Book: The First - Part: One - Chapter: 12 - Installment: i

Lieutenant Edmond thought he heard a noise as he mounted the steps to the Meyers home. He turned to Shale and raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“You hear something?”

Shale’s eyes flicked skyward as if like perked dogs ears he’d hear better with them up. After a brief hesitation he shook his head.

“Nothing.”

Edmond knocked on the door.

“Let me see that chain.” He said to Shale.

Shale produced the glassine bag and handed it to Edmond. Edmond rolled it over in one hand as he knocked again more insistently. He inspected the way the links were seated tightly together.

No doubt about it. Definitely designed as men’s jewelry.

Still no response from inside. Edmond knocked one more time, this time calling out to Tanya Meyers, identifying himself by name and as ‘the police.’ In the ensuing silence Shale spoke up behind him.

“Do we have due cause?”

“We could argue that there is a potentially ill family in need of assistance…”

“What if it’s catching?”

“We’ve already been exposed.”

“If someone wanted to get cranky about a warrant, we wouldn’t be around for the IA inquiry.”

“That’s ugly.” He muttered in response.

Edmond knocked – pounded – on the door one more time and drew his gun.

“Police! We are coming in!”

Edmond looked at Shale and directed, “Count of…”

Shale kicked the door square above the knob with the heel of his boot. The jamb splintered and the door creaked open.

“…none, I guess.”

Then from inside the house a faint sound. Definitely the sound Edmond had heard before. This time they both heard it. A meek weeping sound from upstairs.

Shale’s eyes widened slightly and Edmond beckoned him to follow with a slight twitch of the head.

Edmond lightly stepped through the door. He put his childhood familiarity with the house’s layout to work, knowing Shale was covering his back he threw caution to the wind and charged right down the short hall to the stairs and up to the top floor.

He heard it again – end of the hallway.

Master bedroom.

Edmond moved as fast as he could without making any noise. As he got to the open door of the master bedroom he saw Shale top the stairs behind him.

Edmond could see nothing in the room, but he could hear a combination of sounds coming from the on-suite. A child’s suppressed cry that had carried down to the front door and a noise that sounded perhaps like a rabid animal.

Edmond met Shale’s eye just long enough to confirm that his ‘partner’ was with him and then side stepped into the bedroom facing the on-suite. As the wedge of the bathroom which he could see opened wider his eyes fell upon Carly Meyers. She was huddled under the sink, arms wrapped around it’s pedestal.

Carly’s terrorized face was intent upon something out of Edmond’s view. He fixed his gaze on her. There is something psychically compelling about the human face, and something irresistible about the power of the stare. Surely after a moment she would feel his attention on her.

Come on Carly. Look over here. He willed her to see him.

After the tiniest eternity Carly’s eyes flicked to Edmond. He saw her instinct to call out to him and he quickly raised his finger to his lips. The bag with the chain still in his hand blocked half his face, but his intention was firm. The seven year-old didn’t utter a sound.

The dog, or whatever had her cornered, continued its sickly gnarr. Edmond stepped slowly to his left, opening more and more of the bathroom to his field of view. From the corner of his eye he saw Shale standing at the door backing him up. 

Another step sideways and he saw the lower half of a small limp blood flecked body on the floor.

Goddamn. Little Christopher.

The child’s body was being agitated by the animal apparently feeding on his tiny dead form. Edmond wasted no more time and stepped broadly to where he expected to see the beast that had killed the young boy.

He steadied his gun with both hands as the feral beast came into view. He stopped dead when he saw the hunched form of a person licking the bloodied corpse of the little boy. Edmond felt the bile rise in his throat. He’d seen some revolting things in his years as a cop, but this ranked near the top. A homeless crack addict from the look of things. The clothes were filthy and wet and torn. The sweaty invader’s hair was sticky with blood and clung to their face and neck, and a sharp pungency hung in the air. Tonguing a deep wound in Christopher’s clavicle. Christopher was pale, the broad tear in his shoulder and neck had hit an artery, the child must have bled out in practically no time at all.

“Police! Don’t move!”

With a reluctant hesitation the licking stopped and the cannibalistic addict lifted its head slowly. Edmond saw the two clean slick streaks of skin below each eye and realized the killer was weeping. A flicker of recognition in the eyes and Edmond realized that he was looking at Tanya Meyers hunched over her dead son.

“I… caaa-” She forced the sound out.

“Stand up Tanya.”

Edmond registered the perplexed look on Shale’s face. Shale couldn’t see what Lieutenant Edmond could and this was clearly as unexpected a development for him as it had been for Edmond.

“Caaa… haaap.”  Cried Tanya Meyers.

“Tanya, we have to get you to a doctor. You’re ill. Whatever Jeremy had…”

Suddenly Tanya was standing and running. It seemed that she was practically on top of him before he realized she was moving.

“Stop!” He shouted at her. Carly Meyers began wailing from under the basin.

Installment ii