Читать книгу Wicked Intentions - Kevin Flynn - Страница 7

Prologue

Dusk was falling on the New Hampshire town. It was around 6 P.M. The trip to the farmhouse took the officers down a long, wooded private road. The branches of the trees on either side of the path reached out to one another, touching fingers midway across. The canopy of bark and early spring buds enveloped the police cruiser and its passengers.

When Epping Police Detective Richard Cote and Sergeant Sean Gallagher pulled up to the property at 70 Red Oak Hill Lane on Friday, March 24, 2006, they noticed the wooden gate to the horse farm was closed and padlocked. Neither could remember a time the gate had been secured like that, but they knew historically the homeowner had disputes with the town road agent about plowing beyond her gate even though she herself had chained it shut on him.

The officers had come to conduct a well-being check. Not on the homeowner, but on someone who had recently moved to town.

Cote and Gallagher knew the property well. There was a farmhouse, a large barn and several outbuildings. Tonight, the house seemed quiet. There were no lights on inside. They scanned the yard and all of the owner’s cars seemed to be there. They knocked on the door, assuming that someone was home, but no one answered.

There was some activity on the farm, however. As they stood at the front door, Cote pointed out a completely burnt mattress and box spring. It was right in front of the porch entrance, about twenty feet to their right. About thirty-five feet away from the mattress was a second burn area. It was a rusty metal barrel and a pile of hay. Although there was no one on the property, both of these areas were actively burning.

Gallagher approached the pile of debris. There was an awful smell in the air.

The police officer’s step stuttered with disbelief. No. That can’t be what I’m seeing, he thought to himself. Sticking out of the burning hay pile in plain sight was a bone. The bone was only about three and a half inches long, but appeared to be jagged at the bottom. It was as if it had been cut or hacked in some sloppy way. The top of the bone sprouted into a round ball meant for some corresponding joint. It turned the cop’s stomach with horror.

Immediately, Gallagher made a phone call. Cote, however, didn’t hear the conversation. He had moved in for a closer look at the bone in the fire pit. When the sergeant snapped off the phone he told Cote, “We’re kicking in the side door to find this kid.”

Cote watched Gallagher steady himself at the door. He punched through with the heel of his foot right under the doorknob, breaking the wooden frame. Cote knew the sergeant was so deeply focused on what he was doing that Gallagher probably couldn’t hear what he heard: a set of wheels, a car of some kind, making its way up the windy dirt road approaching the farm. Soon they would not be alone.

“Someone’s coming,” he said.

Cote turned back and looked closely at the bone, braced for the odor. On the ball at the top, he saw something he’d never forget. The bone was covered with soft tissue that looked like a burned hunk of human flesh.