A Deadly Sin: An epic dark thriller that will have you wanting to leave the lights on.

by Tracie Podger

  “She never wanted anyone to know. Her life expectancy isn’t as long as it should be.”

  “That’s why she wouldn’t…” I cut my sentence short.

  “She wouldn’t, what?”

  “Nothing. I’m trying to get my head around why he would take her. I’d appreciate you keeping this between us for now, the press isn’t aware just yet.”

  “I’ve told the staff here that she’s ill. I’ll tell Dan the same when he returns to work.”

  “Dan?”

  “Her technician, he’s off work, doing poorly himself.”

  I knew who Dan was. “How long has been off?”

  “A couple of days now. He left a message on the answering machine that he had a bug of some kind. He was a little vague about it, to be honest.”

  “Vague?”

  “It was just a message left but, yeah, vague. I can’t explain it, he hasn’t had a day off sick since he’s been here.”

  “How long is that?” I asked.

  “About two years, I think. Joined us from Canada.”

  I froze. “Canada, I didn’t hear an accent.”

  “American born but moved up there as a child. I think he came back and forth many times. Anyway, you will keep me informed if you hear anything, won’t you? I just don’t know what to do to help.”

  I hadn’t heard the last part of what he’d said; I was sending a text message to Dean.

  Dan, Eddie’s technician called in sick, left a message; it’s unusual according to Charles. He also spent time in Canada, might need checking out.

  His reply came quick.

  On it, get the recording.

  “Charles, do you still have the voice message Dan left?”

  “I don’t know, why?”

  I deliberated for a moment. “Our killer isn’t working alone, and I’m trusting that isn’t information you’ll share with anyone.”

  “You think…? No, he’s…” Charles seemed shocked at what I’d implicated.

  He picked up his telephone and made a call requesting a copy of the recording.

  “I’m not saying he’s involved, but right now, we have to look at every avenue,” I said, when he’d finished his call.

  Another thought hit me. “Are there rooms here you don’t use?”

  “There are a couple of examination rooms, we have more space than we have examiners, at the moment.”

  “Will you show me the whole facility?” I’d never been beyond reception, Eddie’s office, and her examination room.

  We left the office, and Charles explained what each room we passed was used for. At the rear of the property were a couple of bays, reserved for the vans bringing in ‘visitors.’ To one side was a metal door, he took a key and we descended a staircase. Just the act of taking one step at a time down to a basement had my heart racing.

  “Nowadays all our records are computerized and we do have a process of uploading all the old records, but, as you can imagine, that’s going to take years. So, here we have storage.”

  “What do you do with the records once you’ve uploaded them?” I asked.

  “They’re destroyed, we have a furnace and they’re burned. We think that’s the safest way.”

  I froze. Charles stopped walking and turned back to look at me.

  “Don’t go any further, Charles. We need to get out of here.”

  His brow furrowed in confusion. I pulled my cell from my pocket.

  “You need to get over here. There’s a basement, and another furnace,” I said, as Corey answered.

  “Mich… Oh, forget it, give us five.”

  “Can this area be accessed from outside, when the facility is closed?” I asked Charles.

  “No, unless someone either has a set of keys, and the passcode to disable the alarm, of course. Then there’s the pin code pads to access each area and the whole place is covered by CCTV.”

  Dan did. Dan had all of those things.

  Charles and I walked back out. We passed technicians moving bodies from the morgue to examination rooms. Each body was covered with a white cloth. It could be anyone under those cloths, anyone dead or alive.

  “Does the CCTV extend inside the building,” I asked.

  “Yes, in reception, the corridors, but not in the examination rooms themselves. Those rooms have their own recording systems, but it’s not often that we’ll video an autopsy.”

  I nodded as I thought. “I’ll wait outside for my guys to arrive, we need to investigate the basement, Charles. I’d appreciate it if you could keep any staff away for a little while.”

