by Krishna Ahir
And hit the kid that had just staggered out of the field to his left.
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Water soaked the floor as Drake and Harold shook the rain from their Jackets, striding into the entrance hall of Grand Stone Bay Police Station. White panel lights illuminated them in a clinical glare of intelligent determination.
Drake's card beeped against the magnetic lock, releasing the door to the incident room, and the pair burst in a flurry of purposeful activity. Drake reached the large table in the middle of the room within seconds, and began sifting through the various folders and piles of paper. Simultaneously, Harold moved to the front of the room and dashed his eyes over the evidence board. Fixed to the centre, partially obscuring the mostly erased phrase "Pussy Hunting", was a large map of the wider Grand Stone Bay area.
"Do you have that report?" Harold asked, his voice urgent in pace but level in tone.
Drake muttered under his breath as his fingers flicked through the bindings of a dense black folder. "Hang on, hang on, hang on..." Digits dancing over the sheathing glimmer of the plastic wallets protecting the reports, his pace was frantic. Twice he mistakenly thought he'd passed the report that he was looking for. "Got it!"
Eyes dashed over the sheet, flicking between it and the note that he held, still in the evidence bag, in his other hand. The handwriting definitely matched. The way the "D"s curled back onto themselves, and the "t"s looped were almost identical.
"Veronica Hunt!" he called out, as Harold focused in on the map, ready to plot the address. "2 Burleigh Way, Grand Stone Bay! Postcode: LM6 7NY!" Even as he read it out loud, a vaguely familiar feeling filled Drake's body. He recognized the postcode.
His train of thought was broken as Harold parroted it back to him. "It's one of the cottages out to the west. From what I can see, it seems to overlook the estate that the missing boy lives on."
"She also goes to the junior college where the first dump was made," Drake called back. "That's how she knew the schedule of the class, and about the security cameras." His eyes narrowed as he spotted something on the page. "Shit!"
Harold glanced over his shoulder. "What, what is it?"
"The fucking name of her cat. Smudge. Tabby cat, with a brown tortoiseshell pattern. Why didn't I notice it before. Shit. It's exactly the same as one of Odette Tate' missings."
"That confirms your theory that she made the report to throw off our suspicions. She never had a cat; she just borrowed the name of one of the ones she killed." Leaning closer to the map, Harold inspected several marks that had been jotted onto the surface.
"But why Odette Tate' cat? Why would she pick the cat of someone she ended up killing?"
"The report was probably filed before Mrs. Tate died," Harold said, anchoring his finger onto a single, labeled point. "Plus, given the situation, I think it's clear that she never intended to kill her. Look. Her house is right down the road from Mrs. Tate'. Killing someone so close to where she lives could only be accidental, given everything else we've seen." He narrowed his eyes. "The only thing we don't know is why she decided to kidnap the boy today."
"I think I've found that too, sir," Drake replied, standing as he held the report between his fingers. "Today's her birthday."
"And there's our trigger," Harold said, turning away from the evidence board and signaling to Drake. "Grab your coat. We're going to the house. Gather some uniforms too. But for god sake, make sure they don't turn their sirens on. We don't want to get him killed if she hears us and panics."
Drake nodded in confirmation and moved to head out of the incident room when his phone rang. Whipping it out, he blipped his thumb against the screen and pressed it to his ear, as Wilson's voice came through the device.
"Something weird is going on. I've called Osborne four times, and he's still not picking up."
Noting his subordinate on the phone, Harold walked across the room. "What is it; what's going on?"
"It's Wilson," he replied. "He's saying Osborne isn't there yet."
"This isn't like him," Wilson's voice again played through into his ear. "The idiot's always getting lost, but this is too long, even for him. He should be here by now; or at least should have called when he realized he was in the wrong place."
Drake relayed what the Detective was saying to Harold.
"Put him on speaker," the DCI said. "Quickly. We can't afford to be standing around too long."
"Like I was saying to Drake," Wilson's voice blared out of the phone, now held in front of Drake. "Osborne hasn't called me, and he isn't picking up his phone either."
Harold lowered his brows and looked over at Drake. "And you gave him the correct address?"
"Yes." Drake nodded.
"You're sure?"
"Yes, yes." He fished his notepad out of his pocket and began to thumb through the pages. "I wrote down Christopher s postcode and read it out to Osborne when I gave him the address. Its right-" He stopped short as he turned one page, and revealed a sheet of blank, lined sheets. "Hang on, it should be back here." Drake flicked the page back, and looked down at the postcode scribed on the paper. A dark realization dawned on his face. A tremble of unease coursed through his body. "Oh no..."
Harold lifted an eyebrow and looked at him quizzically. "What?"
Drake lifted the sheet and peeled it apart. "These two pages are stuck together..." He looked over at the map. "The postcode I gave to him... It's the one for Odette Tate' house." He shuddered, as an edge of anxiety touched his voice. "How many houses have that postcode? How many houses are on that road?!"
Harold hurried across the room and quickly studied the map. His voice took on a vacant hollowness. "Three."
"Guys, what's going on?" Wilson's voice, coming through the phone line, warbled with static as the storm interfered with the signal.
