by J. D. Barker
94
Porter
Day 6 • 2:02 AM
“Five, four, three…”
Porter was still standing at the desk when the woman he knew as Sarah Werner began to count down. Both of them had been silent before that, Porter staring at the words Father, forgive me carved into the cover of the roll-top desk, Sarah standing behind him. Several minutes, maybe more—Porter was having trouble tracking things like that, his mind swimming. Then she started counting down.
“Two, one…”
A phone rang.
Porter glanced back at her.
She smiled. “You should get that.”
The sound came from the desk. He rolled the top up and fished around under the papers and bills, many of them glued together with ages-old blood.
The phone didn’t look like a disposable. UNKNOWN CALLER scrolled across the display before ringing for the third time. Taped to the back was one of his old business cards from Charleston PD, faded and covered in grime. The lettering barely legible. Porter’s finger shook as he touched the answer button and pressed the phone to his ear. “What the fuck is this?”
“Sam, you know how I feel about foul language. I thought we were beyond all that.”
“I don’t understand…what I’m looking at.”
“You’re home, Sam. You’re looking at your home. You left a mess behind.”
“I’ve never—”
Bishop cut him off. “Don’t say you’ve never been there, Sam. That’s a lie, even if you’re having trouble remembering. You need to see beyond all the lies you’ve told yourself and find the truth. It’s there in your head, somewhere in the back under all the dust. You can bury a bad thing, but those bad things have a tendency to claw their way back out of the dirt. Yours are coming for you, and they’re angry. You dismissed us all. You wrote us off. Left us to bleed.”
“I was hurt, I—”
“We were all hurt, Sam.”
Sam tried not to look at all the blood, blood marring nearly every surface of the room. “Who died here?”
“In many ways, we all did.”
“Where did you get my card?”
At this, Bishop did not reply. Instead, he said, “You, Hillburn, Welderman, Stocks, who knows who else—the corruption and dirt is so thick around all of you, I’m surprised you’re able to move. At least Hillburn had the decency to take his own life, pay retribution for his sins, but you? You went on without remorse, you carved out a life on the backs of the dead, on the backs of tortured children. How many? Do you even know?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Porter shouted. He hadn’t meant to shout, he didn’t want to shout.
“I saw you there, Sam. We all did. Do you feel their eyes on you now? They’re all around you. Can you hear them? I know I do. Not a night goes by that I don’t hear those voices pleading for help. Over the years, I’ve gone back to Finicky’s little farm and sat in that very room more times than I can count. I cried with them. I gazed upon them. I longed for one more chance to hold Libby in my arms, knowing I never would. And when a miracle came, when I finally did find her, you took her away from me for good. You and your friends tortured her, left her body in complete disgrace in her own filth in that house on Mckeen Road.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Do no evil, Sam. Retribution is at hand. It’s time you pay for your sins.”
From across the room, Sarah watched him, her face expressionless. Although the phone wasn’t on speaker, in the otherwise silent room she probably made out most, if not all, of what Bishop said. Porter’s eyes fell on the three white boxes on the floor, the black string, the knife. That was when she smiled.
As if able to see him, Bishop went on. “The boxes aren’t for you, Sam. Death would be a mercy. A mercy of which you are undeserving. The children shall pay for the sins of the father; it’s only from that pain that the father will find greater or equal suffering. As with all those before you, it should be a child who dies for you, but you don’t have any children, do you, Sam? The only children in your life are those like me, the ones you ran through your little hell house with Finicky and the others. Those children have suffered enough. You do have loved ones, though, don’t you? Well, you did.”
Porter’s chest tightened. “Did you kill Heather?”
“A wife is not a child but a loved one nonetheless. Close but not enough. Not nearly enough.”
The blood rushed to Porter’s head, throbbed at his temples. “Did you kill Heather?”
Bishop let out a sigh. “Harnell Campbell planned to rob a convenience store that night. All I did was offer him a ride. Truth be told, I may have left the .38 on the seat, and Harnell appeared quite fond of it. At one point, the gun belonged to your friend Stocks, but he hasn’t needed it for some time, and good ol’ Harnell said he’d give it a home, so seemed silly not to oblige.”
“If that’s true, why did you kill him?”
“Loose end. Father taught me the importance of picking up after myself. He was trash, and my need for him was over.”
Porter’s hand shook, his head buzzed, he nearly dropped the phone. “Heather never hurt anyone,” he managed to say, his eyes filled with tears.
“Heather was a partial payment on your debt. In several hours, you will make good on the rest. Maybe, once we’re even, once the offering plate is full, we can part ways as friends, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to. I’ve lost Libby, Weasel, Vincent, Paul, Tegan, Kristina…who will you lose today?”
Porter tried to speak, but he couldn’t form the words. The lump in his throat held them all back.
“Go to the stairs, Sam. There’s something you need to see.”
Porter didn’t want to, but he also knew he had no choice.
Without a word, Sarah followed behind him as he crossed the parlor back to the hallway, as he made his way to the landing at the base of the staircase, his legs weak. As it said in the diary, the walls leading to the second floor were covered in framed photographs of children—boys, girls, all ages. Some smiling, some not. One in particular caught Sam’s eye.
