All That Remains (A Missing and Exploited Suspense Novel Book 1)

by Hannah Holborn

  “No angels here,” Chase says. “We can go back to our lives and forget this place exists.”

  Radar stays where she left him, lying down with his side propped against the wall beneath The Blue Boy. Chase’s knees crack as she bends to pick him up for the return trip. She gets Radar’s front legs positioned over her shoulder without a fight, but he squirms when she raises his arthritic back end. They topple over and the wall that should stop their fall dents under their weight. The nail holding The Blue Boy spits out. The picture clatters on the floor.

  Chase extradites herself from under the dog. Her hand dives for the cigarettes and lighter in her robe’s pocket. She takes one long drag before butting the cigarette out on the floor. Then she readies her knife.

  Her body vibrates with adrenaline as she touches a crack in what should be an outside wall. Beyond the damaged Gyprock, her fingers hit metal. At the juncture where the wall ends, she finds a groove. From there it’s only a matter of sliding the fake wall on its track. Behind the wall is the last thing she wants to see—a cell.

  “Hey, in there,” Chase says. When no one answers, she adds, “I hope you’re decent ‘cause I’m coming in.” The beam of her flashlight reveals an unconscious child dressed in threadbare pajamas, lying on an army cot.

  Beyond the cot, handcuffs rest at the base of a pole rising from the floor to the ceiling. There’s a toilet, sink, and mirror in the far left corner. A beach towel hangs on a hook, and there are toiletries on a small shelf. Toys, clothing, magazines, a few books, and the same halo as the kid’s wearing in the paintings are on another shelf on the opposite end of the room. A plaque painted in rainbow colors and the words family is forever makes her skin crawl. Worse yet, Crawley has inflated a rubber glove, drawn on an eerie smile and two X’s for eyes, then hung it to dangle it from the ceiling above the boy’s cot.

  Chase retracts her switchblade to stow in a pocket. She lifts one of the boy’s eyelids. “Kid?” she says. The pupil is unresponsive. Radar ambles over to her side. He looks up at her and whines. “No, we cannot take him home,” Chase says. “What we can do is get the hell out of here right now. Come on. Let’s go.”

  Chase is at the foot of the stairs before she realizes Radar hasn’t followed. She backtracks and calls him to her. The dog stays where he’s laid his body beside the boy’s cot. When she calls his name again his lips curl up to expose his incisors. The growl he makes is no joke.

  Chase wants out of the house of horrors badly enough to leave Radar to find his own way out, except that would lead Willard Crawley straight to her. She reaches for the dog’s collar, determined to drag him up the stairs if need be. His head and teeth flash so quickly she doesn’t see the bite coming until it’s happened.

  “Shit,” she says, jumping back. “I can’t believe you fucking punctured the skin. I swear I’ll have you put down if we ever get out of here.”

  Chase’s legs are trembling too much to support her weight. She squats with her back to the wall and sucks the blood forming on the pad of skin between her thumb and forefinger. She has to think, but her options are slim: abandon Radar and drive as far and as fast away as the van will take her, or take corpse-boy home until she can figure out what to do about him.

  The boy’s skin practically burns Chase as she slips an arm under his limp legs and another under his damp back. Despite his emaciated state, her body complains as she does a slow shuffle out of the room and up the steps. When Chase reaches the top she sets the boy down, then goes back down for her dog.

  When they reach the upper floor a second time, she removes the belt from her robe. She ties one end to Radar’s collar, and the other to her wrist in case he decides not to follow. She hoists the boy’s fiery body and presses it against her own. The night has turned insane and Chase is now personally involved, the last thing she can afford to be.

  «50»

  The smell of bacon wakes up Gabriel. He opens his eyes, surprised to see a bright, flowery room instead of Willard’s basement until he remembers he’s next door, brought there by Chase Solomon and by Radar her dog. Hospitals have security cameras and Chase doesn’t want to go to jail, so she couldn’t drop Gabriel off at the hospital when she found him. Even though he was really sick, it was okay because Chase bought medicine that has made Gabriel better.

