Credit where credit was due, the occupants had put this house together themselves, built their rough-hewn furniture, and carved out a life for themselves. As something of a consequence, everything felt coarse, here. Blue curtains with a texture like burlap, wooden furniture that had been sanded enough to remove any chance of splinters or clothing catching on it, oiled, and set in place.

Bible on the bedside table. He moved it to turn the page, and noted the square of dust-less surface left behind. No annotations, no modifications.

Turning back toward the door, he noted a paddle mounted on the wall, leather strips criss-crossing the handle for grip, holes in the wood, probably to make it hurt more. The words ‘spare the child’ were written in the spaces between the holes.

He walked over to the next room. Same furniture, but the curtains were purple, and a flower wallpaper had been put on the upper half of the walls, a corner peeling away in one spot, another spot that rippled where too much adhesive had been used. A touch of femininity in a space that afforded little. Two guitars sat in the corner, one resting on a chair, the other against the wall. There were books on the bedside table, not dissimilar to the rifle on the wall in the master bedroom. Mass produced to fill a need.

It felt invasive to enter when the space was so much more personal, but he investigated nonetheless, doing a circuit, checking a doorway to find a closet, most of the contents removed.

The dresser had a series of portraits across the top, alongside some simple jewelry. A girl who could have fit in at any high school or in Gilpatrick’s Patrol block… who seemed maybe too normal to be in his Patrol block. The girl pictured for what might have been a graduation photo. Her with her parents, a pinched looking woman and a stern, unsmiling man, displaying enough joy to make up for the two of them.

Spare the child, he thought. He had no doubt that paddle had been used on this girl by those people.

The last picture gave him a moment’s pause. It lay flat, like it had fallen over or been placed face-down. He picked it up—and saw what looked like a crime scene photo. A person, he couldn’t tell who or what gender, with face taking up the entirety of the shot, face swollen to the point the one visible eye wouldn’t open, mottled by bruising and flecks of blood. He wasn’t positive it wasn’t a picture of a corpse, kept among family pictures. Too much rosiness in the complexion to be a body. Probably. It took him a moment to double check, note the girl had a mole by her eyebrow that the person pictured didn’t, to confirm it wasn’t a picture of herself she’d kept.