The Sixth Wicked Child

by J. D. Barker

  Poole didn’t respond to that. Not at first. He wanted to choose his words carefully. “There’s something I haven’t told you. I’ve been trying to figure out how. You need to know, though. Because it’s important. After I spoke to Porter this morning, I put in a request for contact information on his old partner in Charleston. I figured Bishop was lying, but I like to be thorough. If something happened with Porter in Charleston, I wanted to know what it was.” He paused for a second, glanced out the window, then back at Nash. “I was told Derrick Hillburn hung himself in his basement six years ago. I don’t have all the details, but even though it looked like suicide, the locals investigated it as a potential homicide. Apparently, there was a note, a short one, but the handwriting didn’t match Hillburn—that raised the red flag.”

  “What did the note say?”

  Poole licked his lip. “Father, forgive me.”

  Nash recoiled, as if disappearing in the plush seat.

  Poole didn’t want to say the next part, but he felt he needed to. “If Porter wanted to kill you, Clair, or some of the other first responders, the virus would be the perfect way to do it. Pinning it all on Bishop puts a neat little bow on things. If he’s covering something up, something big, he might not want to leave any potential witnesses behind.”

  “What could he possibly be covering up?”

  “A lot of people have died around him.”

  Nash scoffed. “He’s a homicide detective. That’s like saying there are too many shitty cars parked around a used car salesman.”

  “Hillburn died under mysterious circumstances six years ago. That’s just before the first 4MK victim.”

  “That’s coinci—”

  “You know I don’t believe in those.”

  “Neither does Sam. And he’d never purposely hurt Clair or me. No way.”

  “I worked a case about eight years ago,” Poole said. “A cop in Cincinnati, name of Ben Preece. The guy had been on the force for nearly fifteen years, had won more citations than half his squad combined. He could have easily made captain, but he wanted to stay in vice, insisted he did the most good there. Internal Affairs received a complaint from Narcotics—Preece had been spotted in a sketchy part of town at three in the morning. He was staking out the same dealer the Narcotics team had been there to watch. There was no reason for a member of vice to be there, certainly not at that hour. They didn’t approach him, just snapped a couple pictures and turned the information over to IA. That dealer turned up dead about a week later, heroin overdose. IA, being IA, put a tracker on Preece’s car, his personal vehicle. Got an order to monitor his phone, too. They noticed something strange—three or four nights a week, Preece would go out but leave his phone at home—the GPS data on his car didn’t match his phone. They started to tail him, caught him on surveillance ops that had nothing to do with his job, watching people like that dealer. IA started fishing around closer, loaded a monitor on his work computer and personal. Turned out the computer on his desk had been assigned to a Narcotics officer a few years earlier, and when IT repurposed the machine, they didn’t wipe the drive as per protocol. They just created a new user account. Not easy to find unless you know to look for it, but apparently Preece knew to look for it. The previous officer had used a program called PassVault to store all his passwords, so if Preece logged into the computer as him, he had access to all his accounts, including the database used by the Narcotics department. They checked the logs, realized that was how Preece was getting his intel. Meanwhile, they connected six other deaths to him dating back nearly three years. He’d been at this a while. IA kept him in play but watched him close as they put a case together. They found two more deaths, one in Indiana, another in West Virginia—that’s when I was brought in. I linked three more deaths to him, all cops. Bad cops, mind you—we figured that out later—but dirty or not, we knew he killed them. He covered his tracks, but it doesn’t matter how many times you sweep the floor; some footprints stick. When we finally confronted him, we had fourteen murders tied to him, at least three more we couldn’t prove. He admitted to everything, didn’t ask for a union rep. We didn’t have to twist his arm. He was relieved. Preece said he wanted to stop and couldn’t. Said maybe now he’d be able to sleep. Then he told us about his partner.”

  “What about his partner?”

