The Fifth to Die: A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller
J.D. Barker
‘J.D. Barker is a one-of-a-kind writer and that’s a rare and special thing. Stephen King comes to mind and Lee Child, John Sanford. All one-of-a-kinds. Don’t miss anything J.D. writes.’ James PattersonMurder. It’s a family affair.In the midst of one of the worst winters Chicago has seen in years, the body of missing teenager Ella Reynolds is discovered under the surface of a frozen lake.She’s been missing for three weeks… the lake froze over three months ago.Detective Sam Porter and his team are brought in to investigate but it’s not long before another girl goes missing. The press believes the serial killer, Anson Bishop, has struck again but Porter knows differently. The deaths are too different, there’s a new killer on the loose.Porter however is distracted. He’s still haunted by Bishop and his victims, even after the FBI have removed him from the case. His only leads: a picture of a female prisoner and a note from Bishop: ‘Help me find my mother. I think it’s time she and I talked.’As more girls go missing and Porter’s team race to stop the body count rising, Porter disappears to track down Bishop’s mother and discover that the only place scarier than the mind of a serial killer is the mind of the mother from which he came.Perfect for fans of Helen Fields, Val McDermid and Jo Nesbo this gripping and twisted thriller will have you wondering, how do you stop a killer when he’s been trained from birth?What readers are saying about J.D. Barker:'This author is indeed devious for he has literally captured his audience , what a cliffhanger!''another dark , gritty story that's impossible to put down!''Genuinely shocking. Need more NOW…Did not expect THAT.''This is such an amazing series, you’re missing out if you’ve not sprung on the wagon!''This was a crazily addictive read to me and J.D. Barker has so earned his stripes for me as a horror/thriller writer.'
J. D. BARKER is the international bestselling author of The Fourth Monkey, the first in the Detective Porter series. Barker splits his time between Englewood, Florida and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Also in the Detective Porter Series
The Fourth Monkey
Also by J. D. Barker
Forsaken
Copyright (#ulink_7521112a-b4a8-5531-a1b5-e83dea14f604)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © J. D. Barker 2018
J. D. Barker asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008250409
Version: 2018-06-25
For Father
Contents
Cover (#u501bae39-0695-5f50-9689-1bbe33111566)
About the Author (#u4919703e-712a-549c-8d8d-6bbb06fd651d)
Booklist (#u0bf9022b-2cee-5a13-bf75-db542bd0edf6)
Title Page (#uf319663c-afd2-53b7-a551-1e6a7ae1b8e9)
Copyright (#ulink_cfc9baaa-430a-5536-9fcc-7d2d646343a9)
Dedication (#ud26366f2-7a42-5dec-83d6-abc27daf9ea3)
1. Porter: Day 1 • 8:23 p.m. (#u05879b41-0f10-582a-8ba7-be9196d1fd96)
2. Porter: Day 1 • 11:24 p.m. (#ue2cfea2c-775c-566f-929b-cd915125ec2e)
3. Porter: Day 2 • 2:21 a.m. (#u71d43b83-2ea5-5480-806a-0e69704c6f38)
4. Porter: Day 2 • 3:02 a.m. (#u5444afdb-cb0f-51e3-875f-d52ddb23e285)
5. Porter: Day 2 • 4:18 a.m. (#u367ff8f3-149f-52d5-92ea-16d32f0d7276)
6. Porter: Day 2 • 7:26 a.m. (#u8270f0ba-da09-5f56-8e03-74b8651e0d60)
7. Lili: Day 2 • 7:26 a.m. (#ueb36cdc7-4468-5027-a72c-1046fefb31a1)
8. Porter: Day 2 • 7:56 a.m. (#ucf070763-6fd6-5279-b10e-0ec26bf0414b)
9. Porter: Day 2 • 7:59 a.m. (#ue7b288de-40a2-5faa-9542-605640d9f027)
10. Porter: Day 2 • 9:08 a.m. (#u9c111f43-14a7-585e-8923-056513eace44)
11. Lili: Day 2 • 9:12 a.m. (#ub8bbbf2a-b347-59dd-a6d1-330eaab0ba68)
12. Clair: Day 2 • 9:13 a.m. (#u73e22ff9-d729-563a-84ed-3c308c8f24d6)
13. Porter: Day 2 • 9:14 a.m. (#u12f94858-3335-5f30-9e31-3dd2d9892d76)
14. Lili: Day 2 • 9:15 a.m. (#u369401a7-f7a6-5eb7-a1c8-c5904b978580)
15. Clair: Day 2 • 9:17 a.m. (#u33f11d17-33f8-5112-b0e8-7783e380486e)
16. Porter: Day 2 • 10:26 a.m. (#u13fde00e-3ca0-5ceb-96ec-8dc120fd5bdc)
17. Clair: Day 2 • 10:26 a.m. (#ub8043320-c32b-5e2c-bfef-08f56e394c97)
18. Porter: Day 2 • 10:31 a.m. (#uca422037-ef3f-51a1-a1b8-c1acb7042a03)
19. Lili: Day 2 • 11:36 a.m. (#uc563dfd7-b06a-5f78-88a3-cc12f33817bc)
20. Clair: Day 2 • 11:49 a.m. (#uc1d22cc8-820f-5de3-bb74-0653986dd0ef)
21. Porter: Day 2 • 12:18 p.m. (#ub5741a47-4aa4-5641-931b-52f60e5b6497)
22. Lili: Day 2 • 12:19 p.m. (#u4d74dd1c-e278-5c3d-92bc-1304603e1013)
23. Nash: Day 2 • 12:20 p.m. (#ud0a6b810-3708-5c2d-9ebf-aeb8d39bdc76)
24. Clair: Day 2 • 12:46 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
25. Poole: Day 2 • 1:03 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
26. Porter: Day 2 • 1:04 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
27. The Man in the Black Knit Cap: Day 2 • 1:14 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
28. Porter: Day 2 • 2:17 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
29. Clair: Day 2 • 6:23 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
30. Clair: Day 2 • 6:51 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
31. Poole: Day 2 • 7:04 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
32. Poole: Day 2 • 7:12 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
33. Porter: Day 2 • 10:04 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
34. Clair: Day 3 • 4:56 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
35. Nash: Day 3 • 6:43 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
36. Poole: Day 3 • 6:44 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
37. Larissa: Day 3 • 7:21 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
38. Porter: Day 3 • 7:33 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
39. Clair: Day 3 • 8:13 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
40. Porter: Day 3 • 8:16 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
41. Larissa: Day 3 • 8:53 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
42. Clair: Day 3 • 8:59 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
43. Poole: Day 3 • 9:23 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
44. Porter: Day 3 • 9:33 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
45. Larissa: Day 3 • 10:06 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
46. Nash: Day 3 • 10:07 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
47. Porter: Day 3 • 10:36 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
48. Nash: Day 3 • 10:40 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
49. Porter: Day 3 • 10:42 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
50. Poole: Day 3 • 11:02 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
51. Larissa: Day 3 • 11:21 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
52. Clair: Day 3 • 12:23 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
53. Poole: Day 3 • 1:18 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
54. Clair: Day 3 • 1:31 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
55. Porter: Day 3 • 1:35 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
56. Poole: Day 3 • 1:35 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
57. The Man in the Black Knit Cap: Day 3 • 1:35 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
58. Porter: Day 3 • 1:36 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
59. Poole: Day 3 • 2:03 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
60. The Man in the Black Knit Cap: Day 3 • 2:04 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
61. Poole: Day 3 • 2:04 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
62. The Man in the Black Knit Cap: Day 3 • 2:04 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
63. Poole: Day 3 • 2:05 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
64. The Man in the Black Knit Cap: Day 3 • 2:05 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
65. Porter: Day 3 • 2:06 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
66. Poole: Day 3 • 2:23 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
67. Poole: Day 3 • 2:26 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
68. Clair: Day 3 • 2:30 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
69. Poole: Day 3 • 5:18 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
70. Kati: Day 3 • 5:20 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
71. Clair: Day 3 • 5:43 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
72. Clair: Day 3 • 6:04 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
73. Porter: Day 3 • 8:06 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
74. Clair: Day 3 • 8:07 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
75. Porter: Day 3 • 8:07 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
76. Poole: Day 3 • 8:07 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
77. Porter: Day 3 • 8:07 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
78. Clair: Day 3 • 8:15 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
79. Porter: Day 3 • 9:10 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
80. Kati: Day 3 • 9:11 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
81. Porter: Day 3 • 9:13 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
82. Clair: Day 3 • 9:14 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
83. Porter: Day 3 • 9:44 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
84. Poole: Day 3 • 9:49 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
85. Kati: Day 3 • 9:52 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
86. Poole: Day 3 • 9:52 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
87. Poole: Day 3 • 9:55 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
88. Poole: Day 3 • 10:15 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
89. Porter: Day 3 • 10:16 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
90. Poole: Day 3 • 10:23 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
91. Porter: Day 3 • 10:26 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
92. Porter: Day 4 • 3:42 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
93. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
94. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
95. Poole: Day 4 • 4:38 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
96. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
97. Porter: Day 4 • 7:13 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
98. Porter: Day 4 • 7:57 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
99. Gabby: Day 4 • 8:03 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
100. Porter: Day 4 • 8:24 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
101. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
102. Clair: Day 4 • 8:28 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
103. Gabby: Day 4 • 8:49 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
104. Poole: Day 4 • 8:50 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
105. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
106. Clair: Day 4 • 10:12 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
107. Poole: Day 4 • 12:58 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
108. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
109. Clair: Day 4 • 1:12 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
110. Poole: Day 4 • 3:47 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
111. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
112. Nash: Day 4 • 4:06 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
113. Poole: Day 4 • 4:06 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
114. Nash: Day 4 • 4:07 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
115. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
116. Nash: Day 4 • 5:23 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
117. Clair: Day 4 • 6:07 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
118. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
119. Poole: Day 4 • 6:38 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
120. Clair: Day 4 • 7:13 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
121. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
122. Porter: Day 4 • 8:01 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
123. Poole: Day 4 • 8:07 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
124. Clair: Day 4 • 8:08 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
125. Poole: Day 4 • 8:08 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
126. Porter: Day 4 • 8:09 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
127. Poole: Day 4 • 8:09 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
128. Porter: Day 4 • 8:14 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
129. Kloz: Day 4 • 9:11 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
130. Clair: Day 4 • 9:15 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
131. Nash: Day 4 • 9:43 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
132. Diary (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 1 • 8:23 p.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Darkness.
It swirled around him deep and thick, eating the light and leaving nothing behind but an inky void. A fog choked his thoughts — the words tried to come together, tried to form a cohesive sentence, to find meaning, but the moment they seemed close, they were swallowed up and gone, replaced by a growing sense of dread, a feeling of heaviness — his body sinking into the murky depths of a long-forgotten body of water.
Moist scent.
Mildew.
Damp.
Sam Porter wanted to open his eyes.
Had to open his eyes.
They fought him though, held tight.
His head ached, throbbed.
A pulsing pain behind his right ear — at his temple too.
“Try not to move, Sam. Wouldn’t want you to get sick.”
The voice was distant, muffled, familiar.
Porter was lying down.
Cold steel beneath the tips of his fingers.
He remembered the shot then. A needle at the base of his neck, a quick stab, cold liquid rushing under his skin into the muscle, then —
Porter forced his eyes to open, the heavy lids fighting him. Dry, burning.
He tried to rub them, his right hand reaching out only to be pulled back when the chain at his wrist went taut.
His breath caught, and he forced himself to a sitting position, his head spinning as the blood rushed out. He almost fell back.
“Whoa, easy, Sam. The etorphine will work out of your system quickly now that you’re awake. Just give it a minute.”
A light blinked on, a bright halogen aimed squarely at his face. Porter squinted but refused to look away, his eyes fixed on the man beside the light, the dull, shadowed shape.
“Bishop?” Porter barely recognized his own voice, the dry gravel of it.
“How you been, Sam?” The shadow took a step to his right, turned over an empty five-gallon paint bucket, and sat.
“Get that damn light out of my eyes.”
Porter yanked at the chain on his wrist — the other end of the handcuffs rattled around a thick pipe — water, maybe gas. “What the fuck is this?”
Anson Bishop reached over to the light and turned it slightly to the left. A shop light, mounted on some kind of stand. The light struck a cinder-block wall with a water heater in the far corner, an old washer and dryer along the far side.
“Better?”
Porter tugged at the chain again.
Bishop gave him a half smile and shrugged.
The last time Porter saw him, his hair was dark brown and close cropped. It was longer now, and lighter, unruly. Three or four days of scruff marred his face. His business casual attire was gone, replaced by jeans and a dark gray hoodie.
“You’re looking a little ratty,” Porter said.
“Desperate times.”
He couldn’t change his eyes, the coldness behind them.
His eyes never changed.
Bishop pulled a small spoon out of his back pocket, a grapefruit spoon, and twirled it absent-mindedly between his fingers, the serrated edge catching the light.
Porter didn’t acknowledge the utensil. Instead, he looked down, tapping the metal beneath him with his index finger. “Is this the same kind of gurney you chained Emory to?”
“More or less.”
“Couldn’t find a cot?”
“Cots break.”
A dark red stain pooled out from under the gurney, a deep blemish on the filthy concrete floor. Porter didn’t ask about that. His fingers came away sticky after touching the underside of the metal. He didn’t ask about that, either. A few shelves lined the wall to his left, stacked full with random painting supplies — cans, brushes, tarps. The ceiling above was constructed of wood, two-by-six boards spaced about sixteen inches apart. Exposed electrical wiring, water pipes, and air ducts filled the space between. “This is a residential basement. Not a big house. Older, though. That pipe above your head is shielded in asbestos, so I wouldn’t recommend chewing on it. I’m guessing the place is abandoned, because your light there is plugged in to an extension cord running upstairs to . . . what, some kind of battery pack? Not a generator. We’d hear that. You didn’t bother with any of these plugs along the wall, so that tells me the power isn’t on in this place. It’s also cold as balls. I can see my breath, so the heat isn’t on. Again, that points to an abandoned house. Nobody wants to risk frozen pipes.”
Bishop appeared pleased with this, a thin smile edging his lips.
Porter continued. “Wall to wall, this house is fairly narrow. That suggests a shotgun home. Considering you wouldn’t want to be in one of the trendier neighborhoods where residents have Starbucks, the Internet, and tend to report known felons to the police on sight, I’d say you’re more likely to stick to the West Side. Maybe someplace like Wood Street. A lot of empty houses on Wood.”
With his free hand, Porter reached for his gun under his thick coat but found only the empty holster. His cell phone was gone too.
“Always the cop.”
Wood Street was a good fifteen-minute drive without traffic from his apartment on Wabash, and Porter had been a block from his house when he felt the stab at his neck. Of course, this was all a complete guess, but Porter wanted to keep Bishop talking. The more he talked, the less he thought about that spoon.
The throbbing in Porter’s head settled behind his right eye.
“Aren’t you going to try and convince me to turn myself in? How you can spare me from the death penalty if I cooperate?”
“Nope.”
This time Bishop did smile. “Hey, you want to see something?”
Porter would have said no, but he knew whatever he said didn’t really matter. This man had a plan in mind, a purpose. Snatching a Chicago Metro detective off the street was not a risk one would take without a good reason.
He could feel his key ring in his right front pocket. Bishop had left it when he took his gun and phone. He had a handcuff key on his key ring, and most handcuffs took the same key. While he was a rookie, he was told this was because the person who cuffed a perp most likely wouldn’t be the same person who would later uncuff the perp. A suspect could easily be transferred two or three times during booking. That in mind, they were taught to take away keys when patting someone down, all keys. Any criminal worth their salt owned their own handcuff key on the off chance some rookie forgot to check. Porter would have to remove the key ring from his right pocket, somehow maneuver it to his left hand, unlock the handcuffs, and take down Bishop before the man could cross the five feet that separated them.
The man didn’t appear to have a weapon, only a spoon.
“Eyes front, Sam,” Bishop said.
Porter turned back to him.
Bishop stood up and crossed the basement to a small table next to the washing machine. He returned to his seat, carrying a small wooden box with Porter’s Glock sitting on top. He set the gun down on the floor beside him and thumbed the latch on the box, opening the lid.
Six eyeballs stared up at Porter from the red velvet lining inside.
Bishop’s past victims.
Porter looked down at the gun.
“Eyes front,” Bishop repeated with a soft chuckle.
This wasn’t right. Bishop always followed the same pattern. He would remove his victims’ ear, then the eyes, followed by the tongue, and mail each to the victim’s family along with a note in a white box tied off with a black string. Always. He never deviated from this. He didn’t keep trophies. He believed he was punishing the family for some wrong they committed. Twisted vigilante justice. He didn’t keep the eyes. He never kept the —
“We’d better get started. “Bishop ran his hand over the top of the box, a loving caress, then set it down on the floor beside the gun and held the spoon up to the light.
Porter rolled off the gurney, crying out when the metal of the handcuff tore into the flesh of his wrist, the pipe pulled back. He tried to ignore the pain and awkwardly shoved his left hand down into his right pocket to retrieve the keys while also kicking the gurney in Bishop’s direction. His fingers slipped over the keys as Bishop dodged the gurney and thrust his leg out, impacting Porter’s left shin. Porter’s leg fell out from beneath him, and he crashed down to the ground, the handcuff on his right arm catching on the pipe and yanking him hard enough to dislocate his shoulder.
Before he could react, he felt the sting of another needle, this one at his thigh. He tried to look down, but Bishop pulled at his hair, snapping his head back.
Consciousness began to drift away. Porter fought it, fought with all he had. He fought long enough to see the grapefruit spoon approach his left eye, long enough to feel the serrated edge cut into the tarsal plate beneath his eyeball as Bishop forced the spoon into his eye socket, long enough for —
“Was she hot?”
Porter jerked in his seat, a seat belt holding him back. He took in a deep breath, his head thrashing side to side, his eyes landing on Nash in the driver’s seat. “What? Who?”
Nash smirked. “The girl from your dream. You were moaning.”
Six eyeballs.
Porter, still disoriented, realized he was in the passenger seat of Nash’s Chevy, an old ’72 Nova he’d picked up two months back when his prized Ford Fiesta sputtered and died on the 290 at three in the morning, forcing him to call headquarters for a ride when he couldn’t reach Porter.
Porter looked out the window. It was coated in a thin film of road grime and ice. “Where are we?”
“We’re on Hayes, coming up on the park,” he replied, flipping on his blinker. “Maybe you should sit this one out.”
Porter shook his head. “I’m all right.”
Nash made the left into Jackson Park and followed the recently plowed access road, the red and blue flashing lights bouncing off the dark trees around them. “It’s been four months, Sam. If you’re still having trouble sleeping, you should talk to someone. Doesn’t have to be me or Clair, just . . . someone.”
“I’m all right,” Porter repeated.
They passed a baseball field on the right, forgotten for the winter, and continued deeper into the bare trees. Up ahead there were more lights — a half dozen cars, maybe more. Four uniform patrol vehicles, an ambulance, a fire department van. Large floodlights lined the edge of the lagoon, and propane heaters littered an area roped in by yellow crime scene tape.
Nash pulled to a stop behind the van, dropped the car into Park, and killed the engine. It sputtered twice and sounded like it was gearing up for a stellar backfire before finally going silent. Porter noted several officers staring in their direction as they climbed out of the car into the icy winter air.
“We could have driven my car,” Porter told Nash, his boots crunching in the newly fallen snow.
Porter owned a 2011 Dodge Charger.
Most of their coworkers referred to the vehicle as Porter’s “midlife crisis car”— it had replaced a Toyota Camry two years back on his fiftieth birthday. Porter’s late wife, Heather, bought the sports car for him as a surprise after their Toyota was vandalized and left for dead in one of the less “police-friendly” parts of town on the South Side. Porter was first to admit sitting behind the wheel shaved a few years off his subconscious age, but mostly the car just made him smile.
Heather had baked the key into his birthday cake, and he almost chipped a tooth when he found it.
She led him down the steps and out in front of their apartment blindfolded, then sang “Happy Birthday” to him in a voice that had little chance of getting her on American Idol.
Porter thought of her every time he climbed in, but it seemed fewer and fewer things reminded him of her these days, her face gradually becoming a little more fuzzy in his mind.
“Your car is part of the problem. We always drive your car, and Connie over there spends her days rotting in my driveway. If I drive her, I’m reminded of the fact that I want to restore her. If I’m reminded of the fact that I want to restore her, I might actually get out to the garage and work on it.”
“Connie?”
“Cars should have a name.”
“No, they shouldn’t. Cars shouldn’t have names, and you have no idea how to restore her . . . it . . . whatever. I think you got that beater home, and the first time you picked up a wrench you realized you wouldn’t be done in forty-three minutes like those guys on Overhaulin’,” Porter said.
“That show is bullshit. They should tell you how long it really takes.”
