by Krishna Ahir
Rounding yet another corner, he finally laid eyes on a house.
Perched midway up the hill, at the end of a long gravel driveway, the house was a humble redbrick affair. Sloping steeply, the roof was thatched and was spotted with a pair of window, set into opposite halves of the house. Originally built as something akin to a bungalow or cottage, the house more than likely had a sizeable basement, with the attic being converted into extra upstairs rooms. Beneath the canopy of the angular roof, the front door had been painted a deep royal blue. A large evergreen took up residence in the front garden, it's fur leaves shaking violently with the thrash of the wind, while at the end of the drive was a cherry red car. Seeping through the front window, the lights were on.
"You have arrived at your destination."
Something about the property seemed familiar to Osborne. More than likely, he had driven past it at some point in his life, on his way to another scene.
Pulling up the driveway, he left his headlights on as he stepped out of his car and traversed the space to the front door. Knocking on the door, flecks of blue paint peeled off and stuck to his knuckles.
Wind tugged at his heavy overcoat with strong, icy fingers, threatening to rip it from him. A chill licked at the nape of his neck, and he shifted uncomfortably on the spot.
Osborne waited for about a minute before he knocked a second time.
That was when it started to rain.
There was no built up, no brief spatter or shower as a prelude to the storm. The heavens opened and rain lashed down thick and fast. Within a second, Osborne' thick iron grey locks of hair were completely soaked and sticking to his forehead.
Hurriedly turning sideways, Osborne flattened his back against the wall of the house. Reaching out with this left hand, he rapped backwards on the door for the third time. Turning his head sideways, he attempted to peer through the window, in an attempt to locate the owner. As his head extended, a fat drop of rain slapped against the back of his neck and rolled down between his shoulder blades.
Swearing under his breath, he pulled his body flat against the building once again, to escape the rain.
A blade of light suddenly cut across the gravel as the front door was opened. Releasing a relieved breath, at the prospect of escaping the rain, Osborne stepped sideways into the doorway and prepared to introduce himself to the occupant. If the girl had phoned Drake, after finding a dead cat, then she would likely still be in shock. He needed to approach the situation gently.
Looking down at the figure in the doorway, he opened his mouth to speak, but the words stopped short. Lightning and thunder erupted behind him, throwing the features of the occupant into harsh detail. The face that met him was not one traumatized by the horror of stumbling across gore, but rather one of inquisitive curiosity. The girl was short and petite, with sharp and well-defined features. Her skin was milky pale and her hair was starkly dark and contrasting. But it wasn't her features or expression that stopped Osborne short. No. It was something else. Something glaring that he did not expect.
"Hey," he said, his words finding ground as realization settled on his mind. "I know you."
It was true. Osborne had seen this girl before. Now that he thought about it, the house was familiar too. He had been there, and spoken to this same girl, recently.
He remembered doing the rounds with Drake, earlier in the week. Going to the houses of people that reported their cats as either missing or injured. This house was one of them, and the girl that currently stood in front of him had been one of the pet owners. The reason why this particular girl stood out so much to Osborne was all because of timing. Hers had been the last house the pair visited, before they found the body of Odette Tate, just down the road. The girl had told them that her parents weren't home, so they had left the property without going inside.
Wrong house... Osborne realized, mentally kicking himself for his poor sense of direction. Shit. I need to call Drake.
"Yes," the girl replied, with a slow and level voice. "You were here on Monday. I'm sorry, but Mum and Daddy aren't home again."
"No, sorry, sorry..." Osborne flapped, lifting one hand and waving it about. Shrugging his shoulders upwards, he attempted to shield his neck from the rain and breathed out heavily. "I think I must have the wrong address. I, uh-"
He stopped short and paused. Osborne was just about to excuse himself again, when he noticed something strange. Something that screamed at every police instinct that he had.
Blood.
Bubbling from around the knuckle of her left ring finger, it was soaking her digits and dripping down onto the floor, where it expanded into a steadily growing puddle over floorboards. Osborne immediately knew that it wasn't an ordinary cut; it was far too deep and far too thin. Even looking down at her, he could see that.
"Excuse me," he said, taking a step into the door way. "Is your hand alright? It looks like you cut yourself."
The girl's face twitched noticeably. Osborne noted that. He also noticed how her expression spontaneously morphed into a strained smile. "No, no. I'm fine!"
That was a look that he recognized all too well. Typically seen on wives all too familiar with the back of their husband's hand, it was the dismissive smile of a victim. And it set off alarm bells inside Osborne' head.
Something wasn't right.
"Are you sure?" he asked, leaning back slightly so as to not appear intimidating. "If it's bad you might need to go to the doctor."
"I said I'm fine!"
The knife came from Osborne' left. At first he didn't see it. It suddenly appeared midair, as if through time-lapse photography.
She must have been holding it in her right hand, blocking it from view with the inwards-opening door.
The Detective felt his pulse speed up as adrenaline flooded his system. He could see the knife coming, predicting its trajectory. She was aiming for his neck.
Osborne' mind blanked out. He had no idea why the girl was attacking him. The mere concept seemed ridiculous and alien, shutting down his thoughts and leaving his mind numb and full of static.
