by J. D. Barker
“Porter,” he said.
Why did his voice always sound louder in the middle of the night?
At first there was silence. Then: “Detective? This is Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children. I got your number from Clair Norton.”
“What can I do for you, Ms. Rodriguez?”
More silence. “We have another missing girl. You and your partner need to get down here.”
3
Porter
Day 2 • 2:21 a.m.
Here turned out to be a graystone in Bronzeville on King Drive.
Rodriguez didn’t provide any details when she called, only said this case tied to the body of the girl found in the park earlier, and he’d want to be there.
Porter parked his Charger on the street behind Nash’s Chevy and trudged through the snowbank at the side of the road and up into the home at the corner. There was no need to knock. A uniformed officer at the door recognized him and ushered him inside. He found Nash and a woman he didn’t recognize sitting in a parlor to the left of the entrance. A man in his late forties, salt-and-pepper hair, fit, wearing a tweed sport coat and jeans, stood beside Nash. Another woman, no doubt his wife, sat on the couch with a crushed tissue in her hand.
The woman sitting beside her rose as Porter entered the room. “Detective Porter? I’m Sophie Rodriguez from Missing Children. Thank you for coming. I know it’s late.”
Porter shook her hand and studied the room.
Most of these graystones had been built around the turn of the twentieth century. This particular one had been painstakingly restored with original trim and fixtures. The rugs looked authentic too but had to be knockoffs, careful reproductions of the originals. Antique furniture filled the space.
The man who had been speaking to Nash offered his hand. “I’m Dr. Randal Davies, and this is my wife, Grace. Thank you so much for coming out at this hour.”
The man gestured to a chair next to the couch.
Porter declined. “It’s been a rather long night. I think I’d better stand.”
“Coffee, then?”
“Please. Black is fine.”
Dr. Davies excused himself and disappeared down the hall.
Porter glanced at Rodriguez, who had returned to her seat on the couch.
“My office received a call from Mrs. Davies shortly after midnight, when her daughter didn’t come home,” Rodriguez said.
Mrs. Davies looked up, her eyes red and swollen. “Lili works downtown at an art gallery. On Thursdays she goes straight there after school and takes an Uber home when they close at eleven. She is always home by eleven thirty. If for some reason she’s running late, she texts me—she knows her father and I worry, so she always texts me. She is a responsible young lady, and this is her first job and she knows we worry . . .” She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue. “I hadn’t heard from her by eleven forty-five, so I called her, and it went straight to voice mail. Then I called the gallery and spoke to her supervisor, Ms. Edwins. She said Lili didn’t show up for her shift. She had tried to reach her several times and got the same thing: voice mail. No rings, just voice mail. I know that means her phone is off, which is very unlike her. She never turns her phone off. She knows I worry. I called her best friend, Gabby, then—”
“What is Gabby’s last name?” Porter asked.
“Deegan. Gabrielle Deegan. I gave her contact information to your partner.” When she said this, she glanced at Rodriguez. Porter didn’t correct her.
Mrs. Davies continued. “Gabby said she hadn’t seen her all day. She wasn’t at school, and she wasn’t replying to text messages. This isn’t like Lili, you understand. She’s a straight-A student. She hasn’t missed a day of school since the fourth grade, when she had chicken pox.” Mrs. Davies paused, studying Porter’s face. “You’re the detective who chased . . . oh God, do you think 4MK took our daughter? Is that why you’re here?” Her eyes went wide and flooded with tears.
“This isn’t 4MK,” Porter assured her, although he wasn’t certain of that himself. “At this point there is no reason to assume anyone has taken your daughter.”
“She wouldn’t disappear like this.”
Porter tried to change the subject. “Where does she go to school?”
“Wilcox Academy.”
Dr. Davies returned and handed Porter a steaming cup of coffee, then stood beside his wife on the couch. “I know what you’re thinking, and like we told your partners here, Lili doesn’t have a boyfriend. She wouldn’t skip school. She most definitely wouldn’t skip work—she loves that gallery. Something is wrong. The Find My iPhone feature is activated on her phone, but it’s not coming up on our account. I called Apple, and they said her phone is offline. Our daughter would not turn off her phone.”
Nash cleared his throat. “Mrs. Davies, can you tell Detective Porter what Lili was wearing today when she was last seen?”
Mrs. Davies nodded. “Her favorite coat, a red Perro parka, a white hat, matching gloves, and dark jeans. On cold days, Lili preferred to change into her uniform once she arrived on campus. She stopped in the kitchen and said goodbye to me before she left for school this morning. That’s her favorite coat. She bought it at Barneys with her first paycheck. She was so proud of that coat.”
Rodriguez pursed her lips.
Porter said nothing.
4
Porter
Day 2 • 3:02 a.m.
“How is that even possible?”
“We can show them a photo of the jacket to try and confirm,” Nash suggested.
Porter shook his head. “We can’t show them a picture of a dead girl.”
The three of them stood outside the Davieses’ graystone, their breath creating an icy fog between them.
