by J. D. Barker
Pooled picked up a photograph of the note. “What can you tell me about this?”
Locke shrugged. “Bothered me, bothered everyone, I suppose. The handwriting was inconclusive. Most likely his but written under duress. Understandable, considering what he was about to do. Hillburn attended church, never struck us as an overly religious man, so ‘Father, forgive me’ wasn’t completely off base, just odd. His own dad had been dead going on fifteen years. Seemed like a strange choice of words, not the kind of thing you think of on the fly, more like something you decided on after some thought. But I’ve never been much of a religious guy, so who knows.”
“Did you ever suspect this was anything but suicide?”
Locke nearly laughed at that. “After this many years in law enforcement, somebody wishes me happy birthday and I suspect they’re lying. I looked at everything I could find back then, but other than the note, nothing indicated foul play.” He pulled a pen from his pocket and circled an address on one of the pages. “That’s his widow. You can try talking to her. She’s had plenty of time to think on it. Maybe she can help you.”
66
Nash
Day 5 • 8:07 PM
Nash was standing in Porter’s living room when Eisley finally came out of the bathroom. He needed to sit down, but between the federal and local CSI agents combing over every surface, there wasn’t a chair to be had. When the feds arrived, he told them about the drywall in the La-Z-Boy. He didn’t mention the diary that had previously occupied that space, no need to go there, but he couldn’t hide the drywall. He was in this deep enough already. The four pieces were still on the floor, an evidence tag next to each. They’d been photographed by at least three people, and some agent he didn’t recognize was hovering over them now, glaring down at them as if he could stare at them long enough that their true meaning would come to him like Vanna White turning letters.
Nash needed to sit because he felt like he might pass out. His stomach was a churning mess. He’d tried drinking a glass of water, and the moment the liquid hit his throat, it wanted out. He’d thrown up in Porter’s kitchen sink. CSI wasn’t too happy about that. He told them it was on account of seeing the body in the bathtub, but he knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. One glance in the mirror told him he looked like the walking dead. When Eisley had arrived, he’d given Nash a surgical mask and told him to put it on. He’d assured Eisley it was just a cold or the flu. Eisley said that whatever it was, the mask would help prevent airborne contamination. He then told Nash to go home and rest. Nash couldn’t do that. Instead, Nash watched everyone work and tried his best to stay on his feet.
Whatever didn’t get upended by the feds got inspected by Metro’s CSI. Nothing was overlooked. One agent had opened every seam in Porter’s mattress and was busy inspecting between the coils. Another crawled along the floor and pulled up every board showing the slightest sign of being loose or tampered with. Nash remembered when Porter and Heather moved in here. She loved the hardwood floors. He hated the squeaks. He’d spent the better part of their first year nailing boards down, spreading baby powder and oils, trying anything he could to tone down the noise. He finally gave up. All those boards were up now as flashlight beams peered beneath.
“Maybe you should go to Stroger.”
Nash jumped. Eisley was standing a foot away from him, and he hadn’t noticed the man approach at all.
“You’re sweating. Do you have a fever?”
“No,” Nash lied.
Eisley rummaged through his pocket and produced an electronic thermometer. Before Nash could object, he brushed it over Nash’s forehead. Nash tried not to think about where that thermometer had been.
“Hundred and one,” Eisley said flatly. “Figured as much.”
Eisley’s eyes narrowed. “Were you exposed to those girls at the Upchurch house?”
“No,” Nash lied.
“Then you most likely have the flu,” Eisley determined. “You’re going to fall over if you keep this up. You need to rest.” From another pocket, he took out a pill bottle and handed it to Nash. “I had someone bring these over for you. Tamiflu. Should help. Take one now and two more in four hours.”
Nash took three of them without water and dropped the bottle into his pocket. “Thanks.”
“Porter’s got ibuprofen in the bathroom. You should take a couple of those, too. They’ll help with the fever.”