His body, however, reacted automatically.
The blade was already far too close for him to stop it, disarm her, or even dodge. Prompted by instinct, Osborne' left arm shot up.
The cold bite of metal burned his throat as the blade punctured the skin of his neck. Blood soaked his windpipe and coppery droplets burned the inside of his lungs. Pain seared through his nerve endings and fireworks exploded in his vision.
But by that point he had already reacted.
His left fist slammed into the girl's face with all the force of a sledgehammer. Skin ripped from his knuckles as her teeth were shattered on impact. Enamel scattered across the floor and blood burst from the crushed cartilage of her nose. Not expecting the sudden retaliation, her head shot back and her feet were whipped out from underneath her.
The force of the punch knocking the girl back, Osborne felt the knife rip itself out of his neck. Pain assaulted him and his limbs shut down. Legs giving way beneath him, Osborne collapsed forwards and fell on top of the girl.
His heartbeat roaring in his ears, fire took his body and afterimages of color burned in his vision. Blood flooded his throat and his left lung started to cramp with a hot heaviness as it filled with fluid. Darkness began to creep in from his peripheral.
Rain, coming in thick and fast, streamed through the doorway and fell upon Osborne' back, yet he didn't care.
Because he couldn't feel it.
Chapter 25
Veronica Hunt regained consciousness almost as quickly as she lost it.
For a brief instant she had no idea of where, or even who, she was. The only thing she was aware of was the explosion of pain searing across her face. Dispersing out through her body, it left her with the contradicting feeling of a searing numbness. The ground vanished underfoot as her legs swung up, and her stomach lurched up into her chest. Falling backwards, her eyes placed a scattering of tiny marble-like shards flying th
rough the air. In a moment of vacant surprise, she realized that they were her teeth.
Her head hit the floor, a sharp shot of pain ripping down her spine. Her fingertips twitched from the shock and her right hand released the knife, sending it spinning across the wooden floor.
Opening her mouth, to take a breath, she instead let out a guttural cry of pain as the Police Officer collapsed on top of her. Air was forced out of her lungs, and she felt her ribs strain almost to cracking point, under the sudden increase in pressure. The weight crushing down on her stomach burst in her abdomen and vomit dared to surge up and out of her throat.
However, even as all of the pain bloomed in her body, something else roared into the forefront of Veronica's mind. Before even her lucid sense of self returned from unconsciousness, it pulsed through her system.
Hatred.
Visceral and acidic, it seared through her veins and burned along her nerve endings. Firing through the synapses in her brain, the hatred gripped her system and shuddered through her body.
She hated the man. Hated him with a purity unlike anything she had ever felt before.
He had hit her. Punched her in the face.
Despite her familiarity with pain, through her mother's education, never before in her life had Veronica felt pain quite like what was radiating through her face. It was the punch of a full grown man, and a large one at that. So powerful was the punch, it had completely shattered her teeth and broken her nose. The pain was so severe that it was all that she could think of.
Thrashing her arms out, Veronica attempted to pull herself upright but found her progress impeded by the weight of the man on top of her. Screaming in rage, she began to slam her hands into his head and shoulders, clawing at his hair and exposed skin in an attempt to rip his body off of her.
Finally managing to shift slightly, she lurched sideways and grabbed at the handle of the knife. Grasping it on her third attempt, the blade swung up through the air and plunged into the Officer's back.
Screaming again, Veronica used the handle of the knife as an anchor and began to roll the man off of her. Strain burned in her arms from the effort and, past the blood that now smeared her mouth and nose, her once white skin turned red.
Now turned onto his back, the Officer's punctured throat stared up at her like an evil eye, as she scrambled to her feet. A second later, a vicious and spiteful kick drilled into his side.
Veronica was getting ready to hit the man again when she suddenly stopped, her body locking up as if her joints had all spontaneously stopped working. Her mind seized with a jolt as she realized something, the asperity of the thought stopping her in place.
Christopher was still downstairs.
She had left him alone, to answer the door. That wasn't part of her plan. It wasn't the night she envisioned. Everything was all wrong.
She needed to get back to him. To get things back on track and carry on with the night. The right way.
Slowly, almost mechanically, Veronica turned away from body of the Policeman. Rain streamed through the open door, and she didn't even think to close it.
A deep thump, as if something heavy had landed on the floor above him, rattled in Christopher's ears. Dust shook loose from the ceiling and settled on Christopher in a grey mist.
For the most part, however, he ignored it. Whatever was happening upstairs felt a million miles away. Too far away from him to even bother acknowledging.
All that mattered was escaping.
Pulling back with his bound left arm, Christopher again tried to pull free his hand. His thumb dangling loose, he tried to squeeze his hand past the bloody leather of the belt. His wrist passed through with little resistance, however by the time the belt reached the knuckle of his thumb, it had already ground to a halt. Even with the digit dislocated, his hand wasn't narrow enough to pass through the restraint.
Choking on a breath, Christopher gritted his teeth in frustration. Tears formed in his eyes and sweat beaded on his face.
