by J. D. Barker
She smiled politely. “Yes. What can I do for you?”
The Hispanic woman appeared behind her, watching from the other side of the foyer.
“I’m Detective Porter and this is Detective Nash. We’re with Chicago Metro. Is there someplace we can talk?”
Her smile disappeared. “What did she do?”
“Excuse me?”
“My husband’s little shit of a daughter. I’d love to get through one week without the drama of her shoplifting or joyriding or drinking in the park with her equally little shit-whore friends. I might as well offer free coffee to any law enforcement officers who want to stop by, since half of you show up on a regular basis anyway.” She stepped back from the door; it swung open behind her, revealing the sparsely furnished entry. “Come on in.”
Porter and Nash followed her inside. The vaulted ceilings loomed above, centered by a chandelier glistening with crystal. He fought the urge to take his shoes off before walking on the white polished marble.
Mrs. Talbot turned to the housekeeper. “Miranda, please be a dear and fetch us some tea and bagels—unless the officers would prefer donuts?” She said the last with the hint of a smile.
Ah, rich-person humor, Porter thought. “We’re fine, ma’am.”
There was nothing rich white women hated more than being called—
“Please, call me Patricia.”
They followed her through the foyer, down the hall, and into a large library. The polished wood floors glistened in the early-morning light, covered in specks of sun cast by the crystal chandelier hanging above a large stone fireplace. She gestured to a couch at the center of the room. Porter and Nash took a seat. She settled into a comfortable-looking overstuffed chair and ottoman across from them and reached for a cup of tea from the small table at her side. The morning Tribune lay untouched. “Just last week she OD’ed on some nonsense, and I had to pick her up downtown at the ER in the middle of the night. Her caring little friends dropped her there when she passed out at some club. Left her on a bench in front of the hospital. Imagine that? Arty was off on business, and I had to get her back here before he got home because nobody wants to ruffle his feathers. Best for Stepmommy to clean it up and make like it didn’t happen.”
The housekeeper returned with a large silver tray. She set it on the table in front of them, poured two cups of tea from a carafe, handed one to Nash and the other to Porter. There were two plates. One contained a toasted plain bagel, the other a chocolate donut.
“I’m not above stereotypes,” Nash said, reaching for the donut.
“This isn’t necessary,” Porter said.
“Nonsense; enjoy,” Patricia replied.
“Where is your husband now, Mrs. Talbot? Is he home?”
“He left early this morning to play a round of golf out at Wheaton.”
Nash leaned over. “That’s about an hour away.”
Porter reached for a cup of tea and took a slow sip, then returned it to the tray. “And your daughter?”
“Stepdaughter.”
“Stepdaughter,” Porter corrected.
Mrs. Talbot frowned. “How about you tell me what kind of trouble she’s in? Then I can decide if I should let you speak to her directly or ring one of our attorneys.”
“So she’s here?”
Her eyes widened for a moment. She refilled her cup, reached for two sugar cubes and dropped them into her tea, stirred, and drank. Her fingers twisted around the warm mug. “She’s sound asleep in her room. Has been all night. I saw her a few minutes ago preparing for school.”
Porter and Nash exchanged a glance. “May we see her?”
“What has she done?”
“We’re following a lead, Mrs. Talbot. If she’s here right now, there is nothing to worry about. We’ll be on our way. If she’s not”—Porter didn’t want to frighten her unnecessarily—“if she’s not, there may be cause for concern.”
“There’s no need to cover for her,” Nash explained. “We just need to know she is safe.”
She turned the mug in her hand. “Miranda? Could you fetch Carnegie, please?”
The housekeeper opened her mouth, considered what she was about to say, then thought better of it. Porter watched as she turned and left the library, crossing the hallway and ascending the staircase that wound up the opposite wall.
Nash elbowed him, and he turned. Porter followed his eyes to a framed picture on the fireplace mantel. A young blond girl dressed in riding gear beside a chestnut horse. He stood and walked over to it. “Is this your stepdaughter?”
