The Sixth Wicked Child

by J. D. Barker

  “Were all these people killed by the same unsub?” Clair asked.

  Eisley shrugged. “All were killed with an identical pattern, but I don’t see how a single unsub could traverse the distance.” His eyes lit up. “We do have one other thing that may prove useful.”

  “Oh, I need useful right now.”

  Dr. Webber bent down over the body of Christie Albee and opened her mouth. With the bright lights shining down, it was impossible to miss the red lump of flesh where her tongue used to be. “We believe a scalpel was used to remove the tongue. We’ve got a near-perfect incision running the length of the terminal sulcus.”

  “Ah hah,” Clair said, choking back the vomit in her throat.

  “See the angle here? How there’s just a little more of the lingual tonsil remaining on this side versus the other?”

  “Ah hah,” Clair said again, although she was no longer looking. She squinted just enough to make the world a little blurry. There were some images she just didn’t want in her head.

  Dr. Webber had stopped talking and was smiling at her.

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Clair asked.

  It was Eisley who answered. “It means your unsub is left-handed.”

  “What is Bishop?”

  “I performed the autopsies on all of Bishop’s previous victims—the ones we know about, anyway. He’s right-handed. Or he killed them with his right hand, at least.”

  “What’s Sam?” Clair heard herself ask a little louder than she’d intended.

  36

  Poole

  Day 5 • 12:11 PM

  “This is ridiculous!” Porter snapped.

  Poole pressed pause on the DVD player. Bishop’s face froze on the screen.

  Porter shuffled in his chair. “I’ve never met Paul Upchurch! Aside from these diaries and the little bit Bishop told me about him, I have no idea who he is.”

  Porter glared at him, his face red, creases around his eyes. When Poole met his gaze, he looked away. He wanted to believe him, but he couldn’t read him and that made him nervous. At Quantico, Poole had taken several courses on kinesics, the interpretation of nonverbal communication through the study of body language. He’d interviewed countless suspects, and with most, once he established a baseline with a series of routine questions, he was able to determine if the person he was speaking to was being truthful or deceitful. This typically came down to one simple fact—when someone told the truth, they did so readily, without the need to put in conscious thought. When someone lied, they accessed the creative portion of their brain in order to construct that lie, and while this may only take a millisecond, there were usually outward signs—anything from glancing off to the side or hand movements or gestures. While Porter demonstrated many such signs, they had been a constant from the moment he entered the room—nervousness, anxiety, anger, frustration—any one of those could muddy the waters of kinesics. Normally, Poole could see through that, but with Porter he found doing so to be difficult. He also had to consider that, as a detective, Porter most likely had also studied kinesics. He most definitely questioned numerous people during his career. He fully understood what Poole would be looking for and might consciously be deploying countermeasures. With the right knowledge, no lie detector was infallible.

  “What happened in Charleston?” Poole asked.

  “Charleston?”

  “Why would he accuse you of killing that woman? He said you did it to cover up something that happened in Charleston.”

  This time, Porter did glance up, but not up and to the right, which would indicate a lie. Nor did he look to the left, which would indicate truth. He looked straight up, tilted his head back, and ran his hand through his hair with a frustrated sigh. “I did my rookie time in Charleston, that’s all. Traffic tickets, petty thefts.” He tapped a spot on the back of his head. “I took a bullet from a .22 right here during a dealer takedown. After that, I figured I didn’t owe that city anything else, and Heather and I made the move to Chicago to try and get a fresh start.”

  “You were shot?”

  Porter’s hands moved back to his lap. “It had nothing to do with this. My partner and I were trying to take down a petty dealer, mostly dirty heroin and some crack. Some kid named Weasel. We cornered him in an alley. I came up from behind, and my partner circled around the block so he could come in from the other side. He saw my partner first, spun around, and panicked when he saw me standing behind him. He was wired, jumpy. He had a gun in his hand and pulled the trigger by accident. He didn’t mean to shoot me. The gun wasn’t even pointed at me—more of a reflex, really. The bullet hit a Dumpster and ricocheted. I caught it here.” He reached up and rubbed the spot again. “The bullet didn’t make it through my skull, just lodged in place, caused some pressure to build up. They removed it, relieved the pressure, and I recovered. That was that.”

