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to having charge of the case, even if they didn’t seem to have understood a word Kara said. Someone would translate for them once she had left and although she wouldn’t be there to see their faces, the mere thought was priceless to her.
    An officer stood over a dried bloodstain, taking notes in his duty book. Kara peered over his shoulder. He was sketching a diagram of the room.
    Good form.
    He turned and she recognized him from earlier, another remnant from the middle of the night still working into the daylight hours. It was his idea to use the road flares as climbing tools that brought them to the building in the first place.
    “I just had it out with forensics, though I’m not sure they even understood. We need to head to the hospital and speak to the boy they found. Can you make sure that forensics knows we’re looking for evidence of the previous two boys having been here as well? I want this treated as a homicide scene until we know otherwise. Every shred of evidence gets bagged and tagged, every single speck gets swabbed and tested.”
    “Understood, detective.”
    Kara gave him a nod and turned to leave. “Oh, and Detective Jameson?”
    “Yes.”
    The officer peered past her. “The one in the blue coat, the one looking pretty nervous right now?”
    “The old guy?”
    “Yeah, that’s the one. He speaks English,” he said with a smile.
    Kara smiled back. Good, he got the point then.
    Yuri was still standing at the entrance to the building.
    “Figured after your rant I’d stand here and look menacing,” he said, just above a whisper.
    “You done good. The one looks like he’s about to piss himself.”
    “He was like that before I started. I guess you,” he raised his hands in air quotes, “‘done good’ then.”
    “I’m overtired, stressed all to hell and those two come in here treating this like it’s nothing? Not happening.”
    “Clearly.”
    “We’re out,” Kara said, her eyes fixed on the nervous one. “We’re going to speak to the victim. I want every speck of this place swabbed and analyzed. As far as we’re aware, two boys were murdered here and two others were held in captivity. Settle in for the long haul, you’ll be here a while.”
    He adjusted his collar, then stammered out a couple of words.
    “Yes, detective.”

Chapter Ten
    I sat on an old stool in the corner of the room, watching the forensics team as they worked. The stale taste of vomit lingered in my mouth despite the few sticks of gum Guillaume had given me. He had needed them as well. When I had seen the storage bin, all sealed in plastic, I knew what was inside. It was more than I could take. I couldn’t hold it back.
    Guillaume couldn’t either. Even without knowing what it was he was looking at, he vomited right after I did. A sympathetic response if I’d ever seen one. It appeared that the mere act of someone else throwing up was enough to make him do it as well.
    It wasn’t a pretty picture.
    He had wanted to mop up, but I wouldn’t let him. It may have been months old, and it may have just been the storage locker, but we had to treat the entire room as a crime scene. And judging by the layer of dust on the floor, it wasn’t a room that saw much in the way of traffic.
    Or cleaning.
    And so our stomach contents sat in the middle of the room, waiting to be walked over and around by a variety of uniformed officers and detectives. I had told Guillaume he could leave, that this was likely not something he wanted to be present for. He pressured me, and when I finally told him what I expected to find in the bin, he vomited again. This time though, he was prepared enough to make it to the nearby garbage can.
    I was expecting a body, Kat’s body, and after several months, I was not expecting it to be a pleasant sight. It took two people to remove the bin from the locker and I had to wonder how Crawford had put it there himself. Sheer will? There was nothing to indicate an accomplice. Maybe he used something to