Mrs. Talbot nodded. “Four years ago. She turned twelve a month before that photo. Came in first place.”
Porter was looking at her hair. The Four Monkey Killer had only taken one blonde before today; all the others had been brunette.
“Patricia? What’s going on?”
They turned.
Standing at the doorway was a teenager dressed in a Mötley Crüe T-shirt, white robe, and slippers. Her blond hair was frazzled.
“Please don’t call me Patricia,” Mrs. Talbot snapped.
“Sorry, Mother.”
“Carnegie, these gentlemen are from Chicago Metro.”
The girl’s face went pale. “Why are the police here, Patricia?”
Porter and Nash were staring at her ears. Both her ears. Right where they should be.
7
Porter
Day 1 • 7:48 a.m.
A drizzle had begun to fall. The flagstone steps were wet and slippery as Porter and Nash rushed from the Talbot residence back to their car at the curb. Both jumped inside and pulled the doors shut behind them, eyeing the foreboding sky. “We don’t need this shit, not today,” Porter complained. “If it starts to rain, Talbot may call his game off and we lose him.”
“We have a bigger problem.” Nash was tapping at his iPhone.
“Captain Dalton again?”
“No, worse. Somebody tweeted.”
“Somebody what?”
“Tweeted.”
“What the hell is a tweet?”
Nash handed him the phone.
Porter read the tiny print.
@4MK4EVER IS THIS THE FOUR MONKEY KILLER?
It was followed by a photograph of their bus victim from this morning, facedown against the asphalt. The edge of the city bus was barely visible at the corner.
Porter frowned. “Who released a photo to the press?”
“Shit, Sam. You really need to get with the times. Nobody released anything. Somebody snapped a picture with their phone and put it out there for everyone to see,” Nash explained. “That’s how Twitter works.”
“Everyone? How many people is everyone?”
Nash was tapping again. “They posted it twenty minutes ago, and it’s been favorited 3,212 times. Retweeted more than five hundred.”
“Favorited? Retweeted? What the fuck, Nash. Speak English.”
“It means it’s out there, Porter. Viral. The world knows he’s dead.”
Nash’s phone rang. “Now that’s the captain. What should I tell him?”
Porter started the car, threw it into gear, and sped down West North Street toward 294. “Tell him we’re chasing a lead.”
“What lead?”
“The Talbots.”
Nash looked puzzled. “But it’s not the Talbots—they’re home.”
“It’s not those Talbots. We’re going to chat with Arthur. I’m willing to bet the wife and daughter aren’t the only women in his life,” Porter said.
Nash nodded and answered the call. Porter heard the captain screaming from the tiny speaker. After about a minute of repeating “Yes, sir,” Nash cupped his hand over the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Tell him I’m driving. It’s not safe to talk on the phone while driving.” He tugged the wheel hard to the left, circling around a minivan traveling much slower than their current speed of eighty-seven.
“Yes, Captain,” Nash said. “I’m putting you on speaker. Hold on—”
The captain’s voice went from tiny and tinny to loud and booming as the iPhone switched to the Bluetooth speaker system in the car. “. . . back at the station in ten minutes so we can get a team together and get in front of this. I’ve got every television and print reporter clawing at me.”
“Captain, this is Porter. You know his timeline as well as I do. He was about to mail the ear this morning. That means he grabbed her a day or two ago. The good news is he never kills them right away, so we can be sure she’s still alive . . . somewhere. We don’t know how much time she’s got. If he just planned to run out and mail the package, chances are he didn’t leave her with food or water. The average person can live three days without water, three weeks without food. Her clock is ticking, Captain. At best, I think we’ve got three days to find her, maybe less.”
“That’s why I need you back here.”
“We need to chase this down first. Until we figure out who he’s got, we’re spinning wheels. You want something—give me an hour, and hopefully I can give you a name for the press. You put a picture of the missing girl out to them, and they’ll back down,” Porter said.
