The Sixth Wicked Child

by J. D. Barker

  I’m so sorry, Nash.

  Kloz?

  Kloz hit him?

  No, no, no, no. It couldn’t be Kloz.

  The altered video footage at the prison in New Orleans, Montehugh Labs, Stroger Hospital. The chaos at Metro that allowed for Bishop and Porter to get out. These were all impossible feats for the average person, but they were the kind of thing Klozowski could do with several keystrokes.

  Two dead at the hospital.

  Clair.

  This couldn’t be Kloz. He wouldn’t hurt Clair, would he?

  Nash ran his hand over the floor around him, searching for his phone in the dirt and grime, but he couldn’t find it. Either out of reach or taken altogether.

  Somebody groaned.

  A moan filled with this wet, slurpy sound.

  “Warnick?”

  Definitely still the hallway. The groan came again, more urgent this time, further down from where Nash lay. Nash reached for the wall at his back and forced himself to stand, fighting the lightheadedness and pain. When he got to his feet, he touched his head with his free hand. His fingers came away wet. He knew he was bleeding, but he wasn’t sure how bad.

  He could hear Warnick breathing. Quick, ragged breaths.

  Nash held himself up with the wall, moved toward the sound, gun drawn.

  When he reached Warnick, he nearly tripped over him. The man was slumped on the floor, his shoulders against the wall. His shirt and jacket were soaked in blood, and when Nash found the man’s hands, they were over a bullet wound in his chest just above and to the right of his heart. From the sound of it, the bullet pierced his lung. Who knew what else. “Can you talk?”

  Warnick said something, but it was far from an intelligible word. Blood spattered from his lips. Nash felt the droplets smack against his own cheek.

  Nash leaned in closer. “Do you still have your phone?”

  The man nodded, a weak, jerky motion.

  Nash patted his pockets and found the phone in his jacket. When the screen lit up, the device indicated no signal. He hadn’t expected one, not all the way down here, but still.

  Warnick’s body spasmed. Grew stiff, then collapsed again.

  The hallway grew quiet.

  Nash fumbled with the phone, located the flashlight button, and turned it on.

  Warnick’s dead eyes stared up at him.

  There was far more blood than Nash had expected. Along with the lung, the bullet may have nicked the pulmonary artery, maybe even his heart. Pure adrenaline carried him this far. None of that really mattered—he was gone.

  Something squeaked at the end of the hallway, and Nash brought up the light.

  Standing in the doorway leading to the old hospital was a man in a black mask, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses under the cloth. Some kind of device rested on his forehead, pushed up and out of the way held in place with a strap, maybe night vision goggles. He’d come through the swinging doors with a gurney in tow.

  Although his face was covered, Nash recognized his clothing. He brought up his gun. “Don’t you fucking move, Kloz!”

  108

  Porter

  Day 6 • 5:39 AM

  A heavy wool charcoal overcoat, a gray scarf with matching watch cap, and black leather gloves. Porter had found the clothing in the Cadillac Escalade waiting for him at the airport. The .38 was in his right overcoat pocket. Every time he took his hand out of that pocket, that same hand seemed to find its way back in there out of an unconscious desire to feel the metal of that gun under his touch. The gun brought a grounding familiarity.

  In his left hand, Porter held the cell phone. The crowd outside the Guyon was enormous and still growing—he’d parked three blocks over and hustled through the snow, since it was impossible to get closer. The odds of him finding Bishop were slim, but something told him Bishop could find him with that phone.

  A helicopter circled overhead.

  Law enforcement personnel from various agencies were everywhere—uniforms around the perimeter, undercover officers in the crowd. He didn’t find them particularly difficult to spot—most of the spectators were talking, making jokes, anxiously checking every approaching car, while the officers tasked with combing the crowd were silent, systematically checking faces.

  Looking for him.

  He knew they wanted to pick him up as much as they wanted to nab Bishop, so Porter kept the cap pulled low on his head, the scarf covering as much of his face as possible, as he scanned the crowd.

