"I think we search together," Kerry decided. "We don't want to miss any details, sis."
"Agreed," May said.
They entered the house, closing the door behind them.
May looked around, frowning. It was a dump. The house was foul with grime, with a smell of something rotten. There were stains too. The walls were damp and dirty, the carpets were covered in stains and mud.
May didn't know what to think about this weird, neglected place. She knew that Harriet had been a prisoner in her own life, someone else's captive.
But why had she stayed here? Was there another reason for it? Could this be a place where he had kept his captives, and could Lauren, and others, have been held in here?
They needed to look for clues.
May shivered, because it was frightening to think of what might be waiting for her to uncover in this dusty, dilapidated house. But she was determined that she would not give up, that she would not stop until she had her answers and had found more information on Lauren.
"This is creepy," Kerry whispered. "I'm feeling that he definitely kept the victims locked in here. That's the impression I'm getting. It's so dark once the door's closed. Why else would it have been so protected from the light and from anyone outside seeing or hearing anything?"
She was right. The house was making May feel uneasy too. It was so gloomy, with the dust and dirt, and the air not seeming to circulate. The old furniture seemed to loom around her in this dim, early morning light.
It really was eerie.
"I hate this feeling, knowing that we'll almost certainly find something bad," May admitted.
"If we don't find anything, we'll be even more worried," Kerry said.
"Let's not think about that," May said.
They began to search. They started with the living room, which had big shutters over the windows and was almost completely dark. Kerry snapped on her flashlight, and they searched, but there seemed nothing to be found but old furniture and an empty Welsh dresser.
The dining room contained a rickety table covered in dust. Kerry went ahead, her flashlight playing on the walls, as if she were drawing pictures in the dust.
When they went into the kitchen, May caught her breath, because the hasty exodus of roaches, fleeing from the glare of their flashlights, was audible and visible. She saw them scuttling into the shadows.
They searched the kitchen. The cupboards were full of old crockery and appliances. May felt her skin prickle as she searched through them, feeling as if she and Kerry were surrounded by insects and roaches, and that they were crawling on her.
The enormous, ancient fridge was working, humming softly. Inside was a carton of old milk, some moldy cheese, and a few boxes of fast food. It looked as if Harriet must have bought several boxes at once and then put them in the fridge to eat—cold and greasy, or maybe microwaved—over the next few days. The thought of that turned May's stomach, and the worst of it was that she knew even more terrible things had happened in this house.
But where?
The sink was cluttered, the pantry was dirty, and the back door was locked.
They went into the bedroom where they'd found Harriet. The bed covers were grimy and creased. The wardrobe had some clothes in it—some of them even looked relatively clean. But May didn't see any clothes of Lauren's she recognized. Nothing rang a bell. She checked under the bed and found a few discarded Kleenexes and fast-food wrappers, but nothing else.
Where would he have kept the victims? There was a bathroom, with a ring of dirt around the bath, and another bedroom that looked empty.
The house was not large. They were not coming up with any answers here.
"I feel like we're missing something," Kerry said, sounding frustrated. "Is there something we didn't take enough notice of? He must have kept them here. Surely!"
"But where? Maybe he didn't? Maybe he was keeping them elsewhere, and she moved here afterward?"
Kerry shook her head. "That's not what my profiler's instincts are telling me. As a profiler, I'm telling you, she stayed here because it was where she was kept, and it became like her home. He spared her, and it became her place of safety. Like a Stockholm syndrome victim would do."
The house was disgusting. May tried not to think about the fact that Lauren could have been kept in here for years. In a part of the house that May was sure they hadn't yet found.
"He would have kept them hidden away," she said. "The bad guys don't keep their victims where the police can find them. They squirrel them away, out of sight."
"Then we look again," Kerry said firmly. But May's phone began ringing, interrupting those plans.
