The Sixth Wicked Child

by J. D. Barker

  Poole scrolled through the photo gallery. “How far did he get? Did you see any names?”

  She shook her head. “No names for these two. Doesn’t look like he finished with them. There are hundreds of others, though, dating back more than a decade. Not just Illinois licenses but Louisiana, the Carolinas, New York too. He’s been at this for a while.”

  Nash clucked his tongue. “Sam mentioned two women’s names when you first went in to talk to him, from the diary. Do you think…?”

  “Kristina Niven and Tegan Savala,” Poole recalled. “I don’t know, could be.”

  Looking back at Rolfes, Nash asked, “Can you get copies of all this to Kloz?”

  “Already did. A few hours ago.”

  Poole opened his mouth to object, but instead, he took a business card from his back pocket. “Contact SAIC Foster Hurless at this number and make arrangements to get copies to the Chicago Bureau office, too.”

  She placed the card in the breast pocket of her blouse. “Absolutely.”

  Poole stood from the chair and glanced around the cluttered room. There was a disposable phone on the desk in an evidence bag. “Anything useful on there?”

  Rolfes shrugged. “Depends what you consider useful. It’s a cheap buy-and-dump model. Upchurch wiped the log after every use, so IT is working on pulling the call logs from the carrier. We should have those in a few hours.”

  “Call me when you have that too. My cell is written on the back of my card,” Poole instructed. “Did you find anything that looks like a diary, a journal, any of those black and white composition books?”

  Rolfes nodded toward the opposite side of the room. “Under the bed.”

  Nash was closest. He turned and bent down, lifting the pink Hello Kitty quilt out of the way.

  He let out a deep sigh, then started pulling items out, whatever he could reach—five brand-new composition books still wrapped together in clear cellophane, two loose ones, and several stacks of typed pages held together with heavy binder clips.

  Poole stepped over and picked up one of the books. A black pen was clipped to the cover, and several pages of loose paper were folded inside. He unfolded the pages and read:

  Hello Sam,

  I imagine you’re confused.

  I imagine you have questions.

  I know I did. I have. I do.

  Questions are the foundation of knowledge, learning, discovery, and rediscovery. An inquisitive mind has no outer walls, an inquisitive mind is a warehouse with unlimited square footage, a memory palace of infinite rooms and floors and shiny pretty things. Sometimes, though, a mind suffers damage, a wall crumbles, the memory palace is in need of a renovation, one or more rooms are found to be in dire disrepair. Your mind, I’m afraid, falls into the latter. The photographs around you, the diaries to your side, these are the keys that will aid you as you dig from the rubble, as you rebuild.

  I’m here for you, Sam.

  I’ll be here for you, as I always have been.

  I’ve forgiven you, Sam. Perhaps others will, too. You’re not that man anymore. You’ve become so much more.

  —Anson

  This was the text they had found on the computer screen with Porter at the Guyon Hotel. Only here, it didn’t just appear on the printout but was written on the first page of this particular composition book. Poole had seen enough of the diaries to know the shaky scrawl here would be a match for not only the original diary but the ones currently locked up with Detective Porter. Handwriting believed to be Anson Bishop’s.

  Nash was sitting on the floor with his back against the bed looking up at him. “If that’s what I think it is, Bishop could have planted it. This doesn’t mean he told you the truth.”

  He was right, of course, but it didn’t look good.

  Poole’s phone rang.

  Nash was still looking up at him. “Hurless?”

  Poole looked at the display and nodded.

  “As someone experienced with the whole ‘dodge the boss game,’ I can tell you he will track you down eventually, and the longer you wait, the more pissed off he’ll be,” Nash said.

  Poole reluctantly tapped answer and pressed the phone to his ear. “Agent Poole.”

  “Why are you at the Upchurch house?”

  As with all the agents under his charge, Hurless had access to Poole’s phone’s GPS data in real-time, but it always made him uncomfortable when the man pointed out that fact.