  If Bishop planned to release the virus here, he’d need some kind of delivery method. Porter’s first thought had been the sprinkler system at the Guyon, particularly after what happened at Metro, but everyone was outside.

  The phone vibrated.

  Unknown caller.

  “Quite the turnout, don’t you think?”

  Not Sarah, Bishop this time.

  Porter looked up a moment, studied the faces of the people around him. He knew the other man was close—his skin tingled with some sort of sixth sense. He didn’t see Bishop, though. “Tell me what happened to Libby?”

  “You know what happened to Libby.”

  “I know she’s dead now,” Porter replied bluntly. “But your diary doesn’t say what happened to her after the farmhouse. After you killed Stocks. You eventually found her again, right?”

  “Getting sentimental, Sam?”

  Porter peered through the crowd—he had to be here. “Connecting dots. Poole found Franklin Kirby’s hair hidden in a drawer in that house she was renting here in Chicago. How did she get it? She had the picture of your mother with Mrs. Carter, too. A gun. Fake ID. What happened to her after the farmhouse?”

  Bishop sighed. “She and I have a special place in our hearts for Mr. Franklin Kirby.”

  “You said he ran off with your mother.”

  “And I so wanted to thank him for that myself. Mother was elusive, as you well know. Franklin Kirby, though, he left a bit of a trail in his wake. He wasn’t difficult to find. I’d been watching him for years, so imagine my surprise when Libby said she recognized him all those years later.” Bishop paused a few seconds. “Why did you kill my friends, Sam? Why couldn’t you let us all go? We’d been through so much. Were we really just dollar signs to you? Cattle you needed to get to the meat market?”

  Porter saw him then, Bishop—a quick profile, then he turned and faced the other way. About twenty feet away in the crowd, a phone pressed to his ear. Porter pushed his way through and grabbed the back of his coat.

  Not Bishop.

  “If you get yourself arrested now, Sam, you’ll miss all the fun.”

  Porter gave the man an apologetic look, then turned in a slow circle. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Close.”

  109

  Nash

  Day 6 • 5:41 AM

  Kloz did move, he moved fast.

  Nash squeezed the trigger on his Beretta, and the bullet struck the metal door right where Kloz’s leg had been a moment earlier, then ricocheted back into the hallway, cracked the tile in several places along the wall, then finally disappeared with a puff of dust into the ceiling.

  Nash forced himself back to his feet, his legs rubbery beneath him. He closed the distance to the doors and pulled the gurney out of the still open doorway. A bullet struck the open door a few inches above his head, and he dropped low. Kloz was deep in the room, near another door, the night vision goggles over his eyes and the gun they’d taken from Warnick pointing back at Nash.

  Nash brought up the flashlight. Kloz quickly turned his head to the side, away from the light, then ran out through the door at his back. Crouching low, Nash shuffled after him.

  He found himself in another basement surrounded by stagnant air, tomblike, a place sealed away and forgotten a long time ago. The abandoned basement of Cook County General. As the beam of his flashlight worked over the large room, he felt as if he’d stepped into a time capsule. The Cook basement contained much of the same discarded medical equipment as Stro
ger, but everything was clearly from a different era. Glass IV bottles hung from metal poles. Some of the tubing looked like it was made from cloth or discolored rubber rather than plastic, rotten and degraded. Machinery with large dials and displays, all seemingly impossibly big and heavy, coated in dust. Sheets were draped over some, these things left to die.

  Nash caught the movement from the corner of his eye. On the opposite end of the room, another door opened on protesting hinges. Klozowski shouted back at him, “You think you know Sam, but you don’t! He’s not the man you believe him to be! He’s not a good man at all. He’s no better than any of the others. Any one of them willing to sacrifice us kids to make a buck. That’s all we ever were to them, dollar signs, everybody lining their pockets with our blood. They beat me to within an inch of death just for trying to pass a note, just for fighting for my own freedom and trying to help my friends!”