  “What was your partner’s name?”

  Porter opened his mouth to tell him, then appeared puzzled. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  He pursed his lips. “It’s just…sometimes I have trouble remembering things from back then.”

  “You can’t remember your partner’s name?”

  He closed his eyes. “This was a long time ago. Derrick something. Hill, Hillman…Hillburn, that’s it. Derrick Hillburn. I haven’t thought about him in years.” He opened his eyes and scratched at the side of his neck. “I heard he left the force, but I haven’t spoken to him in a long time.”

  “The woman you broke out of prison in New Orleans. You never met her before?”

  “No.”

  Poole said, “‘She was there, she saw me do it, and she has to go,’ you didn’t say that?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You didn’t shoot her? CSI found gunshot residue on your hand and clothing.”

  “I took a warning shot at Bishop. Bishop killed her. I told you that. Christ, do I need my union rep here?”

  Poole fell silent for a moment, then raised the remote and hit play again.

  On screen, Poole said, “Porter hired Upchurch to write the diaries?”

  Bishop nodded. “I rode with Porter to the 51st Precinct on the day his wife’s killer was ID’d. Some coffee got spilled on his clothes, and we stopped at his apartment on the way back to Metro so he could change. While we were there, he got a phone call from one of the guys on the task force, Klozowski. The IT guy. When he hung up, he told me he knew my real name was Anson Bishop and not Paul Watson. I thought he was going to report me or something, but instead, he told me there was an undercover operation in motion to catch 4MK, something off the books, and we could use this thing with my name if I was willing to help.” Bishop shrugged and shook his head. “I trusted him. I asked what he needed me to do. He told me he wanted me to go into hiding. Just stay out of sight for a few days. We both heard the sirens then, and he said we had to hurry. He gave me a thousand dollars in cash and an address for a house on 41st Place. He told me to wait for him there. He insisted there was no time to explain right then, but he’d be there soon.”

  Poole said, “The green house on 41st Place? Where you attacked me?”

  Bishop hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. At that point, months of this had gone by. Porter had me convinced you were involved. I thought you were there to kill me.”

  “My partner died in the house across the street from there.”

  Bishop leaned in close and lowered his voice. “Porter showed up right after you. I saw him run around the side of the house when I left. I think your partner may have seen him, too. I think Porter killed him.”

  “Why would Porter kill a federal agent?”

  Bishop tried to throw his hands up, but the chains held him back. “After I left his apartment, he stabbed himself in the leg. I think he killed Talbot at 314 Tower. He may even be the one who kidnapped that girl, Emory Connors. He tried to pin everything on me, said he had to throw me to the press in order to flush out the real
4MK. He had me convinced there was some plan in action. There wasn’t, though. There never was. I think he’s 4MK. What if he killed all those people? He’s been playing all of us.” Bishop fell back into his chair. “Look, I know how crazy this all sounds. That’s why you need to talk to Paul Upchurch. He can back this up.”

  “How?”

  “After what happened at 314 Tower, after Porter blamed me for everything, I hid. Just like he asked. I didn’t know what else to do. After a week, though, when I didn’t see an end in sight, I started to follow him. He went to Upchurch’s house three times that I know of. After that third time, I waited for him to leave. Then I knocked on Upchurch’s door. I had nothing to lose. When he answered, I showed him my CSI badge—fast, so he couldn’t really read it—and told him I was with internal affairs and I needed to know his connection to the detective who just left. He didn’t even know Porter was with the police. He said Porter found him through some ad on craigslist about a year earlier—he worked part-time as an artist; he was trying to get some comic book off the ground. Porter gave him some handwriting samples, asked if he could match them. A few days after Upchurch proved that he could, Porter returned with a ream of printed text and asked him to transcribe it into black-and-white composition books. Offered him ten grand to do it. Upchurch had recently been diagnosed with cancer and needed the money, so he did it. He didn’t ask any questions, just did it. Bring him in, he’ll tell you!”

