by J. D. Barker
69
Porter
Day 5 • 9:08 PM
Porter took the files.
He wasn’t going to apologize for that.
He’d pulled over on the side of Mount Cleary Road just before the I-26 on-ramp, about three miles from Camden Treatment Center and looked down at the two folders on the passenger seat.
Bishop’s folder was damn near empty. He was brought in immediately following the fire at his home and only stayed for a handful of weeks. He received several medications, mostly for anxiety, and was released into the foster custody of David and Cindy Watson, residents of Woodstock, Illinois, just as Bishop had said in his interview with Poole. Not a single scrap of paper was signed by Dr. Oglesby—he wasn’t mentioned at all, only Dr. Victor Whittenberg. As he had said. Porter grilled him on it for nearly three hours, and the man didn’t falter. His story didn’t change at all. Porter ran him through it forwards, backwards, and sideways, and he didn’t slip once. Whittenberg believed every word he told him.
It was the look on Whittenberg’s face that made things worse. Pity, misplaced compassion—whatever it was, Porter hadn’t liked it one bit. This only got worse when they talked about the contents of the folder with his name on it.
Porter felt this distinction was important.
The folder had his name on it—but he didn’t consider it his folder. He’d read the stack of lies three times with the doctor watching him curiously, like some caged animal. His eyes darting to that little recorder on his desk from behind those ridiculous glasses every few minutes to ensure the device was still working.
Porter had taken that, too. Right along with the files.
Fuck him.
He wasn’t there to make friends. He was there to get answers.
Nothing in the folder with his name on it made sense.
Porter knew he had lost time. The bullet to the back of the head had seen to that. Fluid elicit retrograde amnesia, that’s what they called it. When he’d woken from the coma, that first time he’d seen his future wife, Heather, they discovered the damage. Most of his memories were intact; childhood, teen years, even recent events were all still there. But there were big blank spots, entire months and years missing. He remembered the tests for this at the hospital in Charleston, always with Heather present. He remembered his extended stay there, the ensuing treatment and rehab leading up to his release. He recalled taking and passing the necessary steps to get back on the force, to be reinstated—Heather with him every step of the way.
Not once did he set foot in Camden Treatment Center.
Not once did he meet this Dr. Victor Whittenberg.
Whittenberg never treated him.
Yet, this file said otherwise. Nearly four months meticulously documented. His release from the hospital in Charleston to his extended stay at Camden—paperwork, insurance records, notes, progress reports.
Porter stomped the gas and pulled back out onto the road.
Fifty.
Sixty.
Seventy miles-per-hour.
None of it could possibly be true, because that would mean everything else was a lie, including his early memories with Heather, and that was not something he was about to accept.
Porter rewound the microcassette and hit play. Static poured out of the tiny speaker. After about thirty seconds, he hit the fast-forward button, then play again. More static. Fumbling with the buttons while trying to keep an eye on the road, he hit fast forward again and still only found static. He tried three more times before finally giving up and throwing the recorder down into the passenger foot well.
Bishop is fucking with you.
All Bishop. Had to be. The files. The tape. All fake, just like the Simpsonville property records.
Porter told himself that, repeated it several times, because there was no other explanation.
Focus, Sam. Stay focused.
It took every ounce of his willpower to keep from throwing everything out into the street and watching the wind take it all away.
Sam drew in a breath, forced his head to clear, and consulted the notes he had made on the plane. It was going to be a long night.
A minute later, he was back on I-26 south pushing his borrowed SUV well above the posted speed limit.
70
Diary
They didn’t want to take me to the hospital, Van Man and Stocks; it was Welderman who insisted. Not because he cared about me or the amount of pain I was in. No, he was just as mad as the other two. I heard him say that if my arm didn’t heal properly, the deformity would cost them on the back end.
“Then we write him off,” Van Man replied. “No hospitals. If you need me to call the boss, I will, but he won’t be happy. Not at this hour.”
That seemed to settle that.
No hospital.
A very angry Welderman dragged me back to the Malibu while Van Man and Stocks wrapped Bernie in a comforter and loaded him into the back of the van. Stocks asked me what I touched in the room and I told him. Then he was gone again. I knew there was blood everywhere— Bernie was a bleeder, and I knew he’d made a mess. I was covered in it, but apparently they were more concerned with prints. I expected someone in the motel to hear all the noise and come out to see what was going on, or call the police, or something, but nobody did. We were back on the road in under fifteen minutes.
I cradled my broken arm against my chest. With each bump in the road, I felt the two sides of the broken bone grind against each other. The break was just below my elbow—the ulna bone, I would learn later—and my arm was swelling up fast. The skin had grown hot and purple in color.
More than once, Welderman shouted for me to shut up, but I couldn’t stifle the whimpers dropping from my lips if my life depended on it (and part of me thought it just might). The ride back to Finicky’s might have been the longest of my life.
The white van left her driveway at about the halfway point, cutting out across the field while we drove right up to the front door.
They must have called ahead, because Finicky was standing there under the porch light with a blanket wrapped over her shoulders. “Get him inside, in the kitchen.” Then she turned and stomped through the door.