“Could be worse. At least you didn’t get hooked on HGTV and convince yourself you can flip a house in your spare time.”
“This is true. Although, they knock those out in twenty-two minutes for a much bigger return on investment,” Nash replied. “If I did a house or two, I could pay someone to restore the car. Hey, there’s Clair —”
They crossed under the yellow crime scene tape and made their way toward the shore of the lagoon. Clair was standing next to one of the heaters, her cell phone pressed to her ear. When she saw them, she nodded toward the shoreline, covered the microphone, and said, “We think that’s Ella Reynolds,” before returning to her call.
Porter’s heart sank.
Ella Reynolds was a fifteen-year-old girl who had gone missing after school near Logan Square three weeks earlier. She was last seen getting off her bus about two blocks from her home. Her parents wasted no time reporting her missing, and the Amber Alerts were running within an hour of her disappearance. Little good they did. The police hadn’t received a single worthwhile tip.
Nash started toward the water’s edge, and Porter followed.
The lagoon was frozen.
Four orange cones lined the ice offshore, yellow tape running between them, creating a rectangle. The snow had been swept away.
Porter tentatively stepped out onto the ice, listening for the telltale crackle beneath his feet. No matter how many boot tracks waffled the lagoon’s frozen surface, it always made him nervous when they were his boots.
As Porter edged closer, the girl came into view. The ice was clear as glass.
She stared up through it with blank eyes.
Her skin was horribly pale, with a blue tint except around those eyes. There, her skin was a dark purple. Her lips were parted as if she were about to say something, words that would never come.
Porter knelt to get a better look.
She wore a red coat, black jeans, a white knit cap with matching gloves, and what looked like pink tennis shoes. Her arms were loose at her sides, and her legs curved beneath her, disappearing into the dark water. Water normally bloated bodies, but at these temperatures the cold tended to preserve them. Porter preferred bloated. When they appeared less human, he found it easier to process what he was looking at — he was less emotional.
This girl looked like somebody’s baby, helpless and alone, sleeping under a blanket of glass.
Nash stood behind him, his eyes scanning the trees across the water. “They held the World’s Fair out here in 1893. There used to be a Japanese garden across the lagoon, that whole wooded area over there. My father used to bring me up here when I was a kid. He said it went to shit during World War II. I think I read somewhere they got the funding to restore it in the spring. See all the marked trees? They’re coming down.”
Porter followed his partner’s gaze. The lagoon split into two branches — east and west — enclosing a small island. Many of the trees on Wooded Island had pink ribbons tied around them. A couple of benches littered the opposite shore, covered in a thin layer of white. “When do you suppose this freezes?”
Nash thought about this for a second. “Maybe late December, early January. Why?”
“If this is Ella Reynolds, how’d she get under the ice? She disappeared three weeks ago. It would have been frozen solid at that point.”
Nash loaded a recent photo of Ella Reynolds on his phone and showed it to Porter.“Looks like her, but maybe it’s just a coincidence — some other girl who fell through back when it was still soft.”
“Looks just like her, though.”
Clair came up beside them. She blew into her hands and rubbed them together. “That was Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children — I sent her a picture, and she swears this is Ella Reynolds, but the clothes aren’t a match. She says Ella was wearing a black coat when she disappeared. Three corroborating witnesses put her in a black coat on the bus, not red. She called the girl’s mother — she said her daughter doesn’t own a red coat, white hat, or white gloves.”
“So either this is an entirely different girl, or somebody changed her clothes,” Porter said. “We’re a good fifteen miles from where Ella disappeared.”
Clair bit at her lower lip. “The ME will have to get a positive ID.”
“Who found her?”
Clair pointed to a patrol car at the far perimeter. “A little boy and his father — the kid’s twelve.” She glanced at the notes on her phone. “Scott Watts. He came out here with his father to see if the lagoons had frozen over enough for some skating lessons. Father’s name is Brian. Said his son brushed away the snow and saw part of her arm. The father told his son to stand back and cleared away a little more on his own — enough to confirm it was a person — then he called 911. That was about an hour ago. The call came in at seven twenty-nine. I stowed them in a patrol car, in case you wanted to speak to them.”
Porter scraped at the ice with his pointer finger, then glanced along the shoreline. Two CSI officers stood off to their left, eyeing the three of them warily. “Which one of you cleared this?” he asked.
The younger of the two, a woman who looked to be about thirty, with short blond hair, glasses, and a thick pink coat, raised her hand. “I did, sir.”
Her partner shuffled his feet. He looked to be about five years her senior. “I supervised. Why?”
“Nash? Hand me that?” He pointed toward a brush with long, white bristles sitting on top of one of the CSI officers’ kits.
Porter motioned for the two officers to come over. “It’s okay, I don’t usually bite.”
Back in November, Porter returned early from a leave of absence forced on him when his wife was killed during the robbery of a local convenience store. He had wanted to keep working, mainly because the work distracted him, kept his mind off what happened.
The days following her death, when he locked himself in their apartment, those were by far the worst. Reminders were everywhere.
Her face watched him from pictures on nearly every shelf. Her scent was in the air — for the first week, he couldn’t sleep unless he spread some of her clothes on the bed. He sat in that apartment and thought of nothing but what he would do to the guy who killed her, thoughts he didn’t want in his head.
Ultimately, the Four Monkey Killer had gotten him out of that apartment.
It was also 4MK who exacted revenge on the man who killed Porter’s wife. 4MK was the reason people like these two CSI officers acted odd around him. Not exactly intimidation, more like awe.
He was the cop who had let 4MK into the investigation under the guise of CSI. He was the cop 4MK stabbed in his own home. He was the cop who caught the serial killer and let him go.
Four months later, and they all talked about it, just not to him.
The two officers walked over.
The woman crouched down beside him.
Porter used the brush to clear away the snow nearest the shoreline and along the outer edges they’d previously cleared. When he expanded the circle by another two feet, he set the brush down and ran his palm over the ice, starting at the center and slowly moving out toward the edge. He stopped about four inches from the snow. “There. Feel that.”
The younger investigator removed her glove and hesitantly followed his lead, her fingertips brushing the ice.
She stopped about an inch from his palm.
“Do you feel that?”
She nodded. “There’s a small dip. Not much, but it’s there.”
“Follow it around. Mark it with this.” He handed her a Sharpie.
A minute later she had drawn a neat square over the body, with two smaller squares approximately four inches wide jutting out on each side.
“Guess that answers that,” Porter said.
Nash frowned. “What are we looking at?”
Porter stood, helping the woman to her feet. “What’s your name?”
“CSI Lindsy Rolfes, sir.”
“CSI Rolfes, can you explain what this means?”
She thought about it for a second, her eyes darting from Porter to the ice, then back again. Then she understood. “The lagoon was frozen, and someone cut the ice, probably with a cordless chainsaw, then put her in the water. If she’d fallen in, there’d be a jagged break, not a square like this. But this doesn’t make sense . . .”
“What?”
She frowned, reached into her kit, took out a cordless drill, attached a one-inch bit, and made two holes, one outside her line, the other near the body. With a ruler, she then measured the depth of both from the top to the water. “I don’t get it — she’s beneath the freeze line.”
“I don’t follow,” Clair said.
“He replaced the water,” Porter said.
Rolfes nodded. “Yeah, but why? He could have cut a hole and pushed her body under the existing ice, then let the hole freeze up naturally. That would have been much faster and easier. She would have disappeared, maybe for good.”
Clair sighed. “Can you explain for those of us who didn’t take Ice-hole 101?”
Porter motioned for the ruler, and Rolfes handed it to him. “The ice here is at least four inches thick. You can see the water line here.” He pointed at the mark on the ruler. “If you cut out a square of this ice and removed it, there would be a four-inch ledge from the top of the ice to the water. Then let’s say you put the girl’s body in the hole, she sinks, and you want to make the hole disappear. There’s only one way to do that. You’d have to wait for the water to freeze around her, at least a thin layer, then fill the hole with more water to the top of the ice, level it off.”
“It would take at least two hours to freeze,” Rolfes said. “Maybe a little less, with the temperatures we’ve had lately.”
Porter was nodding. “He kept adding water until this fresh ice was at the same height as the surrounding ice. Our unsub is patient. This was very time consuming.” He turned to the CSI supervisor. “We’ll need this ice. Everything on top of her, and at least a few inches surrounding this square. There’s a good chance some trace got in with the water while it froze. Our unsub hovered here for a long time.”
The supervisor looked like he was about to argue, then nodded reluctantly. He knew Porter was right.
Porter’s gaze went back to the overgrown mess of trees across the water. “What I don’t understand is why whoever did this didn’t dump her over there. Dragging a body out here in the open, taking the time to cut the ice, fill it, wait for it to freeze . . . that’s a lot of risk. The unsub could have carried her across the bridge and left her anywhere over there, and she’d go undiscovered until spring when they started work. Instead, he spends hours to stage her in the water near a high-traffic area. Risks getting caught. Why? To create the illusion that she was here much longer than she really had been? He had to know we’d figure that out.”
“Dead bodies don’t float,” Nash pointed out. “At least, not for a few days. Look at her. She’s perfectly preserved. I’m still not sure why she’s floating.”
Porter ran his finger along the edge of the square, stopping at one of the two smaller squares on the side. He lowered his face to the ice, looking down at her from the side. “I’ll be damned.”
“What?” Rolfes leaned in.
Porter ran his hand over the ice, above the girl’s shoulders. When he found what he was looking for, he placed Rolfes’s hand over it. She looked at him, her eyes growing as her fingers dug slightly into the ice. She reached for the same spot on the other side. “He kept her from sinking by placing something over this hole, probably a length of two-by-four based on these marks, then ran a string or thin rope around her body at the shoulders, and secured it to the board while the replacement water froze. When he was done, he cut the string. You can still feel the nubs here in the ice. There’s enough left to keep her near the surface. You can see a thin rope if you look through the ice at the right angle.”
“He wanted her to be found?” Clair said.
“He wanted to make an impact if she was found,” Porter replied. “He went through a lot of trouble to stage this so it appeared like she froze beneath the lake’s surface months ago, even though she’s only been here for a few days at best, possibly less. We need to figure out why.”
“This guy is playing with us,” CSI Rolfes said. “Twisting the crime scene to fit some kind of narrative.”
Self-preservation and fear are two of the strongest instincts of the human condition. Porter wasn’t sure he wanted to meet the man who possessed neither. “Get her out of there,” he finally said.
2 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 1 • 11:24 p.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
“You want me to come up?”
They were parked in front of Porter’s building on Wabash. Nash tapped at the gas to keep Connie from stalling. The night had grown bitterly cold.
Porter shook his head. “Go home and get some rest. We’ll hit the ground running in the morning.”
Using chainsaws, CSI had cut the ice around the girl as one large square, then carefully broke the ice away in manageable pieces, which were loaded into buckets and transported back to the crime lab for analysis. The girl’s body went to the morgue for identification. Porter put a call in to Tom Eisley, and the man agreed to go in early and contact him as soon as they made a positive identification. Uniformed patrol officers were still searching the park when Porter and Nash left, but at that point they had not found anything. Clair agreed to stay and review footage taken by the lone security camera placed at the park’s entrance. She wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for, and Porter couldn’t give her any direction other than to watch for something unusual over the previous three weeks, particularly after hours. The park itself closed at dusk, and after that, aside from a few lights in the most common areas, the grounds were dark. There were no permanent lights at the lagoon. Anyone coming or going after dark would stand out.
“About earlier, on the way to the lagoon —” Porter began.
Nash cut him off. “You don’t have to explain. It’s okay.”
Porter waved a hand in the air. “I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep. Not since Heather died. Every time I step into our apartment, the place feels so empty. I expect her to come walking in from one of the other rooms or through the front door with an armload of groceries, and she never does. I don’t want to glance over and see her side of the bed empty. I don’t want to see her toothbrush in the bathroom, but I can’t bring myself to throw it out. Same with her clothes. About a week ago I nearly boxed everything up for Goodwill. I got the first blouse into a box but had to stop. Shuffling her clothes around had filled the air with her scent, and it was almost like she was back again, if only for a little while. I know I have to move forward, but I’m not sure I can. Not yet, anyway.”
Nash reached over and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “You will. When the time is right, you will. Nobody is rushing you. You just need to know we’re all here for you. If you need anything at all.” Nash fumbled with the steering wheel, tugging at a flap in the faux leather. “Maybe it would help to move. Find a new place, start over.”
Porter shook his head. “I can’t do that. We found this place together. It’s home.”
“Maybe a vacation, then?” Nash suggested. “You’ve got plenty of time off saved up.”
“Maybe, yeah.” Porter stared up at the face of his building.
He wouldn’t move. Not anytime soon.
The door of the Chevy squeaked as Porter tugged the handle and stepped out. “Holy balls, it’s cold.”
“Time to break out the long johns and whiskey.”
Porter knocked on the roof of the car twice. “If you put some time into this thing, it could be one sweet ride.”
Nash offered a smile. “Meet in the war room at seven?”
“Yeah, seven’s good.”
Then he was gone.
Porter watched the car disappear down the road before making his way into the small foyer of his building, carefully avoiding the piles of frozen dog poop on the steps. He passed the mailboxes and took the stairs. He didn’t do elevators anymore, not if given a choice.
Stepping into his apartment, he was assaulted by the mixed odors of a dozen take-out meals. The worst of the perpetrators, a pile of pizza boxes on the kitchen table, filled the air with stale cheese and old pepperoni.
Porter hung his coat over the back of a chair and stepped into the bedroom, flipping on the light.
The bed had been pushed to the far corner of the room, along with the two nightstands.
Hundreds of pictures and notes, Post-its, and newspaper articles filled the wall where the bed used to be. Some were connected by string. When he ran out of string, he drew lines with a black marker.
This was everything he had on 4MK, or Anson Bishop, or Paul Watson — all of them one and the same. He had details on Bishop’s past crimes, but mostly he focused on just where Bishop might have gone after his escape.
In the corner of the room, a laptop sat on the floor, the screen glowing bright. Porter lifted it up and studied the display. He used Google alerts (surprisingly simple for someone lacking the most basic computer skills) to flag every mention, every story, every sighting of Bishop, Watson, or 4MK on the Internet and drop the results into his personal e-mail account. Sometimes it would take hours, but he would sort through each message and plot out the locations mentioned on the large world map tacked to the wall at the center of all his other data. Maps too. Dozens of detailed maps, all the major cities.
Four months of data.
Thumbtacks filled the maps — red represented a sighting, blue for the location of the reporter writing the story, and yellow for the home of anyone who had gone missing or had been murdered in a way similar to 4MK’s MO. The copycats were everywhere. While many of the thumbtacks centered on Chicago, they went as far as Brazil and Moscow.
Porter picked up a yellow thumbtack and located the lagoon at Jackson Park on the Chicago map. “Ella Reynolds, missing since January 22, 2015, possibly found February 12, 2015,” he mumbled to himself. He had no reason to believe 4MK was responsible, but that tack would stay there until he was sure he was not.
His eyes were heavy with lack of sleep.
He had a brutal headache.
He sat in the middle of the floor and began sifting through all the Google alerts for today, all 159 of them.
When his phone rang two hours later, he considered ignoring the call, then thought better of it. Nobody called at one thirty in the morning without reason.
“Porter,” he said.
Why did his voice always sound louder in the middle of the night?
At first there was silence. Then: “Detective? This is Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children. I got your number from Clair Norton.”
“What can I do for you, Ms. Rodriguez?”
More silence. “We have another missing girl. You and your partner need to get down here.”
3 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 2:21 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Here turned out to be a graystone in Bronzeville on King Drive.
Rodriguez didn’t provide any details when she called, only said this case tied to the body of the girl found in the park earlier, and he’d want to be there.
Porter parked his Charger on the street behind Nash’s Chevy and trudged through the snowbank at the side of the road and up into the home at the corner. There was no need to knock. A uniformed officer at the door recognized him and ushered him inside. He found Nash and a woman he didn’t recognize sitting in a parlor to the left of the entrance. A man in his late forties, salt-and-pepper hair, fit, wearing a tweed sport coat and jeans, stood beside Nash. Another woman, no doubt his wife, sat on the couch with a crushed tissue in her hand.
The woman sitting beside her rose as Porter entered the room. “Detective Porter? I’m Sophie Rodriguez from Missing Children. Thank you for coming. I know it’s late.”
Porter shook her hand and studied the room.
Most of these graystones had been built around the turn of the twentieth century. This particular one had been painstakingly restored with original trim and fixtures. The rugs looked authentic too but had to be knockoffs, careful reproductions of the originals. Antique furniture filled the space.
The man who had been speaking to Nash offered his hand. “I’m Dr. Randal Davies, and this is my wife, Grace. Thank you so much for coming out at this hour.”
The man gestured to a chair next to the couch.
Porter declined. “It’s been a rather long night. I think I’d better stand.”
“Coffee, then?”
“Please. Black is fine.”
Dr. Davies excused himself and disappeared down the hall.
Porter glanced at Rodriguez, who had returned to her seat on the couch.
“My office received a call from Mrs. Davies shortly after midnight, when her daughter didn’t come home,” Rodriguez said.
Mrs. Davies looked up, her eyes red and swollen. “Lili works downtown at an art gallery. On Thursdays she goes straight there after school and takes an Uber home when they close at eleven. She is always home by eleven thirty. If for some reason she’s running late, she texts me — she knows her father and I worry, so she always texts me. She is a responsible young lady, and this is her first job and she knows we worry . . .” She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue. “I hadn’t heard from her by eleven forty-five, so I called her, and it went straight to voice mail. Then I called the gallery and spoke to her supervisor, Ms. Edwins. She said Lili didn’t show up for her shift. She had tried to reach her several times and got the same thing: voice mail. No rings, just voice mail. I know that means her phone is off, which is very unlike her. She never turns her phone off. She knows I worry. I called her best friend, Gabby, then —”
“What is Gabby’s last name?” Porter asked.
“Deegan. Gabrielle Deegan. I gave her contact information to your partner.” When she said this, she glanced at Rodriguez. Porter didn’t correct her.
Mrs. Davies continued. “Gabby said she hadn’t seen her all day. She wasn’t at school, and she wasn’t replying to text messages. This isn’t like Lili, you understand. She’s a straight-A student. She hasn’t missed a day of school since the fourth grade, when she had chicken pox.” Mrs. Davies paused, studying Porter’s face. “You’re the detective who chased . . . oh God, do you think 4MK took our daughter? Is that why you’re here?” Her eyes went wide and flooded with tears.
“This isn’t 4MK,” Porter assured her, although he wasn’t certain of that himself. “At this point there is no reason to assume anyone has taken your daughter.”
“She wouldn’t disappear like this.”
Porter tried to change the subject. “Where does she go to school?”
“Wilcox Academy.”
Dr. Davies returned and handed Porter a steaming cup of coffee, then stood beside his wife on the couch. “I know what you’re thinking, and like we told your partners here, Lili doesn’t have a boyfriend. She wouldn’t skip school. She most definitely wouldn’t skip work — she loves that gallery. Something is wrong. The Find My iPhone feature is activated on her phone, but it’s not coming up on our account. I called Apple, and they said her phone is offline. Our daughter would not turn off her phone.”
Nash cleared his throat. “Mrs. Davies, can you tell Detective Porter what Lili was wearing today when she was last seen?”
Mrs. Davies nodded. “Her favorite coat, a red Perro parka, a white hat, matching gloves, and dark jeans. On cold days, Lili preferred to change into her uniform once she arrived on campus. She stopped in the kitchen and said goodbye to me before she left for school this morning. That’s her favorite coat. She bought it at Barneys with her first paycheck. She was so proud of that coat.”
Rodriguez pursed her lips.
Porter said nothing.
4 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 3:02 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
“How is that even possible?”
“We can show them a photo of the jacket to try and confirm,” Nash suggested.
Porter shook his head. “We can’t show them a picture of a dead girl.”
The three of them stood outside the Davieses’ graystone, their breath creating an icy fog between them.
“There is no way someone had time to kidnap Lili Davies, put her clothes on Ella Reynolds, and bury her under the ice at the park. There is no way. There just isn’t enough time.” Porter shuffled his feet. The temperature must be in single digits. “That means he would have been out at the lake during daylight hours, while it was open. Somebody would have seen him.”
Nash thought about this for a second. “In this weather, the park is nearly deserted. The only real risk would be when the unsub carried the body from his vehicle to the water. Unless someone got close, nothing else would really jump out as a red flag. He would just look like some guy out by the lagoon, maybe ice-fishing or something. If he set up with a fishing pole, I bet he could spend the day without anyone giving him a second glance.”
“Logistics aside,” Rodriguez said, “what’s the point?”
Porter and Nash exchanged a glance. They both knew serial killers rarely had a point, at least not one that made sense to anyone but them. And although they only had one victim, if she tied to this second missing girl, they might be looking at a serial.