  Poole told him what they had found.

  Hurless considered this for a moment. “Have someone bring those pages to our field office. We still have Porter’s laptop and printer from his apartment—we need to see if they’re a match.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hurless covered the phone and spoke to someone else on his end. When he came back, he said, “There’s an SUV waiting for you outside, a black Escalade. I want you and that detective in it in five minutes.”

  “I need to get back to Metro and continue questioning—”

  “Five minutes,” Hurless interrupted.

  Then he hung up.

  Poole wasn’t one to use foul language, but several choice words came to mind.

  42

  Clair

  Day 5 • 1:05 PM

  Zero leads.

  Nada.

  Nothing.

  At least not yet.

  Clair had just talked to Officer Sutter, and while he had managed to speak to nearly a third of the people in the cafeteria, none had anything useful to offer. If her two victims had any kind of connection, she had yet to learn it. Her two missing officers—Henricks and Childs—were still missing, and had been for over four hours now. She could overlook a quick nap, particularly since none of them had really had any downtime in days, but this wasn’t that. The little voice in the back of her head was sounding the alarm, and she could only ignore it for so much longer. If word got out that officers were missing in addition to the two murders, there would be no telling how the remaining people in this hospital would react—law enforcement, professionals, or civilians. This would get ugly. She saw it in the faces—fear, defeat, fatigue, anger—order and civility was an illusion controlled by the majority, and right now, her little group of officers and security guards was far from being a majority.

  And now this.

  Klozowski had been sharing information as it came in, and the pit in her stomach had grown to the size of a bowling ball. She stared at him from across the small table in their office and swallowed the equally large lump in her throat. “This can’t be happening.”

  “Oh, it’s happening,” Kloz replied, his eyes glued to the screen. “It’s completely fucked, but it’s happening.”

  “There is no way Porter was running Bishop in some undercover thing without the rest of us knowing about it, no way.”

  “If it wasn’t some undercover thing, then that means he was just running Bishop and that’s way worse. That means Bishop isn’t 4MK at all. It means—”

  Clair grabbed one of the folders and smacked Kloz in the side of the head. “Don’t you even think about saying that out loud. Not now, not ever. I don’t believe any of that bullshit for a second.”

  “I’m just trying to be objective here. Strip away what we know about him and look at him as if he’s just a suspect, he—”

  She smacked him again. “Sam’s not a suspect! Don’t use words like that!”

  Kloz rubbed at the side of his head. “Will you stop hitting me for five minutes and just listen?”

  “Sam’s not a suspect.”

  “Okay, person of interest.”

  “Interested party.”

  Kloz frowned. “Under the circumstances, I don’t think that’s grammatically correct.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Okay. Whatever. My point is, we have some serious red flags. Have you read Emory’s statement? She never ID’d Bishop as the person who took her. She never saw his face. She heard a voice from the top of that elevator shaft, but with the ec
ho and considering her mental state at that point, if we gave her an audio lineup, I seriously doubt she’d be able to pick him out. Frankly, I don’t think the DA’s office would even agree to try because they wouldn’t want to risk her picking the wrong person and blowing the case. That’s probably why they haven’t brought it up.”

  It was Clair’s turn to roll her eyes. “Why would Sam take her? Why would he kill all those people? We’ve got motive for Bishop. Sam had no reason.”

  “Just because we don’t have a motive doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” Kloz pointed out. “We haven’t looked. And frankly, how solid is our motive for Bishop? That came from Sam—his analysis of the diary and information he said Bishop told him. There aren’t any other witnesses to those conversations. Everything came from Sam.”

  “You were on the phone with him when Bishop stabbed him.”

  Kloz shrugged. “I heard one side of the conversation. Only Sam. I have no more idea what happened in that apartment than you do. We took Sam at his word.” He clicked several buttons on his laptop and brought up the video of Poole interviewing Bishop again. “It could have happened just like Bishop said here. His word against Sam’s. How do we know which one is the truth? How do we really know?”