  “Where’s Clair?” Nash shouted back. “If you hurt her, I swear the things I’ll do to you will be worse than—”

  “Worse than what? You can’t hurt me,” Kloz yelled back. “I’m already dead!”

  Nash stood, planted his feet, and fired three quick shots in the direction of Klozowski’s voice. He dove back down as another bullet whizzed past his head.

  “You kill me, you’ll never find her!”

  Nash rose just enough to catch Klozowski diving through the open doorway and pulling the heavy metal door shut behind him. He crossed the room as quickly as he could, yanked open the door, and found himself at the base of a staircase, Klozowski’s muffled steps above him.

  110

  Porter

  Day 6 • 5:44 AM

  “How many years did they sell kids out of this hotel, Sam? Did you ever bring them here, or was it just Hillburn and the others?”

  Porter ignored him. “How did Libby get Kirby’s hair?”

  “I gave it to her.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Mother snipped it off the last night she was with him. She cut it off while he was sleeping, held the hair over him when he woke, and told him if he tried to follow her, she’d cut off something else while he slept, something that wouldn’t grow back.”

  “Your mother’s a lovely woman.”

  “She is.”

  “Have you been in contact with her this entire time?”

  “I want to know how you found Libby, Sam. I want to understand why you felt the need to torture her, to kill her; she did nothing to you.”

  “All these people are waiting on you, Bishop. Where are you?”

  “Is the helicopter making you nervous, Sam? You sound jittery. Are you wondering if the FBI can trace your phone in a crowd like this? Are you wondering just how close they are? Maybe watching you from above. I wonder if their IT people are as good as Klozowski. Technology always came so naturally to him, even when we were kids.”

  111

  Nash

  Day 6 • 5:46 AM

  At least one floor up, Nash heard another door open and close. With his flashlight in one hand and the gun in the other, he followed Klozowski as quickly as he could while still hugging the walls, prepared to dive back if he found him lying in wait, ready to fire.

  The next landing was deserted. A small, faded placard beside the door read MENTAL HEALTH. Nash opened the door slowly, ready for another bullet, but none came. Instead, he heard a voice. The Mayor’s voice, speaking from down the hall. A woman’s voice too. A flickering light.

  The Mayor screamed.

  The woman laughed.

  Nash turned off the phone’s flashlight and slipped the device into his pocket before easing through the door, leading with his Beretta. He found himself in the remains of a cafeteria, tables and chairs scattered about. Some broken, others overturned. Several pieces of furniture were draped in heavy white sheets. None of the overhead lights were on; there was only the flickering from the far corner.

  The mayor cried out again, a mix of anger and pain. “Talbot funded everything, I was just the middleman—not even that, not really.”

  “You looked the other way while this was happening in your city,” the woman replied, her voice calm, with a slight southern accent. “You profited. You could have stopped them at any time if you wanted to, but you didn’t. You turned a blind eye. You’re no better than the rest of them.”

  “I can give you names,” the mayor pleaded. “Everyone who was part of it. Or I can pay you—they’ll all pay you, you don’t have to do this!”

  “I want all the names, dear. You’re going to write them down for me.”

  The voices came from a television, an old boxy model mounted near the ceiling in the far corner of the cafeteria. Several others came to life, turning on one at a time in the other three corners, each bringing just a little more light to the room.

  Nash spun with his gun, expecting to find Klozowski standing near one of the sets, but he wasn’t in the room. On the screen, the mayor lay on a bed, naked, his hands and feet tied to each of the four corners. Nash recognized the room from the Langham—their missing video.

  “No! No! No! Don’t do that!” the Mayor said.

  “Then run through it all, one more time from the beginning,” the woman instructed.

  “All right, all right.” He drew in a breath between clenched teeth. “I don’t know all the details. I told you that already. All I did was provide a meeting venue, someplace for them to conduct their business.”

  “You gave them the Guyon Hotel.”