“Do Ella Reynolds and Lili Davies know each other?” Porter asked Rodriguez.
Rodriguez shook her head. “Her parents only knew the name from television.”
“We should check with Lili’s friend Gabby,” Porter suggested. “What time did she leave for school?”
Rodriguez glanced at her notes. “Quarter after seven.”
Nash closed his eyes and crunched the numbers. “That only allows about twelve hours from the time Lili disappeared to the time Ella was found frozen in the lake.”
“Look at you doing math.” Porter said, and snickered.
“If this is one guy, he’s fast. Efficient,” Nash said.
Porter turned back to Rodriguez. “Sophie, right?”
She nodded.
“Go back in and search the girl’s room. Look for anything out of the ordinary. Get her computer — check her e-mails, saved documents. Look for a diary, photos . . . You find anything at all, you call me. Find out her route to school. Does she walk or get a ride? With friends or alone? Got it?”
Rodriguez chewed on her bottom lip. “What does this mean for Lili?”
Porter wasn’t ready to go there. He turned back to Nash. “Let’s go wake up Eisley.”
5 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 4:18 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office and morgue was off West Harrison in downtown Chicago. At this hour, Porter and Nash ran into little traffic, and they found the parking spaces out front to be relatively deserted. The guard at the front desk looked up at them with groggy eyes and nodded a hello. “Sign in, please.”
Porter scribbled Burt Reynolds on the clipboard and handed it to Nash, who wrote Dolly Parton before returning it to the desk and following him to the bank of elevators at the back of the lobby. Porter wasn’t a fan of elevators but he was even less a fan of several flights of stairs.
The second elevator from the left arrived first, and he followed Nash inside before he could change his mind.
Porter hit the button marked 3. “Dolly was hot back in the day.”
“Still is,” Nash replied. “A true GILF.”
“GILF?”
“I’ll explain when you’re a little older, Sam.”
The doors opened on an empty hallway.
Nash eyed the vending machine, then gave it a pass, heading for the double doors at the end of the hallway.
They found Tom Eisley at his desk. He glanced up at them as they came in before returning to whatever he was reading.
Porter expected him to say something about the time. Instead, he asked, “Have either of you ever seen the ocean?”
Porter and Nash exchanged a look.
Eisley closed the book on his desk and stood. “Never mind. Not sure I’m ready to talk about this yet.”
“I take it you’re working on our girl?” Porter asked.
Eisley sighed. “I’m trying. We’ve been warming up her body since they brought her in here. She wasn’t quite frozen, you understand, just way below normal temperature. It’s going to make time of death difficult to determine.”
“Do you know the cause?”
Eisley opened his mouth, prepared to say something, then thought better of it. “Not yet. I’m going to need a few more hours. You’re welcome to wait, if you’d like.”
Before they could respond, he disappeared through the door leading to the autopsy room.
Nash nodded at Porter. “Sounds like this might be a while.”
Porter fell into a yellow vinyl chair near Eisley’s door, his eyes heavy with lack of sleep.
6 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 7:26 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
“Gentlemen?”
Porter’s eyes fluttered open, and it took him a moment to realize he was in Eisley’s office at the morgue. He had slid down in the yellow vinyl chair, his neck cricked from being at an odd angle. Nash was slumped over at Eisley’s desk, his head resting on a stack of papers.
Eisley picked up a medical text, lifted the book about three feet above the desk, then released. The book crashed down, loud and hard, and Nash snapped back in the chair, drool rolling down his chin. “What the —”
“Chicago’s finest, hard at work,” Eisley chided. “Follow me.”
Porter glanced up at the clock on the far wall — about half past seven. A little over three hours had passed since they arrived here. “Shit, didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he mumbled. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket — three missed calls from Clair, no voice mail.
Eisley led them past his desk and through the double doors at the back of his office into the large examination room. Both Porter and Nash grabbed gloves from the box hanging on the wall near the door.
Noises echoed in here.
This was always the first thought that popped into Porter’s head when he entered. Everything sounded different due to the beige tile on the floor and walls. The second thing that always hit him was the temperature — he didn’t know what the actual temperature was in the room, but it felt like it dropped nearly twenty degrees. Goose bumps prickled the back of his neck, and a shiver ran over him. The third thing, the one he’d never get used to, was the smell. It didn’t smell bad, not today anyway, but the room smelled strong. The heavy scent of industrial cleaners attempted to mask the underlying odor of something else, something Porter preferred not to think about.
Fluorescent lights burned bright above, glimmering on stainless steel cabinets. A large, round surgical light arched over the examination table at the center of the room where the body they pulled out of the lake rested.
Eisley had closed the girl’s eyes.
Sleeping beauty.
An electric blanket and four large lamps sat off to the side.
Eisley caught Porter looking at them. “We got lucky. She wasn’t in the lake very long, and her body was below the freeze line. If she froze through and through, we’d need to wait a few days before we could autopsy. In her case it only took a few hours to raise her body temp enough to proceed.”
“You haven’t cut her open yet,” Nash pointed out. “It doesn’t look like you’ve started at all.”
“You’d be surprised what a body can tell you if you know where to look,” Eisley replied. “I won’t be able to open her up until tomorrow; she’s still quite cold. If I warm her up too fast, we run the risk of crystallization and cellular damage. That doesn’t mean she can’t offer up some answers while we wait. Unlike you two, I’ve been busy.” He ran his hand through her hair. “She’s been talking, and I’ve been listening.”
“Okay, now you’re creeping me out,” Porter said.
Eisley offered a smile and took a step back from the table. “Would you like to know what I found?”
“That would be lovely.”
He walked over to the side of the table and lifted her hand. “The cold water was extremely preserving. With most bodies found in the water, they can be difficult to print. The skin tends to expand, and we have to reverse the effect before we can print. Like an extreme version of the pruning you probably experience in the bath.”
“I’m more of a shower guy,” Porter told him.
Eisley ignored the comment. “The near-freezing water kept her fingerprints completely intact, probably would through spring thaw.” He lowered her hand back to the table, placing it gently at her side. “The results came back about two hours ago. I confirmed this is Ella Reynolds, the girl who disappeared three weeks ago.”
Porter sighed. He expected as much, but there was something deflating about hearing the words spoken aloud. “What about a time of death or the cause?”
“As I said earlier, time of death can be a bit tricky because of the icy water. At this point, I would have to say no more than forty-eight hours ago but at least twenty-four. I’m hoping to narrow that down once I can get a look at her liver and other organs,” he explained. “Help me turn her over?”
Porter and Nash exchanged a look. Nash took a slight step back. For a homicide detective, he had an odd aversion to dead bodies.
Porter took the girl’s legs, and Eisley held her shoulders. Together, they turned her over.
Eisley ran a finger along a long, dark mark running across her back. “This is from the rope he used to hold her up in the water. The coloration tells me she was suspended post mortem. Soon after, though, otherwise it wouldn’t be so prominent, particularly through that thick coat she was wearing.” He nodded at her clothing, neatly piled on the stainless steel counter.
Nash walked, picked up the red coat, and began going through the pockets. “Did you see any identifying information on the clothing?”
“The clothing isn’t hers, is it.” Eisley said this more as fact than a question.
Porter turned to him. “Did you come to that conclusion?”
“I suspected as much, but I’m not sure I’d be willing to call it a conclusion. Everything seemed like a tight fit on her. Under normal circumstances, I would chalk that up to bloating from the water, but since there was so little, it seemed strange. Her undergarments and jeans in particular were at least a size or two too small. She squeezed into them, but they’re tight, uncomfortable even. Take a look at the hat,” he said, gesturing at the counter. “There are letters written on the tag, most likely initials.”
Nash set down the coat and picked up the white hat, turned it inside out. “L.D. It’s a bit faded, but that’s definitely what it says.”
“Lili Davies,” Porter said.
“Yeah, probably.”
“Who’s that?” Eisley asked.
“Another girl, went missing sometime yesterday,” Porter told him.
“So whoever killed this girl dressed her in the other girl’s clothing?”
“Looks that way.”
“Huh.”
Porter asked, “What about cause of death? I don’t really see anything on the body. No wounds, no strangulation marks.”
At this, Eisley lit up.“Ah, yes. And you’re going to find this strange.”
“How did she die?”
“She drowned.”
Nash frowned. “That doesn’t sound so strange. We found her under the ice in a lake.”
Porter raised a hand. “You said the mark on her back was post mortem. Are you saying she was alive when he put her in the water?”
“Oh no, she was dead at that point. I’m saying she drowned, and then he put her in the lake.” He went over to a microscope on a raised table to his left. “Take a look at this,” he said, pointing at the device.
Porter walked over and looked down into the eyepiece. “What am I looking at?”
“When they first brought her in, I was able to snake a tube down into her lungs, and I extracted water, that water.”
Porter frowned. “What are these specks floating in it?”
The edge of Eisley’s mouth curled up. “That, my friend, is salt.”
“She drowned in salt water?”
“Precisely.”
Nash’s face went from lost to confused, then back again. “We’re in Chicago . . . the nearest ocean is what, a thousand miles from here?”
“The Atlantic would be the closest,” Eisley told him. “Baltimore, Maryland. About seven hundred miles.”
Porter’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the display, then answered. “Hey, Clair.”
“Back from vacation? I called you about a dozen times.”
“You called me three times.”
“So your phone is working,” she replied. “You should never ignore a woman, Sam. It won’t end well.”
Porter rolled his eyes and walked slowly across the room. “We’re at the morgue with Eisley. He confirmed the girl in the lake is Ella Reynolds. It also looks like she was wearing Lili Davies’s clothes.”
“Who’s Lili Davies?”
He thought he’d told her about the second missing girl, then realized he never had. They hadn’t talked since the park. He needed sleep; his head was a foggy mess. “Can you meet Nash and me in the war room in thirty minutes? We all need to get up to speed.”
“Sure thing,” she said. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I’ve been calling you?”
Porter closed his eyes and ran his hand through his hair. “Why have you been calling me, Clair?”
“I found something on the park video.”
“Thirty minutes in the war room. We’ll talk then. Grab Kloz.”
7 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Lili (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 7:26 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
“Would you like a glass of milk?”
Lili Davies heard his voice before she saw him, truly saw him.
He spoke slowly, softly, only a breath, each word enunciated with the utmost care as if he put great thought into what he wanted to say before releasing the words. He spoke with a slight lisp, the s in glass troubling him.
He’d come down the stairs nearly five minutes earlier, the boards creaking under his weight. But when he reached the bottom, when he stood at the foot of the steps, he remained still. Shadows engulfed him, and Lili could make nothing out but the outline of a man.
And this was a man, not a boy.
Something about the way he stood, his broad shoulders, the deepness of his breaths, these things told her he was a man, not one of the boys from school. Not someone she knew playing some kind of sick joke, but a man, a man who had taken her.
Lili did want milk.
Her throat was as dry as sand.
She was hungry too.
Her stomach kept making little gurgling noises to remind her of just how hungry.
She said nothing, though; she didn’t utter a sound. Instead, she huddled deeper into the corner, her back pressing into the damp wall. She pulled the smelly green quilt tighter around her body. Something about the material made her feel safe, like being wrapped in her mother’s arms.
He’d been gone for at least an hour, maybe more. Lili used that time to try to figure out where she was. She hadn’t allowed herself to be afraid, she wouldn’t allow herself to be afraid. This was a problem, and she was good at solving problems.
She was in the basement of an older home.
She knew this because her house was older, and she remembered what the basement looked like before her parents brought in the contractors and construction crews to renovate it. The ceilings were low and the floor was uneven. Everything smelled like mildew, and spiders thrived. Every corner and cranny had either an old web or a new web, and the spiders crawled everywhere. When her parents brought in the contractors at her home, they gutted the basement, leveled the floor, sealed the walls, and coated everything in fresh drywall and paint. That drove the spiders out, at least for a little while.
Her friend Gabby lived in a brand-new house, built only two years ago, and her basement was completely different. High ceilings and level floors, bright and airy. They carpeted, brought in furniture, and turned the space into a fun family room. Basements in old homes could never be fun family rooms, no matter how much work was done. You could cover up the moisture, even level the floors, drywall, and paint, but the spiders always came back. The spiders wouldn’t give up their space.
This basement had spiders.
Although she couldn’t see them from where she sat, she knew they were right above her, creeping in and out of the exposed floor joists. They watched her with a thousand eyes as they spun their webs.
He gave her clothes, but they were not her clothes.
When she woke on the floor, wrapped in the green quilt, she quickly realized she had been stripped nude and left here, in this cage, a stranger’s clothes folded neatly and left near her head. They didn’t fit. They were at least a few sizes too big, but she put them on because she had nothing else, because they were better than the green quilt. Then she wrapped herself in the green quilt anyway.
She was in a dimly lit, damp basement. More precisely, she was in a chainlink enclosure set up in a dimly lit, damp basement.
The enclosure went from floor to ceiling, and the pieces were welded together. It was meant to be a dog kennel. She knew this because Gabby’s family owned a dog, a husky named Dakota, and they had a very similar, if not the same, kennel in their backyard. They bought it at Home Depot, and she and Gabby had watched her father put it together over the summer. It didn’t take him long, maybe an hour, but he hadn’t welded it.
When Lili stood up, wrapped in her green quilt, and ran her fingers over the various pipes and thick metal wire that made up her cage, she sought out joints, remembering how Gabby’s father assembled his, then her heart sank as she found the bumpy welds. The gate at the front was locked tight with not one padlock but two — one near the top and the other near the bottom. She rattled the gate, but it barely moved. The entire structure had been bolted down into the concrete floor. It was secure, and she was trapped inside.
“You should drink something, you need to be strong for what is to come,” the man said, his voice catching for a second on the s in something.
Lili said nothing. She wouldn’t say anything. To talk to him would give him power, and she wasn’t ready to do that. He didn’t deserve anything from her.
The only light came from what was probably an open door at the top of the stairs. He stood perfectly still at the base.
Lili’s eyes fought with the darkness, slowly adjusting.
He remained out of focus though, a darker shadow among other shadows, an outline against the wall.
“Turn around. Face the back wall, and don’t turn back again until I say it’s okay,” he instructed.
Lili didn’t move, her posture firming.
“Please turn around.” Softer, pleading.
She gripped the quilt and pulled it tighter around her small frame.
“Turn the fuck around!” he shouted, his voice booming through the basement, echoing off the walls.
Lili gasped and took a step backward, nearly tripping.
Then all went quiet again.
“Please don’t make me shout. I prefer not to shout.”
Lili felt her heart pounding in her chest, a heavy thump, thump, thump.
She took a step back, then another, and another after that. When she reached the wall, the back of her cage, she willed her feet to turn around and faced the corner.
Lili heard him as he walked closer, the living shadow. Something about his gait was off. Rather than steady steps, she heard one foot land, then the other slid for a second on the concrete floor before it too fell into place, repeating again with the next step. A shuffle or limp, a slight drag of the foot, she couldn’t be sure.
Lili forced her eyes to close. She didn’t want to close them, but she did anyway. She forced her eyes to close so she could concentrate on the sounds, picture the sounds behind her.
She heard the jingle of keys before the telltale click of a padlock — it sounded like the top lock — then the other a moment later. She heard him slip both locks from the gate, then lift the handle and open the door.
Lili cringed in anticipation of what would come next.
She expected his hand on her, a touch somewhere or a grab from behind. That touch never came. Instead, she heard him close the gate and replace the locks, both clicking securely back into place.
His uneven shuffle away from her cage.
“You can turn back around now.”
Lili did as he asked.
He returned to the stairs, lost to the dark again.
A glass of milk sat on the floor just inside the cage, a thin bead of water dripping down the side.
“It’s not drugged,” he said. “I need you awake.”
8 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 7:56 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
“I’ll see you in there. I need to hit the head,” Nash said as they stepped off the elevator at the basement level of Chicago Metro headquarters on Michigan Avenue. Nash took a right down the hallway and disappeared behind the bathroom door. Porter went left.
After Bishop escaped, the feds had stepped in and taken over the 4MK manhunt. Porter had been on medical leave at that point, but from what Nash told him, they initially tried to take over the war room. Nash used his incredible charm, and threats of violence, on the interlopers and banished them to the room across the hall known primarily for the odd odor that permeated it, which seemed to come from the far left corner. Since that point, they coexisted with the civility of North and South Korea.
The lights in the FBI room were off.
Porter waited for the sound of Nash locking the restroom door, then tried the door to the feds’ room.
Open.
With a quick glance back down the hall, Porter slipped inside. He left the lights off.
Six eyeballs.
Seven victims. Eight, if he counted Emory.
His subconscious was trying to tell him something.
He crossed the room to the two whiteboards at the front and studied the victims’ photographs. The familiar faces looked back, their unknowing smiles captured forever in a moment of happiness. In those final moments on the eleventh floor of 314 West Belmont, Bishop pled his case, he laid his cards bare, so proud in the twisted logic of his plan. “These people deserved to be punished,” he told Porter. And it was true. Each of his victims did something horribly wrong, something worthy of punishment. But he didn’t go after them. Instead, he took their children. He made the children suffer in death so their parents would suffer forevermore in life. Each of these girls died not because of something she did but because of something a member of her family did. Each of these beautiful young faces snuffed out to pay for another’s crimes.
Porter stepped closer to the first board and ran his fingers over the photo of Calli Tremell, Bishop’s first victim. Twenty years of age, taken March 15, 2009. Bishop’s first victim as 4MK — Klozowski was always quick to point this out. So thorough and sure in his methods, the pattern strongly suggested he’d killed before, developed a technique after honing a practice over years. He was too sophisticated to be a first-timer, and the thought of someone like him existing out there, taking lives, leading up to this . . . If this was his beginning as 4MK, Porter couldn’t imagine where he came from. The diary gave him some insight, but not enough, only a glimpse — a quick look through an open curtain before Bishop dropped the fabric back into place.
Calli Tremell’s parents reported her missing that Tuesday. They received her ear in the mail on Thursday. Her eyes followed on Saturday, and her tongue arrived the next Tuesday. All were packaged in small white boxes tied with black strings, handwritten shipping labels, and zero prints. He never left prints.
Three days after the last box arrived, a jogger found her body in Almond Park, propped up on a bench with a cardboard sign glued to her hands that read do no evil. Porter and his team had picked up on his MO by that point, and the sign confirmed their theory.
Do no evil turned out to be the key to Bishop’s focus, something they realized with 4MK’s second victim, Elle Borton. She disappeared on April 2, 2010, more than a year after his first victim. Porter’s team caught the case from Missing Children when her parents reported receiving an ear in the mail. When her body was found a little over a week later, she held a tax return in her grandmother’s name covering tax year 2008. After some digging, they found out the grandmother had died in 2005. Matt Hosman in Financial Crimes discovered that Elle’s father filed tax returns on more than a dozen residents of the nursing home he managed, all deceased. Bishop killed Elle Borton, only twenty-three years old, because of crimes committed by her father.
When 4MK’s motive became clear, they went back and looked at Calli Tremell’s family and discovered her mother had been laundering money from the bank where she worked, upward of three million dollars over the previous ten years.
Porter stepped to his right and looked at the third photograph. Missy Lumax, June 24, 2011. Her father sold kiddie porn. Susan Devoro’s father swapped fake diamonds for real ones at his jewelry store. She was victim number four — May 3, 2012. Number five — Barbara McInley, seventeen years old. She disappeared on April 18, 2013. Her sister had hit and killed a pedestrian six years before, and Bishop killed Barbara as punishment. Allison Crammer’s brother ran a sweatshop full of illegals down in Florida. She was number six, disappearing on November 9, 2013, at only nineteen years of age. Jodi Blumington followed only a few months later. On May 13, 2014, she went missing at age twenty-two. 4MK killed her because her father imported coke for a cartel.
The very last photo on the board was of a girl Porter knew well, the only one he actually met, the only one not to die. Emory Connors, fifteen years old, taken in November of last year. Although she lost an ear and spent days in captivity, Bishop didn’t kill her. Most likely he would have, if Porter hadn’t found him first. At least, that was how the papers printed it. Porter knew damn well Bishop let her live. He also knew that Bishop had let Porter find him. He wanted the chance to explain himself, explain his purpose, his manifesto, before killing Arthur Talbot and disappearing.
Talbot, who turned out to be Emory’s father, was the worst criminal of the lot. And although Bishop had kidnapped Emory, he ultimately punished Talbot by mutilating the man before pushing him down an elevator shaft — he killed him and spared Emory.
Emory went on to inherit her father’s billions, his untimely death triggering a clause in his will, a condition left by her mother years prior.
Emory lived, and Bishop eluded capture.
Six eyeballs.
Porter stared up at the photos of 4MK’s victims.
Seven deaths, one girl freed.
