Participants:
| Scene Title | To Stop Another Heart |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Jamie makes a run for it after he kills Ariel, but a critical mistake costs him his life as he crosses paths with Colby Martinez. |
| Date | August 3, 2009 |
It's been several hours now since he inadvertently electrocuted his therapist, Ariel Martinez and Jamie had no clue what to do. The sparks have stopped, but he's been a wreck. He went to his place to get somethings, but the cops were already there, so took off. He's wandered for several hours before deciding he needs to get out of the city. He cannot go to jail. He cannot be picked up and experimented on. He's heard stories that they do that. Wracking with guilt, he stops in front of an ATM and uses his card to pull out as close to his balance from his account as possible in $20 increments. He doesn't have enough to fly anywhere, nor does he want to try to go through airport security. It hits him then that he needs to take the bus.
He's going to use as much of his money as he can to get as far away as he can.
He walks for nearly an hour before he reaches the bus station with the large greyhound illuminated in the growing dusk.
Colby Matrinez. Widow. It sank in as she stood there in Ariel's office, the pleasant atmosphere, set with a bouquet of flowers and soothing paintings, only mocking the morbid nature of the widow's visit. She was staring at the chair in which her wife had died when the phone vibrates at her hip, right beside her firearm.
"Martinez," she answers. A pause, long enough to absorb whatever is being said on the opposite line. "I didn't hear this from you. I owe you one, amigo." Click. She knows the ATM the murderer had pulled his finances from wasn't far from the bus station. The bastard was going to leave town. He'd kill again, even if on accident - that is her excuse for blowing the empty chair a kiss before turning and walking out of the office.
She makes better time in her car then Jamie did on foot. Now she sits there, her knuckles white where her fingers cling to the steering wheel, the world outside darker than dusk from behind her aviator glass and her own dark brooding. She watches and waits - she'd seen his picture in the files. And there he is.
She'd stopped breathing, and reminds herself to pull a deep breath to steady her nerves as she stoops out of the car and begins to walk forward, ignorant of everything around her but Jamie, the killer, standing just ahead. Her badge, strung on a thick chain around her neck, catches a quick wink in the fading sunlight.
The nervous wreck that he is, Jamie has no clue that there's someone waiting for him as he reaches the terminal. Along the way, he tried to think of places he might go to where he could disappear. Maybe Boise, or Spokane. Will the amount he has get him that far. Perhaps he needs to try for some place not so far like Omaha or Topeka. A cold calculated escape this was not. His hands were sweaty and he can already feel the sparks starting to come again as a small streak of electricity jumps from his fingers to the metal handle of the door to the bus station.
The slamming of the door of a car gets his attention as he turns to see where it came from as he stands there with the door open. He sees the glimmer of the badge and panic sets in as he leaps like a rabbit and runs like hell down the sidewalk and across the street. Traffic is dodging him as much as he's dodging them as he nearly is run over by a cab, but he finally makes it across and heads down towards a park. He's not fast, but he's certainly running like his life is at stake, and he has no idea how true that is at this very moment.
"Stop!!"
It didn't matter. The little prick was already off and running, the instinct of training and the rush of bitter adrenaline spurring Colby into a full sprint after the young man. Colby's unnamed law informant promised to only give her so much time, much of which had been eaten up in waiting for the little bastard to show. Officers would be in-route.
She dives into traffic after the man, having an easier time of stopping the vehicles that had just began to roll after the dodging man's interruption into the busy street. Her hands at her gun, the other pumping at her side, when she realizes… Electrokinetic, the file had said. The river wasn't far from here. She's on autopilot as she scans for innocent bystanders and suddenly lifts her gun, shooting the corner of the building ahead to scare the fugitive off to the right. What the hell was she doing? It's only a momentary thought before the image of her wife's pale, lifeless face, her body on a slab of cold metal where their warm bed should have been, kicks her into a faster gear. "STOP!"
The gun shot scares the crap out of Jamie as he ducks as though he could avoid being shot. Stopping would be the last thing on his mind at the moment. He clears the building, running around the corner and finds his way into a park. He's breathing hard, not much of a runner, honestly and the electrical sparks are coming more frequent as he zaps nearly everything he touches.
Tears are streaming down his face as he finds a bench that he crawls under. The dark hides him well enough, except for the fact that there's an occasional spark from his hands that light up the area around him and the sounds of his sniveling. The sounds of a fountain is heard, which would drown out any sounds he makes, but that damn flickering..
Colby's boots skid across the gravel as she enters the clearing in the park. Her glasses are tipped back up over her head before the gun is lowered in front of her, cradled in both clammy palms, as she scours the scene.
"Jamie? I'm an officer with the NYPD. I need to speak with you. Come on out…" It was hard to pick out just what was amiss - the carefully chosen words blending with the officer jargon instilled in police training. "It's just me here. We just need to talk." The latest spark catches her eye. "You're just making this harder on yourself…" She hast bite her tongue to keep her words in check, to keep from calling the murderer just that. "Come on out."
"I-I-I didn't mean to do it. I t-t-tried to stop it, but it wouldn't! I liked her." Rising up from the other side of the bench, his back to the fountain and his hands are up in the air as he takes a step backwards. In the dark, it may be hard to see the tears that are streaming down his face. "I can't make it stop.." he says as sparks of electricity passes from one hand arcing up and over to the other hand and back again. It's getting worse and he knows it. He takes another step back.
