Kitabı oku: «The Fifth to Die: A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller»

1

Porter

Day 1 • 8:23 p.m.

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.”