by J. D. Barker
Sophie asked, “What time was it when you saw her?”
Leo sighed. “Seven thirty.”
“You’re certain?”
He nodded. “I needed an A on that exam, remember? I was counting the seconds all morning.”
“What did you score?”
Leo sighed again. “B minus.”
Clair took down Leo’s contact information and gave him her card. They sent him back to class.
Malcolm Leffingwell had not seen Lili all week.
Noreen Outen poked her head back in. “That the last of them?”
Clair stood up and stretched her back. “Yes, ma’am. Any luck with the attendance records?”
Noreen pushed her heavy glasses back up her nose, then skimmed a small notepad. “We had two students out sick that day, both phoned in by their mothers—Robyn Staats and Rosalee Newhouse. Nobody late to first period, nobody unaccounted for. We have good students here; they wouldn’t get mixed up in any shenanigans.”
Sophie nodded at the notepad. “Do either of those girls know Lili?”
Noreen said, “Well, let me think. Robyn is a freshman, Rosalee is a junior. It’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t know for sure.”
“We’ll need to speak to both of them too,” Sophie told her.
Noreen nodded.
Clair fell back into her chair. It felt like they were spinning wheels.
18
Porter
Day 2 • 10:31 a.m.
“Why does the captain want to meet us at my apartment?” Porter asked.
He had both hands on the steering wheel, his knuckles white.
The red and blue lights flashed in the corner of his eye atop the charger, and the siren wailed behind the throaty engine. He was doing eighty-one on I-94.
Beside him, Nash held the Oh Shit handle above the door with his right hand and gripped the seat with his left. “He wouldn’t say. I tried to get it out of him. His exact words were ‘Get Porter back to his apartment now.’ ”
Porter pulled the wheel to the left and circled around a gas truck. “Well, did he sound angry? Upset? Worried?”
Nash shrugged. “He sounded like the captain always sounds. I couldn’t get a read on him.”
“Fuck!” Porter slammed his hand into the horn and held as a blue Prius pulled into his lane. “Damn tree-hugger.”
“Is there something at your place I should know about? Why would he want to meet there?”
The Prius’s right blinker came on, and the car pulled lazily into the next lane. The moment it passed, Porter dropped the Charger into fourth and flew past, coming within inches of the car’s protruding mirror.
“Sam?”
“I don’t know.”
Nash groaned. “You don’t know if there’s something at your place I should know about? Come on, Sam. This isn’t first grade. I’m your partner. You can tell me. Does this have something to do with Heather’s death?”
Porter said nothing.
He took the exit for Lake Shore Drive.
Along with the captain’s white Crown Vic, there were three vehicles Porter didn’t recognize parked in front of his building—two black sedans and a van. All bore federal plates. He double-parked, blocking in the van, killed the siren, and left the lights flashing as he bound from the car and up the steps with Nash behind him.
They were in the hallway at his door—Captain Dalton, Special Agent Diener, Agent Poole, and Special Agent in Charge Hurless of the Bureau’s 4MK task force. There were two federal crime-scene techs Porter didn’t recognize.
Dalton saw them push through the door at the stairs and hurried over. “What the fuck were you thinking, Sam?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Nash stood beside Porter. He said nothing.
Dalton clicked through some images on his cell phone and held the small screen up to Porter. “Did you take it because of this? Are you looking for her?”
Porter glanced at the screen. It was the note Bishop had left for him on the bed in his apartment along with the ear of the man who had killed his wife.
Sam,
A little something from me to you . . .
I’m sorry you didn’t get to hear him scream.
How about a return on the favor?
A little tit for tat between friends.
Help me find my mother.
I think it’s time she and I talked.
B
“Are you looking for her?” Dalton repeated.
Porter took a deep breath. “I’m trying to find him.”
“That’s not your job,” Dalton said, fuming. “Have you been in contact with him? Has he reached out to you at all?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if he had?”
“Of course I would.”
Dalton dropped his phone back into the pocket of his thick brown coat. “I want to believe you. But I’m not so sure I can anymore.”
Nash frowned at Poole. “What are you up to?”
Poole raised his hands defensively but said nothing.
Dalton’s forehead furrowed. “He didn’t do anything. Security caught your buddy here on video sneaking into the FBI’s office across from yours this morning.”
“He was probably just turning the heat up for them. Always nice to come into a toasty office on a day like today,” Nash replied. He jerked his thumb back at Diener. “That pud tugger was sitting at my desk in our office this morning. We’re all one big happy family down there. Share and share alike.”
SAIC Hurless stepped forward. “Our office is considered federal territory until we vacate. Trespassing is a prosecutable offense, local law enforcement included.”
“I pulled the file on Barbara McInley,” Porter said.
Dalton rolled his eyes.
Hurless drew closer. “Theft of federal property would be a separate but equally damning charge.”
“I’ll return the file as soon as I’m done.”
“You’ll return it now. Then we’ll decide if you get to keep your badge,” Hurless replied.
