The Fifth to Die

by J. D. Barker

  “What are you doing?” Clair knelt beside him.

  Nash leaned back, leaned against the sofa. “There’s something I need to tell you, and you’re going to be pissed.”

  “What?”

  “The diary.”

  “What about the diary?”

  Nash drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Sam never turned it in to Evidence. He withheld it.” Nash raised a hand, silencing her before she could say something. “He planned to. He was going to. But not yet. He wanted to wait until after Bishop was caught, locked up. He felt that if he submitted that book to evidence, the press would get ahold of it, sensationalize the text, turn Bishop into something larger than life. He was convinced that was why Bishop had planted the book in the first place, and he thought that if he didn’t turn it in, if he didn’t let the diary out at all, it would throw Bishop off his game, maybe make him slip up. Porter said Bishop had a temper. He figured if he got him mad, Bishop might make a mistake, something that might give us a chance to catch him.”

  “And you knew about this? Went along with him?”

  Nash nodded slowly. “At first I told him I’d give it a week. That week turned into a month, then that became four months. Time went by, and it seemed less and less important.”

  “I mentioned the diary in my reports. There’s a record,” Clair said.

  “I did too. I didn’t withhold anything. Sam knew that. He said it wouldn’t matter. If someone asked, he’d say he checked the diary in a long time ago, blame it on the evidence room or the system, because they’re always losing evidence. You know Sam, he’d come up with something.”

  Clair nodded at the chair. “That’s where he kept it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Clair reached a hand up inside the chair, felt around. “Good spot.”

  She pulled her hand out and leaned back against the couch beside Nash with a resigned sigh. “So where is he?”

  Nash’s eyes fell on Sam’s phone, still in Clair’s hand. “Best guess? He found something in that diary, and he’s chasing the lead.”

  “Why leave his phone? Why not tell us?”

  “Sam’s keeping us out, protecting us.”

  “He’s on suspension. He was told to stay away from this. Even if he marches Bishop into Metro, they’ll take his badge. He’s done.”

  “I don’t think he cares, not anymore. Not since Heather. Her death changed him. Losing Bishop in that building—it all changed him. I think he sees catching Bishop as unfinished business. I think he’ll do whatever it takes to bring him in, then he’s out anyway. He wants to exit on his own terms. He feels Bishop is still loose because of him, his mistake, and he wants to be the one to bring him in, to end all of this.”

  “That’s dangerous.”

  “He doesn’t care.”

  “He shouldn’t be alone.”

  “That’s what he wants,” Nash said.

  Clair drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “The boy in the truck, Nash, that was horrible. If this is Bishop, he’s gotten much worse.”

  “He’s always been trying to tell us something. We need to look for that. Search for his message. That leads us to Larissa, leads us to him.” His voice was soft, monotone. “Clair-bear, we need to share what we know with the FBI, the diary too. We can’t hold back anymore, not something like this.”

  “I know.” A yawn washed over her, and Clair tried to suppress it, a hand over her mouth. Sitting still, that was bad. If they didn’t keep moving, she’d fall asleep right here. “As soon as we get back.”

  Beside her, Nash yawned too.

  “We rest for five minutes, then we head back to Metro.”

  Nash was already sleeping though, snoring softly.

  83

  Porter

  Day 3 • 9:44 p.m.

  Porter felt the weight of Bishop’s knife in his pocket.

  This was not going well. This was not going well at all. I slipped my hand into the pocket of my jeans searching for the familiar hilt of my Buck knife. If I had it, I could slash this man across the neck. I’d cut right through all his chins and let his blood loose like a faucet. I was fast. I knew I was fast. But was I fast enough? Surely I could kill him before this overweight waste of a man could react, right? Father would want me to kill him. Mother too. They would. I knew they would.

  Bishop’s words rattled back at him from the diary.

  They stood outside the Carter trailer after photographing everything. They bagged the locket and key. The clothes went back into the backpack. They left it on the floor of the bedroom, the floorboards and mattress still up.

