Located at the end of a dead-end street, the derelict Victorian seemed to wither in the heat, the turrets and dormers sagging from time, neglect and decades of inclement weather. The gardens were lost, the maze of brick pathways broken and forgotten. The whole place wore an air of despair and long-buried secrets.
Those secrets and the steamy humidity stole Detective Adaline Kinsella’s breath as she ducked under the crime-scene tape and pushed open the front door. It swung inward with the inevitable squeak, drawing a shiver.
She had the strangest sensation of déjà vu as she entered the house, and the experience both puzzled and unsettled her. She’d never been here before. Couldn’t remember ever having driven down this street. But a nerve had been touched. Old memories had been triggered. If she listened closely enough, she could hear the echo of long-dead screams, but she knew that sound came straight from her nightmares.
She was just tired, Addie told herself. Five days of hiking, swimming and kayaking in ninety-degree weather had taken a toll, and now she needed a vacation from her vacation.
For nearly a week, she’d remained sequestered in her aunt’s lake house without access to cable or the internet. One day had spun into another, and for the better part of the week, Addie had thought she’d found heaven on earth in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But by Thursday she’d become restless to the point of pacing on the front porch. On Friday she’d awakened early, packed up her car and headed back to Charleston, arriving just after lunch to explosive headlines and the police department abuzz with a gruesome discovery.
The details of that find swirled in her head as she hovered in the foyer. The previous owner of the house, a recluse named Delmar Gainey, had died five years earlier in a nursing home, and the property had remained vacant until an enterprising house flipper had bought it at auction. The demo crew had noticed a fusty odor, but no one had sounded an alarm. It was the smell of old death, after all. The lingering aroma of disintegrating vermin and rotting vegetation. The house had flooded at least once, allowing in the deadly invasion of mold and mildew. The structure was a public health hazard that needed to be razed, but the flipper had been adamant about renovation—until his workers had uncovered human remains behind the living room walls.
Skeletal remains had also been found behind the dining room walls and beneath the rotting floorboards in the hallway. Seven bodies hidden away inside the abandoned house and seven more buried in the backyard. Fourteen victims so far, and the search had now been extended onto the adjacent property.
“Hello?” Addie called as she moved across the foyer to the rickety staircase. The house was oppressive and sweltering. No power meant no lights and no AC. Sweat trickled down her backbone and moistened her armpits. Furtive claws scratched overhead, and the sound deepened Addie’s dread. Ever since she’d heard about the Gainey house, images had bombarded her. Now she pictured the ceiling collapsing and rat bodies dropping down on her. She had a thing about rats. Spiders and snakes she could handle, but rats...
Grimacing in disgust, she moved toward the archway on her right, peeking into the shadowy space she thought might once have been the dining room. The long windows were boarded up, allowing only thin slivers of light to creep in. She could smell dust from the demolished plaster and a whiff of putrefaction. Or was that, too, her imagination? Delmar Gainey’s victims had been entombed in the walls for over two decades. Surely the scent would have disintegrated by now.
A memory flitted and was gone. The nightmares still tugged...
Addie suppressed another shiver and wondered why she had come. As of Monday, she had a new assignment. Handpicked by her captain to train with the FBI’s famous Behavioral Analysis Unit, she’d been temporarily reassigned from the Charleston PD Investigations Bureau. Soon she would join select law enforcement personnel from all over the Southeast for six weeks of specialized training conducted by one of the brightest minds to ever work in the BAU. But for today, right this moment, she needed to focus on her perilous surroundings. She needed to find out why so many alarms were tripping inside her head.
“Boo!” a voice boomed from the shadows.
Addie jumped in spite of herself, and her hand went automatically to her weapon. Then she let loose a string of expletives that seemed to echo back to her from the hollowed-out walls. “Are you crazy?” she scolded her partner. “I might have shot you.”
Detective Matt Lepear laughed as he emerged from the depths of the gloom. “Oh, come on,” he drawled. “I’ve never known anyone less trigger-happy than you.” He somehow made it sound like a shortcoming.
“Maybe I’ve changed.”
“Not you, Addie Kinsella. You’re as predictable as the day is long. I knew you wouldn’t make it a week in the mountains all by your lonesome. What happened? Couldn’t stand your own company?”
“Figured I’d better head on back and see how badly you’ve screwed things up in my absence.”
“Can’t say as I’ve missed that mouth.” He shoved his dust mask to the top of his head, allowing a lock of brown hair to fall across his brow. “Seriously, girl, you couldn’t find anything better to do with the last few days of your vacation? Go to the movies or something. Go shopping, get your hair done. Just go. Get out of here. We’ve got this covered.”
“I know you do, but I wanted to see this place for myself.”
“You’re a strange bird, Addie. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Yes, you. All the time.”
He leaned a shoulder against the door frame and unwrapped a stick of gum. Like Addie, Matt Lepear was a ten-year veteran of the Charleston PD. They’d gone through the academy together, patrolled the streets together, and their partnership in the Investigations Bureau had seemed a natural progression of their bond. They were as thick as thieves and as different as night and day. Addie had a tendency to overthink and second-guess, but nothing much fazed Matt Lepear. He took it all in stride. Serial killers, hurricanes, even his two ex-wives.
He was a good detective, one might even say gifted, but his career would always be held back by his disdain for rules and neckties. He preferred to follow his gut rather than the book, and he insisted on dressing in his own uniform of jeans, sneakers and T-shirts. His insubordination had become legendary, but he and Addie led the department in percentage of closed cases, so the powers that be tended to give him leeway. Addie was under no illusion that she would be afforded the same consideration with a different partner, no matter that the deputy chief was a man she once called uncle. Addie was smart, meticulous and persistent to a fault, but she would never have Matt’s instincts.
His irreverence had rubbed off on her over the years and now she was in no position to criticize anyone’s style, she acknowledged, wiping clammy hands down the sides of her faded jeans. She hadn’t bothered going home to change before stopping by headquarters. When she heard about the Gainey house, she’d driven straight over. Come Monday, she’d make more of an effort to look presentable. It was in her best interests to get off on the right foot with the retired supervisory special agent-turned-consultant who would be in charge of her training. If there was anything Gwen Holloway had been known for at Quantico, besides her uncanny profiles, it was her rigid standards on dress and conduct.
“You want the twenty-five-cent tour?” Matt asked her.
“Of the house? No, thanks. I’ll just poke around on my own.” She turned back to the foyer. “How do you think he got away with it for so long? The stench must have been unbearable, especially in the summer months. Yet none of the neighbors ever filed a complaint? Even now I can smell the decay.”
“You’re smelling the rats,” Matt said.