by J. D. Barker
The gate in the chainlink fence was frozen shut, and Poole had to beat on it a bit before the latch snapped open. The gate swung with reluctance through the thick snow, and they followed the sidewalk to the front of the house.
“Frank.” Diener said his name quietly, a gloved hand pointing at the door. The deadbolt was missing, nothing but a gaping hole where it once was. The doorknob looked loose. The top was scratched and dented. Someone had hit it with something. Scuff marks marred the frame.
Poole unzipped his jacket and reached inside for his gun before trying the door. He pointed a finger at Diener, then at the side of the house. Diener drew his own weapon and disappeared around the corner in search of a back door.
Poole reached for the doorknob. Although it turned, he had to hold it steady. The bolts tasked with holding the assembly together had been either removed or unscrewed, and the entire cylinder felt like it might fall apart in his hand. The latch released with a click. He gave the door a gentle push.
The door opened on a small living room. Someone had taken a knife to the cushions of a dilapidated brown leather couch. Piles of stuffing floated through the room, tumbleweeds of white. The heat was off.
“This is the FBI. I need you to step out into the open!” His voice echoed through the house, the kind of sound that only came from an empty, forgotten place.
He stepped inside.
Graffiti covered the walls. Multicolored gang tags, names, and random sayings—Dasha Loves You, Little Mix, and X-Train Chirps. Poole had no idea what half of it meant.
Across the house, a back door popped open with a loud crack. Diener entered the kitchen with his weapon drawn, barrel pointed at the ceiling. He nodded at Poole and turned to the hallway at his right. He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket, switched on the beam, and held it under his gun, sweeping the light down the hall.
Poole crossed the room and followed him. The drywall in the hallway had been either kicked or punched in—there were dozens of holes from top to bottom. Someone looking for something buried in the walls or kids messing around, there was no way to know for certain. Once gold, now a soiled brown, the carpet stank of urine.
In the first bedroom, they found a mattress on the floor surrounded by empty food and beverage containers. A blanket was bunched up in the corner. Someone had taped newspapers over the windows beneath the drawn drapes. The bathroom had been used recently, but since the water was off, the bowl overflowed with a frozen mess Poole refused to think about. The bathtub had not fared much better. The vanity doors were gone, exposing cracked plastic pipes.
They moved on to the second bedroom.
No mattress here, only a torn sleeping bag and a battered gas camping grill. Someone used it either for cooking or to keep warm, or both. The room reeked of stale pot.
They returned to the living room. There was no basement. The house was deserted.
“I think we’ve got some homeless people flopping here, or maybe it’s a hangout for local kids. Makes sense as a mail drop.” Poole holstered his weapon. “How long has the house been vacant?”
Diener was back in the kitchen going through drawers and cabinets. “More than a year.” He stared down into the sink drain. “Someone poured concrete in here.”
“Kids do that sometimes,” Poole said, studying the graffiti on the living room wall.
Diener went on. “I couldn’t find much information on the property. The original owner passed away, and the house went to his three kids. They all live out of state. It’s been on the market. I think they tried to rent it too—no takers though.” He pulled a dead mouse out from under the sink, holding it by the tail, and tossed it across the room. “I don’t understand why. The place is charming.”
Poole ignored the mouse as it thudded against the floor near his feet. “There could be something here.” He traced the graffiti with the beam of his flashlight.
Diener came over, stepped into the light. “Looks like more kid crap. Vandals, gangs, that sort of thing.”
Poole pointed to a small block of text written in black marker.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
“That’s not kids, it’s a quote from ‘The Chariot’ by Dickinson. And this one.” He located another block of text written in the same hand.
A telling analogy for life and death:
Compare the two of them to water and ice.
Water draws together to become ice,
And ice disperses again to become water.
Whatever has died is sure to be born again;
Whatever is born comes around again to dying.
As ice and water do one another no harm,
So life and death, the two of them, are fine.
“That’s from Hanshan, a Chinese poet dating back to the Tang Dynasty,” Poole said.
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I had a girlfriend in college who was into Buddhism. She quoted from this book of poems all the time; this was in there.”
“Figures. Why the underlining?”
Poole thought about it for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Diener moved a few feet down the wall. “I’ve got another one over here, same handwriting.”
Let us return Home, let us go back,
Useless is this reckoning of seeking and getting,
Delight permeates all of today.
From the blue ocean of death
Life is flowing like nectar.
In life there is death; in death there is life.
So where is fear, where is fear?
The birds in the sky are singing “No death, no death!”
Day and night the tide of Immortality
Is descending here on earth.
Poole frowned. “I think that one is Tibetan, but I could be wrong. I’m not sure why these words are underlined here either, Home, fear, and death.”
Diener scratched at the back of his neck. “Smart kids but still kids. I don’t think this has anything to do with Libby McInley.”
Poole pulled out his phone and prepared to take pictures of the wall. “Why don’t you go talk to the neighbors? I want to document this just in case.”
