by J. D. Barker
Stepping past the woman, she pushed through the door, gun first. “Police! Nobody move!”
Turning quickly, she scanned the room. Her words echoed off the tile, but she saw no one. Clair dropped to one knee and looked under the stall doors. She spotted a pair of feet in the second to last stall, the door only partially closed. “Out! Now!”
The feet didn’t move.
Scrambling back up, Clair took several steps across the bathroom, toward the stall.
She knew something was wrong even before she pushed open the door. White powder covered the floor around the feet and the toilet. Glistening in the harsh fluorescent light.
Salt.
There was a partial footprint in the salt. Large, probably male.
The woman was sitting on the toilet, fully dressed, her head slumped to the left. Her eyes were open, but only her right eye stared blankly. The left was a dark, black hole, with a trickle of blood running down her cheek. There was blood where her left ear used to be, too. Clair didn’t need to see into her mouth to know her tongue was gone. The woman’s hands were clasped together in her lap in prayer. Possibly glued—Clair could think of no other way to keep them in such a position. Three white boxes tied off with black string sat on the stainless steel toilet paper dispenser. On the wall, written in black marker, was the phrase, Father, forgive me.
Clair recognized her as one of the women from the cafeteria, but she didn’t know her name. She’d seen her less than a few hours ago getting coffee.
“That’s Christie Albee, she works in administration.”
Dr. Barrington was standing behind her in the bathroom, now wearing a pair of glasses.
“I told you to wait outside.”
He ignored her, took several steps forward, and placed two fingers on the side of the woman’s neck. “No pulse. And she’s cool to the touch. I’d guess she’s been dead at least an hour.”
“Christ, get back!” Clair tugged at his belt and pulled him out of the stall. He’d been standing in the salt. There were two new footprints now, and the original was smudged. “Shit. That was evidence. I need you to get out of here. You’re contaminating my scene.”
Barrington frowned at her. “I only meant to—”
“Please, Doctor. Step outside. Don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen in here.”
Klozowski and Stout came in then. Clair quickly told Stout, “Please keep everyone out of here.”
He looked over her shoulder to the woman’s body, grew pale, then turned right back around, ushering Barrington out the door.
Klozowski came up beside Clair, a puzzled look on his face. “Bishop’s in custody. How…”
“Her name was Christie Albee. She’s on your list, right?”
He nodded. “Admin office. She processed a bunch of Upchurch’s claims. She was a liaison between the hospital and the insurance company. Clair, if Bishop is in custody and Sam’s locked up, who’s doing this?”
“Don’t say Sam’s name in the same breath as that guy.”
“You know what I mean.” He pointed at the boxes. “Those have starred in enough of my nightmares for me to say without a doubt, they’re the same ones Bishop used.”
Clair’s mind was racing. “We need to get in front of this. I’ll get pictures and document the scene, and then we need to seal off this bathroom. I want her body brought to the morgue to the same pathologist working on Stanford Pentz, our other body. We need to get her in touch with Eisley at the city morgue. Somehow, we’ve got to look for differences between these two bodies and Bishop’s original victims. We need to compare them to the ones found in Chicago and South Carolina. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it can’t be Bishop. It sure as shit can’t be Sam. There’s somebody else out there. Maybe multiple somebodies.”
30
Diary
I found the door to the barn open. It was a large door—wide enough for a tractor—mounted to a railing at the top. It hadn’t been opened enough for a tractor, but instead, someone had only slid it about two feet to the side. I stared at that open door for about a minute or so, trying to decide if the person who had left it open had been entering the barn or exiting.
Over the past months, there were several times when my hand involuntarily dipped into my pocket and searched for the comforting cool steel of my knife and each of those times, my fingers came away disappointed. Now was such a moment. To enter the barn without knowing whether or not someone was inside was foolhardy, I knew Father would not recommend doing so, nor would he be pleased if he learned that I did, but Father was not here and something compelled me to step inside that barn. I don’t want to say some unseen force enticed me, I didn’t believe in such things, yet that is what it felt like. Like a part of me was inside that barn, and I had no choice but to retrieve it.
Silently, I stepped through the opening and into the black maw. And knowing I was silhouetted with that opening at my back, I also shuffled quickly to the left—just enough for the blanket of black to take me into its folds. I was comfortable in the dark, but that wasn’t always the case. When I was a little boy, I feared the dark. I feared the dark so much Mother took to leaving a lamp on in my room with an old scarf draped over it to mute the light. Father laughed at this, teased me for it, but I didn’t care. I needed that light as much as I needed to breathe. I think that is why he took it from me.
When I entered my room, on that particular night, the bulb had been removed. I asked Mother about it, and she only put a finger to her lips and nodded back in the direction of our living room. I asked why Father would take my light, and those simple words were enough to make her go pale. It wasn’t the fact that I spoke them. It was the volume at which I said them, for I was loud enough to draw Father to my door.
“Come with me,” he had said.