  “I didn’t give it to them. I just kept it empty, with Talbot. He’d submit plans to revive the place with the building commission. I’d help to tie it up in red tape. When the commission eventually rejected the proposal, his people would come back with another one. As long as he paid the fees to the city, the building remained vacant and locked down, kept the other developers away. If it hadn’t been the Guyon, we would have found someplace else.”

  “And they paid you to meet there?” she said. “To conduct their business?”

  The mayor nodded. “This went on before me—you understand that, right? This wasn’t my idea, I just stepped into it.”

  When she didn’t respond, he went on. “Every year, they brought the buyers in, then the children…not all kids, sometimes there were adults, too, but mostly kids. Not the good kind; these were the ones nobody wanted.”

  “Where did the children come from? Those children nobody wanted,” she said contemptuously.

  He shrugged. “Homeless, mostly, that’s what they told me. The foster system, I guess. I don’t know for sure. I didn’t ask. There’s a website, the website coordinated everything, that’s who you really want, not me. The URL is backpage.com. I bet you take them apart, and you’ll have whatever you need. That’s who you want. You can bust this wide open, if that’s what you’re after. I’ll help you, and we can go to the feds together, just untie me… just stop.”

  Her hand lashed out. It looked like she was holding a scalpel, but she moved so fast it was difficult to be sure. The blade flicked across the mayor’s cheek, and a line of red appeared. When he tried to turn his head, she cut him on the other side.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  She didn’t, though. She cut him again on his shoulder.

  He grimaced against the pain. “You said they took your son? I can help you find him. I can help you get him back! Is that what you’re after? Just give me his name and a phone. You can watch me, I won’t try anything, I promise. I’ll help you. I know a federal agent, someone we can trust.”

  She slashed at him again, this time right below his shoulder.

  “Just stop!”

  The video froze. Then the screen turned to snow.

  In the dim light, Klozowski stepped into the cafeteria. He held both his hands up. The gun was gone. Between the fingers of his right hand, he pinched something else.

  Nash trained the Baretta on him. “Drop it!”

  Klozowski shook his head. “You don’t want me to do that.”

>   With his free hand, he pulled back his jacket. An explosive vest was strapped to his chest, a wire trailing from his waist to the trigger in his hand.

  112

  Porter

  Day 6 • 5:51 AM

  “The Kid,” Porter said softly.

  “Yeah, The Kid,” Bishop replied with a quiet chuckle. “That day in the War Room, when you ran the case for me, it took every ounce of my willpower not to look at him and burst out laughing. We’d rehearsed, gone over how we wanted it to play out, but there, in the moment…that might have been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Oh, and then later, when he called you in your apartment and told you who I really was! Sam, if you could have seen me in the kitchen when your phone rang.”

  Porter heard a police siren in the distance, growing closer, coming from the west. He turned in that direction.

  On the phone, Bishop continued. “Standing there in your apartment while you talked to The Kid, Klozowski, I thought about everything you did to us—you, Welderman, Stocks, Hillburn—the whole lot of you, and I knew if I slit your throat there in your apartment, you’d get off easy. You needed this, Sam. You needed all of it to fully atone for your sins.”

  Everything made sense now. Why hadn’t Porter seen it earlier? “The hacks that created your identity as Paul Watson, the escape from Metro, all the problems with the security systems and video footage: that was all Kloz?”

  “He told all of us how dependent law enforcement was on tech. How you’d blindly follow leads and information from IT as if they held the holy grail, and I didn’t think that could possibly be true. He was right, though—through the entire investigation, he’d throw a scrap of meat out on the table, and the rest of you would eat it up like starving dogs. You made this easy, Sam. Today, we clean house. Today, we reset. The virus provides a fresh palate.”

  Porter thought of the man in the photograph he’d given to Poole. He glanced across the crowd at the FBI communications van.

  “What then? You can’t possibly expect to walk away from all this.”

  “You shouldn’t have taken Libby away from me, Sam. Not when we were kids, and not in that house. Not ever. All this blood, all on you.”