The Hollow Church Read online

  "This is probably all a coincidence," Duffield says as we make our way to the basement interrogation rooms a few hours later, "but it rang a bell, so I figured we might as well check it out." Reaching a heavy metal door, we both look through the small window and see a thin, addled-looking woman with her head resting on the desk. "Clare Stamler," he continues. "Twenty-four years old, fucked up beyond all belief on pretty much every street drug you care to mention. Spreads her legs to earn cash. She's either high or in withdrawal most of the time, and she probably hallucinates fucking demons crawling out of the light fittings. Then again, even a stopped clock is right a couple of times a day."

  He reaches out to open the door, but I grab his arm.

  "Before we go in," I reply, "I need to know one thing. Can I push her?"

  "Push her?"

  "If she's not giving me what I need, can I lean on her? How fragile is she?"

  "She's a twenty-something homeless drug addict with a history of being abused," he replies. "I guess you could say she's a little fucked up. She's tough, though. You know what these kids are like when they've been on the streets long enough. They become assholes. She's a user, too, so her head's all screwy. Think of her as half-human, half-rat. Still, she's the closest thing I can find to a lead right now."

  Grabbing the handle, I push the door open and step into the room, causing Clare to immediately sit up and stare at me with wide, fearful eyes. To say that she's a mess would be an understatement. Her eyes are small and yellow, and the skin on her face is tight, as if it's stuck fast to the bones of her skull. Her lips are chapped and sore, with several festering wounds, and when she opens her mouth, it's clear that her teeth have all rotted to little pearly-black stumps. To be honest, she looks like she's already dead.

  "Clare," I say, taking a seat as Duffield takes up his position by the door. "Thank you for taking time to come and help us out today."

  "I didn't have a choice," she croaks, her voice as tough as sandpaper. "Am I under arrest? Can I at least get a cigarette?"

  "Sorry, only water," I say, pushing a plastic cup toward her, which she immediately pushes back at me. "You're not thirsty?" I ask.

  "Water hurts my throat," she replies.

  "You should get that looked at," I tell her.

  "I'll see if my plan covers it." She pauses. "There's a law. You have to give me a cigarette if I ask for one."

  "There's no law like that," I tell her firmly.

  Picking up Clare's file, I open it to the page that Duffield has bookmarked. "Four months ago," I say slowly, still reading the notes, "you claimed that someone tried to kidnap you in Brooklyn. You said a group of men with a van offered to take you and some friends to a safe house, and that while your friends agreed, you resisted. You claimed that the men then tried to force you into the van, but you managed to get away." I turn the page, and for a moment I'm startled by the photo of a young, beautiful woman. It takes a few seconds before I realize that the photo shows Clare, and it's hard to believe how badly she's deteriorated in just a handful of months. "What's particularly interesting," I continue, forcing myself to remain focused, "is that you said there was blood on the men's shoes. Is that correct?"

  "They were up to something," she replies, her face twitching a little.

  "And your friends," I continue. "The ones who went into the van... What happened to them?"

  "Never saw them again."

  Taking a series of print-outs from Duffield, I set the pieces of paper out on the table. Of the one hundred and ten bodies we recovered from the abandoned building this morning, thirty-nine have already been identified, and their faces are now laid out in front of Clare. "Were any of these people among the group who went into the van?" I ask.

  She stares at the pictures. "What happened to these people?" she asks eventually.

  "I just need to know if you recognize any of them," I reply.

  "But what happened to them?" She pauses. "It's okay. I've been living on the streets for seven years. I know that sometimes bad things happen. Just tell me."

  "We can get you some help," I tell her. "You don't need to stay on the streets."

  She shakes her head.

  "You don't want help?"

  "No."

  "You like your life?" Duffield asks with a sarcastic sneer.

  She flinches, almost as if someone's hit her. Although she seems tough and world-weary, I get the feeling that deep down she's vulnerable and hurt. Then again, maybe I'm romanticizing the situation.

