“He lived alone.”
“Did he though?” Her gaze caught on some grime on the wall. She shifted closer, saw a bunch of smudge marks, but they were only like thirty inches high. She pointed them out down the hallway. “Look. It’s almost like a child rubbed his hands all the way along the wall here.”
Rodney squatted in front of her. “It’s hardly a spot where an adult would touch, is it? But it lends credence to our theory.”
“But,” she said, taking a devil’s advocate point of view, “he also could have dragged something or been carrying something. We’ll have to keep looking for answers.” Still, her mind was locked on the fact that something was off. But then again, it was the home of a pedophile, after all, so what the hell else should she expect? Some seriously ugly scenarios could have happened here. She wandered through the place slowly, checking and searching everything, until she got to the kitchen.
“What exactly are you looking for?”
“Nothing and everything,” she said. She quickly went through the kitchen and found absolutely nothing suspicious. She sighed and said, “What about the basement?”
“Just a crawl space for utilities,” he said.
“I want to go down there,” she said instantly.
He shrugged and said, “Whatever. It’s in the hallway here.” They opened up a panel on the floor, and she dropped down with her cell on Flashlight mode. This space was only about three feet high. She asked, “Did Forensics come in here?”
“Yep, they did,” Rodney said. He crouched again, so he saw where she was, had his flashlight shining down there too.
Kate saw all the utilities, pipes, and wires that kept the condo functional. As she searched around, she couldn’t see much else. She didn’t know what the hell she was looking for really, but at least maybe a scratch on the wall or something to show that a child had been here. There was nothing. She continued her search, tapping the walls for a hollow sound. “Nothing,” she said, disgusted, as she made her way back up.
“We do know how to do our job, you know?”
“So do I,” she snapped. She headed upstairs, where she went to the spare room, and found it completely clean and empty. Then she went into the master. And yet it too was nothing but plain and ordinary. She shot him a look. “What is it about this room that makes my skin crawl?”
He smiled and said, “I can see that it does. Maybe just the fact that he lived here. I don’t know.”
She quickly searched through the room, knowing that the Forensics Division had been here ahead of her, but she didn’t care. She studied the worn wall, wallpapered in some strange purple and gray pattern. She slid her hand across the top of the wall, and, when she snagged her fingernail ever-so-slightly, she stopped and moved back. Then, using her nail, she followed the indention, outlining a space about two feet by two feet. She pressed inward ever-so-gently and out popped the secret door.
“Now this is interesting,” she murmured.
Rodney was there instantly. “Well, I’m betting they didn’t find this,” he said in surprise. Behind it was a safe built into the wall. She looked at it, then turned to him. “You any good at this?”
“No,” he said. “We could get somebody in here.”
She nodded and frowned. “I could try anyway.” She placed her ear against it and slowly turned the dial, but she couldn’t make it open. “Damn it,” she said. “How long will it take to get somebody in here to open it?”
“Unless you know somebody,” he said, “we must bring in a locksmith.”
She swore again. Just then her phone lit up, and a text came in from Simon. She sucked in her breath at the string of numbers in front of her. Was it possible? How could he know? Against her better judgment, but unable to ignore the impulse, she tried the numbers on the safe. When she heard the tumblers fall into place and then aclick, she stepped back, snapped the lever down, and pulled it open. And stared. In front of her were DVDs, old VHS tapes, and what looked like a photo album.
“What have we here?” Rodney asked, beside her.
She groaned. “What we have is a motherfucking sick society. I really don’t want to watch these videos.”
They stared at it all, knowing these would be videos nobody wanted them to see.
“We need Forensics in here,” he said. “A ton of fingerprints could be all over this stuff.”
“And yet Ken is dead, so what I want to know is who else knew this shit was here?”
“How did you open it?” he asked curiously. “Surely that was more than a guess.”
She lifted her phone in her hand and tapped the screen to open it up, so Rodney saw the text she had gotten from Simon.
Rodney stared at that, stared at her, and looked at the lock. “Holy shit. Call us Team Simon.”
*