“There is no way someone had time to kidnap Lili Davies, put her clothes on Ella Reynolds, and bury her under the ice at the park. There is no way. There just isn’t enough time.” Porter shuffled his feet. The temperature must be in single digits. “That means he would have been out at the lake during daylight hours, while it was open. Somebody would have seen him.”
Nash thought about this for a second. “In this weather, the park is nearly deserted. The only real risk would be when the unsub carried the body from his vehicle to the water. Unless someone got close, nothing else would really jump out as a red flag. He would just look like some guy out by the lagoon, maybe ice-fishing or something. If he set up with a fishing pole, I bet he could spend the day without anyone giving him a second glance.”
“Logistics aside,” Rodriguez said, “what’s the point?”
Porter and Nash exchanged a glance. They both knew serial killers rarely had a point, at least not one that made sense to anyone but them. And although they only had one victim, if she tied to this second missing girl, they might be looking at a serial.
“Do Ella Reynolds and Lili Davies know each other?” Porter asked Rodriguez.
Rodriguez shook her head. “Her parents only knew the name from television.”
“We should check with Lili’s friend Gabby,” Porter suggested. “What time did she leave for school?”
Rodriguez glanced at her notes. “Quarter after seven.”
Nash closed his eyes and crunched the numbers. “That only allows about twelve hours from the time Lili disappeared to the time Ella was found frozen in the lake.”
“Look at you doing math.” Porter said, and snickered.
“If this is one guy, he’s fast. Efficient,” Nash said.
Porter turned back to Rodriguez. “Sophie, right?”
She nodded.
“Go back in and search the girl’s room. Look for anything out of the ordinary. Get her computer—check her e-mails, saved documents. Look for a diary, photos . . . You find anything at all, you call me. Find out her route to school. Does she walk or get a ride? With friends or alone? Got it?”
Rodriguez chewed on her bottom lip. “What does this mean for Lili?”
Porter wasn’t ready to go there. He tur
ned back to Nash. “Let’s go wake up Eisley.”
5
Porter
Day 2 • 4:18 a.m.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office and morgue was off West Harrison in downtown Chicago. At this hour, Porter and Nash ran into little traffic, and they found the parking spaces out front to be relatively deserted. The guard at the front desk looked up at them with groggy eyes and nodded a hello. “Sign in, please.”
Porter scribbled Burt Reynolds on the clipboard and handed it to Nash, who wrote Dolly Parton before returning it to the desk and following him to the bank of elevators at the back of the lobby. Porter wasn’t a fan of elevators but he was even less a fan of several flights of stairs.
The second elevator from the left arrived first, and he followed Nash inside before he could change his mind.
Porter hit the button marked 3. “Dolly was hot back in the day.”
“Still is,” Nash replied. “A true GILF.”
“GILF?”
“I’ll explain when you’re a little older, Sam.”
The doors opened on an empty hallway.
Nash eyed the vending machine, then gave it a pass, heading for the double doors at the end of the hallway.
They found Tom Eisley at his desk. He glanced up at them as they came in before returning to whatever he was reading.
Porter expected him to say something about the time. Instead, he asked, “Have either of you ever seen the ocean?”
Porter and Nash exchanged a look.
Eisley closed the book on his desk and stood. “Never mind. Not sure I’m ready to talk about this yet.”
“I take it you’re working on our girl?” Porter asked.
Eisley sighed. “I’m trying. We’ve been warming up her body since they brought her in here. She wasn’t quite frozen, you understand, just way below normal temperature. It’s going to make time of death difficult to determine.”
“Do you know the cause?”
Eisley opened his mouth, prepared to say something, then thought better of it. “Not yet. I’m going to need a few more hours. You’re welcome to wait, if you’d like.”
Before they could respond, he disappeared through the door leading to the autopsy room.
Nash nodded at Porter. “Sounds like this might be a while.”
Porter fell into a yellow vinyl chair near Eisley’s door, his eyes heavy with lack of sleep.
6
Porter
Day 2 • 7:26 a.m.
“Gentlemen?”
Porter’s eyes fluttered open, and it took him a moment to realize he was in Eisley’s office at the morgue. He had slid down in the yellow vinyl chair, his neck cricked from being at an odd angle. Nash was slumped over at Eisley’s desk, his head resting on a stack of papers.
Eisley picked up a medical text, lifted the book about three feet above the desk, then released. The book crashed down, loud and hard, and Nash snapped back in the chair, drool rolling down his chin. “What the—”
“Chicago’s finest, hard at work,” Eisley chided. “Follow me.”
Porter glanced up at the clock on the far wall—about half past seven. A little over three hours had passed since they arrived here. “Shit, didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he mumbled. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket—three missed calls from Clair, no voice mail.
Eisley led them past his desk and through the double doors at the back of his office into the large examination room. Both Porter and Nash grabbed gloves from the box hanging on the wall near the door.
Noises echoed in here.
This was always the first thought that popped into Porter’s head when he entered. Everything sounded different due to the beige tile on the floor and walls. The second thing that always hit him was the temperature—he didn’t know what the actual temperature was in the room, but it felt like it dropped nearly twenty degrees. Goose bumps prickled the back of his neck, and a shiver ran over him. The third thing, the one he’d never get used to, was the smell. It didn’t smell bad, not today anyway, but the room smelled strong. The heavy scent of industrial cleaners attempted to mask the underlying odor of something else, something Porter preferred not to think about.