  “Upchurch passed away about three hours ago,” Poole said flatly.

  Bishop’s face went white, and he slumped back in his chair. “Then it’s Porter’s word against mine. Oh my God, you have to help me.”

  Poole stopped the video.

  Beside him, Porter had gotten quiet. He hadn’t said anything in more than ten minutes. When he finally spoke, his voice was much calmer than Poole expected. “None of this is true. You know that. I wasn’t even in Chicago when your partner was killed.”

  Poole sat there a moment, his gaze fixed on the man across from him. If Porter was lying, there was no outward sign. Earlier, though, when he interviewed Bishop, there were no signs of deception, either. He stood and went to the door. Without looking back, he said, “Excuse me, Sam,” and left the room, Bishop’s frozen face staring smugly back at both of them.

  37

  Poole

  Day 5 • 12:33 PM

  When Poole stepped back into the observation room, Nash handed him a sheet of paper. “Federal warrant for a copy of Bishop’s interview. Dalton walked it in here himself. He also said SAIC Hurless is on his way here and he’s gunning for you.”

  Poole looked around the small room. They were alone except for the officer running the recording equipment. “Where’s the guy from the mayor’s office? Warnick?”

  Nash shrugged. “He left as soon as he got a copy of the video. About twenty minutes ago.” The skin around Nash’s eyes was red and puffy. There was a thin layer of sweat on his forehead.

  “You are sick, aren’t you?”

  “It’s just a cold, maybe the flu. I felt it coming on long before Upchurch’s house. It’s not from there.” He reached into his pocket and took out a blister pack of DayQuil and slipped one in his mouth. “I feel better already.” Turning his head, he coughed into the elbow of his jacket. When he turned back to Poole, he looked like he had swallowed a mouse.

  “What?”

  Nash said, “When you were in there, I talked to Clair. They performed preliminary autopsies on the vics at the hospital. They were drugged with something called succinylcholine.”

  “That’s a paralytic. Probably easy to find in a hospital.”

  Nash nodded. “We’ve got some discrepancies, too.”

  “Discrepancies?”

  “Bishop’s right-handed, and all his initial victims were killed by someone who is right-handed. These latest ones—the two we found and the two in the hospital—were killed by someone who is left-handed. Same with Tom Langlin in Simpsonville. She confirmed with the local pathologist.”

  Poole considered this and fought the urge to turn back to the interrogation room. “Porter’s left-handed.”

  Nash’s eyes fell to the floor. “I promised not to hold anything back so I told you, but this can’t be him. You’ve gotta know that.”

  “I never told Porter my partner was dead, but he knew,” Poole pointed out. “How do you explain that?”

  Nash looked back at him. “Maybe Clair told him, or Kloz. He could have heard it anywhere. I even saw it on the news. Doesn’t mean anything. Bishop is just fucking with you. We know Porter was in New Orleans when he died.”

  Poole held out his hand. “Let me see my phone.”

  Nash fumbled through his pockets, pulled out the iPhone, and handed it to him. “That thing rings more than a hooker at a naval base.”

  “I’m not sure what that means,” Poole muttered, sliding through all the missed calls on his notification screen. Dozens from SAIC Hurless. Several he didn’t recognize from a number with a 504 area code.

  “It means—” Nash started to explain.

  Before he could finish, Poole turned his back on him and tapped on the 504 number.

  The voice that answered was gruff, distracted. “This is Warden Vina.”

