She pulled the Kia up to the edge of the lot. Beyond the lot was packed dirt. As she got out of the car, she saw their bikes lying on the ground. Regina ducked back in the Kia and grabbed a mini flashlight from the glove box.
After popping on the beam, she approached the bikes, stepping over broken glass and a used condom. She really needed to rethink giving them so much freedom.
“Tim! Brian! You here? You’re both in trouble!” she called.
No response.
Regina moved toward the entrance. Something went sploosh under her foot, the ground wet. She shined the beam on it.
Please don’t let that be blood.
There was no mistaking it, though. It was blood, and a trail of it led off into the weeds. She pushed herself to follow it, dreading what she’d find. It followed a zig-zag pattern into the weeds. The weeds themselves had been mashed down.
Maybe it was an animal that had killed something and dragged it off. She tried to convince herself of that.
She made her way into the weeds and spotted an old piece of rusting industrial equipment. A transformer or generator maybe. It was huge, the size of a van. The trail went around the piece of equipment. She would find the answer on the other side, but did she want to?
She crept around the press, hands shaking. Regina looked down and screamed. Her legs barely able to keep her up, she ran from the weeds and tore her cell phone from her pocket.
Maria got the call. Two bodies found at the abandoned power plant. She’d been halfway through sharing a bowl of popcorn with Tim, the two of them catching up on Game of Thrones. After getting the call, she kissed his salty lips, grabbed her badge and gun, and headed out.
In the car, she dialed Martz. “Swing by and get you?”
“I’ll wear my best dress.”
She pulled into Jenna and Rachel’s place. Martz was waiting on the front steps. She wore jeans and a blue button down, untucked. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail.
Martz got in the car and they headed to the powerhouse. Drove up the driveway, where Maria parked in the lot. A uniformed officer had his patrol car parked at the edge of the weeds that surrounded the property.
“They should tear this place down,” Maria said.
“Fire department won’t go in there anymore. Too unstable,” Martz said.
The two of them noticed a silver Kia parked nearby. A woman stood nearby talking to another uniformed officer. Tears streamed down her face.
Maria approached the uniform who was parked near the weeds and recognized him as Jared Handley. He was a stocky kid with angry red razor burn on his neck. On a clipboard, he held the log that kept track of all visitors to the crime scene.
“Jared, how’s the new baby?” Maria said.
“Healthy and keeping me from sleeping,” Handley said.
“As it should be,” Maria said.
The two detectives signed in.
Maria said, “What are we looking at?”
“Mom over there has two boys out past curfew. She gets worried, comes here looking for them. She found them behind that old generator. It’s bad.”
Maria saw where the weeds had been mashed down. “We’re going to have a look.”
She stepped around the blood spatter and trampled weeds, heading toward the generator. They found someone from the crime lab photographing something that was shielded by the generator. Another tech was swabbing blood samples from the weeds.
Maria took a deep breath. Kids were the worst. She’d responded to one call a few years back where a shithead named Myron Lafleur had set fire to his ex-wife’s house in the middle of the night. His wife had gotten out, but his two little girls had burned to death in the fire. Maria still couldn’t get the image of the two charred little bodies out of her head. The one kid’s stuffed teddy bear had fused to her body. She sincerely hoped Lafleur was getting ass-pounded on a daily basis by the Aryan Brotherhood in prison.
“Ready?” Martz said. “I’m not.”
“Let’s rip off the Band-Aid,” Maria said.
They rounded the generator. Maria sucked in a deep breath. The boys were laid out side-by-side. Their shirts had been removed. Doll’s eyes staring up at the night sky. They’d both been cut open from throat to waist, their rib cages spread. Viscera exposed and glistening.
Maria felt her gorge rise.
Don’t puke. Don’t cry.
Both their throats had been cut, as well.
“Goddamned serial killer in our town,” Martz muttered.
“Looks that way.”
She guessed they had been killed and then dragged. Maria took a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and snapped them on. She knelt near the bodies. A raw stink came off of them. She lifted the closest boy’s wrist, inspecting for ligature marks. No sign. Didn’t look like they were bound.
“I hope he did the worst after they were dead,” Martz said, crouching down.
“If he didn’t bind them, not sure how he did all that cutting while they were alive. Suppose he could’ve drugged them somehow,” Maria said.
They spent a while examining the area around the bodies. She didn’t find any totems or symbols. Nothing that would indicate a ritual.
“Satanic?” Martz wondered aloud.
“Those assholes usually leave behind pentagrams and other souvenirs.”
“We’ll have to see if the ME finds evidence of sexual assault. This guy’s a real peach,” Martz said.
She heard someone coming through the weeds. Looked over and saw Handley.
“ME’s on the way,” Handley said.
“You thinking pedophile? Assuming it’s the same guy, the jogger he killed was an adult,” Maria said.
“They’re just missing shirts. Think he would’ve left them naked if that was his thing,” Martz said.
Maria stepped away from the bodies, if only to give her nose a break from the stench. She heard vehicles approaching.
