Finally she skidded to a halt in front of a small white house with peeling paint. One front window was covered with a blanket from the inside.
“That one,” she sobbed. “Please.”
Hale reached the porch first and pushed the door open wider — it had been left slightly ajar.
The smell hit him immediately.
Burnt food. Damp air. Illness.
Inside, the living room was dim except for a television casting bluish light across the walls. A small boy — maybe four years old — sat on the floor wearing dinosaur pajamas, repeatedly shaking a woman’s shoulder.
“Mommy,” he whispered. “Mommy, wake up.”
The woman lay motionless beside the couch, her arm twisted beneath her. Her skin looked pale and clammy with fever.
On the coffee table sat an empty prescription bottle, a final notice from the electric company, and several unpaid hospital bills.
Brooks dropped to her knees beside the woman.
Hale glanced toward the kitchen and noticed a piece of paper taped to the refrigerator in uneven childlike handwriting.
It read:
“I went to get the police because I didn’t know who else could help us.”
For a terrifying moment, Hale thought they might already be too late.