LIFERS Chapter Fourteen

Gregg’s forehead fell hard against the closed door to Chambers; it was over for the missing girls, he’d failed them, and the misery he’d seen within told him so. He turned from the door and hoped Jill hadn’t caught a glimps of what was in there, but the retching he heard coming from the courtroom belied those hopes.

He found her leaning against the wall between the busted door and the judge’s seat, bent at the waist with both hands resting above her knees.

‘Are you okay?’

Jill nodded. ‘Yeah, I just need to get my stomach back from out my throat. Was that stench what I think it was?’

‘You didn’t see?’

‘No, you blocked my view, but the smell, God, that was enough. What was in there, a body?’

‘Trust me, you don’t need to know.’

‘It’s a body, isn’t it?’

Gregg neither confirmed nor denied Jill’s assumption as he looked back down the passageway they just came from, its cold, grey appearance and narrow lines gave it the morbid presence of an empty coffin, and that’s just how the girls must have seen it as they were led to their deaths.

‘There’s something I need to do, Jill. And I need you to wait here while I do it.’

‘I don’t want to stay here on my own.’

‘I won’t be long, I promise.’

She looked up, nodded. ‘Okay.’

The short walk down to Chambers didn’t feel so short this time, and the stench that escaped the room only seconds earlier still hung in the air like the cloak of death it was. Gregg reached the end of the passageway but didn’t go in until he’d stored a large-enough supply of oxygen to do what he had to do, and as the door closed behind him, he assessed his surroundings.

The room was the size of a two-car garage, which, apart from its occupants, was empty. Above was an open roof-space with four thick wooden beams traversing the gap between two of the walls. But it wasn’t just the roof these beams were holding up.

The wind howled around the corners of the building and whined as it squeezed its way through tiny gaps in the woodwork, but a noise more immediate invaded Gregg’s ears. Flies, thousands of them, each one the size of a California raisin, and before he had time to think, they were on him, his hands, his face, his neck, every inch of exposed flesh crawled with them. His lips, even though bitten together in one thin line, felt the thrumming of their tiny pads as they searched for additional rotting flesh. A handkerchief was something Gregg didn’t possess, so pulling his T-shirt up to use as a mask was all he could do to filter out the flies and the acrid fumes around him.

When he first opened the door he managed a quick look inside the room, but now, peering over his T-shirt-covered-hand, he was allowed to inspect the carnage in finer detail. It sickened him more than he expected it would, but he hadn’t expected to see this much misery in any one place at any one time. He tried not to be overwhelmed, but the burning sensation rising at the back of his throat seemed to have its own agenda in that regard.

He somehow managed to force down the urge to vomit as he recalled a similar scene he’d witnessed as a rookie cop. And as those dark images of his partner’s horrific injuries flashed through his mind like some morbid slideshow, he forced them away along with the bile.

Before him, and hanging upside-down from the four wooden beams, were six naked and bloated bodies. Each one a young girl who’d been suspended by one leg or the other from a rusted meat hook pushed through the gap behind their Achilles tendon, much like cow carcasses in a meat locker. A track of blood darkened by time had seeped from each of these hook wounds, and as post-mortem wounds don’t bleed, it showed these girls were hooked-up whilst still alive.

He saw a dozen more hooks hanging from the beams, but thankfully they were empty, although traces of past-use still clung to them, as did many flies.

Each of the corpses had sustained deep, multiple bite marks to their inner forearms, inner thighs, torsos, and necks, with some of the girls having their ears, nose, and lips bitten from them. It brought to Gregg’s mind visions of a feeding frenzy, like a shoal of piranha devouring an injured fish. These poor innocents looked like they were set upon by four or five attackers each, and were alive at the time.

All the girls were Caucasian and aged somewhere between twelve to about sixteen as best as Gregg could tell, and, at their current stage of decomposition, he reckoned they hadn’t been there long, perhaps three days, maybe four at the most.

His thoughts turned to Celia Brontrose and how her information had been bang on the money. It was the first time he used, or, for that matter, ever met with a psychic. She contacted him and mentioned the use of chloroform, one piece of information the police hadn’t released to the press.

Then Larry came to mind, who’d always told him, “Never bother with anyone who claims they’re psychic. They’re just weirdo cranks with nothing better to do than waste their own time and the time of anyone who’ll listen to them”. And then he’d finish off by saying something about psychics and his ass.

Gregg tried to remember the names of the girls but only recognised two of them from CNN news footage, and they were the only two who still had a full face. He couldn’t remember both names, but did remember one of them; Shannon McLean, a fourteen year old abducted two days before Alicia went missing.

Below each of the six bodies, Gregg noticed only a few small drops of dried blood, which meant these monsters wasted very little of what they coveted. He reckoned some of the blood had been there for quite some time, meaning that this had to be a regular occurrence.

Nine young girls had been taken and he’d found and lost six of them in the same instant; he wasn’t about to let happen to the remaining three. He’d seen enough, it was time to get out and put together some sort of rescue plan.