  Above, the moon crept out, pushing aside dark curtains in an effort to steal a peek at the earth below. The air turned decidedly cold, nothing like the weather in Chicago, but there was a deep, humid chill to it, one that teased Porter’s bones.

  Sarah wanted to go to town, find a hotel, get rest. She didn’t have to say it again. He saw it in her eyes. She was tired. She had had enough for one night.

  Porter turned away from her and stared back at the woods lining the property behind both houses, at the small path leading into those woods.

  There was a flutter in his stomach. His skin tingled.

  The beam of Sarah’s flashlight went from the ground at Porter’s feet, swept across the yard, then met with his, illuminating the mouth of the path. “Nobody has been living out here for years. Why do you think that path is still there? Shouldn’t it have grown over by now?”

  “Animals, maybe. Or the same kids who party here in the trailer.”

  Or something else. Something worse.

  The knife felt warm. He hadn’t realized he even put his hand back in his pocket. His fingers slipped over the surface of the handle.

  “You can stay here,” he offered.

  Sarah was already shaking her head. “You’re not going out there alone.”

  With that, they crossed the lawn toward the path, stepping over the trunk of a small fallen tree before disappearing down the path’s throat, the beams of their flashlights dueling with the dark.

  84

  Poole

  Day 3 • 9:49 p.m.

  “I’ve been through that same box about a dozen times, the accounting records of the crazy and deranged,” a voice said.

  Poole looked up from the stack of spreadsheets at the woman standing in the doorway. She wore a pink cap and a purple scarf draped over an unzipped heavy jacket. He had seen her before.

  “May I come in?” she asked.

  He leaned back in the chair and nodded, then rubbed his temples. The pain at the back of his head had worked around to the front and sides. “What can I do for you?”

  She crossed the room and reached out a hand. “We’ve never been formally introduced. Detective Clair Norton. I was on the 4MK Task Force with Detectives Porter and Nash before you and your team stepped in and stole the case from us.”

  Poole took her hand. “Special Agent Frank Poole.”

  “I already know that. Did you miss the part where I said I was a detective?”

  He didn’t need this right now. “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “I need you to come across the hall.”

  “To the war room? Porter said I’m not allowed in the war room. He and that other guy made it very clear the last time I was in there.”

  “Thanks to you and your friends, Sam has been given a little time off. While he’s gone, I’m in charge over there,” she said.

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Someone dropped your chocolate into our peanut butter.”

  Poole followed Detective Clair Norton across the hall to the war room. The tension was thick as he entered. Tired eyes were on him. He nodded at Detective Nash as he pulled up a chair at the conference table. Nash was the only person he recognized of the three people already seated.

  “Frank,” Nash muttered, giving him a weak wave.

  Clair introduced him to the two others at
the table. “This is Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children, and the disheveled mess over there in the corner is Edwin Klozowski. He heads our Information Technology Division.”

  “Call me Kloz,” Klozowski stood and offered his hand across the table.

  “No sucking up to the feds,” Clair said.

  Klozowski withdrew his hand and returned to his chair. “Right.”

  “What happened to your head?” Nash asked. “You’re all banged up.”

  Poole told them about the houses on Forty-First, Diener, and Bishop.

  Nash and Clair exchanged a look. Clair was first to speak. “I’m so sorry.”

  Poole nodded once.

  “Are they going to let you continue working the case?” Nash asked.

  Poole shrugged. “Nobody has said they’re not. Not yet, anyway. The Chicago office is short-staffed as is. Most agents are working a recent terror threat that came in. They might bring someone else in, but for now I’m all they’ve got with BAU experience. Nobody knows this case better than me.” He looked around the room. “Except maybe all of you.”

  “And Sam,” Klozowski said quietly. “He knows the case better than any of us.”

  Poole said, “I’ve tried to reach him, several times. I’m just getting voice mail on his phone.”