  "Tell me about the people in these pictures," I continue, wary of getting side-tracked. "Do you recognize any of them?"

  She pauses, before reaching out and pressing a bony finger against one of the mugshots. "Jamie," she says. "His name was Jamie. He was nice. He shared sometimes."

  "He was one of the ones who got into the van?" I ask.

  She nods, before indicating another of the pictures. "Sal." She points at yet another. "I don't remember her name, but she was there too. She had this little flute. And him. They were there too."

  "And they were all like you?" I continue. "I mean, they were all living on the streets?"

  She nods.

  "And none of them were seen again?" I wait for an answer, but it appears that she's withdrawn from the conversation. Instead, she seems to be staring fixedly at the print-outs, as if she can barely stand to see these faces from the past. "Tell me about the men who had the van," I continue, hoping to re-establish a connection. "Tell me what they looked like. Tell me what they said. Don't leave anything out. Even the smallest detail could help. There are a lot of people and a lot of vans in this city, Clare. I need something that makes it easier to narrow the search down."

  "Why?" she asks suddenly.

  "It's part of an investigation."

  "Into what?" She pauses, and for the first time today there's a hint of doubt and fear in her eyes. "What happened to the people who went with them?"

  "We're still working to determine that."

  "Are they dead?"

  I pause for a moment. "Yes," I say eventually, figuring that maybe I need to shock her into being more cooperative. "I'm afraid we're in the middle of a very extensive investigation, and right now one of the best chances for us to find the perpetrators of this crime is if you can give us a good description." I wait for her to respond, but she seems to have withdrawn once again, and after a few seconds I realize that her lips are moving, as if she's muttering something to herself. "Clare, I need you to describe the men. There has to be something unusual about them. Something that might help us to track them down."

  "Am I in trouble?" she asks.

  "No."

  She looks over at Duffield, as if she's scared that we're going to start hurting her.

  "Clare, focus on me," I continue. "Please, we need -"

  "There were three of them," she says suddenly, turning back to me. "They were wearing sunglasses. Only one of them spoke. He said he'd take us to a care center where we'd get help. He had this Bible, but I noticed that the spine was completely smooth, like it had never been opened. Everything he said sounded too good to be true, but he said they were from some kind of charity. He said they had food and doctors. We all thought he was trying something on, like maybe trying to get people into some kind of sex or drug ring, but eventually he took some food from the back of the van and gave it to us, and he said there was more if we went with him. Everyone else started eating, and then after a few minutes they decided to get into the van."

  "Everyone went?" I ask. "Apart from you?"

  She nods.

  "Why didn't you go?"

  She turns to me. "He looked a bit like my father. Not a lot, but a bit." She pauses. "Enough like him, anyway."

  "And when you refused to go, how did he react?"

  "He smiled." She pauses. "He said he knew how to change my mind. That's when I ran. The other men chased me, but not for long. I've seen them again, once or twice. They're still around sometimes, and they still take people. No-one eve
r comes back. I've got this friend..." She pauses again. "I've got this friend who says she's seen their van over by the church next to Graves Park. I don't know if she's making it up or not, but I keep well away from that part of the city. I don't want them to see me. They might remember me and then..." Her voice trails off as she picks up one of the print-outs. "It's okay, though," she continues eventually. "Jamie and the others are being looked after now, right?"

  "They..." I pause, realizing that there's a desperate look in Clare's eye, as if she wants me to tell her a convenient lie. "Yeah," I say after a moment. "They're being looked after as we speak." I pause. "Why didn't you come to the police about this before, Clare?"

  "Because no-one gives a fuck."

  "That's not true," I tell her.

  "It's true," she says firmly. "Most people are probably glad if they think people like me are disappearing. Most people'd cheer."

  I open my mouth to argue with her, but when I glance over at Duffield, I realize that she's right. People like Clare probably disappear all the time, and no-one notices. I guess that's why they've been targeted. We've only found a hundred victims so far, but there could be more all over the city. Many, many more.

