She eased onto the top tread. The steps below were dark and forbidding. The old wood groaned under her weight. Even from the top of the stairs Jessica could smell the unmistakable metallic tang of blood.
‘Philly PD!’ she yelled. ‘Who’s down there?’
Nothing.
Jessica drew her weapon, held it at her side, edged downward. She heard Byrne behind her, his weight now on the top step.
Jessica followed her flashlight’s beam down the stairs, looking for broken or missing boards. On one tread was a child’s plastic toy — a duck with one foot missing, a dirty string wrapped around its head. Two steps below was a ball of dry, shredded newspaper, probably once home to a family of mice.
A few seconds later Jessica made it to the second last step. She ran her Maglite around the room. The ceiling was low, dense with cobwebs and spider webs. The smell of mold and urine was overpowering.
Down the stairs, hard right, under the steps.
Jessica heard the voice coming from beneath the staircase, although voice was not entirely accurate. What she heard did not sound human. It was a depleted sound that seemed to crawl along the damp floor.
Byrne put a hand on Jessica’s left shoulder, silently telling her that he would flank left when they got to the bottom of the stairs.
Jessica crouched down, swept her flashlight across the floor. Scattered food trash, dried chicken and rib bones, picked clean. In one corner were the remnants of a rusted bicycle, the chain, wheels and pedals gone. Another corner held a collection of old fluorescent tube lights.
Whole lotta blood.
Jessica reached the bottom step. She held up a hand, then pointed to the right. With a silent count of three, she stepped onto the cold cement floor, rolled to the right, leveled her weapon in an attack stance, finger along the trigger guard of her Glock.
A man was sitting under the steps. Or what was left of a man. He was seated in a wooden chair, hands behind his back, his head and chest awash with fresh blood. At his feet were a pair of rats that stood up to the beam of the flashlight, staring back with tiny, defiant black eyes.
The man was nude, his chest crisscrossed with barbed wire. Some of the barbs were rusted and cut deep welts into his flesh from his neck to his waist. Steam emanated from his wounds as the warm blood met the frigid February air.
But while the barbs cut into his chest and arms, it was the wire wrapped around the man’s neck that was doing the mortal damage. Jessica could see one razor sharp polished point, bright silver in color, digging into the skin near the carotid artery.
The man was still alive. The patrol officer should have checked his vitals, but Jessica could understand why the young woman did not want to.
Byrne moved to Jessica’s left, keeping his flashlight and weapon trained on the man. Jessica turned, scanned the rest of the room. There were no other doors, no niches or alcoves large enough to hold another person. The basement was clear.
Except for the all but destroyed human in front of them.
Jessica stepped away for a moment, took out her two-way, and in a low voice contacted dispatch, requesting an EMS unit. The man was still alive, but not for long.
Jessica kept her weapon angled low, moved to the right. She could now see that the man’s hands were bound with wire behind his back. The wire was connected to the loop around his neck. If the man’s head dropped forward, he would sever his jugular vein.
They had to keep him awake and alert.
‘Sir,’ Jessica began. ‘My name is Jessica Balzano. I’m with the Philadelphia Police Department. We’re going to get you out of here. Medical assistance is on the way.’
The man tried to speak. ‘He …’
‘He what?’ Jessica asked softly. ‘Who are you talking about?’ Perhaps the man was trying to tell them who did this to him. Jessica noticed that with each labored breath the man took the barbed wire tightened further around his chest and abdomen, rusted tines digging deeper into his flesh.
The man did not answer. Instead, he began to cry.
‘Sir,’ Jessica said, holstering her weapon, holding her hands out to the sides, showing no threat. ‘I want you to know that we have paramedics on the way. We have people coming who are going to get you free. People who will treat your wounds. You’re going to be fine.’
The man started to violently shake his head. Blood flicked across the room. Both Jessica and Byrne stepped back. When the man stopped moving Jessica could see that the one polished barb had now cut into his neck.
‘Stop!’ Jessica yelled. ‘Please do not move, sir!’
The man’s head slumped forward, his eyes closed. Jessica looked at her watch. She listened for the siren of the EMS unit. She heard nothing. This man was going to bleed out right in front of them and there was nothing they could do about it. Jessica wanted to keep him talking, to keep him from going into shock, but the sound of his voice and the amount of blood he generated with each word frightened her.
The man’s head fell further forward. The blood had begun to pool at his feet. The two rats had now become five.
‘Detectives?’
The voice came from the top of the stairs. Jessica had never been happier to hear another human voice in her life. The ambulance unit had arrived. ‘Down here!’ She yelled. ‘Hurry!’
The first paramedic came down the steps, rounded the corner, saw the victim. He was in his early thirties, short but powerfully built. His nametag read E. GONSALVES.
‘Madre de Dios,’ he said softly. ‘Santa Maria.’ He made the sign of the cross, pulled out a pair of latex gloves, snapped them on, just as his partner made it to the bottom of the steps. She was a tall, lanky white woman in her mid-thirties. Her tag IDed her as F. CHRISTIAN.
‘Do you have anything to cut the wires off with?’ Jessica asked.
‘No,’ Gonsalves said. He got on his portable unit and called for a PFD ladder truck. Jessica wondered if they could respond in time.
Christian ran up the stairs. A full minute later she came down with a portable EKG unit, followed by a pair of PFD firefighters.
One of the firefighters had in his hand a large pair of bolt cutters.
Jessica and Byrne both put on gloves. They stepped in to hold the victim steady. Within seconds their hands were slicked with the man’s blood. The firefighter cut one side, then the other, freeing the man’s wrists. Together Jessica and Byrne gently eased the victim’s head back. Although the pressure of the wire around his neck had lessened, there was still a barb slicing ever more deeply into the area at the man’s carotid. Despite their efforts, within seconds it cut deeply into the artery. Blood jetted across the room.
‘Shit!’ Jessica yelled.
Gonsalves made the call. At this moment it was his scene. He peeled the wire from the victim’s neck, and the three of them eased the man back onto the Reeves. The Reeves spine board was for patients with spine and neck injuries, designed to minimize movement during transport.
Gonsalves opened a large gauze pad and pressed it to the now-spouting wound.
‘Give us room,’ he said.
Jessica and Byrne, along with the two PFD, backed away as Christian took a hypodermic needle from the bag, filled it.
In seconds the first gauze pad was soaked. Gonsalves ripped open a second and third, put pressure on the wound. ‘Come on, man,’ he said softly.
The techs were veteran paramedics. Like Jessica and Byrne they had seen a few things. They had treated gunshot wounds, knife wounds, beatings with weapons ranging from fists to claw hammers to Louisville Sluggers. If there was a way for one human being to damage another, they had likely seen it. But there was a feeling in this room that they had all entered special waters, a place reserved for a mind devoid of passion, or even anger.
While Gonsalves tried to stanch the bleeding, his partner started a pair of IV drips, then gently worked the bolt cutters under the wire that wrapped the man’s chest. Christian carefully snipped the steel. The man’s torso instantly expanded, sucking in air, which immediately burst out through his nose and mouth, bringing blood and saliva with it.