by J. D. Barker
“I imagine he’s getting tired of people asking him how he’s holding up, how he’s doing, how he’s hanging, or any other variation of well-being assertion,” Nash grumbled.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” He forced a smile. “Thank you for asking, Tom.”
“Anything you need, just ask.” Eisley shot Nash a glance.
“I appreciate that.” Porter turned back to Nash. “So, an accident?”
Nash nodded at a city bus parked near the curb about fifty feet away. “Man versus machine. Come on.”
Porter followed him, with Eisley a few paces behind, clipboard in tow.
A CSI tech photographed the front of the bus. Dented grill. Cracked paint an inch above the right headlight. Another investigator picked at something buried in the right front tire tread.
As they neared, he spotted the black body bag among a sea of uniforms standing before a growing crowd.
“The bus was moving at a good clip; its next stop is nearly a mile down the road,” Nash told them.
“I wasn’t speeding, dammit! Check the GPS. Don’t be throwing accusations like that out there!”
Porter turned to his left to find the bus driver. He was a big man, at least three hundred pounds. His black CTA jacket strained against the bulk it had been tasked to hold together. His wiry gray hair was matted on the left and reaching for the sky on the right. Nervous eyes stared back at them, jumping from Porter, to Nash, then Eisley, and back again. “That crazy fucker jumped right out in front of me. This ain’t no accident. He offed himself.”
“Nobody said you did anything wrong,” Nash assured him.
Eisley’s phone rang. He glanced at the display, held up a finger, and walked a few paces to the side to take the call.
The driver went on. “You start spreading around that I was speeding, and there goes my job, my pension . . . think I wanna be looking for work at my age? In this shit economy?”
Porter caught a glimpse of the man’s name tag. “Mr. Nelson, how about you take a deep breath and try to calm down?”
Sweat trickled down the man’s red face. “I’m gonna be pushing a broom somewhere all because that little prick picked my bus. I got thirty-one years behind me without an incident, and now this bullshit.”
Porter put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Do you think you can tell me what happened?”
“I need to keep my mouth shut until my union rep gets here, that’s what I need to do.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
The driver frowned. “What are you gonna do for me?”
“I can put in a good word with Manny Polanski down at Transit, for starters. If you didn’t do anything wrong, if you cooperate with us, there’s no reason for you to get suspended.”
“Shit. You think I’ll get suspended over this?” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “Jesus, I can’t afford that.”
“I don’t think they’ll do that if they know you worked with us, that you tried to help. There might not even be a need for a hearing,” Porter assured him.
“A hearing?”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened? Then I can talk to Manny for you, maybe save you the pain of all that.”
“You know Manny?”
“I worked my first two years on the job as a uniform with Transit. He’ll listen to me. You help us out, and I’ll put in a good word, I promise.”
The driver considered this, then finally took a deep breath and nodded. “It happened just like I said to your friend here. I made the stop at Ellis right on time—picked up two, dropped off one. I ran east down Fifty-Fifth, came around the bend. The light at Woodlawn was green, so there was no need to slow down—not that I was speeding. Check the GPS.”
“I’m sure you weren’t.”
“I wasn’t, I was just moving with the traffic. I might have been a few miles over the limit, but I wasn’t speeding,” he said.
Porter waved his hand dismissively. “You were heading east on Fifty-Fifth . . .”
The driver nodded. “Yeah. I saw a few people at the corner, not many. Three, maybe four. Then, just as I got close, this guy jumps out in front of my bus. No warning or nothing. One second he’s standing there, the next he’s in the street. I hit the brakes, but this thing doesn’t exactly stop on a dime. I hit him dead center. Launched him a good thirty feet.”
“What color was the light?” Porter asked.
“Green.”
“Not yellow?”
The driver shook his head. “No, green. I know, ’cause I watched it change. It didn’t turn yellow for another twenty seconds or so. I was already out of the bus when I saw it switch.” He pointed up at the signal. “Check the camera.”
Porter looked up. Over the last decade, nearly every intersection in the city had been outfitted with CCTV cameras. He’d remind Nash to pull the footage when they got back to the station. Most likely, his partner had already put in the order.
“He wasn’t crossing the street; that man jumped. You’ll see when you watch the video.”
Porter handed him a card. “Can you stick around a little bit, just in case I have more questions?”
The man shrugged. “You’re going to talk to Manny, right?”
Porter nodded. “Can you excuse us for a second?” He pulled Nash aside, lowering his voice. “He didn’t kill him intentionally. Even if this was a suicide, we’ve got no business here. Why’d you call me out?”
Nash put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay to do this? If you need more time, I get it—”
“I’m good,” Porter said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“If you need to talk—”
“Nash, I’m not a fucking child. Take off the kid gloves.”
“All right.” He finally relented. “But if this gets to be too much too soon, you gotta promise me you’ll tap out, got it? Nobody will think twice if you need to do that.”
“I think working will do me some good. I’ve been getting stir-crazy sitting around the apartment,” he admitted.
“This is big, Porter,” he said in a low voice. “You deserve to be here.”