The captain fell silent for a moment. “One hour. No more.”
“That’s all we need.”
“Tread gently around Talbot. He rubs elbows with the mayor,” the captain replied.
“Kid gloves, got it.”
“Call me back after you speak with him.” The captain disconnected the call.
Porter raced up the ramp onto 294. Nash plugged Wheaton into the GPS. “We’re twenty-eight miles out.”
The car picked up speed as Porter forced the accelerator down just a little more.
Nash flipped on the radio.
. . . Although Chicago Metro has yet to make an announcement, speculation is that the pedestrian killed early this morning by a city transit bus in Hyde Park is, in fact, the Four Monkey Killer. A box photographed at the scene matches those sent by the killer in the past. He was dubbed the Four Monkey Killer by Samuel Porter, a detective with Chicago Metro, and one of the first to recognize his behavior, or signature.
“That’s not true; I didn’t come up with that—”
“Shh!” Nash interrupted.
The four monkeys comes from the Tosho-gu Shrine in Nikko, Japan, where a carving of three apes resides above the entrance. The first covering his ears, the second covering his eyes, and the third covering his mouth, they depict the proverb “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.” The fourth monkey represents “Do no evil.” The killer’s pattern has remained consistent since his first victim, Calli Tremell, five and a half years ago. Two days after her kidnapping, the Tremell family received her ear in the mail. Two days after that, they received her eyes. Two days later, her tongue arrived. Her body was found in Bedford Park two days following the postmark on the last package, a note clenched in her hand that simply read, DO NO EVIL. Later it was discovered that Michael Tremell, the victim’s father, had been involved in an underground gambling scheme funneling millions of dollars into offshore accounts . . .
Nash clicked off the radio. “He always takes a child or sibling to punish the father for some kind of crime. Why not this time? Why didn’t he take Carnegie?”
“I don’t know.”
“We should get someone to check out Talbot’s finances,” Nash suggested.
“Good idea. Who do we have?”
“Matt Hosman?”
Porter nodded. “Make the call.” He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out the diary, and tossed it into Nash’s lap. “Then read this aloud.”
8
Diary
Mother and Father were rather close to our neighbors, Simon and Lisa Carter. As just a boy of eleven the summer when they first joined our wonderful neighborhood, I considered them all to be old in the limited pages of my book. Looking back, though, I realize that Mother and Father were in their mid-thirties, and I can’t imagine the Carters were more than one or two years younger than my parents. Three, at most. Maybe four, but I doubt more than five. They moved into the house next door, the only other house at our end of the quiet lane.
Have I mentioned how incredibly beautiful my mother was?
How rude of me to leave out such a detail. Blubbering on about such minute matters and neglecting to paint a picture that properly illustrates the narrative you so graciously agreed to follow along with me.
If you could reach into this tome and slap me silly, I would encourage you to do so. Sometimes I ramble, and a firm swat is necessary to put my little train back on the rails.
Where was I?
Mother.
Mother was beautiful.
Her hair was silk. Blond, full of body, and shimmering with just the right amount of healthy glimmer. It fell halfway down her slender back in luxurious waves. Oh, and her eyes! They were the brightest of green, emeralds set in her perfect porcelain skin.
I am not ashamed to admit that her figure caught many an eye as well. She ran daily, and I would venture to say she didn’t carry an ounce of fat. She probably weighed no more than 110 soaking wet, and she came to my father’s shoulders, which would make her about five foot four or so.
She had a fondness for sundresses.
Mother would wear a sundress on the hottest of days or in the dead of winter. She paid no mind to the cold. I recall one winter with snowdrifts nearly to the windowsill, and I found her humming happily in the kitchen, a short, white, flowered sundress fluttering about her frame. Mrs. Carter sat at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of happiness in her hands, and Mother told her she wore such dresses because they made her feel free. And she favored short dresses because her legs, she felt, were her best asset. She went on to say how Father was so fond of them. How he would caress them. How he enjoyed them on his shoulders, or wrapped around—
Mother spotted me at that point, and I took leave.
