Twelve

Sabrina crossed the street, approaching the cluster of badges that milled around the front yard belonging to the address Strickland had sent her. The uniform stationed at the perimeter gave her a head nod but not much more. No smile. No black-humored commentary on what was going on inside. He barely looked at her as she ducked under the tape. She straightened and looked around. More of the same. Somber faces and hushed voices. It was like someone had turned the volume down on the entire crime scene. Only one thing could do that. Turn a crew of hardened cops into a bunch of dour-faced librarians.

The murder victim was a child.

She made her way up the front walk, forcing her feet to move faster than they wanted to go. No one wanted to work a child murder. Those were the ones you couldn’t shake loose. They stuck with you. Haunted you. She pushed her way inside and found another uniform standing just inside the door. She gave him a questioning glance, and he tipped his head in the direction of the hallway.

The house was empty, the floor littered with fast-food wrappers and old newspapers. Windows were painted over so the morning sun was defused down to little more than a reddish glow as it struggled to push its way through the glass. Another pale-faced uniform was stationed just outside one of the rooms off the hallway.

She stepped into the room to find Strickland crouched over a body so little all she could see was the top of a blond head and small bare feet. She dug a pair of latex gloves out of her jacket pocket and pulled them on. “Hey.”

He looked over his shoulder and jerked his chin at her. “Hey. Hell of a welcome back, huh?” he said, watching her circle around the body to stand opposite him. She looked down, steeling herself for what waited at her feet. It was a boy. No obvious cause of death, his body pale and still. Naked.

She blew out a sigh and hunkered down to get a better look. She glanced at her partner. Strickland rubbed his hand across his mouth and shook his head. “He can’t be more than six or seven.”

He was small. She’d have guessed younger, but she didn’t say anything. “Any witnesses?”

“No.” Strickland dropped his gloved hand and brushed his fingers along the ligature marks that marred the boy’s wrist. “Anonymous 911 call from a burner cell. I got a couple of uniforms doing a walk-through, but so far—”

“Hey, you guys are gonna want to see this.” She and Strickland looked up to see a uniformed officer. His head poked into the room, like the rest of his body had refused to make the trip. His gaze drifted down to the body stretched out on the floor between them before bouncing back up. “Some pretty weird shit in the basement,” he said before retreating back down the hall.

She tried not to let her frustration get the best of her. But it was hard—really hard—to let Strickland take the lead. Especially when he led like an old lady.

“You want to move a little faster, Grandma?” she said from where she was, stuck behind him on the basement stairs.

“Your leg must be better, huh? A year and some change on SWAT and you’re ready to kick down doors,” he said. He clicked his flashlight on and swept it across the interior before taking a few more steps into the gloom. “Not sure if you remember, but we take a more civilized approach here in the land of suits and ties.”

“More like the land of dentures and bingo,” Sabrina said under her breath as she followed, moving farther down the stairs. That’s when the smell hit her.

“Busted sewer line,” Strickland said, but he was wrong. She knew that smell. Had been trapped in the dark with it for eighty-three days. The smell told her that this is where the boy had been kept. That he’d been held against his will, confined somewhere that didn’t offer the luxury of a toilet.

The single bare bulb that hung in the middle of the room did little except create a small circle of watery light; the rest of the room was dark. Strickland shuffled forward a few more steps, doing his best to keep her on the stairs until he knew it was completely safe. She could already see a habit forming, an irritating one that annoyed her. “Strickland, I swear to God … ”

He shot her a look over his shoulder. “Better safe than—”

“You’re being ridiculous.” She shouldered her way past him, pulling her Mini-Mag from her pocket. She clicked it on. “I think I’ve proved it takes a lot more than a dark basement to kill me.”

Liar, liar …

“Nice, Vaughn—real nice.” Strickland shook his head. He hated being reminded of what’d happened to her. That he hadn’t been there to help her.

“You been doing those deep-breathing exercises I taught you?” She was teasing him now, making light of a situation neither one of them could change. And even if she could, she wouldn’t.

He aimed his light in the opposite direction. “Fuck you, Vaughn,” he said with no real heat behind it.

She scanned the opposite side of the room, her beam passing over a large wrought-iron cage. Then another. And another. And another. Whatever she’d been about to say died in her throat. “Oh … ” She let the word out on an expulsion of breath, too soft to sound like anything but a sigh. There were leashes clipped to the outside of each of them. Buckets full of shit and piss next to bowls that’d probably held food and water. There were four of them, which meant that the dead boy upstairs wasn’t the only one who’d been held here. So where were the rest of them? It wasn’t something she wanted to consider, but the body upstairs might not be the only one they found.

Home sweet home …

“Take a look over here,” Strickland said.

She turned in the direction of his voice, and her flashlight found the back of his head. His was pointed at a video camera set on a tripod. “This just keeps getting better by the second,” he said in a disgusted mutter.

She aimed her light at the ground and crossed the room to the camera. “No tape. But we’ll get CSU down here, have them dust every square inch. No way this freak wore gloves the whole time. We’ll catch him,” she said, sounding more sure than she actually felt. She knew better than anyone that monsters weren’t always that easy to catch. Sometimes they were more than just dumb animals; sometimes they roamed free.

She ran her flashlight along the floor, looking for something, anything that might point her in the direction of the sick bastard who thought keeping little kids in cages was an okay thing to do. Her light caught the edge of a curtain. She watched it flutter as if touched by a breeze. But there was no breeze. Not down here. It fluttered again.

She motioned for Strickland to be quiet and aimed her light at the edge of the curtain. She saw movement, something shifting slowly along the floor.

There was someone there.