by Flora, Kate;
“Right. See you soon.”
Just thinking about limping made his knee hurt. If he’d known he was coming to a crime scene, he would have worn his knee brace. He wasn’t about to go home for it, though. He should get a spare one and keep it in the truck.
“Vince coming?” Kyle asked.
Perry had wandered off, doing another tour through the house, looking for small things they might have missed.
Burgess nodded.
“I know the kid was hoping something would happen tonight. Not me. I was hoping for a quiet night.”
“Me, too. A nice steak, a drink with friends, a quiet evening with my family.”
Kyle’s eyes follow the smeared blood trail across the dingy floor. “Not likely. Think this is where she was killed?”
Burgess shrugged. “Something bad happened here. Think that’s why Hooper led us here? Why would he do that?”
“Guilty conscience?” Kyle suggested.
“Pretty damned weird way of getting our attention. Why not just make an anonymous call?”
“Maybe he underestimated us,” Kyle said.
Stan Perry was back, rocking impatiently from one foot to the other. “What are we waiting for? I’m going down.”
Knowing he didn’t have to give the warning, Burgess said, “Stay to one side and try not to muck things up.”
“Right, Joe. Like I’m a rookie and this is my first crime scene.”
“Despite appearances, Stan,” Kyle said, “we don’t even know if this is a crime scene. Yet.”
“You think maybe someone was using tools in the basement, got injured and dragged off to the hospital?” Perry said. “In an empty house? Shitload of blood for something like that.”
“Just go,” Burgess said, “and leave us old farts in peace.”
“I am not an old fart,” Kyle said. “I am in the prime of life. You are the old fart.”
Burgess didn’t argue. He was thinking about what they’d all seen through the window, and wondering how their reactions differed. Whether they saw things he wasn’t seeing, or drawing different conclusions.
“What were you thinking when you looked through the window, Ter?”
“That we’re looking at a place where someone was held prisoner. And most likely a place where someone was killed. Wondering whether just Mermaid, or many girls, were held in that cell. How scared they were. Did they lie there on that cot and hope for someone to rescue them? Did they scream for help, not knowing how isolated this house is? I’m wondering who would do this. Who did do this? What kind of a person can mistreat another human being like our girl was. What were you wondering?”
“Whether that volume of blood meant the victim was likely dead. I see something like that, I start thinking evidence. What the scene is going to tell us. Whether we’ll read it right. I worry that we’ll miss something. Thinking about the victim? Often I do that once preservation of the scene is underway. Or driving home. I’m like a cow chewing a cud. I keep pulling things up and chewing them over. Sometimes, when it’s hard to go home after something especially bad, I’ll just go park somewhere, watch the city, and process for a while.”
He looked at the blood smears on the kitchen floor and thought he saw a faint footprint. As he knelt to inspect it, he said, “It was easier when I was a solitary curmudgeon. I love them and I’m grateful to have a family to come home to, but I still get these fears that the pressure to get home and be a good dad means I’m rushing things. Distracted by my kid’s issues. That I’ll miss things. That I’m not the detective our victims deserve. I don’t know how you’ve done it. With the girls. The PMS queen. All that weighing on you. Distracting you. And you’re still such a good detective.”
Kyle swept off an imaginary hat and bowed. “My thanks, kind sir.”
From below, Stan Perry yelled, “Oh Jesus. Holy fuck! Get down here, you guys. Call Medcu. Call Medcu!”
There was the distinct sound of gagging and he pounded up the stairs, staggered across the kitchen, and vomited in the sink. He stared at them, white faced. “Get some fucking ambulances over here. Maybe some of them are still alive.”
“Them?”
Burgess headed for the stairs while Kyle got on the phone. “Brace yourself, Joe,” Perry gasped between gags. “It’s a fucking horror show. Better call the fire department, too. Tell ’em to bring tools to cut the chains.”