Fluorescent lights burned bright above, glimmering on stainless steel cabinets. A large, round surgical light arched over the examination table at the center of the room where the body they pulled out of the lake rested.
Eisley had closed the girl’s eyes.
Sleeping beauty.
An electric blanket and four large lamps sat off to the side.
Eisley caught Porter looking at them. “We got lucky. She wasn’t in the lake very long, and her body was below the freeze line. If she froze through and through, we’d need to wait a few days before we could autopsy. In her case it only took a few hours to raise her body temp enough to proceed.”
“You haven’t cut her open yet,” Nash pointed out. “It doesn’t look like you’ve started at all.”
“You’d be surprised what a body can tell you if you know where to look,” Eisley replied. “I won’t be able to open her up until tomorrow; she’s still quite cold. If I warm her up too fast, we run the risk of crystallization and cellular damage. That doesn’t mean she can’t offer up some answers while we wait. Unlike you two, I’ve been busy.” He ran his hand through her hair. “She’s been talking, and I’ve been listening.”
“Okay, now you’re creeping me out,” Porter said.
Eisley offered a smile and took a step back from the table. “Would you like to know what I found?”
“That would be lovely.”
He walked over to the side of the table and lifted her hand. “The cold water was extremely preserving. With most bodies found in the water, they can be difficult to print. The skin tends to expand, and we have to reverse the effect before we can print. Like an extreme version of the pruning you probably experience in the bath.”
“I’m more of a shower guy,” Porter told him.
Eisley ignored the comment. “The near-freezing water kept her fingerprints completely intact, probably would through spring thaw.” He lowered her hand back to the table, placing it gently at her side. “The results came back about two hours ago. I confirmed this is Ella Reynolds, the girl who disappeared three weeks ago.”
Porter sighed. He expected as much, but there was something deflating about hearing the words spoken aloud. “What about a time of death or the cause?”
“As I said earlier, time of death can be a bit tricky because of the icy water. At this point, I would have to say no more than forty-eight hours ago but at least twenty-four. I’m hoping to narrow that down once I can get a look at her liver and other organs,” he explained. “Help me turn her over?”
Porter and Nash exchanged a look. Nash took a slight step back. For a homicide detective, he had an odd aversion to dead bodies.
Porter took the girl’s legs, and Eisley held her shoulders. Together, they turned her over.
Eisley ran a finger along a long, dark mark running across her back. “This is from the rope he used to hold her up in the water. The coloration tells me she was suspended post mortem. Soon after, though, otherwise it wouldn’t be so prominent, particularly through that thick coat she was wearing.” He nodded at her clothing, neatly piled on the stainless steel counter.
Nash walked, picked up the red coat, and began going through the pockets. “Did you see any identifying information on the clothing?”
“The clothing isn’t hers, is it.” Eisley said this more as fact than a question.
Porter turned to him. “Did you come to that conclusion?”
“I suspected as much, but I’m not sure I’d be willing to call it a conclusion. Everything seemed like a tight fit on her. Under normal circumstances, I would chalk that up to bloating from the water, but since there was so little, it seemed strange. Her undergarments and jeans in particular were at least a size or two too small. She squeezed into them, but they’re tight, uncomfortable even. Take a lo
ok at the hat,” he said, gesturing at the counter. “There are letters written on the tag, most likely initials.”
Nash set down the coat and picked up the white hat, turned it inside out. “L.D. It’s a bit faded, but that’s definitely what it says.”
“Lili Davies,” Porter said.
“Yeah, probably.”
“Who’s that?” Eisley asked.
“Another girl, went missing sometime yesterday,” Porter told him.
“So whoever killed this girl dressed her in the other girl’s clothing?”
“Looks that way.”
“Huh.”
Porter asked, “What about cause of death? I don’t really see anything on the body. No wounds, no strangulation marks.”
At this, Eisley lit up. “Ah, yes. And you’re going to find this strange.”
“How did she die?”
“She drowned.”
Nash frowned. “That doesn’t sound so strange. We found her under the ice in a lake.”
Porter raised a hand. “You said the mark on her back was post mortem. Are you saying she was alive when he put her in the water?”
“Oh no, she was dead at that point. I’m saying she drowned, and then he put her in the lake.” He went over to a microscope on a raised table to his left. “Take a look at this,” he said, pointing at the device.
Porter walked over and looked down into the eyepiece. “What am I looking at?”
“When they first brought her in, I was able to snake a tube down into her lungs, and I extracted water, that water.”
Porter frowned. “What are these specks floating in it?”
The edge of Eisley’s mouth curled up. “That, my friend, is salt.”
“She drowned in salt water?”
“Precisely.”
Nash’s face went from lost to confused, then back again. “We’re in Chicago . . . the nearest ocean is what, a thousand miles from here?”
“The Atlantic would be the closest,” Eisley told him. “Baltimore, Maryland. About seven hundred miles.”