  “Warden, this is Special Agent Frank Poole. I was about to call—”

  “Something’s happened,” Vina interrupted. “I’m still trying to piece it together. It’s Vincent Weidner. He’s gone.”

  Poole glanced at Nash and put the phone on speaker. “Weidner’s gone? Gone how?”

  “We had a serious security breach here yesterday, some kind of hack, from what we’ve pieced together. At a little after nine yesterday morning, doors all over the prison just started to unlock—cell doors, access doors, gates in and out—everything just opened. It seemed random at first, like some kind of system glitch rolling through the hardware. Started at the cellblocks, and when the prisoners started to flood the common areas, outer doors started to open. The guards got overwhelmed, and we went into emergency lockdown. I’ve got two dead, six in the infirmary with various injuries, and fourteen prisoners unaccounted for, Weidner being one of them. We’re on a closed network with redundant backups. Something like this should be impossible.” Vina placed his hand over the phone for a moment, spoke to someone, then came back. “We’re trying to watch the video footage right now, and it looks like that got hacked, too. All the time stamps are off. Everything is out of sequence. How does that even happen?”

  Poole closed his eyes and sighed. “So if I were to ask you for video footage confirming Detective Porter was in your prison two days ago, something definitive, would you be able to provide it? Or maybe a photo of the woman who claimed to be Sarah Werner?”

  Vina laughed. “I just watched tape of myself walking from my car to Gate Seven, footage I know was from this morning, and the time stamp says it’s from three weeks ago. My tech guys are going to try and restore data from the backups, but they don’t look very optimistic. I don’t understand half the shit they’re saying, but from what I gather, whatever caused this has been in our system for a while now, and it might not be reversible. Can I tell you Porter was here? Absolutely. I sat across from him. He was in my office. Can I prove it? No. Not right now. Maybe not ever. I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes, and I’ve got to explain all this to my superiors. I have no clue what I’m going to tell them. After that, if I still have a job, I get to go back on local television and explain to the good people of New Orleans that fourteen of our guests are still missing and probably mixing it up out on Bourbon Street, breaking into their homes, car-jacking, and God knows what else. All of them out on my watch. My responsibility. As far as Weidner goes, my gut says he’s coming to you if he’s not there already. When we picked him up at his apartment the other day, he had a bag packed, two thousand in cash, and a bus ticket to Chicago. That’s a guy with a plan. All we did was slow him down. I’ve got APBs out on him nationally, and we’re getting a photo out to the press. Hi
m and all the others. We’ll get him.”

  “Do you know if Weidner’s left-handed or right?”

  Vina thought for a moment, then said, “I’m pretty sure he’s right-handed. Why?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say, but I need to know for sure. Can you look into it?”

  “Sure, I’ll put that right at the top of the list of things I need to do today. I gotta go.” He disconnected before Poole could reply.

  As Poole lowered the phone, Nash said, “If Weidner’s here, he might be responsible for the women we found, maybe even the other dead body at the hospital. If he somehow managed to fly, he had time to go to Simpsonville, too.”

  “You’re assuming Porter is telling the truth.”

  “I’m sure as shit not gonna believe Bishop,” Nash replied. “I was there when he found the first diary.”

  “I read your report,” Poole replied. “Porter found the diary after you searched the body. Could he have planted the book somehow?”

  Nash frowned. “What, like some sleight-of-hand magician shit? With all of us standing around him and the body? No way. He’s not Copperfield.”

  Poole dialed another number. He called the agent running the investigation at Montehugh Labs. The video footage there had been compromised, too. Whoever broke in had little trouble bypassing their security. He got in and out without leaving a single shred of evidence behind. They were concentrating their efforts on the staff, but it could have been Bishop, Porter…anyone.

  On the opposite side of the observation window, Porter was reading again, his eyes lost in another one of those composition books, Bishop’s Diary, and Poole wondered—was he really as enthralled as he appeared to be, or was all of this some kind of elaborate act?