The dimly lit apartment hallway smelled of mold and burnt breakfast.

What little light there was filtered through a window at the end of the hall that hadn't

been cleaned in a decade or more.

The place was disgusting, and I'd been in a hundred apartment buildings just like it,

scattered all across this city.

I'd walked into them after ducking under crime scene tape or signing in with a uniformed

officer, tasked with recording the comings and goings of all police officers and forensics

people.

I'd walked into apartments much like my daughters to see the signs left over for moments

or sometimes years of violence.

Blood splatter on the walls, knives protruding from flesh, toppled furniture and smashed

dishes in ransacked rooms.

And it was my job to put the pieces together, as much as they could be put together anyway.

It was no bringing the dead back, no gluing back together shattered lives.

These places always smelled of blood and fear, sweat.

They smelled of desperation and degradation.

As I banged on my daughter's door, I thought I could smell the telltale ol' factory

signs of recent violence coming from inside.

Please God, no, I thought, not her.

A door opened down the hall.

I turned to see a big man in a stretched and stained wife feeder.

Patchy, facial hair, doing nothing to hide is only a mother could love face.

...