Insanity Stains Red

sixteen

Detective Samson got the call about two and a half hours after Evelyn had been wheeled into surgery. He hadn’t been able to see them properly until she’d been dressed in one of those horrible, gaping hospital gowns, but she had so many bruises and lacerations on her body, he was amazed that she had even stayed conscious all that time, let alone refrained from crying out every time she so much as shifted her weight. That was one tough kid.

The phone’s display screen showed it was the station calling, and all the weariness vanished from the detective as he picked up the call; this would be a progress report on the raid. He hoped for Evelyn’s sake everything had gone okay.

“Samson.” He said bluntly into the phone’s mic. Being on the force had certainly worsened his manners considerably, but sometimes you had to be brisk or else no one took you seriously.

“Samson? It’s Sullivan.” Lieutenant Sullivan was the man who had taken over the case when Samson had called the station to report what Evelyn had told him. The Lieutenant was calling now to keep Samson in the loop, as promised.

“What’s the news, Lieutenant?”

There was a significant pause on the other end of the line. “You wouldn’t believe half the shit we saw down there, detective.”

“So everything was as Evelyn described?”

“And more. If that girl really grew up down there, she’s lucky to still be alive, let alone sane.”

“You got the bastards though, yeah? And the other girls – are they safe?”

“Oh we got ‘em all right. A few of them tried to resist, but we soon set them straight. The girls are in bad shape though. I think some of the bastards heard us coming and ran to finish them off. There’s a bunch of the girls on the way to the hospital. We’ll need to talk to them at some point, but I’m honestly not sure how much we’ll get out of them.”

There was an even longer pause this time, as if the Lieutenant was considering what he was about to say. “I’ve never seen anything like it – and you know I’ve seen some shit in my time. This is going to bring on a whole new set of nightmares, for all of us. Be glad you missed it.”

Samson knew how much it had cost Sullivan to admit that. Cops weren’t generally the touchy-feely sort. So for him to come out and say something like that meant that things really had been that bad down there.

“Thanks for keeping me in the loop, Lieutenant.” There was a grunt in reply and then Sullivan hung up on him – a typical end to a gruff conversation. Sullivan hadn’t expected anything else.

Evelyn was still in surgery when he hung up the phone, so Samson decided it would be a good time to get himself some lunch and check on the other girls while he waited.

There were eight girls in the ICU when the detective stopped by. Evelyn had told him there was more than three times that number when she had left. So what had happened to the others? Sullivan had said he thought some of the men had gone ahead to finish them off before the police had gotten to them. But for that many to be dead, well. It said something for the brutality of the men Evelyn had lived with.

One of the girls opened her eyes as he walked into the room, and he approached her bedside carefully so he didn’t startle her. She was smaller than the others, with a shock of purple hair – even blood-soaked and tangled as it was the color could not be muted. She whispered something at him and he crouched down to hear her better.

“Tell me you got them all.” Her voice was harsh with pain and exhaustion but the stubborn look on her face told him that there would be no avoiding the question.

“We have them. It’s all over now, you can rest easy.”

"I won’t be resting for a long time, detective. Not after everything I’ve seen, everything those ass-fucks did to me.” Detective Samson flinched when she swore, not having expected such language from one so young. But he overlooked that, not knowing what to say in response to her words. The girl wasn’t waiting for a reply though, and she continued on after a moment of breath. “Do you know what happened to that other girl, Evelyn? She wasn’t kept in the room with us down there but… she looked after us.”

“She’s safe enough.” He hurried to reassure her. “Actually, she’s on this hospital – she’s currently in surgery, but then they’ll put her in one of the rooms upstairs. I could arrange for you to see her when she wakes up, if you want?” Samson saw the girl hesitate as if uncertain, and decided he might as well tell her the rest – it couldn’t hurt for her to know what had happened. “She was the one that saved you, did you know?”

The girl’s eyes widened considerably. Apparently she hadn’t known that. Samson nodded seriously. “She came to me at the school, covered in blood – her own, and her friend’s. She told me a horrific tale, and then said that we had to move fast before it was too late to save you all.”

“I had no idea. The men were talking about her when they came for us, bragging about what her father had done to her and what they were going to do to us. They made it sound like she was dead – or at least locked up somewhere, about to be.” The girl’s voice softened even further, so that it was barely audible. “We were so mean to her; we didn’t understand that she was trying to help us. I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to see her, but will you tell her thank you for me?” There was so much pain in the girl’s eyes that it was hard for the detective to hold her gaze. He knew that it wasn’t physical pain, but the kind that came from remorse.

“Of course I’ll tell her.” He said kindly. “And what was your name, so I can tell her who sent the message?”

The girl smiled at him, a hint of mischief on her face that gave him hope. “She never knew my name. None of them did. I was always just ‘the purple-haired girl.’”

“I’ll tell her.” He said, watching as she nodded and then closed her eyes, drifting to sleep once more. Samson decided it was time to take his leave. Evelyn was due to be out of surgery any time now, anyway. He trudged slowly out of the room, his mind lost in thought. What a day.