by L. K. Hill
"That wasn't me," Tyke said. His voice held a sharp edge. It surprised Kyra. "I'm sorry, Tyke. I assumed because you said you'd been waiting for him to leave, and she kept calling him."
Tyke sighed. "I didn't mean to snap. I don't know what Cora wanted, but I didn't ask her to call. I'm sorry."
Kyra put a hand on his arm. "Don't worry. Maybe you need some rest yourself."
He nodded, looking sulky. "I will. Soon."
Then he was gone, and leaving Kyra alone with her thoughts. A rat in the department. She wondered who it might be. Of course, she only knew Gabe, Shaun, Tyke, and Cora. It could be anybody. A detective she’d never spoken to before.
She went and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling and not seeing it.
*******
Later that night, Kyra’s cell phone rang. Gabe’s name popped up on the screen. Kyra’s heart did a little flip-flop. Two, actually. A good one because she wanted to hear his voice. A bad one, because she couldn’t tell him about Tyke’s op.
“Hello.”
“Hey, it’s me,” his voice came through clearly.
“Hi Me.”
He ignored her. “I’m sorry. I know I said I’d come see you, but I lost track of time. My flight leaves soon and I have to go straight to the airport.”
She felt a pang of regret that she wouldn’t be able to see him, but she supposed it would be infinitely harder to lie to his face. “Don’t worry about it, Gabe. Do what you gotta do. Travel safe.”
“I will.” He paused. “Kyra, one more time, promise me you won’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
Kyra’s stomach constricted.
“I just…I need you here when I get back. I’ll really need to see you.”
“We’ve been over this, Gabe,” Krya rasped, struggling to make her voice sound normal. “What could I possibly do? I have nowhere to go. No disguise to wear. Even Sadie hates me.”
He heaved a deep breath, sounding relieved. “You promise.”
Kyra swallowed. “I promise.” She cringed as she said it.
“Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Gabe?”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful, okay?”
“I will.” The line went dead.
Chapter 21
The jeep rumbled over a rise, the all-wheel drive successfully navigating the rocky terrain of the unpaved road.
“Is that it?” Colt asked.
Gabe craned his neck to see where the younger man pointed. A cluster of buildings rose above the desert landscape in the distance. They were still too far away to make out.
“I think so,” Asper nodded from the front seat.
Gabe sat back against his seat, wishing the butterflies in his belly would lie still already.
“Almos’ there, Detective,” Colt grinned from beside Gabe.
Gabe suppressed a smile. As though he hadn’t figured that much out. He liked Colt. The rookie couldn’t be more than twenty-two years old. His dark, close-cut hair, big nose, and freckles made him look boyish. Gabe would have guessed younger, except you had to be twenty-one to enter the academy, and Colt informed Gabe more than an hour before that he’d been on the job for ten full months, now. Gabe also knew Colt had a wife and baby girl at home, where he’d gone to high school, and what he thought about the sitting president. In short, Colt loved to talk. His accent made him sound like a Nevada hick, but given his list of favorite books, which he'd also shared unasked, he was well-read.
“Follow the road,” Asper’s gravelly voice came from the front passenger seat. “It should take us right up to the front porch.”
Asper couldn’t be more different than Colt, though the two of them obviously worked together often. Asper only spoke when necessary and possessed all the charm of a stereotypical trucker. His thick neck and jowls supported the idea, though his build, both stocky and trim, could only belong to a cop.
“Looks old,” Colt said. “My gra'ma used to live in a house like that. Built at the turn a' the century. If the occupants keep 'em up, they might be perty modern. Some of ‘em don’t have no ‘lectricity, though. My gra'ma still used her coal chute at wintertime—”
“Shut up, Colt,” Asper snapped. “Detective Nichols is sick of the sound of your voice.”
It wasn’t the first exchange of this kind. Every half hour or so, as Colt’s chatter became more animated, Asper told him to shut up. Each time, Colt immediately quieted, looking chastised, but not offended. Within five minutes, his chatter resumed, and Gabe sensed Asper’s eye-rolling, though he only saw the back of the man’s head.
