She would rather die than land up in a place like this...

Oaklands retirement community. With its perfect lawns and roses and bird feeders in the trees. Perfect little houses all in a row. Pottery classes and choir practice and outings to the local grocery store once a week. And she would rather fucking drown than retire here and do aqua aerobics in a pool with a whole bunch of grey -haired woman who talk about their grandchildren all day. No, when it was her time, she would take herself out, big bang style.

She walked up to his front door and climbed under the crime scene tape. The owner of the retirement community had called her superior twice today asking if they could take the red and white tape down, as it was frightening the other villagers. God forbid any of them had a heart attack or something, he had said. Of course, no one could tell him why this was a crime scene either.

She reached for the door handle and it struck again.

"Owwe! " she winced and grabbed her stomach. Not again. She was getting these crazy stomach pains, that when they struck, they almost knocked her to the ground. She reached for the wall and steadied herself to let it pass. She'd been to every doctor she could and they'd stuck shit down her throat and up her ass and still no one could tell her what was wrong with her.

Her *Gogo had a theory, though. "You have a snake in your stomach because you are not listening to *the call."

Her pain started to subside and she straightened up. Superstitious crap. She came from a family with a long line and history of Sangoma's and when she had been born, her Gogo had had a dream in which the ancestors had come out of the sea and called for her to come with them...

"Hlengiwe, Hlengiwe, Hlengiwe."

Hlengiwe, that was her traditional Zulu name, but back then, choosing a name that the white people could say was what you did. Somehow, it had become Abigail, she had no idea how, but it just had.

She shook the pain off and unlocked the door. She stepped inside, it was dark and she felt around for the light switch, and when she turned it on...

"Fuck!" She reached for her firearm and took it out. The room was a mess. Cupboards had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor, the pillows had been thrown off the sofa. She heard a noise coming from the bedroom down the hall. Someone was there.

She crept down the hall and stopped outside his bedroom. The bedroom door was slightly ajar and she could see someone digging in the closet. She pushed her way into it and shouted.

"Hands up." She flipped the light switch on at the same time and a startled looking man fell out of the cupboard and rolled backwards, she recognized him from somewhere.

"Please don't shoot, don't shoot." The guy whimpered putting his hands in the air and crawling around on the floor like a baby. This was not a professional thief.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Edward Junior, this is my father's house." Yes, she'd seen his picture on the wall. He was the one with the hot wife and three pretty daughters. (His wife was a redhead, she had a thing for redheads.)

The guy looked so revolting crawling on his hands and knees and now he was tearing up, that she wanted to shoot him just because he pissed her off.

"Do you know this is a crime scene?" She kept her voice firm and he squirmed some more.

"Please don't shoot me. Please....." The guy let out a long whimper and she couldn't take it any longer.

"I'm not going to shoot you. Get up. I'm Detective Dlamini." She showed him her badge and helped the guy off the floor. He stood up and was shaking. She got a feel for this guy immediately. He was probably some high paid, geeky accountant who had never been in trouble in his life. He was that annoying lick-arse guy at school that got everyone into trouble and tattled to the teachers while Billy was smoking behind the school hall. He was that guy.

"What are you doing here, it's illegal to contaminate a crime scene." She said in a slightly softer voice, in case this guy had a heart attack.

Eddy Junior's face fell and he looked even whiter now. He sat on the edge of his father's bed and held his head in his hands. Oh Christ, was his son involved in this shit too? Did father-son bonding activities comprise of something other than going camping in the Lambrecht household? His foot was frantically tapping on the floor and she immediately ruled that thought out.

"Can I ask why this is even a crime scene? Was my father killed, or something?" His tone was strange, he was definitely hiding something, just not that.

"I'm not at liberty to say just yet."

The guy nodded and rolled his eyes, this was probably the tenth time he'd heard that today.

"What are you doing ransacking your father's place in the middle of the night Mr. Lambrecht?" She asked.

She was watching him closely now, studying his body language, and it was telling her a lot. His shoulders were tensing and he was wringing his hands together.

"What are you looking for?" She pressed again. He was getting more nervous and unnerved by the second, but remained silent. "We could do this here, or we could do this back at the police station. Your choice?"

He looked up at her and nodded slightly.

"You are entitled to a lawyer."

"God, no. No lawyers. Please. No. The fewer people that know about it...." he stopped mid-sentence and looked up at her. "I could do with a drink. Would you care to join me Detective?"

Abigail froze. This guy was about to tell her something big, he just needed the social lubrication, and quite frankly, so did she. But she couldn't...

28 days of pure hell. Her 9 month keying hanging from her car keys and a sponsor breathing down her neck. But he was about to tell her something...

But it also wasn't best practice to have drinks with the relative of a man that had just broken into and ransacked a crime scene in the wee hours of the morning, but her gut was telling her to go with it.

"I'm not on duty," she said and walked out the bedroom with him. He walked over to the liquor cabinet and took out two glasses and a bottle of whiskey. He poured two big glasses, the guy wasn't fucking around. She took the glass from him and waited for him to sip first, for him to started relaxing and talking.

He finished his drink in one mouthful and then pulled the bottle towards him and poured another one. He downed that too and his shoulders looked like they relaxed somewhat. She raised the glass to her lips. The smell of the booze made something shoot up her spine. She took a tiny sip, just enough to make him feel that they were sharing a moment. He could talk to her and open up.

"What are you looking for?" she asked again, trying to ignore the feeling that the alcohol was giving her. Her entire body was remembering that warm silky feeling and now it was crying out for more.

"What would happen to me if I didn't answer that?" he asked.

"Well, I'd arrest you and take you in for questioning, you'd probably spend the night in a holding cell, not sure your wife and kids could deal with that right now, and they'll all want to know why and..."

He downed another drink and poured another.

"Or, you and I could just have a conversation here now and take it from there."

She watched him closely, he was a few moments away from telling her, she needed to probe just a little bit more.

"You have three daughters, right?" she asked. At that, he flicked his eyes up to hers and a look of total horror rushed through them.

"What are you looking for?" She knew she had him now. She could see it in his eyes... he knew what she was referring to.

"When I was young, about ten, I came across these pictures my dad was keeping in a locked drawer in his office. They were photos...um, some looked older than others, some looked really old, though. Black and white even. I was too young to really understand them at the time." He paused and watched her. She took another sip.

"When I got married and my first daughter, Emily, was born, I started to think about those pictures again. They haunted me. I eventually confronted him one night... he didn't deny it, but he didn't admit to it either."

"So you were looking for the pictures?" Abigail asked. She suddenly felt sorry for this guy- to have seen that at such a young age, to find out your father was a monster... fuck.

He nodded and tears started streaming down his face. "I couldn't let my sisters see that, it would have killed them if they found them when packing up his place. I wanted to dispose of them, I wanted to..." He stopped and shook his head in silence.

"Do you remember what the girls in those photo's looked like?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

"Do you remember how many different girls there were?"

"Five, maybe more. I'm not sure."

She got up. "Wait here."

Abigail walked to her car, got her laptop bag out the trunk and took it inside. She opened it and took out the screen grabs of the girl from the video and laid them out in front of him. He looked up at the pictures and gasped. He covered his eyes, hung his head and started to cry.

*Gogo- Granny in Zulu

*The call- is the call to become a traditional healer, or Sangoma. A Sangoma is also knowen as a witch doctor on Nyanja. If you refuse the call to become one, it is said that you become sick. The call happens to anyone; some children as young as six years old, and even to white people. You cannot refuse the call. Like this 6 year old.. But the training can be very difficukt and long. 

https://youtu.be/RnYdjaX457k