They stood, poised and silent, but no one answered. Kel nodded toward the narrow hallway leading off of the living room. With all of the doors closed, it was pitch black, and Kane stepped forward, searching for a light switch. The bulb flared bright, and Kel blinked, chasing away the spots in his eyes. Hastily checking the house, they came to the one closed door off the main hallway.
“Ready?” Kane motioned with his gun toward the door.
“Yeah,” Kel grunted. “Kick or knob?”
“Kick. Hard.”
The hollow-core door splintered under Kel’s foot, and Kane ducked, taking one of the splinters in his cheek. He spat out a mouthful of grit and wood dust, then went in, covering Sanchez as the other cop went low. Sweeping the room carefully, Kane raked his gaze over the space, looking for any threat.
What they found was the remains of Cynthia Vega, swinging from a rope noose she’d tied around the broken light fixture.
The room was tiny, nearly as small as the storeroom in Shing’s restaurant, but unlike its cinder-block counterpart, it was furnished as if awaiting a guest. A daybed sat under a long window, its wrought-iron frame curling up and around the back, the white paint girlishly embellished with metallic pink flourishes. The floor was a wood laminate, cheap and easy to clean, but someone—probably Cynthia—had laid down a square floral rug to soften the room.
Death had not come quickly to Cynthia Vega. Instead, it flirted with her, tantalizing her with promises of a numb forever as she kicked and struggled before losing consciousness. Without enough space and momentum to snap her neck, the frail-bodied woman instead choked slowly, her neck’s waxy skin bearing a scrabble of long, bloody grooves where she clawed at the rope with her broken nails.
Those hands now swung freely at her sides, her body twisting slowly as the hot air from the room’s vent poured in. Kane stepped closer, careful to avoid touching the body. She wasn’t pretty in life, and the bloat to her dead face did little to soften the pinch to her sharp features. Deep grooves dug themselves in between her eyebrows and around her mouth, engraving a lifelong bitterness into her skin. The flowing white dress she’d put on as her final shroud was stained black from blood splatter and vomit, the eyelet at its hem yellowed from her body’s purge. Her legs were skinny and marked with blue veins, the blood drawn down to purple her bare feet in death.
“How long was it they called her?” Sanchez asked. “Half an hour, maybe?”
“Yeah,” Kane agreed. “For this much livor mortis, she must have done this right after she spoke to Dispatch. Fucking hell. Shit, Kel, look at her arms and legs. She was a cutter.”
Cynthia’s bore signs of old cutting, small nicks allowed to heal over, then sliced open again. She’d taken a blade to herself one final time. Before she tied off the noose, she gouged out furrows from her bare arms, opening up the flesh to bleed out enough to pen her final words to the world she obviously fought to escape.
The shock of her body was nothing compared to the horrors stapled to the walls.
There were literally hundreds of photos, each more depraved than the one next to it. He recognized Miki’s face first. How could he not? The defiant, beautiful man he knew was laid out in front of him, younger and fearful. His face figured prominently among the others. Pictures of a young Miki were the most plentiful… and the most horrific in what Vega chose to do to the innocent boy he’d been given to raise.
And all were smeared over with hateful words using Cynthia Vega’s blood.
“Whore” seemed to be Cynthia’s favorite, but others were used as liberally, filthy accusations made against the young men in the images but none for the man who’d put the pain in their eyes.
“I’m going to call it in,” Kel said finally. “The rest of the house is empty. This is the only room like this.”
“Yeah, okay,” Kane murmured, putting his gun back into his holster. He needed to shove his feelings for Miki aside, at least long enough to finish up the job laid out before them. But as he turned, he caught a glimpse of bright hazel eyes, and his heart skipped a beat. Nodding at the carnage of lives splattered on the room’s walls, Kane stiffened his shoulders and reached for his phone. “Let’s see if we can’t get CPS to shake out the names of the kids who survived this asshole Vega. One of them murdered Shing and maybe even Vega by now. We just have to find out which one.”
“What’s his beef with St. John, then?” Kel stopped dialing.
“Maybe Miki was Vega’s favorite. I don’t know, Kel, but he’s all over this room. He means something to Vega,” Kane replied. “We’re not going to know anything until we find either that kid or Vega. My bet’s that Vega’s gone. Our only hope is to find the monster he made.”
Chapter 7
When Death took you, I didn’t notice.
You left me behind you.
In the rain.
Tossed aside without looking back.
Now you’re back in my dreams, telling me you’re sorry.
I need Death to come and take you back again.
—Letter to My Mother
THE dog was back. Again.