Blind Spot

Prologue - I Just Wasn't Made for These Times

There was a saying about bad things being from the wrong side of the tracks.

The Railroad District was so bad it was like being across the tracks from the wrong side of the tracks. Decades ago, after the trains stopped running through Littlehope, the Railroad District became a ghost town.

The few homes or apartment buildings left in the district stood abandoned, no one wanting to buy them. Companies went out of business or moved to a better part of town. Everything had fallen into disrepair. So much so, even the local motorcycle gang, The Scorpions, had their clubhouse somewhere else. Pimps, dealers, and hookers were the only ones who did business or lived there and every cop within a fifty-mile radius knew it.

It hadn't changed in the few weeks since Butch Hardy had been there last.

Still run down and still depressing as hell.

They drove past newspaper covered storefronts and burned out shells of buildings on their way to pick up a slippery scumbag that was running heroin and girls out of a flophouse in the railroad district.

"How's the Kinsley case coming?" Jim asked.

Butch looked at the deputy driving and let out a frustrated breath. "Same."

He hated that answer but if anyone could understand his frustration it would be Jim. Butch had known Jim for years and respected the hell out of him. As a Deputy for the county, Jim always tried talking him into switching departments but he wouldn't leave the police department.

Jim kept quiet for a minute. "There are some we never get, Butchy. Some slip through our fingers and some we never even come close to catching. It'll eat you alive if you let it. Some cases you just have to leave at the office if you want to survive. This might be one of them, kid."

Butch nodded, knowing the older investigator was right. His wife, Erin, hinted at the same thing but she'd never tell him to let it go. She knew him better than that.

They and a dozen other cruisers convened around the corner from their suspected target and formed two small lines. They filed around either side of the small house, the windows all boarded up. A television blared through the walls, loud male laughter and the distinct sounds of a woman having sex wafted around them. Butch, as instructed, went in with Jim at the front, ready to clear each room.

They breached the door with a loud bang, the sound out of place in the quiet day, as were the screams and shouts that followed. He entered, gun drawn, scanning the dilapidated kitchen for threats. Two sheriffs rushed past him, removing two screaming hookers while he and Jim moved to the next room.

Breaching the room created chaos. There were at least ten sheriffs, a handful of women and two large men all in one room. The men shouted and Butch wasn't sure if they were shouting at the women or the police. He assisted in cuffing and removing both men, neither of which were small or willing.

"Happy!" One woman wailed as Jim cuffed her and dragged her out of the room. "Happy!"

Butch spotted an unopened door and stepped around a coffee table littered with booze, cigarette butts, and heroin. Needles, all used, scattered across its surface.

"Lot of sharps over here. Be careful," Butch warned the others.

Hand on the door knob he turned his head.

To take stock of everyone else in the room, to look at the table again - he wasn't sure. That's when he saw her, on the floor, crouched next to the coffee table. She stared up at him as if awaiting his next move. She looked to be about four and her eyes, even from a short distance were unlike anything he'd ever seen, the right eye as clear as the Caribbean ocean, the left half the same clear blue but the entire bottom half was black as night.