Chapter 146 – The Funeral of Malorie Noelle – Holly Hayfield
Ms. Sampson was seized by the police. The charge had nothing to do with the new wealth of information surrounding Malorie Noelle. No, she was arrested because the police had evidence that she lied in her testimonies surrounding Ms. Logan's death.
When they discovered Angelica's body exactly where Silver told them it would be, they took things a step further by investigating the cabin that Angelica was trying to take Silver to. It was there that they discovered communication logs between Angel and several of her contacts.
Groundbreaking revelations followed in the wake of this, but the greatest was just how involved Officer Angelica Morelli was involved in the cover up of Malorie Noelle's death. This wasn't something they could hide either. The media was right on their heels, following the case.
When the body of Malorie Noelle was discovered in a makeshift plywood casket in the cabin's basement there was a great deal of uproar. On one side of things, it made the police investigators look incredibly incompetent. The fact that one of the key suspects was amongst their ranks wasn't a good look.
On the other side of things, people felt blindsided in the wake of this information. The news, on a national level, took hold of the conspiracy story and ran with it. Even my own mom was glued to the living room TV, watching information on the conspiracy come out.
The police were late to authorize an 'off-limits' zone to the cabin and the area surrounding it. The media had a field day with the place before they did. All the illegally obtained guns, money, blackmail material, and bribery evidence came pouring out. It felt like there was something new in every news segment.
The fact that Officer Morelli was so deeply entwined with Ms. Sampson meant that the two of them risked going down together. It was no secret to the police that the two were friends since high school. A massive light was placed on Ms. Sampson as a result of the fallout.
It didn't help Ms. Sampson's case when the police and half-a-dozen news outlets received some very interesting audio recordings via an anonymous e-mail address. The recordings about the death of Mrs. Duluth and Malorie's betrayal put public interest in the case into overdrive. Now the Art and Theater Club’s secret was known to the entire world.
In death, Malorie was vindicated. She was hailed as a hero for speaking out and trying to tell the truth.
Suddenly, the disappearance and death of Malorie Noelle made sense in the eyes of the police and the public. Suddenly, the police could make sense of Ms. Sampson's contentious relationship with Ms. Logan. Suddenly, they understood why Ms. Hoffman became a recluse and then killed herself when pressed by the police.
All of the pieces were falling into place and it didn't come without spectacle. Above all the conspiracies, lies, and tales of betrayal, there stood the image of the Killing Cat. The mask of the Killing Cat went from being the image of an unscrupulous serial killer, to being an image of truth and justice.
Public opinion of the Killing Cat performed a sharp 180 once the public understood the nature of the mission. People began making artwork, comics, posters, and other merchandise within the same day that all this information came out. Someone who was once thought of as a villain had become a local hero, subduing the criminals when the justice system failed spectacularly to do so.
The police didn't care. Good or evil, they didn't want some masked vigilante running around killing people. In one announcement on a news segment about this very topic they promised leniency and a generous deal should the Killing Cat come forward with the information they are missing from the case. Fat chance.
That sounded like a trap if I had ever heard one. Murder was still murder, even if it was for a good cause. I wasn't delusional enough to believe otherwise. The police didn't want someone doing their job for them, but they weren't capable of doing it back when they were so compromised by their own agent. Their announcement was just a way to save face in all of this.
It wasn't just local police officers involved with the case now. There were federal level investigators assisting them. They were going through greater lengths to gather evidence and information. They were frequenting witnesses that claimed to see the Killing Cat. I had to use my alter ego carefully, now more so than ever. They weren't going to have any leniency on me, despite saying so.
It was largely thanks to Alyssa that I managed to avoid detection and capture for so long. She performed a lot of miscellaneous support functions that made me more of an enigma. All of my infiltrations were planned out well in advance between the two of us these days.
The greater police scrutiny meant that I'd need to lay low until things cooled down. With the amount of public interest in this case there was no telling when that could be. The police had an idea of who my next targets were and likely had them under scrutiny as well.
All of this didn’t go without notice by Malorie’s brother, Jacob. Lilith and I called him the same night that Malorie’s body was discovered by the police and media. He was depressed about the revelations, but not too surprised. He was just glad to have some closure. Jacob said he planned to hold an open-invitation funeral the day after Christmas.
Malorie was going to be buried near her younger sister, Annabelle Noelle. Seeing that the day Jacob chose was after a major holiday we didn’t expect too many people to show up. The story was huge in the media and so we assumed there would be a few unknown stragglers, at the least. We were not prepared for the massively oversized crowd that appeared.
My mom couldn’t even find a place to park. The streets were lined with parked cars all the way up the road, stretching down the street to our trailer park. She opted to drop me off and come pick me up later. That wasn’t the end of the overpopulation problem. Just getting into Davidson East Cemetery was a massive struggle. The facilities weren’t meant to host this many people at once.
