Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) (24 page)

53

Every FBI field office ha
d a Special Weapons and Tactics operations squad. Their duties are the same across every state: take down dangerous and armed criminals, and storm barricaded buildings.

Rosen sat in his car as the SWAT team organized. Though he was a senior agent, the raid was out of his hands, and he had little else to do other than wait until they stormed into Meli
ssa Archer’s home and searched.

However the hell Giovanni had done it, he had been correct. Rosen had done the search himself. Daniel Wolfgram was the legitimate child of Melissa Archer. She was married
once to a man named Clyde Wolfgram, before changing back to her maiden name of Archer.

Clyde Wolfgram
was, briefly, a suspect in the original Black Dahlia murder, and in the Cleveland Torso Murders. He was cleared due to lack of evidence.

When they divorced, Daniel went with their father and Nathan went with their mother.
However, Daniel was removed from his father’s home due to neglect and put in the foster care system. The Department of Health and Human Services kept a file on each child put into the system, and Rosen had read Daniel’s. Whatever abuse he had suffered at the hands of his father couldn’t have compared with the abuse he suffered at the hands of a new foster father, Henry Buk, when he was around ten years old.

Buk was eventually arrested
, and Daniel was back in the foster care system, for a while. Clyde Wolfgram later regained custody before losing it again.

Daniel ran away when he was seventeen
, and Clyde died of a heart attack a short while later. Buk later disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The SWAT team,
looking like some special ops unit from the army, circled the home, and in a flash of movement that appeared chaotic but Rosen knew was drilled hundreds of times, they poured into the house.

He got out of the car and ambled up the lawn, waiting until the captain gave the
all-clear sign. When the captain came out and signaled to Rosen, he scanned the neighborhood. Several people had come out to watch, and he looked at each of their faces. It was possible Wolfgram was still here, enjoying the spectacle.

When Ro
sen was convinced he wasn’t watching, he brushed past the captain and went inside the home.

Melissa Archer sat on the couch, looking pale and fidgeting, but not surprised. Rosen guessed she knew this day
had been coming for a long time. Rosen pulled up a chair in front of her and sat. Melissa glanced up at him and then down at the floor.

“Melissa, I want to help him. You saw what the SWAT team did. They’re a weapon, not an investigation unit. If they’re the ones
who find him, he could get hurt. But I won’t hurt him. I want him alive. I want him in court standing trial for what he’s done. Do you understand what I’m saying? I want to save his life.”

“He was always such a smart boy. Nathan was, too. Both of them. But Daniel was something else. He had… I don’t know. I don’t know what he had. But he got it from somewhere. His father was
a surgeon. And his grandfather, my father, was a physicist. But the brains skipped me. I never could do well in school.”

Rosen
placed his hand gently on her knee. “Melissa, help me save your boy. Where is he?”

Her face bunched up
, and she shook her head. “No, I can’t help you. I don’t know.”

“Melissa, please. Let me save his life.”

She was silent a long time. Her hands started trembling. “He… sometimes stays here. Upstairs. He has a room.”

“Has he
come to see you?”

She nodded. “He’s leaving. That’s all he said. That he’s leaving
, and he wanted to say goodbye.”

Rosen nodded. He patted her knee and then rose. Wordlessly, he walked up the stairs to find Wolfgram’s room. One of the SWAT members was right behind him, his finger off the trigger of his rifle and the barrel held low. Rosen glanced around a couple of rooms until he saw what he was looking for
: a room with a bed and couch, a desk and chair.

He
went to the desk. Rosen could picture Wolfgram sitting here, fantasizing about the women he had chained up in his basement, about their screams and their pleas for mercy.

On top of the desk was a sheet of paper with writing on it. Rosen slipped his glasses out of his pocket and
put them on. He bent down over the paper. All it said was, BOOM.

Suddenly, Rosen became aware of the soft sound emanating from the closet. Almost like a…

“No,” he gasped. Sprinting out of the room, he shouted, “Bomb! Everybody out now! Get—”

And then, there was a
flare and nothing else.

54

Sarah didn’t know how long she was in the hospital, but it must’ve been at least another day. She remembered waking up in the dark and seeing the moonlight coming through the only window in the room. She could hear the voices of the staff out in the hall, joking and laughing. She would sit up in the dark, and her head would start to throb as she saw two little boys in a basement with blood spattered over them.

In the morning, after getting what
she guessed was only a couple of hours of sleep, Giovanni came to see her. Instantly, she knew something was wrong. He looked like he hadn’t slept, and he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday.

“What happened?” she said.

He put his hands on his hips and paced the room, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand. “Arnold is…”

“What?”

“He’s dead, Sarah.”

She sat quietly a long time and watched as he walked to the window and looked down at the parking lot. Somehow, she knew. Already she knew. Without a vision or a flash of insight accompanied by pain. She already knew he was dead.

Giovanni spoke without looking to her. “The fucker had his mother’s house rigged. Bomb squad said it was remote detonation. He was somewhere nearby watching and then… His own mother was in that house.”

She let out a long breath. The sun was back out
, and light was pouring through the windows, no clouds in the sky, and she thought she could hear birds in some of the trees. “I need to go back to his house.”

“No way. We don’t know what he has in there.”

