Rainbow Row is as dismal and even more decrepit than he remembers it. The houses here are old and run-down and crammed together like a mouthful of too many teeth. They wear a rainbow of heinous colors—from hazmat green to coagulated bloodred. The paint is donated to the city and free to anyone. The house Axel grew up in was chicken-fat yellow with teal shutters his mom rescued out of a used home and building supplies store. She tried to make it nice for him, his dad, and his siblings, even going so far as to tip an old wheelbarrow on its side and plant perennials in the mound of dirt that spilled from it. How did it make her feel, he wonders, when all her children ever talked about was leaving this place in the dust?
“This is it,” says Kole. He’s in the driver’s seat, hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, though the raid van is parked. They confirmed Taylor’s address in Onyx, thanks to a speeding ticket issued a few years ago.
Kole cuts his gaze over to Axel who stares at the house through the tinted passenger window. It’s molting, little triangles chipped out of the siding. If it were an animal, it’d be the kind you take behind the shed and put out of its misery. A screen porch juts off the front like an underbite, waiting to swallow them whole.
A wave of dizziness rushes over him. If he wasn’t already sitting, he’d probably have fallen over. This is it. It could all come to an end right here. The five days Chloe has been gone feel like five years. No. Five lifetimes. Axel exhales. His breath creates a little cloud on the glass. He turns to his sergeant, then, his eyes homing in on the sheen of sweat that glistens on Kole’s upper lip. It’s stuffy in the raid van. A sweat and cologne cocktail tinges the stagnant air. Including Kole and Axel, there are nine men dressed in SWAT gear, damp from the rain, rifles ready. A patrol car pulls up behind them as well as an Impala, inside of which sit Riley and Rowan. It was the only way Axel could convince Rowan not to come on her own. At least Riley is armed and has never missed her target.
“This guy doesn’t get into Halloween, by the looks of it.”
Kole is right, Axel observes as he conducts a cursory sweep of the postage stamp–sized yard. There isn’t one Halloween decoration. No fabric ghosts in the trees or jack-o’-lanterns on the porch steps. That fact alone makes this place a little eerie.
The plan is as follows: the four patrol officers will stage at the perimeter and watch for anyone trying to escape out a window. Sergeant Hayes will move to sit behind the wheel, leaving eight SWAT operators to enter the premises.
Kole pulls his door handle, which creates a domino effect. Axel gets out just as he hears the sliding door grate on the tracks. Fletcher and Mattox stand beside him.
“Jesus Christ.” Kole pulls his black turtleneck up over the lower half of his face. “What crawled into a ditch and died?”
Immediately after he says it, Axel’s eyes burn. The stench is suddenly overpowering, tenacious in the air that’s thick with the memory of rain. It reeks of roadkill. He walks a few steps toward the ditch, checking for the carcass of a deer or a raccoon, but there’s nothing.
On his left, Fletcher mimics Kole and tucks his chin into his shirt collar.
They execute formation. The perimeter officers move to the four corners of the house while Axel, Kole, Fletcher, and five more SWAT operators: Crue, Mattox, Jiminez, McKinley, and Whitmore approach the residence single-file.
Crue hoists the ram and punches the door. One strike busts the lock from the frame. The door swings inward. He steps aside, letting Kole, Axel, and the rest move past. They filter into the living room and fan out.
The house is an icebox, with two bedrooms, one bathroom at most, and the smell is worse inside. It’s so strong, it burns Axel’s eyes. But, no matter how badly he wants to close them, he can’t, because they are fixed to an old radiator on the far wall. An air mattress lies in front of it, a purple-and-black bedspread uncoiling from it like skin shed from a giant snake. Breathing through his mouth, he bolts across the room and tears through the blankets, hoping Chloe might be curled up beneath them, asleep and unharmed.
“We’ve got a corpse!” Kole’s voice cuts through the haze of dread that’s gripping his mind.
Axel’s heart stops. Please don’t let it be Chloe. The prayer is a broken record. He repeats it over and over as he turns to look over his shoulder. Then, he sees her. A woman sits on the couch, draped with a blanket as though she’s just watching TV.
Kole creeps closer to it. “Female. Must be … sixty, sixty-five years of age?”
Wisps of russet hair do little to hide the woman’s mottled scalp. Colorless skin is stretched taut over bones that have begun to shift out of place. Her lips have completely disappeared, receding to reveal a skeletal smile.
Axel squints and edges in. Is she moving?
Suddenly, a soft plink! disrupts the silence. A white macaroni noodle falls to the floor and begins to wriggle. Axel jumps back. Looking at the dead woman from this distance, he can see that her barrel-shaped torso is teeming with maggots. Bile surges in the back of his throat. He chokes it back down.
Her state of decomp isn’t the most freakish thing about her, though. Her eyes are unnaturally round; bright gold with a black dot in the center. Looking more closely at her other parts, Axel can see that she’s held together by twisted wire hangers and safety pins. Glass, amber eyes are fitted into the otherwise empty sockets.
Within minutes, the residence is cleared.
Mattox returns, rifle raised. “House is empty.”
“You check the basement?” asks Kole.
“Crue just came back up. Nada.”
“Where’s our ME?” asks Kole. “I knew it was a good idea to bring her along.”
They bring Rowan in to observe the body. Axel watches her eyes widen at the sight of the mess where Chloe must have slept with one eye open. Then, she approaches the dead woman as though she isn’t disgusting and decomposing at all, but just an old woman watching her programs. If anything, she seems fascinated.
“Any idea if this was a natural death … or perpetuated?” Now that Rowan’s here, Kole keeps his distance from the corpse.
“My guess is she was sick,” says Rowan, with a nod to the prescription bottles that crowd the end table. “Judging by the state of decomp, I’d estimate she’s been dead for … probably ten days or so.”
“Maybe that’s what made this guy snap,” offers Kole. “Sister’s dead. Mom’s dead. He’s got no one in this world, so he takes someone.”
There’s a prickling sensation on the back of Axel’s neck when he considers that Kole might be right, and the someone he’s referring to is Chloe. But where is she now? He looks at Rowan, who is still studying the corpse of Eddie’s mother, Patricia Blum. “This sick psycho taxidermied his own mom,” she says finally. Regarding both Axel and Kole warily, she shares what Deschane had told her about the teachers at Monroe Academy and their morbid requests. “He mentioned Mr. Taylor wanted a pair of eagle eyes. He didn’t know what for, though, but … these look like eagle eyes to me.”
Still listening, Axel drifts to the coffee table where mail and paperwork are stacked almost hip-high. The edge of a packet peeks out from near the top. He picks it up and discovers it’s a bill of sale for the old tannery.
“Hey, look at this.” He calls Rowan and Kole over.
“Hedelsten Hides & Leather Goods Tanning Company,” Kole reads. “So this is the bastard who bought that place.”
Rowan meets Axel’s gaze, and he knows she is thinking about the article they just read that told the tragic tale of fifteen-year-old Aurora Blum falling to her death.
“Roll out,” commands Kole. Then he calls to Crue, rattling off the tannery’s address: “Radio for backup. We’ve got a hostage situation.”