by J. D. Barker
Upon my first night here, Paul was kind enough to tell me Tegan was quite spank-worthy and Kristina could be if she cleaned herself up—a solid eight and six on his Spankometer Scale—the two of them had been here at Finicky house longer than anyone—going on two years now.
Personally, I was still trying to figure out what a home for wayward children really was. I expected a parade of wannabe parents to come streaming through on the regular, but that had yet to happen, no adoptions or fostering here, very few visitors at all. And our precise location was still up for debate. The large house sat in the middle of a substantial plot of land without another house anywhere around. The only building within eyesight was a dilapidated barn, one we’d been told was horribly dangerous and off limits, which only made it more intriguing. Paul had a plan in the works.
“We’ll get the girls to check it out with us. I bet there’s hay in there and quiet stalls, maybe even a loft—I’ll play hide-the-salami with Tegan and you can play Yahtzee or something with Kristina. Maybe you can be lookout. We’ll need to bring a bottle for spinning.”
“Before you start naming your children, you need to get the guts to talk to her.”
“I do talk to her.”
“You grunt at her,” I told him. “I’ve heard you. She’ll say something like ‘good morning’ and you reply with ‘huh ug ya’ or some other nonsense.”
“I’m a man of few words, all strong and silent. She gets me. That’s why she’s always undressing me with her eyes.”
“Is that what her eyes are doing?”
“That’s why she calls me ‘Paul Take-Me-To-Church.’”
“She doesn’t call you that.”
“Her eyes do.”
“Could be she just needs glasses.”
“She had stars and fireworks in those eyes,” Paul replied. “She’s always talking about me with the other girls.”
“How would you know?”
“What else are they going to talk about? If she gets me alone in that barn, there’s no telling what she might do.”
“You’d better drink plenty of fluids.”
Paul went quiet for a moment, then, “Have you ever seen a real girl naked?”
“No,” I told him, perhaps a little too quickly. But I had seen a woman, and I fell back asleep that night wondering where Mrs. Carter was at that particular moment and how far from home she had strayed.
13
Nash
Day 5 • 9:01 AM
The Federal Bureau of Investigation Chicago field office was located at 2111 Roosevelt Road, about ten minutes from Chicago Metro. Nash drove his Chevy. One of the box-toting FBI agents had offered to give Nash a ride, but he couldn’t bring himself to accept. Everything about this felt off.
On the ground floor, he checked in at the security desk, surrendered both his primary weapon and backup, and was issued a visitor’s badge after being photographed and passing through a metal detector. Poole had told him to report to the conference room on the fourth floor.
Nash wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t what he found. Conference Room C was at least several thousand square feet with a dozen rows of stadium seating going up the back wall, all facing a raised platform and floor-to-ceiling video monitors. Each screen bore a three-dimensional floating image of the FBI seal, glistening in animated light. He was ten minutes early, and there was no sign of Poole or his supervisor. At least twenty agents were already in attendance, spaced around the room.
While Nash didn’t recognize anyone, they must have recognized him. Most of the voices either dropped away entirely or fell into hushed conversations. They weren’t shy about watching him, though. Nash fought the urge to wave and poured himself a cup of coffee from a refreshment table near the door, then he took a seat in the third row and waited as the room continued to fill.
At exactly nine o’clock, the overhead lights dimmed and the two doors closed automatically. Nash half expected movie previews to come up on the screens. Instead, SAIC Hurless came out of a side door, and the room went quiet.
“While I understand most of you are new to this case, we don’t have time for a learning curve. As of this morning, we have four more victims—three here in Chicago, another in Simpsonville, South Carolina. Detective Sam Porter has been apprehended and is currently being held at Chicago Metro.”
To Nash’s surprise, several agents actually cheered this. A couple clapped.
Hurless ignored them. “Agent Poole will provide the details.”
Poole stepped through the same opening Hurless had used. Somehow he had found the time to shave and change his suit. He held a clicker in his hand and when he pressed one of the buttons, the screens came alive behind him.