Sixteen
It was a fucking horror show. What they couldn’t see from the window was the rest of the cell. In the bright light from his flashlight he saw a decomposing head resting on the far end of the cot, facing the inside wall. On the floor, displayed as though they were reaching for something, were two severed hands. Chained to the wall were four naked girls. Hispanic, Burgess thought. Probably teenagers, but small as children. Two of them lay on the floor, unmoving. He couldn’t tell if they were breathing. Two others huddled together, staring at him with dull, glazed eyes. The airless box reeked of fear, unwashed bodies, feces, decomp, and blood.
In the hot July damp the stench was overwhelming. His stomach flipped. He stepped out of the box, zigzagged across the room, trying not to step on the blood, and tried to open the windows.
They were nailed stuck.
He grabbed a big jug of detergent and swung it until he’d knocked out the glass.
Then he stepped back into the cell, checking the two unmoving girls for pulses. With the first, he couldn’t tell. In the second he found a faint pulse. The other two stared at him, not making a sound. Horrified past fear? Brutalized past protest? Starved into submission? His anger swelled at whoever had done this. He tried to recall the Spanish words for friend and safe. Amigo? Seguro? He tried them a few times in a soft voice but got no reaction.
He tested the chains, but they were sturdy. There wasn’t much he could do until the fire department got there with tools to cut them loose. He went back upstairs, found two plastic cups in the cupboard, filled them with water, and took them downstairs. He offered them to the girls, but they only stared. He mimicked drinking. Neither one moved. Finally, he put a cup against one girl’s lips and tilted it, wetting her lips. Slowly, a tentative hand came up and took the cup.
He moved to the second girl. Offered her a cup. Pointed to the girl who was drinking, and said very softly, “It’s okay.” Slowly a dirty, shaking hand came out and took the cup, crouching over it protectively. She would take a sip, check to see if he was going to take it from her, then sip again.
“Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. This fucking job broke your heart. His heart. Dammit. He’d said no more kids. He briefly closed his eyes, summoning the strength to get through this. Then he opened them and went to work.
Help would come. Pouring into the cell. His scene would necessarily be disrupted. He hated to do this, invading their dignity like this, but no one would believe what they’d seen unless he took some pictures. He swallowed, feeling like a rat, and photographed everything. The severed head. The posed hands. The small girls chained to the wall. The pool of blood. The marks where something had been dragged. The foul bucket that had served the girls as a toilet.
He wished he could photograph the smells. There was really no way for anyone who wasn’t here to understand it without the smells. The horrific, gag-inducing, stomach-turning smells. Bad enough for someone who could leave periodically to gulp some fresh air. Hell on earth for someone chained to a wall.
He didn’t want to leave them, but there was a footprint upstairs that was about to get trampled and he didn’t want to lose anything that might help get the filthy bastards who’d done this. All of this.
He dashed upstairs, phone in hand, and knelt to photograph it. He looked around for something to cover it. Found a dry plastic dishpan and placed it, upside down, over the print. Placed a chair over that. Chances were small it would survive the onslaught that was coming at them—preservation of life was paramount—but he had to try.
Kyle was still on the phone, asking for patrol to help control the scene.
“Nothing Bothers Me” Perry was still clinging to the edge of the sink, gagging and green. Burgess waved a hand to get his attention. “Go outside. Take your flashlight. See if you can find a bulkhead door, so everyone doesn’t have to come through here. Then, if you’ve got any blankets in your car, we could use them.”
Perry waved a hand, picked up his flashlight, and wobbled toward the back door. It wasn’t weakness to be shocked by a horrible scene. You could have seen it all a dozen times and then one day, one scene, one smell, one awful thing too many, it hit you. You still had to do the job, but you were allowed to be human. Most of them had days when they had puked into the bushes and gone back to work.
Burgess called Vince and told him what they’d found. Vince was four minutes out. Burgess told him to brace himself for a horror show.
A commotion of sirens and lights said help was arriving. Soon they’d be overrun with cops, medical personnel, and if they were unlucky, the news.
