by J. D. Barker
“I remember blacking out, then you waking me. Nothing else.”
“You must remember something?”
Lili shook her head. “Nothing.”
He released her shoulders and sat back, his back pressed against the large freezer. He pulled off his knit cap and scratched at his head in frustration.
Lili gasped.
There was an enormous fresh surgical incision running across his bald head. It started above his left ear and trailed around to the back of his head. It was stitched together with black thread, the flesh raised and purple.
He pulled the cap back down, covered up, and stood, favoring his right leg. Reaching down, he pulled Lili to her feet. The blood rushed from her head, and she swooned, her vision going white. He held her still until she could stand on her own, then led her back to the cage, guiding her inside. He tossed her clothes in behind her and slammed the door, then clicked both locks back in place.
“You can get dressed. We’ll try again in a few hours. You will remember next time,” he told her.
He started for the stairs, his right leg dragging slightly behind him. “Drink the milk. You’ll need your strength.”
Lili eyed the glass, now warm. A fly had landed in it and drowned.
15
Clair
Day 2 • 9:17 a.m.
The security guard had ushered Clair and Sophie to the far corner of the school’s lobby, then made a few phone calls. There was a small sitting area with a black leather couch, two matching chairs, and a small sign that read: FREE WILCOX WI-FI—PASSWORD AVAILABLE AT SECURITY.
Clair studied the leaf of a large potted tree. “How do they keep this alive indoors? There’s no light.”
Sophie glanced over. “A ficus? They’re like the weeds of the tree world. They’ll eat up whatever light you cast on them. This one is probably sucking up the fluorescents overhead and whatever it can pull from the windows by the door back there.”
“It’s like a frankentree. Looks completely healthy on a diet of artificial junk. I wish I could do that,” Clair replied.
“The one next to it is a philodendron. They’re easy to maintain too—just water whenever the dirt feels dry. I’ve got a few at home. They’re near impossible to kill.”
Clair glanced over. “Oh, I could kill it. My plant love leaves nothing but brown branches and shriveled blooms in its wake. I’m not fit to be a plant owner.”
They heard footsteps from above and glanced up to see a teenage girl coming down the stairs with a purple backpack slung over her shoulder. Not very tall, about five feet or so, with shoulder-length brown hair and pink highlights. She slowed as she saw them, eyeing them warily.
“Gabrielle Deegan?” Clair said, looking up at her.
The girl nodded, descended the remaining steps, and rounded the corner to the sitting area. “Are you looking for Lili?”
“We are,” Sophie said, gesturing toward one of the empty chairs. The girl glanced at the security guard, who offered a reassuring smile, then plopped down into the seat. Sophie and Clair sat opposite her on the couch. “I’m Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children, and this is Detective Clair Norton with Chicago Metro.”
Clair noted that Sophie didn’t mention she was with Homicide at Chicago Metro.
“Gabby, call me Gabby. Nobody calls me Gabrielle but that guy over there.” She nodded at the security guard. “Captain Law and Order. I should be out looking for Lili, and he’s got these doors locked up tighter than his daughter’s chastity belt.”
Clair exchanged a glance with Sophie, trying not to smile.
“Do you have any leads?”
Gabby wore the traditional school uniform, but Clair noticed her white blouse was untucked and her skirt looked like it had been hemmed up an inch or two from the norm. Her ears, eyebrow, and lip all had piercings, but she wore only a single set of small matching silver loops at each ear. No doubt dress code prohibited anything else—someone seeking individuality in a sea of the same would not be doing so here. Every time Clair entered one of these private schools, she recalled the scene from The Wall with all the identical students marching in unison into a giant meat grinder.
“She’s been gone a full day,” Gabby went on. “She could be lying in a ditch right now or tied to a bed with some crazy psycho telling her to call him Daddy while he jerks off on her chest. If that 4MK guy took her, who knows what he’s doing to her. You need to find her.”
“When was the last time you spoke to her?” Clair asked.
“Wednesday night. She was working,” Gabby said. “She texted me from the gallery.”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything, she just sent me a picture of a new Mustang. Cherry red. It was gorgeous. Her dad said he’d buy her a car when she graduates next year, so we’ve been doing this thing where we send each other pictures of cool cars when we find them. She’s not sure what she wants yet. But her dad said if she graduates with straight As, he’ll buy her whatever. He’s a doctor, so I think he’s serious. I told her she should get a Maserati, but she doesn’t want to take advantage of him. She’s trying to find something cool but still affordable. I keep telling her to break the bank if she can, so she sent me the Mustang pic, and I sent her this one.”
She held up her phone. Clair leaned in closer. “What is that?”
“A Tesla Roadster. They don’t make them anymore, but it’s a way cool car. Fully electric and can do zero to sixty in two point seven seconds. It will even get a few hundred miles per charge. They stopped making them in 2012, but the specs are much better than anything else out there, even the new electric cars. You can find them for around seventy thousand now, even though they went as high as a few hundred when they first came out.”
Clair thought about her seven-year-old Honda Civic parked down the street and made a mental note to call her dad and ask for a car. Apparently that route was much more fruitful than saving pennies followed by a visit to the buy-here pay-here lot. “May I see that?”