9
Porter
Day 1 • 8:49 a.m.
Porter knew little about golf. The idea of hitting a little white ball, then chasing after it for hours on end, did not appeal to him. While he understood it was challenging, he did not consider it a sport. Baseball was a sport. Football was a sport. Anything you could play at eighty years old while toting your oxygen tank and wearing pastel slacks would never be a sport in his book.
The restaurant was nice, though. He had taken Heather to the Chicago Golf Club two years ago for their anniversary and purchased the most expensive steak he had ever eaten. Heather had ordered the lobster and raved about it for weeks. A cop’s salary didn’t allow for much, but anything that made her happy was a worthwhile spend.
He pulled up to the large clubhouse and handed his keys to the valet. “Keep it close. We won’t be long.”
They had beaten the weather. While the sky appeared hazy, the dark storm clouds had paused over the city.
The lobby was large and well-appointed. Several members were gathered around a fireplace in the far corner overlooking the lush course just beyond french doors. Their voices echoed off the marble floor and mahogany wainscoting.
Nash whistled softly.
“If I catch you panhandling, I’ll make you wait in the car.”
“As this day progresses, I find myself regretting I didn’t wear a nicer suit,” Nash admitted. “This is a very different world than the one we putt around in, Sam.”
“Do you play?”
“The last time I held a golf club, I couldn’t get past the windmill. This here is big-boy golf. I don’t have the patience for it,” Nash replied.
A young woman sat at a desk near the center of the lobby. As they approached, she glanced up from her laptop and smiled. “Good morning, gentlemen. Welcome to the Chicago Golf Club. How may I help you?”
Behind her gleaming white smile, Porter could sense her sizing them up. She hadn’t asked if they had a reservation, and he doubted that was an oversight. He pulled out his badge and held it up to her. “We’re looking for Arthur Talbot. His wife said he was playing tod
ay.”
Her smile faded as her eyes darted from the badge to Porter, then Nash. She picked up the receiver on her desk and dialed an extension, spoke softly, then disconnected. “Please take a seat. Someone will be with you in a moment.” She gestured toward a couch in the far corner.
“We’re fine, thank you,” Porter told her.
The smile again. She returned to her computer, slim, manicured fingers bouncing across the keys.
Porter checked his watch. Nearly 9:00 a.m.
A man in his mid-fifties entered the lobby from a door to their left. His salt-and-pepper hair was combed neatly back, his dark-blue suit pressed to perfection. As he approached, he extended his hand to Porter. “Detective. I’ve been told you’re here to see Mr. Talbot?” His grip was soft. Porter’s father had called it a dead fish shake. “I’m Douglas Prescott, senior manager.”
Porter flashed his badge. “I’m Detective Porter, and this is Detective Nash with Chicago Metro. This is extremely urgent. Do you know where we can find Mr. Talbot?”
The blond woman was watching them. When Prescott glanced at her, she turned back to her laptop. His gaze returned to Porter. “I believe Mr. Talbot’s party had a seven-thirty tee time, so they’re out on the course. You’re more than welcome to wait for him. You’ll find a fine complimentary breakfast in the dining room. If you like cigars, our humidor is top-notch.”
“This can’t wait.”
Prescott frowned. “We don’t disturb our guests during play, gentlemen.”
“We don’t?” Nash said.
“We do not,” Prescott insisted.
Porter rolled his eyes. Why did everyone seem to go out of their way to make things difficult? “Mr. Prescott, we don’t have the time or patience for this. The way I see it, you’ve got two choices. You can take us to Mr. Talbot, or my partner here will arrest you for obstruction, handcuff you to that desk, and start shouting Talbot’s name until he comes to us. I’ve seen him do it—the man is loud. It’s your choice, but I honestly think option A will prove least disruptive to your business.”