  “I’m giving permission, Mich, and I’d appreciate if your guys need to remove anything, I know about it first. I have to protect the information that’s held in here.”

  I nodded. “You know about the cases we have, Vicky Bell, for example?”

  He looked at me before sighing. “The furnace,” he said. I nodded.

  “We found a furnace in the old coroner’s office, in the basement, but it didn’t look like it had been used. We need to find somewhere that would allow our guy to melt gold to the degree he needed. Would that furnace do that? We also know he washed Casey before moving her to the school. Eddie thought we should be looking for somewhere ‘clinical’.”

  Charles slowly closed his eyes. His head rolled forward slightly and he sighed.

  “I guess so, I don’t know what temperature gold would need to be melted at, to be honest. Do you think…?”

  “I don’t know, I just know that we are pretty much out of locations in this town, other than here,” I said.

  “Okay, I’ll rearrange my meeting this morning, so I’m available if you need me. I’ll be in my office. Please come and find me before you leave.”

  He shook my hand and walked back toward his office. Charles was due for retirement but in that half-hour he’d aged another ten years. Eddie’s disappearance, the thought that their facility could have been used as a crime scene, seemed to weigh heavily on his shoulders.

  “Bring us up to speed,” Corey said, when he and Dean arrived.

  I gave him the details I’d learned from Charles. “And he gave us permission to enter?” I nodded.

  We didn’t necessarily need his permission if we thought we were entering a crime scene, but it made life a lot easier not waiting on a warrant.

  “Is there any point in me asking you to stay here?” Corey asked.

  “Nope, lead on,” I said, gesturing with my arm for him to descend the stairs to the basement.

  I followed behind, Dean brought up the rear. We didn’t anticipate meeting anyone, it wasn’t an area that the staff of the facility frequented regularly, and I didn’t believe Thomas to be dumb enough to hide down there in the day. The basement held three rooms, the first we entered had rows and rows of metal racking that held boxes of notes. Some were yellowed with age and each had the letter of the alphabet and a date range going back years. I pitied the person that had to input all that data.

  The second room caused us to come to an abrupt halt. In the center of the room was a metal table and to one side a furnace. What caused us to come to a stop was the cleanliness of the floor. In comparison to the previous room, this had been cleaned, thoroughly. The spike in my heart rate, though, was caused by a bucket and mop that had been left in the corner. A gold smudge could be seen on the handle.

  “We’ve got it,” Corey said.

  This had to be the room Thomas prepared his victims in. Which gave more credence to Dan being involved. How else could Thomas have gained access?

  The third room was set up as an office, what caught my eye was a radio, the frequency set to the same one we’d use in the patrol cars.

  “We need all the CCTV around the time Casey and Vicky were murdered,” I said. I wasn’t sure Dale was killed here.

  “How the fuck has someone not noticed this?” Dean said.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess the only people down here are the data entry personel, and I imagine they grab a file and take i
t back upstairs.”

  “Get someone over to Dan’s house, now,” Corey said. Dean made his way back to the entrance to make the call.

  When a break came in any case, a surge of excitement would normally run through me. It wasn’t excitement I felt though. Although it had only been a few hours since Eddie had been taken, it was still fear rippling through me. The closer we got to Thomas, the more dangerous it would be for Eddie. I wandered back to the storage room. The air was stale and heavy with dust, there didn’t seem to be any disturbance. It was as I was staring at the boxes that a thought came to me. I wondered if my mother’s records had been taken from that room.

  By the time I’d joined the others, further officers had arrived. Our forensic team, depleted because some were still working on the evidence we’d already collected, had arrived.

  “Mich, outside,” Corey said. I followed him back up the stairs. “Okay, the guys at the clearing in the woods think they’ve found something, about a mile from the house.”

  “What the fuck are we doing waiting here then?” I asked.

  “Because if he has Eddie there, you know damn well we can’t go storming in. This is potentially a hostage situation. Second, Dan isn’t at his house and it doesn’t look like he has been there for a couple of days, he has uncollected mail. If, and it’s a big if, he’s involved, we aren’t going up against just one person.”

