Juarez went up a ladder and checked the loft. “Clear.”
“House is next.” Bree turned. She sent her deputies to the back door. She and Matt approached the front. They skirted the missing boards and climbed the steps.
Matt noted multiple potential points of entry for trespassers. The front door hung open. The plywood covering a low window had been pried off, the panes smashed. He peered through the broken glass. Enough sunlight streamed through the window and door that they wouldn’t need flashlights. There was no furniture inside. Overturned milk crates formed a semicircle facing the wood fireplace. The floor was covered with cigarette butts and trash. Someone had used the house as a shelter or party spot. The homeless were always looking for somewhere to sleep. Kids were always looking for a place to drink, smoke weed, and have sex. Abandoned buildings were great places for drug dealers to conduct business and for addicts to crash.
They flanked the front door. Through the doorway, he could see down a narrow hall into the kitchen.
A can rattled. A rat squeaked and darted across the floor of the living room, its thin pink tail disappearing down the corridor. Under his body-armor vest, sweat dripped down Matt’s spine. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
Bree went through the door first. Matt shifted the rifle to his shoulder and followed her. She always led from the front, never the rear. Matt slipped into the room after her. Empty rooms were easy to clear, and they rapidly moved from the living room to the hallway that led to the back of the house. Matt and Bree had cleared enough buildings to work as a team with little communication.
Juarez and the other deputy were at the kitchen door. They entered the kitchen from the back as Bree and Matt emerged from the hallway.
“Clear.” Matt shifted the AR-15 to the stairwell. With Bree at his heels, he went to the bottom of the stairs. Peering through the spindles, he put his rifle to his shoulder again. Wary of a potential ambush—stairwells were called fatal funnels for a reason—they wasted no time clearing the steps, then proceeding to the three bedrooms and two baths on the second floor.
They filed downstairs and headed out the back door toward the extra-large garage. With three bays plus a set of huge rolling doors, the structure had likely been used to store combines and other heavy farm equipment.
The door to the garage sagged on its hinges. Matt put his shoulder to the frame. When Bree and her deputies were in place, he opened the door and went through into a small office with a restroom. “Clear.”
The water must have been turned off, because the toilet and sink were both in pieces. The office opened into a hallway that led to two storage rooms and finally opened into the huge vehicle storage space. Across an expanse of concrete, two more doors were closed.
Keeping low, Matt filed through the final opening and pressed his shoulder to Bree’s.
Wind blew through a missing window. Trash and dead leaves tumbled across the concrete. A rope creaked. Matt’s heart jolted.
In the back of the area, a human figure hung from the neck. Matt’s thoughts went to his unanswered texts from Todd.
No. Please, no.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Pulse slamming, Bree leveled her weapon at the hanging figure.
Next to her, Juarez jumped and yelled, “Freeze!”
Bree registered instantly that the figure wasn’t touching the ground. Hung by the neck, whoever it was had to be dead. With a twinge of dread, she thought of Todd. Relief surged through her when she realized the body wasn’t big enough to be his.
Matt exhaled hard. “It’s not him.”
“I know.” She shifted her attention to the rest of the space.
Juarez’s ragged breathing sawed in and out of his lungs.
Bree moved through the opening and swept her weapon around the space. She glanced at her deputies. The older one had experience, but Juarez’s eyes were wide with adrenaline. She didn’t need to check in with Matt. She knew he was solid.
For a brief second, she considered sending Juarez to the rear. But he needed the experience and confidence that finishing this task would give him. How would he gain experience if they didn’t let him? If she pulled him back, the only thing he’d gain from this call was the knowledge that she didn’t trust him. If she didn’t trust him with her life, she couldn’t expect the rest of her deputies to work with him. Lastly, there was only one way to find out how a new officer responded in a stressful situation.
So, she kept him moving.
Fear wasn’t the issue. Intelligent people were afraid in dangerous situations. But could he control his fear? He needed to function despite the fear. That was the key. Ordinary people ran away from danger. Cops ran toward it.
With a gesture, she sent him to the other side of the garage, toward the closed door. He nodded, his face pale in the sun pouring through a broken window near the ceiling. Matt and the older deputy veered left, covering the back of the garage.
Bree took point. The door, off its hinges, lay on its back like a wounded soldier. She examined the visible slice of room, then met Juarez’s gaze.
He nodded and mouthed, “Clear.”
She gestured and slid through the doorway into another spacious room. A pegboard was attached to the wall. Wear marks on it suggested it had been used to store tools. The air smelled faintly of oil, and scratches on the walls showed where a long piece of furniture had once stood. A workbench maybe. Farm equipment needed maintenance and repair. They had to do it somewhere.
The room had no additional exits. A dirty mattress lay in the corner. Someone had been sleeping here. A broken office chair sat in the opposite corner. Missing three of its wheels, it listed drunkenly to one side. Juarez pulled his flashlight and shone it on the mattress. His light illuminated a sleeping bag. Bree covered Juarez while he walked closer and kicked the sleeping bag away with a toe. Empty.
Juarez’s lungs expelled air like a bellows. Bree stood still for a few seconds until it no longer sounded as if her deputy was going to hyperventilate and until her own breathing approached normal. She slid her gun into its holster. “Good job. Let’s get back to that body.”
Juarez nodded. He looked a little sick from the adrenaline rush, but his eyes held both relief and satisfaction.
They turned and filed out of the room. With knowledge that no threats remained in the building, Bree returned to the hanging body and the details she hadn’t noticed while she’d been focused on clearing the building. For one, the garage carried the faint smell of garbage but no decomposition. Even a relatively fresh body put off an odor. Urine and feces released at the moment of death.
She pulled out her flashlight and switched it on. Even before the light fell on the figure, her brain was registering that something was off about the shape. The limbs were oddly bent, almost cartoonish. Relief welled, followed by curiosity. Not a body.
What is it?
She moved closer. “Mannequin?”
Matt’s rifle hung by his side, pointing at the floor. “I don’t think so.”
They walked closer. Bree shone the beam on the shape’s face. It was flat with garish features printed on it. The mouth was disturbingly puckered, an actual hole, lined with bright red lips permanently fixed in an O.
The older deputy gasped.
“Shit.” Juarez flinched. “Sorry,” he said, as if embarrassed he’d been frightened.
“Don’t be,” Matt said. “That thing is scary.”
Bree studied it. “Is it some kind of weird doll?”
Matt cleared his throat. “Sort of.”
In the corner of her eye, she caught bright red spots on Juarez’s face.
She turned back to the doll. It almost looked like a balloon . . . A wave of gross washed over her as she realized what it was. “For the love of Pete . . . It’s a blow-up sex doll.”