by John Hart
The car rocked as the big man climbed in, turned in his seat, and pointed a Polaroid camera. “Hold still.” There was a flash, a whirring sound. Still stretching for that far, high window, Tyra said her roommate’s name. “No talking. I don’t like talking.”
The little engine started, and he turned on the headlights. Tyra said Sara’s name again. She tried to scream it, but the big man twisted again, and found her throat with his hand. Tyra tried to fight, but he was strong and her fingers weak. They scraped an arm. Darkness flickered.
She opened her mouth, but had no air.
The darkness came again.
The darkness stayed.
10
The boy was not a bad boy. Anyone who knew him would agree. He was inquisitive but scattered, the kind of child who might forget he was in a baseball game, and wander out of right field to look for crawdads in the creek. That had happened once. Seventh grade. Last year. Granted, he did catch the largest crayfish anyone at school had ever seen—even the biology teacher agreed—but they still lost the game on a two-run pop fly straight down the right baseline. The coach had spoken to him about it afterward, explaining in his quiet, patient way that the team was a machine, that every boy had a job. The other boys were not wrong, he’d said, to be upset. Winning mattered. So did teamwork. Nods had followed; so had sincere apologies and promises it would never happen again. The coach had smiled in that same, soft way, then sent the boy out to his mother, thinking as so many did.
The boy was a good boy.
Just not very bright.
On this particular morning, the boy was not at his usual stop when the big yellow bus rolled up and opened its doors. He’d left the house at 7:15 but turned left instead of right. That wasn’t a mistake—he did know left from right—but older boys had told him about an abandoned construction site where they’d been finding arrowheads in a patch of churned dirt. The boy liked arrowheads—most every boy did—but for him, it went deeper. His grandfather had been full Cherokee, descended in a straight line from the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation, those not forced to walk the Trail of Tears all the way back in 1838. He was dead now, but the boy remembered his lessons.
Pride of people.
Pride of place.
Arrowheads and spearpoints were to be preserved and treasured, not traded like comic books and baseball cards. And he was good at finding them. When they’d built the baseball field, for instance. Or that time the river dropped. They rarely lay flat—that was the key. Inexperienced hunters looked for the telltale shape, as if they’d been placed on purpose the day before. The boy knew better than that. He looked for the edges, the points, the small bits raised above the dirt. After heavy rainfall was a good time to look, especially in plowed fields and new subdivisions. He didn’t know how old the construction site was or why it had been abandoned, and didn’t care, either.
Turning off the roadside, the boy cut the corner where his neighborhood ended and a four-lane stretched off as far as he could see. The construction site was on the other side and two miles down, a building seven stories tall and incomplete, just the frame, the elevator shafts, the cinder block stairwells. The spot, they’d said, was behind it where a hilltop had been cut down and spread out to fill a gully. When the boy arrived, he stopped where a chain-link fence paralleled the road. Cars sped past, but no one noticed or cared or slowed. Squeezing through a half-open gate, he followed the construction road, his eyes on the red-dirt verge. The boy liked corner-notched arrowpoints the best, but loved the basal-notched and the stemmed almost as much. Even a leaf-cut or a simple triangle made his heart skip a beat. He’d found a flint knife once, and a Clovis point as long as his hand.
Ax-heads. Grinding stones. Scrapers.
Anything was possible.
Because of that, the boy kept his eyes down, and sensed the building more than saw it: a dark mass, rising ahead. He paid no attention until its shadow touched his feet, and he saw caulk guns and soda cans and dropped rivets. Stepping onto cool concrete, he peered up through a spiderweb of beams and cable. Moving deeper, his shoes scraped in the grit, his hands on the concrete, the rusted steel. He circled a stairwell, and saw the blood first.
After that, he saw the girl.
* * *
Detective French got the call at home. “Ken,” he said. “Good morning.”
“Not so much.” There was crackle on the line, a radio patch. “You know the empty construction site on the edge of Highway 16? The developer who went bust last year?”
“A hotel, right?”
“Was supposed to be, yeah.”
“What about it?”
“I need you here.”
“Why?”
“Body. Female. It’s bad.”
“Hang on, hang on. Shit.” French trapped the phone between his ear and shoulder. He was making eggs. They were burning. “All right, Ken. Sorry. Tell me what’s happening.”
Burklow started with the boy.
* * *
French flashed his shield at the gate, drove into the old construction site, and saw a dark shape that evolved into a small kid with his knees drawn up, and his chin pressed into the bones of his chest as if he might never look up again. Exiting the car, French looked at the building, then back at the boy, taking in the sneakers, the T-shirt, the blown-out jeans.
“You okay, son?” The boy didn’t look up or speak. “I’m a cop, okay? I’m here to take care of you.” Still nothing, not even his eyes. Thirty yards away, Burklow stepped from the structure, and waved. French said, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Facing his partner, it was hard to hide the anger. “That boy should be with an adult. His parents. An officer. Someone.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?” Burklow looked away, and French caught all the signals. “It’s really that bad?”
