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She pauses outside 214.
“Ready?” she says to Griffin. He nods. She feels reassured knowing her six-foot brother is there with her.
She knocks.
There’s no answer, so she puts the key in the door. Her hand is shaking; it takes two attempts, then she turns it, pushing it open.
Inside it’s dark.
The apartment feels cold, the air enclosed and stale, but she doesn’t detect the same intense smell of decay as they had from the apartment next door. Even so, she puts the mask on and pulls the hood up. Next to her, Griffin does the same.
The wooden boards creak under their feet as they go into the first room. It seems to be a bedroom, although it’s completely empty. No carpet, nothing on the walls except a patch of damp in the corner of the ceiling. The single window is covered by newspaper, gray light shining through. She’s disappointed, then registers the absurdity of the feeling. No dead bodies are a good thing, surely.
Cara turns around to Nate, narrowing her eyes. He shrugs and points to the next door. Neither of them speaks.
A bathroom this time. Avocado-green sink and bath, white toilet. Gray grime coats every surface, curling linoleum on the floor. But nothing.
They look at the last door.
“Cara …” Griffin starts.
“If we’ve wasted our time, then so be it,” she replies. “What will we have lost?”
He opens it.
And Cara knows she wasn’t wrong.
Bare floorboards, the room shrouded in darkness, layers of newspaper covering the windows. But unlike the first, it’s stuffed to the brim. Shelves are positioned floor to ceiling, creating a maze of books and belongings. Articles are stuck on whatever walls are visible, fluttering slightly in the new breeze from the open door.
It smells of dust and neglect. A faint odor of stale sweat and fried foods.
They walk in slowly, hands by their sides. Even with her full suit on, Cara is reluctant to touch anything. She squints at the titles on the bookshelf. Gray’s Anatomy. Simpson’s Forensic Medicine. An Introduction to Crime Scene Forensics. She leaves them, going deeper into the room.
The back wall was once wallpapered. Through the gaps in the newspaper she can see tiny red roses where some of it remains. She reads the headlines: FIVE MURDERED IN SANDBANKS and PROSTITUTE FOUND DEAD. Clippings from his previous kills.
There are spaces where the plaster has fallen away; she scuffs her feet in some of it on the floor. There’s one chair—brown broken leather—positioned in front of an old bulky television. And left on the arm, reflecting in sunshine from a corner of the window, is an empty clear pint glass.
She takes a quick breath in, crouching down and peering at it in the dim light. She can see markings on the rim, the perfect semi-circle of a lip impression, and five precise fingerprints.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Griffin says from behind her.
She glances backward at him. “Could it be this easy?” she mutters, and he gives her an incredulous look. “Fetch a SOCO from next door,” she says. “Let’s get it logged and analyzed as soon as possible.”
He leaves and she continues looking around the room. She scans the shelves, pulls out one cardboard box. It doesn’t have a lid: inside she can see leather straps, silver buckles, huge purple dildos. She gingerly takes something out with two fingers of her gloved hand. It’s what seems to be some sort of cat-o-nine-tails, black leather, dried matter down one of the strands. She puts the box back quickly.
She continues her journey. Piles of newspapers, pornography stacked neatly. She picks up one of the magazines closest to her and immediately regrets it: the woman is wearing black leather bondage gear, a ball gag in her red-lipsticked mouth, tied to the bed on all fours, some sort of metal bar keeping her legs apart. She assumes it’s been staged but, realizing with a jolt that it might not be, suppresses the bile rising in her stomach.
This guy likes it rough and nonconsensual. But they knew that, she tells herself. Why is this a surprise? Why is any of this a surprise anymore?
But then she turns a corner around one of the bookshelves, and that’s when she sees them.
Small white frames, completely covering the wall on the far side. Neatly organized in rows. Cara walks closer. They’re Polaroid photos, blurry images, but unmistakable. People. Bodies. Limbs. Blood.
Cara’s hand goes to her mouth. She’s seen death before, but this isn’t it. She feels Griffin come back into the room and stop behind her. She knows he’s scanning the wall, looking at the same images she’s seeing.
She hears a noise, almost a groan, caught in the back of a throat, and she realizes it’s coming from her.
Because these aren’t Polaroids of dead bodies. These people are alive. These are eyes, looking at the camera, pleading, suffering, dying.
