by J. D. Barker
Porter’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the display, then answered. “Hey, Clair.”
“Back from vacation? I called you about a dozen times.”
“You called me three times.”
“So your phone is working,” she replied. “You should never ignore a woman, Sam. It won’t end well.”
Porter rolled his eyes and walked slowly across the room. “We’re at the morgue with Eisley. He confirmed the girl in the lake is Ella Reynolds. It also looks like she was wearing Lili Davies’s clothes.”
“Who’s Lili Davies?”
He thought he’d told her about the second missing girl, then realized he never had. They hadn’t talked since the park. He needed sleep; his head was a foggy mess. “Can you meet Nash and me in the war room in thirty minutes? We all need to get up to speed.”
“Sure thing,” she said. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I’ve been calling you?”
Porter closed his eyes and ran his hand through his hair. “Why have you been calling me, Clair?”
“I found something on the park video.”
“Thirty minutes in the war room. We’ll talk then. Grab Kloz.”
7
Lili
Day 2 • 7:26 a.m.
“Would you like a glass of milk?”
Lili Davies heard his voice before she saw him, truly saw him.
He spoke slowly, softly, only a breath, each word enunciated with the utmost care as if he put great thought into what he wanted to say before releasing the words. He spoke with a slight lisp, the s in glass troubling him.
He’d come down the stairs nearly five minutes earlier, the boards creaking under his weight. But when he reached the bottom, when he stood at the foot of the steps, he remained still. Shadows engulfed him, and Lili could make nothing out but the outline of a man.
And this was a man, not a boy.
Something about the way he stood, his broad shoulders, the deepness of his breaths, these things told her he was a man, not one of the boys from school. Not someone she knew playing some kind of sick joke, but a man, a man who had taken her.
Lili did want milk.
Her throat was as dry as sand.
She was hungry too.
Her stomach kept making little gurgling noises to remind her of just how hungry.
She said nothing, though; she didn’t utter a sound. Instead, she huddled deeper into the corner, her back pressing into the damp wall. She pulled the smelly green quilt tighter around her body. Something about the material made her feel safe, like being wrapped in her mother’s arms.
He’d been gone for at least an hour, maybe more. Lili used that time to try to figure out where she was. She hadn’t allowed herself to be afraid, she wouldn’t allow herself to be afraid. This was a problem, and she was good at solving problems.
She was in the basement of an older home.
She knew this because her house was older, and she remembered what the basement looked like before her parents brought in the contractors and construction crews to renovate it. The ceilings were low and the floor was uneven. Everything smelled like mildew, and spiders thrived. Every corner and cranny had either an old web or a new web, and the spiders crawled everywhere. When her parents brought in the contractors at her home, they gutted the basement, leveled the floor, sealed the walls, and coated everything in fresh drywall and paint. That drove the spiders out, at least for a little while.
Her friend Gabby lived in a brand-new house, built only two years ago, and her basement was completely different. High ceilings and level floors, bright and airy. They carpeted, brought in furniture, and turned the space into a fun family room. Basements in old homes could never be fun family rooms, no matter how much work was done. You could cover up the moisture, even level the floors, drywall, and paint, but the spiders always came back. The spiders wouldn’t give up their space.
This basement had spiders.
Although she couldn’t see them from where she sat, she knew they were right above her, creeping in and out of the exposed floor joists. They watched her with a thousand eyes as they spun their webs.
He gave her clothes, but they were not her clothes.
When she woke on the floor, wrapped in the green quilt, she quickly realized she had been stripped nude and left here, in this cage, a stranger’s clothes folded neatly and left near her head. They didn’t fit. They were at least a few sizes too big, but she put them on because she had nothing else, because they were better than the green quilt. Then she wrapped herself in the green quilt anyway.
She was in a dimly lit, damp basement. More precisely, she was in a chainlink enclosure set up in a dimly lit, damp basement.
The enclosure went from floor to ceiling, and the pieces were welded together. It was meant to be a dog kennel. She knew this because Gabby’s family owned a dog, a husky named Dakota, and they had a very similar, if not the same, kennel in their backyard. They bought it at Home Depot, and she and Gabby had watched her father put it together over the summer. It didn’t take him long, maybe an hour, but he hadn’t welded it.
When Lili stood up, wrapped in her green quilt, and ran her fingers over the various pipes and thick metal wire that made up her cage, she sought out joints, remembering how Gabby’s father assembled his, then her heart sank as she found the bumpy welds. The gate at the front was locked tight with not one padlock but two—one near the top and the other near the bottom. She rattled the gate, but it barely moved. The entire structure had been bolted down into the concrete floor. It was secure, and she was trapped inside.
“You should drink something, you need to be strong for what is to come,” the man said, his voice catching for a second on the s in something.
Lili said nothing. She wouldn’t say anything. To talk to him would give him power, and she wasn’t ready to do that. He didn’t deserve anything from her.
The only light came from what was probably an open door at the top of the stairs. He stood perfectly still at the base.
Lili’s eyes fought with the darkness, slowly adjusting.
