The Guardian

the same type of note left on the first man and had the same message. In the middle of his forehead, branded was the words child molester.
    “Where’s the wife?” Halloway wanted to know.
    “She’s in the kitchen with one of our female officers. But she ain’t the only one Lieutenant.” O’Malley said.
    “What do you mean, not the only one?”
    “There are two kids. They’re in the bedroom there. They said they didn’t see or hear nothing.”
    Halloway told the CS guys to cut the guy loose, let the paramedics do their thing and get him to the hospital. They would try to talk to him later.
    In the kitchen, Officer Stone was sitting at the table with the man’s wife when Halloway entered. She stood up, “Hey Lieutenant”
    “Officer Stone. How we doing here? May I have a word with her?” Stone nodded and stepped out of the way.
    He looked at the woman sitting across from Stone. “Hi, I’m Lieutenant John Halloway and this is Detective Griffin. This is going to be a little rough but I need to ask you a few questions. I may repeat some of the ones already asked, but I hope you’ll bear with me.”
    “Yes, that’s fine.” The woman said.
    “Can you please tell me what happened? Try not to leave anything out if you can?”
    “Well, I’m not sure really. I mean we were sleeping. This man, a dark figure I mean, I don’t really know if it was a man or not, you couldn’t really see, he was standing at the foot of our bed.
    “I noticed that my husband was tossing around, that’s what woke me.
    This man had put something over my face. Then I was out. That’s really all I know.” The woman was visibly nervous and didn’t really want to make eye contact.
    “I see. He didn’t harm you in anyway, just your husband, he didn’t harm the kids?”
    “No, no, the kids didn’t see anything either.”
    “Lieutenant, you might want to see this.” One of the other officers was saying from the doorway.
    “Excuse me just one moment. Officer Stone, stay with her.”
    Halloway and Griffin went into the other room and followed the officer into the bedroom where the two children were.
    The small boy, about 6 years old was sitting on his bed. His legs crossed Indian style, arms folded, trying his best to be invisible. The little girl was standing beside him with her arm around him. Her face, clearly bruised and bloody just looked up at him.
    “Hi there, I’m John Halloway and this is Detective Griffin, we’re with the police trying to help you here. What’s your name?”
    “Melissa.” She said shyly.
    “Are you okay? You look like somebody punched you a couple of times?”
    The little girl just looked at him, then away. Her mind was going a mile a minute. She wasn’t sure what to tell this man. The last time she did, nobody believed her. They had beaten her just the same.
    “Was there somebody in the house with you last night?”
    “I didn’t see nobody.” She said, looking away from him. “I didn’t see nuthin’.”
    Chapter 21
    “This is bullshit, you know that?” Griffin was saying on the way back.
    “I know, but what can you do?” Halloway knew that something was just very wrong about this whole thing, just like the last one.
    “We can’t force them to say anything. They weren’t attacked that we know of. There was no robbery, nothing other than this woman’s husband stapled to the floor with the crap beat out of him. His genitals all wired up. He’d been tasered, did you see the marks?”
    “Let’s find out what we know about the man. See if it’s some kind of gang thing or if it’s a jealous husband. I really don’t think so, not one guy working alone. We need to check out everything. All the evidence says it’s our vigilante character. The MO is the same as the last one. But let’s look at all the angles anyway.”
    “Okay, but what about the little girl? She had some pretty good bruises on her face?” Laura wanted to know.
    “Child Services will look into that. It seems that if our perp had done it she would have said so.”
    They drove the rest of the way back in silence. Both of them lost in each other’s own thoughts.
    Halloway couldn’t help but think that the reasoning was the same behind both of them. That prick Radcliff had a history of abusing kids. He wasn’t absolutely sure at this point. By the looks of that little girl, it was clear that they were dealing with the same type of abuse.
    He looked over at Griffin and said, “Let’s look at this father