Anson Bishop had managed to integrate himself into Porter’s task force when he posed as a CSI photographer back in November. During his first briefing with the team, they reviewed each of 4MK’s past victims, tried to bring him up to speed while searching for Emory. He listened to them with attentive ears, soaking in what they knew, pretending all this was new to him. Porter often looked back on that moment, searching for anything that should have given away his true identity, but there was none. Bishop no doubt stared up at this board with a feeling of great accomplishment while portraying just the right amount of horror on the outside, just the right amount of interest. He asked the right questions and refrained from embellishing on the information provided. Porter imagined this was extremely difficult for him. During that last confrontation at Belmont, Bishop bubbled over with the need to share what he knew, to explain himself. That urge must have been overwhelming as he stood looking at these boards, as he heard what they knew about each victim.
Bishop made several points, though, latched on to a few details.
Porter closed his eyes and thought back on that day, on his words.
He recalled Bishop pointing out information access — find out who had access to information on all these crimes, and work back from there. That had been a moot point, though, because ultimately they discovered that it was Talbot himself who knew of all these crimes, and Bishop had pilfered the information from him. He mentioned the dates, pointed out 4MK was escalating. This was true, but if a reason existed, they never determined what it was. They believed 4MK was dead at that point. Only finding Emory mattered.
Then there was the hair color.
Porter recalled how Bishop fixated on the photo of Barbara McInley, the only blonde. An anomaly, he called her. The only blonde among a group of attractive brunettes. He went on to ask if any of the girls had been sexually assaulted — they had not. He also asked if 4MK had any male victims. Specifically, he asked if any of the girls had brothers, then said something like, “If we assume half these families had at least one son and he grabbed their children at random, one or two male victims should have presented. That didn’t happen. There was a reason he took the daughters over the sons — we just don’t know it.” Porter believed 4MK took female victims simply because they were easier to control, less likely to fight back.
Six eyeballs.
Seven dead girls.
Porter returned to the photo of Barbara McInley. Punished because her sister killed someone in a hit-and-run. McInley was the only girl to really hold Bishop’s interest during their briefing, the only one he had honed in on. Porter could still picture him, tapping on her photo, the wheels of his mind racing.
Porter glanced over at the door, listening for anyone in the hallway, but heard no one.
A table stood against the wall on his left, stacked high with file boxes — everything they’d collected on 4MK. The third box from the left had the word Victims written on the front with red marker, Porter’s own handwriting. He crossed the room, removed the lid, and shuffled through the contents until he located Barbara McInley’s file, the name also written in his handwriting.
These were his files. His team’s files. They did not belong to the FBI.
“Fuck it.”
Porter wrapped the file in his coat, then replaced the lid on the file box and crossed the room to the door. When he was certain the hallway was still deserted, he slipped out of the room and pulled the door quietly shut behind him.
He ducked into the war room at the end of the hall and flicked on the overhead fluorescents.
“I was beginning to think you took the morning off,” Special Agent Stewart Diener said. He was sitting at Nash’s desk, his feet up, poking away at the tiny screen of his phone.
Porter hoped an indoor breeze would catch the man’s delicate comb-over. No such luck.
9 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 7:59 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter stared at Diener. “We caught a body and a second missing girl. I’ve been up all night. What do you want?”
Has he been in here the entire time?
“Yeah, great job keeping a lid on that.” Diener tossed a folded copy of the Chicago Tribune over to Porter’s desk.
Porter glanced down at the headline:
4MK BACK AND TAKING OUR DAUGHTERS?
This was followed by a photo of Emory Connors walking on the sidewalk, head down. Both the story and photo were above the fold — main headline. Below the fold were two other shots — a telephoto lens capturing the scene at the Jackson Park Lagoon and another of the Davieses’ house.
Diener stood and walked around to the side of Porter’s desk, pointed at the paper. “They name both Ella Reynolds and Lili Davies in here.”
“How is that possible? We haven’t released anything. I just met with Lili Davies’s parents a few hours ago.”
Diener shrugged. “One of your crack team of investigators has loose lips.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Porter muttered, skimming the text.
The story mentioned the body found at Jackson Park Lagoon and speculated that she was most likely missing teen Ella Reynolds. The reporter also revealed that quick on the heels of this discovery, another girl vanished. Lili Davies was last seen leaving for school yesterday, but she never got to class. The remainder of the story detailed 4MK’s past victims and implied that Anson Bishop was forced to change his MO after his botched arrest.
“What’s that nut sack doing in here?” Nash said from the doorway.
Porter held up the paper. “Delivering the news.”
Nash walked over and dropped his coat onto the chair Diener had vacated. He brushed a piece of lint from the man’s shoulder. “Nice to see you exploring your career options. If you behave, maybe after school today we can go down to Walmart and pick you out a nice bike so you can expand your route.”
Porter dropped the paper onto Nash’s desk and pointed at the photos of the lagoon and the Davieses’ home. “This isn’t Bishop. It’s completely irresponsible for them to go out on a limb and say that it is. They’re just trying to sell more papers.”
Diener said, “How can you be so sure? Maybe Bishop decided to change things up, just like they say.”
“Serial killers don’t change their MO, you know that. Their signature is fixed.”
Diener shrugged. “Bishop is no ordinary serial killer. Each of his murders was part of an elaborate revenge plot. A plot he wrapped up when he killed Talbot. Maybe he planned to retire after that and quickly realized he still had a taste for young girls. When he couldn’t keep it under control, he grabbed Ella Reynolds. He finished up with her and snagged Lili Davies.” Diener started for the door. “You take a step back and look from a little distance, and it makes sense.”
Porter dropped his coat onto his desk, Barbara McInley’s file still wrapped inside. His heart pounding.
“That guy’s a tool,” Nash said.
“Heard that!” Diener shouted from the hallway. “If you’re wrong and they are 4MK’s vics, then you need to kick them over to us!”
“The other guy’s a little better,” Porter said. “His partner — Stool, Drool, Mule . . . ?”
“Poole. Frank Poole. Also a tool, the whole room full of ’em. Hey, see what I did there?” Nash reached for the door, ready to slam it, when Clair pushed past holding an iPad. Kloz was right behind her, with three white boxes perched precariously on top of his laptop. “Little help here,” he said.
Nash plucked the top box off and carried it back to his desk.
“Don’t go too far with those,” Kloz implored. “They need to last me for the week.”
“What is it?” Porter asked.
“Three dozen from that new place down the block, Peace, Love, and Little Donuts,” Clair told them. “The little bugger was going to hoard them back at his desk, until I explained the virtues of sharing with his coworkers.”
Kloz snickered. “You said if I didn’t bring them down here, you’d send a mass e-mail to the department telling everyone I had these in my desk. I couldn’t leave them upstairs undefended with all those vultures. They’d be gone in a minute. And there’s only eighteen — six in each box, not twelve.”
Nash opened the box he pilfered, and his eyes grew wide. “My baby Jesus, these are beautiful.”
Porter grabbed the second box from the pile and settled at his desk. Clair grabbed the third.
“Hey!” Kloz cried out. “Those are mine!”
“Why are they so small?” Porter asked, his mouth full of cream filling.
Clair plucked a donut from her box and held it up. It was covered in Oreo crumbles. “They’re gourmet. I’d do air quotes, but my fingers are busy. They make them small and sell them as artsy-fartsy fancy food for twice the price of regular donuts. If they didn’t taste so damn good, they’d never get away with it, but these little guys are heaven. I can feel my ass getting bigger with each bite, and I don’t care.”
Kloz settled into his usual desk next to the conference table. He placed both palms on the metal top and took a long, soothing breath, his face turning red. “Okay, you can each have one, only one.”
“I may have eaten four,” Nash said, wiping the culinary evidence from his lips. His eyes fell on the decimated box before him. “And I’m keeping the rest.”
Ten minutes later all three boxes were empty with the exception of one strawberry-frosted donut. Porter felt the sugar kick in. He stood up, walked over to their single remaining whiteboard, and wrote ELLEN REYNOLDS at the top.
“It’s Ella Reynolds,” Nash told him.
Porter grunted, wiped away the first name with the back of his hand, replaced it with ELLA. “Okay, what do we know?”
Clair said, “Ella Reynolds was reported missing on January twenty-second and found yesterday, February twelfth. Her body was discovered frozen under the ice at Jackson Park Lagoon.”
“She wasn’t frozen,” Nash broke in. “Not entirely, anyway. That’s what Eisley said. But the lagoon was.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Clair said. “According to the park, the lagoon was completely frozen over by January 2, twenty days before she went missing. Also, I have something on video we’ll want to watch after we update the board.”
Porter nodded. “When found, she wasn’t wearing her own clothes but clothes believed to belong to our second missing girl, Lili Davies.” He wrote her name on the board, then went back to Ella’s column. “Ella was last seen getting off her bus about two blocks from her house in a black coat, near Logan Square, approximately fifteen miles from where she was found. I think we can safely say the unsub staged the scene at the lagoon to appear as if Ella’s body had been there for weeks, which would be impossible if her clothes turn out to be Lili’s.”
Nash got up from his desk and went to the conference table in front of the whiteboard, taking a seat. “What’s the point of that? He went through a lot of trouble to put Ella under the ice, but then he dresses her in Lili’s clothes, giving us a firm date on the timeline. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes sense to him,” Porter pointed out. “All of this does. Including this —”
Porter wrote DROWNED IN SALT WATER beneath Ella’s name.
“Are you serious?” Kloz said.
“Eisley said he found salt water in her lungs and stomach. He’s fairly certain cause of death was drowning,” Porter told him.
“Drowning,” Clair repeated. “In salt water.”
Nash added, “The nearest ocean is about seven hundred miles away.”
“We’ll need to check out local aquariums and aquarium supply houses,” Porter said. “I think we can rule out a trip to the coast. This timeline is too tight.”
Clair was shaking her head. “I haven’t slept enough to deal with this.”
“I think we’re all running on fumes,” Porter agreed. “What do we know about the second girl, Lili Davies?”
Nash opened his small notebook. “Parents are Dr. Randal Davies and Grace Davies. Her best friend is Gabrielle Deegan. She goes to Wilcox Academy. She was last seen wearing a red coat, according to her mother — a Perro red nylon diamond-quilted hooded parka. She also had on a white hat, white gloves, dark jeans, and pink tennis shoes. She never made it to school yesterday, which means she was most likely taken on the morning of February twelfth. Her mother said she saw her leaving for school. That was about a quarter after seven in the morning. Classes start at ten to eight, and she’s walking distance to the school.”
“Does she walk with anyone to school?” Porter asked.
Nash shook his head. “Her mother said the school is only four blocks, so she goes alone.”
Kloz gave the donut boxes a sad glance, then went to the conference table. “Four blocks isn’t very far. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for someone to grab her.”
Clair took a seat next to Nash. “Assuming she went straight to school, which we can’t assume. She might’ve run into a friend on the way and gotten into their car. I know it’s only a few blocks, but I used to do that all the time when I walked to school. When you’re that close to campus, the drivers and walkers tend to converge in the parking lot, and many of the students hang out there waiting on that first bell.”
“May I come in?”
The three of them looked up. Sophie Rodriguez stood at the door. Porter noted she was wearing the same tan sweater she had on at the Davieses’ house. Most likely she hadn’t gone home yet, either. “Please,” he said. “Take a seat, we’re running through everything.”
“Uh, Sam?” Kloz said, his eyes giving her a once-over. “Remember what happened the last time you invited a stray into the clubhouse?”
Clair smacked his shoulder. “I’ve known Sophie for almost four years. She’s been vetted.” She motioned to the chair to her left.
Sophie set her bag down by the door, removed her coat, and took a seat studying the board. “I know you’re all working this from Homicide and Lili is just missing at this point, but we have an obvious connection. Probably best for us to work together, at least for now. Until we have a handle on what’s going on.”
“Welcome to the team, Sophie,” Porter said.
Nash gave him a weary look but said nothing.
Sophie studied the faces in the room. “Ella was one of my girls, too. You always hope for the best, but when they don’t turn up for more than forty-eight hours, it usually means they’re a runaway or something worse. Both of these girls have solid home lives, so I think my heart was telling me it was ‘something worse.’ When you told me about the clothes, I guess you confirmed it for me. I’m just hoping we find Lili in time.”
“Did you show the clothing photos to Lili’s parents?” Porter asked. He had e-mailed them to her from the morgue.
Sophie nodded. “Her mother confirmed they belonged to Lili. She said she wrote the initials in the hat herself.”
Porter wrote FOUND IN LILI DAVIES’S CLOTHES under ELLA REYNOLDS on the board. Then he turned back to her. “What else can you tell us about Ella?”
Sophie studied the board for a moment. “I walked the scene a few weeks back, right after she disappeared. The bus lets her off about two blocks from her house, near Logan Square, but her parents told me she would sometimes go to Starbucks on Kedzie to do her homework. I took both routes. It took me four minutes to walk from the bus stop to her house, seven minutes to walk from the bus stop to Starbucks, and nine minutes for me to walk the route from Starbucks to her house. The entire area is very public, people everywhere. I don’t see how someone could have grabbed her without being seen.”
Nash asked, “Did you talk to the manager at the Starbucks?”
Sophie nodded. “He recognized Ella from the photo I showed him, but he couldn’t tell me if she was in on that particular day. She typically pays with cash, so I couldn’t reference debit or credit card receipts.”
“Any security cameras?”
“There is one, but it recycles daily. They don’t store the footage. By the time we got there, it was gone.”
Kloz cleared his throat. “Maybe I should take a look? I’ve never known a security system that really erased the previous day’s footage. If the system is hard-drive-based, fragments may still exist, even if the manager thinks the footage is gone.”
Porter nodded and wrote STARBUCKS FOOTAGE (I DAY CYCLE?) — KLOZ on the board. “What else?”
“We searched her computer and e-mail but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary,” Sophie replied. “Her phone disappeared with her. It last connected to the tower near Logan Square and dropped off four minutes after the bus’s scheduled stop.”
“Kloz?”
Kloz was already nodding, making a note on his laptop. “I’ll take a look at that too.”
Porter turned back to Sophie. “Did you find anything in Lili’s room?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Lots of clothes strewn about. Nothing hidden in any of the drawers or under the mattress, the typical places. There was a photo taped to the mirror of her and another girl. Her mother said it was her friend Gabby. Her father said she had both a cell phone and a laptop, but neither were in her room. Her mom told me she would have taken them to school, said she was carrying her backpack when she left.” She paused for a second, reading a text message on her phone. “My office pinged her cell, but it was off. The results just came back. The last tower it hit was near her house. It went dark at twenty-three after seven. That’s only about eight minutes after she left home.”
“Kloz, see if you can pull anything from her social media accounts or e-mail,” Porter pointed out.
“On it,” Kloz replied.
Sophie pulled a folder from her bag and spread the contents on the table. She had pictures of both girls. “Ella and Lili have a similar look, which would suggest an attraction or sexual motive, but the ME said there was no sign of assault with Ella. I’m not willing to write that off as a coincidence just yet.”
“Good point. May I?” Porter said, pointing at the photos.
Sophie handed the pictures to him, and Porter taped them to the board. “How old is Lili?”
“Seventeen,” Sophie replied.
“Both have blond hair, roughly shoulder length. Ella had blue eyes, Lili has green. They’re two years apart. Where did Ella go to school?” Porter asked.
Sophie flipped through her notes. “Kelvyn Park High. She was a sophomore.”
“Any reason to believe they knew each other?”
“None that I’m aware of,” she replied. “Different schools, different social circles, two years apart. Neither drove.”
“What about the gallery?” Porter asked. “Could they have met there?”
“I haven’t been to the gallery yet. They don’t open until ten.”
Porter scratched at his cheek. “I’d rather you and Clair walk to school, then maybe interview her friend, Gabrielle Deegan. Nash tends to scare the children.”
Nash smiled. “I can’t help if I’m intimidating.”
Porter nodded at him. “You and I will check the gallery.”
“Love me some art.”
“I’ll text you the address,” Sophie said. “It’s on North Halsted.”
Porter glanced back at the board. “What else?”
The group fell silent.
“Should we watch the video?” Clair asked.
“Yeah, fire it up.”
Clair tapped at the screen of her iPad, then set it in the middle of the table. The image was frozen. A horrible angle on a narrow blacktop road. The time stamp indicated 8:47 a.m., February 12.
Clair pressed Play, and the time stamp moved forward in real time. Two cars rolled past — a yellow Toyota and a white Ford. When a gray pickup truck came into view, Clair hit Pause. “I’m going to advance slowly,” she said, and the image moved forward a few frames at a time.
When the back of the truck came into view, Porter understood. “Freeze there,” he said.
The pickup truck was towing a large water tank, the kind belonging to pool cleaners.
“There’s no pool in the park, and pool service during the dead of winter is not in high demand,” Clair said. “I think that’s how he got the water in.”
“Do you have any other angles?” Porter asked.
Clair shook her head. “That’s the only camera.”
Kloz leaned in. “Not much I can do with it. The image is clear, the angle just sucks.”
“Roll back a few frames?” Porter suggested.
Clair pressed Rewind. The image reversed one frame at a time with each touch.
“Stop,” Porter said. “What’s with that glare, and why such a horrible shot?”
The camera pointed at a severe angle, nearly straight down. Normally they either pointed up a road or down a road, the best possible angle to capture cars either approaching or leaving.
They froze the shot that captured the most of the truck’s windshield, but a bright white glare obscured their view inside.
Porter could make out the shape of the driver but nothing that would help them identify the person. “Kloz, do you think you can enlarge this and clean it up at all?”
Kloz chewed on the tip of his thumb. “Maybe — tough to say. I’ll give it a shot.”
“The park manager said they rarely review the footage. The camera is there as more of a deterrent than anything. At some point either it got loose and pointed down toward the ground, or someone loosened it and purposely pointed it that way. He had no idea when or how it happened,” Clair explained. “He said the camera used to point down the road to capture the cars and their drivers as they approached.”
Porter turned to Kloz, but Kloz waved him off before he could speak. “Yeah, I know. I’ll go back through old footage and see if I can determine when it happened, on the off chance we catch our unsub smiling at the camera holding a wrench.”
“Sometimes they slip up,” Porter pointed out.
“Yep.”
“This is good. At the very least we should get a make and model on the truck. If we cross-reference that against pool cleaning companies, we may get lucky.” Porter turned back to the board. “Anything else we can add?”
Again, the room went silent.
Porter capped the black marker and took a seat at the conference table. “I want to get a better handle on the abductions themselves. This unsub works fast and appears to have no trouble taking these girls from public places. That means he either blends in well or possibly gets to know them in advance so they don’t feel threatened by him. He couldn’t pull them kicking and screaming off the street into this pickup truck without being noticed, so somehow he convinces them to go willingly.”
“He may have access to other vehicles,” Nash suggested. “Public works or a utility company van. Something that disappears in the background.”
Kloz flipped his laptop around so the others could see. The screen had a detailed map of Chicago and the surrounding areas. There was a red dot near Logan Square, one at Jackson Park, and a third on King Drive in Bronzeville. “We’ve got a distance of about ten miles between the two abduction sites. In a city this big, that’s a sizable hunting ground. Jackson Park, where Ella was found, is actually closer to Lili’s house than Ella’s own.”
Porter studied the map for a moment. “So Lili was abducted close to where Ella was found. That may be important.”
“Ella drowned in salt water?” Sophie was frowning up at the board. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“What about a saltwater swimming pool?” Kloz suggested. “That would fit with the truck.”
“Is that a thing?” Nash frowned.
Kloz was nodding. “I’ve got an aunt in Florida who has one. She’s allergic to chlorine. They’re low maintenance too, no chemicals to measure out.”
“There can’t be many around Chicago. Think you can run a list?” Porter asked.
Kloz said, “Maybe I can put something together through building permits.”
Porter studied the faces around the table. With the exception of Sophie Rodriguez, he had known them all for years. He retrieved the newspaper from Nash’s desk and set it on the conference table. “Watch your backs for reporters. Somebody is snooping around a little too close to camp, and they’re not afraid to speculate.”
Clair flipped the paper around so she could read the headline. “You don’t think one of us talked to the press, do you?”
Porter shook his head. “I think they’ll print anything to sell papers. And if they can’t get one of us to talk, they’ll make something up. When we’re ready, I’ll make a statement. Until then, aside from the Amber Alert on Lili, we’re on a press lockdown.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the group. Sophie was first to speak. “Is anyone gonna eat that last donut?”
Kloz’s head dropped to the tabletop, and he let out a sigh. “Take it.”
Evidence Board
ELLA REYNOLDS (15 years old)
Reported missing 1/22
Found 2/12 in Jackson Park Lagoon
Water frozen since 1/2 — (20 days before she went missing)
Last seen — getting off her bus at Logan Square (2 blocks from home/15 miles from Jackson Park)
Last seen wearing a black coat
Drowned in salt water (found in fresh water)
Found in Lili Davies’s clothes
Four-minute walk from bus to home
Frequented Starbucks on Kedzie. Seven-minute walk to home.
