The Tunnel

A deadly Gift

“We are going to have a very long night,” Oliver said

Detective Hackman entered the house; as he walked in the hallway, he saw some pictures of Billie. He had short brown hair, light skin, blue eyes, and prominent cheeks. He looked healthy, happy, young, and full of life.

“Where are his parents? Has anybody managed to get in touch with them?” he asked again.

Another agent walked out of the kitchen and said that it looked like someone was cooking but left before the food was ready.

“Have you found any cellphone numbers or emergency contacts?” Oliver asked.

“Nothing at all,” replied the other agent.

“What kind of parents hire a babysitter but don't leave an emergency phone or a way to contact them,” Hackman asked while looking around.

“Everything is digital these days; she must have had the parent's number on her cellphone,” Oliver added.

“We need to find something about the parents; there is got to be something in this house that we can use to tell us who the parents were. Keep searching, I don't care if we must turn this place upside down.” Hackman was starting to get heated.

You could hear more sirens in front of the house. The CSU had joined the search.

“Agent.....?” Hackman asked.

“Carter,” The agent replied while waiting for what Hackman had to say.

“Agent Carter go outside and tell the other agents to widen the search, knock on doors, and send two more agents to help us process the house.”

Carter went outside, told the other agents what to do, grabbed a pack of gloves in his car, and went back inside. He handed a pair of gloves to Hackman and Oliver.

“Carter keep searching the kitchen, check every drawer, trashcan, and even check the refrigerator and the fridge if you have to. I will go upstairs with Oliver; I want to take a look at the room where the kid apparently got kidnapped,” Hackman said

Two more agents walked up to them while they were talking.

“I am Agent Rosado, and this is my partner, Agent Harris, Crime Scene Unit; how can we help?”

“There are two other rooms upstairs; each of you can take one. Agent Oliver and I will go to Billie's room. Make sure to be very meticulous Billie's life depends on all the evidence we can gather in this house.” Hackman said

Hackman and Oliver went up the stairs while the other three agents proceeded to their respective areas in the house.

“Billie's room is the last one down this hallway,” Oliver said pointing with his finger

Hackman stopped before entering the room, inspected the door frame, and saw the marks caused by the forced entry.

“It looks like this door was kicked open. By looking at the impact, the suspect was a male or a powerful woman, but I am confident that it was a man.”

“If it was kicked down, how can you explain the absence of a shoe print?” Oliver asked.

“He must have used something to cover his shoes just like you are doing. Nice trash bags.” Hackman pointed at Oliver’s shoes.

“We can say goodbye to any prints on the door handle; this animal busted in like it was his house.” Oliver implied.

“We will not discard anything; tell the crime scene unit to dust all the doors in the house for prints, even this one.”

Oliver left the room and went down while Hackman stood in the room looking at everything on it. Something caught his attention; the room was empty. There were no toys, the room was spotless. He found a ball with tiny dots of blood he immediately called one of the CSI and asked him to bag, tag, and send the ball to the laboratory.

The ball was in the middle of the room; the most logical explanation would be that the perpetrator hit the kid and took him, but these blood drops are not consistent with a blow to the face. The kid must have cut himself playing or something. Hackman thought.

The detective opened the desk drawer; there were a couple of drawings. One that looked like a train, another one of a house, and the last one was a family drawing. Dad on the left, Mom on the right, and him in the middle. Each person had a title on top, Mommy, Daddy, and me. He put the drawings back and proceeded to check the computer. Before he did anything else, he walked down the hallway to one of the CSI and asked him for some tools to lift prints.

He dusted the outside, it was clean, opened the computer, dusted the screen and the keyboard. Nothing was found; everything was immaculate, not even partial prints. He turned on the computer, and the start menu said, Welcome, Miss. Walker. He pressed enter and logged in to the computer. The Wi-Fi was on, so he took a look into the search history; the search was deleted. It was not a surprise to him. There was a file named Billie Walker, he clicked on it, but it was encrypted.

Hackman tried to open another file named Allan Walker and wife. The file was encrypted too, the detective was getting frustrated. It was 8:00 pm; he had been on the scene for two hours, and the case was going nowhere. He closed the laptop put it in a bag, and tagged it. At this time, he was about to move to check the closet when Oliver walked in.

“Detective, you need to see this I got a present for you.”

“What now, Oliver? can't you wait a couple of minutes? I got nothing in here, Billie's clock is ticking, and there is nothing on this room that can lead me to his captor except for this laptop, but it is encrypted.”

“This is very important, Sir.”

“Alright, show me what is so important.”

Detective Hackman grabbed the bag and got out of the room with Oliver. In the hallway near one of the other rooms was Agent Rosado. He gave him the bag with the laptop and told him that he needed to know everything that was inside, but it was encrypted, and he needed to know now. After that, they kept going downstairs and outside.

“Oliver, where are you taking me?”

“Just a little bit farther, Sir, in the tunnel.”

As they got closer to the tunnel, Hackman started to get goosebumps, a strong smell of death hit him. The animals were not making any sound; everything went quiet for a split second; it was like something dreadful had happened inside there.