Colt’s talk did grow mildly annoying at times, but Gabe felt grateful for it. It gave him something to focus on other than their destination and the unpleasantness they would find there. It would be unpleasant. Gabe felt sure of that much. The darkness of it wriggled beneath his skin, trying to get out.
The fourth man in the car drove. Sheriff Damiens. He said nothing to anyone other than to clarify directions with Asper. Though from what Gabe could tell, Colt and Asper worked for him directly, the sheriff didn’t intercede when Asper snapped at Colt. He might as well be alone in the jeep for all it affected him. Stocky, middle-aged and balding, Damiens had a solid, steady presence. He'd been on the job for twenty-seven years. Gabe instantly trusted him.
Gabe gazed out the front windshield as the dirt track twisted, bringing the cluster of buildings—growing ever closer—into their direct route. They’d traveled so far into the southern Nevada desert, they didn’t get service of any kind.
Shaun had set up help for Gabe through a local town fifty miles north. The town proved so small, it only had a handful of law enforcement officers. Out this far from civilization, one or two county sheriffs might cover thousands of square miles, and rarely be busy.
They’d ended up with eight officers all together, all armed and traveling in two jeeps that belonged to the county and were made to travel these strange roads.
The wind howled through the jeep’s old doors. It had done that all day. Colt insisted the wind would blow a storm in, though the sky looked clear. Still, the powerful gusts stirred up clouds of desert dust. The instant they left the jeep, they'd be covered in it.
They cleared a final rise, and their destination came into view. The ranch Cora identified. Gabe’s abdomen constricted. Dillon disappeared when Gabe was six years old. Pieces of Gabe's life had been missing ever since. Would that change today?
The ranch appeared deserted. A dilapidated, ramshackle house, made mostly of wood, stood like a lone totem against the dusty brown desert. Cracks spider-webbed the glass in most of the windows, where it wasn't broken out completely. The front door was closed. A screen door, while still adhering to its hinges, stood open and swung back and a forth a few inches in the hot breeze. A wooden porch, sunken in some places, missing planks, and leaning drunkenly in others, wrapped around the house. Thin pillars made of raw tree trunks stood at uneven intervals, holding up the house’s second level.
A small shed—in worse repair than the house—stood some way behind. A chicken coop that obviously hadn’t held chickens for ages, leaned against it.
“Only pigs and chickens. Always a fox in the hen house.”
Gabe pushed away the memory of Hammond's words.
The yard, composed of only dirt—no grass or plant life anywhere to be seen—held strange pieces of wood that might have once been feeding troughs. Skeletons of old cars also sat vacant. Most had been stripped of their parts long ago. Rust and dust covered them in thick coats.
One they drove past—a pickup from the sixties—had accumulated such a pile of loose sand inside, it would be impossible to move the frame without a full-scale excavation.
They pulled the jeeps right up to the sagging front porch and all the officers exited together. As soon as both of Gabe’s feet hit the dirt and he stood looking up at the pathetic, leaning residence, something else came over him. An crushing feeling of melancholy.
Not lone
liness, per se, or vacancy. Rather, a pulsing ache in his chest and he somehow knew Dillon had been here. Probably still was. Gabe took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Detective Nichols?”
Sheriff Damiens stood at Gabe’s shoulder. “Would you like a minute?”
Gabe rubbed his chest and forced himself to shake his head. “No. Let’s go in.”
Damiens gave a single nod of his head. “All right.”
As they moved forward, Gabe glanced up. An octagonal window sat directly above the front door on the upstairs level. Most of its glass had been broken out. Sinister shards pointed in toward the center point at various angles, like an ominous picture frame. Gabe half expected to see Dillon’s ghostly face looking out. The frame stood empty.
Entry proved swift and anticlimactic. Gabe, Damiens, Asper and Colt went through the front door while the four from the other jeep took the back. Both doors were unlocked and easily entered. They cleared the small house in under two minutes. It consisted of the main level—a filthy kitchen and living area—an upstairs with several bedrooms, and a cellar. Gabe would have bet the entire place was still smaller than his house back home.
