by J. D. Barker
He removed his glasses. “I want to help you, Anson. I hope you see that, but we’re running out of time.”
He concluded our session then, nearly ten minutes later than usual, and led me back down the hall, past the nurses’ station, to my room.
The girl’s door was open as we passed, Nurse Gilman delivering her lunch. The girl sat on her bed, her legs pulled tight to her chest.
She watched me as I walked past, and I watched her.
I could not look away, even if I wanted to.
109
Clair
Day 4 • 1:12 p.m.
“I told you, we don’t run contests. I have no idea what that is.”
Clair stared at the woman behind the counter at the Designated Driver driving school. She felt the blood heating her face. The woman stared at her blankly, defiantly. Clair wanted to reach across the counter and pull her over. Kloz had taken the image of Lili Davies holding her iPad, enhanced it, and blown the picture up so they could make out the detail. The version Clair had on her phone clearly showed this building and some of the cars out front. “Look at the pictures again,” Clair said, pushing the photo sheet of the missing and dead children across the counter at the woman.
She glanced down, then back at Clair. “I told you, I haven’t seen any of them. None of those kids have ever set foot in here. I’d know. Anybody could have taken a picture of this place and mocked it up. That’s not our phone number, it’s bogus.”
The phone number in the picture, the one Gabby Deegan had called earlier that morning, currently rang through to a voice mail box that had not been set up. Kloz tried to trace the number, but it came up as a burner phone, no longer online. He and Nash were working with the phone company to try and trace back Gabby’s call from earlier and possibly pin down a location.
Gabby sat in a chair at the corner of the small building, Sophie next to her, holding the girl’s hand. “Okay, run through it one more time for me, sweetheart,” Sophie said.
Gabby wiped at her eyes. “I should never have let her go by herself. It’s my fault. If I had gone with her, she’d still be alive.”
“Tell us about the phone call, about the man who answered. What did he say to you? Did you hear any strange noises? Anything that might tell us where he was?”
Gabby shook her head. “I hung up right after he answered. He sounded funny. I . . . I could see inside here, I could see her. She didn’t answer the call. I don’t think the phone in here even rang.”
“I haven’t gotten a call all day. It’s been dead,” the woman said.
“Sounded funny, how?” Clair asked, walking over.
“Like he just woke up, sleepy, I guess. He couldn’t say the word school right.”
“He had a stutter?”
Gabby frowned. “No, not a stutter. I’m not sure what you call it. He couldn’t say the letter s—well, he could say it, just not right. He pronounced it thcool.”
“A lisp?” the woman behind the counter asked. “Is that what you mean? He had a lisp?”
Gabby was nodding. “Yeah, that’s it. A lisp.”
Clair went back over to the counter. “Does that mean something to you?”
The woman picked up the phone and began dialing. “I need to call the owner.”
Clair took the phone from her and hung it back up. “You need to tell me whatever it is you know.”
Her eyes jumped from Clair to Gabby, then to Sophie, then back again. She drew in a deep breath. “One of our instructors, he has a bad lisp. It came on recently. A side effect, I think.”
“Side effect of what?”
She came out from behind the counter and went to the wall on the left side of the office, to a series of employee photographs. She reached up and took one down off the wall. “Paul Upchurch. He’s been with us for nearly ten years. About six months ago, he started smelling things that weren’t there. He kept telling me I smelled like almonds and vanilla. I thought he was trying to be nice. He was always sweet. The nicest guy. Funny too. Then he started to get the shakes. They’d come on randomly and disappear just as fast. The owner pulled him out of rotation, made him see a doctor. We can’t risk something happening to one of our instructors with a kid in the car. He went for a series of tests, over the course of a week or so. Anyway, the doctors said he had a brain tumor. I don’t remember the specifics. He explained it, but it was all so technical, went over my head.”
Cancer, Clair thought.
Insurance.
Oncologist.
Pharmaceuticals.
X-ray.
MRI.
Surgeon.
Hospital.
“Where is Paul Upchurch now?”
“Home, I imagine. He’s had three surgeries that I’m aware of, maybe more. We haven’t heard from him for over a week. I was thinking about driving over and checking on him if he didn’t call in over the next few days.”
“I need an address.”
“Sure, okay.” Her eyes were still on the picture in her hand. A man in his early thirties, smiling back. “Paul wouldn’t hurt anyone, he’s really the sweetest guy. Terrible, what he’s going through. He’s so young, very spiritual, a good soul too.”
Clair was already dialing Nash.
110
Poole
Day 4 • 3:47 p.m.
Poole heard the warden step back into his office and close the door behind him.
“Oh hell, we’ve got a problem,” the man said. “This is worse than we thought.”
Another man had returned with the warden.
Poole stood up from the rickety chair at the warden’s desk, his legs still stiff from the flight.
