The Sixth Wicked Child

by J. D. Barker

  Nash fumbled with the device and answered the call on speaker. “Yeah?”

  “What the hell? I’ve been calling you for an hour!”

  The phone felt like an ice cube in his hand. Nash flicked the heat switch to full and heard something behind the dash groan in protest. He couldn’t stop shivering. “I feel like shit, Kloz.”

  “You too? Ah, man. You probably picked it up at Upchurch’s house. Nobody’s told you to come here? You shouldn’t be running around. You’re probably infecting everyone.”

  “Gotta find Sam. Gotta find Bishop. Gotta find the…” Nash remembered he wasn’t allowed to discuss the mayor and managed to pinch off the word before it got out.

  “The mayor is missing.”

  This took a moment to sink in. Nash’s thoughts were all muddy. “How do you know about the mayor?”

  “What? No, not the mayor. Clair is missing.” He dropped off for a second. “Wait, is the mayor missing, too?”

  Nash sat up, forced his brain to work. “Did you say Clair is missing?”

  Kloz sighed. “You must have a fever or something. Yes, Clair is missing. Our Clair. She went to the cafeteria to deal with something, and nobody’s seen her since. That was like…wow, eight hours ago now. The head of security has his people looking for her, but with the CDC lockdown, they’re having a tough time getting around the hospital. The elevators are all shut down and the stairwells are locked. His people have keys, but the CDC doesn’t want people moving floor-to-floor. Two of our uniformed officers are missing, too. They’ve been gone most of the day. We’ve got two dead here in the hospital, someone’s picking off the law enforcement officers, and now Clair is gone. I’m holed up in our office, but I’m all alone. I’m not sure who I can even trust. For all I know, Stout took her.”

  “Stout?”

  “Christ, aren’t you paying attention? He’s the head of security here. Whoever is doing this is in the hospital somewhere. They might all be dead. If it’s Bishop, can you imagine what he’d do to Clair? He’s had eight hours. If this is all Sam…if Clair has seen his face…I don’t know what to do, man. I need help.”

  Nash looked out the windshield again, at all the flashing lights in front of Porter’s building. A stretcher was coming out. “I found Vincent Weidner’s body in Sam’s apartment. He was in the bathtub.”

  Klozowski’s voice dropped lower. “I know. I’ve been watching all the chatter—texts, e-mails, radio traffic. The feds think this is all Sam. I really don’t want to go there…I keep telling myself not to go there, but there’s so much evidence. Poole just found a body in Charleston—an old body—hidden in the garage of Sam’s old partner. Some of Sam’s stuff was there…a ton of money.”

  Nash pinched his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead. Forced himself to see clearly through the brain fog. “You can see all that?”

  “Seriously? I could tell you the last three porn videos you watched on your phone, if I wanted to. Now is not the time to question my skills. We need to get Clair back.”

  Nash reached for the gear shift, and his hand moved right past it. He actually missed. He tried two more times before he was able to wrap his fingers around it. “I’m coming in. I’ll be there soon.”

  “They won’t let you through the doors. This whole building is under quarantine, remember?”

  “I’m sick. They have to let me in.” When Nash turned to look for traffic, his head tapped against the window glass. He felt like he might pass out. He found the pills Eisley had given him and took three more.

  Shutting off the engine, he eyed a patrol officer getting into his car at Porter’s building. “Think I’ll get a ride, though.”

  He forced his body to move from the car and flagged the man down. At some point, he hung up on Kloz.

  75

  Diary

  Libby and I huddled at my bedroom window, watching as Welderman and Stocks pulled up. It was a little after nine, and the sun was long gone. There wasn’t much of a moon, either, the sky as black as oil.

  “Do you see him?”

  I rose up a few inches, and she pulled me back down. “Don’t—”

  The lights were off in my room, so there was no way anyone would spot me, but I ducked anyway. I raised my head just enough to look out past Welderman’s car to Finicky’s Camry parked to the left side of them. I didn’t see him, not at first. Then this long, black figure rolled out from underneath and crouched beside the passenger door.