Nash nodded. “How are you coming along in there?”
“Easier to show you.”
Before Nash could respond, Eisley started back across the room, stepping around people, the missing floorboards, and various items tagged into evidence. He’d insisted nobody else enter the bathroom but him.
Like in most of these older buildings, Porter’s bathroom wasn’t large. Toilet, single sink, a small closet for towels and various sundry items, and a bathtub/shower combo. The curtain had been removed and placed in an evidence bag, same with all the items Porter had left on the counter around the sink. Just outside the door, Eisley had set up a small table, the surface covered with small vials filled with liquids of varying colors. Stacked beneath the table were more than a dozen evidence bags, each filled with salt. “I removed what I could without disturbing the body,” Eisley said. “We’ll get the rest after we take him out.”
From the doorway, Nash could see the naked man in the bathtub. Eisley had slit the plastic open down the center and peeled it back like a cocoon, revealing the man inside. “What did he…”
The words trailed off as Nash tried to make sense of what he was looking at.
“He was tortured,” Eisley said. “Nearly every inch of his skin. Someone wrote on him with a razor blade, or possibly a scalpel. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, do no evil…over and over again. I found a few you are evil mixed in there, too. I am evil on his forehead.”
“Like Libby McInley?”
Eisley nodded. “Exactly like Libby McInley.”
“Was he killed here?”
“No. Whoever did this took their time. It would have produced a lot of blood. He was awake for most of it. Neighbors would have heard the screaming. You’ve got a primary crime scene somewhere else, and he was transported here later.”
“Is that why he’s using salt? Like some kind of preservative?”
“I’ve been learning a lot about salt today.” Eisley turned back to his table. “As a preservative, salt inhibits the growth of microorganisms by drawing out water through osmosis. This prevents decomp and significantly distorts time of death. I’m working on a method to use the remaining saturation levels in the body to determine TOD, but I’m not there yet. Right now, I couldn’t tell you if this man died forty-eight hours ago or a week ago. I don’t think it’s longer than that. He certainly didn’t die today. Here’s what interesting, though. I’ve got two types of salt here. The first isn’t designed for human consumption at all—it contains high levels of sodium ferrocyanide and ferric ferrocyanide. He was exposed to that the longest. The second salt is primarily potassium chloride, consistent with the kind used in water softeners.” He gestured at the plastic evidence bags. “That’s what most of this is.”
Nash tried to focus on this, but his thoughts were all muddled.
Eisley went on. “The two women found earlier today, the salt on their bodies matched both types. The first salt appears to be the same as the kind used on the roads to prevent icing. The second is used in water softeners.”
Nash said, “Okay, so these people were killed, then stored in road ice?”
Eisley nodded. “When this body was placed here, someone poured water softener salt, the kind you can buy in large bags just about anywhere, on and around the body, then filled the bathtub with water. That caused the salt to leach in and around the plastic, partly contaminating my first sample. They might have done that to try and mask the original salt.”
“To prevent us from figuring out where they’re storing these bodies?”
“Storing the bodies locally,” E
isley pointed out. “The body down in Simpsonville only had exposure to water softener salt. I confirmed about an hour ago with their local pathologist. I think that was just meant to confuse us, try to make them all look the same.”
“Because they don’t salt the roads in South Carolina,” Nash thought aloud. “The killer wouldn’t have access to that type.”
Eisley nodded. “If I’m correct, you’ll want to check all the salt storage buildings in and around the city. Your unsub killed these people and brought them to one for an undetermined length of time, then placed the bodies where you found them.” Eisley lowered his voice and took a step closer to Nash. “With this victim, the question we really need to ask is, ‘did our killer place him here to frame Sam or—’”
Nash interrupted him. “—or was Sam soaking the body, getting it ready for placement somewhere else? Is that what you’re getting at? He wouldn’t do that in his own apartment.”
Eisley shrugged. “Sam’s a smart guy. He knows all our countermeasures and methods. He might do it here simply because it’s blatantly not the best place to do it.”