Four bodies.
“Each body was found in the same pose—on their knees with their hands joined at their front and head bowed as if in prayer. Left eye, left ear, and the tongue have been removed from each with surgical precision and placed in white boxes tied with black string and left at the victim’s side. Aside from Gunther Herbert and Libby McInley, Bishop always mailed the boxes over the course of a week, Herbert and McInley being the exceptions. Within close proximity of each body, we also found a note reading ‘father, forgive me.’”
Poole walked to the left side of the platform and gestured at the two women pictured behind him. “This first victim was found in Rose Hill Cemetery. The second sitting on the tracks of the Red Line at the Clark subway station. With both, their fingerprints have been removed chemically. We have no identification at this time.”
He crossed over to the third victim. “This man has been identified as Tom Langlin, a former inspector with the Simpsonville fire department. Our unsub placed him on the courthouse steps, in full view. He wrote up the original report on the fire at the Bishop property.”
“Don’t you mean Porter’s property?” someone shouted out from the back.
“We’ll get to that,” Poole replied.
He stepped to the far right and pointed up at the last body. “This is Dr. Stanford Pentz. He worked in Cardiovascular at Stroger Hospital. He was found in his office this morning, posed like the others. The hospital has been on lockdown since yesterday—we don’t have time-of-death yet, but most likely he was killed before the hospital was sealed. It’s unlikely our unsub managed to get through enhanced security with a body, and nobody has been permitted in or out of the hospital with the exception of a surgeon brought in to operate on Paul Upchurch. Information on that can be found in the case file.”
An agent sitting halfway down the second row stood. “You keep saying ‘unsub’ rather than Bishop. Do you believe someone else is responsible?”
Poole glanced over at Hurless, who nodded, then turned back to the agent. “Because we have multiple victims in several states all appearing at relatively the same time, we don’t want to rule out the idea that Bishop is working with a partner. We’re certain he aided Paul Upchurch with the abductions of Ella Reynolds, Lili Davies, and Larissa Biel. It’s possible someone else is working with both of them. Detective Porter claims Anson Bishop is here in Chicago along with a woman who may or may not be his mother.”
“Is Detective Porter Bishop’s father?”
This came from someone on the far end of the room. An Asian woman in a tan pantsuit.
Hurless jumped in. “At this point, we’re not ruling anything out.”
Poole said, “Both female victims had I am evil cut into their foreheads. The male victims did not. We don’t know the relevance of this yet. None of this is to be shared with the press.”
There were several murmurs in the crowd.
Poole turned back to the video monitors. “There is something else you all need to know about these victims. With each, their skin was covered in salt. Not their clothing. This suggests they were exposed and dressed later. The salt found on them is not a match for the saltwater found in the tank at Paul Upchurch’s home. It appears to be a finely ground form of the salt used on the roads.”
The Asian woman stood and spoke again. “In the bible, Genesis, Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt when she looks back on Sodom. If you consider that along with the messages found, ‘father, forgive me,’ this could be something biblical. Something very different from Bishop’s history.”
“Or this could be Bishop sending some kind of direct message to his father,” Hurless interjected. “If he is still alive.”
Poole didn’t seem to hear Hurless. He turned to the Asian woman and quoted, “‘Flee for your life. Do not stop anywhere in the plain; flee to the hills, lest you be swept away.’ Genesis 19:17. Angels told this to Lot and his wife right before they destroyed the city.”
The Asian woman nodded. “I’m curious—were all four bodies found facing the same geographical direction?”
Poole appeared to be thinking about this when Nash’s phone rang. The room went quiet, and all eyes turned toward him. Nash offered those around him an apologetic smile. He reached down, fumbled with his phone, and swiped the answer button before bringing it to his ear. Although he knew the voice, he hadn’t heard it in a number of months. That did nothing to stop the sensation of spiders crawling about his spine as Anson Bishop spoke.