  “There he is,” I said, pointing.

  Libby had seen him too. I could tell by the way she tensed up. “God, I hope he can pull this off.”

  “He will,” I said with all the confidence I could muster, although I wasn’t so sure. Libby had devised a good plan, but there were a lot of moving parts, and any one of them could go sideways.

  Finicky shouted up from downstairs. A moment later, I heard the sound of feet as Weasel and The Kid ran through the hallway and thundered down the steps. I tried not to think about where they were going or what was waiting for them. There were far too many Bernies out in the world and not nearly enough of them buried out in the field. Tegan had said it was more pictures, and while that was bad, there was worse.

  Outside, Vincent made his way across the open space to the back of Welderman’s car. He moved slow, stayed as low to the ground as he could. Welderman was still behind the wheel. As usual, Stocks was standing with his door open and a cigarette in his hand on the opposite corner. Vincent made his way to the driver’s side rear tire, twisted off the cap on the stem, and began letting out the air.

  “I think he’s done this before,” I said quietly.

  “Vincent has done a lot of things,” Libby agreed. “He needs to hurry.”

  I just hoped he didn’t let out too much. The trick was to leave just enough so they could still drive on it, but not enough to maintain integrity. In a perfect world, they’d get about halfway to town before the rim ate through the rubber. Libby had insisted that as long as they got out of the driveway, it would work. With the driveway being dirt and gravel, they probably wouldn’t notice the poorly inflated tire until they got back on the pavement, and even then, Welderman might drive a bit on it before realizing something was wrong, if the discrepancy could be felt at all.

  Downstairs, I heard Kristina say something to Finicky. The two boys raised their voices in some kind of mock argument.

  “She won’t be able to stall them all for very long,” Libby pointed out. “Vincent needs to hurry.”

  This wasn’t exactly something you could put a rush on. If they came out the front door before he was done, Finicky would surely see him crouching there between the two vehicles, a stem cap in his hand and a blank look on his face. Her Camry only partially blocked him from the porch.

  Libby and I both heard the front door of the house open, then the screen door.

  “Oh no.” Her hand tightened around mine.

  Vincent must have heard it too. He had the stem cap back on in a second and dove for the Camry. Stocks’s head tilted up, the glow of his cigarette just enough to illuminate his face. Vincent scrambled back under the car as Stocks took several steps in his direction, then stopped.

  The porch light came on, and Weasel and The Kid made their way to the car. Tegan’s camera dangled from Weasel’s neck. Welderman got out long enough to open the back door for them and exchange a couple words with Finicky. Then he was back behind the wheel. Stocks dropped his cigarette and ground it out under his shoe, then got back into the car too. A moment later, they were making their way down the driveway, the back of Welderman’s Chevy leaning awkwardly to the left.

  “Who’s got the envelope?”

  “The Kid,” Libby said.

  The envelope contained a list of the parts we needed, five hundred dollars in cash, a note for whoever The Kid could pass it to at the auto parts store—deliver these parts and we’ll give you another five hundred for your trouble. Finicky’s address was listed, along with instructions to go straight to the barn. T
hey had also slipped in a very provocative picture of Tegan. This was Paul’s idea. “Any male with a pulse who thinks Tegan is waiting for them in some isolated barn will be helpless to resist. The Force is strong with that one,” he insisted.

  Libby sighed. “If they go to the gas station instead of the auto parts store, we’re sunk.”

  “The garage will be closed this time of night, and I taught Weasel how to disable the air pump out front. They’ll have to go to the parts store—there’s no place else.”

  “He might have a spare or could call someone, or maybe that guy in the van will help him…a million things could go wrong.”

