The Longest Winter by Harrison Drake Read Free Book Online Page B

light switches earlier, but there was only one weak bulb in each room. It sufficed, but they still found themselves having to use their flashlights to search through the building.
    It was, for all intents, a square. There were four main rooms, five if the bathroom was included. Each room was about the same size. Kara tried to determine what the building had been built for, if it had been made for the sole purpose of what it was most recently used for. The room with the window seemed like an odd place to use to keep the children though. It was the only one they could escape from.
    Was it sympathy on their captor’s part? A little bit of light and air coming into the room might have helped to keep them in better spirits. But would he have cared? Kara hated to admit it, but they knew very little about how the suspect operated and what his motives were. All they knew was how it had ended the first time. In between, however, they had almost no information.
    They needed to speak to Claude, figure out what the suspect did, how he acted, what he looked like, what he had said to them, anything that might help. They had received word from the hospital that he was awake and able to speak, but they had not had a chance to leave the building yet. If the suspect had left something behind, that was the best chance they had of catching him. Claude’s testimony would help, but Kara knew he wouldn’t be able to identify the man, and there was no way Claude could know where Jacques had been taken.
    There was little to go on in the building. Once the initial adrenaline was gone, Kara and Yuri began to search for evidence. There wasn’t much. Kara believed it to be a matter of there never having been much to begin with. She doubted someone careless enough to forget to flush the toilet would remember to remove everything else that could tie him to the scene.
    Especially when there were a few very obvious fingerprints left behind.
    “Do you see that?” Kara pointed her flashlight at the back of the microwave. There was a visible print on the metal frame. “Another print. How many is that now? Seven?”
    “I think so. Wait until forensics gets here. If we can see that many, I’m sure they will find a ton more once they dust.”
    “It’s a little worrisome,” Kara said. “If he’s this careless, he’s probably not worried about being caught. Which means we won’t have him in the system. Doesn’t matter if we have his prints and DNA.”
    “Maybe he was in a rush once Claude got away. He must have known we would not be far behind.”
    “I hope so. If we’ve got him on file…”
    “We are going to get Jacques back either way.”
    Kara nodded.
    “Here, help me pull the fridge and stove out.”
    Kara walked over and she and Yuri each took a side of the fridge. They grabbed hold and pulled, the feet scraping across the concrete floor until they reached the middle of the room. Yuri let go and looked behind the fridge.
    “Nothing. Let’s do the stove.”
    They took hold and pulled once more, the familiar scraping sound like nails on a chalkboard filled the room once more.
    Yuri took a look behind the stove. “I have something here.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah, a couple of papers. Must have slipped behind.” He bent down and picked them up then began to look through them, shuffling through three yellowed pages. “This guy really was careless.”
    “Why? What is it?”
    “Bills. With a name and address on them.”
    Yuri took his radio off of his belt and pressed the button to talk. “Can I get a location on an address?”
    “Go ahead.”
    “1342 Rue de Rennes. It’s Belgian.”
    There was a long period of silence before the operator returned to the radio.
    “Is this a joke, Detective?”
    Yuri and Kara looked at each other, unsure of what was happening.
    “No, not at all. Why?”
    “That’s where you are. As close as we can tell anyway. It’s a large property. That address probably refers to the main house.”
    “Sorry,