And gotten himself drained of blood, too.
The moon was obscured by a gauzy veil of clouds. The street had a mean feel to it. The area itself seemed malevolent, and I suspected this awareness was a result of my increased psychic abilities. I sensed death on this street. I sensed stabbings and robberies and harassment and fear. I sensed drug deals and drugs deals gone bad. I sensed a ramshackle attempt at organized crime. I sensed killers and victims. It was all here, infusing the air and the earth, the trees and the buildings. A calling card of hate for anyone sensitive enough to feel it. And I was sensitive enough. Perhaps too sensitive. The feeling was overwhelming. Energy crackled crazily through the air, too - and now that I knew what to look for, I saw many vague spirits walking among the living. Murders victims mostly. But some were lost souls, whose lives were taken by drug abuse or physical abuse.
It was into this environment of loss and despair and suffering that I stepped out of my minivan.
A low iron fence surrounded the property. The gate was topped with rusted iron spikes. The spikes were mostly rounded and probably wouldn't do much damage unless some fell from a great height. The front gate was not locked and swung open on rusted hinges. As I moved across the front yard, I felt eyes on me from across the street. I had attracted the attention of the neighbors in the apartment building. No doubt watching from one of the windows.
I stepped up onto the cement porch, which was cracked and flaked with peeling paint. I paused a moment, getting a feel for the house. Someone was inside, I knew that much. I could hear a TV on somewhere. The house itself was drenched in so much tragedy that it was a beehive of bad vibes, depression and anything else negative.
More than anything, the house was the last known residence of Lauren Monk and her daughter Maddie. I shook my head. What a place to raise a little girl.
Granted, I doubted there was much "raising" going on here. Existing was more like it.
I knocked on the door loudly. The door was made of metal and seemed better suited in a parking garage stairwell. There were dents in the door, about waist high. Someone had tried to kick it in at some point. Maybe many points. I looked around the metal frame. As far as I could tell, they weren't successful. The door and frame had held firm.
The TV continued to blare. A distant siren wailed behind me. Down the street someone laughed and others followed suit. I knocked again, and again.
No response.
I stepped back, lifted my foot, and kicked the door in.
Chapter Nineteen
The door swung violently back, slamming hard into the wall behind it, so hard that the doorknob punctured the drywall. It stayed open like that as I stepped in. Unless someone was brandishing a stake or silver-tipped arrows, I wasn't too concerned about what was waiting for me on the other side. Sure, a bullet to the chest probably would hurt like hell, and no doubt ruin my blouse, but gone are the days where I worried much about my own physical safety.
I found myself standing in a living room. Or a toxic bio-hazard. Take your pick. The long clump of trash to my right was probably a couch. The rectangular clump in front of it was probably a coffee table. Everything from shopping bags to clothing to pizza boxes were everywhere. Including used heroin needles. Everywhere. Hundreds of them.
I stepped over broken glass and empty beer cans and a McDonald's Happy Meal. I moved through the living room and into a kitchen that hadn't been used as a kitchen in some time.
Instead, it was being used as a meth lab.
There were bottles and jars with rubber tubing. There were stripped-down lithium batteries piled on tables. Paint thinner and starter fluid containers lined the floors. Empty packets of cold tablets, no doubt containing pseudoephedrine, were piled on the tables and counters. Also on the tables were jars containing clear liquid with red and white bottom layers. Ether and ammonia wafted from them. Propane tanks were everywhere. Okay, the propane tanks made me a little nervous.
There was a strong smell of something else. And it was coming from the next room. I knew that smell. Any cop or agent would know that smell.
I moved through the kitchen and down a short hallway. I had sensed someone else in the house, but what I had not sensed was whether or not that someone was alive or dead.
At the far end of the hallway, in a room to the right, a TV was on and a man wearing boxer shorts was lying face down in a pool of blood. In death, he had made an unholy mess of himself, but that did not stop me from checking him out.
I rolled him over. Blood stained the mattress. Probably all the way through and to the bed springs below. I counted five shots to the chest. I wrinkled my nose, although wrinkling did little against what was wafting up from him.
I did a quick examination. White male in his early fifties. Dead for less than 24-hours, give or take a half a day. Heavy set. No indication of a fight. The body already in full rigor mortis. Face bright crimson where the blood had settled like oil at the bottom of an oil pan.
I eased him back down.
Years ago such a scene might have turned my stomach. I might have picked a quiet spot behind the house to vomit, careful not to disrupt a crime scene. Now, not so much. I had seen many dead bodies in my time, certainly, but there was something else going on. Something that worried me. I should care more about death, about the loss of life. But I didn't.
Death no longer bothered me. Didn't phase me. I felt no emotion or concern or anything.
It was just death.
The natural order of things.
I wasn't always this way, but something had changed inside of me, and I think I knew what that something was.
I was becoming less human...and that scared the shit out of me.
I spent the next twenty minutes carefully picking through the house, looking for any clues that might help me find little Maddie, but nothing stood out. No Rolodexes filled with the names of drug kingpins. No computers or laptops. No cell phones. Nothing that seemed to indicate that a little girl had ever lived here.
Nothing, that is, except for the Happy Meal box.
I pulled out my cell phone and called Detective Sherbet.
Chapter Twenty
I spent the next two hours with Detective Sherbet and Detective Hanner. I gave them my statement, stood back and watched the preliminary crime scene investigation, and when all the fuss was over, I headed over to Heroes in Fullerton, where Fang worked.
As I walked up to Heroes' single door, a door which always somehow seemed to be slightly cracked open, I ran a hand through my thick hair and fought a sudden wave of nerves. I adjusted and readjusted my light leather jacket.
It was just after 1:00 a.m. when I stepped inside the bar. Heroes is filled with a lot of wooden beams and colums. The floor creaks when you walk across it, and more often than not, you will find a pool of spilled beer somewhere nearby, reflecting the muted track lighting above.