Warden Vina gestured to the man beside him. “This is Captain Fred Direnzo. He runs security for the prison. Captain, this is Frank Poole with the FBI. Please tell him what you told me.”
Poole shook his hand. It was cold and clammy. The man was nervous.
He didn’t like where this was going.
He didn’t like it one bit.
Direnzo cleared his throat. “After SAIC Hurless called, we put a tight noose around Weidner. We didn’t want to spook him, so the plan was to let him go about his normal day and keep an eye on him through the security cameras until you got here. This way, you could talk to him and he wouldn’t get a chance to concoct some kind of story to cover his tracks. Always best to approach these scenarios with the element of surprise, right?”
Poole nodded.
Captain Direnzo glanced at the warden, then back at Poole. “He slipped out. I’m not sure how, but somehow he got out.”
“When?”
The warden raised both hands, palms out. “Before you get too excited, we got him. I called the local PD, and they cornered him in his apartment, not far from here. Caught him in the middle of packing a bag. They’re bringing him back, shouldn’t be more than twenty or thirty minutes. Please continue, Captain.”
Direnzo nodded. “The cameras are meant to monitor the inmates, not necessarily the guards, so there are blind spots in various places the guards can access. He changed out of uniform in the locker room and left with the three p.m. crew, but like the warden said, we got him. He’s not going anywhere, I promise you that. We started backtracking Weidner’s steps today, tried to get a better handle on whatever he was up to. Looks like he used a fraudulent court order to arrange for the release of a prisoner at 0800 this morning.”
“Who?”
The warden handed a file to Poole. “We don’t have a name on her. No ID, and she’s not in the system. Just another Jane Doe, picked up for felony grifting. Here’s the thing, though. Your detective, Sam Porter, he was here to see her yesterday, spent three and a half hours with her and her attorney in one of the interview rooms. He told me she was somehow connected to the 4MK murders in Chicago.”
“Is there tape?”
“Cameras are disabled whenever a prisoner is in consultation with their attorney.”
“Who’s her attorney?”
&
nbsp; “A local, Sarah Werner,” the warden said. “We’ve got a trace on Jane Doe’s ankle monitor. She’s at her attorney’s office. The data is live. She’s not going anywhere without our knowledge.”
“Can I see her cell?”
“We already tossed it. There’s nothing there.”
“I’d like to see it for myself.”
Her cell truly had been tossed.
Poole stepped into the small room, feeling the walls on all sides closing in on him.
The mattress stood on its side, up against the wall, revealing the metal cot beneath it. Some clothing was scattered on the floor: a T-shirt and two pairs of sweatpants. The contents of a shampoo bottle and toothpaste tube had been emptied into the sink.
“Sometimes prisoners hide small objects in those. Shivs, mostly.”
“Find anything?”
“Nope.”
Poole stepped over to the mattress and began running his fingers across the edges, the seams.
“We checked that too,” Captain Direnzo said. “Nothing.”
Poole looked anyway but didn’t find any openings in the material.
“Like I said, there’s nothing here.”
Poole sighed and dropped the mattress back onto the cot. The metal rattled. His eyes fixed on the wall, on the words scratched into the paint. They weren’t alone. The entire cell was covered in text, years’ worth of prisoners’ thoughts captured in time, left for the next occupant. Poole knew these words, though. They jumped out at him:
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.
Home, fear, death, all underlined, as they were in the house back in Chicago. This was followed by one additional line:
Original sin will be the death of you.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Captain Direnzo stood behind him, reading over his shoulder. Poole hadn’t noticed him enter the cell.
Poole ran a finger over the words, bits of paint flaking off beneath his touch. This had been added to the wall of words recently, new graffiti among the layers of old. “It’s a play on the Bible, original sin. Shakespeare said it meant ‘the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.’ Essentially, we are responsible for the sins of our ancestors, and they are responsible for ours.”
“Shakespeare, huh? Our little Jane Doe didn’t seem like much of a Shakespeare fan to me.”
The radio on Captain Direnzo’s shoulder beeped, and he pressed a button. The warden’s voice crackled through the small speaker. “Captain? Weidner’s back. Please escort our friend to interview room three when you’re done.”
“Copy that.”
111
Diary
Night again.
No rain.
When Nurse Gilman brought my dinner, I asked her about the girl two doors down, but she wouldn’t tell me anything about her, not even her name. I hoped for her name. Instead, she only placed my tray on my bed and smiled. “You should eat,” she said.
I didn’t want to eat. I wanted to know the girl’s name. I wanted to speak to her. I wanted to get close enough to her to feel the warmth of her skin, her breath.
I heard her cry. I wanted to know if she could laugh.
I didn’t eat.
I didn’t notice when Nurse Gilman left my room.
My food went cold sitting on the corner of my bed.
