Breathe (44 page)

Deck and Chace met them in the snow outside a dilapidated shed about the size of a big bathroom. The men huddled, kept their lights low in their hands, aimed up but away from faces, lighting the conversation.

“Didn’t pull in lights, Chace, ‘cause it’d be a pain in the ass to haul ‘em up here but also because we might wreck tracks if we did,” Dave informed him and Chace nodded.

“Got in a good look around, though,” Terry added. “Did the best we could not to disturb anything. Not that there was much to disturb.”

This was not good.

Chace nodded anyway.

Avoiding the shed for now, he asked, “What’d you find?”

“Not hard to find the trap,” Dave told him and went on to explain, “seein’ as the blood trail led from it to him.” He dipped his head toward the shed.

“Two hundred yards, I figure,” Terry shared quietly, careful with this knowledge because of what it said and Chace braced so his body wouldn’t jerk.

Two hundred yards. Two fucking football fields. A long way to go with a broken arm, two mangled hands and a fucked up leg.

A long way to go.

Jesus Christ.

“Able to walk the first fifty.” Dave’s voice was also quiet. It got quieter when he continued, “Had to drag himself the rest of the way.”

Chace closed his eyes and dropped his head.

He shouldn’t have let it go the way it did. He should have tracked him or set Deck on him sooner. He shouldn’t have given in and gone slow. He should have pushed it.

He didn’t.

Jesus Christ.

“Trap’s old,” Terry carried on, Chace opened his eyes and looked at him. “Probably set years ago and forgotten. Rusted. Snowed over. The kid couldn’t have seen it even if he was movin’ in daylight. Pure bad luck he happened on it.”

Malachi seemed to have a lot of bad luck.

But this bit of it was on Chace.

“He’s big on invisibility, Chace,” Dave put in. “Couldn’t find a lot of tracks and, we get lights or come back in daylight, we’ll know more but seems like he covered them. We went a fair ways, large perimeter, got some animal tracks, only thing we got is a few leadin’ toward the trap he probably hadn’t yet covered and was in no state to mess with and the tracks leadin’ from the trap to the shed. Lots of disturbed snow around the trap.”

“Found some drops look like blood,” Terry stated. “Leadin’ to the trap comin’ from the hill, northeast.”

“He was beaten before he hit that trap,” Deck muttered.

“Yeah?” Dave asked.

“Leg was fucked up by the trap but his arm was broken and his face was a mess. Trap didn’t do that,” Deck told them.

This got nods.

But Chace was thinking of a kid who had been beaten, his arm broken but still had the presence of mind to cover his tracks in the snow.

Who the fuck was beating him, who was he hiding from and why?

These questions were strangely exclusive at the same time inclusive. Somehow, whoever got hold of him got the chance to do it.

But they didn’t know about this place. He kept this a secret.

So how did he keep getting beaten?

Terry looked to Chace. “You want lights brought up?”

Chace looked at his watch then his gaze went to Terry. “Not tonight. Tomorrow morning, we’ll come back up, get a better look around in the daylight, follow that blood, see if we can get anywhere with that.”

Dave and Terry nodded.

Chace reluctantly turned to the shed.

“Bad shit, man,” Dave murmured. “Popped Terry’s cherry, steppin’ into that.”

Terrific.

“Won’t sleep tonight,” Terry mumbled, glancing at the shed then back at Chace. “How old was he?”

“He
is
nine, maybe ten,” Chace replied.

“Is, right, is,” Terry mumbled again, this time quickly then he asked, “He good?”

“No,” Chace answered.

“Right,” Terry muttered.

Chace studied Terry a moment and decided not to tell him there’d be other sleepless nights. Memories of this and new memories. Traffic accidents. Domestic disturbances. Child abuse. Suicide. Overdoses. Small town didn’t mean small crime. Even with a clean Department. He stayed the course, made it his career, he’d have enough to haunt his sleep for the rest of his life.

Unless he found a good woman to sleep beside him.

On that thought, Chace turned to the shed to create the next ghost that would haunt his, a ghost only the likes of Faye Goodknight could beat away.

He felt Deck move with him and they both trained their flashlights on the door. Rickety, planks warped. Lots of space in between and not only on the door. There was a wind, snow, it’d rush through and settle inside.

It wasn’t much but for a desperate kid, it was better than nothing.

The door hung drunkenly and it was a miracle it held. The shed wasn’t built in this decade or the last. It was, like the trap, unused and long-forgotten. A great hiding place in the summer. A desperate one in the winter.

He carefully pulled open the door, stepped inside and held his body tight as he swung the flashlight around and tried not to breathe in.

“Remember, kid was here awhile, man,” Deck whispered behind him.

The smell eloquently stated that. So did the state of the sleeping bag. Malachi had been unable to move so a week’s worth of bodily mess was visible to the eye and reeking in the small space. The sleeping bag had been zipped open and thrown wide to get him out so the inside was visible and stained with not a small amount of excrement, urine and copious amounts of dried blood.

Chace moved the flashlight around the area and his eyes followed the beam. Malachi had set up his sleeping area against one side of the shed. Under the sleeping bag were some thin, torn pieces of fabric. They looked heavy, they were definitely discarded. Likely from someone’s trash. These were under his sleeping bag which meant, until Chace and Faye gave him that bag, they were all he had. Chace couldn’t even make out if they were blankets or rags. What they were were definitely not enough to shield him from the cold.

At the top of this mess, a small, round cushion, definitely a castoff, stuffing coming out, soiled, dirty.

His pillow.

