twispitefic

Title: Perceptive Charlie
Author:

gehayi
Fandom(s): Twilight (1st book)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 790
Inspiration: Written in response to

das_mervin constantly asking just where the hell Charlie was and pointing out all of the plotholes in Edward and Alice’s efforts to cover their tracks in chapter twenty-four.
Summary: Charlie is too good a cop to ignore the fact that Bella's story and the physical evidence don't match up.
Author's Note: I need a Charlie icon so badly.

When Charlie arrived, he rushed over to my bedside. “Isabella Marie Swan, do you know how worried I’ve been? Do you? Why did you run away? What happened?!”

I swallowed, and tried to assemble the story I’d been told to repeat into something approaching coherence. “I...I had to get away from Forks, Dad. I had to get away from Edward. I told you that in my letter.”

Charlie nodded a bit impatiently and motioned me to go on.

“Well, I got to Phoenix,” I continued, “and I walked around for a while. Then I found out that Edward had followed me to Phoenix to talk to me. And he told me to come to the Hyatt where he was staying with Carlisle and Alice. But the elevator wasn’t working.” I was proud of myself for thinking of the elevator. “So I had to take the stairs. And my heel caught at the top of the stairs on the fourth floor, and I fell down two flights and out a window.” I tried to laugh, and gasped with pain instead. “It couldn’t have happened to anyone but me, Dad.”

Charlie’s expression had been growing more coldly furious as I continued to speak. Now he got up, closed my door, strode back over to my bed, and sighed. “Bella, you’re lying.”

I was furious—the more so because he was right. “Dad, I would never—!”

“Wanna know how I know?

I nodded, not even realizing that I was admitting to lying by doing so.

“First off, your injuries. According to you, you fell out of a window, right? Where are the lacerations, Bella? Your skin doesn’t have any cuts on it. The doctors here didn’t have to wash glass out of your hair, either, and there wasn’t any in your clothing. And you don’t have impact injuries, either—the kind you’d get from falling from a considerable height.

“Second, there’s no physical evidence that you fell down those stairs. Your clothes have dust on them, yes—but not the same dust that people track in and out of that hotel. According to the Phoenix Forensic Labs, you were about five to seven miles west of that hotel. Oh, there’s a broken window in the Cullens’ hotel, yeah. Looks like someone hit it with a hammer—the break is far too neat to have been made by a human body. And the screen didn’t bend or break or burst outward from the weight of a human being—it’s been cut with shears, and not cut much, even. You didn’t even leave any fingerprints on the stairs, and if you’d been falling the way you say, you’d have left fingerprints and palm prints all over the stairs and railings. You couldn’t have helped it.

“Third. You say that you fell down one flight of stairs, hit the landing hard enough to break four of your ribs and yet in such a way that none of them punctured a lung. Despite the fact that a body at rest tends to remain at rest, you, in defiance of Newtonian physics, kept moving, falling down a second flight of stairs, this time landing hard enough to twist your leg so hard that it broke in multiple pieces. Once you broke your leg, you then bounced straight up until you were level with the window, phased through the glass and the screen as if you were Kitty Pryde—for the pane and screen weren’t damaged at the time that you were hurt, we have security photos—and plunged downward two and a half floors, cracked your skull on the asphalt parking lot, and, despite the fact that you were having problems breathing, walking and remaining conscious, thanks to a subdural hematoma, you simply got up without making a sound and strolled away. Because no ambulance was called to that hotel, Bella. None.”

He gazed at me solemnly. “Now, I could choose to believe in this miracle, Bella. Or I could believe that you were scared to death of Edward for reasons that you don’t want to talk about, and that when you fled to Phoenix, he stalked you there and beat you until he broke your ribs, your leg and your skull. That makes more sense. Your injuries were inflicted by a very angry person who’s used to getting his own way—not by impact with objects.

“Your mother told me on the phone yesterday that all of a sudden, you love Forks and don’t want to leave it or Edward. Quite a turnaround.” He scowled at me. “I don’t know why you’d want to protect this piece of shit; I’ve never understood why people protect their abusers. But I swear to you, Bella, he will NEVER hurt you again.”