“Empty,” Lieutenant Teddy Gilman announced to the sheriff as he exited the mobile home. His team followed him in their heavy tactical gear then climbed back into their waiting armored vehicle.
David stepped into the trailer and glanced around. The air held a vague moldy smell. The stained mattress was stripped bare, the couch tattered, the sink empty of dishes. Rat droppings littered the floor. A dried snakeskin lay in a cobweb-covered corner. Matt McGregor hadn’t lived there in years.
Back outside, he took a deep breath of fresh air and strode toward his car. He waved his hand toward the narrow road disappearing into the woods. The armored truck roared up the path in the lead, followed by a K-9 SUV and three patrol vehicles. David fell in behind them with the FBI agents taking up the rear.
The tactical debate had been brief. Their background intelligence was sketchy, based on Jaxon’s story and Buck’s crude map. A highway-patrol helicopter had flown over the house to confirm its existence and location but spotted no movement below them and no smoke from the chimney. Unfortunately, they also saw no place to land, so access would be limited to a ground assault. Waiting on additional resources from another county or the FBI’s Incident Response Team might have been the safest option, but they dismissed the idea. If kids were in that house and needed rescuing, the risk was worth taking.
Their only choice was going in fast and loud, so Matt would hear them coming. He would already have heard the helicopter and probably had discovered the missing boy, so their time was short. If he took off running, the K-9 could chase him down. And if he didn’t run, speed and surprise were the only advantages they had. Matt unfortunately knew every hiding place in that remote section of mountains, and they didn’t know any.
Tree branches scraped along the side of the SUV as David fought to keep the vehicle in the ruts created by the vehicles in front of him. His radio crackled with Gilman’s voice. “I see it. House at a hundred yards. No movement. Everyone, lock and load.”
They entered the clearing, the back doors of the armored vehicle flinging open before the vehicle came to a stop. The heavily armed men hit the ground running and spread quickly around the house. The K-9 SUV slid to a stop, and the driver jumped out with a Belgian Malinois straining against its leash and barking in excitement. The patrol vehicles blocked in the two-tone van. Their occupants, with shotguns in hand, fanned out around the perimeter.
David barked into his microphone, “What you see, Gilly?”
Gilman’s voice squawked back, “No movement, no sound in the house. Front door ajar. We have side windows covered. No rear door. We need to get a look inside, so going to break the windows.”
“Go.”
At the sheriff’s command, movement was swift. SWAT members on either side of the house stood and broke windows. With flashlights mounted on the barrels of their weapons, they scanned the interior.
“Five. I’ve got a body on the floor. Repeat: body on the floor.”
Gilman’s calm voice replied. “You have a bead on him, Five?”
“Ten-four.”
“Movement?”
“Negative.”
“Adult? Child?”
David held his breath as he waited for the reply. “Adult.”
“Five, keep your bead. Three, can you see the whole room?”
“Ten-four. All clear. Looks like a kitchen in back, but I can’t see for sure.”
“Sheriff, we’re ready to breach.”
David moved up behind a tree near the porch. “Watch your crossfire, gentlemen. Entry team, go.”
With the men on the side windows covering the interior, two men mounted the front steps and pushed open the door. One went low and to the right and the other higher and to the left, their rifles sweeping the room as their voices boomed through the house. After a pause, David’s radio cracked with the first report. “Body on the floor DOA. Other rooms cleared.”
David entered the house right behind Gilman and shined his light in the face of the body on the floor. The cold air had slowed decomposition, but the face of the man crumpled on the floor was still too bloated to positively identify. Besides, David barely knew Matt McGregor and hadn’t seen him in years. He could only guess it was him.
“In here, Sheriff.”
David stood and followed the voices into a cramped kitchen. On one wall was a wooden door. The screws holding the hasp were ripped from the wall, a remarkable feat for the boy to have accomplished in his weakened state. The cellar side of the door and frame hinted at the ferocity of his efforts to escape, with long scrapes and cracks in the wood from his attempts to scratch his way out, bloodstains marring the surface. The upper panel was shattered from the basement side, matching the boy’s description of putting his fist through the door. A clear, small, bloody handprint gripped the doorframe, probably left as Jaxon threw his thin body against the door to break it open.
Two SWAT-team members eased down the steps, the flashlights on their rifles probing the shadows. David paused at the top step, his own flashlight picking up a glint on the tread. He looked down and saw it was a bloodied fingernail. He looked at the claw marks on the back of the door and shuddered. The poor kid had ripped it out in his frenzy to escape.
He carefully stepped over it and descended into the darkness, gasping against the stench rising from the basement. The only light filtered through the narrow, shattered windows near the ceiling. The wind whipped in, chilling the room enough that they could see puffs of their breath. Following the powerful beam of his flashlight as it scanned the room, David took in the contents. A small pile of books was stacked neatly in one corner, including a dog-eared Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. A crumpled blanket was near an indention in the floor. A metal pail filled with excrement was tucked in one corner.
Most remarkable was what wasn’t there. No furniture, not even a thin mattress for comfort. No changes of clothing. No toys. No food. Not even a second bucket for fresh water. The books appeared to be the only luxury, and everything else was sheer depravity.
The weight of the horror of the room made David tremble. He couldn’t imagine staying down there for an hour, even with the comfort of his thick coat and outdoor gear. He muttered, “How did that boy survive this place for ten years?”
Gilman could only shake his head in reply.
Revulsion enveloped David, and he had to get out, get to fresh air. He couldn’t feel his feet moving, though he heard his boots clomping up the steps as distant echoes in his mind. His eyes locked on the shattered open door above him. The kid had clawed his way out of the subterranean hell and then walked miles out to the interstate, all while David had finished paperwork in his office, eaten a warm meal, relaxed in an overstuffed recliner, and watched some Netflix. And when the first sightings had been broadcast over the radio, he had remained under the warm covers, not wanting to go out in the cold, snowy weather.
He stopped and stared at the body on the floor of the main room. Tests would prove it, but he knew it was Matt McGregor, a man he knew existed, yet never suspecting the depth of his depravities. Most frustratingly, it was a man who would never feel the cold steel of handcuffs being snapped around his wrists, all because the sheriff had barely even suspected him.
Jaxon had been cowering in that basement a decade ago while he had stood not a half mile away, having a conversation with his kidnapper. He hadn’t even thought to look around for other places to hide a boy.
He stumbled across the porch and into the yard. He leaned against a large poplar tree and vomited, a first for him at a crime scene—it never happened even during his rookie year. But this was different. He wasn’t sick from what he saw. He was disgusted by what he imagined. Jaxon sat in the darkness, waiting on someone to come, on someone to rescue him. Kids came and went, lived and died, and David’s biggest worry had been how his divorce might affect opinion polls.
He straightened and wiped his hand across his mouth. With a deep breath of fresh, cold mountain air, he turned back to where Roxanne and Agent Gonzalez stood, both carefully avoiding looking at him. He wanted more than anything to get into his car and leave but instead took a halting step toward them when his radio rattled to life.
A young deputy’s voice came over the air. The man had been assigned to the perimeter of the clearing. “Sheriff? We found graves. God help me, there’s at least a dozen of ’em, maybe more.”