  “He said his partner knew what he had been doing, figured it out about a year earlier, and he’d been paying him to keep quiet. His partner was diabetic, and Preece said he swapped out one of his insulin bottles with saline. He told us now that the truth is out, his partner didn’t have to die.”

  Without looking at him, Nash said, “Sam would never hurt me, or Clair, or anyone else. You’re way off base on this.”

  “Preece’s partner was his cousin…family,” Poole responded. “The people we are in public aren’t the people we are behind closed doors. Vigilantes are born out of frustration with the system. Every one of the 4MK victims got traced back to some kind of criminal activity, retribution for their activity. We can’t discount that. Who had more of a motive? Some kid caught up in the foster system, or a detective who has seen his share of bad guys walk?”

  Nash closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat. “Charleston.”

  “What?”

  “Whether you believe Bishop or Sam, both theories lead to Charleston,” Nash said. “You asked me to be objective. This is me being objective. Bishop is pointing us at Charleston, and Sam might have something there he doesn’t want us to know. I’d be willing to look if it put an end to all this.”

  He took out his phone and dialed Clair. The call went straight to voice mail. He opened his messaging app and began tapping out a message.

  “What are you doing?”

  Without looking up, Nash said, “Telling Clair and Kloz to look for a Charleston connection on the victims in the hospital.”

  “Nothing on the mayor,” Poole told him. “Not until we figure this out.”

  Nash didn’t reply. He finished his message, hit send, and pocketed the phone.

  The driver braked a little too hard, and the back of the Escalade slid awkwardly to the left, then back to the right as he regained control. Both Nash and Poole glanced outside. It wasn’t his fault. Traffic ahead was at a standstill, with brake lights burning and cars attempting to avoid a collision in the snow. “Sorry,” the driver said. “The salt doesn’t work well at these temperatures. It stops melting the ice at around five degrees.”

  Nash sneezed again. “How cold is it?”

  “Three right now. With the wind, it’s more like negative ten.”

  Poole peered out the windshield. None of the traffic on Michigan Avenue was moving. “Can you tell what’s happening up there?”

  Keeping his hand on the steering wheel, the driver pointed forward with his index finger. “There’s a crowd outside Metro. Maybe some kind of evacuation?”

  Nash’s phone dinged. He fished it back out of his pocket and stared at the display.

  “What is it?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Nash?”

  “I just got a text from a restricted number.”

  “What does it say?”

  “‘You can’t keep me safe. None of you. He won’t stop until we’re all dead.’” Nash paused for a second. “It’s signed AB.”

  51

  Porter

  Day 5 • 3:20 PM

  Porter’s teeth were chattering, and he couldn’t make them stop. He stood, did jumping jacks, paced quickly in a little circle, tried sitting back down on the park bench with his hands under his thighs. None of that made much of a difference.

  Outside Metro, he managed to flag down a cab but quickly lost the Lexus in traffic. In the movies when someone tells a cab driver to follow that car, they do. When he tried it in real life, feeling foolish even as the words left his mouth, the driver had just stared ahead at the hundreds of cars rolling up and down Michigan and asked, “Which car?” By the time Porter told him, the silver L
exus was gone—Bishop and his mother with it.

  He’d given the driver two hundred dollars in soggy bills for his coat and another hundred to use his cell phone, turning the ride to A. Montgomery Ward Park in River North into the most expensive cab ride he’d ever taken. When Porter put the coat on over his wet clothes and told the driver to let him out near the playground, the driver looked at him as if were a crazy person.

  That was only twenty minutes ago, and Porter was beginning to agree with that assessment. With the temperature in single digits, his wet clothes were well on their way to freezing stiff. Within the coat, his body heat fought valiantly but futilely with the dampness. And Porter wished for a hat, because the only thing worse than standing outside in the dead of winter in wet clothes was standing outside in the dead of winter with wet hair.

  Porter got to his feet again, did another lap around the bench, and blew into his hands. Every inch of his body shivered, quivered, and revolted.