LILI DAVIES (17 years old)
Parents = Dr. Randal Davies and Grace Davies
Best friend = Gabrielle Deegan
Attends Wilcox Academy (private) did not attend classes on 2/12
Last seen leaving for school (walking) morning of 2/12 @ 7:15 wearing a Perro red nylon diamond-quilted hooded parka, white hat, white gloves, dark jeans, and pink tennis shoes (all found on Ella Reynolds)
Most likely taken morning of 2/12 (on way to school)
Small window = 35 minutes (Left for school 7:15 a.m., classes start 7:50 a.m.)
School only four blocks from home
Not reported missing until after midnight (morning of 2/13)
Parents thought she went to work (art gallery) right after school (she didn’t do either)
UNSUB
Possibly driving a gray pickup towing a water tank
May work with swimming pools (cleaning or servicing)
ASSIGNMENTS:
Starbucks footage (1-day cycle?) — Kloz
Ella’s computer, phone, e-mail — Kloz
Lili’s social media, phone records, e-mail (phone and PC MIA) — Kloz
Enhance image of possible unsub entering park — Kloz
Park camera loosened? Check old footage — Kloz
Get make and model of truck from video? — Kloz
Clair and Sophie walk Lili’s route to school/talk to Gabrielle Deegan
Porter and Nash visit gallery (manager = Ms. Edwins)
Put together a list of saltwater pools around Chicago via permits office — Kloz
Check out local aquariums and aquarium supply houses
10 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 9:08 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
“Sam, you don’t have to do this.”
“Yeah, I do.”
He rang the Reynoldses’ doorbell.
They had driven straight here from police headquarters, lights blazing. Porter raced through at least three reds.
Nash shuffled his feet beside him on the stoop. “The department will send a uniform.”
Porter rubbed his hands together. The cold was slowly killing him. With the wind-chill, the temperature hovered at three degrees. “It’s after nine. They may have already seen the morning paper. It’s probably all over the morning news too.”
Porter rang the doorbell again.
The curtain over the glass window to the left of the door moved aside briefly, fell back into place. Someone worked the deadbolt. The door opened a few inches. A woman in her mid-forties peeked out, her eyes red and dark, the skin around them sunken with lack of sleep. Her brown hair looked oily, unwashed for days. She wore a thick brown sweater and jeans. “May I help you?”
Porter unfolded his badge case. “I’m Detective Porter, and this is Detective Nash with Chicago Metro. May we come in?”
She stared at him for a moment, as if the words took a second to register. Then she nodded and opened the door while staring past them to the street. “I think the cold finally scared away the last news van. They were still out there last night.”
Porter and Nash stomped the snow from their feet and stepped inside, closing the door behind them. The heat wrapped around them, stifling compared with outside. Porter didn’t care. He could stand in a fire pit for an hour, and his fingers would still be numb. He cleared his throat. “Is your husband home?”
Mrs. Reynolds shook her head. “He’s not back yet.”
“Did he go somewhere?”
The woman took a deep breath and sat on the arm of the leather sofa behind her. “He’s been driving around looking for Ella since the day she disappeared. He comes home long enough to eat and get a few hours of sleep, then just goes out again. I went with him the first few times, but it felt so futile. Driving up and down random streets like we’re going to spot her darting between houses or something, like a runaway dog. I can’t tell him not to go, though. It would break his heart. He tried staying home last Tuesday, and we were both climbing the walls. He went back out again last night after dinner.”
“It helps to stay active,” Nash said.
She looked at him, her face blank, then went on. “For the first week, I did nothing but make phone calls. All Ella’s friends and our family, our neighbors, anybody I could get to pick up. Shelters, hospitals, morgues . . . sitting here, trapped in this house, it feels so . . . helpless. But what else can I do? We’ve got posters hanging everywhere. Little good they do in this weather. Nobody is outside unless they need to be.”
Porter took a deep breath. “There’s no easy way to say this —”
Mrs. Reynolds raised her hand, silencing him. “You don’t have to. I saw it on the news this morning. The television hasn’t been turned off in three weeks. I dozed off on the couch, and when I woke up last night, they were running footage at the park. They never came out and said it was Ella, only that a girl’s body had been found in the lagoon. A mother knows, though. I guess I’ve known for weeks. I think I saw you on TV. You look familiar.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She nodded and blotted at eyes that looked like they had shed their last tear two weeks earlier. “My Ella wouldn’t run away, we knew that from the moment she went missing. I think I lost a little bit of hope with each minute after that. A girl can’t just disappear in today’s world, not with cameras and the Internet everywhere. A girl disappears completely, and you gotta know something bad happened.” She took a deep breath. “How did she die?”
“We think she drowned. We’re still waiting on the full report.”
“She drowned in the lagoon?”
Porter shook his head. “No . . . someplace else. She drowned and was placed in the lagoon.”
“You mean, she was drowned. Somebody did this to her, right?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Mrs. Reynolds’s eyes drifted to the floor. “I want to ask you if she suffered, but I think I already know the answer, and I’m not sure I really want to hear it out loud. I mean, somebody took her weeks ago. Do you know when she drowned? Do you know what this monster did to my baby in all that time?”
Nash’s eyes had also drifted to the floor. “At this point, we don’t know much more than that. We had hoped to tell you before you —”
“Before I heard it somewhere else? That’s very noble of you, but those reporters . . . well.”
“Do you have a way of reaching your husband? Maybe we should call him? Tell him to come home?”
Again, her gaze went blank as these words sank in. Porter had seen this before, the disconnect. People who are greatly traumatized sometimes separate slightly from reality; they watch the events around them rather than live within them. Mrs. Reynolds nodded and pulled a cell phone from the folds of the blanket on the couch. After a few seconds, she mouthed voice mail, then looked to the floor as she left a message. “Floyd? It’s me. Please come home, honey. They . . . the police are here. They found her, our baby.”
She disconnected the call and dropped the phone back onto the couch.
A back door slammed, and a little boy came marching into the living room, leaving a snowy trail behind him on the kitchen floor. Bundled in a navy blue snowsuit with a floppy yellow hat, scarf, and black gloves, he couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. “Mama? Somebody built a snowman in our yard.”
Mrs. Reynolds glanced at him, then turned back to Porter and Nash. “Not now, Brady.”
“I think the snowman is hurt.”
“What?”
“He’s bleeding.”
11 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Lili (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 9:12 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Lili had been alone, and now she wasn’t.
The man came down the steps and just stood there for maybe two minutes, watching her. He held something in his hand, but she couldn’t make out what it was.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low, deliberate, and practiced in its delivery. “You didn’t drink the milk.”
Lili had not drunk the milk, and she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t eat or drink anything this person planned to offer her. She would sooner starve to death than accept something from him.
“Why not?”
She didn’t answer, she only pulled the quilt tighter around her body as she pressed into the far corner of her cage.
“This doesn’t have to be unpleasant. Not unless you want it to be. I’d prefer you to be comfortable and relaxed,” he said. “Are you warm enough?”
Against the wall to her right stood the HVAC system and water heater for the house. The unit had run on and off since she woke here but was silent now. The vent in the side pointed directly into her cage and was, in fact, very warm. She wasn’t about to tell him that, though.
“If you get too cold, be sure to let me know.”
He stepped from the shadows at the base of the stairs and approached her cage. Funny, she thought, how she quickly grew to consider this her cage. From the inside, it seemed to offer her safety from the threat outside. As he stepped closer, she was grateful for the chainlink and metal bars separating them, the protection they offered. Her free hand reached around behind her, her fingers wrapping around the chainlink mesh and squeezing, the cold steel digging into her skin.
As the man stepped into the light, she got a good look at him. His skin was incredibly pale, the color of paper; she could make out the webs of veins at his neck, tiny roadways on his cheeks and forehead. He wore a black knit cap pulled down tight on his head, covering his hair — if he had any at all. His eyebrows were thin, barely there. When she saw his eyes, she wished she had not. The way he peered at her, a deep gaze from behind cloudy gray. They were the eyes of an old man, lost behind cataracts and film. He didn’t look old, though, maybe thirty at the most. The eyes did not fit; they weren’t natural. The right eye seemed darker than the left, bloodshot. Lili wanted to look away but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. She wouldn’t show weakness.
“I apologize for my appearance. I haven’t been well. Today is a good day, though. I promise you it’s not contagious. Please don’t be frightened,” he said, the lisp evident.
Lili squeezed the chainlink, welcoming the pain it brought, the distraction. She set her jaw, firm and defiant.
The man’s mouth hung open slightly. She heard a slight wheeze with each drawn breath. “I’m going to let you out, and you’re going to do as I say.” His eyes flicked to the object in his right hand, a stun gun. He said nothing of it. Lili knew they weren’t fatal. She wondered just how much they hurt. Would she be able to push past him and get up the stairs, even if he shocked her?
With his left hand, he slipped a key into first the top padlock, then the bottom, sliding each from the door and hanging them on the chainlink. Then he lifted the latch and pulled open the door.
Lili remained still, her fingers tightening on the back of her cage.
“Please come out,” he said quietly. “I could shock you and take you out, but then we would have to wait or possibly start over. It’s best that you just do as I say.”
His eyes bore into her, those cloudy eyes. There was a bandage on his right hand near the wrist, dirty, stained with dried blood.
“Out now!” he screamed.
Lili jumped and drew in a deep breath.
“Why do you make me shout? Please don’t make me shout. I don’t want to be loud. I don’t want to be mean. Just come out so we can begin, please. The sooner we start, the sooner it will be over.”
She didn’t want to, Lili knew she shouldn’t, but she forced herself to stand and walk toward the man, toward the door of the cage, her eyes looking over his shoulder at the stairs behind him, at the light pooling toward the top.
“Others have tried to make the stairs, but nobody ever has. You can try if you like, but it will only lead to a shock and delays. We would have to start over, but we would start over. It’s best that you just do as I say,” he said again in the most reassuring of voices. She felt his hand on the small of her back through the quilt, guiding her, nudging her toward a large white freezer against the wall with the stairs.
He lifted the lid.
Lili expected a rush of icy-cold air — they had a similar freezer at her house. Instead, warm, humid air rose from inside. The freezer was filled with water. She took a step back, tried to push away from him, but the prongs of the stun gun against her back held her still.
“The water is nice and warm. Go ahead and touch it.”
Lili watched her hand reach for the water, operating with a mind all its own. She dipped her fingers into the water. It was warm, far warmer than the air.
“You’ll want to take off your clothes. It’s better that way.”
He said this so nonchalantly, casually, a conversation between two old friends.
“I’m not —” The words slipped out before Lili realized she spoke. She capped them off and shook her head. Her hands gripped the quilt and pulled it tighter around her small frame. She wanted to step away from the water tank, but he was standing behind her. His warm breath drifted over her neck.
His left hand fell onto her shoulder and tugged at the quilt.
Lili screamed, the first real sound she’d made since waking here. She screamed as loudly as she could, the sound so powerful it felt like a knife grating at the inside of her throat. It echoed off the basement walls and cried back at her in a voice that wasn’t her own. This voice sounded like a terrified little girl, like someone who’d lost control, someone who’d given up, someone she didn’t want to know.
The metal prongs of the stun gun bit into her neck, two cold metal teeth followed by a pain so intense, it sliced at every inch of her, a blade cutting from her toes to her fingertips. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and her legs gave out from under her. Lili’s scream died away in an instant as silence enveloped her.
She awoke on the floor, lying atop the quilt. The man was tugging her panties down. He had removed all her other clothes. Lili tried to reach for the edge of the quilt to cover herself, but her arm wouldn’t work. She stared at her fingers, still twitching.
“I didn’t want to shock you. I don’t want to hurt you. Please don’t make me hurt you again,” the man said. “You can have the clothes back when we’re done. It’s better this way, you’ll see.”
Lili understood what would come next, and she tried to mentally prepare herself.
The man wrapped one arm around her back and the other under her knees and lifted her from the ground. Although he appeared sick, he was surprisingly strong. He lifted her over the freezer filled with warm water and gently lowered her inside. Lili was five-two. Her toes brushed the far side as her legs drifted out, flattening. He held her up at the shoulders, keeping her face above the water.
“Warm, isn’t it? Nice.”
The warm water was oddly comforting; it felt like slipping beneath the surface of a pool, allowing the water to hold you as you drift along. Lili noticed the feeling returning to her fingers, her arms, the warmth massaging her limbs back to life.
“Close your eyes, relax,” he said in a soothing tone, his lisp barely catching. Calm. “Take in a deep breath, a nice, long breath.”
Lili did as he said, not because he told her to, but because she wanted to. She allowed her lips to part and pulled in the basement air, allowed it to fill her lungs, a breath like those she learned in yoga class, a cleansing breath, deep and full.
“Now let it out slowly, feel the air leave your body,” he said in a whisper. “Feel every bit of it.”
Lili released the —
The man pushed at her shoulders and plunged her into the water with such force, her head banged on the bottom of the tank. Her legs kicked and her arms flailed. Her fingers caught at the top edge for one brief second before the smooth plastic slipped from her grasp.
Lili could hold her breath for a long time, almost two minutes the last time someone timed her. But that only worked when she filled her lungs with fresh air first, when she was prepared. She hadn’t filled her lungs, she’d emptied them, just as the man asked, and when he pushed her beneath the surface she inhaled instead, her body’s attempt at grasping for air. Instead of air, she gulped down water and immediately coughed, expelling it even before her head hit the bottom, expelling the water only to inhale more. The water filled her throat, her lungs, resulting in a pain so severe, Lili thought she might implode. When she stopped kicking, when she stopped flailing, the pain went away, and for one brief second Lili thought she would be okay, she thought her body had somehow found a way to survive on water, and she went still. She saw the man looking down at her from above with those gray, bloodshot eyes, his mouth agape. He was distorted through the water, but she could see him. Then everything went black, and she saw nothing at all.
12 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Clair (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 9:13 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Clair and Sophie Rodriguez pulled up to Lili Davies’s house on South King Drive and parked Clair’s green Honda Civic behind two news vans. Both had their satellite antennae raised, but there was no sign of the reporters or the camera operators.
A light snow filled the air, leaving the sky a hazy white.
“It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here,” Clair said, rubbing her hands together.
“I never understood that expression,” Sophie replied, eyeing the vans.
“Witches get no love.”
“Oh, I know that feeling.”
Clair glanced over at her. “What happened to that guy you were dating, James, John, Joe —”
“Jessie. Jessie Grabber.”
Clair chuckled. “Really, that’s his name? Grabber?”
Sophie rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry. It’s a bit high school to make fun of a name, but come on, Grabber? No sneak attack down at Lover’s Lane with a name like Grabber.”
“Well, he was anything but. I think that was part of the problem. I was hoping for a little something, but he was nothing but a gentleman. All the way on through date number four I got nothing but a peck on the cheek. A girl’s got needs.”
“Like witches.”
Sophie nodded. “Like witches.”
“I’m still not warm.” Clair frowned.
“Me either.”
“Witch tit.”
“Witch tit.” Sophie shivered.
Clair shuffled in her seat, looking up and down the street, then pointed at the graystone beside them. “That’s Lili Davies’s house, right?”
“Yes, 748.”
“And her school is where?”
Sophie pointed out her window. “Four blocks east of here. You can nearly see it.”
The snow shifted from tiny flakes to something a little larger than Clair’s favorite breakfast cereal, and her body gave an involuntary quiver. She zipped her jacket all the way up, wrapped a heavy-knit purple scarf around her neck, and donned a fluffy pink cap. When she turned back to Sophie, the woman had done the same. “You look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”
Sophie smirked. “You look like Willy Wonka’s long-lost sister.”
“Perfect. Let’s do this.” Clair tugged at the door handle and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The snow was about two inches deep and still coming down, flying at her at an angle. She jogged in place for a second as Sophie rounded the car, her breath leaving a white plume in the air. The two women started walking east on Sixty-Ninth Street, hunched against the snow.
They crossed Vernon Avenue, and Clair stopped, staring ahead. “If I wanted to grab a girl, that seems like a good spot.”
She stared at the dark tunnels one block up where the Skyway crossed over Sixty-Ninth Street, three lanes of traffic running in each direction. At approximately fifteen feet per lane, that meant she was looking at a space about one hundred feet wide with only a small break at the median in the middle. Although three lights burned under each section, they offered little to break up the gloom.
Clair looked up at the sky, searching for the sun. “What time is sunrise?”
Sophie tilted her head, a line appearing between her brows. “About seven or so.”
“So our girl made this walk about two hours earlier in the day, a little after the sun poked out. If it came out at all. This stretch is fairly deserted now, but that may be different closer to school time. Still, though, someone could easily park around here, maybe feign a breakdown, then grab her when she walked by. The tunnel would be my bet; everything else is fairly wide open.”
They had reached the start of the underpass. Sophie pressed a hand to the concrete. “This is a good neighborhood. There’s not a bit of graffiti on these walls and no sign of homeless activity. I can’t imagine someone could stand around very long without getting noticed.”
They followed the sidewalk under the Skyway, their footfalls echoing off the walls. When they came out the other side, Sophie pointed. “There’s her school.”
Wilcox Academy was a private school housed in what appeared to be a repurposed factory or warehouse building. The red brick façade was immaculate. It could have been built a year ago. The parking lot beside it was posted FACULTY ONLY and was full. A public lot sat across the street, most likely utilized by the students.
Clair pulled open the large glass door, and both women stepped inside, a wave of heat wafting out. “This makes me want to hop back in the car and drive straight to Florida.”
“Can I help you?”
Clair turned to find an elderly security guard sitting at a table to their left. She took a step forward, and a buzzer went off.
The guard pointed toward the entrance. “Metal detector built into the door frame.”
Clair showed the man her badge. “I’m Detective Norton with Chicago Metro, and this is Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children. We’re investigating the disappearance of one of your students, Lili Davies.”
The security guard’s smile fell away. “Heard about that on the way in. I’m so sorry for her family. She’s a good girl.”
Sophie’s head tilted slightly. “You know her?”
He nodded. “This is a small school, only about two hundred kids total. I see each of them every day, hard not to get to know them. I’m former Pittsburgh PD, retired about six years ago. If there is anything I can do to help, I’m here for you.”
“What can you tell us about her?” Clair asked.
“Like I said, never gave me any trouble. Usually got here around seven thirty or so. Many of the students hang out across the street there in the lot until first bell, but not her. She’d try to beat the crowd and get up to class. Not too many friends.” He waved a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, she was well liked, just a bit of an introvert. Could always tell there were big plans cooking behind her eyes. Always thinking, that one.”
Sophie glanced out the window at the cars across the street. “Did she ever ride in with anyone?”
He shook his head. “If she did, I never noticed. If I saw her outside, she was usually coming up the walk the same way you did.”
Clair pulled off her hat and scarf. “What about Gabrielle Deegan? Do you know her?”
The corner of his mouth turned up, and he brushed at his chin. “Gabby can be a bit rough around the edges, but she’s a good girl too. The two of them are together a lot, a bit of yin and yang thing there.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked down the hallway, then turned back to them, lowering his voice. “I have to be a bit hard on her, you know? Being the law here. But I see her for what she is: just a girl looking for some attention. She’s not fooling me none. She’d never admit it — in fact, I bet she’d outright deny it — but I think she may be one of the smartest students here. I think she acts out because she’s bored, not because she’s a troublemaker. She’ll come into her own one day. Until then, it’s my job to steer her away from big trouble and let her get away with a bit of little trouble, find that balance. Every class has at least one.”
“Do you know where we can find her?”
“I’ll call upstairs, see if I can get someone to bring her down for you,” he replied, reaching for the phone on his table. “Watch your wallets and jewelry.” He winked.
13 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 9:14 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter and Nash stood at the Reynoldses’ back door, staring out into their yard.
About fifty feet out, toward the left corner under a large birch tree, a snowman stared back at them.
The beady black eyes glistened under a stovepipe hat. The snowman was tall, at least six and a half feet, maybe more, the body thick and wide, glistening with ice, a red rose at his snowy lapel.
The arms were fashioned from tree branches, each capped with a black glove. The right hand held the handle of a wooden broom. A corncob pipe jutted from the corner of its makeshift mouth, and dark blood trickled down from an icy neck.
Snow fell, filling the air with a white haze. The scene was so odd, so picturesque. Porter felt he was looking at the page of a childhood storybook, not a real yard. There was a swing set off to the far right and woods behind the yard.
“Nobody in your family made that?” Nash asked.
Mrs. Reynolds had her arms wrapped around her son. “No.”
The single word escaped her lips, but she didn’t take her eyes off it, this stranger in her yard.
Porter tugged at his zipper and reached inside his coat, retrieving his Glock.
Brady’s eyes went wide. “Whoa, is he going to kill the snowman, Mom?”
“I’m not going to hurt the snowman. I’m worried he may try to hurt me,” Porter said quietly. “Did you see anyone else out there? Anybody at all?”