Gabby handed her the phone.
Clair scrolled through her text messages. No actual words were exchanged with Lili, only photos of cars over the past few weeks.
Gabby went on. “She was hoping to get her license soon and maybe talk her dad into buying the car earlier. She’s had straight As since finger painting in grade school. That’s not gonna change between now and graduation. We thought it would be cool to drive to school every day, even though it’s only a few blocks.”
Clair returned the phone to her. “Do you have a license?”
Gabby shook her head. “I don’t really need one, not now anyway. I get along fine on the bus or the train. Parking in the city can be a bitch. I figured riding in someone else’s car was the way to go.” She offered a wry smile. “Particularly if it’s a Tesla Roadster.”
“Have you ever done that?” Sophie asked. “Ridden in someone else’s car to school?”
Gabby shifted in her seat and scratched her elbow. “Sometimes, if the weather is bad. We always see somebody we know on Sixty-Ninth. If it’s raining or snowing heavily, we might catch a ride.”
“What about yesterday morning? Think Lili caught a ride with someone?” Clair asked.
Gabby thought about this for a second. “It was snowing pretty good, so I guess it’s possible.”
“We’re going to need a list of everyone who might’ve given her a ride. Do you think you can do that?” Sophie asked.
Gabby chuckled. “You think one of the boys here took her? Not a chance. She’d kick their ass before they got their pecker out of their pants.”
Sophie tilted her head. “Would she get in the car with a stranger?”
“No.”
“Then . . .” Sophie let the word hang.
Gabby leaned forward, twisting her fingers together. “Right before school, Sixty-Ninth is full of students, driving and walking. If someone tried to pull her into a car or something, somebody would have seen her.”
“What abou
t if she got into a car with someone she knows?” Clair asked. “Think somebody would notice that?”
Gabby sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Think you can make that list for us? Anyone you can think of who may have given her a ride?”
Gabby nodded and pulled a notepad out from her backpack.
16
Porter
Day 2 • 10:26 a.m.
They found Floyd Reynolds within the body of the snowman, a deep gash in his neck. Someone had tied him to the metal pole of a large bird feeder, then built the snowman around him, slowly covering him in ice and snow.
Porter and Nash watched in awe as CSI painstakingly removed the snow in bits and pieces, carefully bagging and tagging each one for analysis back at their lab, slowly revealing the man beneath.
“This took time, a lot of time,” Nash said under his breath.
“Few hours at least,” Porter agreed.
“How can he do something like this completely unnoticed?”
Porter motioned around the yard. “We’ve got nothing but a tree line at the back here, hedges to the right blocking the view from the neighbors, a wood fence on the left. For someone to really see what was going on back here, they’d have to come through the gate at the front yard. This isn’t visible from the street.”
“Mrs. Reynolds is preoccupied, and the boy was probably in bed by the time he got started,” Nash added, thinking aloud.
Porter’s gaze fell to the ground. He started for the front yard.
Nash followed a few paces behind him, careful to duplicate his steps and avoid multiple tracks. He did this more out of habit than necessity. CSI had already searched the snow and found nothing.
Porter pushed through the gate, paused for a second, then went to the silver Lexus LS parked in the driveway. The car was parked at the side of the house, not visible from the front door. Mrs. Reynolds thought her husband had left, but most likely he’d never gotten the car in gear.
The unsub opened the rear door and slipped into the car behind the driver’s seat. “He was hiding back here when Reynolds came out, probably ducked down in back. There’s a motion light up there. Mrs. Reynolds said her husband left after dinner, so it was probably dark out. He would have tripped the light—only place to hide is the backseat. He waited for Reynolds to get in, maybe get the seat belt around him, and close the door. Then he came up and got something around the man’s neck, something thin like a piano wire, judging by the way it cut into his throat.” As Porter spoke, he climbed into the back of the car and acted everything out, moving in slow motion.
He looked at the back of the driver’s seat. “We’ve got a shoe print here in the leather. Looks like he tried to wipe it away and missed part. He must have put a foot against the back of the seat for leverage.”
“CSI said it’s a size eleven work boot. They don’t know the make,” Nash said.
“It takes a lot of strength to kill a man like that. He’d be thrashing about, fighting back, trying to work his hand under the cord. Reynolds’s movement would be highly restricted—the steering wheel would see to that. He might have tried to get the door open, but most likely both hands went to his neck. The power position is in the backseat. Reynolds wouldn’t have been able to get the cord off, even if he were the stronger man. The leverage and angles all work against him,” Porter said.
Porter climbed out of the backseat and opened the front door. “The blood spatter on the windshield and dashboard fits.”
The steering wheel and door were covered in black fingerprint powder. “Our unsub kills him, climbs out, reaches into the front, takes Reynolds by the shoulders, and drags him out, drags him all the way to the back.” Again, Porter mimics the movement, his back hunched, hauling an invisible body through the snow until he reached the remains of the snowman. Reynolds’s body was completely visible now, all the snow and ice removed. Porter looked at the props on the ground, the stovepipe hat, the black gloves, and the broom. “He must have used the broom to sweep away what he could of his tracks. Last night’s snow did the rest.”
