The Tunnel

What a way to start

“What is going on? Whose blood is that?”

“I don’t know. It could be Billie's blood or the person who took him.” one officer said.

One of the officers left the room and walked down the stairs to start securing the rest of the house and making sure no one else got in it without the proper equipment. Undoubtedly, something wrong would happen to Billie if they didn’t move fast. The officer walked outside to his car to grab something to help him make a perimeter around the house and in Billie's room.

As he was doing so, he grabbed his cellphone from his jacket and called the missing person unit:

“Hello, this is Agent Oliver, two other officers and I responded to a call from dispatch saying that a kid was freaking out, crying, and saying that he saw something. When we arrived, he was gone.”

“What is the address?”

“I am at Beach House Bradford Road, Hawthorn, Corsham SN13 0NY.”

“Thank you, Agent; the Detective will be there as soon as possible; he just got notified.”

Agent Oliver hung up his phone, went into his Glock compartment, got some trash bags, got out of his car, and walked towards the house entrance. As he got closer to the house, he started to put the bags over his shoes and shouted out:

“Richard, don't move; I don't want you to contaminate the scene before the Detective arrives. I will walk over to you and hand you two bags for your shoes.”

Oliver walked into the house, retracing the same route he took. He walked over to Billie's room again, where he found his partner having problems breathing. At that moment, there was a rush of blood and adrenaline running through his body. He had a kid who got kidnapped, a scene to maintain until the proper personal gets there, and now his partner was in a fight for his life.

“Call for help!” Oliver screamed at the top of his lungs.

“You are going to make it, man; where is your inhalator?”

Richard touched his pockets while struggling to breathe; the inhalator wasn’t in his pocket.

He must have left it in the car, Oliver thought.

The other two officers heard him screaming and ran into the house and up the stairs. He told one of them to run to the car and grab Richard's inhalator. In the meantime, the other officer was calling an ambulance.

“We need to get him help now,” Oliver said.

“I found him like this, but it had been almost one minute since I found him. After three minutes, he will go unconscious, and his brain will start taking severe damage. In five minutes, he will die; we need to do something.”

The officer sprinted back through the house with Richard's inhalator in his hand and got up the stairs as fast as he could. They put the inhalator in Richard's mouth and pressed the button. They all looked at each other astonished as Richard was still struggling to breathe, the inhalator was empty. They heard the sirens getting closer and closer; the help was close. Richard had gone unconscious at that point; it was up to the paramedics.

They got into the house with a stretcher, and one of the officers escorted them upstairs. Richard was sitting down on the floor, unconscious. The paramedics put him on the stretcher, tied him up, and moved him down into the ambulance, where they put an oxygen mask. They checked his pulse, but it was feeble. As they headed toward the hospital, they hoped for the best for Richard. He had been without oxygen for too long; they didn’t know how much brain damage he had suffered.

A few minutes later, another police car pulled up in front of the house. There was a man inside the car; the man opened his car door and got out. He was around five feet ten inches tall, skinny but looked strong. Long black hair on the top but short on the sides. Small ears with one earring on the right side and three on the left side, skinny eyebrows, dark brown eyes, a pointy nose, small lips, and he was well shaved. He was dressed in a black suit with a red handkerchief on his left breast pocket, and his blouse was open. You could see his badge on his belt, and around his ribs, there was a holster with a Colt .45 handgun. Oliver approached him and asked him his name, and asked to see his badge.

“I am Detective Michael Hackman, the missing person detective.” He said as he showed his badge.

“Nice to meet you, Detective,” Oliver said while giving him a firm handshake.

“I need a full report on the situation, starting with why there was an ambulance at the crime scene.”

"That was my partner; he got an asthma attack while I was calling you guys and grabbing some tools to secure the scene until your arrival. I am unsure how much the scene got compromised, with everyone running around and the paramedics walking into the house. I tried to keep a specific walking area, but it was chaotic. "

“Okay, you are done with the ambulance; now tell me what is going on, why you got the call, what the operator told you, what happened when you arrived, and how long you have been at the scene; I need as many details as possible. I hope your partner recovers, but I will need the clothes of every person who came in contact with the house.”

“We got a call from a kid; he said he saw something terrible while playing outside. The kid went out to play while the babysitter prepared dinner. The kid told the operator he returned home, but the babysitter wasn't home.”

“How old was he, and what was his name?” Hackman asked.

“His name was Billie, and he was six years old.”

“I got to admit Billie is a brave kid.” Hackman said

“Anything else, Agent Oliver?”

“We got here around 5 pm; call in the door, no one answered, so I sent officers to the back, and I went in with my partner. There were no signs of the babysitter downstairs, so we went to the second floor, where we found a door that was forced, I got in, and I found a ball with tiny dots of blood. It's possible that was Billie's room, and that's where he got kidnapped. This is all the information I have other than that; it's all yours, Detective. When I was trying to secure the perimeter, everything went south.”

“Thank you, Oliver”

“Can you take me to Billie's room? I want to see it.”

“One more thing Oliver, ask for more agents we will need more hands-on-deck.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Oliver walked with Detective Hackman while he signaled one of his officers and told him to call the CSU; we will need all the help we can get. Before entering the house, he ordered to start a search of the house's premises for anything suspicious and to not leave stone unlifted.

“Oliver, for how long was the kid on the phone with the operator before the call was interrupted?”

“The call lasted twenty minutes, Detective.”

“You got here at 5 pm; it is 5:30 pm now; the perpetrator has approximately one hour on us,” Hackman said while looking at his watch.

“What are we supposed to do Detective; we don't have any leads yet; we don't know what direction they are heading.”

“I want you to call the state police and close every road, train station, and airport within a 20-mile radius. He has an advantage over us; we might not be lucky to find anything on the cars, but we got to try. Notify every airport, train station, and port. I don't want anyone leaving the state without me knowing. It is almost 6 pm; the parents should be home by now. Has anyone tried to contact the family?”

“No, we looked as we were going inside the house, but it wasn't anything too detailed. We were making sure that no one was in the house. There are some pictures of Billie around the House; we can use one of them to make the bolo and pass it around.”

“A missing kid, a missing babysitter, missing parents, and an empty house just the way I was planning to finish my day,” Hackman said.