PAINT IT RED (MikhAiah)

28: Kinship of Silence

"Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors." —Confucius

***

MIKHA

"Just stay here," I tell Aiah, gesturing to a large breakroom. "I'd let you into my office to wait, but it's restricted access."

She squeezes my hand, giving me a small, reassuring smile. "I'm fine. Go do your thing."

I head out of the breakroom, leaving the door open, and walk straight toward Jhoanna's office where she's waiting with Maloi and Jeremy. Maloi's red-rimmed eyes meet mine the second I step through the door, and she jerks her gaze away.

My eyes shift to Jeremy, who glares at me.

"Why is it necessary to have you guys in here for me to ask her a few simple questions?" Jeremy asks, annoyed.

"Call it an observation, but your chief put my girl in danger just to have a better chance of catching a serial killer. Then you show up, targeting one of my people for a crime she couldn't have possibly committed."

His eyebrows go up, and a lazy smile curves his lips. "Really? Agent Kang has so many alibis that it'd be a fool's quest to try and pin Kenneth Ferguson's death on her."

"Then why are you here?" I ask, suspicious.

His smile dies, and he tosses out several bagged pictures. Maloi's breath catches in her throat when she sees them, and she clutches the chair.

"These aren't all the pictures he had, but these children? They're missing. Some of them have been missing for years."

Maloi doubles over, vomiting into the trashcan. Jeremy actually looks sympathetic as he watches her.

"I need air," Maloi says, wiping the back of her mouth as she stands.

I nod toward Jhoanna, who takes her out, leaving me alone with Jeremy in the office.

"You wanted to see her reaction," I tell him as I sit down too.

"She ran away from home for a reason," Jeremy answers. "She accused him of molesting her as a child."

"So you are trying to—"

"I'm trying to get answers about what 'special' places he took her, as terrible as that sounds. We need to find these kids, even if we're just recovering bodies. Someone killed this guy, but I'm looking for the dozens of kids who are missing more than I'm looking for his killer."

He pulls out his phone, and I glance at the pictures that are on the desk. Most are naked little girls, spread wide on a bed. My stomach roils and I look away. Maloi never told me this part of her past.

"Ferguson left Maloi's mother shortly after Maloi ran away. That means the mother was no longer valuable after the child was gone. How can a mother ignore something like that?" he asks.

"It's often easier for someone to believe evil can't exist inside someone they love, than to admit they've failed someone who should be more important. We see it too often. The blind eye effect is what we call it," I say absently.

Just as I'm about to ask questions, he thrusts his phone at me, and my eyes widen in disbelief. "Someone knew what this guy was doing," he goes on, gesturing to the picture.

Kenneth Ferguson has been tortured. There's no doubt about that. His skin has been flayed off in numerous areas. There are black spots on the flayed portions, as though someone burned him.

"They used a knife. They used a blowtorch—possibly even the one he had downstairs for welding. And they hammered nails into his feet and testicles—seventy nails, to be exact... We found sixty-nine pictures and seventy nails. They did all this before dumping his dead body into the water."