  Again, Nash and Clair exchanged a look. “Nash and I just came from his apartment. We found his cell phone sitting on a table in his living room, switched off, and his favorite chair was overturned, lying on its side.”

  “Do you think Bishop got to him?”

  “No. We think he left on his own. His suitcase was gone. We think he went somewhere,” Clair said.

  “Someplace he didn’t want us to know about,” Nash added.

  “Where would he go?”

  Nobody had an answer to that.

  “Could he be working with Bishop? Helping him somehow?”

  “No way,” Nash said.

  Clair folded her arms. “Not a chance.”

  Poole studied their faces. “What do you know about Bishop’s diary?”

  The room grew quiet again. Looks passed among the group, but they said nothing.

  Poole blew out a breath and stood, turned toward the door. “I don’t have time for this.”

  Nash unfolded his arms, set both palms on the table. His eyes swung from Clair to Klozowski. “Wait, Frank. Please sit.”

  Poole lowered himself back into the chair. “You know where it is, don’t you?”

  Clair looked to Nash. Nash said, “Sam held it back.”

  “From Evidence?”

  “From the press. Checking the diary into Evidence would be no different from sending it to the newspapers. It would leak. Something like that would most definitely leak.”

  “So he withheld evidence? All of you let him do that?”

  “Sam held the book back. I knew he had it, only Sam and me, nobody else.” Nash turned his hands over, looked at his palms.

  “Where is the diary now?”

  “Sam hid it under the La-Z-Boy in his living room, the overturned chair we found.”

  “So Sam has it with him? Wherever he is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nobody made a copy?”

  “We didn’t want any copies.”

  Poole let all of this sink in, then turned to Clair. “Is this why you brought me over here? To come clean?”

  Klozowski let out a soft laugh. “Oh boy, icing and cake and all that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There’s more,” Clair said. She pulled an eight-by-ten photo from a manila folder on the table and slid it over to him.

  Poole picked up the picture. It was a photograph of a boy, frozen beneath layers of ice, in the cab of a pickup truck.

  Clair stood up and retrieved another picture from the whiteboard at the front of the room. She set it down in front of Poole. This one showed a close-up of a windshield, taken from a traffic camera.

  “That’s Bishop,” Poole stated flatly.

  “It’s the same truck,” Clair told him. “That truck was also caught on a security camera at Jackson Park three weeks ago. Our unsub used it to tow a water tank into the park, then used water from the tank to help conceal the body of Ella Reynolds beneath the surface of the lagoon. The tank was stolen from Tanks A Lot, an aquarium store downtown. Libby McInley, the sister of Bishop’s fifth victim, applied for a job at Tanks A Lot. She worked there for one day. I think she was only there long enough to scope the place out for Bishop. Somehow, they’re working together. They were working together.”

  Poole stared at both photographs. “When did you learn all of this?”

  “In the past few hours,” Clair told him. “All of it.”

  “Do you have an ID on the boy?”

  “Not yet. The body went downtown. They’re working on it.”

  “Are you aware of what happened to Libby McInley? How we found her?” Poole asked.

  “We saw the report.”

  “You saw the report,” Poole muttered. He still couldn’t close his eyes without seeing Libby McInley. Now Agent Diener too. Bishop’s face when he opened that door.

  You’re not Sam Porter.

  A smile on his face.

  Poole looked at the whiteboards at the front of the room, at the girls’ images staring back at him. Then he turned back to the people sitting around the conference table, their eyes on him. “Porter said these cases weren’t tied to Bishop.”

  “Sam was wrong.”

  “Withholding evidence, holding back that diary, in what is now a federal case, could not only cost you your badges but land some of you in jail. That diary could be key, and now we don’t have it. We don’t know where it is.”

  “They had nothing to do with it. That’s on me and Sam,” Nash repeated.

  The room dropped into silence again, filling with nervous energy thick enough to crackle.