And although I could tell Mother wished to protest, she did not, as Father led me to the basement door and down the steps. He removed each bulb on his way back out, taking the one at the top of the stairs moments before locking the door. From the other side of that door, he told me, “Forget your eyes—sight is a deceitful mistress—it’s only when you trust your other senses equally that you truly learn to see.”
He didn’t give me a blanket until the second night, and three nights passed before I was granted a pillow. I spent more than a week down there, nearly two. It wasn’t until I learned to embrace the dark that Father allowed me back upstairs. And he had been right, there were many ways to see without your eyes. The human mind adapted quickly, found a way.
There were sounds in that basement.
Sounds I heard here in the barn.
The patter of tiny feet running this way and that. The whispers of spiders crossing their webs. In a world as black as this, a world in which I was blind, there were a million eyes that could still see me, and I felt every one of them inching closer.
The air was cooler in the barn, motionless, yet I knew instantly I wasn’t alone.
“I know you’re in here.”
My voice sounded much louder than I hoped. I didn’t want to frighten her. I knew it was Libby. I’m not sure how I knew, but I did. I think I realized she was here the moment I pressed my ear to her door back in the house. I knew she was here as surely as I knew she was gone from the Camden Treatment Center on that day that seemed so long ago but wasn’t really.
“Libby, it’s me, Anson.”
Silence again, then—
“Is anyone else with you?”
Her voice came from above me and to the left. A sweet, angelic voice as beautiful as music. A voice as pure as a mountain stream. A voice that could read the telephone book and make it sound as if it were the greatest story ever told.
“Only me,” I told her. “Where are you?”
She said nothing at first, but I heard her shuffle. Something rained down from above, soft against my skin, powder or dust.
“There’s a ladder to your left. I’m in the hayloft.”
A light bloomed above. The ghostlike flu
tter of a flame spread over the interior of the barn.
“Hurry, before someone sees the light.”
I spotted the ladder to the loft a dozen paces from where I stood. It didn’t look very strong, but was sturdy enough. I climbed the ten feet to the top and crawled out onto the platform, dry straw crunching under my hands and knees. The ground looked impossibly far below.
Perched on an old wooden crate, a small, tarnished oil lamp burned in the far corner. Libby huddled to the side of them, her back against the wall, her head turned just enough to watch me. I couldn’t really make her out; the shadows clung to her like a thick blanket, backlit by the lamp. But oh, how I wanted to see her. My skin tingled with a need to see her.
“Hurry, I’m killing the light.”
I got to my feet and started toward her. I was about halfway when she extinguished the lamp. Even in the resulting darkness, I could hear her breathing, and I followed the sound. I settled near enough to feel the warmth of her body.
Too close, I thought. She’ll move away.
She didn’t though.
I fought the urge to edge closer.
“You were at Camden,” she said quietly. “I saw you there.”
“You were there, too.” Which was a dumb thing to say, but it just came out. I was nervous, stupid because I never got nervous—not around Mother or Father or Mrs. Carter, or anyone—yet I was certainly nervous now. And part of me was glad Father wasn’t here to see me. I’m not sure what he would do to someone who made me nervous. I had several ideas, and they made me shiver.
“You’re cold?”
“A little,” I said, even though I wasn’t.
There was a blanket draped over her legs, and she stretched the corner over me. The blanket was musty and old and probably dirty from years in the loft, but I didn’t really care. Something about Libby next to me made all of that all right.
My eyes began to adjust to the dark, fed on the moonlight, and the muddle of black beside me turned into the shape of her, a rough outline at first, then a little clearer. She had a black eye. Another bruise on her temple. A third around her neck, like someone choked her. Several more on her right arm, another on her—
She looked away from me, lowering her head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay. I’d probably stare, too.”
“Does it hurt?”
“It did. It hurt something awful, but it’s getting better.”
Libby wore a locket that glistened in the dim light on a gold chain around her neck.
“Were you in some kind of accident or did someone do that to you?” This was none of my business, and I probably shouldn’t have asked, but I wanted to know. I wanted her to say it was an accident, because the idea of someone doing that to her was horrible, something I didn’t want to think about.
“Can we maybe not talk about it? It’s behind me now. I’d rather focus on where I’m going, not where I’ve been.”
“Okay.” I could do that. I wanted to do that.
I remembered the Snickers bar then, and I fished it from my pocket and held it out to her. “Are you hungry?”
She nodded, took it, and peeled off the wrapper. “Wanna split it?”
Before I could answer, she broke the bar down the middle, popped half in her mouth, and brought the other to my lips. It was gone in an instant and might have been the greatest candy bar I had ever eaten. She licked a bit of chocolate from her fingertips and smiled. Her smile made me forget about the candy bar.
She settled back against the wall. “The nurses at Camden were scared of you, you know.”
“Why would they be scared of me?”
“Dr. Oglesby told them you were dangerous. He said you might have killed your parents. He said there were bodies in your house when they found you. Three of them.”
I wondered when he told them that. I imagine it was the day Nurse Gilman stopped smiling at me.
“I didn’t kill my parents.”
“What about the other people they found in your house? Did you kill them?”