“No, sir.”
“How about you and your mother go back into the living room for a few minutes? Think you can take care of your mom while my partner and I check this out?”
Brady nodded.
Porter looked from the boy to his mother. “Go along now.”
When they were gone, he turned to Nash. “Stay here and keep a bead on those trees back there.”
Nash withdrew his own weapon, his eyes scanning the woods.
Porter stepped out the back door, into the falling snow. From somewhere in the back of his mind, an old children’s song began to play.
Small footprints littered the newly fallen snow, crisscrossing the yard near the door, then petering down to a single set ending at the snowman. Porter followed the footprints as best he could, taking small strides so he could place his feet where the child had rather than create another trail. Snow had fallen most of the night, a few inches at least, but it seemed inconceivable that someone could build such a thing without leaving any tracks. His eyes drifted to the broom perched in the snowman’s hand. He supposed it was possible that whoever did this used the broom to sweep away their tracks, but that didn’t explain how they got the broom back into his hand without leaving a final trail. Porter also noted that their yard was fenced. A four-foot chainlink. The gate leading to the front yard was open.
Porter saw a faint trail leading from that gate to the snowman. Not footprints, more of an indent, as if something heavy had been dragged from the front of the house to the back, to here.
He stood in front of the snowman.
It towered over him by nearly a foot. From this angle, the smile upon its face, made from tiny pieces of a broken branch, looked more like a smirk.
Porter remembered building hundreds of these as a kid — pushing the snowball along until it became a snow boulder, too heavy to push at all. Normally, a snowman is constructed by starting with a large snow boulder at the base, then placing another smaller one on top of that to form the torso, then another at the very top to take the place of a head.
This snowman was not constructed that way.
The snow on this snowman had been packed in place. Someone took the time to sculpt the snow into the shape of a snowman rather than use the far faster traditional method.
All of these thoughts rushed through Porter’s mind in an instant as he glanced over the creation from top to bottom, his eyes finally landing on the dark red at the neck — dark red seeping through the white like a giant snow cone.
Porter snapped a branch of a nearby oak and, using the splinted end, carefully plucked at the snow beneath the darkest red spot, where it congealed at the base of the neck. Whoever built this had sprayed the snow with water as they worked, causing it to harden into ice — another trick Porter learned as a child. If made properly, a snowman would be as sturdy as a stone statue, standing tall for the remainder of the winter. If you failed to harden the snow, chunks would break away with the first sun. By midafternoon, half your work would be piled at the ground.
Porter used the stick to break through the ice and to scrape away the packed snow, digging deep enough to reveal the torn neck of the man beneath.
14 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Lili (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 9:15 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
It hurt.
It hurt so bad.
Lili’s body convulsed in one big spasm as her lungs fought to expel water, to cough it out. She inhaled in a quick gasp even though she didn’t want to, she didn’t want to breathe in more water, she didn’t want to die. She did inhale, though, the motion as involuntary as listening, and this time her lungs filled with air. She coughed again, ridding her lungs and throat of more water. This was followed by another gasp.
She was cold.
So cold.
No longer in the water but lying on the concrete floor.
Her eyes snapped open.
The man was above her, his palms pressing down into her chest.
As her eyes met his, he stopped. His eyes went wide, and he leaned in, his stale breath rushing over her face. “What did you see?”
Lili gulped another breath of air and swallowed, then another after that.
“Slow down, you’ll hyperventilate.” He reached for her right hand and pressed his thumb into her wrist. “Your pulse is still a bit irregular, but it will even out. Lie still. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, calming breaths.”
Lili forced her breathing to slow, doing as he said. Sensation returned to her fingertips, to her toes. She was so cold. She began to shiver uncontrollably.
The man reached for the quilt and draped the sour material over her body. “Your body temperature began to drop the moment you died. It will return to normal in a moment. What did you see?”
She tried to blink away the haze from her eyes, but it hurt to try and keep them open. The thin light seemed incredibly bright, hot, burning. When she pinched her eyes shut, she felt a light slap at her cheek.
Died?
“What did you see?” he asked again. He rubbed her arms through the quilt, the friction slowly warming her.
“I . . . I died?” She coughed again, the words scratching at her throat with the last bit of water.
“You drowned. Your heart stopped for a two full minutes before I brought you back. What did you see?”
Lili heard the words, but it took a moment for them to sink in. Her brain was sluggish, thoughts moving slowly, groggily.
Her chest hurt. There was a deep pain at her ribs. She realized he had probably performed CPR to expel the water and kick-start her heart. “I think you broke my ribs.”
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her limp body. “Tell me what you saw! You have to tell me now before you forget! Before it goes away!”
The pain at her chest burned like a knife gouging her belly — Lili shrieked.
The man released her, pulled back from her. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You just have to tell me, and this will all be over, just tell me.”
Lili thought about it then, her mind jumping back to the moment she plunged beneath the water, the moment she . . . had she really drowned? She remembered breathing in water, consciousness pulling away. She remembered blackness.
She remembered nothing.
“I didn’t see anything. I think I passed out.”
“You were dead.”
“I . . .” Her words drifted off. She didn’t remember anything at all.
He was staring down at her, his bloodshot eyes wide and wild, spittle dripping from the corner of his mouth.
“I remember blacking out, then you waking me. Nothing else.”
“You must remember something?”
Lili shook her head. “Nothing.”
He released her shoulders and sat back, his back pressed against the large freezer. He pulled off his knit cap and scratched at his head in frustration.
Lili gasped.
There was an enormous fresh surgical incision running across his bald head. It started above his left ear and trailed around to the back of his head. It was stitched together with black thread, the flesh raised and purple.
He pulled the cap back down, covered up, and stood, favoring his right leg. Reaching down, he pulled Lili to her feet. The blood rushed from her head, and she swooned, her vision going white. He held her still until she could stand on her own, then led her back to the cage, guiding her inside. He tossed her clothes in behind her and slammed the door, then clicked both locks back in place.
“You can get dressed. We’ll try again in a few hours. You will remember next time,” he told her.
He started for the stairs, his right leg dragging slightly behind him. “Drink the milk. You’ll need your strength.”
Lili eyed the glass, now warm. A fly had landed in it and drowned.
15 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Clair (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 9:17 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
The security guard had ushered Clair and Sophie to the far corner of the school’s lobby, then made a few phone calls. There was a small sitting area with a black leather couch, two matching chairs, and a small sign that read: FREE WILCOX WI-FI — PASSWORD AVAILABLE AT SECURITY.
Clair studied the leaf of a large potted tree. “How do they keep this alive indoors? There’s no light.”
Sophie glanced over. “A ficus? They’re like the weeds of the tree world. They’ll eat up whatever light you cast on them. This one is probably sucking up the fluorescents overhead and whatever it can pull from the windows by the door back there.”
“It’s like a frankentree. Looks completely healthy on a diet of artificial junk. I wish I could do that,” Clair replied.
“The one next to it is a philodendron. They’re easy to maintain too — just water whenever the dirt feels dry. I’ve got a few at home. They’re near impossible to kill.”
Clair glanced over. “Oh, I could kill it. My plant love leaves nothing but brown branches and shriveled blooms in its wake. I’m not fit to be a plant owner.”
They heard footsteps from above and glanced up to see a teenage girl coming down the stairs with a purple backpack slung over her shoulder. Not very tall, about five feet or so, with shoulder-length brown hair and pink highlights. She slowed as she saw them, eyeing them warily.
“Gabrielle Deegan?” Clair said, looking up at her.
The girl nodded, descended the remaining steps, and rounded the corner to the sitting area. “Are you looking for Lili?”
“We are,” Sophie said, gesturing toward one of the empty chairs. The girl glanced at the security guard, who offered a reassuring smile, then plopped down into the seat. Sophie and Clair sat opposite her on the couch. “I’m Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children, and this is Detective Clair Norton with Chicago Metro.”
Clair noted that Sophie didn’t mention she was with Homicide at Chicago Metro.
“Gabby, call me Gabby. Nobody calls me Gabrielle but that guy over there.” She nodded at the security guard. “Captain Law and Order. I should be out looking for Lili, and he’s got these doors locked up tighter than his daughter’s chastity belt.”
Clair exchanged a glance with Sophie, trying not to smile.
“Do you have any leads?”
Gabby wore the traditional school uniform, but Clair noticed her white blouse was untucked and her skirt looked like it had been hemmed up an inch or two from the norm. Her ears, eyebrow, and lip all had piercings, but she wore only a single set of small matching silver loops at each ear. No doubt dress code prohibited anything else— someone seeking individuality in a sea of the same would not be doing so here. Every time Clair entered one of these private schools, she recalled the scene from The Wall with all the identical students marching in unison into a giant meat grinder.
“She’s been gone a full day,” Gabby went on. “She could be lying in a ditch right now or tied to a bed with some crazy psycho telling her to call him Daddy while he jerks off on her chest. If that 4MK guy took her, who knows what he’s doing to her. You need to find her.”
“When was the last time you spoke to her?” Clair asked.
“Wednesday night. She was working,” Gabby said. “She texted me from the gallery.”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything, she just sent me a picture of a new Mustang. Cherry red. It was gorgeous. Her dad said he’d buy her a car when she graduates next year, so we’ve been doing this thing where we send each other pictures of cool cars when we find them. She’s not sure what she wants yet. But her dad said if she graduates with straight As, he’ll buy her whatever. He’s a doctor, so I think he’s serious. I told her she should get a Maserati, but she doesn’t want to take advantage of him. She’s trying to find something cool but still affordable. I keep telling her to break the bank if she can, so she sent me the Mustang pic, and I sent her this one.”
She held up her phone. Clair leaned in closer. “What is that?”
“A Tesla Roadster. They don’t make them anymore, but it’s a way cool car. Fully electric and can do zero to sixty in two point seven seconds. It will even get a few hundred miles per charge. They stopped making them in 2012, but the specs are much better than anything else out there, even the new electric cars. You can find them for around seventy thousand now, even though they went as high as a few hundred when they first came out.”
Clair thought about her seven-year-old Honda Civic parked down the street and made a mental note to call her dad and ask for a car. Apparently that route was much more fruitful than saving pennies followed by a visit to the buy-here pay-here lot. “May I see that?”
Gabby handed her the phone.
Clair scrolled through her text messages. No actual words were exchanged with Lili, only photos of cars over the past few weeks.
Gabby went on. “She was hoping to get her license soon and maybe talk her dad into buying the car earlier. She’s had straight As since finger painting in grade school. That’s not gonna change between now and graduation. We thought it would be cool to drive to school every day, even though it’s only a few blocks.”
Clair returned the phone to her. “Do you have a license?”
Gabby shook her head. “I don’t really need one, not now anyway. I get along fine on the bus or the train. Parking in the city can be a bitch. I figured riding in someone else’s car was the way to go.” She offered a wry smile. “Particularly if it’s a Tesla Roadster.”
“Have you ever done that?” Sophie asked. “Ridden in someone else’s car to school?”
Gabby shifted in her seat and scratched her elbow. “Sometimes, if the weather is bad. We always see somebody we know on Sixty-Ninth. If it’s raining or snowing heavily, we might catch a ride.”
“What about yesterday morning? Think Lili caught a ride with someone?” Clair asked.
Gabby thought about this for a second. “It was snowing pretty good, so I guess it’s possible.”
“We’re going to need a list of everyone who might’ve given her a ride. Do you think you can do that?” Sophie asked.
Gabby chuckled. “You think one of the boys here took her? Not a chance. She’d kick their ass before they got their pecker out of their pants.”
Sophie tilted her head. “Would she get in the car with a stranger?”
“No.”
“Then . . .” Sophie let the word hang.
Gabby leaned forward, twisting her fingers together. “Right before school, Sixty-Ninth is full of students, driving and walking. If someone tried to pull her into a car or something, somebody would have seen her.”
“What about if she got into a car with someone she knows?” Clair asked. “Think somebody would notice that?”
Gabby sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Think you can make that list for us? Anyone you can think of who may have given her a ride?”
Gabby nodded and pulled a notepad out from her backpack.
16 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 10:26 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
They found Floyd Reynolds within the body of the snowman, a deep gash in his neck. Someone had tied him to the metal pole of a large bird feeder, then built the snowman around him, slowly covering him in ice and snow.
Porter and Nash watched in awe as CSI painstakingly removed the snow in bits and pieces, carefully bagging and tagging each one for analysis back at their lab, slowly revealing the man beneath.
“This took time, a lot of time,” Nash said under his breath.
“Few hours at least,” Porter agreed.
“How can he do something like this completely unnoticed?”
Porter motioned around the yard. “We’ve got nothing but a tree line at the back here, hedges to the right blocking the view from the neighbors, a wood fence on the left. For someone to really see what was going on back here, they’d have to come through the gate at the front yard. This isn’t visible from the street.”
“Mrs. Reynolds is preoccupied, and the boy was probably in bed by the time he got started,” Nash added, thinking aloud.
Porter’s gaze fell to the ground. He started for the front yard.
Nash followed a few paces behind him, careful to duplicate his steps and avoid multiple tracks. He did this more out of habit than necessity. CSI had already searched the snow and found nothing.
Porter pushed through the gate, paused for a second, then went to the silver Lexus LS parked in the driveway. The car was parked at the side of the house, not visible from the front door. Mrs. Reynolds thought her husband had left, but most likely he’d never gotten the car in gear.
The unsub opened the rear door and slipped into the car behind the driver’s seat. “He was hiding back here when Reynolds came out, probably ducked down in back. There’s a motion light up there. Mrs. Reynolds said her husband left after dinner, so it was probably dark out. He would have tripped the light — only place to hide is the backseat. He waited for Reynolds to get in, maybe get the seat belt around him, and close the door. Then he came up and got something around the man’s neck, something thin like a piano wire, judging by the way it cut into his throat.” As Porter spoke, he climbed into the back of the car and acted everything out, moving in slow motion.
He looked at the back of the driver’s seat. “We’ve got a shoe print here in the leather. Looks like he tried to wipe it away and missed part. He must have put a foot against the back of the seat for leverage.”
“CSI said it’s a size eleven work boot. They don’t know the make,” Nash said.
“It takes a lot of strength to kill a man like that. He’d be thrashing about, fighting back, trying to work his hand under the cord. Reynolds’s movement would be highly restricted — the steering wheel would see to that. He might have tried to get the door open, but most likely both hands went to his neck. The power position is in the backseat. Reynolds wouldn’t have been able to get the cord off, even if he were the stronger man. The leverage and angles all work against him,” Porter said.
Porter climbed out of the backseat and opened the front door. “The blood spatter on the windshield and dashboard fits.”
The steering wheel and door were covered in black fingerprint powder. “Our unsub kills him, climbs out, reaches into the front, takes Reynolds by the shoulders, and drags him out, drags him all the way to the back.” Again, Porter mimics the movement, his back hunched, hauling an invisible body through the snow until he reached the remains of the snowman. Reynolds’s body was completely visible now, all the snow and ice removed. Porter looked at the props on the ground, the stovepipe hat, the black gloves, and the broom. “He must have used the broom to sweep away what he could of his tracks. Last night’s snow did the rest.”
“We think he walked off into the woods,” one of the CSI officers said. It was the same woman Porter and Nash had met at the Jackson Park Lagoon crime scene.
Porter nodded in agreement. “That’s how I would have left. You’re Lindsy, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Rolfes replied. She pointed at the ground leading into the trees. “The snow isn’t as thick under the trees, but he brushed it anyway. Looks like he used a branch or something, something not as effective as the broom. We’ve got a faint trail. It comes out one block over on Hyicen Street. He probably parked his own vehicle there.”
“Any tire tracks?”
Rolfes shook her head. “Nothing to identify the unsub’s vehicle. Two uniforms are going door to door to see if anyone saw a car parked there last night.”
Porter’s phone rang. He glanced down at the display. “It’s the captain.”
“You gonna answer?”
“Nope.”
Nash frowned. “Balls. You know what that means.”
Porter’s phone went silent. A moment later Nash’s phone rang.
“Double balls.”
“Tell him we’re still at the scene. We’ll come in as soon as we wrap up here,” Porter said.
Nash sighed and answered the call.
Behind them, a woman screamed.
Porter turned to find Mrs. Reynolds standing at her back door. “Christ, I told them to keep her and the boy in the living room. She shouldn’t see this,” he said.
Nash shrugged his shoulders and walked away from the house, his phone pressed to his ear.
17 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Clair (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 10:26 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Clair fell back in the squeaky-wheeled office chair and picked at the cracked green leather on the armrest. She reached for her coffee cup and brought it to her —
Empty.
Dammit.
“Do you want another refill?” she asked Sophie.
Sophie glanced up from the sheet of notebook paper in her hands. “I’m good. We’ve got two more left. Let’s wrap this up so we can get out of here.”
After they spoke to Gabby Deegan, the security guard had escorted them to the second-floor administration office and introduced them to Noreen Outen at the front desk. She’d looked up at them with a forced smile from behind glasses thick enough to leave the top of her nose red with their weight. Clair felt a headache coming on just watching her eyes strain.
After identifying themselves, they’d sent her off on two tasks — round up the students on the rather extensive list Gabby provided them (sixteen names in all), then check the attendance records for the twelfth — they were looking for anyone who didn’t make it to class that day, any class, on the off chance a student picked up Lili and left with her.
While the woman plugged away at her homework assignment, Clair and Sophie had begun interviewing the students lining up in the hallway outside the office. Now they were fourteen down, two to go. So far, none of the students remembered seeing Lili that morning, either walking to school or in the building.
“Who’s next?”
Sophie glanced down at Gabby’s notes. “Malcolm Leffingwell and Leo Gunia. Want to flip for it?”
Clair tilted her head back in the chair. “Leo!”
Sophie giggled. “Jeez, Clair. Do you have to shout every name?”
“I love the way kids jump when they hear their name shouted out from the admin office. Every bad thing they’ve done since wetting their first diaper runs through their head. See? Look how white that kid’s face is.”
Sophie glanced up at the boy coming through the door. “You’re a damn sadist, woman.”
“Just keeping them on their toes.”
Leo Gunia wore the same white shirt, navy pants, and blue striped tie as all the other boys they had spoken to. His black hair was neatly cropped, and he had the slightest amount of stubble growing under his chin.
Clair suppressed a smile. Why is it all teenage boys think they can grow some form of facial hair? She had yet to meet one who actually could. Instead, they had these bitty shadows and patches of peach fuzz. She was tempted to send each one on his way with a razor and a bottle of testosterone. “Please take a seat, Leo.”
Sophie explained who they were and why they were there.
Leo held their gaze, nodding as she spoke. “The whole school is talking about it.”
“Really? What are they saying?” Sophie asked him.
The boy shrugged. “Only that somebody might have taken her on her way to school the other day. That 4MK guy.”
“It wasn’t 4MK,” Clair told him.
He shrugged again. “Well, somebody, then.”
“Did you see her that morning?”
The boy didn’t say anything. His eyes fell to the floor. He shuffled his feet.
“Leo?”
“I should’ve stopped. It was so cold out, she must have been freezing, but I had to get to class early to try and prep for a test. I had to work the night before and didn’t have time to study,” Leo said quietly.
Clair leaned forward in her chair. “So you saw her? Where?”
“On Sixty-Ninth, right before the overpass.” He glanced up, his eyes watery. “She was hunched over, walking against the cold. It was snowing kind of heavy, and I didn’t see her until the last second. I don’t know what happened. I thought about stopping, I think my foot even reached for the brakes, but that test came into my mind, and I looked at my clock and I was already five minutes late. That meant I only had about twenty minutes to study — by the time I parked and got upstairs, probably less. Anyway, I saw her at the last second. I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to, and I didn’t have enough time to double back. I figured someone else would give her a ride.”
Clair glanced at Sophie, then back to Leo. “Did you see anyone else stop for her?”
Leo lowered his head. “No. I’m not sure I would have noticed even if the car behind me did. I wasn’t thinking, and with the snow . . . If I would have picked her up, she’d probably be okay right now. This is my fault.”
Sophie asked, “What time was it when you saw her?”
Leo sighed. “Seven thirty.”
“You’re certain?”
He nodded. “I needed an A on that exam, remember? I was counting the seconds all morning.”
“What did you score?”
Leo sighed again. “B minus.”
Clair took down Leo’s contact information and gave him her card. They sent him back to class.
Malcolm Leffingwell had not seen Lili all week.
Noreen Outen poked her head back in. “That the last of them?”
Clair stood up and stretched her back. “Yes, ma’am. Any luck with the attendance records?”
Noreen pushed her heavy glasses back up her nose, then skimmed a small notepad. “We had two students out sick that day, both phoned in by their mothers — Robyn Staats and Rosalee Newhouse. Nobody late to first period, nobody unaccounted for. We have good students here; they wouldn’t get mixed up in any shenanigans.”
