Hide (Detective D.D. Warren, #2)(8)

Be in the moment, but outside the moment. Detached. Composed. Focused.

The first blind rolled up. Then the second.

What helped him the most, in the end, was sheer incomprehension.

Bags. Clear plastic garbage bags. Six of them. Three on the top shelf, three on the bottom, positioned side by side, tied neatly at the top.

Bags. Six of them. Clear plastic.

He staggered back.

There were no words. He could feel his mouth open, but nothing was happening, nothing coming out. He just looked. And looked and looked, because such a thing couldn't exist, such a thing couldn't be. His mind saw it, rejected it, then saw the image and fought with it all over again. He couldn't… It couldn't…

His back hit the ladder. He reached behind, grabbing the cool metal rungs so hard he could feel the edges bite into the flesh of his hands. He focused on that sensation, the sharp pain. It grounded him. Kept him from having to scream.

D.D. pointed up to the ceiling, where one of the light strips had been hung.

"We didn't add those two hooks," D.D. said quietly "They were already there. We didn't find any lanterns left behind, but I would assume…"

"Yeah," Bobby said roughly, still breathing through his mouth. "Yeah."

"And the chair, of course."

"Yeah, yeah. And the f*cking chair."

"It's, uh, it's wet mummification," D.D. said, her own voice sounding shaky, working at control. "That's what Christie called it. He bound the bodies, put each in a garbage bag, then tied the top. When decomp started… well, there was no place for the fluids to go. Basically, the bodies pickled in their own juices."

"Son of a bitch."

"I hate my job, Bobby," D.D. whispered suddenly, starkly "Oh God, I never wanted to see anything like this." She covered her mouth with her hand. For a moment, he thought she might break down, but she caught herself, soldiered through. She turned away from the metal shelves, however. Even for a veteran cop, some things asked too much.

Bobby had to work to abandon his grip on the metal ladder rungs.

"We should go up," D.D. said briskly "Christie's probably waiting. She just needed to fetch body bags."

"Okay" But he didn't turn toward the ladder. Instead, he walked back to the exposed metal shelves, to a sight his mind couldn't accept but already would never forget.

The bodies had turned the color of mahogany with time. They were not the dried, empty husks he'd seen on shows of Egyptian mummies. They were robust, almost leathery in appearance, each feature still distinct. He could follow the long ropy lines of impossibly thin arms wrapped around gently rounded legs, bent at the knees. He could count ten fingers, clasped at the ankles. He could make out each of the faces, the hollows of their cheeks, the pointy tips of their chins resting upon their knees. Their eyes were closed. Their mouths pursed. Hair matted against their skulls, long lank strands covering their shoulders.

They were small. They were naked. They were female. Children, mere children, crouched inside clear garbage bags from which they would never escape.

He understood now why the detectives above weren't saying a word.

He reached out a gloved hand, lightly touched the first bag. He didn't know why. Nothing he could say, nothing he could do.

His fingers fell upon a thin, metal chain. He plucked it from the pleated folds at the top of the bag, to discover a small silver locket. It bore a single name: Annabelle M. Granger.

"He tagged them?" Bobby swore viciously

"More like trophies." D.D. had come to stand behind him. She reached behind a second bag with her gloved hands and carefully revealed a small tattered bear hanging from a string. "I think…Hell, I don't know, but each bag has an object. Something that meant something to him. Or something that meant something to her."

"God."

D.D.'s hand was on his shoulder now. He hadn't realized how hard his jaw was clenched until she touched him. "We have to go up, Bobby."

"Yeah."

"Christie needs to get to work."

"Yeah."

"Bobby…"

He yanked his hand away. Looked at them one last time, feeling the pressure, the need, to imprint each image into his brain. As if it would bring them comfort to know they would not be forgotten. As if it mattered to them anymore to know they were not alone in the dark.

He headed back for the ladder. His throat burned. He couldn't speak.

Three deep breaths and he burst up through the opening, under the light blue tarp.

Back into the cool misty night. Back to the glow of spotlights. Back to the noise of news choppers who'd finally caught whiff of the story and were now whirling in the sky overhead.



BOBBY DIDN'T GO home. He could've. He'd come as a favor to D.D. He'd confirmed what she'd suspected. No one would've questioned his departure.

He poured a cup of hot coffee from the crime-scene van. Leaned against the side of the vehicle for a while, buffered by the white noise of the roaring generator. He never drank the coffee. Just twisted the cup around and around with shaky fingers.

Six a.m. arrived, sun starting to peek over the horizon. Christie and her assistant brought up the bodies, encased now in black body bags. The remains fit three to a gurney, making for two trips to the ME's van. First stop would be to the BPD's lab, in order for the plastic garbage bags that encased each body to be fumigated for prints. Then the remains would journey on to the OCME lab, where postmortem would finally begin.