by J. D. Barker
“I’m going back to Metro,” she said defiantly.
Nash must have known this was a losing battle. “Okay, but under two conditions. One, you try to get some sleep on the couch in the war room. And two, you let me drive you. You shouldn’t be driving. You’re still shaking from the adrenaline, and when you crash, you’re going to crash hard.”
“And I’m supposed to entrust my life to a guy who can’t work a seat belt?”
“I’m all you got.”
“God help us.”
Clair’s phone buzzed. She pulled it from her pocket and read the text. Her heart sank. “They found the truck and the missing water tank. We’ve got another body.”
75
Porter
Day 3 • 8:07 p.m.
The GPS chimed, told them to make a right turn, and Sarah slowed, following the sign toward Simpsonville.
Porter’s gaze had returned to the window. “After I saw Heather standing over me, I saw my partner. He was getting up from a chair in the corner of the room. My captain showed up about an hour later. It was weird at first. I recognized him, my partner. I didn’t realize anything was wrong. I remembered chasing the dealer, I remembered the shot, all of it was fresh. Heather asked me my name, I promptly told her I was the love her life, she asked me for the name of the current president, and I told her. Then she asked me for the name of the last president, and I drew a blank. There was no other way to describe it, like someone had taken an eraser and smudged it out. I could picture the guy’s face, but his name was gone. The testing started after that, a lot of testing.”
“Some kind of amnesia?”
“Fluid elicit retrograde amnesia, that’s what they called it. My mobility wasn’t impaired, which was lucky. Most of my memories were intact—my childhood, teen years, even recent events, that was all there, but there were these big blank spots, entire months and years missing.” He paused for a moment, his finger tapping against the window glass. “Heather used to make me do this exercise where she’d have me write down the bullet points of my life in chronological order, date them as best I could. We’d do it every day, start with a blank piece of paper and fill in everything I could remember. For the first few days, the list got longer with each attempt. There was progress. After about a week or so, that ended. I didn’t lose anything else, but those blanks held tight. The doctors assured me the memories would return in time. Some have, I suppose, but to this day I’m still missing time.”
“Through all this, Heather stuck with you?”
Porter nodded. “She refused to go out with me on an official date until I was out of the hospital and had resumed a normal life for at least a month. We both felt a spark, knew there was something there, but apparently it’s common for patients to fall for their caregivers during prolonged hospital stays, and she was wary that’s all it was. I knew it was more than that, but my word didn’t hold a whole lot of water in that particular discussion. We still met every day to run my list—that’s what she called it, ‘running the list’—but she wouldn’t go out on an official date. When they finally reinstated me on the force, about three months after I landed in the hospital, she agreed to go to out—dinner and a movie. We saw The Princess Bride. We were married four months later.”
“Aren’t you bothered by this missing time?”
Porter shrugged. “My best memories are with Heather. I remember all of our time together. I don’t need anything else.”
“And what about the police force? Was it difficult to go back to active duty?”
“Yeah, that was a little rough. I didn’t think it would be. Aside from the memory issue, I was fine. Physically, I had no problem—a few written and physical exams, then an interview, and I was back on the streets. New partner, though. My last one transferred to narcotics full-time. That shot took something else from me, in a way. Charleston was ruined. The city felt a bit darker, dirtier. I felt uneasy anytime I was near the alley where it all happened. I began to feel like this anxiety could get me hurt, distract me at the wrong moment. Heather and I talked about it quite a bit and decided to make the move to Chicago, get a fresh start someplace new. I made the transfer to Chicago Metro patrol, and when there was an opening in Homicide, I took it. Hell, that was all so long ago, I was just a kid.”
“You never had children?”
“We considered having kids, talked about it more times than I can count, but the timing never seemed to be right. Heather was a bit of a rising star at Chicago General, and I was doing well at Metro. You tell yourself next year will be a better year for it, things will slow down, finances will get in order, so you put it off and you put it off. Before you know it, it’s too late. I don’t regret not having any, though. I don’t think there is a single moment of my life I would change.”
“Not even getting shot in the head?”
“Not even getting shot in the head. Hey, pull in there.” Porter pointed toward a small Stop-N-Go gas station coming up on the right.
“What for? We have a full tank.”
“Supplies.”
Sarah slowed and maneuvered the car off the narrow two-lane highway and into the gravel parking lot. A beat-up Ford pickup was parked in front of the store. Aside from that, the place was deserted. She pulled up next to the truck and slipped the car into Park. She held up the diary. “Go ahead. There are a few sections in here I want to give a second glance.”
“Be right back.” He unfastened his seat belt and climbed out of the Sonata.
An electronic chime went off as Porter pushed through the doorway, and a clerk behind the counter looked up at him for a second before returning to a copy of Autotrader.
There were only five aisles in the store, and Porter hit each of them. He picked up two flashlights, a package of C cell batteries, a box of Ziploc bags, a box of latex gloves, a cheap digital camera, and a large bag of Cheetos. He carried everything to the front and dropped the supplies onto the counter.