Sophie nodded at the notepad. “Do either of those girls know Lili?”
Noreen said, “Well, let me think. Robyn is a freshman, Rosalee is a junior. It’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t know for sure.”
“We’ll need to speak to both of them too,” Sophie told her.
Noreen nodded.
Clair fell back into her chair. It felt like they were spinning wheels.
18 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 10:31 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
“Why does the captain want to meet us at my apartment?” Porter asked.
He had both hands on the steering wheel, his knuckles white.
The red and blue lights flashed in the corner of his eye atop the charger, and the siren wailed behind the throaty engine. He was doing eighty-one on I-94.
Beside him, Nash held the Oh Shit handle above the door with his right hand and gripped the seat with his left. “He wouldn’t say. I tried to get it out of him. His exact words were ‘Get Porter back to his apartment now.’”
Porter pulled the wheel to the left and circled around a gas truck. “Well, did he sound angry? Upset? Worried?”
Nash shrugged. “He sounded like the captain always sounds. I couldn’t get a read on him.”
“Fuck!” Porter slammed his hand into the horn and held as a blue Prius pulled into his lane. “Damn tree-hugger.”
“Is there something at your place I should know about? Why would he want to meet there?”
The Prius’s right blinker came on, and the car pulled lazily into the next lane. The moment it passed, Porter dropped the Charger into fourth and flew past, coming within inches of the car’s protruding mirror.
“Sam?”
“I don’t know.”
Nash groaned. “You don’t know if there’s something at your place I should know about? Come on, Sam. This isn’t first grade. I’m your partner. You can tell me. Does this have something to do with Heather’s death?”
Porter said nothing.
He took the exit for Lake Shore Drive.
Along with the captain’s white Crown Vic, there were three vehicles Porter didn’t recognize parked in front of his building — two black sedans and a van. All bore federal plates. He double-parked, blocking in the van, killed the siren, and left the lights flashing as he bound from the car and up the steps with Nash behind him.
They were in the hallway at his door — Captain Dalton, Special Agent Diener, Agent Poole, and Special Agent in Charge Hurless of the Bureau’s 4MK task force. There were two federal crime-scene techs Porter didn’t recognize.
Dalton saw them push through the door at the stairs and hurried over. “What the fuck were you thinking, Sam?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Nash stood beside Porter. He said nothing.
Dalton clicked through some images on his cell phone and held the small screen up to Porter. “Did you take it because of this? Are you looking for her?”
Porter glanced at the screen. It was the note Bishop had left for him on the bed in his apartment along with the ear of the man who had killed his wife.
Sam,
A little something from me to you . . .
I’m sorry you didn’t get to hear him scream.
How about a return on the favor?
A little tit for tat between friends.
Help me find my mother.
I think it’s time she and I talked.
B
“Are you looking for her?” Dalton repeated.
Porter took a deep breath. “I’m trying to find him.”
“That’s not your job,” Dalton said, fuming. “Have you been in contact with him? Has he reached out to you at all?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if he had?”
“Of course I would.”
Dalton dropped his phone back into the pocket of his thick brown coat. “I want to believe you. But I’m not so sure I can anymore.”
Nash frowned at Poole. “What are you up to?”
Poole raised his hands defensively but said nothing.
Dalton’s forehead furrowed. “He didn’t do anything. Security caught your buddy here on video sneaking into the FBI’s office across from yours this morning.”
“He was probably just turning the heat up for them. Always nice to come into a toasty office on a day like today,” Nash replied. He jerked his thumb back at Diener. “That pud tugger was sitting at my desk in our office this morning. We’re all one big happy family down there. Share and share alike.”
SAIC Hurless stepped forward. “Our office is considered federal territory until we vacate. Trespassing is a prosecutable offense, local law enforcement included.”
“I pulled the file on Barbara McInley,” Porter said.
Dalton rolled his eyes.
Hurless drew closer. “Theft of federal property would be a separate but equally damning charge.”
“I’ll return the file as soon as I’m done.”
“You’ll return it now. Then we’ll decide if you get to keep your badge,” Hurless replied.
Dalton’s face went red. He turned to Hurless. “The only person who will decide what happens with Detective Porter’s badge is me. You’re guests in my house. I can put you and your team out on the street with one phone call.”
Hurless stepped closer. “Let’s be clear, Captain. We’re here because your prize detective let a serial killer walk. That mistake will cost lives. There’s a good chance it already has. You’ve got one girl dead and another missing, two crimes probably attributed to our guy, and you put the same clumsy detective in charge. Now he’s stealing files. How much blood do you want on your hands before you decide it’s time to fix this?”
“4MK didn’t take the girls,” Porter said quietly.
“Enough.” Dalton grunted.
“I want to know what else this man is hiding. Open the door,” Hurless said.
“No fucking way!” Nash blurted out. “Unless you have a warrant, you’ve got zero business in there.”
Hurless began ticking off items on his fingers. “Federal trespass, theft of federal property, impeding a federal investigation, aiding and abetting a wanted federal fugitive . . . notice the key word? Losing his badge is the least of your friend’s worries right now.”
Dalton took Porter by the shoulder and led him back down the hall. “You need to open that door.”
“Why?”
“You let them in, let them take a sniff around, and the charges go away. You share whatever you’ve got cooking in there, and this goes away,” Dalton said. “You don’t, and I can’t protect you.”
“Screw them, Sam,” Nash said.
Porter glanced back down the hall at the men standing at his door. Poole met his eyes. “All right.”
“Sam!”
Porter offered a weak grin at his partner. “It’s fine. I really don’t give a shit anymore. Maybe it will help catch him.”
Dalton drew in a deep breath and steered Porter back down the hall.
Porter pulled his keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.
Hurless and Diener pushed past him into the apartment, followed by the two crime-scene techs. Poole went in next. His eyes dropped to the ground as he walked past Porter and the others.
Porter followed, with Dalton and Nash at his back.
A whistle from the bedroom. “Holy hell,” Hurless said.
“Oh, Christ,” Dalton said, his breath catching as he stepped into the room.
Nash said nothing. He stepped up behind the others, dragging his feet.
“What am I looking at?” Hurless asked.
“Every mention of Bishop in the past four months, worldwide,” Porter replied. He stepped up to the map, located the yellow thumbtack he had placed at the Jackson Park Lagoon, and pulled it out, dropping it onto the nightstand.
Diener was watching him. “What was that one?”
“Jackson Park. I told you, he didn’t take these girls. This is something, someone different.”
Poole crossed the room and kneeled down at the laptop, his eyes drifting over the text on the screen. “Google alerts?”
“Every mention of Bishop or 4MK online,” Porter replied.
Poole positioned the screen to get a better look, prepared to type, then turned back to Porter. “May I?”
“Sure.”
Porter watched as he scrolled back through the messages, scanning the subjects of each, then refreshing the screen to load the previous fifty, repeating. When he reached the end, he looked up at the maps. “Where do you think he is?”
“I have no idea.”
Hurless started opening drawers, rifling through his clothes.
Nash crossed the room and stood between him and Porter’s dresser. “You seriously going to go through the man’s underwear drawer?”
“Step aside, Officer,” SAIC Hurless said.
“It’s fine, Nash. Let him look at whatever he wants. I’m not hiding anything,” Porter said.
Hurless faced him. “Where’s the McInley file?”
“In my car, under the driver’s seat.” Porter tossed him the keys.
Hurless tossed the key to one of the techs. He disappeared out the front door toward the elevator.
“What other files are we going to find in here?” Hurless asked.
Porter crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “That’s the only one I have.”
“Because you put the others back?”
“Because it’s the only one I took.”
Poole stood up from the laptop and turned to him. “Why Barbara McInley?”
Porter thought about this for a second, not sure he wanted to say anything, then decided he wasn’t helping anyone by keeping his thoughts to himself. “A gut instinct, that’s all. Something feels off about that case.”
“Off how?” Poole asked.
Agent Diener snickered. “Who cares? He’s not Philip Marlowe. Gut instincts only sub for evidence in old black-and-white movies and pulp books.”
“Off how?” Poole repeated.
Porter ran his hand through his hair. “She’s the only blonde. Eight girls taken, and she’s the only blonde.”
“You’re kidding with this, right?” SAIC Hurless said.
Poole stepped closer. “He took the loved ones of the true criminals in his eyes. The McInleys only had blond children. He didn’t have a choice.”
Porter shrugged. “Maybe, but the crime doesn’t fit, either. Barbara McInley’s sister hit and killed a pedestrian. It was an accident. All the other crimes, everyone else he decided to punish, did something premeditated.”
Poole thought about this. “That’s still thin.”
“I never said I had something solid. Just a gut instinct, a hunch. Like your buddy said — just my very own Philip Marlowe moment, nothing more,” Porter told him. “If it played out, I would have told you.”
The tech returned holding the McInley file and handed it to SAIC Hurless. He waved it at Porter. “What did you find in here? Anything to back this up?”
“I didn’t get a chance to look,” Porter said. “It’s been a busy morning.”
SAIC Hurless stared at him for nearly a minute, neither man saying a word, then turned back to the two techs and the other federal agents. He waved his arm at the wall. “I want photos of all this, then bag and tag everything. Bring it all back. Turn over every inch of this place. You find anything at all having to do with this case, I want to know about it.”
He turned back to Porter and stood inches from his face. “I find you’re holding out, if this guy reached out to you and you’re holding back, if you know anything at all you’re not telling me, I will not hesitate to lock you up. I don’t give a shit what kind of seniority you may have or what your track record is, you’re nothing but a fucking thief to me, a thief and a hack interfering with a federal investigation. Now’s your chance to come clean, if there’s anything at all you haven’t told me; now or never. I hear about it in an hour, and you’re done. Do you understand me?”
“There’s nothing else.”
The man let out a breath.
Porter’s eyes stayed on him.
When SAIC Hurless finally turned away and crossed the room to root around in Porter’s closet, Porter found himself looking at the photo of Heather on his dresser, her bright, reassuring smile, and he had never felt so alone.
One hour and four file boxes later, they were finished.
Porter’s wall was once again bare, save for the tiny holes left by the tacks and the paint damaged by roughly removed tape. Agent Diener had the laptop under his arm and was slowly circling the room on the off chance something was missed. In the hallway Porter heard SAIC Hurless mumbling something to Dalton, but he couldn’t make out the words.
On his way out, Poole prepared to say something but then changed his mind. Porter watched him slip into the elevator, with the techs behind him, lugging the last of the boxes.
“Diener?” Hurless shouted out. “Let’s go.”
Agent Diener pushed past Porter and went to the elevator, trailing the scent of an aftershave forgotten since 1992.
The doors opened. Hurless said one last thing to Dalton and ducked inside, his eyes fixed on Porter as the doors creaked shut.
Dalton came back into the apartment with Nash behind him. “I really don’t know what the hell you were thinking, Sam. This is a clusterfuck.”
“It’s not like he was hiding evidence,” Nash pointed out.
Dalton went red. “You keep your mouth shut. I seriously doubt all this was going on under your nose and you didn’t know.”
Porter said, “He had no idea. This was all me.”
Dalton spun back to him. “Not only have you compromised the 4MK investigation, now you’re impacting our efforts to find this new psycho snatching girls. I can’t afford to take you offline right now.”
“Then don’t.”
“Hurless took it to his assistant director, and the AD called our chief. This is completely out of my hands.” The captain’s eyes fell to the floor. “I’m relieving you of duty, one week. You’ve got to get this shit out of your head. I find out you didn’t drop it, and this will play out much worse. They agreed not to charge you, but the suspension is nonnegotiable.”
“Captain, this is just a pissing contest. You can’t let politics dictate your actions. Catching this guy has to be our priority, nobody knows more —”
Dalton held out his hand. “Gun and badge.”
Porter knew better than to argue. He handed over his Glock and identification.
Dalton dropped both into his jacket pocket, turned, and left the apartment. He pressed the elevator call button.
“This new guy is nasty, Captain. He’s escalating fast,” Porter said.
Without turning, Dalton replied, “Nash and Clair will handle it.
I don’t want to hear anything from you for the next seven days. I do, and you’ll get another seven. Do we understand each other?”
Porter said nothing.
“Do we understand each other?” the captain repeated.
“Yes,” Porter said.
The elevator arrived and Dalton stepped inside, his hand holding the door open. “Nash, you’re with me.”
Nash looked to Porter but said nothing. Porter offered a slight nod.
Nash stepped inside the car. The doors closed, and Porter found himself standing in the middle of his apartment, his heart pounding in his chest, the silence screaming.
19 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Lili (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 11:36 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Lili huddled in the corner of her cage, the thick blanket wrapped around her. She had gotten dressed, but she couldn’t get warm. She couldn’t stop shivering, even when standing next to the heater vent. She couldn’t stop looking at the dark staircase in the corner of the basement or listening to the creak of old floorboards as the man moved around upstairs.
A spider crept across the chainlink a few inches from her foot, and she pulled away, pushing deeper into the corner.
With each footfall upstairs, a tiny bit of dust rained down from the rafters, a thin fog in the gloomy light. Lili tried to pretend this was snow and she was looking out a window. She tried to pretend she was safely back in her room at home, but the illusion broke whenever the man cried out.
He screamed, a lot.
His words were incoherent, a muffled blast of nonsense, and they were followed sometimes by crying, other times by a pain-filled wail. But they broke the relative silence of the home and lingered on the air, somehow living in those tiny bursts of dust drifting down.
Nothing preceded the cries.
Lili’s father once hit his index finger with a hammer while trying to help her build a birdhouse for school, and he let out a similar wail but it hadn’t lingered — like he caught himself about the scream, realized his daughter was watching, and bit his tongue. The scream came to an abrupt halt, dying somewhere in his throat as his face flushed with red.
The screams from the man upstairs did not drop off so suddenly. He would be silent for a really long time, no movement or noise at all. Then his voice would fill the house with the sharpness of a blade, then linger as they morphed into sobs.
Lili didn’t know what brought on his screams. She didn’t want to know. She preferred he keep whatever it was upstairs.
He had come down only once in the past hour. He emptied the bucket he had left for her waste, washing it in the utility tub before returning it to her cage. He then eyed the still-full glass of milk with the fly floating on top, picked it up, and carried it back up the stairs, all without uttering a word. He looked sickly pale, though. When Lili met his gaze, she couldn’t help but turn away, her eyes unwilling to look upon him — somehow, that had caused him to stay a little bit longer. If she wasn’t looking at him, he felt more comfortable looking at her, staring even. Who knew what thoughts ran through his head.
When he came back again, Lili would lock her eyes on him and not turn away, maybe say something about his wound. Maybe that would make him go away sooner.
Lili knew plenty of boys like this.
The confident ones had no problem glaring at her. Some made sure she knew they were watching. The shy boys, though — they may look, but the moment she felt their eyes on her, the moment she looked over at them, they would turn away and lose themselves in something else, pretending she wasn’t there at all. Her friend Gabby thought of it as some kind of game, always calling out the shy boys and making them feel all embarrassed whenever she caught one.
There was one boy in their class, Zackary Mayville, notoriously shy. Gabby got partnered with him during science class last week, and just to mess with him, she unfastened two of the buttons on her blouse, just enough so her bra was visible when she bent down over their workbench. He turned bright red every time, looking but trying not to get caught looking, and Gabby managed to get through the entire hour with a straight face. Lili hadn’t, though. She couldn’t stop laughing and nearly didn’t get the assignment done. She had to —
Lili heard footsteps on the stairs. The man appeared.
He had changed clothes. Now he wore black jeans, a dark red sweater, and the same black knit cap from earlier. When he reached the bottom of the steps, he sat, and this time he did stare at her.
Only minutes earlier, Lili had told herself that she would stare back, that she would watch him with an intensity in her eyes, unflinching, unnerving. She would rattle him. She didn’t, though. Instead, she looked away. She focused her gaze on the concrete floor and watched him from the corner of her eye.
He sat there for a long time, at least twenty minutes, his breath coming in short, wheeze-filled gasps. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. “I’m sorry if I alarmed you. Sometimes it hurts.”
Lili wanted to ask him what he meant, but she didn’t. Instead, she remained silent.
“Sometimes,” he went on, “I feel like someone’s got their fingers around my eyeball and they’re squeezing with all their might, not enough to pop it, but almost. I have meds, but they make it hard to think, to focus, and I need to concentrate right now. I need my wits about me.”
Lili wanted to ask him about it, find out what was wrong, but kept her thoughts to herself. She wouldn’t speak to him.
He reached up and scratched at his cap, then stood. “It’s time to do it again.”
20 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Clair (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 11:49 a.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Kloz gave his chair a push with his right foot and sent it spinning. “No shit? Sam couldn’t stop being a cop? Not exactly a news flash.”
Nash sat on the edge of the conference table, Sophie and Clair at the opposite end. “He should have told us.”
“It’s not like we could have covered for him,” Clair said. “Sounds like the captain didn’t even give you a chance.”
Nash pointed across the hall. “It’s those ass clowns over there.”
Kloz gave his chair another spin. “This has conspiracy written all over it.”
“What do you mean?” Nash asked.
“Someone higher up is covering their ass. We should be working directly with the feds on this. Instead, they scooped up the investigation and cut us out. In what world does that make sense? I’ll tell you — in a world where someone higher up wants to distance this department from the case.”
“Who? Dalton?”
“Maybe higher. The mayor was friends with Talbot. He took a lot of flak when that all went down. Then you got the press saying Sam let Bishop go . . .”
Clair threw a pen at him. “Sam didn’t let anyone go. He saved that girl.”
Kloz caught the pen and put it in his pocket. “We know that, but it’s a juicier story if he lets him go. The mayor’s bestie is a criminal, the lead detective lets the serial killer walk . . . it makes perfect sense for the feds to come in and lock everyone else out.”
Clair turned to Nash. “Do you think he’s in contact with Bishop?”
“Sam?”
“Yeah.”
Nash shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Would he do that?” Sophie asked. “Talk to that man on his own?”
Nash shrugged again. “He’s been playing things close to the vest since Heather died.”
“Who’s Heather?” Sophie asked.
Clair tilted her head. “You didn’t hear?”
Sophie shook her head.
“Sam’s wife was killed in a convenience store robbery a few weeks before all this went down with Bishop. He probably shouldn’t have been working, but he had been on 4MK since the beginning, so when we thought he died we had to bring him back in. 4MK was his case. They caught the guy who killed her, and then he escaped police custody. Bishop killed Talbot, Porter saved Emory, then he spent a little time in the hospital recuperating. When he got home, he found a box on his bed. Inside there was a note from Bishop and an ear belonging to the man who killed his wife. Bishop got him,” Clair explained.
“What did the note say?”
“Bishop asked Sam to help find his mother,” Nash told her.
“His mother? What does she have to do with this?”
Clair rolled her eyes. “We don’t have time for this right now. I’ll fill you in when we’re back in the car. We need to keep moving, figure out how to proceed without Sam.” She turned back to Nash. “What happened at the Reynoldses’ house?”
Nash loaded up the photos on his phone and slid it across the table to Clair and Sophie.
Kloz leaned in to get a better look. “The same guy who killed Ella Reynolds did this?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Nash replied.
“But why?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
Sophie swiped back through the images. “That doesn’t make sense. If the unsub is targeting the Reynolds family, why would he take Lili Davies? They don’t know each other. There’s no connection.”
“There must be a connection, we just haven’t figured it out yet. What do we know about the father?” Clair asked.
Nash stood and went to the whiteboard. He wrote FLOYD REYNOLDS and underlined it, then wrote WIFE: LEEANN REYNOLDS under it. “He worked for UniMed America Healthcare, has for the past twelve years. Sold blanket insurance and health-care policies. According to his wife, he brings home about two hundred thousand a year before bonuses, and they have no debt aside from an American Express card they pay off every month.”
Klozowski whistled. “That’s some nice scratch. I’m clearly in the wrong line of work.”
“We have UniMed,” Sophie pointed out.
“They’re the number three provider in the state,” Nash told them before writing SIZE II WORK BOOT PRINT FOUND on the board under UNSUB.
“Where?” Sophie asked.
“On the back of the driver’s seat in the Reynoldses’ car. A Lexus LS. Looked like the unsub tried to wipe it away but must have been in a hurry. Sam thinks he put his foot there for leverage when he strangled the father.”
Kloz’s eyes turned toward the ceiling. “Size eleven would put him around seventy-one point five inches, about six feet tall.”
“How do you know that?” Sophie asked.
“The average person is six and a half times taller than their shoe size. Any smaller or larger and their feet are out of proportion with their body, which means they’d have trouble walking, standing, balancing,” Kloz replied.
“Huh.”
“Hang with me, and I’ll school you on all kinds of trivia.”
“No, thank you,” Sophie told him.
Clair said, “I’m not sure I buy the no-debt thing. Maybe they don’t have traditional debt, but what about something not so traditional, like gambling or something he may not have shared with the wife? If you owe the wrong person money, I can see them making an example out of Reynolds’s daughter.”