They left footprints in the three inches of dust covering the house’s floor, which proved no humans had been there in some time. Small animal tracks were scattered in the dirt, including a deep, zig-zaggy canal.
“Snake track?” Gabe asked one of the officers.
She shook her head. “More likely a lizard. That track comes from the swish of the long tail as it walks. The track it leaves tends to cover the actual footprints.”
Gabe nodded.
“Sheriff.” Gabe turned to see Colt standing on the stairs. He and Asper cleared the upper level while other officers took care of the cellar. Colt’s face had lost all its color. The terror in his countenance made Gabe’s stomach clench all the harder.
“Yes?” Damiens said.
“You’d better come see this.”
The ache in Gabe’s chest intensified but he followed them up. The staircase creaked ominously, as though it might give way to their weight any second. It wound around in a 180-degree turn, terminating in a skinny hallway that led to the other side of the house. The broken window Gabe noticed directly above the front door peered down from there. The two bedrooms sat directly above the living room and kitchen. Long and skinny, rather than box-shaped, their doors faced one another directly across the narrow hallway.
Asper stood in one of the door frames. Both stood open, and he glanced worriedly from one room to another as Gabe and Damiens approached.
Gabe slowed as he came near, afraid of what he’d find. When the Sheriff stepped aside to let him see, his heart lurched.
The two rooms mirrored one another. Each held a rusty brass bed frame with a bare mattress atop it. Atop the mattresses, curled into tiny balls, which made them look smaller than reality, lay four small skeletons.
Two lay on each bed, each with one hand tied to a brass bed post. An adult might have escaped from the intricate knots. Children this age couldn’t have.
The sadness in Gabe’s chest collapsed into a steel cage around his heart. He pushed his emotions away, forcing himself to look at the details with as much detachment as possible.
The children in the room on the right looked to be boys. Both wore moth-eaten shorts and t-shirts, so faded and dust-covered Gabe couldn’t tell what the original material looked like. Neither wore shoes or socks. They faced one another, free hand outstretched, their fingers brushing. The restraints kept the too far apart to do more.
Neither could be Dillon. Too small. These boys were younger than Dillon when they died.
Gabe backed up to the hallway before turning to the room across the hall. It housed a nearly identical scene. Brass bed. Two skeletons, facing one another but barely touching, dressed in tattered clothes with no shoes, and too small to be Dillon. Here, one of them appeared to be a girl. A few long, fine brown hairs still clung to the skull. They would have fallen softly just below her shoulders, and she appeared to be wearing a faded sun dress. Perhaps it had been pink.
Did Dillon die this way? The killer might have done this to many children before coming to Abstreuse. Could Dillon be here somewhere? Gabe thought so. How to find him?
“Why did the pigs and chickens deserve to be eaten, Ellie?” Hunt had asked.
“Anything too stupid to save itself deserves to be eaten, don’t you think?”
Gabe's head felt stuffed with cotton, his eyes filled with the small corpses in front of him.
A firm hand on Gabe’s shoulder startled him. He felt like something thudded down through his body and into his feet, grounding him.
“Detective,” Sheriff Damiens said quietly, “why don’t we go back downstairs.”
Gabe swallowed and nodded. He allowed Damiens, through the hand on his shoulder, to steer him out of the room, down the hallway and down the stairs.
“You all right, Detective?” he asked when they were back on ground level.
Gabe took a deep breath, immediately feeling clearer. “Yes. Thank you, Sheriff. I needed some air.”
“Thought you might,” Damiens said. “I need to get the sat phone from the jeep. Call this in.”
Gabe nodded. “What’s the procedure?”
“This will get everyone’s attention, detective. I’m sure I’ll get a call from the Bureau.”
Gabe frowned. “They have no jurisdiction here.”
“If any of these corpses is identified as a missing child from over state lines they will.”
Gabe sighed. "Right."
