was churning in the forefront of the younger woman’s mind. After all, eyes were windows to the soul, and this reaction had little difference to what Bishop saw in Jack just the day before. “We saw him take them. We couldn’t stop him.”

“Them?” Clockwork’s eyes blew wide, and her voice went quiet. “Wait, them? You mean—”

“Skye Martin was there as well,” Gilliam said slowly, carefully. “The Operator took them both.”

A gasp of breath escaped her disfigured lips. “No, no. Not again,” she stuttered out, shaking her head. “W-Well, where the fuck is Jack, then? W-Wasn’t he with them?”

“He went to go find them,” Bishop replied. “He’s going to bring them back.”

“Bring them back? There’s no bringing them back.” The younger woman practically fell back to the chair behind her, all the strength gone from her limbs and her speech. She weakly lifted her head, eye staring at the two people standing before her. “I’ve seen what that thing did to Toby. I’ve seen what he can do.” She made a small shake of her head, voice stuttering with each breath. “He’s not going to let them go. Not again.”

Bishop briefly looked over toward Gilliam and saw the lack of expression across his unmoving face before turning her head down, choosing to keep silent. He could have told Clockwork about HABIT if he wanted to. But he knew Clockwork better than she did, knew the situation better than she did. He hadn’t told her, not yet, perhaps not ever, so the detective wasn’t going to either.

She could’ve sworn she heard Clockwork sniffle before the younger woman snapped her head to the side, away from the investigators, away from even the camera in the corner of the room, to the far corner of the back wall with a single feeble scoff.