Chapter 8 — I Called for Help

I did not open the hatch myself.

Every instinct I had told me not to — that whatever was down there was beyond me, that I needed people with authority and training and a warrant.

So I backed out of that shed, and I kept my sister in front of me where I could see her, and I called the police.

I told the dispatcher what I had found: a locked shed, a hidden hatch, evidence someone had been kept there.

Within forty minutes a patrol car and then an unmarked one came up the drive, and a detective got out — a calm, gray-haired man who introduced himself as Detective Kingsbury, and who took one look through the shed door and stopped being calm.