Colby parts her feet to a shoulder-span width, raising her gun in tandem with the dark silhouette that emerges from the opposite side of the bench. Her gaze flickers to the fountain and back. "Is that the truth?" She asks, grinding her teeth as she takes a step forward, just enough to keep a measured distance between her and the fugitive.
Jamie nods emphatically as he continues to back up closer to that fountain. "I swear! Oh God, I swear!" As if it would help, he raises his arms as h igh as he can as if there were degrees of surrender.
"Alright. Just try and control yourself…" Colby begins to holster her weapon. Another step forward - she couldn't see his tears, nor hear the sorrow in his voice over her own thoughts - What was to become of the child they'd meant to adopt? How could this careless creature be allowed to live when her Ariel's life had been snuffed out despite all the good she'd done.
Colby crouches under the weight of her thoughts, trying to keep from hyperventilating. Another flash of the crime scene and her hand closes around a large rock, sending it hurling at the young man a moment before the officer stands and lunges forward…
He watches as she puts the weapon away and he thinks this is all going to be over with as he feels the edge of the fountain at his heels. His attention is diverted, only to be struck by the rock that is hurled towards him. His body falls into the water as his electricity begins to short circuit him and be begins to heave and wail.
The water conducts the current and begins to light up around him. He holds up his hand. "Wait.. please." he begs off, then another shriek as the electricity surges through him again. The sparks grow more rapidly and a nearby lamp post catches a strike and shorts out, darkening the already dark park even more. With each surge of electricity that flows around him, the louder his shrieks got.
Sirens can already be heard in the distance.
Colby steps up to the edge of the fountain despite the fireworks of azure sparks and streaks of electricity. Half of her wishes that one would go astray, let her know Ariel's last pain and taker her away to her wife. The other just needs to see him, to get a good eyeful of the murderer as he convulses in his own pain.
She isn't heartless, though - if she was she wouldn't be here. She swallows visibly past the lump in her throat, oblivious to the wail of sirens as her gun is reclaimed. "Let me help you," she mumbles, the first inklings of sorrow overcoming the rage that had been aloud to build and broil.
*CRACK!* The gun fires, aimed at the uncontrolled, young man's heart
Holding his hand out in front of him as he sees her aiming towards him. "No. Wait!" His words are rushed, disjointed just before the shot rings out in the park. The flashing lights of squad cars is starting to luminate the park as Jamie watches the shadowed figure of Colby standing there arm out.
His heart is pierced by the round and almost immediately his current begins to taper off. He looks incredulously at Colby, having no idea how this day has turned to hell like it has. "Tell them.. tell them I'm sorry.." He finally falls back, the water of the fountain covering his body shortly after he breaths his last breath.
He knew it was inevitable. He could see that dangerous burning fire in her eyes when he brought her in to identify the body. Of course, that was the whole motivation behind the sharing of information, the verbal reliving of the death of his own wife from twenty-one years ago. Coren had desperately hoped it would make her stray from that path, that quest for vengeance — maybe even avoid it altogther. If he had thought the talk was as pointless as he realized it was when he heard the reports over the radio, he wouldn't have gone down that dark and depressing road in the first place. It's nothing he wanted to review even in his own mind, let alone share it with a complete stranger who was suffering as much as he had, way back when.
The black, rust-bucket sedan pulls up shortly before the few squad cars, and it's only a second before Coren all but flies out of his vehicle, his eyes narrowed at Officer Martinez. There is a laboured sigh as he unholsters his service weapon, flicking the safety off — though he doubts he will need to use it. "Colby Martinez," his hopefully familiar accented voice calls out, "Please put the gun down on the ground and place your hands on your head." It always goes too far.
The anger in Colby's drains from her body not unlike the last breath that slips from Jamie's lips - quiet, quick, and leaving an emptiness in its wake. She doesn't turn at the sound of the familiar voice at first, but stares at the second empty face she's seen today, another face that'll burn in her memory forever.
"He said he was sorry," she offers, giving the dead man at least that much, as she finally looks back over her shoulder, her dark eyes all the darker for the strains and horrors of the day. Her shoulders slump and there is a soft thud as the gun lands a surrendering distance away into the grass. Slowly her hands lift, fingers lacing into one another at the back of her head. When she turns around her gaze is only for Coren, the only member of the bustling police force around them with whom she seems to both recognize and connect.
The very emptiness he had warned about, for that is all vengeance brings. The weapon is re-holstered, safety back on as Coren moves forward. He doesn't bring out the handcuffs quite yet, and if he had any way of avoiding protocol, they would not come out at all. "Whether or not he's sorry now," he says, his voice quiet as he looks down at the bleeding corpse in the water of the fountain, "Is irrelevant." There is a deep sadness in his eyes as they fix upon Colby's own. "The question is, are you?"
When he brings out his handcuffs, there is another sigh as he moves around to Colby's back, drawing each hand and securing it into its respective cuff. "Colby Martinez, you are under arrest for murder. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say will be entered into evidence and may be used against you at trial. You have the right to an attorney who will act in your defense. If you cannot afford one, a public defender will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?"