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29
Twenty minutes later Holly is crouched in the far corner of the cell across from the Porta-Potty. Her legs are drawn up and she has buried her face in her arms. A man in a welder’s mask is cutting through the bars, and the long room is filled with coruscating light. Izzy Jaynes is at the other end of the basement, where she first examines the woodchipper and then yells to one of the crime scene techs. She points to Bonnie’s bike helmet and backpack and tells him to bag both.
A steel bar clatters to the concrete floor. Then another. Izzy walks up to the FD guy running the cutting torch, keeping one arm up to shield her eyes. “How much longer?”
“I think we can get her out in another ten minutes. Maybe twenty. Someone did a hell of a good job putting this thing together.”
Izzy goes back to the workshop part of the basement and tries the door there. It’s locked. She motions to one of the bigger cops—there are half a dozen blues down here now, basically just milling around. “You better bust that,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I heard someone inside.”
He grins. “You got it, boss.”
He hits the door with his shoulder, and it gives way immediately. He stumbles inside. Izzy follows and finds a light switch beside the door. Overhead fluorescents come on, a lot of them. The two of them stand, stunned.
“What the fuck is that?” the widebody asks.
Izzy knows, even if it’s hard to believe what her eyes are reporting. “I’d say it’s an operating table.”
“And the bag?” He’s pointing to the big green sack hanging down from the end of the hose. It’s distended into a teardrop shape by what’s inside. Stuff Izzy doesn’t want to think about, let alone see.
“Leave it for the forensics guys and the ME,” she says, and thinks of Holly saying How am I ever going to tell her what happened to her daughter?
30
Forty minutes later Holly emerges onto the Harrises’ porch, supported by an EMT on one side and Izzy Jaynes on the other, but mostly walking under her own power. Barbara gets up, runs to her, hugs her, and turns to Izzy. “I want to go with her to the hospital.”
Instead of refusing, Izzy says they’ll both go.
Holly wants to walk to the waiting ambulance, but EMTs insist on a stretcher before she can descend the porch steps. Now there are news vans as well as all the official vehicles, but they are being kept at the top and bottom of the hill, behind police tape. There’s even a helicopter circling overhead.
Holly is hoisted into the ambulance. One of the EMTs shoots her up with something. She tries to protest, but he says it will help with the pain. Izzy sits on one side of the secured stretcher, Barbara on the other.
“Wipe my face, please,” Holly says. “The blood is drying to a crack-glaze.”
Izzy shakes her head. “No can do. Not until you’ve been photographed and we’ve got swabs.”
The ambulance pulls out, siren yelling. Barbara holds on as it takes the corner at the bottom of the hill.
“That’s a woodchipper in the basement,” Izzy says. “My father had one at his cabin upstate, but a lot smaller.”
“Yes. I saw it. Can I have a drink? Please?”
“There’s a cooler with Gatorade in it,” one of the EMTs calls back.
“Oh God, please,” Holly says.
Barbara finds the cooler, opens a bottle of orange Gatorade, and puts it in Holly’s outstretched hand. Holly’s eyes look up at them from above her bloody cheeks as she drinks.
She looks like she’s wearing warpaint, Barbara thinks. And I guess that’s okay, because she’s been in a war.
“The chipper’s outflow goes to a bag in that little…” Izzy pauses. She was about to say operating room, but that’s not right. “…that little torture chamber. Is the stuff inside what I think it is? Because it stinks.”
Holly nods. “They must not have had a chance to get rid of the… the leftovers this time. I don’t know how they did that with the others, but my guess is the lake. You’ll figure it out.”
“And the rest of her?”
“Check the refrigerator.”
Barbara thinks of the wrapped cuts of meat. She thinks of the parfait glasses. And feels like screaming.