If I thought the ride back was painful, the walk from the car to the kitchen was ten times worse. At one point, Welderman and Stocks tried to pick me up, said I was moving too slow, but something in my eyes must have told them to back off, because they did. The two of them shuffled next to me, about a foot away, just close enough to keep me heading in the right direction.
Dr. Oglesby was in the kitchen. He looked up from a newspaper and nodded at the table. “Put him up there.”
I blocked out most of what happened next.
Welderman and Stocks were told to hold me down while Finicky put a leather belt in my mouth and told me to bite down hard and not let go. Oglesby cut away my shirtsleeve and studied the break for a moment. When his fingers stopped prodding at my arm, he tightened his grip, one hand on either side of the break, looked at me for a moment, then—
I passed out then. I didn’t think the pain could get worse, but the pain most certainly did, and that wash of hurt came with a blinding white light, then nothing. When I woke, Oglesby was busy wrapping my arm in cloth strips dripping with plaster. I could hear Welderman and Van Man shouting at each other somewhere else in the house.
Finicky saw that I was awake and leaned down next to my head. “If you ever do something like that again, I’ll let each of these gentlemen gang rape your little girlfriend while you watch. I’ll let them violate every hole in that sorry bitch. And when they get tired of her, I’ll slit her fucking throat and drop her out in the fields for the crows to pick at. While you’re under my roof, you live by my rules, and you’ll earn your keep.” She licked at her chapped lips. “You think Bernie was bad? Wait until the next one. Just wait. I’ll give the next one a free pass to do whatever the fuck he wants with you. You’ll learn. You’ll see. Or I’ll dig a hole for you out back myself. W
elderman kept the screwdriver. It’s got your prints all over it. You tell anyone what happened, and he’ll make sure you’re charged with Bernie’s murder.” She leaned in closer. “I own you, you little shit.”
Oglesby left medication for the pain but Finicky pocketed the bottle for herself. She told me, “I want you to hurt.” Then told me to go up to my room.
Paul was awake when I gently lowered myself onto my bed. “You flubbed that up good,” was all he said.
71
Poole
Day 5 • 9:15 PM
The two-car detached garage sat behind the Hillburn house at the end of a cracked blacktop driveway under the unkempt branches of a willow tree that looked like it might topple over with the next breeze. Robin Hillburn had given Poole the key, but he found the side door to be unlocked. That didn’t mean it was willing to open. Whether from moisture, old paint, or copious amounts of glue, the door was stuck and had been for a very long time. Poole put his shoulder into it, and after several hits the door rattled and finally gave, the bottom grinding against the concrete.
He located a light switch on the right of the door frame, but when he flicked it, the bulb hanging from the center beam only sparked for a brief second before going dark with a dry pop. He activated the flashlight on his phone and swept the space with the beam instead.
Spiderwebs dripped from the ceiling. White, tangled, thick knots of them. Brown recluse spiders were indigenous to South Carolina—he’d read that somewhere—but so were many other spiders. He couldn’t tell what had spun these particular webs, and no spiders were visible, but he felt their eyes on him, an intruder in their home.
Of the two parking spaces, the one nearest the door was filled with boxes of all shapes and sizes.
In the second bay sat an old white panel van.
Tires flat, the rubber rotted and split, windows caked with dust. The paint lined with rust and filth. Poole had always found it odd that someone could allow a vehicle to waste away in some dark corner, but he had seen his share over the years. Most likely Derrick Hillburn drove this one, and his wife either had no use for it or couldn’t bear the memories it might contain. Easier to forget than to even attempt to sell.
Poole stepped over and around the boxes, swiping at the webs with his forearm, sneezing more times than he could count with the agitated dust. He reached the garage door at the front, located the release handle, and tugged the door up. Like the side door, this one fought back, rollers protesting loudly every inch up their track. But he managed to get the door open and welcomed the rush of cold air from outside.
Several mice scurried from the shadowed mess inside, darted out the opening, and vanished in the unkempt grass. One stopped long enough to look up at Poole. It was possibly the largest mouse he’d ever seen—all twitchy nose and glowing eyes, the rodent stood on its haunches and glared at him before turning and chasing after the others.
From the house, a floodlight positioned under the eaves and pointing back toward the garage door flipped on. Poole shielded his eyes and found Robin Hillburn standing in the window of a backdoor. She raised a hand and offered him a tentative wave before disappearing back into the house.
The light strained to reach into the garage, the mouth of the building somehow holding the light at bay. It was better than his flashlight, though, so it would have to do. There was no simple way to tackle this project, so Poole went at it the only way he knew how—one box at a time. Starting with the first box within reach, he carried it from the garage out to the driveway, opened the flaps at the top, and riffled through the contents. Jeans and pants, a few dozen pairs, all musty and riddled with moth bites. The next five boxes proved to be more of the same—T-shirts, sweaters, socks. He couldn’t bring himself to throw these things away as Robin Hillburn had asked so he separated items as he went—anything worth donating went to the right side of the driveway, the rest went on the left. Derrick Hillburn had his share of junk, too.
