IN THE BEGINNING, I CRIED. Which in time led to a sort of mindless humming, making noise for the sake of making noise, because it’s hard to be alone in a dark wooden box. Sensory deprivation. The kind of torture used to break hardened assassins and radicalized terrorists. Because it works.
The pain was the worst. The relentless hard surface denting the soft spot on the back of my skull, straining my lower back, bruising my bony heels. I would feel the ache like a fire across my skin, until my entire nervous system roared its outrage. But there was nothing I could do. No new position I could adopt. Not a twist here or a bend there to relieve the pressure. To be trapped, pinned really, flat on your back on a hard pine plank, minute after minute after minute.
I think there were times, especially in the beginning, when I wasn’t sane.
Humans are interesting, however. Our ability to adapt is truly impressive. Our rage against our own suffering. Our relentless need to find a way out, to do something, anything, to advance our lot in life.
I made the first improvement in my living conditions by accident. In a fit of fury against the pain in the back of my skull, I lifted my head and smacked my forehead against the wooden lid. Maybe I hoped to knock myself unconscious. Wouldn’t have surprised me.
What I received was a sharp sting to my front right temple, which did, at least temporarily, alleviate the ache in the back of my head. Which led to more discoveries. Your back throbs? Smack a knee. Your knee hurts? Stub a toe. Your toe hurts? Jam a finger.
Pain is a symphony. A song of varying intensities and many, many notes. I learned to play them. No longer a helpless victim in a sea of suffering but a mad orchestral genius directing the music of my own life.
Alone, trapped inside a coffin-size box, I sought out each tiny register of discomfort and mastered it.
Which led in turn to leg lifts and shoulder shrugs and the world’s most abbreviated biceps curls.
He came. He worked the padlock. He removed the lid. He lifted me out of the depths and reveled in his godlike powers. Afterward, a small offering of liquid, perhaps even a scrap of food as he tossed the dog the proverbial bone. He’d stay to watch, laughing as I cracked open the dried-up chicken wing and greedily sucked out the marrow.
Then, back to the box. He would leave. And I belonged to myself again.
Alone in the dark.
Master of my pain.
I cried. I railed against God. I begged for someone, anyone, to save me.
But only in the beginning.
Slowly but surely, dimly, then with greater clarity, I began to think, plot, scheme.
One way or another, I was getting out of this. I’d do whatever it took to survive.
And then . . .
I was going home.
Chapter 5
D.D. DISCOVERED NEIL in the upstairs rear bedroom of the two-story house. The youngest member of the three-man squad, Neil was famous for his shock of red hair and perpetually youthful face. Most suspects dismissed him as a new recruit, which D.D. and Phil had never stopped using to their advantage.
These days, Neil carried himself with more poise. In the past couple of years, D.D. and Phil had been pushing him to step up, take the lead. It had resulted in a few battles, given Neil remained most at home overseeing autopsies in the morgue. But D.D. liked to think she’d raised him right. Certainly, with her gone and Phil now serving as lead detective of the squad, Neil had better be lording over Carol, D.D. thought. It was the least he could do for her.
Neil glanced up as she walked in. He was kneeling on the floor beside a rumpled queen-size bed, holding a shoe box pulled from beneath the mattress. D.D. made it three feet into the cramped, dank space and wrinkled her nose. It smelled like unwashed sheets, cheap cologne, and gym socks. In other words, like the home of a bachelor male.
“Devon Goulding’s room?” she asked.
“Looks like it.”
“Arrested development,” she muttered.
Neil arched a brow. “We can’t all be Alex,” he observed.
Alex was D.D.’s husband. Crime scene reconstruction specialist and instructor at the police academy. One of the more refined members of the species, D.D. liked to think, he had impeccable taste in clothing, food, and, of course, his wife. He also looked pretty good with mushy Cheerios glued to his cheek, which is how most breakfasts with their four-year-old son ended. Alex actually enjoyed doing laundry. Devon Goulding, on the other hand . . .
“Got anything?” D.D. gestured to the shoe box in Neil’s hand. “Say, a stash of trophies from previous victims? According to our femme fatale, who apparently had never met Mr. Goulding before this evening, he’s definitely done this before and might even be the perpetrator responsible for the Boston College student who went missing in August.”
Neil blinked. “You mean the Stacey Summers case?”
“So I’m told.”
“By the woman who torched Devon in his own garage with her hands still tied?”
“The one and only.”
“Who is she again?”
“Interestingly enough, she was more forthcoming on Devon’s alleged crimes than her own. But she’s convinced he’s a serial predator, and we should definitely check for trophies.”
“She looks familiar,” Neil said. “I can’t quite place her. But when I first arrived and spotted her . . . I thought I knew her from somewhere.”
“Quantico?” D.D. asked helpfully, as Neil had recently attended a training seminar there for detectives, and it would certainly explain the woman’s knowledge of criminal behavior.
But Neil was shaking his head. “I don’t think so. Then again . . .”
“You ever hear about this chemical-fire thing?” she asked him now, Neil having the most extensive science background on her squad. Former squad.
“Yeah. One of those survival tricks for when lost in the wilderness, that sort of thing. Gotta admit, though, if I woke up trapped in a garage with my hands bound . . . Not sure that’s the first thing that would pop into my head.”
“Seems to indicate higher-than-average self-defense skills.”
“Here’s the thing, though,” Neil continued, rising to his feet. “It shouldn’t have killed Goulding. Incapacitated, maimed, traumatized, sure. But localized burning, relatively low heat . . . You’d be amazed at how much the human body can endure and keep on ticking. I’ve seen victims pulled from fiery wrecks with two-thirds of their skin toasted, and still, with enough time and treatment, they make it.”
D.D. shuddered. She didn’t like burns. She’d once been sent to interview a survivor in a burn unit who was having the dead skin literally scraped from his back. Based on the guy’s screams, she’d assumed he was dying, only to be told the whole treatment was designed to fix him. Not enough morphine in the world, the nurse had offered helpfully, scouring away.
“Now, it’s possible Devon inhaled heat and smoke into his throat,” Neil was saying. “Maybe seared his esophagus, which swelled up, closing his airway. But what the witness described sounded more instantaneous. Which made me think maybe he went into shock and his heart stopped beating.”
“Okay,” D.D. said. She still didn’t know where they were going with this, but Neil had worked as an EMT before he became a cop. He often saw things she and Phil didn’t.
“Of course, the deceased is a young, obviously fit male. Bodybuilder, by the looks of things.”
“You could see that?” D.D. asked incredulously, recalling the curled-up lump of charred remains.
“You couldn’t?”
“Never mind.”
“Which leads to further considerations. Bodybuilders have been known to dabble in anabolic steroids, which in turn can lead to a whole host of symptoms, including high blood pressure and an enlarged heart.”
“And shrunken testicles,” D.D. offered up. “High blood pressure is news to me, but the shrunken testicles, I’m pretty sure about.”