  She was right; a million things could go wrong. “The guy in the van has a job to do. He won’t help them. I don’t think Welderman’s the kind of guy who asks for help, and even if he wanted to, who would he call? He’d have to explain the kids in the back seat. Vincent said the spare tire in a Malibu is probably one of those little donut tires, and I don’t see them driving around for very long on that. They’ll want to fix it tonight.”

  “What if they make Weasel and The Kid go to the motel before they go to the store?”

  “If this doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”

  “We should just steal Ms. Finicky’s car, like Tegan said.”

  We’d talked about that. We’d talked about it a lot, actually. But it wouldn’t work. “Her car is too small to fit everyone, and they’ll just report it stolen and bring us all back. We need to get everyone out, or we don’t go at all. That’s the plan. They don’t know the truck. We have a shot if they don’t know what to look for.”

  “Maybe we should run away, just the two of us. I wouldn’t be surprised if Vincent and Kristina did.”

  Oh, how I wanted to. And looking back, how I wish I would have said yes. How I wish I had taken her by the hand at that very moment, found a way out of the house, and disappeared into the night with a bag of cash from the barn. Her and I alone. I don’t know why I hesitated, maybe for the same reasons she did. We’d promised the others we’d all go together. The Kid and Weasel were too young to try and make it on their own. We all were. We all needed each other. “Remember where I said I grew up?”

  Libby nodded. “The house by the lake in Simpsonville.”

  “If we get separated, I want you to meet me there.” I told her the address and made her repeat it back to me until I was sure she had it memorized. “I’ll find some way to get there, and I’ll wait for you.”

  This made her smile.

  I’d grown quite fond of her smile.

  My leg was falling asleep, and when I shifted my weight, a horrible pain shot through my broken arm. It didn’t take much to set it off. I’d been taking Tylenol like candy. Finicky wouldn’t let me take anything stronger. Libby must have noticed, because she brushed her hand through my hair. “Is it getting any better?”

  “A little,” I lied. My heart did this little pitter-patter dance every time she touched me. She must have known that. Are all girls born knowing that, or is it taught to them by some older, wiser girl? She was wearing a cotton dress that was probably a size or two too small for her, and the hem rode up on her thigh a little higher than it probably should. She made no effort to tug it back down, even when she caught me looking. I’m not sure whose face flushed the brighter red then, hers or mine.

  “If I show you something, do you promise not to tell anyone?”

  I nodded.

  She led me across the hall to her room, closing the door softly behind us.

  76

  Poole

  Day 5 • 10:08 PM

  Handcuffs still on his wrists, Poole drove. The gun didn’t leave Porter’s hand as he dug through the contents of the green duffle bag. His wild eyes kept darting up to glance at Poole, then back at the road as he occasionally told him where to turn. He tugged the sodden dress shirt from the bag and held it up in the thin light. “This is the shirt I was wearing the night I got shot. My other clothes from that night, too.”

  “You should wear gloves—you’re contaminating evidence. I have some in my right jacket pocket.”

  Porter ignored him and kept digging. He came up with the camera. “This isn’t mine. I’ve never owned a camera like this. Look at this lens. It’s expensive. Or was expensive at the time. How old do you think it is?”

  Poole shrugged. “You shouldn’t touch it.”

  “There’s film. We need to find someplace to get it developed. See what’s on there.” Porter pointed at a street sign with his free hand. “Make a left up here on East Bay, then head north.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Porter’s brow creased, and he turned to him. “Where’s your cell phone?”

  “In my pocket.”

  “Give it to me. Now.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “You’ll need to get it. I can’t reach with the cuffs, and I’m not about to let go of the wheel.”

  Porter considered this. “Which pocket?”

  “Right front, in my pants.”

  Porter moved the gun from his left hand to his right, kept the barrel pointing at Poole, then reached over and dug out the phone. When he looked at the display, he frowned. “Granger’s been calling you. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Poole’s eyes stayed on the road. “They’ll look for me if they’re not already. You destroy the phone, and you’ll trigger a response the moment my signal goes dark.”