Dalton’s face went red. He turned to Hurless. “The only person who will decide what happens with Detective Porter’s badge is me. You’re guests in my house. I can put you and your team out on the street with one phone call.”
Hurless stepped closer. “Let’s be clear, Captain. We’re here because your prize detective let a serial killer walk. That mistake will cost lives. There’s a good chance it already has. You’ve got one girl dead and another missing, two crimes probably attributed to our guy, and you put the same clumsy detective in charge. Now he’s stealing files. How much blood do you want on your hands before you decide it’s time to fix this?”
“4MK didn’t take the girls,” Porter said quietly.
“Enough.” Dalton grunted.
“I want to know what else this man is hiding. Open the door,” Hurless said.
“No fucking way!” Nash blurted out. “Unless you have a warrant, you’ve got zero business in there.”
Hurless began ticking off items on his fingers. “Federal trespass, theft of federal property, impeding a federal investigation, aiding and abetting a wanted federal fugitive . . . notice the key word? Losing his badge is the least of your friend’s worries right now.”
Dalton took Porter by the shoulder and led him back down the hall. “You need to open that door.”
“Why?”
“You let them in, let them take a sniff around, and the charges go away. You share whatever you’ve got cooking in there, and this goes away,” Dalton said. “You don’t, and I can’t protect you.”
“Screw them, Sam,” Nash said.
Porter glanced back down the hall at the men standing at his door. Poole met his eyes. “All right.”
“Sam!”
Porter offered a weak grin at his partner. “It’s fine. I really don’t give a shit anymore. Maybe it will help catch him.”
Dalton drew in a d
eep breath and steered Porter back down the hall.
Porter pulled his keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.
Hurless and Diener pushed past him into the apartment, followed by the two crime-scene techs. Poole went in next. His eyes dropped to the ground as he walked past Porter and the others.
Porter followed, with Dalton and Nash at his back.
A whistle from the bedroom. “Holy hell,” Hurless said.
“Oh, Christ,” Dalton said, his breath catching as he stepped into the room.
Nash said nothing. He stepped up behind the others, dragging his feet.
“What am I looking at?” Hurless asked.
“Every mention of Bishop in the past four months, worldwide,” Porter replied. He stepped up to the map, located the yellow thumbtack he had placed at the Jackson Park Lagoon, and pulled it out, dropping it onto the nightstand.
Diener was watching him. “What was that one?”
“Jackson Park. I told you, he didn’t take these girls. This is something, someone different.”
Poole crossed the room and kneeled down at the laptop, his eyes drifting over the text on the screen. “Google alerts?”
“Every mention of Bishop or 4MK online,” Porter replied.
Poole positioned the screen to get a better look, prepared to type, then turned back to Porter. “May I?”
“Sure.”
Porter watched as he scrolled back through the messages, scanning the subjects of each, then refreshing the screen to load the previous fifty, repeating. When he reached the end, he looked up at the maps. “Where do you think he is?”
“I have no idea.”
Hurless started opening drawers, rifling through his clothes.
Nash crossed the room and stood between him and Porter’s dresser. “You seriously going to go through the man’s underwear drawer?”
“Step aside, Officer,” SAIC Hurless said.
“It’s fine, Nash. Let him look at whatever he wants. I’m not hiding anything,” Porter said.
Hurless faced him. “Where’s the McInley file?”
“In my car, under the driver’s seat.” Porter tossed him the keys.
Hurless tossed the key to one of the techs. He disappeared out the front door toward the elevator.
“What other files are we going to find in here?” Hurless asked.
Porter crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “That’s the only one I have.”
“Because you put the others back?”
“Because it’s the only one I took.”
Poole stood up from the laptop and turned to him. “Why Barbara McInley?”
Porter thought about this for a second, not sure he wanted to say anything, then decided he wasn’t helping anyone by keeping his thoughts to himself. “A gut instinct, that’s all. Something feels off about that case.”
“Off how?” Poole asked.
Agent Diener snickered. “Who cares? He’s not Philip Marlowe. Gut instincts only sub for evidence in old black-and-white movies and pulp books.”
“Off how?” Poole repeated.
Porter ran his hand through his hair. “She’s the only blonde. Eight girls taken, and she’s the only blonde.”
“You’re kidding with this, right?” SAIC Hurless said.
Poole stepped closer. “He took the loved ones of the true criminals in his eyes. The McInleys only had blond children. He didn’t have a choice.”
Porter shrugged. “Maybe, but the crime doesn’t fit, either. Barbara McInley’s sister hit and killed a pedestrian. It was an accident. All the other crimes, everyone else he decided to punish, did something premeditated.”
Poole thought about this. “That’s still thin.”
“I never said I had something solid. Just a gut instinct, a hunch. Like your buddy said—just my very own Philip Marlowe moment, nothing more,” Porter told him. “If it played out, I would have told you.”
The tech returned holding the McInley file and handed it to SAIC Hurless. He waved it at Porter. “What did you find in here? Anything to back this up?”
