The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor 10)

sexual intercourse & rape

of an unconscious or

unaware person

Phila Police Dept Case No.: 2008-18-063914

Kendrik LeShawn Mays’s mother raised her eyebrows. But she did not appear at all surprised. Nor at all concerned that Will Curtis had her son’s Wanted sheet.

She sighed.

“Yeah,” she said, “that him. Guess he lied. Said he took care of that.”

She looked at Curtis. “No check, huh?”

More like a reality check, Curtis thought.

He shook his head.

“No check.”

Will Curtis went down the unstable wooden steps into the basement. His left hand slid along the wooden handrail, and his right hand, holding the .45-caliber pistol, followed the wall of mostly busted Sheetrock.

There was some light from the small window at the far end of the room—the one the rats had gone through—but not enough for him to make out anything but vague shapes in the pitch dark.

There was a stench, although not like the putrid smell that had assaulted his olfactory senses at the front door. The odor here was a sickly sweet stench that became stronger the farther down the stairs he went. So far, though, it hadn’t triggered his gag reflex, and he was grateful for such small favors.

At the foot of the stairs, Curtis stopped and listened. He could hear snoring about midway in the room.

That’s two people snoring!

One deep as hell.

He felt around on the wall for a light switch. As best he could tell there wasn’t one, just busted-up drywall.

He took another step, reaching farther down the wall, then felt his foot catch on a rope or cord or something.

Some kind of trip wire?

He carefully reached down with his left hand till he felt it.

It was a vinyl-covered electrical extension cord that had been run from upstairs. When he tugged on it, something attached to its far end started sliding across the basement floor toward him.

He pulled and pulled, and finally found at the end what had once been the guts of a lamp. All that was left from the lamp was a threaded metal rod attached to the receptacle that held a lone bare lightbulb. His thumb found the stick push-switch on the receptacle, and after positioning himself in a crouch and aiming his pistol in the direction of the snoring, Curtis pushed the switch on.

The bare bulb burned brightly, damn near blinding him until his eyes adjusted.

The only response from the middle of the room was another loud, deep snore.

After his eyes adjusted, Will Curtis could not believe what he was seeing.

The basement was the worst thing he’d ever seen in his life. It was completely trashed. The Sheetrock walls were all busted, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to them in search of whatever treasure might be hidden behind them. And then he saw why: The wiring had been ripped from the wall power outlets and light switches.

It probably was cheap aluminum, not copper, wiring, making the effort mostly worthless. Idiots.

Desperate idiots . . .

Trash was strewn all across the floor. There were piles upon piles of dirty clothes that hadn’t been touched in years. Dust and dirt were everywhere. And, in a far corner by a plastic bucket, he saw the source of the sickly sweet stench: mounds of dried human waste.