“Nothing. He couldn’t bring himself to do anything to that house. There were too many fond memories.”

Giovanni turned to her
, and briefly, she saw a spark of anger.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If I hadn’t said anything…”

“How did you see everything else but couldn’t tell us there was a fucking bomb in the house?”

His voice had risen
, and the anger had bubbled up to the surface. As quickly as it had come, it faded away. And he was calm again.

“I’m sorry, you don’t deserve that. This wasn’t your fault.”

“You have a right to be angry.”

Giovanni turned back to the window. “I ca
n’t believe he’s gone. Just like that. I thought I left all this shit in the desert.”

Sarah rose and then swung her feet around the bed. Planting her feet on the floor, she stood up and
crossed to him, placing her hand on one of his shoulders and her head gently on the other. He leaned his head toward her, and they rested against each other. Two people who lacked the energy to keep going but somehow had to, Sarah thought.

“Take me to his house,” she whispered.

He nodded. “Okay.”

The home was what Sarah remembered, and the darkness was still there. Oozing out of it like pus from some wound.
She sat in the car for a long while and stared at the home before getting out. Giovanni followed her but didn’t say anything.

She could feel pain in him. A deep pain, but not because he was close to Rosen. The pain came from losing one of his own. It brought up memor
ies he had buried deep inside himself. Later, she would help him. But right now, the house was calling to her, almost as though it could speak and was telling her to step inside.

The front door was unlocked
, but there was police tape up. She ducked underneath. The living room was untouched. In a flash, she saw spray paint up on the walls, the word “bitch killer” scrawled in red across the white walls. But for now, the house had been left alone. The news of who the intelligent though aloof Professor Davies really was hadn’t reached a wide audience yet.

Sarah stood in the middle of the living room… and felt nothing. As she had before. The soul of the house was in the basement.

She went there now, listening to the noises of an empty home. The creaks from the wood and the odd spurts of sound from appliances. The stairs now had dirty shoeprints from all the people who had gone in and out of the home. Soon, a padlock would be put on all the doors, and those who wanted to come in would break windows. The house would then be cleaned and sold to a couple who wouldn’t find out who had lived here—not until after they’d already made their purchase.

At the bottom of the stairs, she turned to the door she had touched before blacking out last time. She hesitated only a moment before reaching out and touching the doorknob.

Agony went through her again, but only a short wave. It started in her head, rolled through her body, and dissipated through her feet into the ground.

She saw all of them, every single one. The weeping, the blood
, and the suffering before their bodies finally gave out. He never killed them. They just died during the torture. Some died when he cut off their faces, others at the sheer shock of being brutally raped and mutilated, and any who survived all of that died when he finally sawed them in half and wrapped them in plastic to be dropped off at whatever site he’d chosen.

Sarah stepped inside the basement. Though Giovanni was behind her, she shut the door and he didn’t protest. She was alone now.

Closing her eyes tightly, she let the thoughts take control, let all the horror and misery flow through her mind’s eye like a film. When she opened her eyes, they were all here. All in the place of their death.

He’d had seven known victims,
but there were easily over thirty girls here, all in various states of decay, all with blank expressions in their eyes, uncertain where they were or what was happening. None of them had found peace. They were stuck here, stuck to a monster who had linked them to himself.

And there was someone else here, too. Someone
who hadn’t died here. Sarah felt the presence behind her. Slowly, she turned and saw Nathan Archer standing next to the wall staring at her. A hole had been blown in his throat, and he was gray, the wound in his neck rotting. He took a step toward her, and she jumped back.

“Who are you?” he mumbled.

Sarah swallowed before speaking. “I’m searching for your brother, Nathan.”

“He’s not here.”

“I know. Do you know where he is?”

Nathan took another step toward her
, and Sarah took a step back. She glanced behind her to judge how far away the wall was, then she looked at the door and wondered how quickly she could get to it if she needed to.

“I know you,” he said, “I know you.”

“Nathan, where is Daniel?”

“Daniel,” he said, his eyes drifting over the basement. “Daniel…”

“Yes, your brother, Daniel. Where is he?”

“It’s not his fault.”

“What isn’t?”

He scanned the girls. “All of this. He made us do it.”

“Your father?”

Nathan didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes on a young woman in the corner. “He would make us watch, and we would wear their faces. He told us that was how they should be treated. That’s how
they wanted to be treated. If we were really his sons, we would do what he did. It’s not Daniel’s fault.”

Hesitantly,
Sarah took a step toward him. “Help me find him.”

“He’s leaving.”

“Leaving where?”

“Far away. But not alone.”

“Who’s he leaving with?”

Slowly, he shook his head, revealing the sinew and bloody flesh of his neck.

“Is he leaving in a plane? Is he flying?”

“Yes. A plane. And he will
kill whoever he is with… A woman. A woman and her child.”

Sarah glanced around at the women in the basement. The faceless heads and severed torsos were too much. She had to look away, at the floor, at the walls, even at Nathan.

“I have to leave,” she said, inching toward the door.

“I know you.”

“I… helped find you. I spoke to one of your victims.”

“What did she say?”

Sarah got to the door and opened it. “She said that she wanted me to kill you.”

Opening the door, she saw Giovanni. When she looked back, the basement was empty.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We have to get to the airport. He’s leaving today.”