“Christ, Nash. Will you spit it out?”
“It’s a good bet our vic was heading to that mailbox over there.” He glanced toward a blue postal box in front of a brick apartment building.
“How do you know?”
A grin spread across his partner’s face. “He was carrying a small white box tied up with black string.”
Porter’s eyes went wide. “Nooo.”
“Uh-huh.”
CHAPTER THREE
Porter
Day 1, 6:53 a.m.
Porter found himself staring down at the body, at the lumpy form under the black plastic shroud.
Words escaped him.
Nash asked the other officers and CSI techs to step back and give Porter space, to give him time alone with the victim. They shuffled back behind the yellow crime-scene tape, their voices low as they watched. To Porter, they were invisible. He only saw the black body bag and the small package lying beside it. It had been tagged with number 1 by CSI, no doubt photographed dozens of times from every possible angle. They knew better than to open it, though. They left that for him.
How many boxes just like it had there been now?
A dozen? No. Closer to two dozen.
He did the math.
Seven victims. Three boxes each.
Twenty-one.
Twenty-one boxes over nearly five years.
He had toyed with them. Never left a clue behind. Only the boxes.
A ghost.
Porter had seen so many officers come and go from the task force. With each new victim, the team would expand. The press would get wind of a new box, and they’d swarm like vultures. The entire city would come together on a massive manhunt. But then the third box would eventually arrive, the body would be found, and he’d disappear again. Lost among the shadows of obscurity. Months would pass; he’d fall ou
t of the papers. The task force dwindled as the team got pulled apart for more pressing matters.
Porter was the only one who had seen it through from the beginning. He had been there for the first box, recognizing it immediately for what it was—the start of a serial killer’s deranged spree. When the second box arrived, then the third, and finally the body, others saw too.
It was the start of something horrible. Something planned.
Something evil.
He had been there at the beginning. Was he now witnessing the end?
“What’s in the box?”
“We haven’t opened it yet,” Nash replied. “But I think you know.”
The package was small. Approximately four inches square and three inches high.
Like the others.
Wrapped in white paper and secured with black string. The address label was handwritten in careful script. There wouldn’t be any prints, never were. The stamps were self-adhesive—they wouldn’t find saliva.
He glanced back at the body bag. “Do you really think it’s him? Do you have a name?”
Nash shook his head. “No wallet or ID on him. He left his face on the pavement and in the bus’s grill. We ran his prints but couldn’t find a match. He’s a nobody.”
“Oh, he’s somebody,” Porter said. “Do you have any gloves?”
Nash pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and handed them to Porter. Porter slipped them on and nodded toward the box. “Do you mind?”
“We waited for you,” Nash said. “This is your case, Sam. Always was.”
When Porter crouched and reached for the box, one of the crime-scene techs rushed over, fumbling with a small video camera. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have orders to document this.”
“It’s fine, son. Only you, though. Are you ready?”
A red light on the front of the camera blinked to life, and the tech nodded. “Go ahead, sir.”
Porter turned the box so he could read the address label, carefully avoiding the droplets of crimson. “Arthur Talbot, 1547 Dearborn Parkway.”
Nash whistled. “Ritzy neighborhood. Old money. I don’t recognize the name, though.”
“Talbot’s an investment banker,” the CSI tech replied. “Heavy into real estate too. Lately he’s been converting warehouses near the lakefront into lofts—doing his part to force out low-income families and replace them with people who can afford the high rent and Starbucks grandes on the regular.”
Porter knew exactly who Arthur Talbot was. He looked up at the tech. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Paul Watson, sir.”
Porter couldn’t help but grin. “You’ll make an excellent detective one day, Dr. Watson.”
“I’m not a doctor, sir. I’m working on my thesis, but I’ve got at least two more years to go.”
Porter chuckled. “Doesn’t anyone read anymore?”
“Sam, the box?”
“Right. The box.”
He tugged at the string and watched as the knot unraveled and came apart. The white paper beneath had been neatly folded over the corners, ending in perfect little triangles.
Like a gift. He wrapped it like a gift.
The paper came away easily, revealing a black box. Porter set the paper and string aside, glanced at Nash and Watson, then slowly lifted the lid.
The ear had been washed clean of blood and rested on a blanket of cotton.
Just like the others.
CHAPTER FOUR
Porter
Day 1, 7:05 a.m.
“I need to see his body.”
Nash glanced nervously at the growing crowd. “Are you sure you want to do that here? There are a lot of eyes on you right now.”
“Let’s get a tent up.”
Nash signaled to one of the officers.
Fifteen minutes later, much to the dismay of oncoming traffic, a twelve-by-twelve tent stood on Fifty-Fifth Street, blocking one of the two eastbound lanes. Nash and Porter slipped through the flap, followed closely by Eisley and Watson. A uniformed guard took up position at the door in case someone snuck past the barricades at the scene perimeter and tried to get in.
Six 1,200-watt halogen floodlights stood on yellow metal tripods in a semicircle around the body, filling the small space with sharp, bright light.
Eisley reached down and peeled back the top flap of the bag.
