Free Primal Fear by Brad Boucher Page A

cardboard boxes had been pulled partially out from under the table, probably while Charlie had been guiding Harry down the steps and into the room.  Harry moved toward them, his heart beginning to beat faster.
    He pulled the covers off of the first three boxes, peering carefully inside.  They were filled with what looked like old blasting equipment, the caps and detonators thrown into each box in a careless heap.  Reels of red wire lay on top of everything else, apparently the only new addition to the contents of the carton.
    “How the hell do you suppose he got his hands on all that?” Charlie asked from behind him.
    “Most likely it’s all from the quarry.  But I don’t know how he got out with so much of it.  What’s bothering me more is what he was planning on doing with it.”
    “It’s in the other box,” Ben muttered.  He sounded as though he was about to be sick, his eyes still downcast.  “Harry, I—”
    Harry took a deep breath, reaching towards the last carton.  A sudden instinct sparked within him, a deduction based in part on the photos that lined the walls, kindled by Ben’s strong reaction.
    And a part of him suddenly knew what he’d find inside. 
    He tried to deny it, as if a simple act of denial could negate the truth.  It was whatever Ben had seen inside of the box that had forced him from the room, and Harry held his breath as he tugged it out into the light.
    He hoped he would be wrong, that his suspicions would be proven untrue, but he couldn’t deny the gut feeling that was already gnawing at him.  And all the hope in the world couldn’t change what he saw inside the box, and never in his life had he felt so poorly about his instincts being so right.
    The cardboard box was filled with articles of clothing, some of them torn, some of them in perfect condition, as if they’d just been plucked off of the rack at a local department store.  But old or new, each piece of clothing had two things in common: they were all the garments of a child, and all of them had been designed for a girl.
    Harry pulled one of them out, his stomach churning.  It was a small red dress, tiny white hearts printed up and down the sleeves, its collar torn and pulled out of shape.  A dark stain had dried upon the back of the dress, a stain Harry knew at that moment would turn out to be blood.
    “Oh, no,” he whispered.  “Oh, dear Jesus, no . . .”
    It all added up, everything he’d seen this morning coming together in a sudden thunderclap of realization.  Slater’s note, his pleas for forgiveness; the thousands of pictures of young women that had been carefully selected and pasted to the walls of the shelter; even the silent privacy of Slater’s life, his reputation of living almost as a hermit. 
    It all made terrible, tragic sense.
    And pushing it all home was the State Police update Harry had received only three days before, a report that had come in from the police barracks in Concord.  Five missing children, all of them female, all of them between the ages of nine and thirteen, all of them reported missing within the past three weeks. 
    And all of them within a two-hundred mile radius.
    There had been no indication that the epicenter of activity had been Slater’s house, and Harry began to wonder even then whether he’d missed some tell-tale remark or action on Marty’s part that would have tipped him off.
    “Call the state boys,” he ordered quietly, not daring to make eye contact with either of his deputies.  He knew his own expression would betray his fear, his revulsion; he felt no desire to share such apparent weakness with his men.  “Tell them to high-tail it out here.  I think we might have found their kidnapper.”
    He let the tiny dress fall back into the box, and when he raised his empty hand to wipe away the cold sweat breaking out of his brow, he noticed with some dismay that his fingers had begun to shake.
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Five
     
    John zippered