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We move through the house in pairs. It’s a typical dwelling for this part of town — living room at the front, then the kitchen, with bedrooms running off a rear hallway. There are three bedrooms in this tiny single-story house, one bathroom, and a storage closet.
We will search through every corner until we either find what we’re looking for; or until we don’t.
We move down the hallway in a convoy. There is no speaking, no noise. Somebody could be taking a shit in the toilet at the end of the hall, and they’d be oblivious to the fact that ten heavily armed Federal Agents are about to bust in. Never mind the fact that they would have heard and felt the earth move as the side of their house was obliterated by the BearCat. Moving silently like this, in formation, is still the best way to take someone by surprise, before they have a chance to take you out first.
We move with stealth, panther-like, communicating through a mixture of hand gestures and the well-oiled routine we’ve practiced countless times before. We each hold everyone’s fates in our hands, but it’s more than that: we holdhers, too.
The girl on the TV screen. She’s why we’re here. She’s thethingwe’re all consumed with getting out of here alive. The bounty. The cargo.Avery Capulet.
We all move into position. Each team of two has been assigned a room to search and clear. Isobel and I have the back bedroom, and we’re ready. In position, each with an automatic assault rifle held in front of us, the bullets inside big enough and bad enough to cleave a grown man in half.
On cue, each door is either opened or kicked down. If there was time to stop, to think, one would marvel in our synchronicity. But there’s no time. Three bedroom doors, one bathroom door, and a storage closet door explode from their hinges in the space of a single second in time, and then we’re moving.
“FBI!” Isobel screams, echoing the yells in the other rooms. I move in behind her, my finger already applying pressure to my rifle’s trigger, ready to shoot anything that moves. And somethingdoesmove. There’s a crunching noise amongst a pile of old clothes and trash. I’m a hair’s breadth away from shooting a fucking rat when I realizeit’s just a rat.
“Team leaders, what is your status?” a voice calls out.
“Bedroom one is clear!”
“Bedroom two is clear!”
My turn. “Bedroom three is clear!”
“Bathroom is clear!”
“Storage closet is clear!”
There’s a brief pause. I look at Isobel, my gun still aimed in front of me, tensed and ready to shoot.
“Any sign of the girl?”
Jesus Christ, please don’t tell me this is another dead end. Not again. I’ve had enough dead ends to last me a lifetime during the six weeks I’ve been assigned to this case.
“We have a body in the bathroom,” I hear a voice call. “Adult female, deceased.”
A body.Fuck. It takes every muscle in my body to stop myself from puking. I see Isobel’s face fall. We lower our guns, still on high alert, and head for the bathroom, leaving the rat to live another day.
We’re both thinking the same thing:Is it her?
The rest of the team sees us coming down the hallway and steps aside, letting us past. Everybody is impatient to see what’s happened, but since it’s our case, they’re letting us go first. Isobel and I are the ones who’ve spent every waking moment for the past six weeks glued to a laptop screen, watching the live feed of a real-life snuff film, with seemingly no end scene. We’ve interviewed just about every criminal to have ever stepped foot into the city of San Francisco and its neighboring suburbs, bribed low-life thugs to give us breadcrumbs of intel. What started as a simple kidnapping case, one we thought would end quickly and with a hefty ransom payout, has consumed us.
And the thing that has kept us going, the singular thing, is knowing she was still alive. That we might get to her in time.
And nowthis.
“Do we have an ID?” Isobel asks, before we’re even in the room.
Isobel and I shuffle through the rest of the SWAT team in silence, guns by our sides, until we reach the bathroom. Tommy, the team leader, looks at her with blank eyes. “Not yet.”
“She’s in the bathtub,” one of the officers says, looking at the floor as I pass him. I step carefully into the small bathroom, my heart hammering in my chest.
The first thing I see over the tub’s high edge are long, dark strands of hair covering a pale face. A young woman. She is nude, the only thing on her body a string of red rosary beads slung around her slender neck. There’s no water in the tub, just a trail of blood that appears to have been draining down the plughole for God only knows how long. The harsh smell of the bleach invades my nostrils, burning my eyes, making my skin itch. The girl’s flesh is so pale it’s almost iridescent — whoever did this poured bleach on her, probably in an attempt to clean away any traces of their DNA. Two crude letters carved into the skin between her breasts - XO - confirm my worst fears. The serial killer we’ve been chasing has just claimed his thirteenth known victim, and we’re too late.Again.
Is it her? Is it Avery Capulet, the girl I’ve been watching day and night, as she was beaten and tortured and bled out? I pull a pair of sterile latex gloves out of my pocket, snapping them on in a kind of stupor, as I stare at the dead girl’s hair.
I want to see her face. I want to know who she is.
I want to smash something. I want to find whoever did this and make them suffer.