  Clair wasn’t about to accept any of this. “Bishop confessed to Sam right before he killed Talbot.”

  “Confessed to Sam,” Kloz repeated. “Sam alone.”

  A smug grin spread across Clair’s face. “What about the fingerprint? They found Bishop’s fingerprint on that railcar with Gunther Herbert’s body. At the Mulifax building. If Bishop didn’t kill Herbert, why would he be down there?”

  “Oh, I’ve read that report, too.” He loaded the file up on his screen and scrolled down to the last few paragraphs. “Mark Thomas with Brogan’s SWAT team lifted the print from the railcar, put it in an evidence bag, and gave it to Sam. That was 6:18 p.m., according to the report. Sam carried it in his pocket and handed it off to Nash three hours later. He asked Nash to take it in for analysis. Three hours. You don’t think he had time to switch it?”

  “Sam wouldn’t do that.”

  “Forget that we’re talking about Sam. We’re talking about our ‘interested party.’ If that person wanted to frame Bishop, they had opportunity. We don’t have a single witness who can actually ID Bishop.”

  Clair snapped her fingers. “What about Tyler Mathers, Emory’s boyfriend? Him and his uncle—they collected all that money, stole Talbot’s shoes…”

  Klozowski opened the report on Mathers, traced a line with his finger, and read aloud, “I never saw him. I don’t think Uncle Jake ever did, either. He only talked to him over the phone.” Kloz looked up at her. “This is your report. You interviewed him.”

  “Okay. The people at the park—where Emory was abducted—we have eyewitness accounts…”

  Kloz was already shaking his head. “That’s your report, too, and all the physical descriptions you got from those people contradict each other. Nobody really got a good look at him. It’s like the voice lineup with Emory—the DA won’t risk a lineup with those witnesses, considering they were all so far apart on description in your interviews. You bring in a group like that and they pick different people, everything falls apart.”

  He blew out a breath and leaned back in his chair. “Look, I’m not saying Bishop isn’t our guy, all I’m saying is if someone wants to poke holes, they won’t have to work too hard.”

  “Bishop is a fucked-in-the-head, crazy, piece-of-shit vigilante killer. He did it. He did all of it. He’s the reason we’re here, trapped in this goddamn hospital.”

  “Is it really so hard for you to believe that a police detective could be a vigilante? Sam wouldn’t be the first.” Kloz shrunk back and tensed, waiting for another blow.

  Clair didn’t hit him this time. Instead, she shivered and nodded toward a heavy coat on the floor next to Kloz’s chair. “Give me that. I’m freezing.”

  “You’re sweating. You probably have a fever.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Kloz handed her the coat. “I don’t think the meds they’re giving us are helping at all.”

  She draped the coat over her shoulders and tried to keep her teeth from chattering.

  The laptop dinged, and Kloz leaned in closer. “Got another e-mail from CSI Rolfes.”

  “What’s it say?”

  He didn’t answer at first. Instead, he clicked on the attachment and opened a zip file. About a dozen images filled the screen—pictures of Sam with Bishop at various ages.

  “Are those the same pictures they found in that room with Sam at the Guyon?”

  Kloz nodded. “I think so.”

  Clair turned the laptop so she could read Rolfes’ note—

  All of these were created on Upchurch’s computer. They’re fake.

  - Lindsy

  “I’m not sure what to make of that,” Clair said softly.

  “It means either Sam paid Upchurch to make them, along with the diaries, or Bishop had him do it for some reason.”

  “Okay, but why?”

  Kloz didn’t answer.

  Clair’s phone buzzed with a text message from Officer Sutter—

  Need you in the cafeteria. Now.

