Come Little Children (31 page)

The bloodhound was off like a race dog. It zipped behind a patch of trees as Camilla wiped a pile of snow off a rain barrel and sat down. She was a little nervous when she couldn’t spy the dog through the branches—
if that thing runs away, they’ll give me the death penalty
—but a minute later it came frisking back, tongue out, with a satisfied swagger.

She reached down and ruffled the dog’s face. He seemed to enjoy it, playing back with a few head-butts. How many hours he’d been cooped up in the back of a vehicle or forced to sit patiently by his commander’s bootstraps, she didn’t know, but it seemed like even work dogs needed a little playtime.

Camilla looked around for a Frisbee or a ball they could toss back and forth before going inside, but the only object she found was the pink slipper that the officer had used to track the twins’ scent. She bent over and picked it up, batting the snow off, and turned it around in her hands.

The bloodhound pressed against her leg, and without even thinking about it, Camilla bent down and offered the slipper just like the commander had done. The dog sniffed it and then Camilla said softly, but firmly, “Go find.”

A switch flipped in the dog’s demeanor. It went from being fun and playful to intense and alert, then took off in a flash.

She watched the hound run around the backyard, glancing behind her every two or three seconds to make sure that no one was coming out of the house, and crossed her fingers subconsciously. She found herself holding her breath again—like a slot machine addict who got a free pull on her last nickel—clinging
to some microscopic hope that
this
time the result would be different. This time she’d hit the jackpot and all their worries would be solved.

The dog repeat the same circles that it ran last time: a few laps around the sandbox, then three, four paces up and down the dock before bounding over to the boatshed and looping back to the sandbox in zigzag fashion. She tried spying some sort of clue that they hadn’t seen before.
There has to be a pattern
.

Another minute passed and Camilla slumped, defeated. It was useless. What kind of idea made her—a funeral assistant—think that she would be able to spot something that a professionally trained rescue team had missed?

When the dog ran by again, she flagged it down. It was so cold that she could barely think anymore, and it was about time they went back inside before the officers noticed that one of their most valuable assets had vanished.

The dog trundled over and stuck its head in Camilla’s lap, just as disappointed as she was. She wiped a couple drops from her eyes—mostly from the cold, but a few from the sting of failure—and let out a sigh, raking her fingers through her hair in frustration.

Suddenly, Camilla froze.

Her breathing turned very shallow. Then slowly—very slowly—she brought her hand away from her head and held something in front of her. Her palm was clenched into a fist, and when she opened her fingers, they revealed a small metal orchid.

Moira’s hair clip.

No
, she corrected herself.
Abigail’s hair clip
.

Don’t do this
, she wrestled.
Don’t mess around, Camilla. You’re paranoid, and this whole debacle’s gone far enough. Put that damn thing back in your hair and go inside. Go inside and stop torturing yourself
.

But she didn’t go inside. She leaned down, frowning determinedly, and stuck the clip in front of the dog’s nose. The dog sniffed a few different angles and then looked up and made eye contact with her.

“Go find.”

The circuitry in the dog’s brain flipped again and its body went totally rigid.

But instead of darting off this time, the bloodhound bent its head and started sniffing around Camilla’s feet. It made a slow circle around her, looking over at the house, and took a few cautious steps away before turning its head to the left, then right, then left again. It glanced back at Camilla for a brief moment and gave her a look that seemed to ask if she was pulling his leg.

The wind changed and the bloodhound cocked its head to the right.

Camilla was trembling. She covered her mouth as the dog stalked farther into the yard and started picking up its pace.

This is ridiculous. Stop scaring yourself and call it back
.

But she couldn’t call it back, even if she wanted to. She was paralyzed atop the rain barrel like a frozen monument that couldn’t talk or wave or even blink.

The dog was running now. It dashed through the banks of snow toward the lake and arrived at the dock, putting one paw on the wooden planks, and then stopped—second-guessing itself—and swerved to the right, away from the dock toward the old boat shed.

