Page 35 of Her Last Whisper
“Okay, big guy, this is just a fact-finding expedition. That’s all. No running into houses to get the bad guys or searching for tripwires or bombs.” She laughed as she spoke to Cisco like she would a human partner.
Cisco let out a disappointed grumble followed by a high-pitch whine.
“Yeah, I know. It can’t be funallthe time.”
Katie noted that according to Amanda’s statement she had referred to landmarks of abig boxand afantasy tree. She also described the house with ablue doorandwhite trim.
Slowing her unmarked patrol vehicle, she saw what appeared to be a big boxhousing telephone lines for the area. The two doors hung ajar with wiring spilling out of it.
Katie continued, surveying the houses along the way. There wasn’t as much graffiti as she’d expected, and most windows hadn’t been broken out. A couple of the houses actually looked like someone could still live there, if it weren’t for the red notices from the county, warning of the abandoned and condemned houses, attached to all the front doors.
Old trees lined some of the streets and one street in particular had three large trees straight down the middle of the road—the trunks were massive, almost the girth of a car and she had to maneuver her vehicle around them.
Katie stopped the car.
The tree at the end was a type of oak that was twisted and gnarled in such a way it looked like elves might’ve inhabited the inside of it. The fantasy tree?
“Okay, Amanda. I see your landmarks, but what I don’t understand…” Katie mumbled to herself as she thought about how Amanda could have seen these things on a dark, rainy night and in the frenzied state she was in.
Had she been there before?
Katie saw the blue door and white trim house Amanda had described, and the deputies had discovered and searched. A quick look at the map confirmed it with the police report.
She pulled to the side of the road, parking where her vehicle would be visible and give her clear access to leave. Cisco whined as he moved back and forth in the backseat, preparing himself for a drill.
“You’re going to have to sit this one out,” she said and got out of the car.
Katie stood still.
The first thing that struck her as strange about the area was that there were no sounds. She strained to hear traffic from a nearby freeway several miles away, but the silence was deafening.
Katie ran her hand over her gun handle, which was in its usual position on her hip, and adjusted a small remote device on her belt that K9 officers used to open the back door to their police cars to release their four-legged partners if an emergency were to arise. Sergeant Hardy had arranged for Katie to use the unmarked police K9 vehicle with the lever release whenever she had Cisco with her.
She took a couple of steps and stopped. Just like she would do when moving into enemy territories in Afghanistan, she slowly turned three hundred sixty degrees, surveying her position, looking and listening for anything that seemed out of place or unusual. Satisfied, she proceeded to the small house.
Pushing the front door open to let some light in, she crushed an old Styrofoam cup to form a makeshift door stop, jamming it under the open door to hold it in place. An overwhelming smell hit her senses hard, making her cover her nose and mouth. The odor of musty, disintegrating garbage and urine made her stomach flip.
Why hadn’t Amanda mentioned the bad smell? Why did she smell jasmine?It had been six months since the attack, but it was clear that it had been a lot longer than that since the house smelt like “spring,” as Amanda had described it.
She walked to the only front window that had vertical bars loose enough for someone to squeeze through.
But why not escape out the front door?
Katie focused her attention on the front door where there were geometric holes that had once housed two extra locks that were now missing. It was difficult to ascertain if the locks were part of the dilapidating house or if someone had removed them recently.
Taking a couple of deep breaths from the clean outdoor air, Katie then turned and headed deeper inside the house to search the bedrooms. The once low-grade carpet was now torn and curled from the baseboards causing it to buckle and fold beneath her feet in several areas.
The living room was empty except for some old trash that had been there for months and a couple of spray-painted initials from local gangs muddying the walls.
There were no pieces of furniture or anything that indicated anyone had been living there during the past six months or longer. A small bathroom missing the toilet and sink separated the two small bedrooms. As with the rest of the house, the rooms were empty and there was no indication that there had been furniture or anyone living there within the last year or more. The thicker old carpet didn’t show any signs of a bed, table, or chairs having left indentations.
The rooms felt smaller than she thought they would be—even without furnishings. Disappointed, Katie walked through the rest of the house and into the kitchen. There was nothing to indicate anything criminal happened in the house or that anyone had been residing there—or held against their will. If there had been, the abductor cleared everything after Amanda had escaped.
No blood.
No remnants from the abductor’s restraints or tools.
No bed.