  When a horn blew from the road behind him, it took a moment for his brain to process what he heard, which he blamed on the hypothermia. He turned, started for the SUV, then realized he’d forgotten the box with Bishop’s diaries on the bench. He scrambled back as quickly as he could on the slippery ground, retrieved the box, and stumbled back toward the awaiting vehicle, icy wind swirling all around.

  There was nobody in the passenger seat, but he climbed into the back anyway, thankful for the tinted windows. The heat wrapped around him like a heavy quilt, and when he tried to speak, his throat didn’t cooperate. “Elo, Mree.”

  Emory Connors turned in the driver’s seat, her mouth hanging open. “My God, Sam. Do you have any idea how cold it is? You’re soaked! You could have died out there!”

  From the floor of the passenger’s seat, she grabbed a black backpack and handed it to him. “You need to change out of those wet clothes. I grabbed some of Arthur’s old things—socks, underwear, a few pairs of pants and shirts. I keep meaning to donate them to Goodwill or something, but… Anyway, just…just change right there. I won’t look. Before you get sick or something!”

  The last thing on Porter’s mind was modesty. He stripped off the wet clothes, piled them on the floor, and dressed in the clothes Emory pilfered from her murdered father’s closet at her apartment. As he did, he glanced up into the rearview mirror. True to her word, Emory had her eyes pinched shut. Her knuckles were white, she was gripping the steering wheel so tight.

  “You cut your hair,” he said, buttoning the shirt. It was a little tight on him but close enough. “It looks nice.” His throat felt raw, but his voice was returning.

  Her eyes still closed, she reached up and touched her brown hair where it curled up just above her shoulders. “I needed a change. Is it okay to look now?”

  Porter threaded a black leather belt through the loops in his borrowed pants. “Yeah.” He nodded at the radio. “What are they saying on the news?”

  Emory put the SUV into gear and pulled out onto Kingsbury, heading toward I-90. “Nothing about what happened at Metro, not yet. All the news channels keep bouncing back and forth between Stroger Hospital and that video of your partner kicking Bishop.”

  “Nash kicked Bishop?” He hadn’t heard anything about this.

  She told him about Bishop’s arrest, how he claimed Porter and Nash were dirty cops live on the air as he surrendered, all of it.

  Traffic picked up the pace when Emory followed the signs from I-90 to I-55 South with the skill of a seasoned professional. “I didn’t know you had your license yet.”

  At this, Emory’s face flushed. “I have a learner’s permit. Arthur insisted I start private lessons last year. I went to a school for a little while. Then my bodyguards started to take me out to the track in Woodstock, which was way more fun. They taught me all kinds of cool stuff like PIT and PIN maneuvers, threat recognition, weight transfer…”

  “Everything a teenage driver needs to know?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I hope somebody squeezed parallel parking into your lesson plan. That’s what gave me the hardest time.” Porter pulled a pair of black leather shoes from the bag—John Lobbs, Talbot’s favorite. They were a size eleven, and he normally wore ten and a half—close enough. When he finished, he looked up at her. “Did you bring the rest?”

  She glanced at him in the mirror, her face filled with concern. “Are you sure about this?”

  He nodded.

  Reaching over to the glove box, she pressed the release and removed two paper sacks. Emory handed them both to Porter.

  Inside the first were two stacks of bound twenties. Four thousand dollars in total.

  The second bag contained a .38, a leather belt holster, and a box of ammunition.

  “None of that is traceable,” she told him. “Arthur had it in his safe. The gun doesn’t even have a serial number.”

  He twisted the weapon and looked at the underside. She was right. If the number had been filed away, someone did a bang-up job. There were no tool marks. It looked more like the gun had been manufactured without one.

  Porter slipped the gun into the holster and clipped it to his belt. He placed the ammunition and money in the backpack. He transferred Bishop’s diaries from the wet box to the bag, too.

