AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If it’s a homicide. But unlikely.”
“What? You think it might be something else? Like kids playing and getting caught in the basement and dying?” she scoffed.
“We don’t know yet.”
“You don’t know yet. My money’s on murder.” Folding her arms over her chest, she raised an eyebrow to stare at him. “What d’ya say? Five bucks?”
He wanted to counter with, Fine, you’re on. But he couldn’t. Because she was probably right. “No bet.”
“Thought so. Anyway, I’ve got one of the newbies, Delacroix, trying to run down the phone call. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Maybe,” he said without any conviction as they slowed and eased around another utility truck, its amber lights flashing. “The call could have come in on a burner phone. No trace.”
“Hell, Reed, let’s not go there yet.” She shot him a look that could cut through steel.
“Just sayin’.”
“Well, don’t. Okay? Would it kill you to try to think positive?”
“Like you?”
“Oh, fuck you,” she said, but scared up the hint of a smile as he cut through a neighborhood going to seed, took a side street and finally connected to the highway. He hit the gas. When they rolled up to the gates of the old Beaumont estate, they weren’t the first. Three cop cars, a cruiser and two SUVs, blocked the entrance.
A deputy for the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department was posted at the rusted gate. Reed had met her several times. Tina Rounds, a tall, no-nonsense policewoman with a dour expression, her springy black hair pulled tightly away from her face, her hat square on her head. She made them sign in and display their badges despite knowing who they were. By “The Book” all the way.
>
The sun was hanging low in the sky, the air muggy despite the canopy of branches overhead. Together they walked along a winding lane that had once been gravel but now was two faint ruts separated by a band of grass and weeds. A few birds twittered in the heavy, still air, and a snake, shining like silver, twisted quickly out of sight, slithering away through the knee-high grass.
Leaves and branches littered the lane, and a long, rusted real-estate sign was wedged into a larger limb that partially blocked their access. “You’d think if you owned a place like this, you’d take care of it better,” Morrisette observed.
“Unless you just wanted to subdivide it into parcels.”
“Humph.” Around a final bend, the live oaks and pines opened to a small rise where the old house stood. It may have once been grand, but now it was waiting for a bulldozer to put an end to its steady and imminent decline. “Sad,” she said as they walked to the front door, which was securely locked, then made their way to the back of the house and the open doorway, where Phil Carter, another deputy for the county, was waiting. About five-ten and trim, with blue eyes cut deep into his skull and the ravages from teenage acne still visible, he was a good cop who was known as “Crater,” the nickname having been pinned on him by a bully of a football coach twenty years earlier.
They knew each other. No introductions necessary. “This way,” he said, and they followed him past a bank of boarded-over French doors to a side entrance most likely used by delivery people and servants back in the day.
“What’ve you got?” Reed asked.
“Nothin’ good,” Crater said, the trace of a Georgia drawl evident. “Two bodies. Maybe more. Been there a while. Other than that, the place is clear. No one else inside.”
“Forced entry?” Morrisette was eyeing the dingy doorjamb.
“Nope. Door wide open. But it hadn’t been open for long. Wasn’t wet inside. And that storm would’ve poured gallons inside.” He led them down a narrow, curving staircase to a basement where Reed couldn’t quite straighten without bumping his head on ancient beams. He sank into water and mud that had collected. Maybe the rain hadn’t gotten into the stairwell above, but it sure as hell had seeped through windows or cracks in the foundation.
“Swell,” Morrisette said as she sank into the mud. “Just . . . swell.”
They sloshed past piles of discarded furniture, clothing and equipment to a spot on the far wall where an entrance led to a cavern of sorts, where a door, now open, had been cut into the brick foundation. “In there,” he said, and shined the high-wattage beam into the musty, dark space, where the smell of old death lingered and two small corpses were visible.
Reed’s stomach clenched.
The flesh on each body had long rotted away, the bones of small skeletons stark and white, tufts of blond hair still attached to each weirdly grinning skull, the clothes disintegrating but recognizable. One of the small frames was still covered by a dingy blouse and skirt, a bra visible beneath the tattered fabric, a chain encircling the neck bones, a locket resting on the sternum glinting in the flashlight’s beam.
Reed fought nausea.
The smaller skeleton was clad in shorts with a belt and a faded blue T-shirt, along with tattered sneakers that appeared identical to those worn by the larger skeleton, a ring on one finger.
“Holy Mother of God,” Morrisette whispered as she peered inside the crypt. “They’re just girls. Priscilla had shoes almost like those. Keds. What the hell happened here?”
