Toxic Delights: Part 6

Being back in New York brought Elle back to a time where things were often murky and hopeless. Memories of the hell that was her childhood had flooded her mind the moment she and Detective Nieves landed at JFK airport, but she forced them aside on their way to their low-budget hotel and checked them both into the Kamway Lodge, which was located in Elmhurst, Queens, close to her old neighborhood.

"There's no way we're staying in this place." Camilla nagged and while the self-tanning brunette complained about the square footage and how we were going to share a room and bathroom, Elle focused on unpacking her toiletries from her suitcase.

"You've never been outside of the sunshine state, have you?" Elle asked in amusement, witnessing how prissy the woman was and she couldn't wait for her reaction when she heard the gun shots coming from up the block at night.

"Why would anyone want to leave? It's perfection." Nieves answered, and Elle rolled her eyes as she began to undress on her way to the shower. When she heard Camilla gasp, Elle smirked as she stood in the doorway, in all her naked glory, and glanced back at the bewildered detective seductively.

"Care to join me, detective?" Elle teased, and when she started stammering, Elle's head fell back in laughter as she closed the door behind her, and turned on the water in the shower. The moment she closed her eyes and the lukewarm water hit her face, she began to go over the things she'd say to her mother during her visit to the correctional facility later on in the day. The woman wouldn't have gotten away with decades of weapon trafficking and prostitution rings if she weren't a master manipulator. It wasn't going to be easy to get her to talk. Which was why she had called in a few favors at the FBI headquarters in Virginia and convinced them to let her father in on their little family reunion. Noah Dubois had been the only one who could shake my mother out of her skin with just one look, and she planned on using that to get the answers she needed.

Of course, they wouldn't actually be in the same room together. They'd be sitting in separate rooms, lined next to one another, divided by a large floor-to-ceiling one-way mirror. That way, her mother could see her baby daddy just enough to get her to talk.

Its been close to eleven years since the last time she saw her parents. She remembered the day so vividly, it almost hurt to think about it. She'd been sitting in her bedroom, about to tell Leah she loved her, when the loud pounding of someone knocking on her foster mother's door distracted her. Two shots were fired before her parents made their way into her bedroom, indicating that they indeed had killed her foster mother first, and wanted Elle to be next. She'd done her best to shield sixteen-year-old blonde-haired Leah from her parents rage, but nothing she could've done that day would've helped them see reason. At the time, they didn't know she ratted them out to the police because she wanted things to be better. Because she was dying to come home from school to a normal household full of family game nights, instead of bludgeoned bodies who failed to comply to their demands. They only saw betrayal. And they saved the worst of punishments just for her.

It didn't matter how hard she had cried, or how much she begged. Her parents were going to kill her. And they did. Maybe not physically, but in forcing her to kill her favorite person in the world, they might as well have ripped out her heart from her chest and shot a full round of bullets into it.

"Are you okay? You look a little—" Camilla started, bringing her out of her memories. Elle squared her shoulders and lifted her chin up, throwing on a costume of confidence and relentless determination.

"I'm fine. You can take Noah. You're his type, and you'll be able to get answers from him quickly," Elle suggested, while Camilla's eyes narrowed at her in concern.

"Anything else I should know before I head in there?" Camilla asked as the guards escorted them down the hallway, to the interrogation room she had requested for this meeting.

"Don't get too close. He's a charmer," she advised, and Camilla smirked as she nodded, while the guard escorted her into Noah's room. As soon as she saw Camilla's door close, she took a deep breath and nodded towards the guard beside her, allowing him to use his key card to unlock Stella's door first before she entered.

The room was at a warmer temperature than normal, which she had requested they set before they escorted her mother in. The heat had always irritated her mother. And she needed her to be on edge if this visit was going to give her the outcome she desired.

"Well, look what the devil dragged in." Stella Dubois greeted her with a smile that showed her newly installed pearly white dentures that Elle had paid for. She'd been a terrible mother to her, and she'd never forgive her or Noah for what they made her do, but she needed them to know she didn't turn out like them. Cold with the remorse level of a sociopath and psychopath combined. Compassion and mercy didn't exist to them. But they'd been victims of the same cycle of violent destruction in their own childhoods, which was why Elle had used what was left of her forgiveness to give them both the medical necessities they needed access to in prison.