  Now Chase bangs around in the kitchen. After months of darkness, the loud sounds and bright light in her house bother Gabriel’s ears and eyes, but he likes the food she cooks, and the funny pictures on the walls. And he loves her dog, Radar, with all of his heart.

  The smells haven’t woken Radar up yet, so Gabriel waits. The dog’s nose twitches, and one leg starts to pump. He’s having what Chase calls a running dream. Gabriel also has running dreams most nights, and he wonders if his legs pump too.

  The dog’s dream ends when Chase knocks on the door. She comes in adjusting an apron with a cartoon picture of a woman’s body in a bathing suit that looks like one of Celine’s real suits. Sometimes Chase smiles, but right now her mouth is turned down in a frown. “How’d you sleep?” she asks like she has each morning.

  “Good.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she says. “Chow’s on.”

  Yesterday Chase made an omelet, fried ham, toast, hash browns, and orange slices for the vitamin C. She’s not like Celine who doesn’t waste money on food. She’s not like Willard either; instead of eating almost everything, Chase only took one slice of ham and a few forkfuls of egg for herself. It didn’t even make her mad when he tried to hide the leftovers under the bed because he couldn’t fit any more food into his stomach. She said it only made her sad.

  Chase wraps her arms around Radar’s torso and lowers him to the ground. When the dog does a slow shuffle from the room, Gabriel gets up to follow.

  “Your bruises and cuts are healing,” Chase says. She points to a paper bag on the dresser. “I bought a disposable camera. You might need photographic evidence of what that man did to you. Think you can you manage to follow the directions on the package?”

  Gabriel’s not sure because he’s never used a camera before, but he nods.

  “All right,” she says, “I’ll leave you to it. When you’re done, come eat and we’ll talk about where we go from here.”

  Gabriel closes the bedroom door, which has a full-length mirror on the backside. He takes off the soft, clean pajamas he’d like to stay in forever and puts on his old, but clean, underpants. There are marks on his body from Willard, Celine and the Elvises that never went away. The new cuts from Willard have crusted over. The purple bruises on his legs are turning yellow at the edges, and the mark on his chest in the shape of Willard’s fist is still red and large. When he covers it with his hand, the edges show. The camera doesn’t have many buttons and it’s not too hard for Gabriel to figure out how to take one smiling picture.

  When he goes into the kitchen, Chase is leaning against the kitchen counter, holding her mug with both hands. She tells him to take a seat at the table. He obeys and picks up the knife and fork the way she taught him, but can’t keep himself from hunching over the plate to protect his food.

  Chase raises the mug to her lips to blow off steam, then takes a gulp that sounds as if it hurts. A wind chime stirs beyond the kitchen window, making a pretty song. “Let’s start with the basics,” she says. “We agree that your father’s a sick pig.”

  Gabriel doesn’t understand why Chase thinks bad things about his dad. “I like visiting him,” he says.

  “Seriously? After everything that creep has done to you?”

  Gabriel’s teeth can’t stop chewing the delicious bacon when he says, “He didn’t do anything to me. It was a rabbit he let me hold that scratched my face. We caught it on the hospital lawn.”

  Chase sets down her mug and looks at him hard. “We’re talking about the creepy dude next door. The one with a thing for torture and imprisonment?”

  “That’s not my father.”

  “Then who the hell is he?”

  Ga
briel thinks this through. “Willard,” he says. “A kidnapper.”

  «51»

  Chase is the wrong person for the job. It was nerve-wracking the first night while she waited for Tylenol and ice packs to bring down the kid’s fever. Even though he regained consciousness it would have meant a trip to the emergency department and possibly her subsequent re-incarceration, if she hadn’t been able to rehydrate the kid with the electrolytes she keeps for bad hangover days.

  Now hours of racking her brain over what to do and all she’s come up with is to arrange for a handover of the boy to sympathetic relatives, ones who’d see the need to protect him from a psycho father and who wouldn’t feel compelled to ask questions about her.

  Except her only idea’s gone kaput. If Gabriel was abducted, as he claims he was, then every cop in the country has finding him on their bucket list. And no handover in which Chase is present will be low-key.