She asked this so matter-of-factly, no fear at all, as if asking what I had for dinner or what my favorite color might be. What did this say about her? This girl I hardly knew, yet felt I did, sitting beside me. What brings a girl to not fear the boy who has bodies in his basement?
“Those men had no business being inside,” I told her. “All actions have consequences.”
Under the blanket, her hand found mine. Her fingers laced into mine perfectly. “That they do.”
31
Poole
Day 5 • 12:06 PM
Poole rarely touched alcohol. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even had a beer, let alone something stronger. Yet, when he stepped out of the interview room with Bishop several hours after entering, he needed a drink. A double, maybe a bottle. The idea of forgetting all about this case, even for a little while, had never been so enticing.
Nash met him in the hallway and quickly whispered in his ear. “Watch what you say around that guy, Warnick. He’s been on his phone this entire time giving the play-by-play to someone. I’m not sure who he’s talking to—he’s been careful about not saying anyone’s name. He asked the communications office for a copy of the interview, and I told him he’d have to get it from you—federal case and all that. I’m not sure how much time that bought, though.”
“Did Hurless call?”
Nash rolled his eyes. “Only about a dozen times. I told him you were behind closed doors with Bishop. He wanted you to call him the minute you got out.”
Nash tried to hand him his phone back, but Poole didn’t take it. Poole told him “Not yet. You didn’t give me that message yet, either.”
When he started past the detective into the observation room, Nash put a hand on his chest, stopping him. “You know everything that guy just said is bullshit, right?”
Poole didn’t know what to believe, not anymore.
The moment he entered the observation room, Warnick was on him. “You need to call your supervisor, SAIC Hurless. You’re under orders to provide a copy of that interview to me.”
“Under whose authority?”
“That’s not your concern,” Warnick said. “There’s a warrant on your boss’s desk, and you’re under orders to execute it immediately.”
Nash glowered at the man. “The mayor’s office doesn’t have the authority to issue a warrant in a federal investigation.”
“Nobody said the warrant originated with the mayor’s office. And considering you’re teetering on the edge of suspension, Detective, I’m not sure you should be running interference right now,” Warnick told him.
Nash sneezed.
He didn’t cover his nose or his mouth, in fact, Poole was fairly certain he had taken a step closer to Warnick before he let rip. He sneezed a second time.
Warnick shuffled back into the corner. “What the hell, Detective?!?”
“Sorry about that,” Nash told him, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. “I think I”m coming down with a nasty bug. I might have picked something up at Upchurch’s house.”
Warnick’s eyes went wide. “You should be in quarantine!”
“I’ll get checked out as soon as we finish up here,” Nash told him. “Hmm. Maybe you should, too. Better to be safe than sorry and all that.”
Warnick’s head spun back around to Poole, his face red. “Copy of the interview, now.”
Poole let out a sigh and turned to the communications officer who had sat quietly through all of this. “Can you make me a copy, please?”
He reached over to the CPU from his computer and hit the eject button on the CD-ROM drive, then plucked the disk from the tray and handed it to Poole. “Already done.”
“You can’t give him that,” Nash said.
“I will if I’m ordered to do so,” Poole told him. “But as of this moment, I haven’t received any such order.” He started back for the door with the d
isc. “Right now, I need to discuss this with Detective Porter.”
Warnick stepped up and tried to block him at the door. “Are you crazy? You can’t share that with Porter! Not before we run it past the proper authorities. At the very least, we need to check the tapes at the lab, whatever else we can use to corroborate. We need to question Porter and—”
Poole interrupted—pointed first at himself, then at Warnick. “You and I aren’t in a ‘we’ situation. I’m still not sure why you’re even here. Step aside, or I’ll charge you with impeding a federal investigation.”
Warnick didn’t move at first. Then he shook his head, stepped to the left, and dialed his phone again.
Back out in the hallway, Nash grabbed him by the shoulder. “Let me go in there with you. He’ll talk to me.”
“No way.” Poole shook his head. “What I said earlier still stands. As long as your team is viewed as compromised, we need to keep you at a distance. Especially now, with that video circulating.”
“You let me investigate a crime scene,” Nash pointed out.
“With federal agents on site and me on the phone guiding you. That’s different. My team documented and collected all evidence, not Metro. You were only there as an expert to confirm similarities with past cases. I’ve got some room to maneuver there, but not much. Frankly, you’re more useful to me if you just observe right now. Until we get a handle on what’s going on. At some point, I may need you to come in, but not yet.”
Nash reluctantly nodded and stepped into the observation room on the opposite side of the hall.
Poole took a deep breath, then opened the door to the interview room.
Porter’s face was buried in one of the diaries, and he didn’t look up. Not at first. Under the table, his right knee bounced. The whiteboard they had brought in earlier was covered in writing, several sketches too, the layout of a house. The coffee pot was empty, as was his mug.
Poole settled into a chair opposite him, the same one he had sat in earlier. “Do you need more coffee, Sam?”
His eyes still lost in one of the diaries, Porter said, “He knew Libby McInley. Barbara McInley’s sister. Did you know that? He was placed in some kind of foster home after the events at his house.”