It was an extraordinary thing to witness. People were holding up posters, artwork, and light-up devices as if this were some sort of sports game. More than that, there were people selling Killing Cat merchandise on site! That blew my mind to see. People were purchasing practically perfect Killing Cat replica masks, hand over fist.
The vendor selling the masks ran out by the time I made it into the gates of the cemetery. The crowd was a diverse group of people coming from all walks of life. The few individuals that I randomly chatted up claimed to live in the area. Most of them even knew the original story of the Killing Cat.
Valentina was so upset that she couldn’t be here. She was still out of the country, visiting her family back in Kyiv. Instead, I was talking to her via video-call on my phone. This way she could be here in spirit if not actuality. Currently I was lifting my cell phone over my head so that she could get a look at at the size of the crowd.
"That's a far larger turnout than I expected." Val said to me when I brought the phone back to my face. "You can hardly move around."
"You're telling me..." I said, pushing my way out of the crowd. "I'm supposed to be meeting the others somewhere around here. Originally we were going to meet at the gates, but now..."
"Yeah, too many people there." Val said. "Damn… I wish I could've been there... After all of our hard work getting information about Malorie out to the public and I'm not even there to witness the results of our efforts. What a shame."
"Well, let's just be glad that this is happening. You'll be back for New Years' Eve, right?"
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"Right, my plane actually takes off in a few hours. I’m all packed and ready to go. I’ll be there soon. I've had a lot of fun visiting my family here but I'm ready to return. Speaking of which, you're not going to believe this but they briefly mentioned Malorie's story on the news here."
"Really...?"
"Yeah, it was only a small 30 second segment, but they framed it as a police conspiracy to keep a young girl's murder from getting noticed. They mentioned that the police department is under investigation themselves."
"The fact that Angel was a police officer has really hurt the department's image. She wasn't just any police officer, either. She was the officer officially designated to handle interactions and outreach at our school. It looks like some sort of internal collusion."
Val gave me an odd look over the video call.
"What is it?" I asked when she remained silent.
"I was going to ask you how you're holding up in the aftermath of her death. Although, I understand if this is too soon..."
"It's not too soon." I said. "I'm not at all shaken up by her passing. The thing is that she's been involved with the Malorie conspiracy from the very beginning. I grew distant to her ever since I learned about that. It was impossible to look at her the same way now that I knew what she had a hand in."
"I see..." Val said. "I can understand where you're coming from. I often find it hard to talk to Ms. Sampson with a straight face."
“My mother was more broken up by Angel’s death than I am.” I said. “They were occasional drinking buddies. All of the information about the corruption she was involved in forced her to realize that she didn’t know Angel as well as she thought she did.”
"Please don’t get mad at me for saying so, but you're taking the news better than I thought you would." Val said. "I thought you might have a hard time getting over it. You seemed fond of her before. Maybe that was my misunderstanding."
I sighed heavily. She had a point, but I was prepared for this for a long time.
"It's hard for me to be outraged over something that was more or less inevitable. Our goal was always justice for Malorie, in some form or another. This form was a violent one, but not totally unexpected in light of the Killing Cat's attacks."
“The Killing Cat has been on the hunt lately, hasn’t she?” Val asked. “She’s done more for our cause than any one of us could have. It’s a shame that she’s getting to so much unwanted attention. I’d like to arrange a meeting to speak with her.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” I warned. “We can’t afford to be affiliated with that sort of character. If someone were to see us with her…”
“Yeah, yeah… I get the picture.” Val said, waving me off, “It was an idle thought. Besides, I get the impression that she’s the type of person that doesn’t want to be found. Then again, she made use of the information we put out on the Immortal Diary website. You think she’d be grateful to us for that.”
“How has the website been handling recently?”
“It hasn’t.” Val said. “Jay was forced to take it offline when the servers were overloaded by visitors. She got an e-mail from the host company and was offered the choice of paying to upgrade server plans or close it down.”
“That’s understandable. The website was mentioned in one of the news segments I saw. It’s only natural for people to take a curious peek at it.”
“True,” Val said.
Sam playfully slapped my arm from the side. She grinned at me when I quickly spun to face her. She was here with her older sister, Ash. Lilith was trailing close behind them.
“We were looking all over for you!” Sam said. “You didn’t meet us near the gate!”
“Yeah, for obvious reasons…”
“I sent you a message, didn’t you see?” Sam asked.
“No, I’m on the phone with Val. See, look…”
I repositioned the phone in my hands so that the others could greet Val. Ash was most excited to see her again and tried to start up a conversation about where Val was. Val explained her family situation a little over the phone. She nominally lived with her older brother here in the US, with her father coming back and forth between countries for work.
Both of Valentina’s parents worked in translation and localization services between the US and Ukraine. They’ve always travelled and moved around for their work. Val has always had trouble maintaining a consistent school life until high school. It was only now that her brother lived relatively independently from their parents that she could have a long-term home.
Lilith pulled at the edge of my jacket.