  She took exit 286 from I-55 South and followed the signs for Midway Airport. When the speed limit dropped to twenty, she veered to the left and took a narrow exit toward the private hangars. At the guard gate, she didn’t even stop. The guard leaned out the small building, recognized her, and waved her through. Weaving through a series of buildings, she pulled through the large open door of Hangar 289 and parked next to glimmering white jet with Talbot Enterprises painted on the tail. “This was Arthur’s favorite,” Emory said. “It’s a Bombardier Global 5000. Swank and fast. There’s a couple more here in Chicago, but this is the one I like to take.”

  Porter tried to imagine a world where an individual had several private jets at the ready, as an adult or a teenager. That reality was so far removed from his own one-car, small apartment existence, he couldn’t wrap his brain around it. How this girl managed to keep a level head, he’d never know.

  “I’m going to leave this car here for you,” Emory continued. “GPS is disabled. The plates are registered to one of Arthur’s shell companies. Nobody will be looking for it, and if someone does, they won’t find it.”

  “How will you get home?”

  She nodded toward the mouth of the hangar. “My security staff followed me.”

  When Porter looked out the window, he realized another SUV had pulled up behind them. A cloud of exhaust rose from their tailpipe. There were at least two people inside.

  “They don’t know who I picked up at the park. I told them to follow two minutes behind me so they wouldn’t see you.” Emory turned back toward the jet. “The plane is fully fueled, and the staff has been instructed to take you anywhere you want to go. Your name won’t appear anywhere, and they won’t file a flight plan until just before takeoff. I figured it’s better if you tell them where you’re heading instead of me. This way, if someone asks, I can tell them I really don’t know. Once they have your destination, they’ll arrange for another car to be waiting for you at landing, like this one, untraceable.” She bit her lower lip playfully. “Apparently there’s a service for that kind of thing. Who knew?”

  “I imagine Arthur did.”

  “Yeah, I suppose he did,” she agreed. “Wherever you land, they’ll wait for you. If you need to go somewhere else, they’ll take you.” Her voice dropped off for a moment as she weighed what she wanted to say next. “I…I called one of my attorneys after you called me, just to determine what I could and couldn’t do. I hope you understand.”

  Porter did understand. “I’m glad.”

  Emory went on, “I was told since you haven’t been charged with anything, I’m technically not breaking any laws here. If they do file charges against you, he said I can wait up to four hours before calling the authorities and telling
them what I know. He said that’s an ‘acceptable window.’” She made air quotes to emphasize her point. “So, if you’re charged, I’ll tell them you asked to use one of my jets. I’ll tell them the truth—I have no idea where you went. I don’t know how long it will take them to figure things out from there, but the clock will be ticking. I’m not sure even the cars will be safe at that point. You might want to consider ditching whatever my people line up for you and take something else, get a little more time…you know, if things come to that.”

  She seemed a little embarrassed by this last statement, and she looked away.

  Porter sat back in the seat and took a moment to catch his breath, to look at the beautiful young girl in the front seat. “I owe you for all this, Emory. You might be the strongest person I know.”

  She smiled. “You will never owe me. Not now, not ever.”

  More than anyone, he understood the sacrifices she had made, the lengths she had gone to.

  He watched as she climbed out of the SUV and ran back to the awaiting car on the tarmac. They were gone by the time he got out with the backpack in hand and made his way to the steps of the Bombardier and disappeared inside.

  52

  Diary

  Libby wouldn’t talk to me when she got back. I fell asleep in the hallway leaning against her door and didn’t wake until I heard the girls shuffling up the stairs. My eyes fluttered open, and the three of them were standing there, staring at me.

  “Move,” Tegan said.

  My eyes found Libby. “Are you okay?”

  She turned away, and a moment later she walked briskly down the hallway to the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

  I scrambled to my feet, tried to go after her, but Tegan got in my way. “Just let her be. You can see her in the morning, but don’t ask her about tonight. Don’t ever ask her about tonight, understand?”