The sun was drooping over the treetops, but Camilla could still see the yard fairly well. The dog had pushed through the dead reeds and dry branches that flanked the shoreline and arrived at the splintered door of the decrepit shed. It stuck its nose in the crack between the bottom of the door and the ground and
tried wiggling underneath, but its body was too large. Instead it backed away and sat down with its ballerina posture again, then looked over its shoulder at Camilla and waited for her to make the next call.

She waved the dog back but it didn’t budge. It sat there obediently with the look of the hunt still hardwired into its body.

Camilla sprung up and ran to the bloodhound, massaging its sides and ruffling its ears until the electric look disappeared from its eyes. She grabbed a loop on its little orange vest and tugged it back to the house, then opened the screen door and patted its furry body inside.

The door closed again, and she turned to face the boat shed.

Before the sun had started going down, it had been nothing but a harmless, busted-up shack. Now in the creeping shadows of late afternoon, it was a dark, menacing specter, its rotted walls and boarded windows warning souls not to come near.

Camilla was moving before she even registered it.

She walked calmly to the police car and glanced through the window: the passenger’s side lock was flipped down, but the driver’s side was popped up. She checked over her shoulder—no one stirred at the house yet—and wrapped her fingers around the driver’s handle, pulling ever so gently.

Clack
. The door hovered opened.

Camilla leaned over and pulled a latch beside the driver’s seat. She heard the
pop!
of the trunk outside and then straightened up and closed the door before scurrying to the back of the cruiser.

The trunk was a lot messier than expected. There were at least five different tool boxes jumbled together with blankets, loose garbage bags, traffic cones, water bottles, boxes of ammo, spare boots, a couple quarts of oil, and even a teddy bear. She
rummaged through the gear—glancing over her shoulder periodically—and started cracking open the boxes. The first was a medical kit; the second was a container of flares. She snapped the clasps of the third kit and lifted it open to reveal a jug of liquid, a few random packets marked
BLUELAMP
, and—
alleluia
—a flashlight. Bingo.

There was a rattle behind her. She spun around and looked at the door of the house: it was shimmying, but didn’t open.
Hopefully it’s the dog
.

She flipped the tool kit shut and quietly closed the trunk again, then rushed toward the rotting boat shed.

There was no lock on the shed and no lights inside. From her first step through the dilapidated frame, she was drowned in darkness—the same treacherous darkness she remembered from her horrifying chase through the Vincents’ basement. Just as she pictured Maddock’s invisible fingers reaching out to caress her face, the flashlight shone to life and cut through the shadowy apparition, hitting the back wall of the boat shed over a hundred feet away.

She flashed the light in ten directions to gain her bearings. The shed was an open room with a wooden walkway that ran along three of the four walls. There was no floor in the middle—just a pool of water with a family boat bobbing on the surface. Shelves of fishing rods, tackle boxes, and cleaning supplies took up most of the wall space, but otherwise the shed was barren.

Camilla bit down and forced herself to follow the walkway around the right side of the building. This wasn’t the complicated search that she expected; if the twins were here, there was really only one place they could be.

Inside the boat
.

Still, she held out hope.
The parents must have searched this place top to bottom. Please let me be wrong. Please, please let me be crazy
.

The water kept swishing with a calm, eerie rhythm that echoed in the roof. The walls groaned like the wood itself was in pain, or perhaps it was trying to warn her to turn back before it was too late.

But she didn’t retreat. She got to the starboard side of the Bayliner and shone her light over the tarp that was buttoned to the top. Her hand set the toolbox on the floor and reached out for a loose bit of the cover, then started to pull.

The metal buttons that held the tarp to the liner crackled off like machine gun bullets. She tore and tore—her thoughts abandoning her body as her carnal hands attacked the barrier with all they could muster—and when the whole starboard edge had been unclasped, she grabbed the cover and threw it over the other side of the boat. Without stopping to give herself time to think, she shone her flashlight at the vessel and forced herself to look at what was inside.

The boat was empty.