  Her pacing brings her back to the sink. She’s an idiot to put her freedom at risk for a stranger. She’s leaving today, that much is for certain. She doesn’t have a clue what the kid’s going to do with himself.

  Chase has confirmed the name he calls out at night is his mother’s and he’s given her the phone number. Chase’s family handover plan can still work with a tweak; the family just won’t know it’s going to happen in advance. If the boy’s mother answers, Chase won’t speak. All she needs to know is that the woman is in Fenny where she’s supposed to be.

  She punches in the number. After three rings an answering service picks up. A sultry recorded voice invites the caller to leave a discreet message for Ce-Ce’s Escort Service.

  “Fuck,” Chase says. The kid has something in common with her; they’re both the offspring of losers. “Tell me about your mother,” she says. “What’s she like?”

  Gabriel’s big blue eyes seek out the floor. “Celine works hard.”

  “I just bet she’s too busy working hard to cook meals or help you with your schoolwork. Am I right?”

  The kid has a knack for uncommunicative silence.

  “Does she use drugs to help her make it through the night?”

  “She has medicine.”

  “Now that’s a big surprise. Bet she’s not too busy to hit you, though, hey?”

  The kid’s only response is to flinch.

  “Bet Creepy Crawley was one of your mother’s boyfriends.”

  “Nope,” Gabriel says.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  Gabriel nods his head. “Willard’s not an Elvis.”

  Chase can do a lot of things, but she can’t hand the fragile child over to a druggie prostitute with a temper and an Elvis fetish. “The number’s not in service, so I guess your mother moved,” Chase says. “Who should we call next? Your father? Aunts or uncles? Friends? Do you know anyone decent?” She gives Gabriel time to think, but all he comes up with is a teacher who isn’t listed. He doesn’t know the name of what sounds like a psychiatric hospital where he occasionally visited his father.

  Chase isn’t good with plans that involve other people, and she knows the one she comes up with in desperation is full of holes. Even so, it’s all she’s got.

  She reaches over to lift the boy’s chin until their eyes meet. “It’s prison for me and death at an animal shelter for Radar if we get caught. None of us want that, so after breakfast we’ll pack up the van, then we’ll go to the Greyhound station. I’ll buy you a ticket for Fenny and tell the bus driver I’m your mother. I’ll come up with some kind of family emergency and promise people will be there to meet you at the other end.”

  “Celine?”

  “Doesn’t matter who. When you get to Fenny, tell the bus driver you were abducted by Willard Crawley and you escaped. That’ll get the right peoples’ attention.”

  “I could stay with you and Radar.”

  “Not a chance in hell, kid. Think you can stick to the story until you reach Fenny? Even if nosy people ask you questions?”

  Gabriel nods.

  “Okay. Good. Now go shower. And use shampoo on your hair like I told you. Something is seriously wrong with your scalp.”

  While the boy follows her instructions, Chase finds a hammer and a pair of safety glasses to stuff into a plastic bag. She can’t drop Gabriel off at the bus depot with the boy still wearing her pj’s, and if she has no choice but to enter the bungalow from hell one more time to retrieve his clothes, she’s going to use the opportunity to do a quick demolition project.

  She dials the hospital and is put on hold. Chase will allow herself just enough of a conscience to slow down the monster next door. In case the Fenny police don’t know how to get helpful info out of traumatized children, she’s planned something convincing. Somewhere along the way to her next new life, she’ll drop the disposable camera with a few shots of evidence into the mail for the police. And with that her part in this crap-fest will be done.

  A saccharine nurse is finally available to answer Chase’s question. Willard won’t be discharged for another few days.

  It’s time to wreak havoc, ditch the kid and get the hell out of Dodge.

  ¤

  Chase snaps a close-up of Creepy Crawley’s masterpiece, Our Child of Sorrows, then moves downstairs to destroy the torture chamber. In the light of day, the horrors the child suffered come into greater focus. The brown stains on the rusty pole, concrete walls and saggy cot are obviously blood. Some of the blood on the walls includes curly blond hairs. Chase had it bad when she was a girl, but nothing like this.