“I know where you are, Nash, so don’t say anything, only listen. In a moment, I’m going to text you an address and you’re going to leave your little meeting and go to that address. You’ll do this alone. If I see any vehicle in the street other than your junker of a Chevy, a lot of people will get sick. I have more of that virus than I know what to do with, and I’m getting tired of carrying it around. It’s so tempting to share it with everyone down at the Revival Food Hall or maybe Woodfield Mall. The Bears are playing tonight at home on Monday Night Football—can you imagine the fun we’d have if I brought it to the game? That one is tempting most of all, but honestly, I think I’d rather just see you right now. Catch up. I miss all my old friends. And we have so much to talk about. I’ll give you thirty minutes. Don’t be late. I get grumpy when I’m kept waiting.”
The phone dinged, and an address appeared on the screen.
Bishop said, “Only you, Nash. Nobody else. Cough if you understand.”
Nash cleared his throat.
“Atta boy.”
The call disconnected, and when Nash looked up, he realized everyone was still watching him.
14
Diary
I woke at a little after six and had to pee. Not the roll-on-my-side-think-about-something-else-and-hold-it-for-another-hour kind of pee, but really had to pee, like my bladder would burst with a pop loud enough to wake the house if I didn’t do something about it fast.
Somehow my sheets got tangled up around my legs, and that didn’t help matters any. I nearly fell from the bottom bunk trying to get out of that mess in my rushed state. In the bunk above me, Paul snored, rattled, and rolled. He was on his back, and his right arm hung over the side. The first hint of morning sniffed around the window.
I crossed the room to the door, opened it, and got to the hall nearly jogging in place with both hands covering my private parts under my pajamas. Any boy will tell you, when mother nature calls at full volume, two things happen—a sudden and all-encompassing need to jog and morning wood. Neither of these things would go away until I spent a little time in the bathroom at the other end of the hall.
Here’s the thing, though: The boards in the hallway squeaked, and Vince Weidner had made it very clear that he could hear them squeak from his room across the hall. He also made it very clear that anyone on the starting end of such wakeful squeaking would be severely punished, possibly maimed, or maybe disappeared. Vince was fond of sleep and not so fond of anything, or anybody, else. Except maybe hurting people. He seemed fond of that.
I knew which boards squeaked.
Paul had a map, one he helped me memorize on my first day here at Finicky House for the reasons stated above, and with that in mind, I placed my left foot on the board closest to the opposite wall and swung my right around to a board at the center of the hall about three feet closer to the bathroom. This maneuver took place in blissful silence, despite my body’s continued insistence on jogging in place.
Libby’s door was closed, and as I did every time I passed it, I paused long enough to listen.
She wasn’t crying, and that was good. She still cried a lot, but not as much as she did at the Camden Treatment Center. While I didn’t want to hear her cry, I did want to hear her. There was something oddly comforting about knowing she was in that room so close. I knew this was strange. I hadn’t even met her. Never spoke to her. I barely knew what she looked like, as I’d only caught glimpses.
A toilet flushed at the far end of the hall, and the door to the girl’s bathroom swung open.
Tegan came out with her arms stretching above her head, her eyes closed, and a big yawn on her mouth. She wore nothing but a skimpy pair of white panties, and I froze in place—even the jogging stopped. The morning wood went nowhere, though, and when her eyes opened they dropped right to it—my boy parts in full-on tent under my pj’s. I tried to cover up, but I was a bit too slow for that. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t distracted by why she wore (or, more appropriately, by what she didn’t).
“Geez, stare much?” Tegan said as she came down the hall on long legs, numerous boards creaking as she did. “Pervert.”
She ducked back into her own room and closed the door with enough force to rattle the walls.
From his room, I heard Vince groan.
I crossed the remainder of that hallway, got to the bathroom, and closed the door with the speed of an elk. I twisted the lock, a feeble thing I could pick in my sleep, got to the toilet, and did my business wondering if I’d have to spend the next hour on the john in order to avoid Vince or if I could get back to my bed.