By the pillow, a bag of bread torn open as if by fumbling hands, blood on the plastic, blood stark on the scattered white of pieces of bred. Eight bottles of water, empty. Six energy drink bottles, empty. The shampoo bottle sitting on its side, blood on it, top not on, shampoo leaking out. The tube of Neosporin, no cap, squeezed dry. Two apple cores. An empty bag of baby carrots with blood smears. Four banana peels, not peeled off, ripped open, teeth marks visible on the inside skins now brown. He’d gnawed the meat out. The bottle of ibuprofen, blood on its sides, unopened. Possibly too difficult to get the cap off with torn up hands and a broken arm but the pain was bad enough, he’d tried. A milk jug opened and on its side, milk still in it, its sour smell mingling with the foul odor. The flashlight Faye got him was amongst this mess, on its side, the light pointed toward the sleeping area, no beam coming from it now.

He moved his light across the back wall and felt his gut get tight.

Six milk crates, plastic, probably stolen from behind the grocery store. Three upended and against the dirt and snow at the floor of the shed. Three sitting on top holding their precious contents away from the dirt and wet. One held the carefully packed remnants of food and drink Chace and Faye had given him. One held his sparse collection of clothing, folded precisely, organized carefully. One held the other bits and pieces, the stacks of paper plates and bowls, his camp cutlery, bottle of vitamins, toothpaste, toothbrush, the packs of batteries Chace bought him to go with his flashlight.

Last, closest to the sleeping area, was a little table that was obviously a castoff Malachi had collected, probably, from the state of it, resting against trash bins at a curb.

His nightstand.

On top of it, his books and comic books. Carefully, almost reverently arranged and Chace knew if he approached and looked closely, they’d be methodically organized.

His prize possessions, close at hand for when he lay in that bag and read.

His prize possessions, close at hand just because they were prized.

Chace sucked in breath to tamp down the surge of feeling moving quickly, freezing his insides and he shifted his beam through the space. Nothing much else, no furniture, some drifts of snow that came through the holes in the ceiling or the openings in the planks.

But in the corner opposite the sleeping area, assisting greatly in the stench, a hole was dug. As it was close to the door, Chace only had to take one step to look in it and see it was excrement and it was dug down deep. There was a large pile of dirt beside it. He shoved dirt on top, probably to aid in getting rid of the smell.

He didn’t see to the call of nature in nature.

He did it there.

And he did it there because he didn’t want anyone to find it elsewhere.

His fear of discovery was so great, he lived with his own shit.

He lived with his own goddamned shit.

Chace moved his beam across the dirt along the wall.

There were three other piles, dirt loose on top, small mounds.

Fucking shit, he’d been there awhile.

Fucking shit,
he’d been there awhile.

“Jesus Christ,” Chace whispered.

“Brother, he’s safe now, got sweet sittin’ right beside his hospital bed,” Deck said quietly from beside him.

“Jesus Christ,” Chace repeated.

“I fucked up with the homeless guy, I gotta let that go and Chace, man, you gotta work past this and let it go,” Deck went on.

Chace stared at the hole.

Deck was silent, giving him his moment.

Then he stopped being silent.

“Do not let CPS get their hands on this kid,” Deck whispered.

Chace nodded, his eyes still on that fucking hole.

“Whatever drove him to this desperation, do not set his ass in the system,” Deck went on and Chace turned, cutting his eyes to his friend.

“He’s not goin’ into the system.”

Deck held his gaze.

Then he nodded.

Chace’s phone rang and he pulled it out as he walked around Deck and got the fuck out of that shed.

Once he was breathing clean air again, he took the call and put it to his ear.

“Keaton.”

“Chace, Silas,” Silas replied. “Listen, son, visiting hours are over and they made Sondra and Faye leave the room. Sondra’s got Faye in her Cherokee, we talked her into leavin’. Nothin’ she can do sittin’ in the waiting room and whatever she can do tomorrow she’ll do it better if she gets a little rest. We’re takin’ her home.”

“Right,” Chace muttered.

Silas said nothing.

“I’m still at the shed, Silas,” Chace told him when this silence stretched.

“Okay, son, but you didn’t answer my question,” Silas stated.

Chace blinked.

What question?

“Sorry, didn’t catch the question.”

“We’re takin’ Faye home.”

“Got that.”

“Son, I need to know
which
home we’re takin’ her to.”

Jesus.

Was the church deacon Dad of the virgin girlfriend he’d deflowered asking him which bed he wanted to sleep in with his daughter that night?

“Yours or hers?” Silas continued.

Fucking hell, he was.

Chace quickly processed this and the question and figured Faye would want familiarity around her.

“Faye’s,” he told Silas.

“Right. You gonna be long?”

“I’m leaving in five, trek to Sioux is about ten minutes, bit more and then I’ll be there a couple minutes after that.”

“Right. We’re idling, ready to leave now. We’ll probably arrive around the same time. See you there. If you get hung up, see you tomorrow.”

Tomorrow?

He didn’t ask.

He just said, “Right, Silas.”

“If I’m not there when you get there,” Silas continued, his voice soft. “See to my girl. Like her Momma, Faye is, in a lotta ways and not just hair and temper. She can stand strong through a lot of shit, son. So strong you won’t even know inside she’s sufferin’. But inside, she’s sufferin’. And now is one of those times. You gettin’ me?”

There it was. The reason Silas Goodknight didn’t mind Chace sleeping beside his daughter.

“I’m getting you, Silas,” Chace replied quietly.

“I reckon you are,” he muttered then, “’Bye, Chace.”

“Later, Silas.”

Chace disconnected.

Deck, Terry and Dave got close but it was Dave who spoke.

“What do you want done with the shit in there?”

“You take pictures?” Chace asked.

“Yeah, about a hundred of ‘em,” Terry answered.