  Abby Hart

  "I didn't ask for an assistant," I say as I switch off the electric saw and place it on the trolley. Taking hold of the side of the victim's head, I slowly lift away a section of skull to reveal the dry, slightly shriveled brain. "Go back to your supervisor. You've been mis-assigned. Someone gave you the wrong details."

  "But you're Abigail Hart, right?" the girl asks, standing awkwardly over by the counter. "That's who I was told to come and help. My name's -" She pauses to take a deep breath from her inhaler, which makes a loud, irritating hissing sound. "My name's -"

  "Who told you to come and help?" I reply, using a scalpel to gently slice away a sliver of brain tissue.

  "Detective Mark Gregory," she continues. "He said you'd need help. I mean, you've got a lot of bodies in here. He said you were kind of flooded and that you'd be grateful for an extra pair of hands. He specifically told me not to interfere and only to do exactly what you tell me to do. He was really clear about that."

  "I already explained to Detective Gregory that I can handle these bodies," I say, placing the piece of brain on a slide. This simple part of my work should have taken just a few seconds, but instead it's being dragged out because I'm having to do the thing I like least in all the world: I'm having to talk to a human. "I told him that assigning an assistant would only slow me down," I continue, "and I hoped he'd have the courtesy to actually listen to me."

  "I..." She pauses for a moment, clearly unsure of what to say.

  Sighing, I realize that she's not going to just turn and walk out of here. She's young, probably only in her teens, and she's obviously just some kind of lab rat who's been sent to hold and carry things while I do the work. Judging by the terrified look on her face, I assume she'd be obedient and keen, but I still don't want her here. I specifically want to work alone.

  "My name's -"

  "There's nothing for you to do here," I say, interrupting her.

  "But -"

  "Nothing!"

  "Well, maybe I could just wait until you think of something?"

  "You can wait all you like," I reply, placing the slide under a microscope and adjusting the scope, "but you can't do it in here. Go sit in a cafe or something. I'll sign your time-sheet. Just don't bug me." I continue with a few adjustments before taking a look at the magnified image of the brain section. It's immediately clear that there was some internal damage, probably caused before the victim died. It looks as if the body was drastically low on blood; not enough to kill, at least not at first, but enough to cause damage. This must have been a very slow, very painful way to die, especially if it was carefully managed so that the victims would last as long as possible. Someone clearly wanted to extract as much blood from these people as possible. Perhaps if -

  Pausing, I realize that there's a whistling sound nearby. It's the girl's nose, making a very faint, high-pitched noise as she breathes.

  "You're still here," I say eventually, not looking up from the microscope. "Why?"

  "I can't just go and sit in a cafe," she replies, reaching into her pocket and taking out a pill bottle. She quickly unscrews the lid and takes a pill, before putting the bottle away. "Allergies," she explains sheepishly. "My name's -"

  "Take a cranial section from the seventh and eighth bodies and then work through a DNA comparison marker to see if you find any signs of electrolyte inversion," I say, finally turning to her. "When you're finished with that, try to do a copper plate spectral analysis of any remaining blood you can find. Try the region around the neck first, and work your way down. Be creative, and follow your instincts. When you've done that, see if there's any residual glucose in any of the pathways, and check it for white blood cell contamination." I pause for a moment, before checking my watch and seeing that it's almost 10am. "After that, you can go for lunch."

  "I..." She stares at me, clearly feeling completely lost. Half the instructions I just gave her were way beyond her level of experience, and the other half were totally nonsensical descriptions of imaginary procedures. "I think," she continues eventually, choosing her words carefully, "Detective Gregory thought I'd be more of an assistant. Like, you'd tell me what to do, and I'd do it, and you'd be free to focus on the more important things." She waits for me to say something. "Maybe?"