Nash didn’t respond to that. Instead, he stepped into the bathroom, opened Porter’s medicine cabinet, and found the ibuprofen. As he took four pills, he looked back at the body. “Do you have any kind of ID?”
Before answering, Eisley glanced up at the words written in soap on the mirror. Father, forgive me.
“His prints came back as Vincent Weidner,” Eisley said.
67
Diary
The man from the van was first through the door. Either Welderman had returned the key to him or he had another, but he got there fast and it made me wonder if the room was bugged and he had been listening in. Bernie was loud, but not so loud that the man should have heard him from across the parking lot. Or maybe he had. There was no way for me to be sure, with things moving so fast.
The tip of the screwdriver entered Bernie the first time just under his chin. I think it pierced his tongue before getting stuck in the roof of his mouth. I’d hoped it would get to his brain, but it wasn’t long enough. His scream was more of a yelp, cut short by the impaled tongue, but you’d be surprised how much noise a person can make in a second like that. Without the use of his tongue, the scream turned into a guttural moan, still loud, just different. I tried to pull the screwdriver back out, but it was stuck good. I grabbed the phone off the nightstand instead and smashed it into Bernie’s head. That quieted him down.
Van Man came through the door with his trench coat snapping in the wind, slammed the door at his back, took in Bernie on the floor trying to stand (and failing) before turning on me. I’d never seen a face as red as his, and I found myself shrinking deeper into the room, toward the bathroom at the back. He ran at me, shoulder first, and slammed into my chest. I fell back, and when I hit the ground, he came down on top with all his weight. My right arm folded awkwardly beneath both of us, and I heard a sickening SNAP! like a branch under a car tire, and the worst pain followed a moment later, running down my arm to my chest. I let out a scream of my own. Bernie was still louder, though. Somehow he had managed to find his voice even with that screwdriver sticking through half his face.
Van Man climbed off me, crossed the room over to Bernie, and did something I didn’t expect. He snatched a pillow off the bed and pressed it against Bernie’s face with his left hand while his right produced a handgun. The pillow reduced the blast to a muffled thump.
68
Poole
Day 5 • 9:07 PM
“I should have moved, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. My parents left me this house. I grew up here.” The widow of Derrick Hillburn, Robin Hillburn, looked up from the cup of tea in her hands and nodded toward some marks on the kitchen door jam. “Those are all me, when I was a little girl. One mark for every month from the time I was able to stand until around fourteen—when I was too cool for that sort of thing and made them stop.”
Poole sat across from her at the Formica table. His hands wrapped around a mug of tea he had yet to drink. By the time he’d left Charleston PD, it was well after eight. He considered getting a hotel room for the night and starting fresh in the morning, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, particularly after Nash called and told him about Vincent Weidner’s body in Porter’s apartment.
Robin Hillburn was in her mid-fifties, at least fifty pounds overweight, and dressed in a gray sweatsuit. Her straggly hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she wore no makeup. When he knocked on her door at a little after nine, she’d stared at his badge from the other side, the chain between them. When he told her why he was on her doorstep, he half expected her to slam the door, but she didn’t. Instead, she sighed and let him in. “Every couple years, one of you seems to come by. Suppose tonight is as good a night as any.”
She’d led him through a crowded living room to the kitchen, the house itself caught in a time capsule of shag carpet and wallpaper, knick-knacks, and dusty furniture. From the television, a preacher droned on about the failure of social society and how the Internet was raising our kids.
Robin took a sip of her tea and wiped the side of her mouth with the back of her hand. “When Derrick…when he died…all I wanted to do was run, get as far away from here as I could. I went to stay with my sister in St. Louis for a few weeks, but after a while, I got so homesick. I came back and Derrick was gone, all his stuff was packed up. All the other things that reminded me of home—things I missed—those were still here. After a couple days, I settled back in. Like an old blanket or a familiar chair. I couldn’t picture myself anywhere else. I still saw reminders of Derrick around, but this place was my home long before I met him, and I knew it would continue to be my home.”
