Free Sacrifice by Wrath James White Page A

after their child went missing?”
    “Maybe even before.”
    “But why would they do that?”
    “Guilt maybe. Closing the door on that chapter of their lives and moving on. Trying to forget.”
    “Trying to forget their own daughter? So you think they’re suspects?”
    “I know they’re involved. If they took the pictures down before the girl went missing, then they knew it was coming. Did you see the way they looked at us? The father was almost daring me to catch him. We need to talk to the guys from Missing Persons who interviewed them the day their daughter disappeared. I want to know if those pictures were on the walls then.”
    They walked to their vehicle, both trying to guess at the secrets hidden within the Wells’s house. Just as they stepped into the car the radio sputtered to life. “Code two! We have reports of a 415 at the Learning Tree Elementary School.”
    Then, moments later, another call came out. This one was a little more urgent.
    “Code three! Code three! We have a report of a 187 in progress. A possible 10-54 at the Learning Tree Elementary School!”
    A dead body at an elementary school.
    “Shit!” Rafik exclaimed as he put the lights and siren on and took off in the direction of the school. He and Malloy looked at each other with horrified expressions, imagining the mutilated remains of some pedophile’s deviant passions crumpled up beneath a playground swing set or dangling like a ghastly ornament from the jungle gym.
    When they pulled into the school parking lot, they paused, mouths agape, staring at the commotion taking place in the schoolyard. Expecting to find a child victim, they were not at all prepared for what they were seeing. Nothing could have possibly prepared them for this. There was no dead body lying in the schoolyard - not yet anyway - but if they didn’t get out there quickly there would be.
    A cloud of birds circled the schoolyard - crows and pigeons, scavengers, carrion eaters, and below them a bizarre melee was going on, some type of riot. Occasionally some of the birds would dive down and attack the victim struggling on the ground before returning to rejoin the flock. Malloy and Rafik stared aghast as they tried to absorb exactly what they were seeing. Malloy felt shivers race the length of his spine as a feeling of de‚ja vu overwhelmed him. He knew he was witnessing exactly what had happened to the victim who’d been killed by his dog the previous day.
    Yards from where the sandbox, swing sets, and jungle gym sat neglected, an angry mob of seven and eight-year-old children attacked a man as he scrambled on all fours, running for his life and calling out for help. It almost looked like a game - except for the blood running down his face and the shrill and desperate sound of his voice. The children were killing him.
    They rained blows down on him, swarming all over the screaming and bloodied man in a flurry of savage violence. It looked like a riot at a hospital for the criminally insane. Teachers were running out of the building, trying to rescue the victim from the biting, kicking, punching frenzy of pre-adolescent fury engulfing him. It was almost comical if it wasn’t for the fact that the man was clearly being murdered. A cloud of birds surrounded the assault, attacking as relentlessly as the children.
    “What the fuck!” Malloy exclaimed. The detectives left their vehicle and began jogging across the field toward the horde of angry, murderous children.
    Malloy and Rafik looked at each other while they ran. The detectives stared out across the field as more than two dozen children seethed over the helpless man, attacking him with fearsome savagery. They clawed and bit and dug their fingers into his eyes, nose, and ears, ripping off whatever appendages they could manage to tear free. He was bleeding profusely as he went down, succumbing to the weight of their numbers. The teachers were striking the children, trying to get them to release the man, but the