Richard Hale - Frozen Past

“We will. We have to.”

She spent a few minutes on the phone briefing Holt on the situation. When she hung up she said, “He offered to send back-up.”

“We don’t need it.”

“That’s what I said. I told him they would just be in the way.”

“Good.”

“He knows you’re with me.”

“You told him?”

“He guessed.”

Jaxon nodded. It made sense. It would be stupid for her to be doing this on her own. “Is he going to do anything about it?”

“No-not right now.”

He stared straight ahead and dodged the traffic. “He’s giving you the same twenty four hours as me and then he’s going to have you arrested.”

“Screw him.”

“No.”

She smiled and he caught it out of the corner of his eye. He smiled too and a little of the tension drained out of them. Only a little.

Turning into the old Herndon neighborhood of Oak Place, Jaxon was appalled at the state of disrepair. The houses that had once been cute and appealing, were now trashy and run down. Sad popped into Jaxon’s head. The neighborhood had been his and Vick’s first and Michael had been born here. They had moved shortly afterward, when Jaxon had been promoted to detective, his income taking a nice jump.

The streets were littered with garbage and abandoned cars, tires, refrigerators and window A/C units. It was bordering on a slum. As their old house came into view on the right, he slowed and approached quietly, coasting to a stop one house over. They sat for a second, staring at the ruin of their past life. He felt embarrassed that he had once called this home.

The house sat back about fifty feet from the street, nestled in a yard of weeds and dirt that hadn’t seen attention in probably two years. A small, faded, red wagon lay on its side in the middle of the yard, abandoned and apparently useless, one of its wheels missing. No children could be seen or heard anywhere near their immediate vicinity. The siding hung off in places and the once dark, brown paint had faded to what looked like old, dried blood. A few of the window screens were missing, with one hanging tilted in its frame, the screen ripped and torn. The front door was half open and moved slightly in the breeze. The driveway was empty. As a matter of fact, the whole neighborhood looked empty. Not a soul moved about or made a sound. It was like a ghost town.

Jaxon opened his door and stepped out scanning the area. Victoria did the same. Jaxon cleared his throat and the sound seemed horribly loud in the silence. They looked at each other but didn’t speak as they walked up to the door and pushed it open. The inside was a wreck. Trash and leaves littered the entrance and a broken chair sat blocking the way in. Drywall hung off the studs in jagged tears and spray paint was the primary color on the parts that were left intact. Gang tags and lovers laments greeted the visitors all along the entrance hall. Jaxon kicked the chair out of the way and as they walked into the main room, he saw the ceiling hadn’t been missed either.

“How the hell did they get up there?” Victoria asked, her voice startling him.

“Beats the hell out of me. Come on, let’s go to the basement. That’s where she was in the video.”

Walking into the kitchen, Jaxon was struck by the smell. They both looked at each other in shock.

“Oh no!” Victoria said and dashed through the house to the back where the basement door stood ajar. The smell was stronger and they hurried down the steps into a dark cave of blackness, the stench of decay overpowering. Jaxon hit the light switch out of habit and was surprised when the basement lit up. Someone had paid for the electricity to be on.

The room was stark and bare except for two chairs, a table, some shelves and a mini fridge. The odor was strong and mixed with the stench of human waste. They went to the closet door and swung it open. The decapitated dog lay in a heap in the corner, flies swarming around it, the source of the smell revealed.

“Thank God,” she said and turned away into the room. Jaxon saw the bucket with the toilet seat and put two and two together.

“He dumped her own urine over her,” he said.

She turned and looked at him.

“That’s why she was wet in the video. He soaked her in her own urine so she would be all freaked out.”

Victoria turned away from him, a look of such sorrow on her face he wanted to go to her and hold her, but he knew she would not appreciate it at this moment. She was totally focused on finding the girl.

Scanning the room for any clue, he didn’t see much in the way of evidence. The walls were bare and the shelves mostly empty. The few tin cans on them held rusty nails and discarded screws, but little else. Victoria was squatting near the mini-fridge and he went over to her. She was looking at an old cardboard box full of pictures. She picked it up and carried it to the table.

Inside were pictures of the Worthingtons. They looked to go back about fifteen years and when he saw the man they were now hunting, memories of the domestic disturbance call he went to at their house flooded back in. He remembered it all now. The man had been belligerent and out of control. Jaxon had actually been afraid. The man had been huge and wildly drunk. Jaxon was no midget himself, but compared to Worthington he was small. The drunken state he had been in had been the only reason Jaxon had been able to subdue him.

The pictures all contained Leonard, Madison and a baby. Jaxon grabbed a picture of the Worthingtons and stared at it closely. Nothing was jumping out at him. He recognized the people in the picture and the house where Ellie and her mother and brother still lived, but nothing else jumped out at him.

“There’s nothing here,” he said, throwing the picture on the table and looking around the room frustrated. “How the hell are we going to find her?”

“He must have left something. We’re missing the obvious,” she said. “He’s probably put it in plain sight and we’ve walked right on by. Maybe we need to check the rest of the house.”

Jaxon picked up the picture again and waved it at her. “This is the only thing we’ve seen that ties anything in this house to him. A bunch of shitty family shots that mean nothing!”

Victoria grabbed the hand holding the picture and reached for it. She pulled it from his fingers and worked her fingernail into the edge. A picture had been stuck to the back of the one he had been waving and when she saw it, she smiled. She showed it to him.

“Come on!” he yelled and they bolted toward the stairs.

Luke’s cell phone went off. The music signaling he had a text message jarred him from his sleep and he sat up quickly, unsure of his surroundings. He had been dreaming and in it he and Ellie had been swimming in the pool with Jimmy and John. Nothing ominous or threatening in that simple act, yet the dream left him feeling disjointed and uncertain. It had been too happy considering all that was happening at the moment. His head still throbbed and he had a brief wave of dizziness as he reached for the phone on the nightstand.

The sender’s number was all zeroes and his heart skipped a few beats.

“Gotcha’ you bastard,” he whispered as he opened the text. It read simply, ‘Bring it, kid!’

Luke called John and Jimmy immediately and told them to get their butts over to his house. Worthington had just sent him a message. They were over in less than two minutes.

Luke was plugging his phone into the computer with a USB cable and loading the program up Bodey had e-mailed him when they both bounded in out of breath.

“What did he say?” Jimmy asked.

“He told me to ‘Bring it,’” Luke said.

“That’s it?”