“You see it, don’t you?”
He did see it. Porter climbed the steps. The picture was about halfway up, the only one facing backward. On the back of the frame, written in black, blocky letters was WM10 5k, and two initials. Sam knew what he’d find even before he lifted the frame off the wall and turned it around so he could see the picture. A much younger face, but one he recognized.
Oh God, it couldn’t be him.
“Your friends hurt The Kid bad that night, but he eventually recovered,” Bishop said. “Over the years, I realized he was the most resourceful of us all. He came back from those horrors of childhood and found a way to help balance the scale, reclaim what had been taken from him, from us all.”
Porter’s eyes were glued to the photograph. “Nobody else has to die, this needs to stop.”
“I have something of yours, Sam. Something precious,” Bishop said. “I tried to get from that farmhouse to the Guyon once to try and save someone. I wasn’t fast enough. Let’s see if you are. It’s so far. I think part of me is rooting for you. Heather always had faith in you. Even as the last breath left her body, she held out hope you’d save her.”
The line went dead then, and Porter looked down at Sarah, watching him from the bottom step. “Hmm, if only you had a plane,” she said. “We’re late for a flight.”
“I put Poole on the jet.”
“Talbot’s people had another brought out to Atlantic Aviation just for you, you know that. Don’t lie to me, Sam, not after all we’ve been through together—it’s beneath you.”
Porter shook his head and dialed another number. “I’m calling the FBI.”
“Anson told me you’d try to do that.” Sarah stepped closer and took out her own phone. She cycled through several screens before holding it out to him. “He told me you’d throw yourself in front of a bus if you had to. He said when you did, I was to show you this.”
; The video she played was surprisingly clear. Even though the image was shot from behind, Porter recognized Clair. Although muted, he still heard her screaming as she beat on a door with both fists.
“You’re going to power down that phone and it will stay that way until you touch down in Chicago, then you can call whoever you want. You try to reach someone sooner, and she’s dead. Do you understand?”
Porter nodded reluctantly.
“You try to call anyone before you reach Chicago, and not even her boxes will be found. Power it down, now.”
He did.
95
Poole
Day 6 • 3:31 AM
Twenty-eight minutes to mobilize Grainger’s team in Charleston, another thirty-one to reach the farmhouse. Nearly one hour after Poole made the call, at a little after three in the morning, they moved into position as he listened from the FBI communications van now parked outside the Guyon Hotel.
“Gwendle, in position.”
“Jordan, in position.”
“Suarez, in position.”
“This is Michaelson, I’ve got line of sight on the vehicle in the driveway. A silver Lexus, Illinois plate TW84R3. The vehicle appears empty.”
“No lights on inside the house. No sign of anyone.”
“Stay frosty,” Grainger said. “Porter may just be sleeping.”
They’d already searched the remains of the barn and found nothing.
“Lonestar One in position, North and West face.”
“Lonestar Two in position, South and East. Full line of sight.”
Poole knew lonestar was code for Grainger’s two snipers. Federal snipers didn’t use names on communication lines. Based on the satellite photos, they were most likely hidden in the fields, probably found some kind of hill to provide a visual field.
All would be wearing night-vision equipment, thankful for the cover offered by the last few hours of darkness.
Grainger returned to the line. “Gwendle, you head up. Suarez, you take down. Jordan, you’ve got the ball. Move on my count.”
“Copy.”
“Three, two, one, mark.”
“Federal agents!” someone shouted out.
Poole heard the familiar sound of a battering ram, and in his mind’s eye, he pictured the scene as Jordan heaved the heavy metal cylinder back and swung toward the door. Wood cracked and gave way with a satisfying crunch. This was followed by two loud bangs, concussion grenades, no doubt heaved into the house from the opening, then the stomp of running feet. More shouts.
“Hallway, clear!”
“Stairs, clear!”
“Dining room, clear!”
“Bedrooms one and two, clear!”
“Parlor—Don’t move! Don’t move!”
“Remaining bedrooms, bathroom, clear!”
“Suarez,” Grainger said. “What do you have?”
No response.
“Suarez?”
Nothing.
“Gwendle—back downstairs, check on Suarez!”
Suarez then, “Parlor…clear. I’ve got a body here. Female. Oh, man.” He retched, his bone conducting microphone picking up the sound with crisp detail.
“This is Jordan. Suarez is…indisposed. We’ve got a female. Thirties, forties, difficult to tell. Short brown hair. She’s wearing a white dress, thin material, almost looks like a nightgown. Someone carved her up. It’s bad. Missing ear and eye, looks like her tongue, too. I’ve got three white boxes sealed with black string. I’ll leave those for CSI to open. Cause of death appears to be a slit throat. There’s a butcher knife on the floor beside the body. They used something else on her too, maybe a scalpel, something with a fine tip. They carved her up—wrote all over her face, neck, arms…all exposed skin…see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, do no evil. We’ll…we’ll have to ID her from prints or dental. That’s not all, though. We’ve got blood all over this room. Old, not from her. Under the dust, might be years old. Something else. Somebody carved father, forgive me in the top of a desk in his room. I don’t see any wood shavings. Hard to tell if it’s recent or not.”
