The Sixth Wicked Child

by J. D. Barker

  “He told Clair he fucked up. He told her he was sorry. An innocent man doesn’t say those things.”

  “A guilty man runs. He doesn’t sit in a room and wait for the cops to come and get him. He hides his tracks, he disappears.”

  Poole said, “He stole evidence. He defied orders. He ran off to New Orleans, broke one woman out of jail, and left a dead body behind. Another one here. This is precisely why you can’t talk to him: You’re too close to see it. Forget he’s your partner, forget he’s your friend. Look at the evidence, look at him as an unsub. Until you’re able to do that, you can’t be objective. And if you’re not objective, you’re part of the problem.”

  Poole picked up the printout and studied the text again. “Where’s the laptop now?”

  “Our IT department upstairs.”

  “Call up there and tell them to bag it. I don’t want your people touching it. Your entire team is compromised. The FBI lab will take it apart and analyze the data,” Poole said. “What about the photographs and composition books you found in the room with him?”

  Nash said nothing.

  “Don’t make me ask again.”

  “The photographs are still at the Guyon Hotel, room 405. I had the room photographed and taped off. I’ve got a uniform watching the floor, two more outside the building,” Nash said. “I brought the composition books back here and checked them into evidence myself.”

  “Leave everything as is. Your people touch nothing from here on out.”

  Nash didn’t reply.

  Poole stood, the motion causing his head to throb like a bowling ball was rolling from one side of his skull to the other and smacking the walls. He rubbed his temples again. “Look, I’m doing you a favor here. Whatever is going on with Sam, if this makes it to a courtroom, you and your team need to distance yourselves. Any attorney worth his or her salt will tear the case apart if you don’t. They’ll start with Sam, then you, Clair, Klozowski, anything you’ve touched. From here out, you’re an observer. All of you. Anything else is professional suicide.”

  “I don’t desert my friends.”

  “No, but sometimes they desert you.”

  Poole reached for the door to the interview room, pulled it open, and stepped inside. The metallic clink as that door closed was one of the loudest sounds he ever heard.

  3

  Clair

  Day 5 • 5:36 AM

  Clair sneezed.

  “Fuck me,” Klozowski muttered, watching her from across the room in their temporary office in an old exam room at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital.

  “The proper response is ‘bless you,’” Clair said before blowing her nose.

  “My skin feels clammy. My throat’s dry. I’m achy all over,” Klozowski said. “You know what we have to look forward to? Diarrhea comes next. Nothing worse than the shits when you’re not in the comfort of your own home. After that, all our internal organs will start to melt and turn into mush, our eyes too. We’re both going to exit this world as a puddle of waste. That’s not how I expected to go out. When I joined the police force, I always figured I’d die in some glorific gun battle, or a raid, or some kind of SWAT takedown. Not like this.”

  “Glorific isn’t a word,” Clair said. “And you’re in the IT department. None of those things happen to members of the nerd herd. You’re more likely to die from a paper cut or some horrible pocket-protector mishap.” She wadded up her tissue and tossed it into the trash can under the table that still held all of Upchurch’s medical records. “You’ve got the symptoms wrong, too. You’re thinking of Ebola. SARS won’t melt our organs.”

  “Well, yay for that, I guess.”

  Clair nodded at Klozowski’s laptop. “Do you have a total for me?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I need to.”

  “Twenty-three,” he said.

  Clair perked up at this. “That’s not as many as I thought. This could be much worse.”

  Klozowski waved a finger. “We identified twenty-three potential victims from Upchurch’s file and brought them here to the hospital, along with their families. If you include spouses and children, our total rises to eighty-seven.”

  “Oh, balls,” Clair said.

  Once they realized Upchurch and his partner were killing the people responsible for the perceived failure of his medical care, Clair had rounded them all up and brought them here to the hospital, thinking it was the only place they could keep such a large group of people safe. Upchurch and his partner had counted on this—they infected Upchurch’s last two victims—Larissa Biel and Kati Quigley—with a contagious pathogen, knowing the girls would be brought here, too, as the closest hospital.