First through the door were fire fighters. Burgess explained what they needed. Two returned to the truck for tools, a third said he’d walk around the house, find Perry, and see if they could find and open a bulkhead door.
Before they piled down the stairs with their bolt cutters, Burgess cautioned them they were walking into something unusually ugly. He got a “we’ve seen it all, Sarge,” look from the older guy, and nothing from the younger, so he shrugged. He was just trying to prepare them. If they wanted to be jerks, he could be one, too.
“The severed head and hands,” he said, “try to work around them if you can because our crime scene team hasn’t got their photos yet.”
“Yeah, right,” the world weary one said. Maybe thinking this was part of the friendly rivalry between police and fire and Burgess was jerking their chains. Like Burgess ever went out of his way to be friendly. Or to jerk someone’s chain.
The young guy shot him a look and slowed his pace.
“I’m not kidding,” Burgess said, following them down.
The arrival of the two big men carrying tools terrified the two girls who were conscious. They crouched together in a tight ball, pressing small hands over their eyes.
The firemen were pretty terrified themselves. The cocky one paused and looked at Burgess. “What the fuck?” he said.
Burgess shrugged. “I got no answers. We found them like this. Don’t know much more than you do at this point. Just cut those damned chains, if you can, so we can get these poor kids to a hospital.”
“You gotta get these freakin’ hands out of the way so we can work.”
Getting the girls to a hospital was paramount, so he carefully lifted the posed hands and set them on the cot by the head.
“Fuckin’ freak show,” the man said, barking some instructions to his sidekick as he moved into the small space and started cutting chains. “When I cut her free, you lift her out of the way so I can get to the next one.”
“Where am I supposed to put her?” the sidekick said.
“Medcu’s on the way,” Burgess said. “I’ll see if I’ve got some blankets in my truck.”
There were footsteps on the stairs. Kyle coming down. He was carrying a couple of blankets, and clearly was bracing himself for what he was going to see. Even warned, it rocked him.
“Jesus, Joe!”
A silence. He heard Kyle swallow.
“What if we’d decided to call it a night and put this off until tomorrow?” Kyle said.
As the second firefighter lifted the first girl, Kyle passed a blanket to Burgess and opened the other one to receive the first girl. He wrapped her tight, holding her against his shoulder like an infant, murmuring soothing sounds to her as he carried her up the stairs.
Burgess opened his blanket for the second girl. Someone better get here soon. The other two were in worse shape. He was really afraid one of them was dead.
Imitating Kyle, he wrapped this girl tightly and held her against his shoulder. As he turned toward the stairs, there was the sound of hammering and splintering boards, and Stan and a couple firefighters broke through the wall beside the washer. Stan was holding a blanket.
“Medcu here yet, Stan?”
“Just pulling in.” He held out the blanket. “Let’s swap. I’ll take her out.”
Burgess handed the silent girl to Perry and opened another blanket. This girl, when they passed her to him, was limp and unresponsive. He was afraid maybe they were too late. Leaving them to deal with the fourth, he followed Perry through the broken wall and around the house to the waiting ambulances.
“There’s one more coming,” he said as he handed his girl over. “She’s in the worst shape.”
“I’ll come with you,” said his favorite EMT, a woman named Mary, who had an ocean full of patience and compassion. He led her around the house and into the basement.
The younger firefighter had spread his jacket on the floor, laid the girl on it, and was giving her CPR. He looked up with relief when he saw Mary, and stepped back. “She’s all yours.”
“Thanks, Jed,” she said. “I really need to lose another child.”
She looked at Burgess. They’d been together through enough losses to have become fatalistic, but she never did, and he tried not to. Especially when the victims were kids. She knelt beside the girl who looked horribly dead. Then she started giving Jed orders about what to go and get her, and started CPR.
“Anything you need me to do?” Burgess asked.
“What I always ask you to do. Find the bastard who did this.” She worked on the child, her face set. “Come on, sweetie. Come back to us. Come on.”