The cashier looked no more than sixteen or seventeen. He had a large pimple on his pink chin and a nose that was much too large for his narrow face. He set down his magazine, nodded at Porter, and began scanning the items. He scanned the box of gloves four times before it took. Porter was curious if he even knew how to ring something up manually.
“Twenty-three forty-eight,” the kid said, looking over the items. “Starting a proctology office?”
“The brain surgeon thing didn’t work out, so I figured I’d try my hand at something new.”
Porter handed him a twenty and a five and bagged everything himself while the cashier counted out his change.
“Have a nice night, Doctor.”
“Yep.”
Back in the car, he retrieved the Cheetos and dropped the rest of the bag onto the floor. Sarah held the diary against the steering wheel as she maneuvered back onto the road, her index finger marking her place.
“You’ve made it through that entire book without so much as a word about it. What do you think?”
She blew out a breath. “I’m not sure what to think. Part of me feels sorry for the kid. Then I think about all the people he’s hurt, all the lives he’s ruined, and I remind myself that he’s a monster. Then there’s his mother. She said, ‘This isn’t how it happened.’ What did she mean by that? None of it? Some of it? We just flew six hundred miles because a convict scribbled an address into this book.”
Porter said nothing.
She tossed the diary into his lap. “Give me some of those Cheetos.”
Porter opened the bag and held it out to her.
Sarah plucked out a Cheeto and dropped it into her mouth. “If my client really did half the things in this book?” She shook her head and licked her fingers. “I can’t represent someone like that. No way.”
The GPS spoke up, advising them to turn left on Jenkins Bridge Road in one thousand feet. Sarah clicked on the blinker.
Porter thought it was dark after they left the city. It was even worse out here. Not a single house or car anyw
here, nothing but roads and farmland.
Sarah made the turn, and though Jenkins Bridge Road was paved, it was rough. She swerved left to avoid a large pothole in the middle of the street, then immediately swerved back right to stay out of another one. At the sides of the road, nature had begun taking back the land. Weeds and foliage ate away at the blacktop, leaving the pavement cracked and ravaged. “BFE,” she said, slowing down.
“What?”
“Bum Fuck Egypt.”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“It means we are in the middle of absolute nowhere, and I’m about three minutes away from second-guessing many of my recent life choices.”
The GPS instructed her to turn left in one hundred feet. Sarah turned on the high beams. “Do you see a turn? ’Cause I don’t see a turn. I don’t see much of anything.”
Porter leaned forward. “There it is. Right after that big rock.”
Sarah turned left, and the road turned to a combination of gravel and grass. “If you kill me out here and leave my body in a shallow grave, can you at least find a nice home for my fish?”
“You have fish?”
“I have a fish. His name is Monroe. He’s an excellent listener and only slightly judgmental.”
The farmland had given way to trees—dogwood, oaks, evergreens—that loomed over the car, the branches reaching across the narrow road and twisting above like dozens of interlaced bony fingers.
“Your destination is ahead in one hundred feet,” the GPS told them. “It will be on the right.”
Sarah frowned. “I don’t see anything, do you? Do you think she lied?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
The GPS played a happy little melody, then: “You have arrived.”
Sarah hit the brakes and stopped the car. “There’s nothing here. She played us.”
Porter stared out the windshield. Up ahead, the road petered out, ending in an overgrown mess of wild bushes and trees. He saw nothing at all around them but dense woods.
He unfastened his seat belt, opened the door, and stepped out into the chilly night air.
Sarah killed the motor and got out too.
Porter’s shoes crunched in the gravel as he walked toward the side of the road. The energy drained from his body, his shoulders slumped. “I’m an idiot,” he said. “I should have known better.”
Sarah rounded the car and stood beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good cop. You chased a lead. They don’t always pan out.”
Something scurried through the bushes a little to their left. Porter turned to find shining eyes staring up at him. They paused for a second and disappeared into the growth. “What’s that?”
“I think it was a raccoon.”
Porter took a few steps to the left. “Not the animal . . .”
He reached up, his fingers wrapping around a thick vine growing over—
“Is that a mailbox?”
He tugged at the weeds and shrubs, freeing the crooked post and the cracked white box fastened to the top.
His eyes fixed on the faded word scrawled on the side in black paint, barely visible in the thin light.
Bishop.
76
Poole
Day 3 • 8:07 p.m.
Frank Poole stepped into the basement office at Metro and flicked on the light switch. The fluorescents buzzed to life, casting a yellow glow over the space. His nose crinkled at the strange odor permeating from the far back corner. They had yet to figure out what it was but traced it to an oval stain on the carpet under an old desk.
Poole removed his coat, scarf, and hat and dropped them onto a table by the door. He crossed to the center of the room and sat on the edge of a desk, his eyes locked on the whiteboards at the front of the room.