I did not want to talk to the police.
I didn’t want to meet the attorney general the doctor mentioned.
I most certainly did not want to be transferred to the place he talked about.
It was time I left.
Father would want me to puzzle it out. I had a plan.
At night there was one guard and two nurses. The doctors were gone, and everyone else was tucked in their rooms.
I would go at night.
I would wait for the girl to cry.
I didn’t want her to cry.
I didn’t want her to cry ever again, but I knew she would, and when she did, at least one of the nurses would open her door and go into her room to comfort her. When I was certain one of the nurses was in her room, I would pick my lock, go down the hall, and slip into her room too.
I would then make the nurse scream.
I hoped it would not be Nurse Gilman I found in the girl’s room but one of the others. I liked Nurse Gilman. But even if it was Nurse Gilman, I would make her scream. Father taught me how. I would make her scream loud enough to draw the other nurse and the guard into the girl’s room. I would get them all inside that room two doors down from mine and—
Let me stop here for a moment, give pause.
I want to be clear.
I don’t want to hurt anyone.
Nobody needs to get hurt.
The last thing I want to do is hurt someone.
But I will.
They need to stay in that room, and I need to leave.
That is the only acceptable outcome.
I hope I won’t have to hurt anyone.
I don’t want the girl to see me hurt anyone.
I will lock them all in that room, then I will go to the doctor’s office and get my knife. I know this is a risk, but I feel it is an acceptable risk.
Then I will leave.
I’ll take the security camera footage with me. The recorder is probably at the guard’s desk.
If I have my knife, if I had to hurt someone in that room, in the girl’s room, if I had to hurt someone before I could get out and lock them inside, I might have to go back and finish hurting them. That’s what Father would want me to do. Mother would tell me I had to hurt the girl too. I had to finish hurting them all, then take the camera footage and leave. Father and Mother would agree on this.
I did not want to hurt the girl, but I would.
A night escape presented one problem, a serious problem, one I wasn’t sure I could overcome. I desperately wanted to say goodbye to Dr. Oglesby.
112
Nash
Day 4 • 4:06 p.m.
“Nash, can you hear me?” Espinosa’s voice crackled in the small earpiece hidden beneath Nash’s thick jacket hood.
Nash resisted the urge to tap at it. “Copy, SWAT leader, coming in clear.”
“Ready in three.” This was Brogan, out of breath, his voice slightly muffled. He and his team had parked one block over and were trudging through the snow, attempting to approach the back of the house unnoticed.
Clair had gotten an address for this Paul Upchurch from Designated Driver, and Klozowski had confirmed it with DMV and county records. His name appeared on the deed. He had owned the property for the better part of ten years.
Nash sat in Connie, two blocks down Upchurch’s street. She had a wad of smoke caught in her throat. The exhaust sputtered as she coughed it out. A large Amazon.com box sat in the passenger seat. Inside the box were an assault rifle and two flat ten-pound weights. He wore body armor beneath his thick fleece coat.
“I can see the back of the house now,” Brogan said. “We’ve got three windows on the second floor, a small one at the attic, and two on the ground level. Shit—”
“What is it?” Espinosa asked.
“The backyard is fenced in, four-foot chainlink. We’re in two feet of snow as is, looks like the drifts nearly reach the top of the fence. We’ll need to get over. I’m holding the team behind the house one yard over. As soon as we leave this location, we’ll be exposed. I’d estimate thirty seconds to cross to the fence, ten to get over, another twenty to reach the back door and attempt a breach. We’ve got no pla
ce to hide in all that space. It’s wide open back here.”
“Copy,” Espinosa said. “Nash, you go on my mark. If you see a doorbell, don’t ring it. Knock. A lot of the doorbells in these old houses don’t work, and you won’t be able to tell from the outside—ringing it and waiting can cost us time. Just knock loudly. The moment you do, I’ll give a five count. We’ll give Upchurch time to answer. On five, our vans will come in from both ends of the road. Brogan and his guys will breach from the back door.” He paused for a second. “You’ll be standing on a small front porch. Looks like we’ve got nine steps with one turn leading up to it with a railing. It’s going to be tight, not much room to maneuver. If Upchurch opens the door, rush him, run right over him with the weight of that box as a battering ram. My guys will be right behind you. They’ll secure him. Just try to stun him and get out of the way.”
“What if he doesn’t answer?”
“If he doesn’t answer, I’ll need you to skirt out of our path. My team will come up behind you and take the door down, then they’ll hit the house while Brogan’s guys come in and secure from the back. Brogan?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Both teams will secure the main level. Then I want you to go down, get the basement and any subbasements. I’ll head high and get the second floor and the attic.”
“Copy.”
“Nash. Do your best to stay out of our way. You don’t have headgear on. I don’t want to lose anyone to a lucky shot.”