“I know I’m cutting this short, but Jacob wants to talk to us.” Lilith whispered.
“Oh, you got a message from him?” I asked.
“He sent me a text message. He wants to meet us in the main building over there. He said it’s off-limits to the crowd, but he talked to the staff on our behalf.”
“Let’s not keep him waiting then.” I said. “Valentina, can I call you back later?”
“It’s fine. You two go ahead and talk to Malorie’s brother. Jay should be there soon. I’ll call her instead.”
Lilith and I left to go find Jacob. Sam said that she and Ashley were going to wait near the gates for Jay and Alyssa. We found Jacob inside one of the ceremony preparation rooms.
There she was. Malorie's body looked thinner than I remembered it. Angelica probably didn't put as much effort into its preservation as Ms. Logan did. Her skin was still ghost white due to all the bleaching, although there were patches of greying skin in some areas now. Similarly, her once black hair was now a grayish color without Ms. Logan dyeing it.
"I thought this was going to be a closed-casket funeral?" I asked Jacob.
Jacob was quietly standing by his sister's side, staring down at her face absent-mindedly. Malorie's face was masked with a blindfold to hide the fact that she was missing eyes. There was no doubt in my mind that the fact bothered him a great deal. It was probably what was going through his mind as he stared at her.
"It is." He said after a long pause. "I just wanted one last chance to lay eyes on her before she's finally put to rest... It's been so long that she no longer even looks like how she once did. I won't lie. It's… difficult for me to see her like this. I feel sad… I feel angry… She shouldn’t have been treated like this!"
"Malorie went through so much in both life and death..." I said. "She deserved something better than this world. It's a shame that her corpse was hidden away for so long."
"Yes… At least now I can at least finally put her to rest beside Annabelle, where she belongs." Jacob said. "I called you two here to thank you both for all the work that you've done."
"Us...?" Lilith asked incredulously. "We didn't locate her body. We just helped spread Malorie's story to the public eye."
“And this is what your information spreading accumulated to.” Jacob said, tapping Malorie’s coffin. “I’ve been searching for her for years and now I finally have her. I finally have the answers I had been searching for. All of my theories about her disappearance were wrong and I never would’ve known without your intervention.”
Lilith gave Malorie’s casket a frustrated look as she laid a hand atop the wooden siding.
"I wanted to do more to help, but we could never gather enough solid evidence." Lilith said. "Until now, there wasn't a way to get the police involved in a way that lead to definite arrests. All of this isn't thanks to us, it's thanks to..."
"The Killing Cat," Jacob said flatly. "I'm well aware of her contribution to Malorie's return. It’s a little hard to swallow that a killer helped set things right. You may hate me for saying this, but I'm actually grateful to her. Without the Killing Cat taking action into her own hands Malorie's killers would have got away with this and I would've never found her body."
"Why would we hate you for saying that?" Lilith asked. "I feel the same way! They got exactly what they deserved in my opinion. I'm glad that the website we made came in handy for something like this."
I hummed in agreement with Lilith's sentiment. There was nothing more that needed to be said on that topic. It was a bit risky to agree with Lilith when she was saying something radical, but it felt appropriate at the moment.
Part of my reason for becoming the Killing Cat was to discourage Lilith and Val from taking matters into their own hands. Normally I’d chide one of them for speaking this way, but it was hard to do so with Malorie’s corpse right beside us. No one was that much of a saint.
"I'm glad that you two are such genuinely considerate young women. I knew there was something special about you two since the day you arrived on my doorstep. I thought you girls might appreciate the chance to look at her before the casket is closed for the final time."
Lilith looked down at Malorie with an uninterested look on her face.
"This view of her is sort of depressing." Lilith admitted. "I prefer the enlarged copy of Malorie with her friends that I have hanging in my bedroom. Seeing that image makes me think about this school year and reminds me of all the friends I made."
Jacob perked up at this.
"I'm not sure I know which image of her you're talking about. Did you find a new one?"
"I'm not sure if I can call it new, per se, but I can e-mail you it."
"I'd appreciate that very much." He said. "For now though, I have to go let the other visitors know that the outdoor ceremony is about to begin. The cemetery staff is a bit antsy about this many people being here at once. I'll try to keep things brief."
"Do you mind if I stay behind a bit with Malorie?" I asked. "I'll be out in a minute or so."
"Of course," Jacob said. "Take as much time as you need. It's not like Malorie has much family left to visit her. I'm sure she'd appreciate your presence if she could say so."
"Thanks." I said.
Jacob and Lilith walked out of the room while talking about the images Lilith had of Malorie. All of the staff was in a different room, leaving me alone with Malorie. I turned to her and reached for her casually, putting a gentle hand against her cheek.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Killing Cat keychain that I bought from a local maker just a couple of days ago. I slipped the keychain into Malorie’s gloved hand and let it rest there. The keychain was small enough to be easily hidden and avoid detection from the staff.
“This will all be over soon. You will be avenged. I swear it.”