  Porter scrolled through the rest of the messages, then smashed the phone against the dashboard three times. When the glass shattered, he grabbed both ends, bent the phone in half, then lowered his window and tossed the device out into the night.

  “I just bought that.”

  Porter rolled up his window and went back to the bag. He took out the composition book and began flipping through the pages. “What do you make of this?”

  “Did you visit the Camden Treatment Center?”

  Porter’s eyes darted up. “Make a left on Queen.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “Why?”

  “The call I took after Granger, that was a lieutenant with the South Carolina State Police. He said something bad happened at Camden. They found blood.”

  Porter’s eyes were on the street ahead. “I didn’t hurt anyone at Camden.”

  “But you were there.”

  Porter was leaning forward. “Pull over there on the left. You can park at that church.”

  Poole glanced at the large church but kept going straight. “Oops.”

  “Goddamn it.” Porter fumed. “We don’t have time for games, Frank. Make a right on Church Street. Another right on Cumberland. We’ll go around the block.”

  “You seem to know this area.”

  “This is my old beat. Me and Hillburn. You drive the same streets enough, and they’re in your head forever.”

  Poole took the right onto Church, drove past two small parks, then took another right on Cumberland.

  “Park at the bank. Up there on the right.” Reaching into the bag, Porter removed the three bound stacks of bills and placed them on the center console. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much money in my entire life. The bills are circulated, nonsequential. The bands aren’t stamped with a bank ID. They were most likely bundled privately somewhere. Banks are required to stamp them.”

  “Whose SUV is this? Did you steal it?”

  “Right there, park there.” Porter pointed toward the far corner of the lot with the barrel of the gun. “Under that streetlight.”

  “Good idea. I’d hate to see someone steal your stolen car.”

  “It’s not stolen.”

  “Then where did you get it? You didn’t rent it. We would have flagged that.”

  “Park. Shut off the motor.”

  Poole pulled into the space Porter indicated, shifted into park, and pressed the button on the dash to kill the motor. “Now what?”

  “Now we get out and walk.” Reaching into the b
ack seat, Porter grabbed a black leather jacket and pulled it on, carefully shifting the gun from one hand to the other. He then slipped the gun into the left pocket. “Don’t think for a second this isn’t pointed at you, ready to shoot.”

  “I’m not going to run.”

  “I don’t care.” Porter exited the SUV, quickly made his way around to the driver side, and opened Poole’s door.

  Poole held up his cuffed hands. “Somebody might see these.”

  “That would be unfortunate. I suggest you hide them under your jacket.”

  When Poole got out of the SUV, Porter nodded toward the side of the bank. “Follow the edge of the building and make a left at the corner. I’m right behind you, so nothing stupid.”

  Although the bank was closed, several lights were on inside. Through one of the windows, Poole spotted a security guard sitting at his post. He saw them, too. Several people were on the sidewalk, walking in both directions. Foot traffic was high enough, Porter and Poole didn’t raise any red flags in the guard’s mind. After a quick glance, he returned to the book in his lap.

  “Left here,” Porter said as they reached the northwest corner of the building.

  Poole glanced down the alley. Light trickled in, but not much. A cobblestone sidewalk ran down the center. Hedges and potted plants lined each side. The opposite end was barely visible, nothing but a distant glow between the branches of low-hanging trees. “Is this where you were shot?”

  Porter pushed at the small of his back. “Keep going, out of the light.”

  They followed the sidewalk to just beyond the halfway point before Porter told him to stop. He glanced around, first at the surrounding buildings, then at a fenced-in yard on the left. “There used to be a restaurant here,” he said, pointing. “The Dumpster was right here, up against the wall. It wasn’t so overgrown back then. They didn’t allow all these plants; the trees were cut back more so the trucks could squeeze in.”

  “What do you remember?”

  Porter pursed his lips and knelt, running the fingers of his free hand over the cobblestones. “This is where I fell.”

  “Tell me what you remember.”