As he turned to leave, he noticed an iron ring in the centre of the floor, about the size of a woman’s bangle, attached to a four-foot square hatch with a disengaged bolt on either side. He looked closer to see no dust trapped in the seams of the hatch, clear evidence of recent use. He considered not opening it, knowing if he did; he’d find a pit-full of decaying corpses dating back years. But he had to know, he had to be sure of the scale of what he was about to go up against.

With his T-shirt still pressed over his mouth, he fingered the ring from its shallow pit and lifted the hatch open to feel a cool gust of air with the scent of damp earth brush over his face, a welcome release from the perfume of death around him.

He opened the hatch to its maximum where it rested on a rusty chain just over ninety degrees vertical and descened a wooden staircase that led into a basement. The sounds of flies and wind became more muted the deeper he dropped into the blackness, and on reaching the bottom; his feet touched soft, wet soil.

He stood in the shaft of light coming from the room above which illuminated the stairway and a six foot diameter circle around him. And with the only audible stimulus available being that of dripping water, and plenty of it, it was a circle he feared to break without the aid of a flashlight and umbrella. He climbed back out and looked for a last time at the girls hanging from their hooks, then crossed himself and left the room to its occupants.

When he entered the courtroom he found Jill sitting at one of the tables emptying the contents of a small leather satchel. He saw a fistful of bullets for the Magnum and a small container of gun oil.

Jill stood and walked over. ‘Was it as bad as it smelled?’

Gregg nodded. ‘Yeah, six young girls, probably been dead three or four days. The heat and humidity’s speeding up their decomposition, which is why the smell was so strong.’

‘Christ, six of them,’ she said. ‘So it was like she told you, your psychic lady I mean.’

‘Yeah, kind of.’

‘Was the girl you’re looking for one of them?’

‘No. If she’s here they must be keeping her somewhere else, which could mean she might still be alive.’

‘Breeding.’

‘Breeding?’

‘Yeah. That’s what Hal more or less said about Vicky. Ella told him to see to it that she isn’t harmed any further because she’d be very useful to them, which is probably the reason she’s still alive now. I was supposed to be hooked-up somewhere, whatever that means.’

Gregg looked away before his eyes betrayed him. ‘Listen,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘I found a basement in that room and I need to know what’s in there. I hate to ask this of you, but it’s possible there’s a flashlight somewhere in the cruiser.’

‘Sorry, Gregg, but I’m not going back out in that rain. It was bad enough before but now it sounds even worse. We’ll both go down there in the pitch dark if we have to. But I’m not─’

‘Arrrgggghhhh, Gyill, Gyill,’ screamed Vicky.

Jill ran for the stationroom and Gregg followed to see Hal sitting on the bench covering his ears and Vicky screaming from the front of the cell holding the bars, probably because it was the furthest point from the insane lawman. Her split lip and left eye were swollen and the blood from her nose had congealed but still glistened with moister. Her eye had blackened and was swollen shut, which made the cut below it to look deeper than it was.

Vicky quietened and tried to speak, but the injury to her mouth made her sound like a lousy ventriloquist. ‘Get nee the huck out o’yere, Gyill.’

Gregg left her to it and went to open a small cupboard by the stationroom door; inside he found some woollen blankets and an empty first-aid box, but no flashlights.

Jill placed her hands over Vicky’s and it shocked her to feel how cold they were. ‘Christ, Vicky, look at the state of you. How did it happen?’

Vicky shook her head. ‘Neder nind dat, dust you get nee out o’yere.’

Jill looked past Vicky to see Hal on the bench watching them; she also saw something else in the cell, and then knew just how to get her friend out.

‘Avez-vous encore à vous souvenir de votre cours de français?’ ‘Do you still remember your French class?’

Vicky looked puzzled but nodded. ‘Kwee.’

‘Then trust me, Vicky.’

Jill took Gregg by the hand and pulled him back into the courtroom where she explained what she had in mind to get Vicky out of the cell without the risk of Hal getting free.

A minute later they returned to the stationroom and Jill positioned herself as before. ‘Vicky, ne regardez pas rond, et écoutez ce que je dis.’ ‘Vicky, don’t look round, and listen to what I say.’

She nodded.

Jill continued. ‘Sous le banc derrière vous est un aiguilles à bétail.’ ‘Under the bench behind you is the cattle prod.’ ‘Quand je reçois le gros gars de venir en barres,’ ‘When I get the big guy to come to the bars,’ ‘L’obtenir et l’utiliser sur lui.’ ‘Get it, and use it on him.’ ‘Quand il redescend Nous allons obtenir, votre liberation.’ ‘When he’s down, we’ll get you out.’

Vicky nodded and backed up until the bench hit the back of her knees, then she sat and slid to the corner furthest from Hal. All Jill had to do was get Hal to the front of the cell with his back to Vicky. She gave the nod to Gregg who walked up behind her and put his hands in the pockets of the jacket she still wore.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m just getting my gun from the pocket.’

After he’d retrieved his gun, Gregg backed up until he reached the desk and sat on its edge. Jill stood mid-way between the desk and the cells, she folded her arms and slouched on her left leg with her head titled to the right, and was about to grab Hal’s attention when the stationroom door flew open.

She and Gregg turned, but neither of them expected to see the grotesque sight that stood before them.