There was a narrow window behind the toilet, one that overlooked the driveway, and as I stood there, relishing the relief of that first morning pee, I looked out. There was a car in the driveway, a white Chevy Malibu that I recognized. I watched as Detective Welderman rounded the side and opened the back door. Kristina Niven got out, said something to him, then stomped off toward the front door of the house. She was wearing a short black dress and matching heels and clutching a small purse.
When I looked back at the detective, I realized he was glaring up at me.
15
Clair
Day 5 • 9:17 AM
Clair stood in the cramped office of Jerome Stout, head of hospital security. He sat in a rickety rolling chair behind the desk, his bulky phone centered on the desk between them. At the request of Stout, she had dialed her captain, Henry Dalton.
“Five? That’s it?” Dalton’s voice rattled from the speaker. “How do you keep a hospital of that size safe with only five security officers on duty?”
Stout scratched at the top of his head. “That’s a conversation you need to have with our budgetary committee, not me. I make do with what they provide me. Frankly, I’ve got a buddy at Cleveland General, and he’s only got three per shift. I’m grateful for what I’ve got.”
Clair leaned forward. “Captain, he’s in here with us. We need more support.”
“The CDC won’t allow us to send anyone in any more than they’ll let one of you out,” he replied. “And we can’t be sure he’s in there.”
“I’m fairly certain that man didn’t cut off his own ear and tongue and wrap them neatly in boxes. Probably didn’t take out his own eyeball, either,” she said.
“We’ve got two similar bodies found here in Chicago this morning and one more just like it found in Simpsonville, South Carolina. It’s very doubtful your guy was killed by Bishop. More likely it was some kind of copycat.”
“That supposed to make me feel better? Either way, we got a killer locked in the hospital with us!”
“You’re a detective. Get your head around it and detect. How many uniformed officers do you have in there with you?”
“Four,” Clair replied. “I’ve got on
e stationed with Darlene Biel and her daughter, Larissa. Another outside Katy Quigley’s door, and two more down in the cafeteria. I’d planned to move them all down there to keep that mess from turning into a full-on riot. No way I can do that now. I’ve got to keep them under protection. We need additional support. We can’t keep this up 24/7.”
“Nobody on Upchurch?”
“He’s comatose and not expected to regain consciousness. I don’t have the resources to keep someone on him.”
The captain sighed. “I wish I could give you some help, but I can’t. I’m under orders, just like you.”
“What about the feds?”
“I’ve already spoken to SAIC Hurless, and he’s in the same boat. Until the CDC allows us to open the doors, nobody gets in or out. The focus right now is on containment. Where is the body now? Who else knows about this?”
Clair glanced at Stout, then back down at the phone. “I had it brought down to the morgue. There’s a pathologist on duty, a woman named Amelia Webber.”
“Good,” Dalton said. “Put her in contact with Eisley down at the medical examiner’s office. He’s got the other two from this morning. He’s in touch with Simpsonville, too. They all need to compare notes. You’ll obviously want to keep all this as quiet as possible. If word spreads around the hospital, your situation could easily escalate.”
Clair rolled her eyes.
Little late for that.
The nurse who discovered Pentz’s body told the others at the nurses station in a manner loud enough to attract the attention of several other staffers nearby—three orderlies, another doctor, and two members of the cafeteria staff. Clair had tried to corner all of them and explain the importance of discretion only to learn they had all told others, and those people had also talked.
“That cat is already out, Captain,” she said.
“Then you need to treat this as you would any other homicide and work to solve it as quickly as possible. If we didn’t have the other bodies this morning, I’d suspect a copycat who might have had it in for your dead cardiologist. Somebody trying to use all the hype around 4MK to cover up their own reasons for wanting the man dead. That’s still a viable theory, but you need to remain open to other possibilities. Did Klozowski run the name? Is he connected to Upchurch?”