“Grainger? This is Gwendle. I found blood in one of the upstairs bedrooms as well. Old too, like down here. Not a recent crime. There’s a lot, though. Very possibly fatal.”
Poole unmuted his phone. “Is there any salt on or around the body? Around the other blood spots?”
“Salt?”
“On her skin, her clothes…anything at all?”
“Standby.”
Jordan came back a moment later. “No visible sign of salt. I don’t think she’s been dead for very long. She’s still warm. Her blood is fresh.”
“Any sign of Porter?”
“Lonestar one and two,” Grainger said, “any exterior movement?”
“Negative.”
“Nothing.”
“Gwendle here, again. The walls in this place are covered with pictures of kids. I found one frame on the landing leading upstairs. There’s a lot of dust in here, and judging by the smudges on the glass, it’s been handled recently.”
“Can you send me a photograph?” Poole asked.
“Hang on.”
A moment later, Poole’s phone chirped. When he looked at the image of the young boy on the screen, he felt the blood drain from his face.
96
Porter
Day 6 • 2:16 AM
Porter drove as Sarah Werner sat silently in the seat beside him, face forward, hands clasped in her lap. When he tried to speak, nothing came out. He couldn’t close his eyes, not even for a second; when he did, he saw Clair beating on that door. He saw Heather looking back at him, a questioning look on her face. Porter had never been able to lie to her, even about the smallest thing—she’d give him that look, and he’d melt. She’d pluck the truth out of him without the need to utter a sound.
“I’ve never been inside that house, not before tonight,” Porter finally managed to say aloud. He said this not only to the image of Heather in his mind, but to himself, to the woman sitting beside him.
“You mean you don’t remember setting foot inside that house before tonight,” Sarah replied, her eyes on the broken yellow line rushing under their SUV. “We both know just how faulty your memory is, Sam. You’ve got a lifetime locked away up there. You read the file from Dr. Whittenberg.”
Porter frowned. “How do you know about that? I didn’t tell you.”
Sarah smiled. “I know a lot of things.”
“Whittenberg’s file is bullshit.”
“Is it?”
“According to that file, you’re not even real. You’re some imaginary person my screwed-up brain created. Some kind of ghost in the machine.”
Sarah smiled again but said nothing.
Nearly two minutes passed before Porter spoke again. “Are you real?”
Sarah reached over and took Porter’s right hand. She placed it over her breast. “Do I feel real?”
He pulled away. “Stop that.”
“If I’m not real, it means you killed the real Sarah Werner back in New Orleans. You shot her in the head and left her to rot on her couch. Do you remember doing that, Sam? Maybe to cover more of your past.”
“I haven’t killed anyone.”
“You keep saying that, but that doesn’t make it true.”
“I’m trying…”
“Trying what?”
“I’m trying to remember, but that part of my life is so cloudy,” Porter told her. “It’s like trying to remember an old movie that played on the television in the corner of the room while you were also reading a book. Background noise, barely there. When I reach for those thoughts, they pull back, sink a little further in the muck.”
“In his file, Dr. Whittenberg said your brain was trying to protect you. Shielding your conscious memory from the horrible events of your past, things you did but you weren’t willing to accept. Maybe that’s the answer—you need to accept what you did, make peace with your actions, and that cloud will lift.” She paused for
a second, then added, “You remembered what happened in the alley. The rest is there, too.”
Porter hadn’t told her that, hadn’t mentioned the alley at all. He was sure of that. “I remember…”
But what did he remember?
Porter said, “I remember chasing after that kid. Weasel. I remember parking on Cumberland, cornering him in the alley, running after him. The dealer Hillburn had been trying to collar for months. He…”
“He what?”
“Hurry, they’re coming,” Porter mumbled, more to himself.
“Why were you in that alley, Sam?”
“I was chasing Weasel.”
“Were you?”
Porter reached for the phone sitting in the center console.
“You’re not allowed to call anyone,” Sarah told him. “You do and your friends will die. You need to remember that. We’re watching you, Sam. Don’t, even for a second, ever believe you’re alone today.”
Porter wasn’t trying to make a call. He had turned the phone over and was looking at the business card taped to the back. “Where did Anson get this?”
“There’s the airport, up there on the left,” Sarah said.
97
Clair
Day 6 • 3:39 AM
The brown paper sack contained a Snickers bar, an orange, and a package of peanut butter crackers. Not exactly the meal of champions but far better than the nothingness that filled Clair’s belly earlier. She gobbled the food down, saving the orange for last—washed everything down with about half the water and tried not to eat so fast that the food came back up.
Clair was halfway through the meal before she realized she had been hungry, and she knew that was a good sign. A few hours earlier, she had no desire to eat. Her stomach twisted and churned and ached, and the idea of putting any food in there just made her feel sicker. Being hungry was good.
When she finished, Clair went back to the vent. “Are you there?”
At first, there was no reply. She didn’t hear anything from the room beside her. When the mayor did speak, his voice was meek. “Yeah.”
“Did he give you anything to eat?”