“We think he walked off into the woods,” one of the CSI officers said. It was the same woman Porter and Nash had met at the Jackson Park Lagoon crime scene.
Porter nodded in agreement. “That’s how I would have left. You’re Lindsy, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Rolfes replied. She pointed at the ground leading into the trees. “The snow isn’t as thick under the trees, but he brushed it anyway. Looks like he used a branch or something, something not as effective as the broom. We’ve got a faint trail. It comes out one block over on Hyicen Street. He probably parked his own vehicle there.”
“Any tire tracks?”
Rolfes shook her head. “Nothing to identify the unsub’s vehicle. Two uniforms are going door to door to see if anyone saw a car parked there last night.”
Porter’s phone rang. He glanced down at the display. “It’s the captain.”
“You gonna answer?”
“Nope.”
Nash frowned. “Balls. You know what that means.”
Porter’s phone went silent. A moment later Nash’s phone rang.
“Double balls.”
“Tell him we’re still at the scene. We’ll come in as soon as we wrap up here,” Porter said.
Nash sighed and answered the call.
Behind them, a woman screamed.
Porter turned to find Mrs. Reynolds standing at her back door. “Christ, I told them to keep her and the boy in the living room. She shouldn’t see this,” he said.
Nash shrugged his shoulders and walked away from the house, his phone pressed to his ear.
17
Clair
Day 2 • 10:26 a.m.
Clair fell back in the squeaky-wheeled office chair and picked at the cracked green leather on the armrest. She reached for her coffee cup and brought it to her—
Empty.
Dammit.
“Do you want another refill?” she asked Sophie.
Sophie glanced up from the sheet of notebook paper in her hands. “I’m good. We’ve got two more left. Let’s wrap this up so we can get out of here.”
After they spoke to Gabby Deegan, the security guard had escorted them to the second-floor administration office and introduced them to Noreen Outen at the front desk. She’d looked up at them with a forced smile from behind glasses thick enough to leave the top of her nose red with their weight. Clair felt a headache coming on just watching her eyes strain.
After identifying themselves, they’d sent her off on two tasks—round up the students on the rather extensive list Gabby provided them (sixteen names in all), then check the attendance records for the twelfth—they were looking for anyone who didn’t make it to class that day, any class, on the off chance a student picked up Lili and left with her.
While the woman plugged away at her homework assignment, Clair and Sophie had begun interviewing the students lining up in the hallway outside the office. Now they were fourteen down, two to go. So far, none of the students remembered seeing Lili that morning, either walking to school or in the building.
“Who’s next?”
Sophie glanced down at Gabby’s notes. “Malcolm Leffingwell and Leo Gunia. Want to flip for it?”
Clair tilted her head back in the chair. “Leo!”
Sophie giggled. “Jeez, Clair. Do you have to shout every name?”
“I love the way kids jump when they hear their name shouted out from the admin office. Every bad thing they’ve done since wetting their first diaper runs through their head. See? Look how white that kid’s face is.”
Sophie glanced up at the boy coming through the door. “You’re a damn sadist, woman.”
“Just keeping them on their toes.”
Leo Gunia wore the same white shirt, navy pants, and blue striped tie as all the other boys they had spoken to. His black hair was neatly cropped, and he had the slightest amount of stubble growing under his chin.
Cla
ir suppressed a smile. Why is it all teenage boys think they can grow some form of facial hair? She had yet to meet one who actually could. Instead, they had these bitty shadows and patches of peach fuzz. She was tempted to send each one on his way with a razor and a bottle of testosterone. “Please take a seat, Leo.”
Sophie explained who they were and why they were there.
Leo held their gaze, nodding as she spoke. “The whole school is talking about it.”
“Really? What are they saying?” Sophie asked him.
The boy shrugged. “Only that somebody might have taken her on her way to school the other day. That 4MK guy.”
“It wasn’t 4MK,” Clair told him.
He shrugged again. “Well, somebody, then.”
“Did you see her that morning?”
The boy didn’t say anything. His eyes fell to the floor. He shuffled his feet.
“Leo?”
“I should’ve stopped. It was so cold out, she must have been freezing, but I had to get to class early to try and prep for a test. I had to work the night before and didn’t have time to study,” Leo said quietly.
Clair leaned forward in her chair. “So you saw her? Where?”
“On Sixty-Ninth, right before the overpass.” He glanced up, his eyes watery. “She was hunched over, walking against the cold. It was snowing kind of heavy, and I didn’t see her until the last second. I don’t know what happened. I thought about stopping, I think my foot even reached for the brakes, but that test came into my mind, and I looked at my clock and I was already five minutes late. That meant I only had about twenty minutes to study—by the time I parked and got upstairs, probably less. Anyway, I saw her at the last second. I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to, and I didn’t have enough time to double back. I figured someone else would give her a ride.”
Clair glanced at Sophie, then back to Leo. “Did you see anyone else stop for her?”
Leo lowered his head. “No. I’m not sure I would have noticed even if the car behind me did. I wasn’t thinking, and with the snow . . . If I would have picked her up, she’d probably be okay right now. This is my fault.”