“I didn’t get a chance to look,” Porter said. “It’s been a busy morning.”
SAIC Hurless stared at him for nearly a minute, neither man saying a word, then turned back to the two techs and the other federal agents. He waved his arm at the wall. “I want photos of all this, then bag and tag everything. Bring it all back. Turn over every inch of this place. You find anything at all having to do with this case, I want to know about it.”
He turned back to Porter and stood inches from his face. “I find you’re holding out, if this guy reached out to you and you’re holding back, if you know anything at all you’re not telling me, I will not hesitate to lock you up. I don’t give a shit what kind of seniority you may have or what your track record is, you’re nothing but a fucking thief to me, a thief and a hack interfering with a federal investigation. Now’s your chance to come clean, if there’s anything at all you haven’t told me; now or never. I hear about it in an hour, and you’re done. Do you understand me?”
“There’s nothing else.”
The man let out a breath.
Porter’s eyes stayed on him.
When SAIC Hurless finally turned away and crossed the room to root around in Porter’s closet, Porter found himself looking at the photo of Heather on his dresser, her bright, reassuring smile, and he had never felt so alone.
One hour and four file boxes later, they were finished.
Porter’s wall was once again bare, save for the tiny holes left by the tacks and the paint damaged by roughly removed tape. Agent Diener had the laptop under his arm and was slowly circling the room on the off chance something was missed. In the hallway Porter heard SAIC Hurless mumbling something to Dalton, but he couldn’t make out the words.
On his way out, Poole prepared to say something but then changed his mind. Porter watched him slip into the elevator, with the techs behind him, lugging the last of the boxes.
“Diener?” Hurless shouted out. “Let’s go.”
Agent Diener pushed past Porter and went to the elevator, trailing the scent of an aftershave forgotten since 1992.
The doors opened. Hurless said one last thing to Dalton and ducked inside, his eyes fixed on Porter as the doors creaked shut.
Dalton came back into the apartment with Nash behind him. “I really don’t know what the hell you were thinking, Sam. This is a clusterfuck.”
“It’s not like he was hiding evidence,” Nash pointed out.
Dalton went red. “You keep your mouth shut. I seriously doubt all this was going on under your nose and you didn’t know.”
Porter said, “He had no idea. This was all me.”
Dalton spun back to him. “Not only have you compromised the 4MK investigation, now you’re impacting our efforts to find this new psycho snatching girls. I can’t afford to take you offline right now.”
“Then don’t.”
“Hurless took it to his assistant director, and the AD called our chief. This is completely out of my hands.” The captain’s eyes fell to the floor. “I’m relieving you of duty, one week. You’ve got to get this shit out of your head. I find out you didn’t drop it, and this will play out much worse. They agreed not to charge you, but the suspension is nonnegotiable.”
“Captain, this is just a pissing contest. You can’t let politics dictate your actions. Catching this guy has to be our priority, nobody knows more—”
Dalton held out his hand. “Gun and badge.”
Porter knew better than to argue. He handed over his Glock and identification.
Dalton dropped both into his jacket pocket, turned, and left the apartment. He pressed the elevator call button.
“This new guy is nasty, Captain. He’s escalating fast,” Porter said.
Without turning, Dalton replied, “Nash and Clair will handle it. I don’t want to hear anything from you for the next seven days. I do, and you’ll get another seven. Do we under
stand each other?”
Porter said nothing.
“Do we understand each other?” the captain repeated.
“Yes,” Porter said.
The elevator arrived and Dalton stepped inside, his hand holding the door open. “Nash, you’re with me.”
Nash looked to Porter but said nothing. Porter offered a slight nod.
Nash stepped inside the car. The doors closed, and Porter found himself standing in the middle of his apartment, his heart pounding in his chest, the silence screaming.
19
Lili
Day 2 • 11:36 a.m.
Lili huddled in the corner of her cage, the thick blanket wrapped around her. She had gotten dressed, but she couldn’t get warm. She couldn’t stop shivering, even when standing next to the heater vent. She couldn’t stop looking at the dark staircase in the corner of the basement or listening to the creak of old floorboards as the man moved around upstairs.
A spider crept across the chainlink a few inches from her foot, and she pulled away, pushing deeper into the corner.
With each footfall upstairs, a tiny bit of dust rained down from the rafters, a thin fog in the gloomy light. Lili tried to pretend this was snow and she was looking out a window. She tried to pretend she was safely back in her room at home, but the illusion broke whenever the man cried out.
He screamed, a lot.
His words were incoherent, a muffled blast of nonsense, and they were followed sometimes by crying, other times by a pain-filled wail. But they broke the relative silence of the home and lingered on the air, somehow living in those tiny bursts of dust drifting down.
Nothing preceded the cries.
Lili’s father once hit his index finger with a hammer while trying to help her build a birdhouse for school, and he let out a similar wail but it hadn’t lingered—like he caught himself about the scream, realized his daughter was watching, and bit his tongue. The scream came to an abrupt halt, dying somewhere in his throat as his face flushed with red.