“Have you had breakfast yet? ’Cause it’s like that.”
“Jesus. Okay. The boy called it in?”
“Kid stumbled into traffic, and a motorist almost took him out. Older woman. Grandmother. She got him out of the street and flagged down a patrol car. New guy. Dobson, I think. That’s him at the gate.”
“It’s a school day. It’s early. The kid’s what? Twelve?”
“Maybe. Maybe younger.”
“What’s he doing out here?”
“He’s not really talking.”
“No name?”
“Not yet.”
French looked around at the weeds and dirt, the windblown litter. “It’s pretty quiet out here, Ken.”
“I need you to see it first. I need that.”
French frowned as a pit opened deep inside. Burklow’s opinion mattered more than most, but rules existed for a reason. There should be other personnel on-site: detectives, technicians, chain of command. Ken had behaved like this only once before, and that crime scene had been so disturbing, they’d kept most of it from the papers, even from the victim’s family. “All right, partner. I’ll take your lead for now. Give me a second with the kid.”
French crossed to where the boy sat. Even standing, he could smell the child’s sweat; see dust in the creases of his skin. “How’re you doing, kid?” He knelt beside him. “Can you tell me your name?”
Nothing.
Silence.
“That’s fine. I run quiet, too. How about what happened? Can we talk about that? Or maybe why you were here?”
Still nothing.
Burklow was watching, shaking his head.
“Would you like to sit in my car? Air-conditioning. Cop stuff. It’s pretty cool.”
The boy shrugged
Progress.
French got the boy up and into the car. He showed him the radio, the spare cuffs, the shotgun locked to the dash. “Listen, son. I need to go inside…” The boy shook his head, terrified. “You’re safe here. Promise. All that…” He gestured at the building. “Whatever you saw, whatever is in there—it’s my problem, now. Okay? Not yours. Not ever again.” The boy looked away, trying not
to cry. “You wait here.” French patted him on the knee. “We’ll talk more when I come back.”
The boy watched him go. Burklow was waiting at the superstructure, and French followed him into the shadows.
“Watch the vomit.”
French stepped over it. “The boy’s?”
“Mine.”
That one-word response spoke volumes. Ken was a twenty-year murder cop. He’d fought in Korea. Moving more deeply into the structure, he angled left at an elevator shaft. “That’s where we’re going. North stairwell.”
The stairwell shaft rose the full seven stories. Beyond it, red earth and scrub stretched to a distant tree line. Rounding a final corner, French saw blood on the floor, reddish black, mostly dry. Above it, the woman hung from chains tossed over a steel beam. His gaze went to the torn wrists first, and then the cloudy eyes. After that, he soaked it up like a sponge: the way she’d been tortured and ruined and cut. He tried to stay level, but Burklow was right.
It was bad.
* * *
French had to walk away. When he had himself under control, he returned to the scene and studied the body from top to bottom, shying from none of it, not the blood or the excisions, not the organs and bones, the bits of marbled flesh.
Burklow kept his distance. “Can you imagine the kid? Finding her like this?”
French circled the body. Silver tape had been twisted around the victim’s head to bind her mouth and keep her quiet. Parts of her had been opened up, and parts removed. Her toes grazed the floor, and he saw drag lines in the blood. The way she’d fought. The way she’d swung. “White female. Mid- to late twenties.” French sought comfort in the routine; couldn’t find it. “Jesus, Ken. I’ve never seen anything like this. Not ever, not even close.”
“I tried to count the cuts while I waited for you. I stopped at ninety-seven. That’s when I got to the, uh, the…” Burklow pointed at the raw patches where her breasts had been cut away. “You think she was alive when that happened?”
“Possibly.”
French pulled on rubber gloves, and moved blood-crusted hair from the woman’s face. One eye was swollen closed, the nostrils black with blood. He studied cheekbones, the good eye. Something about the face was familiar.
“You okay, Bill?”
“Um…”
“What is it?”
“I was just, uh…” French shook his head as if to hide a sudden sickness. He pointed, but had no idea if Burklow was looking or not. “She chewed through the tape. No wedding ring. No other jewelry. Any sign of her clothing?”
“Not yet.”
French stepped away from the body, more than shaken. Undone. “Check for me, will you?”
“Bill, you don’t look so great.”
“Search for the clothing, okay? I need a minute here.”
“Yeah. Course. Whatever you say.”
Burklow lurched into the shadows, and French took the most difficult breath of his life as a cop. He counted to ten, then lifted the woman’s head a second time.
He knew the face; he’d met her.
A week ago she was screwing his son.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the place was crawling with cops, technicians, pathologists. Directing their movements, French appeared to be in perfect control; but deep down, he warred with himself.
Tyra …
That was her name.
“Do we have ID on the victim?”
French turned in the hot sun. He’d not heard the footsteps. “Captain, I’m sorry. Say again?”
“Do we have a name yet? An address? Did you find a wallet? A driver’s license?”
