114: Nash stepped to the open doorway.
Espinosa was inside the small room, his weapon trained on a man sitting at a desk in front of the window, the same window where they caught movement from the outside.
The man had seen them approach.
He did not attempt to flee.
The man sat there, his back to them, his head hung low, staring at the desk. Both his hands rested on the desktop, fingers splayed. “I have no weapon.”
Espinosa was on him then. He pulled a thick zip tie from the back of his belt, grabbed the man’s left arm and yanked it behind his back, then the right, fastening them together behind the chair with the tie. The other SWAT officer, Tibideaux, kept his rifle trained on the man, the muzzle pointed at his head.
Nash’s eyes were fixed on a large surgical incision beginning at the man’s left ear and running up under a black knit cap. The flesh was red and inflamed, crusted with dried blood. He crossed the room, nearly tripping over a pile of clothing, and pulled off the black cap.
The man was almost bald, his head shaved a few days ago, the hair growing back in thin, irregular patches.
“The chemo does that. I’m sorry, I must look awful. I apologize.”
He had a lisp, trouble with the word sorry.
“Paul Upchurch?” Espinosa said, lifting the man from the chair. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”
Espinosa’s words dropped into the background. Nash found himself studying the room.
A little girl’s room. Pink and bright. The small bed covered with a Hello Kitty quilt and stuffed animals. The walls were filled with drawings. Some appeared to be done by a child, and others by the talented hand of an adult, perfectly lined and colored.
In the corner of the room stood a mannequin, child-size, the shape of a little girl. The mannequin was dressed in little girls’ clothing. A red sweater, blue shorts. As Espinosa dragged Paul Upchurch away from the desk, Nash saw the drawings where the man’s hands had rested, drawings of a young girl in the same clothing as the mannequin. Apparently, he had been attempting to color them, but they had become a scribbled mess. Uncapped colored pens littered the desk.
“Please, don’t hurt her,” the man said as Espinosa and Tibideaux led him past the mannequin and out the room, his bloodshot eyes on the images.
“Detective Nash?” Brogan said from the earpiece.
“Yeah?”
“We need you in the kitchen.”
“On my way.”
When Nash reached the bottom of the stairs, he caught sight of Upchurch in the upper hallways, now surrounded by SWAT, moving toward the steps. Nash heard him sobbing over the exposed microphones, but he didn’t care.
He crossed the small, sparsely furnished living room.
Two men flanked the kitchen table in the next room.
On the table was the body of a young girl, dressed in the same red sweater and blue shorts as the mannequin and drawings upstairs. Her hands lay crossed on her chest, palms up. Resting in her open palms—a small white box sealed tight with a black string.
“She’s alive but unconscious,” Brogan said, his fingers tenderly feeling her head. “I’ve got dry blood here, but I don’t see a wound.” He turned back to Nash. “We’ve got another girl in the basement. She’s unconscious too. No visible wounds.”
Nash’s eyes fixed on the white box in her hands. “Could they be drugged?”
“Maybe.”
The paramedics burst in then, surrounded her. A woman and two men. Within moments a blood pressure cuff was around her arm. One man held her eyelid open and studied her eye with a penlight, while the female paramedic held her wrist. “Pulse is sixty-three.”
“Pressure is 102 over 70.”
Fingers ran over her torso, head, and extremities. “No signs of physical trauma. I don’t think the blood is hers. I think it’s from there—” She nodded toward the puddle on the floor, streaked and crusted into the linoleum.
Nash hadn’t noticed it until now.
They wheeled a stretcher through the door, set up next to the table.
“Wait.” Nash pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and carefully lifted the white box from her outstretched hands.
The paramedics moved the girl to the stretcher, began fastening her in.
Nash set the small box down on the table and tugged at the black string. It fell away.
Nash didn’t notice the silence that fell over the room, nor did he realize everyone had stopped moving, including the paramedics. He lifted the small lid and set it aside.
Clearly one of Bishop’s boxes.
Inside, a small silver key with blue plastic on the head, J.H.S.H. carved into the metal, rested on a bed of cotton. Nash lifted it out and set it beside the box. There was nothing else inside.
“I think that’s a hospital locker key,” the female paramedic said. She turned to the man still holding the blood pressure cuff. “Rick? What do you think? Stroger key, right? J.H.S.H.?”
He nodded, faced Brogan. “You said there was another girl?”
“She’s in the basement. Same condition. Drugged, I think. Lacerations around her mouth, but they look superficial.”
The paramedic pointed at the girl on the stretcher, at her leg. “She’s got a needle mark on her thigh. Definitely a recent injection site. Based on her initial vitals, my guess would be propofol or some other sedative. She’s stable, which is consistent with a pharmaceutical-induced state—high-grade, not homegrown. If she were unconscious due to trauma, her vitals would be irregular.” He turned back to the others. “Kat, you and Diaz get her in the bus, ride with her to Stroger. Tell Mike to meet me down in the basement with a flatbed stretcher. We’ll get the other girl and follow behind you. Draw blood en route, radio ahead for a full tox screen on both.”
She nodded and took one end of the stretcher; her partner took the other, and together they wheeled the unconscious girl out of the small kitchen.
Nash followed the remaining paramedic, who disappeared down the stairs at the back of the kitchen into the mouth of darkness below, Brogan behind him.