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Again, there was no answer.
"Maybe she's not here," Kerry said.
May raised her eyebrows. "Maybe she's not?" she repeated. “But we have sufficient cause to enter and search.”
Kerry shot her a determined look, and together, she and May reached for the door handle in unison.
To May's surprise, it opened.
May felt her throat closing up as they entered the house. A musty, stale smell hit her immediately, and she could feel apprehension rushing through her.
She looked around feeling utterly shocked. The entire inside of this small house was papered with memorabilia. Newspaper articles and printed pages covered the walls, the paper old and yellowing. One of them, tacked to the wall near the door, caught May's eye, and she gasped.
"Lauren Moore Reported Missing."
Her sister! Her sister's newspaper article was up on this wall, forming part of a weird and creepy record of events that Harriet must have kept.
Her eyes widened even more as she saw that even Harriet's own record of disappearance was taped up there.
"Harriet Downs: Missing Woman Alert."
Other things were on the walls too. A baseball cap. An old, pink t-shirt. A pair of socks.
May felt cold inside. Her stomach churned.
"This is like a museum," Kerry muttered, turning around from wall to wall, looking utterly shocked. "Like Memory Lane, set up as a tribute to this psycho."
Or it was like a shrine, May thought with a shiver. She'd never, ever expected to find this.
Without a doubt, Harriet had ended up being somehow aligned with the terrible man who had taken these girls. And for some reason, she'd been spared.
But did she know where he was now? And where was Harriet herself?
May walked through the house, her feet creaking over the dusty boards. Ahead, she saw a bedroom.
She stopped dead as she walked in, her heart accelerating. There, in the bedroom, was the woman they wanted. She was lying on the bed, her arms behind her back, staring at a wall-mounted TV that was strangely silent. Only the flickering picture shifted the light in the gloomy room.
She turned to them, and for a moment, May saw surprise and apprehension in her eyes.
"Harriet Downs!" she said, stepping forward.
The woman sat up. This was definitely the right person. She was the right age, the right face. And there was awareness in her eyes. But something strange about her too.
The way she hadn't reacted when they had hammered on the door. That silent TV. The way her eyes focused on their lips.
Nan Downes had said nothing about her daughter being deaf. And perhaps she hadn't been. But now, she was. Whether it had been illness or trauma or some other cause, May could see that Harriet now lived in a world of silence.
"She's deaf," Kerry muttered. "She can't hear us. How did that happen?"
Pulling out a paper pad from her purse, she scrawled the question.
"The man who took you. Who filmed the video. Where is he?"
For a moment, Harriet looked at the question, reading it, and May saw a sharp intelligence in those pale blue eyes, but also a calculating look, as if she was considering her options and how much she should say.
Then she shrugged. She stared at May and Kerry. And she began to laugh.
The sound was strangely toneless, and as it resounded through the house, May felt chills creep up and down her spine. This was all so bizarre. This was their only witness to these crimes—a sole survivor, now apparently deaf and refusing to speak or reveal any information. Living in a home that was a shrine to what he'd done.