  Sighing, I step back from the microscope. "You want to know the truth?" I ask. "The truth is, there's no point doing any of this. Whoever kidnapped these people, they were professionals. I mean, they were really professional about the whole thing, from start to finish. I can already tell. They didn't leave any clues behind. They didn't mess up. And since they didn't mind us finding the bodies, it's clear that they knew there was nothing here that'd tell us anything. In fact, they probably wanted us to waste days and weeks analyzing the bodies, so they could go off and do this again, to someone else."

  "But maybe they slipped up anyway?" she suggests. "No-one's perfect, right."

  "Some people are," I reply. "Some people never, ever make a mistake. Whoever kept these people chained up, they were too good. We could spend the next year going through these bodies on a microscopic level, and we wouldn't find an atom of evidence. The only thing we'd be able to do at the end would be to tick all the right boxes on all the right forms. If we're going to make a breakthrough, we need to be more instinctive."

  "Well -"

  "You don't have the right kind of instincts," I say firmly.

  "I might," she splutters. "Maybe... Look, my name's -"

  "Tell me what you see," I continue, figuring I might as well see if the girl's worth training up. After all, even though she's a human, she might be useful. If she gets things wrong, I can at least observe how she gets them wrong, and maybe I can learn something. "Look at the body and tell me your gut feeling," I add. "Don't get too close. Don't take samples. Don't even touch the damn thing. Just look at it and tell me the first thing that comes into your mind."

  She takes a step toward the body.

  "They were all found the same way?" she asks after a moment, her eyes fixed on the corpse's exposed brain.

  "All one hundred and ten of them."

  She pauses. "Chickens," she says finally.

  "Chickens?"

  "Like... battery chickens. In cages."

  "There were no cages," I tell her.

  "But they were in a grid layout, right? And they couldn't touch each other?" She waits for me to say something; it's almost as if she thinks she's at school and I'm supposed to give her a gold star. "They were chained up and they couldn't move beyond a certain radius," she continues uncertainly. "In a way, they were caged. Not actual cages, though, because whoever did this to them, they needed to be able to get close to them."

  "Why couldn't they touch each other?" I ask. "Why did that matter?"

  "Because..." She pauses again.
"With chickens, you have to keep them separate 'cause when they go mad, they peck each other to death. Maybe these people were going mad and there was a chance they might attack each other."

  "Exactly," I reply, surprised at her level of insight. For a human, she's almost smart. "That's exactly why I think they were kept at a distance from one another."

  "Or mercy."

  I raise an eyebrow.

  "Maybe they would have killed each other to stop the pain," she continues. "To save each other from going through any more torture."

  Pausing for a moment, I realize I hadn't considered that possibility. Then again, that's really not how humans work. They don't have any proper sense of nobility or compassion. Even the most cursory reading of their history shows that when the going gets tough, humans just think of themselves.

  "Whatever," she adds, "it seems very controlled and ordered, like someone was trying to make maximum use of the available resources. This wasn't someone just adding people whenever he got a chance. This was..."

  "Professional?" I suggest.

  She nods.

  "Someone who knew what they were doing," I continue. "Someone who couldn't and wouldn't accept failure. Basically, this person was a kind of farmer, tending to his animals and extracting what he needed from them." I pause for a moment, staring at the nearest corpse and trying to imagine the huge amount of pain that must have coursed through its flesh before it finally died. "Someone held these people captive and drained their blood," I say eventually. "They were smart enough to always leave enough blood in the bodies so that the victims could recover, and then they waited for them to produce more blood before coming back and draining them again. Eventually the bodies were so broken down, there was no point continuing, so I guess they were drained completely and left for dead. The farm was abandoned, and the perpetrators moved on to a new site."

  "You think this is still going on?" she asks.

  Before I can answer, there's a knock at the door, and I turn to see Detective Gregory peering into the room. Great. Not satisfied with sending an assistant to interfere with my work, he apparently thinks he needs to come and bug me directly. I should have known that working in a human environment would cause problems. I assumed that if I was intentionally unfriendly and gruff, people would leave me alone, but so far it seems that no-one's getting the message.