  Picking up a sledgehammer, she hoists it above her head and brings it down with a shudder on a toilet the boy somehow kept clean. She ducks from the spray of shards and brings the hammer down again and again until only chunks and fragments remain. Then she turns her attention to the false wall.

  When the demolition is sufficient downstairs to prevent a quick turnaround of victims, she sprays the food in Willard’s refrigerator and cupboards with ant spray and mosquito repellent, the only toxins he has on hand. She hopes he’ll eat enough of the contaminated food to give him one hell of a tummy ache.

  Chase would love to slash the tires of Willard’s Buick and fill his gas tank with sugar, but windows have eyes and she isn’t exactly liked in the neighborhood. Instead, she pauses long enough on her way back home to snap one photo of his car and its license plate.

  «52»

  Willard signed himself out of the hospital against his doctor’s order. Now his body quakes as he passes the cab driver a ten-dollar bill to pay for the $9.75 fare. He waits with his clammy hand outstretched to receive his change. The man’s dark eyes turn cold as he shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re too generous, man,” he says as he plunks a quarter into Willard’s hand. “And to think, if you had any luggage, I’d have offered to carry it for you.”

  After the offended cab driver speeds away, the relief Willard feels being home briefly overrides his pain. Soon he will rest in his own bed and eat the foods he loves in his own kitchen. He’ll recuperate away from the prying eyes of a fellow patient who doesn’t deserve his wretched life. He’ll toss out the hospital bill he won’t ever pay.

  The pain in his surgical site returns as he makes his way step-by-painful-step toward the house. The neighbor’s van, usually gone at that time of day, is parked in the driveway, a change that puts Willard on alert. He doesn’t see movement in the woman’s house or anyone moving between the rows of statues. To his relief, the handcuffs, along with the rest of the garbage, are gone from the lawn.

  He won’t be so lucky with the boy’s corpse; the faker will be a bloated, leaking, disgusting mess just like Willard’s grandfather became when he thawed. The memory triggers a bout of nausea. As Willard makes his way to the side door, he unscrews the lid from the bottle of mentholated cream he picked up at the hospital’s gift shop. As soon as he’s had a good whiff, he’ll apply large dabs beneath each nostril, and he’ll keep applying the stuff day and night until the deceiver dries into human jerky in the basement.r />
  He steps through the open door. The boy shoots him crafty looks from the paintings on the walls. Willard slowly lets out his breath. When he takes a cautious breath, instead of decay, the only smell that hits him is that of ripe garbage and stale cooking.

  Terrance materializes beside the basement door. He’s of kindergarten age, wearing a brown tee shirt and matching shorts that show skinned knees. The worn-out sneakers on his feet are a hand-me-down pair once owned by Willard. Tears pour down his blue face, proving he knows how much time the traitor has caused Willard to waste. He fades away, ignoring Willard’s demand that he stay.

  Willard settles himself carefully onto a kitchen chair, overcome with fatigue and confusion. Nothing makes sense and he’s running on empty with nothing but hospital food in his belly. He needs to think and eat, but before he can do either he needs to sleep.

  «53»

  Chase’s heart pounds with such force she’s certain the sound will draw Creepy Crawley to her house. She’s lucky she saw the freak return in a taxi; the Black Top pulled up to the curb just as she crossed over into her yard. Any moment he’ll realize his house is ransacked and Gabriel’s gone. She imagines the gun or evil eye he might already have trained on her back.

  Her keys and purse are on the kitchen table. She’s casting around for whatever else she cannot live without when Gabriel joins her in the kitchen. “Crawley’s back early,” she says. “We’re leaving pronto.”

  The boy doesn’t say a word, simply disappears into another room.

  Chase gives the home she worked hard to create a final fleeting glance. For a second, a sense of loss overrides her terror. The garage sale furniture, paintings and doodads gave her a sense of security she often forgot was false. She wants to keep it all: the crazy colors, the way the morning light makes the kitchen glow, the deep claw-foot tub where she soaks away her worries, the familiar floorboard creaks and old house smells. Then the full terror of the situation overwhelms her and she hurries to pack the essentials: clothes, ID, money, booze and cigarettes.