  “What do you mean, if?”

  “We don’t know that Dan isn’t a victim…” He raised his hand to silence my protest.

  “It’s highly likely he’s involved, getting in and out of here would take an insider, we know that. But I’m not fucking this case up, or putting Eddie’s life in jeopardy by acting on gut and not procedure.”

  “So what is going to happen?” I asked.

  “There’s no point in me telling you to go home, but you are not involved, Mich. Do you understand me?”

  I smarted; I wasn’t a fucking idiot. But I respected the guy, so I nodded.

  “We’re going to use some surveillance equipment to see what we can find at the new site. A camera has already been set up but we need to know what’s underground. There’s a metal hatch, very well concealed, which we think might lead down to a bunker. I’ve got someone trying to find out if it's military or not.”

  “When, Corey? How quick will you be set up?”

  “Hopefully, within another couple of hours. We’ll get over there for dusk.”

  “And if they’re there?”

  “We’ll have to take it as it comes when we get there.”

  “Make her the priority, please,” I said, my voice lowered to a whisper.

  “You know I will.”

  “She has a heart condition, Corey, she needs medication.”

  “Okay, you know we'll have paramedics there anyway.”

  One of the things that had helped my decision to leave the FBI had been involvement in a case where the priority had been to catch the bad guy, no matter what; with little regard for the life of the person he held. I sort of understood why, he was a prolific killer who needed taking out, but it didn’t sit well with me. Not everyone in a hostage situation made it out. I didn’t want Eddie to be a statistic, collateral damage for the greater good.

  There was nothing for me to do but to head back to the station, alone. If we were getting close to Thomas, I had to back off; I knew that.

  It was time. The final part of my plan. First I had to dispose of Dan, he’d served his purpose over the years. He had been the only friend I’d ever had, but I didn’t trust him to keep quiet. He’d been dumb when he’d called in sick. It seemed I was surrounded by stupid people sometimes.

  “How shall we do this, Eddie?” I asked. “Shall I cut his throat? Maybe you could teach me how to perform an autopsy, that would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  I liked to see the fear on Dan’s face. It was ironic that I’d just administered the ketamine that he supplied to me. I never asked where he’d gotten it, but he sat in the chair I’d bound him to, head lolling and spaced out.

  “Yes, an autopsy. Now, I guess I have to lay him down.” I kicked the chair from underneath him until he fell face down onto the concrete floor. I untied him, then rolled him over.

  “Mmm, Eddie, will he wake up?” Maybe I needed to secure him down.

  I walked over to where she lay and stood over her. Her brown eyes looked back at me, she blinked a couple of times.

  “Don’t,” she croaked, her voice was so hoarse. It was the first time she’d spoken.

  “Don’t? Why?”

  “Thomas, please. Just let him go.”

  “You sound so sexy with that hoarse voice of yours. I can’t let him go, no one gets to go.”

  A single tear rolled down the side of her face. I reached down to catch it on my finger, and then sucked on that finger to taste her.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “Ah, Eddie, it’s a long story, but shall I tell you a secret? Your boyfriend ruined my life. Well, his mother decided he was the more important child. Did you know we are half-brothers? You didn’t? How could you not?”

  Her eyes had widened in shock at my revelation.

  “The whore, our mother, married my father, then left to be with Mich’s father, and gave her child up, me. She gave me up to a man who hated to look at me because I resembled everything he couldn’t have. My father loved her, the stupid fuck. He pined after her for years and years.”

  “How is that Mich’s fault?” she asked.

  “How? How?” I shouted then took a deep breath to calm myself. “She was going to leave his father, come back to us, but then got pregnant again. That baby made her stay. That. Baby.”

  “But…”

  “Shut the fuck up now, you hear me?” I kicked her in the ribs. I didn’t want to hear any more from her.