  In just a few short hours, they exposed not only the rest of the people Upchurch wanted dead but also everyone else in the hospital. Which included Clair Norton and Edwin Klozowski.

  Porter had called her to not only tell her this but also to tell her the pathogen was SARS and Upchurch’s partner was Anson Bishop. The entire hospital immediately went under lockdown. Per protocol, the hospital notified the Center for Disease Control, and they immediately dispatched a response team from their local quarantine station at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. They arrived within twenty-seven minutes. Kloz timed them. He checked his own temperature four times while waiting.

  Clair was still trying to make sense of that last conversation with Porter.

  The man who called her didn’t sound like the man she knew.

  He sounded defeated, broken.

  Sam knew things he shouldn’t.

  When Nash and SWAT raided Upchurch’s house, they found Upchurch in a little girl’s bedroom upstairs. There was no little girl, though; only a mannequin dressed in girl’s clothing, surrounded by stuffed animals and drawings. The girl turned out to be nothing but a character in some failed comic book Upchurch had created. He willingly gave himself up. In the basement, they found Larissa Biel, drugged and unconscious. They later learned she swallowed glass. At first, they thought Upchurch had forced her to do this, but it turned out she had swallowed the glass herself in an attempt to prevent him from using her as he did the others. In a written statement, she explained that Upchurch had been drowning girls to the point of death, then bringing them back to life, all as part of some twisted attempt to learn if there was life after death. When she swallowed the glass, she was damaged, no longer a viable test subject.

  Clair couldn’t imagine making such a decision. The strength Larissa Biel demonstrated by taking her fate away from such a madman and back into her own hands was incredible. Biel was currently in recovery post-surgery to remove the glass and correct damage to her throat, vocal cords, and stomach. Although she was expected to recover from the injuries suffered in the Upchurch house, she had also begun to demonstrate symptoms of the virus that Anson Bishop had injected into her damaged body. Whether or not she would recover from that was yet to be seen.

  In the kitchen of the Upchurch house, unconscious and lying on the table, they found the body of Kati Quigley. In her hand was a small white box tied with a black string, Anson Bishop’s signature. Inside that box was a key for a locker in this hospital. Within that locker, they found Paul Upchurch’s medical records and an apple with a syringe embedded in it. According to Porter, that syringe contained a pure sample of the pathogen. Bishop told him if Upchurch died, he would unleash the pathogen on a larger scale somewhere else in the city.

  Snow White didn’t know better, either, Porter had said.

  Paul Upchurch, currently in surgery himself after collapsing in police custody, suffered from glioblastoma. Stage four brain cancer. Porter went on to tell Clair that she needed to track down someone named Dr. Ryan Beyer, a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins. She had tasked Klozowski with that—he found him in under ten minutes. At that point, Clair called Frank Poole with the FBI, and he made arrangements to transport Dr. Beyer from Baltimore to Chicago aboard one of the FBI’s private jets. The flight left Washington International Thurgood Marsha
ll Airport at shortly after midnight and arrived at O’Hare at 2:21 in the morning. From there, a police escort brought Dr. Beyer to Stroger Hospital, where he was routed around those who had been infected and rushed to a surgical suite on the third floor where Upchurch waited, prepped by a local team. Upchurch and Bishop had killed numerous people because they felt he didn’t receive the care required to properly treat his illness. For better or worse, his actions bounced him to the top of a very long list—the predominant specialist in the field now poking around in his head.

  Someone knocked at their door.

  Sue Miflin, an orderly with the hospital, looked inside. “Detective? Dr. Beyer has stepped out of the OR. He’d like a word with you.”

