The Sleeping Girls by James Hunt

Author:James Hunt [Hunt, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

23

Susan didn’t hang up the phone, staying on the line with Charlie as she checked out a cruiser and flicked the lights, weaving through traffic

“Just hang on, Charlie!” Susan put the phone on speaker, shouting over the siren.

Susan arrived at his house, which sat on the edge of a small neighborhood of single family homes that were built in the fifties as low-income housing.

But the past seventy years had seen the houses fall apart, held together with scraps, barely able to keep the people who lived in them protected from the elements. The moment she reached the neighborhood, she dropped the siren but kept the lights, wanting people to know that she was there in case whoever had hurt Charlie was still hanging around.

Unlike other neighborhoods when police entered, bathing the houses in blue and red emergency lights, no one stepped from their homes to investigate what was happening. Because out here the police only meant trouble, even when all they were trying to do was help.

Susan pulled into the driveway, screeching to a halt, and then parked the cruiser. Because of adrenaline, Susan forced herself to slowly approach the front door, which was cracked open.

The curtains on the windows were drawn so she couldn’t see inside, but she paused at the door, listening for anyone inside before she shouldered the door open. “Police! Identify yourselves if you are in the house!”

Susan wasn’t sure how by the book she should play it, so she decided to go in all the way. She had been to Charlie’s a dozen times and already knew all of the choke points in the house, so she was able to move more quickly through than had she not been familiar with the house.

The moment that Susan entered, she could smell something off, like something was burning. She passed from the foyer and into the living room, which was sparsely furnished with furniture that looked like it had been pulled from a landfill, but Susan noticed the blood on the dirtied carpet and saw that it trailed into the kitchen.

Susan followed the blood, dreading what she would find, but praying that Charlie was still alive, and when she hit the tile, she wasn’t sure.

“Charlie!” Susan dropped to her knees to examine Charlie’s lifeless body. She checked for a pulse and felt one, though it was faint, and then she gently cradled the back of Charlie’s head in her palm. “Charlie? Charlie, can you hear me?”

His face was bloodied and swollen, far different than the handsome face she remembered from this morning. His body was completely limp, and she saw the blood that stained his clothes as she searched for any other injuries to his body, such as stab or gunshot wounds, but she found none. He had only been beaten to within an inch of his life

Susan looked up and saw what she had smelled when she first entered the house. He had been cooking something in a pan, and it was burning. The house didn’t have any fire alarms, so there was nothing to alert anyone to the burning save for the smoke.

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