The life vests were stored in their open seat compartments. The fishing rods were piled up neatly in the side bins. The deck was packed with water skis and buoys and a fat inner tube that looked like the world’s largest chocolate donut.

She fell back on the walkway and massaged her chest to try and soothe her heart rate back to normal.

You were wrong, Camilla. Alleluia. Praise the Queen, Christ, Allah, Buddha, Isis, Zeus. The Republic For Which It Stands. Everything. You were wrong. Now get out of here
.

She reached forward to pull the tarp over the boat again, but her left foot slipped on a patch of ice and she tumbled backward onto the dock. Her hands tried cushioning the fall, but her ass
slammed hard against the planks and her flashlight went sailing out of her hands.

The beam of light rolled over the wood and revealed a patch of ice glimmering underneath her. Not wanting to trip again, Camilla picked up the flashlight and waved it over the floor to get a sense of how big the patch actually was.
That’s peculiar
. The coat of ice was barely as thick as a sheet of paper, but a thin layer of water glazed the top and gave it that extra slip. Her flashlight followed the planks and traced the water to the nearest wall. Lo and behold, a garden hose was curled up like a long snake, and little droplets were rolling silently out of its mouth and trailing across the dock to where she was standing.

Camilla crossed the walkway and gripped the spigot on the wall. She gave it a good crank and the hose stopped trickling.
Why’s the water on in the winter?

Her pupils dilated, and then went rocketing around the room.

The puddle, the planks, the boat.

The boat, the puddle, the planks.

The puddle, the planks, the…tool kit?

She dashed for the RCMP tool kit and flipped open the lid, remembering something that she’d seen when she was back at the police cruiser. Her hands dove for the packets of BLUELAMP and her eyes flew over the chemicals that were printed on the back.
Presumptive reagent…luminol and sodium carbonate tablets…Combine 8 oz. distilled water and sodium perborate solution
.

She grabbed the jug of liquid from the toolbox and ripped off the cap. Without hesitating, she tore the BLUELAMP packet open and dumped two tablets into the water, then screwed on the spritzer cap and gave the contents a vigorous swirl. She
tested the trigger and the liquid worked its way through the nozzle, spritzing out in a fine, clear mist.

She scampered to her feet again and jabbed her thumb on the flashlight button, killing the beam and drenching the whole shed in darkness once more.

Suddenly, the sounds of the spray bottle going off filled the room. The trigger squeezed seven, eight, nine, ten times as the mist soaked the air and fell like fresh rain onto the floor.

And then—barely five seconds later—the walkway’s floorboards started glowing bright blue in the pitch-black shed. The effulgence of the luminol reaction lit up the lines of horror on Camilla’s face as her eyes took in the previously invisible bloodstains that someone had tried washing away.

There hadn’t been a tiny bit of blood; there had been a great, massive puddle of it. It had pooled on the walkway where the bodies had once lain, and then streaked down toward the boat before finally dripping into the—

The water
.

Camilla blazed the flashlight back to life and threw herself down to the edge of the walkway where the water lapped against the boards. She shone the light into the microcosmic lake, but the beam couldn’t cut through the fogginess of the murky green water.

Stop and think!
her brain rattled.
There are false positives. It’s a different spill—a cleaning agent or a purifier could set off the luminol. It’s not what you think
.

But she was past the point of no return. She ripped off her coat and thrust a naked arm into the ice water, feeling a sudden cold clamp like the teeth of a bear trap snapping on her muscles. A wince escaped her lips but she stopped it with a
glottal grunt, continuing to swirl and stretch deeper and deeper into the murky abyss.

Idiot! Stop trying to solve this! You’re not a dog trainer, you’re not a forensics specialist. There is nothing wrong with Abby, nothing! She’s a good girl! A GOOD GIRL!

Camilla coughed and sniveled as sweat poured down the lines of her face. She had no idea how deep the water here was, but her hand kept swirling, kept churning up a froth of foam and splinters as her hope sunk further and further away into the dark void below her.

And then somewhere in the cloudy waters, Camilla Vincent touched the cold, shriveled fingers of Erica Cory.