  4

  Poole

  Day 5 • 5:38 AM

  Detective Sam Porter of Chicago Metro didn’t look up when Poole entered the interview room. He didn’t acknowledge his presence at all. He remained still, oblivious to the events around him, his lips lost in some private conversation. His eyes watched his hands. His fingers twitched, but the motion didn’t appear voluntary. Poole was reminded of the moments before someone drifted off to sleep, those sudden jerks and spasms the body did to work out the last bit of consciousness. Porter was far from sleep, though. His eyes held the sharpness of a tweaker, a meth-head, someone who just snorted their third line of coke. Hypersensitive, spastic, rabid yet calculating. A mind racing with complex thoughts that made sense to no one else.

  Poole didn’t know Sam Porter well, no better than he knew the rest of the original 4MK task force, but he knew people. Poole prided himself on his ability to size someone up with a glance, to understand a person’s motivations and fears, their intellect and misgivings. When he first met Detective Porter, his instincts told him Porter was a good cop. Poole believed he truly wished to catch the Four Monkey Killer and put him behind bars. He recognized Porter as a sharp, seasoned member of law enforcement both respected and admired by his peers. The kind of man Poole himself strived to be every day he carried a badge. Although Porter had said very little during the brief time they knew each other, Poole was certain the man understood much. He didn’t jump to conclusions; he followed the evidence. He cared for the victims and he fought for their memories. He sought justice for those left behind.

  The Detective Sam Porter Frank Poole knew was a righteous man.

  The man sitting in the interview room was not that Sam Porter. This person was a shell.

  This man was broken.

  His rumpled clothing smelled of sweat and dirt. He hadn’t shaved in days. His spastic eyes, twitching this way and that, were bloodshot, looking out from above deep, dark, bags, heavy with lack of sleep.

  Poole lowered himself into the chair opposite Porter and folded his hands on the table. “Sam?”

  Porter continued to stare at his own hands, his lips still lost in a conversation only he could hear.

  Poole snapped his fingers.

  Nothing.

  “Can you hear me, Sam?”

  Nothing.

  Poole raised his right hand and brought his open palm down on the top of the table with all the force he could muster.

  It hurt like hell.

  Porter looked up. His eyes narrowed. “Frank.”

  He said Poole’s name not as a question, not as some sort of recognition, but merely as a statement of fact. The single word was uttered in one quiet breath, barely spoken at all.

  “We need to talk, Sam.”

  Porter leaned back in the chair, his eyes dropping back to his hands. “I want to speak to Sarah Werner.”

  “She’s dead.”

  Porter cocked his head. “What?”

  “Killed with a single gunshot wound to the head, at least three weeks ago. I found her sitting on her couch in her apartment in New Orleans.”

  Porter shook his head. “Not her, the other one. The other Sarah Werner.”

  “Tell me where to find her, and I’ll bring her in.”

  Porter said nothing.

  “Were you aware she killed the real Sarah Werner?”

  “We don’t know that she did.”

  Based on the estimated time of death, they were certain Porter was still in Chicago when the real Sarah Werner was murdered. Porter was right about the other part. Aside from assuming her identity, they had no proof she killed the other woman.

  Poole said, “Your Sarah Werner, the impostor, do you know who she really is?”

  “Do you?”

  “I know with your help she broke another woman out of prison in New Orleans. A woman believed to be the mother of Anson Bishop—4MK. I know the two of you transported that fugitive across numerous state lines and brought her back to Chicago. I know that woman was then murdered last night at the Guyon Hotel with a gun that was found in your possession shortly after. I know she’s in the wind, and you didn’t have time or inclination to wash the gunshot residue from your hands before SWAT showed up.” Poole let out a sigh. “I know enough. Now, why don’t you tell me what I don’t know.”

  “She’s Bishop’s mother,” Porter said quietly.

  “The dead woman? That’s what I said.”

  “Not the dead woman, the one who was with me. The other Sarah Werner. The fake Sarah Werner. Right before she left with Bishop, after he shot the prisoner, they told me she was Bishop’s mother.”

  “Do you believe them? After everything he’s put you through?”

