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It was so late in the night, that even the street dogs were asleep. A few crickets, lost amidst the green carpets in the surrounding gardens, provided a background sound that, other than here, was rarely heard in the city.
One of the street lamps quietly buzzed against the night's chill, blinking twice before dying a quiet death.
"Damn cold," Aiden mumbled against her overcoat, as the six of them made their way towards the empty house.
They had left the cars' head lights on, to provide for a better view of the place. With the potent lamps on her back, she could see only the silhouetted figures of the others.
In the dilapidated grass in the front yard, a wooden post with the words 'for sale' written in red, stood slightly askew.
"House belonged to a nutcase named Patrick Rice," Flack whispered to the CSIs as he fished his pocket for the key that the real estate agency had provided him with. "The old man died nearly ten years ago and they still haven't managed to sell the house. People say it's haunted," he finished lamely as the rusty front door opened.
"You sure you wanna do this, Flack?" Aiden teased him, remembering his dislike for ghosts from a case a few months ago.
"Very funny, Aiden," he said, releasing the holster of his gun and holding it up. "Really funny. Maybe the funny lady should go first?" He invited her with a stretched hand.
She knew he was just messing with her. Flack was a professional, which meant that he would never let a 'lab cop' do his job for him.
Sure enough, even before she could reply, Flack and the other two policemen had taken point and venture inside the dark house.
"We'll check upstairs," Flack warned the CSIs as they joined them inside, guns pointing straight ahead, following their eye line.
Mac nodded, his eyes already searching the few rooms that where visible to him from the hall. He waited as the detective and the two uniforms climbed the two sets of stairs to the second floor, before the three of them started to secure the main floor.
For the next ten minutes, shouts of 'clear' sounded from various locations inside the big house. When it was made obvious that there was no one in there beside them, Flack left the two police officers covering both entrances to the house, one up front and one in the kitchen's back door, while he and the rest proceeded towards their main goal, the basement. According to Rubben, that was probably where the cell phone would be.
None believed that they would be as lucky as catching the perp inside the house, but they were all experienced enough to not take any chances. Communicating only through their eyes and hands, the four detectives quietly opened the door to the basement, the only way in or out of the place. If their guy was in there, this was the moment where he would panic and make his move.
This time Mac took point. Between his experience in the marines and the fact that he was the boss, Flack didn't even thought about contesting the decision.
The older CSI held his gun in a straight angle in front of his chest, right hand gently gripping the handle, index finger relaxed against the outer rim of the trigger. His left hand, supporting from beneath, held the flash light in the same angle of the gun. Flack, right behind him, was pointing his flash light on the stairway steps.
From a strategic point of view, Mac hated this sort of situation. They had to get down there, but they were seating ducks until they reached the bottom of the stairs. The wall running down the left side of the staircase was their only protection.
A faint scuffling sound to their right made both detectives turn at the same time, beam lights crossing the pitch black dark beneath them and both weapons aimed at the source of the noise. The 'guilty' rats that had been frightened by their sudden arrival were caught in the light for one second before scattering away in to hiding. Flack smiled, relaxing his trigger finger. 'Better rats than ghosts', he thought. Rats he could shoot.
Finally Mac's shoe hit cement instead of wood, signalling the end of the stairs. He quickly stood to one side, making room for Flack to stand beside him.
When the gunshot sound that he'd been waiting to hear didn't materialize and two beams of light circled the division and found it empty of other living beings, Mac called the rest of the team down. Both women didn't look happy at being left behind, but none had said a word. They understood Mac's reasoning. It was unnecessary to risk the whole team.
Four beams of white light travelled through the basement, their holders all coming to the same conclusion. This place had long been abandoned.
The room had obviously been used as storage and laundry room when the house was in use. Now, ten years later, the skeleton of an old washing machine; a black box of rusty iron that had probably been the house's boiler and a variety of junk covered most of the walls and floor of the large division.
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"This isn't our crime scene," Mac stated the obvious for all to hear. They all knew it as soon as they saw the place, but still the words carried a lot of disappointment with them.
The layer of dust covering the harsh cement floor was, for the most part, undisturbed. It would've been impossible for the killer to bring six people to that space and held them there as he made the marks on their backs.
He had no place where to hold them either. There were a couple of wooden beams on the ceiling, but they were so eaten away by old age that there was no way they could've support a human body.
"Anyone found the phone yet?" Stella asked, pulling hers from her pocket. Three heads nodded in negative and she quickly dialled Margaret's number.
In the silence that formed between them and the dusty basement, the soft initial accords of Sting's 'Englishman in New York' sounded awkward and out of place.
Stella had to smile. Margaret Stuton had good taste in music.
Once broken the spell, they all moved at the same time, frenetically searching for the ringing phone. They knew that an average cell phone battery would last up to five days, if not used. Margaret had use that phone two nights ago and neither of them could know how low that battery could be running at this point. They needed to find it, fast.
"Got it!" Aiden called from behind the stairs. She picked it up using a fresh latex glove. Not wasting time to put it on, she had just used the latex as a napkin.
The glowing screen showed NYPD in bold letters, confirming to them that this was indeed the right phone. Stella hit the end call button on her cell phone and the music suddenly stopped.
"Bag it," Mac told Aiden. "We'll process it later at the lab."
Burn did just that and joined the others searching the room. Suddenly the place held a lot more promise, now that they had confirmed that Margaret Stuton had been there before dying. Now they just needed to find the evidence that would lead them to the killer.
Mac remained behind the stairs. He pointed his flash light up, looking at the spaces between steps. The slits separating them were too narrow.
If Margaret had dropped her phone while coming down, it would've landed either out in the open, to the right of the staircase or at the bottom of the stairs. For it to be behind the stairs meant that she, or the killer, would've had to contour the stairs and move to the space he was in now. Mac wondered why either of them would walk in to a dead end.
He looked around. The space was narrow, with nothing more than the construction ramp that supported the stairway above, the wall that ran alongside the stairs and the back wall, which met the other one at a 90 degree angle.
Mac took a step back, pulled his pants a notch up and crouched, looking at the floor more closely. The cement in that area was almost dust free, inconsistent with the rest of the place. He pointed the light beam at the back wall. Nothing there.
Then he saw the dust. Besides the dirt dropping from beneath the staircase, there was a distinct wall of dust that rose from the ground. His flash light slowly travelled along the brick wall, until the dust stop. Carefully moving around, Mac found two more, one at each end of the first one, in a straight angle, forming three sides of a box.
"Found something," he called to the others.
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