There was no delicate way to ask this, so Poole came right out with it. “Did you find him?”
Robin nodded. “I’d been grocery shopping, and when I came home, I yelled for him to help me unload. His car was in the driveway, so I knew he was home. The second I stepped through the door, though, I was sure something was wrong. I checked upstairs first, then the bathrooms, looked out back. Didn’t think to check the basement, not right away. Nothing down there but the laundry, and he avoided that like the plague, but after I checked everything else and didn’t turn him up, I went down there.” She paused a moment and blew on her tea. “Didn’t seem real when I first saw him. Felt like watching a scene from a movie. He was just hanging there from the rafters, all quiet, nothing moving. The first thing I thought of, can’t explain why, was where did he get the rope? I didn’t recognize it. Turns out the receipt was in his pocket. He’d bought it that morning.” She waved a hand around. “There was all this hushed talk—he didn’t do it, someone else did it, especially after reading the note. I knew he did, though. It was that damn receipt that convinced me.”
“Could someone have planted the receipt?”
“Nope. Not a chance.”
“How can you be sure?”
Robin sighed. “Derrick did this thing with receipts. He liked to roll them. I’d find them in his pockets all the time like that, never failed. This one was rolled the same way as any other.”
A partner would know to roll it. Partners new each other better than most married couples.
Poole shook the thought from his head. “Did he ever mention the name Rose Finicky to you?”
She shook her head.
“Vincent Weidner?”
“Nope.”
“How about a Detective Freddy Welderman or Ezra Stocks?”
“I think I’d remember a name like Ezra. He never mentioned anyone named Freddy, either.”
“Anson Bishop?”
She took another drink of her tea. “I know that one from TV, but Derrick was long gone before all that business ever came up.”
“What about a drug dealer named Weasel?”
She shook her head again.
“Did he discuss his work with you at all?”
“Only that he didn’t like it muc
h and was considering a change. Talked about that a lot, but it was mostly talk. He got into law enforcement because he wanted to help people. Derrick was a kind soul like that. Like any other boy, he grew up idolizing cops, but once he got into that world, he realized it was nothing like television. I imagine you know what I mean. He spent shift after shift with the worst humanity has to offer, and it took a toll on him. We were both raised on the Good Book, and he thought he could help everyone. After a number of years on the job, he realized that wasn’t the case. Rather than him showing them the light, they showed him the dark. The dark engulfed him. Derrick got depressed. Obviously, more so than even I realized.”
“Did he get along with his partner?”
“Which one? He had a couple.”
“Sam Porter.”
“Is he the one who got shot?”
Poole nodded.
“Those two were thick as thieves for a while there. Like brothers. When Sam got shot, that spooked Derrick. Looking back, I think that was the start of his slide. He blamed himself. I guess any partner would. Took to drinking for a little while after Sam left. Luckily that didn’t stick. Suppose if it did, he wouldn’t have hung in with the job as long as he did. I can tell you one thing—Sam was the only partner he ever brought home for dinner. I think he vowed never to get too close to another after all that business. He spent a lot more time at home after Sam, that’s for sure.”
“Derrick traveled?”
Robin nodded. “He and Sam took a few overnight trips for some case or another. Never said what it was about. I didn’t ask. Figured he’d tell me if he wanted me to know.”
“Do you know where they went?”
She shook her head. “They drove, so not too far.”
Poole glanced around the kitchen, at the cluttered shelves. “You said after Derrick died, you stayed with your sister for a few weeks and while you were gone, somebody packed up his belongings?”
She nodded. “Some of the guys from the force. They boxed up everything and put it out in the garage. It’s all still out there. You’re welcome to go through it, if you like. Just do me a favor—whatever you don’t want, put out at the curb. I think it’s time I rid myself of all that.”