  Porter’s eyes dropped back to his fidgeting hands. “I need to read the diaries, all the diaries, everything he left in that room. It’s all there. Everything we need. All the answers. All there. All there.”

  “Sam, you’re rambling. You need rest.”

  Porter looked up, leaned in toward Poole. “I need to read those diaries.”

  Poole shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  “The answers are in those diaries.”

  “I think the diaries are bullshit,” Poole said.

  Porter quickly shook his head. “I found the lake. The house. You saw it all, right? You were there. I know you were there. They’re real.” His voice dropped low, conspiratorial. “There’s a bloodstain in the basement, right where he said it would be. Right where Carter died.”

  “Let’s talk about that, Sam. Is that the first time you’ve been to Simpsonville, South Carolina? To 12 Jenkins Crawl Road?”

  Porter glared at him, puzzled. “What? Of course. Why?”

  “When I arrived in Simpsonville, I reviewed the property records with the local sheriff. Your name is on the deed.”

  Porter didn’t seem to hear him. He said, “Did you find Carter in the lake?”

  “We pulled six bodies from the lake. Five full bodies, another chopped up, in trash bags.”

  “Carter,” Porter said softly.

  “The property records, Sam. Why are they in your name?”

  Porter was staring at his hand again, his lips moving soundlessly.

  “Sam?”

  His head shot back up. “What?”

  “Why is your name on the deed for 12 Jenkins Crawl Road?”

  Porter waved a hand through the air. “That’s just Bishop. Forged, faked, swapped…doesn’t matter. He did it, and it doesn’t matter.” He sat back in his chair, a grin growing on his lips. “You found Carter. You…found…Carter. Holy shit, you found Carter.”

  Poole watched the other man’s hands, still twitching on the table. Porter seemed unaware. “You’re not well, Sam. You need to rest.”

  Porter slammed both hands down on the table and leaned forward. “I need to read those diaries!”

  “Who are the other five bodies we pulled from that lake?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It’s your property.”

  Porter opened his mouth as if to answer, then went quiet again. His eyes fell back to his hands. He weaved his fingers together, pulled them back apart. “This is Bishop. This is what he does. He fills the world with lies.”

  “If that’s the case, why do you believ
e the diaries?” Poole asked. “If Bishop isn’t to be believed, why do you care what’s in those books?”

  Porter looked back up, hopeful. “Where are they now? Still at the Guyon Hotel?”

  “I asked you a question, Sam.”

  “Your other five bodies will be in those books.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Porter leaned in closer. A thin trail of spittle glistened on the corner of his mouth. “We know it’s true because you found Carter, right where he said he put him. We know it’s true because there’s a bloodstain in the basement—there’s a lock on the refrigerator. He wants us to know what happened. The rest—my name on some deed—that’s your smoke and mirrors, that’s your bullshit, that’s what you have to see through.”

  Poole leaned back in his chair, his eyes never leaving the man sitting across from him. This time, Porter’s gaze didn’t falter, either.

  Porter’s voice dropped low. “Her name was Rose Finicky, and she deserved to die, she deserved to die a hundred times over—hardly pure at all.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what Bishop told me right after he shot her in the head.”

  “The woman we found in the lobby of the Guyon?”

  Porter nodded. “The other woman, the woman I thought was Sarah Werner, she’s Bishop’s mother. He used me to get them both to Chicago. He said he had a bomb.”

  “You have GSR on your hand from that weapon.”

  “I got the gun away from him and fired a warning shot. I didn’t shoot her. He did.”

  “If you had the gun, why did you let them both leave? Why not take them into custody?”

  “You know why.”

  “Because of what you told Clair?”

  Porter nodded. “He injected those girls with the SARS virus and left a sample at the hospital in an apple to prove he had the real thing. He told me he had more, and if I didn’t let them walk, he made arrangements to spread the virus. I couldn’t chance he was telling the truth. I had to let them go. He told me I had to make the call from room 405. He said I’d find more evidence there.”

  “You did what he told you?”