He remained out of focus though, a darker shadow among other shadows, an outline against the wall.
“Turn around. Face the back wall, and don’t turn back again until I say it’s okay,” he instructed.
Lili didn’t move, her posture firming.
“Please turn around.” Softer, pleading.
She gripped the quilt and pulled it tighter around her small frame.
“Turn the fuck around!” he shouted, his voice booming through the basement, echoing off the walls.
Lili gasped and took a step backward, nearly tripping.
Then all went quiet again.
“Please don’t make me shout. I prefer not to shout.”
Lili felt her heart pounding in her chest, a heavy thump, thump, thump.
She took a step back, then another, and another after that. When she reached the wall, the back of her cage, she willed her feet to turn around and faced the corner.
Lili heard him as he walked closer, the living shadow. Something about his gait was off. Rather than steady steps, she heard one foot land, then the other slid for a second on the concrete floor before it too fell into place, repeating again with the next step. A shuffle or limp, a slight drag of the foot, she couldn’t be sure.
Lili forced her eyes to close. She didn’t want to close them, but she did anyway. She forced her eyes to close so she could concentrate on the sounds, picture the sounds behind her.
She heard the jingle of keys before the telltale click of a padlock—it sounded like the top lock—then the other a moment later. She heard him slip both locks from the gate, then lift the handle and open the door.
Lili cringed in anticipation of what would come next.
She expected his hand on her, a touch somewhere or a grab from behind. That touch never came. Instead, she heard him close the gate and replace the locks, both clicking securely back into place.
His uneven shuffle away from
her cage.
“You can turn back around now.”
Lili did as he asked.
He returned to the stairs, lost to the dark again.
A glass of milk sat on the floor just inside the cage, a thin bead of water dripping down the side.
“It’s not drugged,” he said. “I need you awake.”
8
Porter
Day 2 • 7:56 a.m.
“I’ll see you in there. I need to hit the head,” Nash said as they stepped off the elevator at the basement level of Chicago Metro headquarters on Michigan Avenue. Nash took a right down the hallway and disappeared behind the bathroom door. Porter went left.
After Bishop escaped, the feds had stepped in and taken over the 4MK manhunt. Porter had been on medical leave at that point, but from what Nash told him, they initially tried to take over the war room. Nash used his incredible charm, and threats of violence, on the interlopers and banished them to the room across the hall known primarily for the odd odor that permeated it, which seemed to come from the far left corner. Since that point, they coexisted with the civility of North and South Korea.
The lights in the FBI room were off.
Porter waited for the sound of Nash locking the restroom door, then tried the door to the feds’ room.
Open.
With a quick glance back down the hall, Porter slipped inside. He left the lights off.
Six eyeballs.
Seven victims. Eight, if he counted Emory.
His subconscious was trying to tell him something.
He crossed the room to the two whiteboards at the front and studied the victims’ photographs. The familiar faces looked back, their unknowing smiles captured forever in a moment of happiness. In those final moments on the eleventh floor of 314 West Belmont, Bishop pled his case, he laid his cards bare, so proud in the twisted logic of his plan. “These people deserved to be punished,” he told Porter. And it was true. Each of his victims did something horribly wrong, something worthy of punishment. But he didn’t go after them. Instead, he took their children. He made the children suffer in death so their parents would suffer forevermore in life. Each of these girls died not because of something she did but because of something a member of her family did. Each of these beautiful young faces snuffed out to pay for another’s crimes.
Porter stepped closer to the first board and ran his fingers over the photo of Calli Tremell, Bishop’s first victim. Twenty years of age, taken March 15, 2009. Bishop’s first victim as 4MK—Klozowski was always quick to point this out. So thorough and sure in his methods, the pattern strongly suggested he’d killed before, developed a technique after honing a practice over years. He was too sophisticated to be a first-timer, and the thought of someone like him existing out there, taking lives, leading up to this . . . If this was his beginning as 4MK, Porter couldn’t imagine where he came from. The diary gave him some insight, but not enough, only a glimpse—a quick look through an open curtain before Bishop dropped the fabric back into place.
Calli Tremell’s parents reported her missing that Tuesday. They received her ear in the mail on Thursday. Her eyes followed on Saturday, and her tongue arrived the next Tuesday. All were packaged in small white boxes tied with black strings, handwritten shipping labels, and zero prints. He never left prints.
Three days after the last box arrived, a jogger found her body in Almond Park, propped up on a bench with a cardboard sign glued to her hands that read DO NO EVIL. Porter and his team had picked up on his MO by that point, and the sign confirmed their theory.
Do no evil turned out to be the key to Bishop’s focus, something they realized with 4MK’s second victim, Elle Borton. She disappeared on April 2, 2010, more than a year after his first victim. Porter’s team caught the case from Missing Children when her parents reported receiving an ear in the mail. When her body was found a little over a week later, she held a tax return in her grandmother’s name covering tax year 2008. After some digging, they found out the grandmother had died in 2005. Matt Hosman in Financial Crimes discovered that Elle’s father filed tax returns on more than a dozen residents of the nursing home he managed, all deceased. Bishop killed Elle Borton, only twenty-three years old, because of crimes committed by her father.