Drake and Harold both made for the door, hurrying to get out of the building.
"Wilson, get as many uniforms as possible," Harold commanded, his voice whirling into a mechanical authority. "Have them head to the location Drake is going to give you."
"Yeah, sure. As soon as you tell me what the hell is going on."
Even as he said the words, Drake didn't quite believe them. In spite of that, however, fear came through in his voice. "I think Osborne is at our suspect's house."
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Chapter 28
Christopher staggered out of the field, ripping his dead ankle from the mud, using the force of his still functioning leg to push himself up. Stumbling out of the mire, his left leg came down with a jolt onto the Tarmac of the road, sending a bolt of pain up the joint. His leg unable to support his weight, he fell sideways.
As he did so, the high beams of a car fell upon him.
The car smashed into his right hand side, crushing his femur and rolling him over the bonnet. His head cracked the windscreen on impact, sending spider web of red and white over the glass, as the cracks filled with his blood.
Pitched ten feet into the air by the crash, Christopher was surrounded by rain. Weightless, if only for a moment, he was turned end over end before finally falling and landing in the swamp of the field opposite.
Landing on his left elbow, the joint twisted sharply and a sharp crack split the air as all three bones in his arm broke from the strain. The snapped limb dug into his side as he rolled, cracking three of his ribs with the pressure.
Coming to a stop several feet into the field, the pain tore through him like a freight train. It smacked him with the force, and left his very bones feeling the sear of fire.
There becomes a point where the discussion of pain becomes redundant. When describing how much something hurts can never quite do it justice. And Christopher realized, in that moment, that if he lived through it, he would never be able to accurately describe what it felt like to anybody. Because in that instant, the burn felt like being possessed by the devil himself.
Sparks of scotoma danced in his vision in flashes of red and, com
bined with the disorienting rain, he felt like he was going blind. Everything was upside down. He had no idea where he did, know nothing but the bloodcurdling scream of pain.
Blood crawled out of his body and wormed deep into the earth, as if the ground were feeding on him. The dirt suckled on him hungrily, pulling life from his wounds.
Too riled by agony to pass out, Christopher was filled with an overwhelming restlessness. He tried in vain to move his body but found his arms heavy and full of far too much sensation.
Choking out a breath, his broken ribs jabbed at his lungs, and he felt like he was being stabbed by a red hot poker. Even breathing became a struggle, the only thing keeping his ragged breaths regular being his brain's most basic fundamental instincts.
Roaring in his ears, all he could hear was the thrash of rain and the furious pounding of his heart. It was like he was drowning in static.
Nothing else even seemed to exist, outside of his own sphere of awareness.
Nothing, until he heard it.
Creeping over the horizon, it began to grow progressively louder, building until it pierced the haze of his lucid mind.
The sound of sirens.
"Jesus Christ!"
Byron was on his way to the house when he saw the crash. Illuminated by a white burst of lightning, the whole scene was seared into his optic nerves like the negative of a photograph. His mouth opened, horrified, as he watched the car plough into the boy, tossing him through the air like a rag doll.
Pulling over into a muddy lay by; he hurriedly got out of his car and climbed the bank of the field separating him from the collision. Passing him by, the other squad cars screamed up the hill and stopped outside of the cottage.
Concern knotting his stomach, he watched as the driver swung his car around and came to a screeching halt. A man in a suit hurriedly leapt out of the convertible to check on the kid. His hand was raised up beside his face as he began to phone for help.
Swearing under his breath in disbelief that the other cars had just passed by, he turned back to his patrol car and snatched up the radio.
"This is Byron. I've got a traffic collision down on Burleigh Way. Postcode LM6 7NY. Send an ambulance. Quickly. A kid's been hit by a car. Some kind of BMW; I can't see the plates from here, I'm going to move closer."
Glancing back over his shoulder, he looked down the slope of the field at the site of the crash. As he did so, his eyes opened wide.
Stepping out onto the road, covered in a mixture of mud and blood, a girl passed in front of the car's headlights. Catching the glare of the light, something metallic flashed in her hand. A knife.
She was heading straight for the driver.
Byron realized, in that moment, that the girl was their suspect. Panic grabbed at his heart with icy fingers, and he completely forgot procedure. His body reacted automatically, spurred by the urge to stop the girl. Dropping his radio, he leapt the bank and began to sprint through the muddy field.
Rain beat down upon him, soaking his uniform, and mud sucked at his legs. Neither deterred him. Charging down the incline, he pumped his arms furiously, as if the motion would speed him up.
Please! His mind begged his body. Please make it in time!
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Even as the thunder and lightning raged around her, an ever-fiercer storm was exploding through Veronica Hunt.
Her thoughts were in complete disarray; to such an extent that it felt as if her body had been left to roam on its own. Her mind flickered with fragments of incomplete trains of thought, while a cordial of hormones and neural signals fired through her body. Twitches shook her limbs and her eyes were unfocused; the overwhelming rush of chemical emotions riding her body in waves of destructive activity.
Christopher had attacked her. He had tried to get away. He was getting away.
That wasn't right; there had to be some kind of mistake. Something that she just wasn't seeing.