The agent snorted. “Oh no, I canvassed the neighbors at McInley’s murder scene while you sat nice and toasty back at Metro. If anyone is going back out in that cold on a door-to-door, it’s you.”
Poole looked reluctantly at the wall.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get every inch of it,” Diener assured him.
With a nod, Poole pushed back out through the front door, into the icy air.
57
The Man in the Black Knit Cap
Day 3 • 1:35 p.m.
The man in the black knit cap pressed his fingers to his temples and squeezed. His thoughts pounded from inside, trying to get out, and it hurt. It hurt so much. He didn’t realize he’d screamed again until the sound trailed off from his lips, a bit of saliva dripping down to the collar of his sweatshirt. He opened his eyes and the light from the window pushed in, sliced at his pupils, his retinas, a new pain on top of the old.
He fumbled with the lid of the prescription bottle in his left hand, the childproof white top slipping under his bloody fingers three times before he finally got the bottle open. He shook out two tablets, placed them in his mouth, and swallowed them dry, the chalky tablets gritty on the way down.
The bottle dropped to the top of his desk, and the remaining pills spilled out across his drawings, some clattering to the floor. He didn’t care.
He looked down at his left hand, at his bloody fingers. He scratched at the incision on his head until he drew blood, yet even that wasn’t enough. The moment he stopped, there was a second of relief, maybe two. Then the itch started again, beginning at his left ear and trailing to the back of his head like a thousand insects on a death march below the surface of his skin, bu
rrowing deep into his head.
The insects ate his thoughts. He knew that now. They fed on his memories. That was why he had so much trouble remembering. They fed and multiplied, and the itch grew with their numbers—only a couple at first but now so many.
He reached for the phone, missing the first time. He grabbed at it and hit the first programmed speed dial, his number. The only number. The line rang once, twice, three times—
The mailbox you have reached has not been set up by the user and cannot accept incoming messages at this time. Please try your call again later.
He hit End Call, then the speed dial again. Three rings—
The mailbox you have reached has not been set up by—
He hung up. He wanted to throw the phone across the room. He wanted to watch the cheap plastic shatter into a million pieces as it hit the wall. He didn’t though. He couldn’t.
He needed another girl.
He needed the man to get him another girl.
Someone who would see. Someone who would see soon.
His vision cleared as the pill began to work, and he looked down at the drawing spread out in front of him. He remembered sketching this particular image, his daughter riding a bike along the sidewalk outside their house. It hadn’t been that long ago, only last fall, about the time the first leaves began to drop. The drawing was wrong though, because the bike should be red. His right hand squeezed around the soft material of his daughter’s sweater. He didn’t remember picking it up, but there it was, bunched up in his hand, his index finger poking through the small collar.
He raised her sweater to his nose and smelled.
Nothing.
He wasn’t quite sure when his sense of smell deserted him but knew it had been recently, probably in the past few days.
She was disappearing along with his senses, with his thoughts, his memories, as the insects feasted.
Shuffling through the contents scattered over the top of the desk, he found the red marker and removed the cap. He carefully lowered the tip to the paper, aiming for the metal frame of the bike. He knew the shakes would come, and he anticipated them, his face hot with blood as the anxiety built beneath his flesh. The tip of the marker found the page, and his hand remained steady as he cautiously moved the felt side to side. Tears came as he colored the image, as his hand moved like it once did, sure and steady. Tears came and fell upon the picture, his daughter on her shiny new bike.
From the basement came a muffled cry, but he ignored it.
He hated that girl for what she had done.
Damaged.
Unable to see.
Useless.
She would suffer for her sins. She would burn.
The bike colored, he moved on to color her sweater, identical to the one he held in his hand. The red sweater, always the red sweater. He colored the garment with the careful strokes he possessed in the time before all this, back when everything was right.
Even the itch had gone. Not entirely, but lessened, and he told himself he wouldn’t scratch at the incision anymore. He wouldn’t risk reopening the wound.
Another groan from the basement, this one louder than the last.
The itch tingled, just for a second. Not enough to require scratching. He wouldn’t scratch at it.
He finished with the sweater and retrieved a blue marker, going to work on the sky. The fall skies in Chicago were usually marked with gray, but this bike ride was a happy time, and happy times called for blue skies.
He was so into his work, he didn’t see the person cross the street through his window, he didn’t see him approach his front door. He didn’t notice him at all until he heard the knock, the heavy-handed knock downstairs.
The incision itched as the insects scattered for cover on tiny little feet.
58
Porter
Day 3 • 1:36 p.m.
“I think she’s done,” Sarah said, her fingers pressed to parted lips.
“You think?” Porter let out a breath.
Jane Doe stood there, her body frozen, the diary pressed between her palm and the window, the bang still reverberating through the room.
Sarah started for the door. “Give me a second. Let me talk to her before you go back in?”