When 4MK’s motive became clear, they went back and looked at Calli Tremell’s family and discovered her mother had been laundering money from the bank where she worked, upward of three million dollars over the previous ten years.
Porter stepped to his right and looked at the third photograph. Missy Lumax, June 24, 2011. Her father sold kiddie porn. Susan Devoro’s father swapped fake diamonds for real ones at his jewelry store. She was victim number four—May 3, 2012. Number five—Barbara McInley, seventeen years old. She disappeared on April 18, 2013. Her sister had hit and killed a pedestrian six years before, and Bishop killed Barbara as punishment. Allison Crammer’s brother ran a sweatshop full of illegals down in Florida. She was number six, disappearing on November 9, 2013, at only nineteen years of age. Jodi Blumington followed only a few months later. On May 13, 2014, she went missing at age twenty-two. 4MK killed her because her father imported coke for a cartel.
The very last photo on the board was of a girl Porter knew well, the only one he actually met, the only one not to die. Emory Connors, fifteen years old, taken in November of last year. Although she lost an ear and spent days in captivity, Bishop didn’t kill her. Most likely he would have, if Porter hadn’t found him first. At least, that was how the papers printed it. Porter knew damn well Bishop let her live. He also knew that Bishop had let Porter find him. He wanted the chance to explain himself, explain his purpose, his manifesto, before killing Arthur Talbot and disappearing.
Talbot, who turned out to be Emory’s father, was the worst criminal of the lot. And although Bishop had kidnapped Emory, he ultimately punished Talbot by mutilating the man before pushing him down an elevator shaft—he killed him and spared Emory.
Emory went on to inherit her father’s billions, his untimely death triggering a clause in his will, a condition left by her mother years prior.
Emory lived, and Bishop eluded capture.
Six eyeballs.
Porter stared up at the photos of 4MK’s victims.
Seven deaths, one girl freed.
Anson Bishop had managed to integrate himself into Porter’s task force when he posed as a CSI photographer back in November. During his first briefing with the team, they reviewed each of 4MK’s past victims, tried to bring him up to speed while searching for Emory. He listened to them with attentive ears, soaking in what they knew, pretending all this was new to him. Porter often looked back on that moment, searching for anything that should have given away his true identity, but there was none. Bishop no doubt stared up at this board with a feeling of great accomplishment while portraying just the right amount of horror on the outside, just the right amount of interest. He asked the right questions and refrained from embellishing on the information provided. Porter imagined this was extremely difficult for him. During that last confrontation at Belmont, Bishop bubbled over with the need to share what he knew, to explain himself. That urge must have been overwhelming as he stood looking at these boards, as he heard what they knew about each victim.
Bishop made several points, though, latched on to a few details.
Porter closed his eyes and thought back on that day, on his words.
He recalled Bishop pointing out information access—find out who had access to information on all these crimes, and work back from there. That had been a moot point, though, because ultimately they discovered that it was Talbot himself who knew of all these crimes, and Bishop had pilfered the information from him. He mentioned the dates, pointed out 4MK was escalating. This was true, but if a reason existed, they never determined what it was. They believed 4MK was dead at that point. Only finding Emory mattered.
Then there was the hair color.
Porter recalled how Bishop fixated on the photo of Barbara McIn
ley, the only blonde. An anomaly, he called her. The only blonde among a group of attractive brunettes. He went on to ask if any of the girls had been sexually assaulted—they had not. He also asked if 4MK had any male victims. Specifically, he asked if any of the girls had brothers, then said something like, “If we assume half these families had at least one son and he grabbed their children at random, one or two male victims should have presented. That didn’t happen. There was a reason he took the daughters over the sons—we just don’t know it.” Porter believed 4MK took female victims simply because they were easier to control, less likely to fight back.
Six eyeballs.
Seven dead girls.
Porter returned to the photo of Barbara McInley. Punished because her sister killed someone in a hit-and-run. McInley was the only girl to really hold Bishop’s interest during their briefing, the only one he had honed in on. Porter could still picture him, tapping on her photo, the wheels of his mind racing.
Porter glanced over at the door, listening for anyone in the hallway, but heard no one.
A table stood against the wall on his left, stacked high with file boxes—everything they’d collected on 4MK. The third box from the left had the word Victims written on the front with red marker, Porter’s own handwriting. He crossed the room, removed the lid, and shuffled through the contents until he located Barbara McInley’s file, the name also written in his handwriting.
These were his files. His team’s files. They did not belong to the FBI.
“Fuck it.”
Porter wrapped the file in his coat, then replaced the lid on the file box and crossed the room to the door. When he was certain the hallway was still deserted, he slipped out of the room and pulled the door quietly shut behind him.
He ducked into the war room at the end of the hall and flicked on the overhead fluorescents.
“I was beginning to think you took the morning off,” Special Agent Stewart Diener said. He was sitting at Nash’s desk, his feet up, poking away at the tiny screen of his phone.