Porter knelt. “Has he been moved at all?”
Eisley shook his head. “We photographed him, and then I got him covered as quickly as I could. That’s how he landed.”
He was facedown on the blacktop. There was a small pool of blood near his head with a streak leading toward the edge of the tent. His dark hair was close-cropped, sprinkled with gray.
Porter donned another pair of latex gloves from a box at his left and gently lifted the man’s head. It pulled away from the cold asphalt with a slurp not unlike Fruit Roll-Ups as they’re peeled from the plastic. His stomach grumbled, and he realized he hadn’t eaten yet. Probably a good thing. “Can you help me turn him over?”
Eisley took the man’s shoulder, and Nash positioned himself at his feet.
“On three. One, two . . .”
It was too soon for rigor to set in; the body was loose. It looked like the right leg was broken in at least three spots; the left arm too, probably more.
“Oh, God. That’s nasty.” Nash’s eyes were fixed on the man’s face. More accurately, where his face should have been. His cheeks were gone, only torn flaps remaining. His jawbone was clearly visible but broken—his mouth gaped open as if someone had gripped both halves of his jaw and pulled them apart like a bear trap. One eye was ruptured, oozing vitreous fluid. The other stared blindly up at them, green in the bright light.
Porter leaned in closer. “Do you think you can reconstruct this?”
Eisley nodded. “I’ll get somebody on it as soon as we get him back to my lab.”
“Tough to say, but based on his build and the slight graying in the hair, I’d guess he’s late forties, early fifties, at the most.”
“I should be able to get you a more precise age too,” Eisley said. He was examining the man’s eyes with a penlight. “The cornea is still intact.”
Porter knew they were able to able to estimate age through the carbon dating of material in the eyes; it was called the Lynnerup method. The process could narrow the age down to within a year or two.
The man wore a navy pinstripe suit. The left sleeve was shredded; a jagged bone poked out near the elbow.
“Did someone find his other shoe?” The right was missing. His dark sock was damp with blood.
“A uniform picked it up. It’s on that table over there.” Nash pointed to the far right. “He was wearing a fedora too.”
“A fedora? Are those making a comeback?”
“Only in the movies.”
“There’s something in this pocket.” Watson was pointing at the right breast pocket of the man’s jacket. “It’s square. Another box?”
“No, too thin.” Porter carefully unbuttoned the jacket and reached inside, retrieving a small Tops composition book, like the ones students carried prior to tablets and smartphones: 4½″ x 3¼″ with a black and white cover and college-ruled pages. It was nearly full, each page covered in handwriting so small and precise that two lines of text filled the space normally occupied by one. “This could be something. Looks like some kind of diary. Good catch, Doc.”
“I’m not a—”
Porter waved a hand at him. “Yeah, yeah.” He turned back to Nash. “I thought you said you checked his pockets?”
“We only searched the pants for a wallet. I wanted to wait for you to process the body.”
“We should check the rest, then.”
He began with the right front pants pocket, checking them again in case something was missed, then worked his way around the body. As items were discovered, he gently set them down at his side. Nash tagged them and Watson photographed.
“That’s it. Not much to g
o on.”
Porter examined the items:
Dry cleaner’s receipt
Pocket watch
Seventy-five cents in assorted change
The receipt was generic. Aside from number 54873, it didn’t contain any identifying information, not even the name or address of the cleaners.
“Run everything for prints,” Porter instructed.
Nash frowned. “What for? We have him, and his prints came back negative.”
“Guess I’m hoping for a Hail Mary. Maybe we’ll find a match and it will lead to someone who can identify him. What do you make of the watch?”
Nash held the timepiece up to the light. “I don’t know anyone who carries a pocket watch anymore. Think maybe this guy’s older than you thought?”
“The fedora would suggest that too.”
“Unless he’s just into vintage,” Watson pointed out. “I know a lot of guys like that.”
Nash pushed the crown, and the watch’s face snapped open. “Huh.”
“What?”
“It stopped at fourteen past three. That’s not when this guy got hit.”
“Maybe the impact jarred it?” Porter thought aloud.
“There’s not a scratch on it, though, no sign of damage.”
“Probably something internal, or maybe it wasn’t wound. Can I take a look?”
Nash handed the pocket watch to Porter.
Porter twisted the crown.”It’s loose. The springs not grabbing. Amazing craftsmanship though. I think it’s handmade. Collectible for sure.”
“I’ve got an uncle,” Watson announced.
“Well, congrats on that, kid,” Porter replied.
“He owns an antique shop downtown. I bet he could give us some color on this.”
“You’re really trying to earn a gold star today, aren’t you? Okay, you’re on watch duty. Once these things are logged into inventory, take it down there and see what you can find out.”
Watson nodded, his face beaming.
“Anybody notice anything odd about what he’s wearing?”
Nash examined the body once more, then shook his head.
“The shoes are nice,” Eisley said.
Porter smiled. “They are, aren’t they? Those are John Lobbs. They go for about fifteen hundred a pair. The suit is cheap, though, possibly from a box store or the mall. Probably no more than a few hundred at best.”