Porter nodded, his eyes fixed on the woman on the other side of the glass. He knew she couldn’t see him, but that didn’t change the feeling that she was looking directly at him. Her eyes were filled with rage, dark and haunted, yet her breathing appeared measured. He couldn’t get a read on her. Her heart could be racing, or possibly slow and steady. He imagined the latter. During the course of his career, he had encountered many people who could control their bodies, these physiological responses, to a certain extent, train themselves to remain calm when pressed with detrimental emotions. Their eyes though—there was no such filter on the eyes.
Sarah appeared on the other side of the glass, and Jane seemed not to notice her at first. She remained still. It wasn’t until her attorney took a seat at the table that she finally turned. She crossed the room and sat beside Sarah, placing the book on the table.
She leaned over and whispered in Sarah’s ear.
Sarah looked up at this, startled, maybe the first time she had heard her client speak. She said something too low for him to hear in return, then stood and went to the camera controls in the far corner. Porter watched as she flicked two wall switches. The first disabled the video feed, the second shut down audio. The observation room became deathly quiet as Sarah looked toward him from the other side of the glass, her eyes landing a little to his left, unsure of his actual location, before she returned to her seat beside Jane Doe.
The woman smiled at him then—subtle, to be sure, but a smile nonetheless. Then she turned back to her attorney and leaned in close.
Porter watched their lips move, a silent movie playing out before him, their hands and bodies telling a story he couldn’t quite make out. Jane referred to the diary more than once, flipping to specific pages, her finger running along the text as she mouthed the words to the other. Through all this, Sarah Werner listened. She nodded, she shook her head, she frowned. She read parts of the diary as the other woman pointed them out. Porter wanted to pick up the chair, throw it through the glass, and climb into that room. He wanted that more than anything.
Finally, nearly thirty minutes later, Sarah stood and left the room. Her client buried her face in her hands.
The door to the observation room opened, and Sarah’s head poked inside. “Come on, she’s willing to talk to you now.”
Porter realized his hands were trembling. The observation room couldn’t be more than sixty-five degrees, yet a sweat had broken out on his brow.
“Are you all right?”
He nodded and started for the door.
She led him around the corner back to the interview room. The guard in the hallway had been replaced by another. Younger, Hispanic. He eyed them with indifference before returning his gaze to an interesting spot on the floor.
Porter entered the interview room and took the seat across from Jane again. Sarah sat beside her. The guard closed the door behind them.
Jane slid the diary back across the table to Porter, her fingertips lingering on the black and white cover. “This is not how it happened.”
He wasn’t sure what he had expected her voice to sound like. Harsh and authoritative, he supposed. It was anything but. The words slipped off her tongue with the smoothness of a bow on a violin. There was none of the anger he expected. She was calm, collected. He detected a slight southern accent.
“No?”
Her fingers left the diary. She folded them on the edge of the table, her head tilted slightly to the left. “Anson has always had a bit of an imagination, a leaning toward self-indulgence.”
Sarah sat quietly across the table from him, her eyes first on the diary, then on him.
Porter leaned in closer. “Do you know where I can find him?”
Bishop’s mother rolled her fingers,
her nails tapping against the aluminum.
“Do you know where he is?”
The smile was there again, although she tried to suppress it, a hint at the corner of her lips. “Give me a pen.”
“I don’t have one.”
She frowned. “I suppose not. They worry someone like me might plant it in your neck. So mistrustful, the powers that be.” She kicked her feet beneath the table. “And me, all unshackled, ready to spring.”
“Give her a pen,” Porter told Sarah, his eyes fixed on her client.
Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “Sam, I don’t think—”
“Please.”
Her posture stiffened, the tone of his voice taking her aback. She let out a breath and reached down into her briefcase, retrieved a blue ballpoint pen, and set it on the table in front of Jane.
The woman picked it up and removed the cap. Her free hand flew across the table, and Porter pushed back in his chair, almost toppling over. He regained his balance as her hand took the diary and pulled it back to her with a soft giggle. “No need to be jumpy, Sam. I don’t usually bite.”
Something about hearing his name come from her mouth sent the fingers of a dead hand over his spine.
She opened the cover of the diary and wrote on the first page. When she finished, she capped the pen and handed it back to Sarah, who quickly returned it to her briefcase.
Porter reached across the table and retrieved the diary, opened the cover. “What’s this?”
She smiled, then stood. “I’d like to go back to my cell now.”
She stood and went to the door and knocked twice at the glass.
The guard’s face appeared in the small window, and a little door opened at waist height. She turned, facing them, and placed both hands in the opening. The guard locked a pair of handcuffs on her outstretched wrists and tightened them with a click behind her back. She stepped forward and the door swung open. The guard took her by the shoulder. “We’ll talk again soon, Sam. I’m looking forward to it.” Pausing at the door, she added: “Look to the place where the monsters hide, Detective. That’s where you’ll find answers.”