Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

“’Scuse me, sir. ’Scuuuuuse me.”

I turned and saw two scrawny teenagers sitting on the Bronco’s hood. Gang tattoos on their necks identified them as members of the Goonies, the city’s newest street gang. I wondered if they’d borrowed the name from the kid movie or if it was just a diminutive form of goon .

“Give us twenty bucks and we’ll watch the car for y’all, make sure nothin’ happens to it.”

I smiled and showed them my gun.

“The cracker got hisself a piece,” the tall one said.

“Never seen one like dat,” the short one said. “Looks fuckin’ old.”

“Prolly don’t even shoot,” the tall one said.

I pulled back the hammer. “Stick around,” I said, “and maybe you’ll find out.”

They shrugged, slid off the hood, and pimp-walked down the street.

The guardrails flanking the row house’s six concrete steps were loose and corroded. The shades on the apartment windows, two upstairs and one down, were drawn. The front door, dark green with two tiny broken windows, was open a crack. When I knocked no one answered, so I nudged it open with my shoulder, stepped inside, and elbowed it closed. I’d reported on enough crime scenes in the project to know the layout: an open living room-kitchen area on the first floor, two small bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

The living room held three fake-leather desk chairs, a daybed covered with a rumpled chenille bedspread, and two tipped-over aluminum worktables. Hundreds of DVDs in jewel cases were scattered across the threadbare green carpet. Many of them were cracked, as if they’d been stomped on. On top of them were two open Apple laptops, their screens smashed.

“Hello. Is anyone here?”

When no one answered, I skirted the mess on the floor and checked out the kitchen. The rust-stained porcelain sink was piled high with food-encrusted dishes. A bottle of Early Times with two inches in the bottom stood on the yellow linoleum countertop next to a roll of paper towels. There was also a twelve-cup coffeemaker with a couple of refills left inside. I touched the pot with the back of my hand. It was warm.

A white Apple laptop, its power cord plugged into the wall, sat in the middle of a round, pressboard kitchen table. The screen was open but dark. On the keyboard, someone had left a note, hand-printed in big block letters on a sheet of copy paper:

MULLIGAN!

PRESS PLAY.

WATCH TO END.

THEN CHECK UPSTAIRS.

Not sure what was going on here, I didn’t want to risk leaving my prints, so I took a Bic pen out of my pocket and used it to nudge the note off the keyboard. Then I tapped the pen on the touch pad. The screen lit up, displaying a paused video. I dragged the pen across the touch pad, trying to move the cursor to the control panel, but it didn’t work. I tore a paper towel off the roll on the counter, laid it on the touch pad, and slid my finger across it, moving the cursor to the play button. Then I reeled back.

A naked child was sprawled facedown across a queen-size bed. She was sobbing. A pale, skinny man climbed on top of her, and the child’s mouth opened in a scream. Mercifully, the sound had been turned off. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old.

“WATCH TO END,” the note said, but I couldn’t take much of this. I hit the fast-forward button, slowing the video in time to watch the man complete his business, grab a fistful of brown curls, and pick up a buck knife. I averted my eyes too late to miss the big finish.

I don’t know how long I stood there, immobilized by the shock of it. Maybe a few seconds. Maybe several minutes. Then I turned from the computer and threw up in the sink. When I finished heaving, I grabbed another paper towel, used it to turn on the cold water, and cupped some in my hands to wash the sour taste from my mouth. I hoped I wasn’t washing any important trace evidence down the drain.

In twenty years as a journalist, I’d seen a lot of death: firemen burned to cinders in collapsed buildings, mobsters shotgunned against barroom walls, teenagers dismembered by fast-moving trains. But I’d never seen anything like this.

“THEN CHECK UPSTAIRS,” the note said. I jerked the.45 out of my sweatshirt, craving an opportunity to use it.

The worn vinyl stair treads felt gritty under my Reeboks. As I nudged open the door to the first bedroom, the first thing that hit me was the odor. The room smelled as if an army had used it as a urinal.

Two men and a woman dressed in jeans and T-shirts were crumpled on a beige shag carpet beside an unmade queen-size bed. Beside them, several thousand dollars’ worth of professional video equipment-two Sony video cameras, a couple of 5,500-watt DayFlo lights, and a tripod-lay twisted and broken. The carpet, the bed, and the room’s flowered wallpaper were splattered with blood and brain matter. It was the same wallpaper I’d seen in the video downstairs. The blood was still wet.

I stuck the Colt back in my sweatshirt, popped the lens cover off the Nikon, and snapped photos from as many angles as I could without stepping in blood. The paper would never print such horrific pictures, but my mind would try to block this out. I’d need photos to write an accurate story.

Careful not to touch anything, I backed into the hall. The bathroom was just ahead to my left, the door pulled closed. I shouldered it open. The room was empty.

I stepped back into the hall and saw that the door to the second bedroom was padlocked. I put my ear to it and thought I heard a whimper, but it was so faint that I couldn’t be sure.

“Hello? Is anyone in there?”

No one answered. I put my ear to the door again. Another whimper.

My first instinct was to kick the door down, but I’d contaminated the crime scene too much already. Instead, I rushed down the stairs and fled the house. I had Captain Parisi on speed dial. He picked up on the second ring.

The day had turned bitterly cold. A stiff northwest wind blew McDonald’s wrappers and old newspapers around the project parking lot. A half-dozen kids, one of them bouncing a basketball, strolled by. It was good to see children still pushing and pulling their own breath. I sucked in air to clear the stench of blood and urine from my nostrils. Then I unlocked the Bronco, slid in, and pulled a Partagás out of the glove box. As I lit it, my hands shook. I cracked the side window, smoked, and waited for Parisi to roll up.

After a few minutes, I started thinking more clearly. It wouldn’t do to be carrying when the authorities arrived, so I tugged the Colt from my sweatshirt and locked it in the glove box. What else? Parisi might confiscate my camera. I ejected the memory card and concealed it between the passenger-seat cushions. Then I unzipped the pouch on the front of my camera bag, took out the spare card, and slipped it in the Nikon. I snapped a few shots of the front of the death house through the car window so there’d be something on the fresh card if anyone looked. Then I called Lomax, gave him the gist, and suggested he get a real photographer over here in time for the show.

Parisi must have made a courtesy call to the Providence PD, because they arrived first-two squad cars and an unmarked Crown Vic. The Vic’s doors swung open, and out climbed the homicide twins: Jay Wargat, a big lug with a permanent five o’clock shadow and fists like hams, and Sandra Freitas, a bottle blonde with rumble hips and a predatory Cameron Diaz smile. I got out of the Bronco and met them on the sidewalk.

“Mulligan?” Freitas said. “You the one called this in?”

“I am.”

“Been inside?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“Two dead males and a dead female in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Looks like they were head-shot. And something worse in the kitchen.”