Forty minutes later, dripping with sweat, Poole hadn’t found a damn thing.
He was considering knocking on the kitchen door to get a glass of water when his eyes drifted over to the van.
Derrick Hillburn (or whoever drove it last) backed it into the garage with the driver’s side butted against the side wall and the back of the van tight against the back wall of the garage. Poole hadn’t thought about it earlier, but this meant that whoever parked the van would have needed to climb out through the passenger door. That made no sense. If they meant to park in such a way to leave as much storage space in the garage as possible, why not just pull in?
Over the years, several towers of boxes had tumbled over against the passenger side, blocking access there too. Poole focused his attention on those boxes, carrying them out to the driveway with the others, checking each as he went, until he’d cleared a path to the passenger door—locked.
He tried shining his flashlight inside but couldn’t see much. A partition separated the passenger compartment of the van from the back with a narrow access door positioned behind the two front seats.
Poole checked the exposed wheel wells for a magnetic key but didn’t find one. Nothing under the bumper, either—what he could reach, anyway. Glancing back at the house, he noticed all the interior lights were out. Robin Hillburn had most likely gone to bed.
Poole considered breaking the window but knew the noise might draw unwanted attention. Instead, he plucked a wire hanger from one of the boxes in the driveway, straightened out the metal, and fashioned a small hook at one end. He forced the wire between the window seal and glass and twisted it back and forth until the hook brushed over the chrome nub of the door lock. He made five attempts before finally catching the top—he yanked up and popped the lock.
When Poole opened the door, stale air rushed out at him, somehow colder than the garage—ancient trapped air eager to escape. The dust on the cracked leather seat was so thick, he thought the seats were gray until he ran his finger over one and discovered they were originally black.
He opened the glove box. There was a .38 inside along with two boxes of ammunition and a leather belt holster. Vehicle registration. Owner’s manual. A half-eaten roll of Rolaids. Nothing else.
In the cupholder near the stick shift sat an old can of Pepsi. Liquid along the rim had long ago gummed up and evaporated, leaving a black tar-like ring behind. An old navy-blue trench coat was bunched up and lying on the floor.
Poole climbed in and leaned over the metal door leading to the back, tried the latch and found it unlocked. The door groaned on tired hinges as it swung back and away.
Flashlight out again, he edged closer and peered into the back.
There was a green duffle bag near the wheel well. Written across the side in black Sharpie, faded with age, was a single word.
Porter.
A gym bag, maybe. Possibly something Porter used to transport his dirty laundry from the locker room at Charleston PD to home and back. Not completely out of place in his partner’s van. Not something Poole was about to ignore, either. He’d check it in a moment, because something else had caught his eye.
Some kind of bundle at the far end—black garbage bags or plastic around something entwined in circles of duct tape, sealed up tight.
Unsure of what he’d find in Hillburn’s possessions, Poole had been wearing latex gloves, but they were torn in several places and covered in grime. He peeled them off and put on a fresh pair before climbing into the back of the van. He glanced at the bag, but it was the bundle that had his attention, nearly five feet long. He’d carried a knife since he was a kid, and Poole found himself reaching for it in his front left pocket before remembering he’d flown commercial and he left both his knife and gun back in Chicago rather than risk appearing on a list that might cross SAIC Hurless’s desk. Even when checking a bag containing a weapon, federal agents were required to disclose the firearm at the counter. That information went into a database which automatically cross-referenced against current assignments. Anomalies were
flagged, and Poole had no intention of becoming an anomaly.
Pulling a section of the black plastic tight, Poole poked his finger through.
A sickly sweet scent crept out, one he sadly recognized.
He leaned back on his heels and pinched his nose.
72
Diary
“Christ, kid, that took balls.”
Vincent was leaning against the bumper of the truck, Kristina beside him. Libby sat on the ground next to me, with Paul standing near the door, watching the path leading up from the house. Weasel and The Kid were playing in the loft. Tegan had gone to town with Finicky.
For the most part, they all knew what happened last night. I filled in the blanks.
“They buried him out in the field.” Paul pointed off into the distance. “I found the spot on my way here easy enough. He’s only about twenty feet off the path in the weeds.”
“We should call the cops,” Kristina said. “They’ll take away Finicky. They’ll take them all away.”
We all knew we couldn’t.
Vincent took her hand. That might have been the first time I ever saw him appear even remotely affectionate toward someone else. He let go when he noticed Libby and me watching. “Welderman and Stocks are the cops. They’ll pin it all on Anson, just like Finicky said. Then things just get worse for the rest of us ’cause we’ll still be stuck here. We need to stick with the plan.” He thumped a hand against the truck. “We fix this thing, then we all run together. We get to Charleston or some other big city where we can vanish.”
Kristina frowned. “They’ll just come after us.”
“Welderman and Stocks are the cops here,” Vincent pointed out. “Once we get away, they can’t touch us. They wouldn’t risk alerting the authorities outside their little circle.”