I leaned my head back to look at her tortured expression.
“A man who spoke to me sometimes, helping me through the roughness.”
I glanced at Rivera, and within a second, he was speaking into his microphone, telling the news to the team.
“Do you know the man’s name?” I asked her gently.
“No.”
The look my partner gave me told me he was on it, and I said to Mills, “We’ll take care of it. I’m going to carry you out to the ambulance now.”
With her arm securely around my neck, I carefully brought her up the steep steps and took her outside, setting her on the gurney that was in front of the ambulance. Two female paramedics were standing next to it, ready to check her vitals.
“They’re going to examine you,” I told Mills the moment I knew she was safely on the bed. “And then they’re going to bring you to the hospital.” I held my finger up in the air, letting her know I just needed a moment, and I said into the microphone, “Can I get an update on Mills’s mother, please?” A team member responded in my ear, and I looked back at Mills and said, “Your mom is on her way to Mass General Hospital. She’ll be there before you even arrive.”
She was nodding, her hair making a sound as it scratched the pillow behind her head. “Okay.”
“Before I leave, is there anything you need? Anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable?”
“No. B-but …” Her chin quivered as it rested on the doll’s head, her stare darting around outside. Knowing she’d lived in that cell for six months, I was sure the brightness and sounds were overwhelming her senses. “Th-thank you.”
I tapped an open spot beside her bare foot. “My partner and I are going to follow up. This isn’t the last you’ve seen of us.” I held her eyes for a moment more. “You’re going to be all right, Kerry.”
One of the paramedics placed a blanket across Mills’s legs, the other one warming her stethoscope to place on Mills’s chest, and I turned to head back into the house.
The police had blocked off the entire road, and yellow tape was surrounding the front entrance. Multiple cruisers were parked along the street with their lights flashing, and news reporters were already filming from the sidewalk.
Within an hour, every channel in New England would be covering this story.
“They’re looking for another door,” Rivera said as I got inside the living room. “The room Mills was in was all cement. If someone else is down there, it has to be from a different access point.”
The team was analyzing the staircase, the one where Rivera had found the metal door on the side.
“I’m not saying that was easy, by any means,” Rivera continued. “But I didn’t think he had her imprisoned in his fucking house.”
We stayed close to the team, watching them bring in machinery, tools that would help aid them in their search.
“I knew he was lying,” I said. “But I really thought he’d killed the poor girl. I had no fucking idea we were about to uncover that.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “When you were bringing Mills outside, I took a look upstairs.” He shook his head, sighing. “That dude is one sick puppy.”
“We have something!” one of the team members shouted.
They had broken through the bottom of the staircase, lifting the first four steps and tilting them backward toward the others, a hinge between that allowed them to move. As I got closer, looking through the large gap, there was another hidden staircase below that led to a different section of the basement.
“That shifty motherfucker,” I said to Rivera as he stood next to me, looking at Little’s construction.
“A brilliant design from a raging psychopath,” Rivera replied.
The team handed Rivera and me flashlights, and I was the first to go through, my feet hitting the wooden step.
As I slowly descended, I shone the light in all directions, trying to get an understanding of the layout and what we were about to walk into. From here, I could only hear silence aside from the buzzing of the single bulb that hung from the ceiling above.
Once I eventually reached the bottom, the room appeared to be a hallway of cement with a door just off to my left. A padlock kept it closed, and the door wouldn’t budge when I tried to pull.
“Bring down a pair of bolt cutters,” I said into the microphone.
An officer rushed down the stairs, positioning the tool around the lock, and snapped it off, the door loosening enough that we could slowly slide it open.
I sucked in a mouthful of air, holding it in my lungs, preparing myself for what we were about to find.
I hoped like hell if there was a person in there, they were still alive.
The door widened enough, giving us a full view of a cell that was identical to the one Mills had been in. A bucket was in the corner, and a single light dangled from above. There were three paperbacks on the floor and a dirty cot in the middle of the small room.
And sitting on top of the bed was a thin, scared, shivering man.
His hair was long, his eyes haunted.
His arms wrapped around a doll.
“Detective Flynn,” I said, showing him my badge. “We’re here to save you. Can you tell me your name?”
He lifted his face, showing a bushy, extremely long beard. When he cleared his throat, a sound as loud as a cough came out. “David.” He was so quiet that I barely heard him. “David Cohen.”
Relief, I had learned, didn’t always come out in sounds. It didn’t always reveal itself in tears. In Cohen’s case, it came out in breaths. A chest that was rising and falling, like we’d just given him a new set of lungs.
“David Cohen, thirty years old, taken from Brookline almost six years ago,” a team member said in my ear. “Last seen on the evening of February seventh, wearing a gray sweatshirt and jogging pants. His mother said he was going out with his friends and never returned home.”
Cohen’s legs were spread out straight, ankles turned toward the ground, hands holding the neck of the doll.
“We’re going to call your family and let them know you’ve been found, and we’re going to get you out of here and take you straight to the hospital,” I told him.
He dropped the doll and put both hands on his chest.
It was as though we had disconnected the cables and removed the oxygen from his nose, and for the very first time, he was finally breathing on his own.
Sixty
Before
Ashe
I found myself wandering Boston Medical, not ready to leave, but unsure why I was still here. My hand didn’t move from my pocket as I yearned for the closeness of Gran’s words even though I hadn’t read them. Aside from a few pictures she’d gifted me from her old apartment, this letter was the only thing I had of hers.
It didn’t feel like enough.
She was gone.
So was Pearl.
And I had nothing to grab on to.
Each hallway I walked down felt endless. A corridor of squeaky white floors and the swishing of lab coats and scrubs. Name badges with the letters DR at the front.
Clothes I’d wanted to wear just months ago, initials I’d envied.
Now, they were just men and women who hadn’t been able to cure Gran.