Desperation took over and he began to violent tug on his limb. Each jolt of his body sent a pulse of pain through his arm, as the empty socket was slammed into the leather restraint. But still, he failed to slip free.
Breathing desperately between clenched teeth, spit flew from between his lips and spattered against his restrained arm.
Leaking through the ceiling, he heard a scream, shortly followed by another.
He didn't have long. He needed to break free.
The struggle resumed in earnest. Over and over he pulled on his arm, desperate to move it even one millimeter. His fingertips had turned red and were beginning to tremble.
After what seemed like an age, his hand moved. Only slightly, but it definitely moved. Tears sprung up in Christopher's eyes, and he almost cried with happiness.
Taking a breath and swallowing his tears, he prepared to resume his escape-
When the door opened.
Veronica strode into the room, covered in blood. Soaking into her face and across her chest, the fluid had stained both her clothes and her skin, filling the room with the pungent metallic scent that Christopher was now so accustomed to. Her hand holding the knife was moving sporadically, twitching and jumping as if it had a mind of its own. Her nose, now broken, hung at an odd angle across her face and dripped a waterfall of red over her ripped top lip. When she smiled her shattered teeth peeked past her bloodied lips, jutting unevenly from the torn gums, glinting viciously with blood, like the mouth of a shark.
"Sorry I took so long," she said, her voice warped by the blood that had flooded her sinuses. "I didn't mean for there to be so many distractions today."
It started off as a feeling; a vague sense of intuition. First coming to him as he wrote details in his notepad, it arrived as he watched the trail of ink appear behind his pen. Ordinarily he would have ignored it, but the more time he spent thinking about Christopher the more it glared at him.
Drake had just finished on his third house when he turned back, leaving his accompanying uniformed officer behind. Rain lashed down on him, soaking him through and washing away the unnecessary thoughts. The more it beat down on him, the clearer his theory became.
"I thought I told you to go door to door!" Harold called over to him, from his position beneath the marquee covering the front garden. "What's the problem?"
"Sorry, sir!" Drake replied. "But there's something I need to check! Do we still have that note on site? The one I said was passed through the boy's door last week?"
Harold lowered his brows in one slow, clockwork movement. "What about it?"
"I'm not sure yet. It's just a feeling. It hasn't been taken back to the lab yet? I need to have another look at it."
"I think it's still here." He waved over to one of the figures wearing a plastic suit. "Is the note still here? The one from the kitchen? Don't look at me like that, we're not going to take it out of the bag. We just need to look at it." He glanced back at Drake as he stepped out of the rain and under the protective canopy. "You just need to look at it, right?"
"That's right, sir." He swiped one hand across his face, wiping moisture out of his eyes. "I just... I've missed something. I need another look at it. I feel like I've missed something."
Harold took the plastic sheath from the forensic specialist and handed it to Drake. "What is it?"
Eyes flicking over the looping text, Drake licked his lips and held his breath. "I recognize this handwriting!"
"What do you mean, you recognize the handwriting?" Harold asked, his voice bearing a hesitant edge to it, as if he didn't quite believe what Drake was saying.
"I mean I've seen this somewhere before," Drake repeated. "This way of writing. Normal people don't write like this. It's too distinct to be a coincidence."
"Where have you seen it before, Gregory?" The DCI's expression was level, but his voice belied his true feelings. Drake could hear the hopeful expectation; something that he never thought he would hear coming from the typically robotic Detective.
&n
bsp; "In... In the reports of the missing cats," he said, tripping over his words. "On the records taken by the Vets, the owners had to fill in forms with the pet s names, and all of their details. That's where I've seen this before!"
Harold's spine straightened, his body growing rigid. "Do we still have those?"
"Back at the station, yes."
"Right," Harold said, beginning to walk towards his car, and signaling for Drake to follow suit. "You're coming with me. We need to go through those reports."
Turning to venture further down the road, Drake fished in his pocket for his car keys, when the intensity of his superior's voice stopped him short.
"Where are you going?"
Confused, he paused and struggled to say even the most simple of responses. "Um, m-my car?"
"No, we're taking mine," Harold shot back. "Yours will keep. We'll come back for it later. There's no sense in taking two cars, when we need to get back fast. I also need you to talk me through these reports. It's easier than doing it over the phone."
"O... O-Okay..." he stammered, walking back towards Harold's car, as if on autopilot.
"Hey!" Wilson suddenly shouted, from down the road. "Where are you going? What about the door to doors?"
"Something's come up!" Drake replied, raising his voice to be heard over the thrash of rain. "I need to get back to the station and check something!"
"What do you mean "something's come up"? In case you haven't noticed, we have a missing kid here!"
"I'm well aware of that," Harold said, sharply. "But if this is what Drake thinks it is, we might actually be able to find him. You stay here and continue with the door to doors. I'm leaving you in charge of the uniforms." Turning, he opened his car door and paused before climbing inside. "And if Osborne isn't here in five minutes, call him again! We need him right now!"
Without another word, Harold got into his car and slammed the door. Following suit, Drake only offered Wilson a hesitant shrug before he joined his superior in the car.