“I’m sure they’ll call anyway and offer to lend a hand. With this many…” he trailed off, shaking his head. Gabe didn’t need him to finish.
“Sheriff?”
Damiens hadn’t moved toward the door yet. He turned slowly, looking as worried as Gabe felt at the tone in the officer’s voice. One of the two officer’s who’d gone into the cellar stood at the top of the stairs leading down. Gabe had met him that morning. Officer Rogers.
“Yes?” Damiens said.
“Something down here you should see, Sir.”
Gabe’s heart pounded again. He followed the two men into the dark cellar.
Gabe remembered seeing window wells outside. They were so filthy, only miniscule rivulets of light filtered into the cellar. He wondered if the wells held the same sand that filled the husks of cars in the yard.
Stone stairs led down, and the temperature dropped a good 20 degrees as they descended. Like upstairs, a hallway of sorts met their eyes when they reached the lowest level. Its walls were created not by wood or sheet rock, but by iron. Two cages filled the room, made of bars stretching floor to ceiling with six inches between. The stairs led to the natural walkway between the two.
The other officer who’d ventured down—Martinez—stood with his hand resting on a door to the cage on the right. He rattled it briefly. “Locked. We don’t know where the keys are.”
Gabe peered into the cage. His eyes hadn’t fully adjusted to the dimness yet. He only saw lumps inside the cages. His heart lurched in his chest even so. As his eyes adjusted, details of the lumps evolved, haunting corpses materializing out of the darkness. More children.
“How many?” Gabe rasped when he found his voice.
“Not sure,” the cop answered softly. “I can see three clearly in each cage. There may be more in the back, by the wall. With all the shadows, I can’t be sure.”
The gloom made it difficult to gauge size, but these looked larger—taller—than the children upstairs. Closer to Dillon’s height when he disappeared. Gabe’s breath came more painfully. He put a hand to his chest.
“Detective,” Damiens said, “Walk with me. Please.”
Gabe turned to find that Colt and Asper had followed them into the cellar. Even in the dimness, both men looked haunted.
They moved aside and Gabe followed the sheriff.
At the bottom of the stairs, Gabe froze as warm wind hit his arms. “
There’s air here,” he said, looking back at Asper.
“From what?” Martinez asked from farther back.
“Don’t know,” Gabe said woodenly. “An exit? Trap door? Chute of some kind?”
Martinez nodded. “We’ll find it.”
Gabe nodded and practically vaulted up the stairs, feeling empty and numb. Damiens walked through the main part of the house and didn’t stop until they’d gotten outside. Damiens opened the trunk and started punching numbers on the sat phone.
Gabe already felt clearer standing outside the house. The ache in his chest didn’t go away, but he didn’t expect it to for many days. He glanced around. If Dillon wasn’t one of the bodies in the basement, he’d be somewhere else.
“Mind if I look around the property?” Gabe asked.
“Of course not,” the Sheriff said kindly. “Please don’t touch anything, Detective. We need to get experts out here.”
Gabe nodded. He walked circles around the house, radiating outward, not sure what he searched for. The weight in his chest tried to pull him toward the ground. Gabe fought it.
In most crime scenes Gabe visited, clues became fewer and farther between as one moved out from the body. That wasn't the case here.
Gabe moved around to the front of the house. Without thinking, he bent his knees and fell into a squat to peer beneath the porch, not truly expecting to find anything. Four long, lumpy, sheet-shrouded objects met his eyes. They couldn’t be anything other than human bodies.
The Sheriff spoke into the sat phone, looking serious. Colt and Asper both stood on the porch. Gabe motioned them over. Asper froze before walking slowly to where Gabe squatted. Colt followed, looking like a lost puppy. They fell into identical squats beside Gabe. Gabe merely pointed.
Asper heaved a sigh laced with all the weight in Gabe's belly.
“There-there’s more,” Colt sputtered. If possible, his face grew paler. “H-how can…who would, I mean why—”
“Shut up, Colt,” Asper said quietly.