  Clair’s eyes met Nash’s across the table. Both turned away. Sophie’s gaze was locked on the small screen of her phone, although it didn’t look like she was actually reading anything, just unwilling to face the others.

  After nearly a full minute, Poole stood. “Wait here.”

  He left them sitting at the table.

  Behind him, Klozowski muttered, “We’re so fucked.”

  Poole returned a moment later with one of the whiteboards from the FBI room across the hall. He slid it beside the others at the front of the room, then started back across the hall.

  “You’re not gonna report us?” Klozowski called after him.

  “Right now, we’re going to work the case.”

  Clair let out the breath she had been holding.

  85

  Kati

  Day 3 • 9:52 p.m.

  The man in the black knit cap sat across from her at the small kitchen table, his dark eyes bloodshot, lined with red, the left more than the right. He seemed to favor this eye. As he watched her, his head turned slightly as if watching her with the left eye while the right focused on something in the distance, something behind her.

  Kati’s hands and feet were bound to the metal chair with zip ties.

  They were tight.

  Far too tight.

  Kati kept wiggling her fingers to keep the circulation up.

  She tried to focus on him, to keep her eyes on him as one would be expected to do during a civilized conversation. She tried not to look at the wound on the side of his head, caked with dried blood. She tried not to stare too long at the black knit cap rubbing against that nasty red flesh. She tried not to look at the dark cocoa stains on the table and floor, now dry and crusty. Most of all, she refused to look down at the blood on the floor, the thick splatter where Wesley fell, the round pool that trickled out into streams on the floor, then thin branches, finally ending in drops on the linoleum and up the wall.

  She couldn’t look at that.

  She wouldn’t look at that.

  The man held a bottle of pills in his right hand, gripping tightly e
nough to turn his fingers white.

  Kati tried to glimpse the label, but his hand covered most of it. He was shaking, just a little. He had been worse before he took one of the pills.

  “Tell me again,” he said, leaning a little closer to her. She smelled his breath. She didn’t want to smell his breath. She also knew the only chance she had at escape was to win over his trust. She needed to give him a reason to need her, something that other girl in the basement couldn’t or wouldn’t provide, something his victims were not willing to provide.

  “Can you loosen my hands and feet? I promise I won’t try to run. It hurts. I’m still having trouble concentrating, and this pain doesn’t help.” She rattled her wrists against the chair to emphasize her point, but then decided she shouldn’t do that. She shouldn’t show any sign of strength, of defiance, only weakness, only submission.

  “Pain sharpens the thoughts. If you use it properly, pain will help your focus, not diminish it.”

  His speech had become clearer since the pill, the lisp almost gone. He was sweating now, though, a slight shimmer on his brow and neck.

  “I want Wesley to see,” Kati said. “Can you show Wesley too? So we can both tell you? I think it would be helpful to learn if we both saw the same thing, don’t you think?”

  His eyes left her for a moment, dropping to the floor, looking to the place she refused to look, before focusing on her again, his lips thin. “We’re not going to talk about Wesley. I don’t want to talk about him anymore. I want you to tell me again.”

  Kati pulled at her bound hands again, quietly this time. The left one felt looser than the right but not enough to pull free—at least, she didn’t think so. She couldn’t be sure. “I don’t know that I can put it into words. I saw something beautiful, magical. Like standing inside of music or tasting the emotion of an artist as he captures his subject’s breath. There are no words, nothing that really compares.”

  “You said you saw the face of God.”

  The lisp again, subtle, on the words said, saw, and face.

  “I . . . I think it was all God. I think he was all around me. I felt a warmth, something big all around me. Have you ever drifted off to sleep and first felt like you were falling for a brief second, then that turned into floating, a perfect weightlessness without pain, without any pressure on your body? There was no discernible sound at all, yet I also heard the most beautiful soothing sound, like nothing and everything all at once, almost like being in two different places at the same time.”