  “And then, Eddie, just when I thought my father had moved on with life, just when he started to show me a little respect, your cunt of a boyfriend killed him. Oh, I swore! Oh, I’m so sorry, please, forgive me?”

  She nodded; she gave me a smile. My smile spread from ear to ear. She had smiled at me!

  “Anyway, we need to get rid of Dan, it’s important, Eddie.”

  I walked around my ‘cave,’ deciding what to do. “How about you show me what to do?” She disappointed me when she shook her head.

  “Time is running out!” I shouted.

  I dragged Dan to his knees by his hair. He moaned, coming down from the high I’d administered. I grabbed a knife from the bench and yanked his head back. He was kneeling between Eddie’s legs, salivating over her exposed pussy I imagined. I drew the knife slowly across his throat and watched as blood spurted over her. She screamed, he gurgled, and I laughed. I let him fall; he lay across her, bleeding out. She writhed, cried, and when he’d bled out over her, I pushed him away and fucked her again. His blood acted as a useful lubricant.

  I sat at the station, watching the preparations, listening to the briefing, and scanning the monitor connected to the wireless camera watching the bunker. The only movement had been one of Corey’s team planting a listening device to the entrance. They had wanted to find a way to insert a small camera, but when they’d scraped a little of the earth away, they discovered the bunker was concrete lined. Nothing had come back from his military contact so the assumption was made that Thomas, or whoever owned the property, had built the bunker.

  “Okay, we’re ready to move out,” Corey said. I stood and looked at him. “You can ride in the second car. You are an observer only, Mich,” he said, his voice stern.

  I climbed into an unmarked car with Pete driving and two officers in the back. They were part of a tactical team, dressed in black and wore balaclavas on their heads, rolled up to their foreheads.

  We didn’t enter the property via the driveway but from the opposite end. We joined three other vehicles, one being a large surveillance unit. I was told to wait in the unit. The tactical team huddled together to check their equipm
ent before hiking through the woods. They wore cameras attached to their flack jackets so we were able to watch in night vision. They skirted the clearing, dropping to the ground to crawl toward the hatch.

  The occupants of the unit were silent as we watched the monitors. One of the team reached forward and gently cleared grass and earth, his camera picked up a metal plate with a rope handle and a bolt, pulled open. He used a snake camera to film the edges of the plate. I could see him watching the feedback on a handheld monitor. He would be looking for hinges, bolts, anything to give him an idea of whether the plate was secured shut from inside. I’d used the snake camera myself. It was a tiny cable with a fisheye lens on the end, perfect for what he wanted to do.

  The camera fit between the edges of the hatch and the bracket it sat on. It also picked up another bolt on the underneath. I silently cursed. He’d have to pry open that bolt without being heard.

  I could hear my heart beating and the blood rushing past my ears, building as each second, minute, passed, with tension. My palms sweated, the evening was balmy and the unit humid. For obvious reasons there were no windows, and we couldn’t have the air conditioner running for fear of making too much noise. I felt a bead of sweat slowly roll down my spine, yet coldness seemed to have seeped into my bones. I shivered.

  I watched the guy raise his hand and beckon his colleague forward; they inserted something between the gap to pry the bolt open. Every movement was slow, silent. Eventually, they rose to a crouch and pulled out their guns. It took just another few seconds for a third member of their team to join them.

  “Come on,” I whispered, as I watched one slowly raise the hatch just a couple of inches.

  From the camera, we could see steps leading down into darkness. We had no idea how big the bunker was or what the guys would face when they entered.

  “Go,” Corey said, speaking through a headset and startling me.

  The hatch was flung open and the three guys rushed through with flashlights turned on and guns raised. I held my breath, watching the jolting images that were fed back from their jacket cameras. They descended the stairs and into a square room. The camera focused on a body on the floor. Even with the green hue that was night vision, I could see it wasn’t Eddie. My breath was expelled in a rush of relief.