She shook her head and looked up at him. “I know I sent Jed for stuff, but I don’t want to wait. If you could carry her out. There are things I can try here, but we’ve really got no time to lose.”
He scooped up the girl, and the fireman’s coat, and followed her out. Wishing there were a way to infuse the small body with some of his life force. Out in the driveway, he gratefully delivered her to Mary and her colleagues, saw her swept inside, and surrounded by hands and equipment. He recalled another child, an infant, and how hard they’d worked, and prayed, for his survival. They couldn’t always win, but did their best. The doors swung shut. He watched as the first ambulance, then the second, backed down the drive and headed off into the night, the screaming sirens echoing through the quiet neighborhood.
The crime scene van and Melia’s truck moved into the spaces where the ambulances had been. Burgess directed Wink and his team around the house to the bulkhead, then took a moment to breathe, wishing he could clear the stench from his lungs. It would linger there, clinging to his clothes. Travel home with him. Live in the Explorer for days, if not weeks. Tonight he’d be undressing outside the door and stumbling to the shower in the robe he kept on a hook out there. He felt a thousand dark ugly years old.
Kyle and Perry were standing in the darkness with him, each in his own private space, illuminated by strobe-light flashes of red and blue. Taking a moment before heading back inside. Tucking that initial horror on a shelf, hoping it would stay there and, please God, let them work. As though more bad stuff wasn’t waiting for them.
There was a sudden, startling flash off to his left. The news was here. Before he could move toward it, a large uniformed officer appeared, fierce-faced and black as the night that surrounded them, moving toward the offender with the inexorable force of a bulldozer. Pinning the man and his camera in the beam of his flashlight, he barked a command in a loud, resonant voice, “Back to the street. Behind that line. Now!” and kept moving. Another time, different circumstances, the way the photographer turned and fled from the force of Officer Gabriel Delinsky would have been amusing. Tonight nothing could be amusing. Burgess was glad to see Delinsky, though. While his own job was to keep people safe, having Delinsky there made him feel safer. Gabe was the soul of decency and this was so indecent.
His protective instincts, though, made him glad Delinsky hadn’t been in that basement. They’d wor
ked a small, murdered boy a while back, a child in Delinsky’s neighborhood. The officer had beaten himself up for his failure to save the child from toxic family circumstances. Not that Delinsky hadn’t tried. He’d done all the right things, but bureaucracy can be an ass.
Burgess pulled himself back from another summer, from a steamy morning in a city park, bending over a beautiful murdered child, to find Vince Melia was standing beside him, already embarked on a litany of questions Burgess hadn’t heard.
He held up a hand. “Missed all that, Vince. Start again.”
Instead, Melia put a hand on his shoulder. “Take your time, Joe.”
Burgess brought up the pictures and handed Melia his phone. “This will tell it better than I can. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Melia took his phone and carried it into the light.
Burgess went on standing in the dark. So did Kyle and Perry. Their crime scene wasn’t going anywhere, and Dani and Wink knew what to do.
He should call Chris and tell her wasn’t going to be home any time soon, but when he reached for his phone, he remembered he’d given it to Melia. He headed for Kyle, his body moving reluctantly, as if while he was standing there, putting himself back together, someone had coated him in lead. Kyle was staring into the night, his whippet body trembling. As he got closer, Burgess heard a sound, not a hum but a growl.
Kyle jumped when Burgess got close. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t…”
“Take your time.”
Kyle had gone back to staring. Burgess was worried. Kyle was his rock. His attack dog. Kyle didn’t let things get to him. He just plodded on, doing the job, a silent, insanely competent, deeply insightful detective. Perry was the volatile one. But Kyle had daughters. Carrying out that emaciated, terrified waif would have hit him hard.
He headed toward Perry. When he got close enough, he could see the strobes from light bars coloring Perry’s silver tears garish red and blue.
Fuck it. They could take as long as they needed.
He went to the house to find Melia.