David Martin stepped closer. As a homicide captain, he was competent, fair, and smart. Generally, French liked him. Not now. “No, sir. No ID.”
“What about the kid who found her?”
The captain was a clear-eyed, narrow man in his early fifties. French looked past him. The kid was still in the car. “He’s pretty shut down. I’ll try him again in a bit.”
The captain nodded, already distracted. “This’ll be a media shit storm. You know that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So let’s keep it tight. You and Burklow, the medical examiner and me.” He pointed at other detectives. “Martinez. Smith. We’re the only ones who’ve seen the body, right?”
“The boy…”
“Of course, the boy.”
“And Dobson, I think. He looked pretty green when I showed up.”
“Right. First responder. Shit. I don’t know if we can keep this wrapped.”
French dipped his head at the structure. “Don’t forget the photographer, the fingerprint techs, the boy’s parents, when we find them.”
“I want time. Talk to your people. Give me what you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jesus, Bill…” The captain’s composure failed as he mopped sweat from his face. “As a father, what do you do with this?”
“I say a silent prayer and thank God for my sons.”
“I have girls.”
“The twins, I know.”
“Have you ever seen anything like that?” He wasn’t looking for an answer, so French didn’t give him one. “You know how long I’ve had this job? Too long, maybe.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“But you’ve got this, right? I can leave it with you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good man. Thank you.” The captain gathered himself, buttoning his jacket. “If you need me, I’ll be at the high school, then at the station.”
“The high school?”
“I think I’ll give my girls a hug.”
“Good idea.”
“Oh, and Bill…”
“Yeah?”
“Call me when you identify the victim. She’ll have family and friends. Someone somewhere is worried.”
“Soon as we have a name.” French watched the captain nod, and slide into his car. Inside, the war raged on.
Her name is Tyra …
She’s been with my son …
* * *
When French returned to his car, the kid’s color was better. “Mind if I sit with you for a while?” He slid behind the wheel. “I’m sorry you had to wait. It’s kind of crazy out there.”
“I’ve been watching.”
“Ah, he talks.” French kept it light because the boy still looked as thin as glass. “Remember what I told you before? You’re safe here. The bad people are gone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“Samuel.”
“Do you live nearby, Samuel?”
The boy gave an address. French knew it.
“I know I’m supposed to be in school…”
“Don’t worry about that. You’re not in trouble. My name is Bill.”
The boy held out a small hand, and they shook. He looked like Gibby at the same age: the thin shoulders, the same solemn eyes. “Do your parents know where you are?” The boy shook his head. “Will you tell me their names?”
“It’s just my mother.”
“Your mother, then.”
“Kate.”
“Kate. Good. Thank you, Samuel. Will you tell me why you came here this morning?”
“Some older boys said I might find arrowheads.”
“Did you find any?”
He shook his head, eyes filling. “I found…”
“It’s okay, Samuel.”
“I found … I found…”
“You’re okay, son. Breathe.” French squeezed the narrow shoulders. “In and out. That’s a boy.”
* * *
When the kid stopped crying, he told a simple story. He’d wanted one thing and found another. When he finished talking, French put him in a car with a female officer who had kids of her own. It was a good fit. He saw it in the boy’s eyes.
After that, they cut the body down.
It took bolt cutters and three men with strong stomachs. When she was bagged and in the
van, French called the medical examiner into a shady place by a different stairwell. Malcolm Frye was a small man with coffee skin and salt in his hair. He was good at his job. The two of them went back at least a decade. “What can you tell me?” French asked.
Frye pulled off latex gloves, his eyes as doleful as the kid’s. “Where should I start?”
“Cause of death?”
He shook his head, and used a handkerchief to polish wire-rimmed glasses. “I doubt any single cut killed her. Preliminarily, I’d say shock, cumulative trauma, massive blood loss.”
“Was she alive for all of it?”
“Probably.”
“Jesus.”
“It was precision work designed to keep her breathing and conscious. No damaged organs or nicked arteries. Whoever did this to her had training.”
“Surgical?”
“Not to that degree, but training. Paramedic, maybe. A corpsman. A med school dropout.”
“How long, do you think?”
“Once they subdued her and strung her up?” He lifted his shoulders, weary. “Long enough to chew through her own tongue.”
The ME settled the glasses back on his face, and French studied him more closely. “You okay, Doc?”
“I’m a black man in the South, Detective. What’s not to like about a good lynching?” The bitterness came out; he couldn’t help it.
“Listen, I’m sorry this one landed on you. If you want, we can get a different examiner.”
“No, no.” He waved off the suggestion. “Forget I said that.”
“Forgotten.”
“What else can I do for you?”
“Can you be more specific on timing? When it happened? How long she lived? This early in the case, even a guess would be helpful.”
“I can’t speak to her abduction, but she suffered for a long time, make no mistake. Inflicting that kind of damage would have taken hours. Methodical work. Careful work. Then there’s the underlying psychopathy.”
“Meaning?”
“That he probably enjoyed it. I doubt he rushed.”