"Stella," Elle replied as aloof as possible, treating her like she'd treat any other criminal. The woman was now in her late sixties, and the drug abuse her father got her into, had caught up to her in here. Her skin sagged, and the hollows of her eyes had deepened over the years. Elle saw it as a motivation to stay away from all the bad shit her mother had gotten addicted to.

"No hug for your mamma? I'm hurt," Stella mocked with a raspy laugh as Elle sat in the chair across from hers and folded her hands on top of the table.

"Dean O'Leary, tell me what you know about him," she demanded calmly, and watched her mother's overly plucked eyebrows shoot up with surprise.

"Haven't heard that name in years. But he was a sight for sore eyes, I'll tell you that much," her mother answered, her eyes dilating with arousal at the mention of Dean's name. Interesting, but not surprising. Her mother was the queen hooker back then. There was no man she couldn't seduce, no matter how happily married or single they were.

"I don't care about your sexual relationship with O'Leary. But I'm sure Noah would," Elle fired back, and watched at how her mother sat back in her chair, and looked her dead in the eye as they widened, indicating her father still caused a reaction after all this time apart.

"Dean was a business man, just like your father. He would understand," Stella claimed, while Elle rolled her eyes at her denial.

"Hmm, should we test that theory, mamma?" She asked, a sharp and wicked smile forming on her lips as she signaled towards Camilla through the one-way mirror. A few seconds later, the mirror morphed into see-through glass, and Stella's glare followed hers to the image of Camilla interrogating Noah in the room next door. Elle watched her mother's shifty eyes lower down to her lap as she stood up and stood her ground next to the glass. She pressed the intercom button that would allow Noah and Camilla to hear her talking and focused her frenzied thoughts on the tactics she had learned at the academy.

"Hi, Daddy," Elle spoke into the intercom speaker on the wall and she peered into the room while Noah Dubois stopped speaking at the sound of her voice.

"Elle? Is that you? Quit playing games little girl and come out of hiding," Noah demanded, causing Elle to laugh at his request.

"I've got mamma here. And she's got a secret to tell you about Dean O'Leary. Go ahead, Stella. Confess your sins," Elle taunted her, and held back her laughter when her mother tried to tackle her, but the cuffs around her hands and feet wouldn't allow her to.

"I'll kill you. I'll kill you good this time. Don't think I don't know what you've got going on out there," her mother admitted, clarifying that she still had contacts outside of prison. Whoever this stalker was, could be keeping tabs on her and working for her mother.

"So you know about my new case," Elle continued her inquiries, as Stella huffed and puffed her way back onto her seat.

"Ain't nobody care about your life back then or now. I thought Noah and I made that clear when we made you kill that girl of yours. What was her name? Lori? Lucy?" Stella was toying with her now, getting her agitated enough to snap, but it wasn't going to work. She was better than them. She needed to be.

"Daddy, do you remember any of mamma's old lovers? Did any of them stand out to you? He might've even been good with electrical wiring," Elle asked her father, as she stared Stella down and waited for his response. It was no secret as to what her mother was back in those days, especially to Noah, who made no attempt to cover it up in front of her. He accepted her for who she was, which was why they worked well together. Her mother had done the same for him during his mob days.

"From cops to pastors, that woman kept her legs open for business twenty-four seven," Noah spit out with a short laugh. Stella's glare disappeared and a smile surfaced at his words.

"Did you bring anyone else with you the night you got arrested?" Elle continued, pushing aside all the memories of the night her parents put a gun to her head, and coerced her to beat the living hell out of Leah James, bringing her close to death. The feds had shown up too late, and the social worker in charge of her case had shipped her off to another foster home the same night. She never found out if Leah had been taken to the hospital, or if she died on her way there. Either way, she'd never be able to look at her in the eye after what she'd done. She only hoped Leah had gotten the happy ending she deserved.

"Happy Mike. He was supposed to get rid of your body when we killed you, but he pussied out. Decided he wanted to drive the getaway car instead. Feds picked him up too from what I heard. Haven't heard from him since," Noah answered without hesitation, or penitence. No doubt he was staring at Camilla as he spoke, undressing her with his eyes, imagining all the things he wanted to do to her after being in prison for so long.

Desperation made people mess up. Noah Dubois was no different. And he just gave her the biggest lead she'd gotten so far. She remembered Happy Mike from her childhood. He'd been about six-feet-tall, white, with green eyes, typical body builder type, but he was dumb as a door knob, he wouldn't be smart enough to pull this off. The memory of how he was didn't fit the profile of the kind of serial killer she was hunting. Which was why she needed to find him and figure out what happened after her parents got arrested.