  43

  Diary

  Shortly before dusk the following day, we did find a truck in the barn. A 1998 Ford F-150 held together by patches of rust and the dwindling remains of yellow paint. Someone had draped a tan tarp over the entire dilapidated mess after rolling it as far into the back corner as possible. It was so close to the back wall, the only way to pass was to jump up on the bumper and crawl over. Prior to placing the tarp, the bed of the truck had been the premier spot for dumping all things that needed to be stored away and forgotten. Libby and I found everything from an old birdcage to shoes and books. There was even a television, the glass cracked revealing the inner workings, the electronic intestines, arteries, and heart of this now dead thing.

  All four truck tires were flat. The key was in the ignition, but twisting it didn’t even produce a click. The cab smelled musty and stale, the air of an Egyptian tomb opened to the sky for the first time in millennia.

  “Phew,” Libby said, pinching her nose.

  There was an underlying stink there, like something had crawled up under the dash to take a nap and died there. Maybe a raccoon, rat, or family of mice. I poked my head underneath, but without a flashlight, I couldn’t see much. The vinyl seats were covered in webs of cracks, yellow stuffing peeking out. When Libby climbed up into the passenger seat and plopped down, a cloud of dust plumed up and sent us both into a sneezing fit. When she finally was able to speak again, she drew a finger through the dust on the dashboard and proclaimed, “This is perfect!”

  “It’s junk.” I twisted the key again. “Somebody left it here to die.”

  She turned to me and smiled. “We can get it running and drive to California or Canada or maybe even Mexico. Leave all of this behind and start over somewhere!”

  “We’ll need parts and tools. Heck, we’ll need a way to get to those parts and tools. We’re at least ten miles from the closest store. And let’s say we find a way to get there and back. We need someone who actually knows how to fix this thing. Father taught me how to change the oil and maintain a vehicle, but I have no idea what to do with an engine, how to fix something like that.”

  Libby’s smile fell away, and she turned to me thoughtfully. “You always call him ‘Father,’ you don’t say ‘my father’ or even ‘my dad,’ always just ‘Father.’ Why is that?”

  I didn’t know the answer to that question. He’d always been Father to me. As long as Mother had been Mother, I supposed. This wasn’t a question of this or that, just a statement of what is—as air is air and dirt is dirt. I am—

  “Anson,” she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It was insensitive. You just lost them. I’m sorry.”

  She curled her fingers through mine. We held hands all the time now, and it was ni
ce. My hand felt empty without hers. Like Dr. Oglesby, she had mentioned that I sometimes drifted off from a conversation, and unlike Dr. Oglesby, I didn’t want to do that with her.

  I forced a smile. “It’s not that. I guess I just never thought about it before. My parents never permitted me to call them ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad,’ only ‘Mother’ or ‘Father.’ I suppose everything is normal when you don’t know any better.” This was like the lock on the refrigerator, but I hadn’t told her that. It was like many things that took place at our house—I didn’t tell her about those, either. It had been months since I had been home, and I wanted to go there—see my house, my lake. My world had been burning the last time I was there. I was curious what was left, what even the fire didn’t want.

  “We should tell Paul.”

  We found Paul where we always found Paul, sitting on his bed with his sketchpad. He didn’t look up when we explained what we found, just kept drawing. “Vincent worked in a garage. He’d know how to fix it. But I’m not gonna ask him. Mr. Vincent Weidner is dead to me.”

  Vincent had done a number on Paul. His left eye was black, and even though he hadn’t broken his nose, it was still swollen. The surrounding skin was an odd mix of green and blue. None of us had seen Vincent since last night. He hadn’t come out at all, not even to use the bathroom. His bedroom was directly over Ms. Finicky’s, and Paul said he was probably relieving himself right out his window onto the porch overhang. “She’ll be thrilled about that when the sun comes out,” Paul said. But the sun had come out, and nothing happened. I figured he just went when nobody was around.

  “We’ll talk to him,” Libby proclaimed. “Won’t we, Anson?”

  I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to see him. Vincent Weidner scared me. Father wouldn’t have approved of me showing fear, particularly around a girl, so I only nodded, and before I could object, she had dragged me across the hall to Vincent’s door and knocked.