He should go home.
He should sleep.
He couldn’t, though.
Poole knew the moment he closed his eyes, Libby McInley would be there waiting for him, desperately trying to tell him what happened, but unable, silenced.
Diener had left his scarf on the floor near the door.
Stewart, his first name was Stewart.
Poole hadn’t known him well. He remembered seeing him around the Chicago Bureau office a number of times, but this was the first case they’d worked together. He wasn’t married. No girlfriend. At least, he didn’t mention one. Poole knew nothing about his home life. He didn’t know where the man grew up, went to school, whether or not he had any brothers or sisters. SAIC Hurless said he would personally reach out to Diener’s family, but he hadn’t said who that was.
Poole knew at some point, as the last person to see him alive, he would also have to reach out to that person or persons, that someone special to Stewart Diener. He wished he’d taken the time to learn just who that was.
“Goddammit, Diener,” he muttered, shaking his head.
He went to the whiteboards and cleared a spot on the far right and wrote:
Green House—518 41st Place
Bishop—hiding there since?
Wiped—no evidence left behind—planned for fast escape
Drop House—519 41st Place
Libby McInley’s fake IDs shipped there—Bishop organized?
Why would Bishop help Libby McInley? Why would Libby agree to help? Killer of sister, Barbara McInley?
Why would he kill Libby McInley?
Poole paused at this one. It didn’t make sense. Why would he kill Libby McInley if he was somehow helping her? Maybe they had some kind of falling out? That would mean they had a relationship to begin with. What kind of relationship could they possibly have had? He killed her sister. He tortured and killed her sister. Did they somehow know each other? If that’s the case, did they know each other before Barbara was murdered, or did they somehow get in touch while she was in prison? There would be a record. Not a single piece of mail, phone call, or visit goes unrecorded.
He wrote STATEVILLE CORRECTIONAL on the board.
He’d have to pull all her prison records. Somehow, Bishop had been able to correspond with her. Finding those messages would be key.
Finding the how.
Poole cleared another spot on the board and wrote out the three poems and the sentence excised by Bishop from the drop-house wall.
Had Bishop taken their cell phones because they took pictures, created a record of this writing? Originally, Poole assumed he took the phones to slow them down, to give him a head start before Poole could get somewhere and call for help. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Bishop expected Detective Sam Porter to find the house, not federal agents. That meant he wanted Porter to find the writing. He wanted Porter to try and figure out the meaning. He and Diener had spoiled that, shown up first, ruined whatever timeline Bishop may have had in place. Poole had taken out his phone to photograph the wall, but Diener had stepped in, stopped him before he got a single picture.
Had he killed Diener because he saw the wall? Photographed it? Would he have seen the images on Diener’s phone? Bishop hadn’t found any pictures on Poole’s phone—maybe that’s why he let him live? Figured he hadn’t seen the writing?
It was possible.
Poole had seen the writing, though. He remembered every word.
He stared up at the poems, particularly the underlined words:
Ice
water
Life
death
Home
fear
Death
“You can’t play God without being acquainted with the devil,” Poole muttered.
Death was the only repeated word. He circled both, then wrote Death x2 at the bottom.
The knot at the back of his head ached. The paramedic said he probably had a mild concussion. He needed sleep but probably shouldn’t. He didn’t really want to. He wanted to keep working the problem.
Sleep would clear his head.
He went back to the desk and ruffled through his briefcase, found a bottle of Advil, and dry
-swallowed three of them.
The contents of the boxes he’d sifted through earlier were still spread out. Polaroid pictures and spreadsheets were strewn about on the desk beside him.
He glanced back up at the boards.
Poole had never believed in coincidences.
This was all connected.
77
Porter
Day 3 • 8:07 p.m.
Porter stared at the mailbox.
It seemed familiar to him—the name Bishop scrawled on the side in a childlike hand, the mailbox itself, this place. He didn’t recall a specific mention of it in the diary, yet there was a sense of déjà vu here.
“Sam? Are you okay?”
Porter had closed his eyes. He didn’t remember closing his eyes. When he opened them, he found Sarah watching, concern across her face, barely visible in the pale moonlight.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “I lost you again, like back at the prison. I really think we should get a hotel and come back here when it’s light out. We both need some sleep, and we can’t see anything out here now anyway.”
Porter’s heart thudded in his chest. He couldn’t sleep, not now. “I’m fine . . . I . . . I bought flashlights.”
He turned back toward the car, nearly stumbled as he crossed the gravel road. He braced himself on the frame of the vehicle.
Sarah was at his side again. “You’re not fine, Sam. You look like you’re gonna pass out. Sit down in the car for a minute, catch your breath. You’re pale as a ghost.”
Sam rubbed at the back of his head, the scar, his other hand still on the car. “I’m okay.”
The words came out harsher than he’d hoped. Sarah took a step back.
He took a breath. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like . . .”
“Like an ass?” she finished for him.