It’s my job to investigate apartments for hazardous materials or things like exposed wiring after tenants move out or get evicted. What I hate most are the surprises. Sometimes folks leave entire apartments full of broken furniture, rotting food, dirty laundry, rodents, and garbage. One thing I find unsettling is when I enter an apartment and see pictures of the former occupants, their memories frozen in time.
The last apartment I was assigned to was the worst yet. It was a ground floor unit in the back of this really run down apartment complex. The place was crawling with cockroaches and on the walls were smears of red and in the kitchen were dishes piled to the ceiling with a mountain of trash underneath. A woman and her two young boys lived here- a picture of the two boys hung on the refrigerator door next to a grainy photo of the mother. A social worker came by here responding to a request from PS 101 that the boys hadn’t been to school in ten days and discovered the entire family was gone.
The mother, who nobody in the building would describe as friendly, left a note explaining that she took the boys to their grandmothers and after that she actually came into the welfare office to pick up a check and reiterated the same thing. Probably for the best, wherever the boys are now is better than this place. I think on the last day they were seen the boys were visibly upset and pleading with their teacher that they didn't want to leave.
Unique to this apartment was the access to the back of the building. Although I couldn’t imagine anyone having parties back there, it sure did look like it was set up for barbecuing. In the back, against the wall, was a tall white freezer box that was still humming. The power in the apartment was shut off days ago so it was quite obvious that the box was powered from another source.
I motioned to my partner to investigate the freezer and the source of its power while I checked the gas stove in the kitchen. Before I was able to get underneath the stove my phone rang. It was a detective from the local precinct.
He asked me, “We have a tip that the two Jackson boys may be at the apartment you’re inspecting. I have a unit on the way over there now.”
I told him, “Nobody is here. The boys are with their mother in..”
My partner stumbled back inside making a lot of noise.
Putting my hand over the phone I asked him, “What is it?”
He pulled his mask off revealing his face drained of all color, "I know why the boys missed all of those days of school.”
From the muted phone in my hand I can hear the detective say, “No sir, that’s not what I mean.”
Submitted May 28, 2015 at 03:41AM by Magic-M http://ift.tt/1ex3mWI shortscarystories
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