Ever since she had first met him, Christopher had been her only tether to even the concept of normality. Just by being visible to her, he had been her safety net. A means of escaping the torturous horror of her home life. Whenever her Mother hit her, or bathed her in boiling water, or stabbed her with the fork, Veronica had thought of Christopher. Of the friendly smile he had offered her, the first day that they met. Whenever Daddy crawled into her bed, it was Christopher that she thought of when he touched her. She would think of him, and imagine that it was him touching her.
He had been an obsession. A grounding force in her life that counteracted all of the sick, twisted and painful experiences. Like a human lightning rod.
His one act of kindness meant more than anything else she had ever experienced, in her miserable life. After all, nobody else had ever given a damn about her. Nobody else cared. He was the only one.
So he had to love her, the way that she loved him.
How could he not? No one else had ever treated her the way that he did; talking to her the way nobody else would; smiling at her.
So it had to be love.
Right?
But then he tried to get away. He had kicked her and hit her, the way her mother always used to, and the way the evil man had struck her.
Veronica knew that she didn't deserve it. There was no reason for his escape; no need for him to hit her.
When you do bad things, you are punished. However she hadn't done anything bad. She was only showing him how much she loved him.
A dark, vengeful feeling took her and shook Veronica to her core, thrashing through her and snapping at her nerves like a rabid animal.
It was the same as when her Mother had last beaten her. When, even though she was the one in the wrong, Veronica had been on the receiving end of the punishment.
Christopher was deflecting onto her. The same way that her Mother did.
The thought of the betrayal was crushing. Veronica's chest constricted, like she was being held in a vice. Her breaths became short and her heart bruised the inside of her ribcage. She felt sick, like vomit and acid was going to heave out of her stomach and fly out of her mouth. The idea that the boy she loved so much could turn against her like that repulsed ever fiber of her being.
And yet she knew what she had to do.
She needed to punish him.
Just like with her Mother and Father.
Hardly even aware of herself, Veronica stepped around the car and made for Christopher s mangled form.
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"Oh god. Oh fuck. Fuck! I need an ambulance here, right now! I- I've just hit a kid. He... He just ran out into the road! Please, you have to get someone!"
Tufail Kalam, still in shock from the collision trembled and stammered. Practically screaming down his phone at the emergency services, just stringing together a cohesive sentence seemed like the hardest thing in the world.
His heart was beating in his throat, and his tongue swelled, sticking to the inside of his mouth; dried out from the horror.
He slipped once on the mud as he stepped into the field where the kid had landed. Now that he was closer, the boy looked so much worse than before. He lay half on his back, mostly covered in a curdled mixture of mud and blood. Vacant eyes stared out of his face, through the veil of grime. His expression was blank, a dying light leeching from his expression.
"Oh shit, it's really bad," he said, not even listening to the operator's response. "What do I do? What do I do?"
He didn't want to touch the boy. It was like he was made of fragile glass; he felt like even the smallest movement would shatter him into a million pieces.
What if he has a spine injury? He thought, panic seething out of him. What if I've fucking crippled him?!
Nervous sweat seeped out of his body, beneath the expensive suit, and combined with the rain crashing down on him from above, ensuring that he was almost completely soaked through. His legs trembled unsteadily beneath him, quivering as they struggled to support him in the mire of mud.
The voice of the operator, more urgent and louder now, snapped him from his panic-induced daze. "Sir! Sir! Can you hear me? I need you to make sure that he's breathing. Please, can you check and see if he's breathing."
Tufail's breath came through in short, sharp gasps as he began to hyperventilate. "Yes, yes... Yeah I'll check..."
Stooping and holding out one hand, Tufail moved to hold his palm over the boy's mouth, when he suddenly felt a blow against his right hand side. It felt like he'd been shot. Pain radiated out from under his limbs and locked his muscles in a cramping tightness. He fell to his left and dropped the phone, writhing in agony as he grabbed at his side.
His spine arching from the horrific sensation, Tufail's body turned over. Eyes squinted in pain; he just about made out the form of someone standing behind him.
The girl looked downright inhuman. Her body was mostly covered in a curdled mixture of dirt and blood. Her hair was matted and streaked with clumps of clay, hanging in tendrils around her ruined face. A nose, crooked and crushed, jutted from beneath her cold eyes, bubbling blood over the jagged teeth of her vampiric mouth. In her right hand she held a knife, the blade slick with blood.
She stepped past him, as if he wasn't even there.
And made for the boy that lay dying on the floor.
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Christopher looked up at Veronica through swollen eyes. Tears blinded him and a mist of red sprayed from his mouth when he tried to speak.
He gave in to his fear of death, a whimpering sound escaping from between his bloody lips. Christopher crumbled, breaking down into sobs as tears flowed freely from his eyes. He wanted to go home. He wanted his Mum.
The urge to beg filled him, as Veronica reached down and grabbed the neck of his shirt, but no sound came out. His strangled breathing shot spears of pain from his broken ribs, into his lungs.
Veronica moved her knife towards him.
This is it, he thought, as lightening blacked out his vision. I'm going to die.
Thunder boomed in his ears and Veronica was blown off of her feet.