man was black. The woman was white. They walked with their little girl, who was dressed in a beautiful white dress for church. The little girl was crying because she spilled something on it. It looked like grape juice. Or blood.
“Daddy!” she cried.
“Excuse me,” the sheriff said. “I received a complaint about a smell coming from room 217. Do you know who lives there?”
“No,” the mother said. “But you dO.”
The mother smiled. She had no teeth. Her husband put a gentle hand on his family and quickly moved them into their apartment and locked the door. Click. Click. Click.
The sheriff walked into the elevator and pushed 21. The doors closed and the Muzak came on. Blue Moon. The sound almost distracted him from the smell of urine and feces. The sheriff was used to tenements smelling like piss and shit, but this smelled like the inside of a baby’s diaper. The baby was crying.
The elevator doors opened on the twenty-first floor.
The sheriff left the elevator and entered darkness. The lights flickered. The carpet was threadbare. He turned and saw room 217 at the very end of the long hallway.
The door was ajar.
The sheriff walked toward it. He heard scratching behind all of the apartment doors. He listened for the familiar sound of dogs or cats, but there was no sound. Just scratching. And breathing.
He reached room 217.
The sheriff tried to see inside, but the room was black.
“Hello. Sheriff’s Department. We’ve received a complaint about the smell.”
Silence. The sheriff opened the door to a smell that made him nostalgic for the elevator. Sweet smoke and rotten meat mixed with spoiled milk. The sheriff gagged and covered his face. His eyes watered so badly that he felt like he was looking through a fog. Wasn’t he just in a fog? He thought he was. He couldn’t quite remember.
He turned on the light.
He looked into the cold kitchen. A milk carton sat on the table. He saw some roaches. A box of Cheerios and a bowl.
That’s when he saw the woman.
She was facedown inside a bowl of cereal. The woman’s body was bloated and rotting. A needle stuck out of her arm. The belt was still loose around her shoulder. It looked like she had been here for days without anyone noticing.
Except the family dog.
The sheriff rushed over to the woman. He pushed the dog, all skin and bones, away from the snack he was making of her legs. Then, the sheriff lifted her out of the cereal bowl. He quickly checked her pulse to confirm the woman was dead.
There was a sound in the bedroom. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
The sheriff stood up. Gooseflesh crawled across his body.
“Hello?” he said.
The sheriff walked to the bedroom door.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
“Hello?!” he said.
The sheriff opened the door slowly. He peered into the room and saw her. Her hands and feet were each bound with a neck tie to an old rusty bed frame. She was filthy and starving to death. She might have been fifty-five pounds. She had struggled so much that her wrists and ankles were caked with blood. But somehow, her hands and feet were still clean.
It was the girl with the painted nails.
At first, he thought she had been kidnapped, until an old photograph made it obvious that she was the daughter of the dead junkie in the kitchen. The sheriff didn’t need to do a lot of work to guess that she had been sold to perverts to pay for the needle in her mother’s arm.
The sheriff rushed over to the little girl. Her pulse was faint. But she was still alive! He could save her this time! Had he been here before? He reached for his radio, but it was gone. He looked for a phone, but there was none. There was no way to call 911. He untied her hands and bent down to untie her feet. Suddenly he felt her little hand on his arm.
“Daddy?” she whispered.
The sheriff looked back up. He looked outside the bedroom window and saw the little Charlie Brown Christmas tree through her window in Mercy Hospital. Something was wrong. They were in her bedroom. Or was this a hospital room? Where were they?
“Daddy?” she whispered.
“No, honey. I’m a police officer. I’m the one who found you.”
“You can’t fool me. I always knew you’d rescue me, Daddy,” she said.
He untied her feet and picked her up. She was a rag doll in his arms. He laid her back on the hospital bed and tucked her under