"You're openly confessing to wanting to kill your own daughter?" Camilla asked incredulously.

"She ain't never been my daughter. She was a problem the day I pushed her out in that hospital bed and she's still a problem now," Stella replied sharply in her New York accent.

"I forgot how much I missed your kindness, mamma. We should do this again some time," Elle answered sarcastically, "Let's go Camilla," she ordered through the intercom and hurried towards the door.

"Now wait a minute. We helped you with your case. Don't we get something in return?" Stella mentioned, just as the guard opened the door for her.

"Of course. You're both going to rot in your solitary confinement cells and I'll make sure you never see the light of day again. Enjoy your slow deaths, I sure as hell will."

"Why did you become a profiler?" Camilla asked, on the cab ride back to their hotel. Elle stared out of her window, as she watched the sun go down and the lights turning on from the heart of the city, illuminating its surroundings.

"I lived next to a pedophile when I was seven. And I could tell he liked children because I always saw him open up his curtains right around the time the kids got out of school. He watched me and my friends walk home five days a week from the comfort of his bedroom, and there was this look on his face. I'll never forget it." Elle started, closing her eyes as she pictured the old pervert again, "He looked happy. And not in the oh-children-are-god's-miracles kind of happy. It wasn't until I was older that I realized the change in my friends' behavior. They were withdrawn, refused to play with the others during recess. The shame had them paralyzed on the inside."

"You were in different foster homes at the time, right?" She questioned and Elle nodded.

"I asked them to keep me in the same neighborhood. So I could keep an eye out for my friends. But I was still a kid. No one would've believed me if I said my friendly next door neighbor was a disgusting pedophile without proof. He was too nice, blended in well with the other parents. But I saw him for what he really was. And I wanted to make him pay for what he did to my friends. So I did."

"How?" Nieves asked as they walked into their shared hotel room and Elle locked the door behind them.

"I showed up at his door one day after school, with a video camera my teacher let me borrow. I lied and told her I liked to make movies and she let me keep it," Elle continued, "Anyway, I planted the camera behind a flower vase he had in his living room while he went to go get me a plate full of chocolate chip cookies. I hid it well, so he wouldn't notice it. Guys like that are paranoid, they'd notice if something were out of place. He told me he'd been waiting for me to come visit him for a long time, then offered me a cookie. I took one but never put it in my mouth. I kept him talking until he scooted closer to me on the couch. He got closer and closer, even reached to touch my braids. I let him. He moved his hand to my thigh. I let him. When he moved it up in between my legs, I took his fingers and twisted them hard enough to make him pull back."

"Holy shit," Camilla commented as she listened attentively to Elle's story.

"I got up, took the camera and ran out of the house. I walked to the police station shortly after and turned in the video tape. They arrested him within the hour and as far as I know, he's still rotting in prison thanks to the testimonies I convinced my friends to give during his trial."

"You must've been terrified."

"Funny thing is, I wasn't. I was so angry about what he'd done, that the fear disappeared. Even when I stared that man in the face in court. Him knowing I made that all happen made me feel exhilarated. That's why I do this, detective. I do it for the high enforcing justice to the fullest extent of the law gives me," Elle explained and Camilla nodded in approval, reaching out to shake her hand.

"Never thought I'd say this but, I enjoy working with you, Agent Dubois," the detective claimed, causing Elle to smile with pride.

"Likewise," she responded, and fished into the back pocket of her jeans for her vibrating cell phone. Sarah's number flashed across her screen and she immediately excused herself to take the call in the bathroom. "Sarah? Is everything okay?"

"He sent me another email. I forwarded it to you along with the rest he's sent me." Sarah informed her.

"Did you read it?"

"I did..." the apprehension in Sarah's voice made Elle nervous.

"What did it say, Sarah?"

"He mentioned Carter Murphy," the blonde replied, while Elle's heart began to pound and her blood began to boil.

"Tell the captain Carter needs to send his men to Carter's hotel as soon as possible and tell him its under my orders, no questions asked. Got it?"

"Got it. Stay safe."

Elle hung up the phone quickly and opened the bathroom door.

"What's going on?" Camilla asked when she noticed Elle packing up her things in a hurry.

"The killer has been after me all along. I thought it was my mother. I thought she had caused all of this. But it was me. And now he's after my friend and I swear on this badge and this gun I'm going to make him wish he were dead."