“They wouldn’t take him out, though,” Kloz said. “Do that, and there’s nobody left to pay.”
“What about the wife? Maybe she owes somebody, and they made examples out of her daughter and her husband,” Sophie said. “Women bet on the ponies too.”
“They have time for that between all the cooking and the cleaning and baby making?” Kloz said, raising his notepad to shield his face from flying pens.
He lowered the notepad a moment later to find Clair just staring at him. “You are such a douche-nozzle.”
Sophie was shaking her head at him. “I don’t like you much.”
Nash studied the board. “That’s actually a good point.”
“Thank you,” Kloz said, smiling triumphantly.
“Not you, asshat. Sophie,” Nash said. “Clair, ask Hosman to dig into their finances in case things are amiss in suburbia.”
“On it.”
“Is somebody watching the mother?” Klozowski asked.
Nash nodded. “We left two uniforms there to keep an eye on her and their little boy. There were also three news vans outside when I left. I don’t think they’ll get much alone time in the near future. Probably a good thing.”
Clair was flipping through the images of Reynolds on Nash’s phone again. “This doesn’t really feel like a collection hit. Those guys tend to work efficiently, a double tap to the head, no mixed signals. They don’t build snowmen or spend hours positioning a body under the ice just right. Whoever this is, they’re trying to send some kind of message.”
“They’re not afraid of getting caught, either,” Sophie said. “They’re spending a lot of time in visible places.”
Clair nodded. “Somebody with nothing to lose has no fear, no remorse, they just act. That makes this guy very dangerous.”
Nash drew a line between Ella Reynolds and Lili Davies. “These two are connected somehow.”
Klozowski’s phone buzzed, and he glanced down at the display. “We’ve got a make and model on the truck from the park footage. It’s a 2011 Toyota Tundra.”
“See if you can get a list of matches within a hundred-mile radius of the city.”
Klozowski was already tapping at his phone. “Yep.”
“Any luck enhancing the image of the driver?”
“Nope,” Klozowski replied. “I tried before I came down here. The camera is old and doesn’t have the resolution.”
Nash went back to the board, crossed out the completed items, and studied the remaining list of assignments. “This is getting long, and now we’re down a man.”
Kloz set down his phone and raised his hand.
“Yes, Kloz?” Nash said, pointing at him.
Klozowski grinned. “See what I did there? Remember when Bishop raised his hand? That’s a ‘callback.’”
“Do you have something to add?”
Kloz nodded. “Yes, sir. I can go out in the field. I need to run to that Starbucks anyway to tackle their video footage.”
Nash glanced up at the evidence board. “What about your other assignments?”
“I’m not running a one-man show upstairs. I’ve got staff. I’ll bring my laptop, and they can feed information to us as they get it,” Kloz said.
Nash nodded. “Done. Ladies, let’s divide and conquer. You take the art gallery. They should be open by now. Kloz and I will hit Starbucks and tackle some of these other items on the list. At this point, we’ve got to assume Lili is still alive. We need a break.”
Clair stood up and stretched. “Should someone check on Sam?”
“Nope,” Nash replied.
Evidence Board
ELLA REYNOLDS (15 years old)
Reported missing 1/22
Found 2/12 in Jackson Park Lagoon
Water frozen since 1/2 — (20 days before she went missing)
Last seen — getting off her bus at Logan Square (2 blocks from home/15 miles from Jackson Park)
Last seen wearing a black coat
Drowned in salt water (found in fresh water)
Found in Lili Davies’s clothes
Four-minute walk from bus to home
Frequented Starbucks on Kedzie. Seven-minute walk to home.
LILI DAVIES (17 years old)
Parents = Dr. Randal Davies and Grace Davies
Best friend = Gabrielle Deegan
Attends Wilcox Academy (private) did not attend classes on 2/12
Last seen leaving for school (walking) morning of 2/12 @ 7:15 wearing a Perro red nylon diamond-quilted hooded parka, white hat, white gloves, dark jeans, and pink tennis shoes (all found on Ella Reynolds)
Most likely taken morning of 2/12 (on way to school)
Small window = 35 minutes (Left for school 7:15 a.m., classes start 7:50 a.m.)
School only four blocks from home
Not reported missing until after midnight (morning of 2/13)
Parents thought she went to work (art gallery) right after school (she didn’t do either)
FLOYD REYNOLDS
Wife: Leeann Reynolds
Insurance sales — works for UniMed America Healthcare
No debt? Per wife. Hosman checking
UNSUB
Possibly driving a gray pickup towing a water tank: 2011 Toyota Tundra
May work with swimming pools (cleaning or servicing)
Size 11 work boot print found — back of driver’s seat, Reynolds car (Lexus LS). Used for leverage?
ASSIGNMENTS:
Starbucks footage (1-day cycle?) — Kloz
Ella’s computer, phone, e-mail — Kloz
Lili’s social media, phone records, e-mail (phone and PC MIA) — Kloz
Enhance image of possible unsub entering park — Kloz
Park camera loosened? Check old footage — Kloz
Get make and model of truck from video? — Kloz
Clair and Sophie walk Lili’s route to school/talk to Gabrielle Deegan
Clair and Sophie visit gallery (manager = Ms. Edwins)
Put together a list of saltwater pools around Chicago via permits office — Kloz
Check out local aquariums and aquarium supply houses
Hosman to check debt on the Reynoldses
21 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 12:18 p.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Porter needed a Big Mac.
Not only a Big Mac but a large fry, chocolate shake, and an apple pie for dessert.
He needed it so badly, the craving drove him to walk steadfast from his apartment, three blocks down Wabash, and directly into the nearest McDonald’s, which was hopping this time of day. He ordered, took his meal to a small table in the back, and devoured every bit. Seven minutes later, he found himself staring at an empty tray, his stomach still rumbling.
He desperately wanted to talk to Heather. The immense hole in his heart once filled by the sound of his wife’s voice burned.
Heather had been gone for six months now, and it felt like six thousand lifetimes. People told him he would heal with time, the hole would grow smaller, fill with other loves, with life lived. It hadn’t, though. Instead, the void only seemed to grow larger, and he found himself missing her more each day.
Heather understood. Heather listened.
Porter wanted to tell her about the past six months. He needed her advice. He needed the sound of her voice.
“You kept me from venturing down the rabbit hole, Button,” Porter said quietly. “Now I’m knee deep and sinking fast.”
Last month he canceled her cell phone service. Until then, he’d called her regularly, sometimes three or four calls in a day, just to hear her sweet voice on the other end of the line, enough distance to make it sound real, to make her sound real. Silly, he knew, but it was all he had. Her presence slowly faded from his life no matter how tight he held on. Her body may have died suddenly, but her spirit lingered. Porter held that spirit’s hand with all his might, unwilling to let go at first, finally coming to the realization that he had no other choice. That was the night he turned off her cell phone, and when he called her the next morning, it wasn’t her voice that answered but instead a robotic operator telling him the number was no longer in service. At that point, her hand slipped from his and she was gone.
He would kill to have her back.
Even if only for five minutes, to have her back, to hold her, to ask her what to do next.
“I love you, Button,” he said quietly.
With a deep sigh, Porter stood up, gathered his trash, and dumped everything into the overflowing can at the door. He stepped out into the icy day, welcoming the numb of it.
Then he wandered.
Twenty minutes later Porter found himself standing in the lobby of Flair Tower on West Erie, a small puddle forming at his feet. He hadn’t planned on coming here, and as he pushed through the doors he considered turning right back around, but instead he found himself standing still, his eyes looking out across the lobby but not really taking anything in, dazed.
“Detective?”
Porter hadn’t heard her walk up. He hadn’t expected her to walk up, a building this size, but there she was, standing in front of him.
“Hello, Emory.”
The last time he had seen her was at the hospital shortly after she was rescued from 4MK. Bishop had placed her at the bottom of an elevator shaft in that building on Belmont, used her as bait to lure Porter in. She had been malnourished, gaunt, her skin pale. Her right wrist had been badly damaged by the handcuffs he used to restrain her, and Bishop had removed Emory’s left ear, yet she still managed to smile that day. Her hair was longer now, her face fuller, color in her cheeks.
“Detective, are you okay?”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry. I’m not really sure why I’m here. I meant to come and see you, you know, after, but things have been so hectic, the time got away from me,” he said.
“Let’s sit.” She took his hand and led him to some couches placed in front of a fireplace in the corner of the lobby. A log crackled, wrapped in thick flames, the heat reaching out and lapping at the air.
Porter tugged off his gloves, his fingers nervously twitching together. “I probably shouldn’t be here.”
Emory smiled. “That’s silly — it’s good to see you. I meant to stop by the station a dozen times but couldn’t bring myself to go. Silly. I guess it’s hard to find the words after something like that. The whole thing feels like a bad nightmare that happened to someone else. Like a movie I watched a few months ago and left at the theater. I can’t talk to my friends, they don’t understand. Ms. Burrow, either. She tried to coax the story out of me a few times, but I couldn’t . . . it all made her very uncomfortable. She wanted me to talk for my own sake, not because she wanted the details, and I didn’t see the point in burdening her with those details. It was my nightmare. There’s no reason for her to suffer too, have those thoughts in her head.”
“Did you see a shrink?”
Emory laughed and shook her head. “They sure wanted to see me. I don’t know how many dozens of them reached out. I tried to talk to one, but I couldn’t stop thinking she planned to write a book about whatever I told her, and the idea of walking past a book at the store, knowing this ordeal was carved in stone for others to read, the idea of all that shut me right up. I couldn’t tell her anything.”
“I don’t think they’re allowed to do that. She would have lost her license.”
“I suppose.”
Emory’s hands rested in her lap. Porter could still see a faint scar on her right wrist, but for the most part, the surgeons had done a wonderful job repairing the damage. On her left wrist, a small figure-eight tattoo — Bishop gave her that too.
She raised her right wrist and pulled back the sleeve. “They did a good job, right?”
“If I didn’t know what happened, I’d never guess. It’s barely noticeable.”
“I’m going back in next May. The doctor says he can wipe it out completely, but we need to give it a chance to heal up first,” she told him, rotating the wrist. “I still don’t have full motion, but it seems like it’s coming back.”
Porter’s eyes inadvertently went to her left ear, hidden behind her long chestnut hair. He caught himself, almost looked away, then figured he wasn’t fooling anybody. “How’s the ear?”
A wide grin spread across her face. “Wanna see?”
Porter couldn’t help but smile back. He nodded. “Is it gross?”
“You tell me?” Emory pulled her hair back, revealing a perfectly natural-looking ear. “Pretty cool, huh?”
Porter leaned in closer. Aside from a small scar visible at the base where doctors had attached the extremity, he couldn’t tell it wasn’t her original ear. “That’s amazing.”
Emory rolled up the sleeve of her right arm and showed him a small scar below her elbow. “They grew it here, using cartilage from my ribs. It only took a few months. The surgery was about six weeks ago. The doctor said Bishop removed mine with near surgical precision, so they had no trouble attaching the new one. Usually when they do this, the ear is torn off in some kind of accident and they have to try and piece the mess back together again. I guess I got lucky.”
“I think you’re a very strong girl.”
“You wanna know the best part?”
“What’s that?”
She turned her head and showed him her other ear. “Notice something different between the two?”
It took Porter a minute, and then it came to him. “Your right ear is pierced and your left one isn’t?”
“Yep.” She beamed. “The left was, but not anymore. I think I’m gonna leave it that way.” She held up her left wrist, showed him the small infinity tattoo. “I’m on the fence about keeping this. I think a small reminder of what happened isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it’s good to remember the bad. It makes other things seem not so terrible.”
“You are one remarkable, inspiring girl.”
She let her hair fall back. “Why, thank you, Detective.”
The two went quiet for a minute, not an awkward silence, but something a little more comfortable. Porter found himself watching the flames as they wrapped around the logs in the fireplace, the wood slowly growing red and white. The crackle they produced was soothing, relaxing. This girl had lost her mother as a child, now her father, and yet she smiled. Porter wanted desperately to smile. He wanted to smile and mean it.
As if reading his mind, Emory leaned in closer. “He wasn’t much of a father to me. I barely knew him. If not for the money, the way my mom drafted her will, I’m not so sure he would have wanted me around at all.”
“He was your father. I’m sure he cared for you. He just had trouble showing it.”
“He was a horrible man,” she said quietly. “Not to me but to so many other people.”
Porter considered telling her something to the contrary, try to build him up, thought better of it. She was a big girl. She deserved the truth. “It’s important to remember he’s not you. He never was.”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she fought them back. “That’s not what the press says. They say it’s worse now than ever. All his assets going to a kid, leaving nobody to run the business. Building inspectors shut down one of his skyscrapers last month, and the press blamed me. Nearly four thousand lost jobs.”
Porter knew the building. Talbot had used substandard concrete in the construction. When the shortcut was discovered, he’d tried to retrofit the building (and most likely pay off inspectors), but the project was shut down anyway. The building cost a little over $700 million dollars, and it was set for implosion. Better to end it now, Porter supposed, than let construction complete and the thing topple over down the road.“They’re trying to sell papers. How could that be your fault?”
“There’s a lot of fighting going on at Talbot Enterprises,” Emory explained. “Three of my father’s senior officers are contesting his will. They’re saying he drafted it under duress, that my mother forced him to leave everything to me. With all of them making grabs for the money, key decisions aren’t happening, and things are falling apart. I’m not old enough to assume control, so Patricia Talbot stepped in as interim CEO until somebody can take over full-time.” Emory let out a sigh. “She’s suing me directly. She claims my father didn’t have the right to leave all that he did to me, that everything rightfully belongs to her. Then there’s Carnegie . . .”
Porter knew all about Carnegie, Talbot’s other daughter. She regularly made the papers before Talbot died. Constant partying and arrests, a fixture on the Chicago social scene, and not a good one.
“She’s been badmouthing me on social media and in every interview she does, whenever she gets the chance,” Emory said. “She calls me Bastard Bitch. She ends every message with hashtag BastardBitch. I’ve never met her, and she acts like she’d stab my eyes out with a pen in the street if we were to cross paths.”
With that, the tears did come, and Porter put an arm around her.
After a minute or so she wiped her eyes. “I’m being so selfish, going on about me. What about you? How are you doing?” Emory asked. “I heard about those girls. The papers say it’s 4MK. That they wouldn’t have been taken if it wasn’t for you. The Tribune actually said you let him go, which is silly. I should know.”
“It’s not 4MK.”
“No?”
“Nope,” Porter replied.
Emory shook back the tears and forced a smile. “You’ll find them. You found me.”
Porter hoped to God she was right.
Nearly an hour had passed. He had to go.
Emory somehow understood. She rose from the couch, and when he did too, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. “I can’t talk to a shrink. Maybe we can talk sometimes? If you’re willing to listen?”
“I think I’d like that.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
When Porter left Flair Tower, the hole in his heart felt a little smaller.
22 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Lili (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 12:19 p.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
“No! No more!” Lili screamed.
The man reached for her anyway, his large hands tugging at the quilt wrapped around her. “We must continue,” he said.
Lili scrambled across the damp floor, sliding, her feet slipping, trying to get a grip on the damp concrete. She found herself in the back corner of the cage, unable to go any farther. “Please stop!” No place else to go.
The man raised the stun gun and pointed it at her. He pressed the button, and Lili watched lightning jump across the two metal prongs, smelled ozone in the air. “One more hour, then we can do it again, I promise. I promise.” She tried to say this, but she shivered so hard that only a handful of syllables actually came out, fragments of words.
If they did it again, this would be the fourth — no, fifth time. Wait, maybe the third time. She couldn’t be sure. Her thoughts didn’t want to come together; her string of consciousness had a knot, something that kept her brain from working properly. White flakes whirled across her vision, making it difficult to see what was happening around her, a snowstorm in the basement, that’s what it looked like, a whiteout of haze and gray.
He reached for her through the snow, the fingers of his left hand outstretched. “Now, while we’re close.”
His other hand, the one with the stun gun, drew within an inch of her, the gun nearly touching her neck. Lili couldn’t take the pain of another shock. It felt like fire chewing at her bones, gnawing away from her inside out. A pain worse than dying.
She knew what that felt like now too, to die.
He thrust the stun gun at her face, pressed the button again near her eye.
“Okay!” she shouted. At least, she tried to shout. Only the sound of the letter k left her throat from somewhere behind chattering teeth.
The man pulled back, if only slightly. His free hand scratched at the knit cap, at the festering incision beneath.
Lili tried to stand, but her feet failed her, her legs folded, made of jelly now.
He reached in and offered a hand. His nails were bitten to the quick, the tips of his fingers red and puffy
Lili’s fingers wrapped around his. His palm felt cold, clammy. She didn’t want to touch him, but she knew she couldn’t stand on her own, not now. And she had to stand. She had to do this willingly, or it would only hurt more. He would make it hurt more.
He led her from the cage, Lili putting most of her weight on him to stay upright.
When they reached the water tank, she looked up at him. She looked deep into his cloudy, lifeless eyes. “Thirty minutes, please. Just let me rest.”
“We’re too close.”
Lili stared at him for a long time, the seconds ticking away like hours. Finally, she nodded. Lili released her hold on the quilt around her neck, and the tattered material fell to the ground, pooling at her feet. She hadn’t gotten dressed again after the last time. Not after he said they would do it again in a few minutes. Instead, she only curled up with the quilt, the soft green quilt, her quilt. She curled up with the quilt in her cage and waited. She saw the clothing he gave her — his daughter’s clothing, he had told her — folded neatly in her cage, just inside the door. He put the clothing away sometime after she dumped the articles on the floor beside the tank.
Lili had thought they were alone in the house. The last time, an hour or so ago, Lili screamed for his daughter, but there had been no answer. She pictured a girl her age sitting alone in a small bedroom upstairs, her hands over her ears, unwilling to accept what her father was doing down below. How could she? How could anyone? At first Lili refused to believe the girl knew what was happening, but soon she realized she must; the house wasn’t that big. Lili’s own house was much larger, and she was certain she’d hear cries from the basement. This girl, this man’s daughter. She understood all too well, and she did nothing.
“Get in,” the man said.
Lili looked down at the water. She knew it was warm, warmer than the basement, soothingly warm, comforting, but she feared it more than anything else in her entire life — more than the anger of her parents or the pain of a horrible injury, more than this man beside her.
It was death.
“Get in now,” he said.
Lili took a deep breath, but it did little to stem the quivers passing through her body, the weakness building deep within and slowly taking hold of her all. She took a deep breath, placed a hand on the edge of the large freezer, and climbed over the side. Then she sank into the water and lay down, the man holding her head above the surface at her shoulders. When her ears dipped below the water line, she lost all the sounds of the basement and heard nothing but her own breathing, the echo of her pounding heart, even the sound of her eyelids snapping shut and open again.
The man lifted her up just a little, enough to bring her ears back into the air. “Remember this time,” he said. “Remember it all.”
“I will,” Lili said.
The man shoved her beneath the surface, pressing her weakened body against the floor of the tank. Lili didn’t try to fight him this time, she didn’t even suck in one last breath. Instead, she inhaled the water. She choked back the pain as fluid filled her lungs, she fought the urge to cough, and breathed in more. She breathed in more until the wavy image of the man hovering above her faded away, until all went black, until it didn’t hurt anymore, telling herself to remember she had to remember.
Lili would not wake up again.
23 (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Nash (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
Day 2 • 12:20 p.m. (#udea7f158-b983-5a4e-ad3d-8efab2e28c4d)
“You can’t possibly expect me to work my magic surrounded by the scent of freshly ground coffee without a venti caramel macchiato in my hand, can you?” Kloz said as he sat behind the manager’s desk in the back office of the Starbucks on Kedzie.
The room was cluttered, no more than a hundred square feet, with the desk pressed against the back wall and random boxes of supplies littering every inch of open floor space. With Kloz behind the desk and Nash standing to his right, the manager had to stand in the hallway outside the office.
“What about you? Would you like something?” the manager asked Nash. He had thinning brown hair, glasses, and about thirty pounds more than his frame was built to carry. He shuffled from side to side, his hands in constant movement. Nash couldn’t help but wonder what inhaling coffee fumes for ten hours a day would do to a person. “Can I get a regular large coffee, black?”
“What kind? We’ve got blond, dark, decaf Pike Place, Caffè Misto, Clover —”
“Regular large coffee, black,” Nash repeated.
His shoulders slumped. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Nash watched him disappear down the hall toward the front of the shop, then turned back to Kloz. “Well?”
Kloz had three windows open on the monitor. He was studying the text on the third with narrow eyes. “This thing is old, at least five years. The drive is only a half gig, and they’re running an HD camera setup at 1080p.”
“Don’t make me hurt you. I need it in English.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/j-d-barker/the-fifth-to-die-a-gripping-page-turner-of-a-crime-thriller/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.