The Fifth to Die

by J. D. Barker

  Four dead.

  She wondered if Kloz had gotten anywhere on the list of saltwater pools, the local suppliers, or the aquariums.

  Clair found herself glancing at the coffee machine in the corner of the room, then quickly changed her mind. She’d get something out of the vending machine instead, something in a sealed, lisinopril-proof package would do nicely.

  35

  Nash

  Day 3 • 6:43 a.m.

  “The heater in this clunker is for shit,” Klozowski said, rubbing his hands together in front of the vent.

  They were parked across the street from Cars R Us on Pulaski. According to the sign, the dealership wouldn’t open for another hour—two hours earlier than normal, for some kind of Valentine’s Day sale. Red streamers hung all around the lot.

  After spending most of the night at the Davieses’ house supervising CSI, Nash found just enough time to run home, shower, and change clothes, before picking up Kloz at his apartment downtown. He found him sitting on the stoop outside chugging Red Bull.

  Nash patted the dashboard. “Connie has seen better days, but I’ll get her back to prom-queen status. It’s just going to take a little work.”

  Kloz’s hands stopped moving, and he stared at him. “You’re creeping me the fuck out right now. I’m serious. I’m getting a Christine vibe from you, and that didn’t end well for anyone, not even the car. Why don’t you trade this hunk of scrap in on a nice Toyota or Honda? Something with airbags and a CD player. That’s an eight-track player, Nash. A fucking eight-track player. Where the hell are you going to find an eight-track?”

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” Nash said. He reached over and banged a fist on the glove box. It popped open and fell against Kloz’s knees. Eight-track tapes rained down to the floor well. “Pop one of those bad boys in.”

  Kloz stared at the puddle of tapes at his feet. “This car has officially been upgraded to legendary status.” He reached down and plucked up one of the tapes. “Hell yeah.” He slipped the cartridge into the eight-track player with a satisfying clunk. A moment later the opening riff of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” started crackling through the blown speakers with a wheezy trill.

  Nash drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while Kloz began to sway back and forth to the beat. “John Lennon had nothing on this guy. Pure genius.”

  Kloz started humming.

  Nash reached over and ejected the tape.

  “What the hell?” Klozowski frowned.

  “If I let you play that, you’re going to start singing, then I’m going to start singing, then we’re going to have some kind of moment, and when it’s over things will be weird between us. I’m not ready to sing Neil Diamond with you. That’s a big step. You haven’t been in the field long enough,” Nash said.

  “You would sing with Clair or Porter, though, wouldn’t you?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Different how?”

  “Just different.”

  “I think I have partner envy. We don’t sing in IT.”

  Nash peered out across the street. “We’ve got movement.”

  A man in a thick blue winter coat climbed out of a red SUV and darted through the snow for the squat gray building at the center of the lot. He struggled with the key in his gloved hands, got the door open, and slipped inside.

  “Must be the manager or the owner,” Kloz said. “You were right. He came in early to prep for the sale.”

  “Let’s go,” Nash said. He unfastened his seat belt and pushed open his door. Icy wind nearly knocked him over, and he fought for footing on the ice. He reached for the collar of his coat and held it tight around his neck. He wished he had a hat.

  When the traffic broke, he crossed the street as quickly as he could without falling down. Klozowski followed behind him.

  Cars R Us was a small lot, a half acre at the most, surrounded by a high black fence and tall yellow floodlights set to illuminate the selection of late-model used cars in the best possible light. Each vehicle was tagged with a bit of text beneath the inflated price: Low Miles! No Rust! Great Value! Clean!

  Nash hustled past them and stopped outside the office door.

  Kloz almost lost his balance on a patch of ice on the sidewalk. He quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Nash stared at him.

  “I’m moving to Florida or LA when this is all over. Plenty of work for an IT guy in warm climates,” Kloz said when he finally got to the building.

  “You do that, and you’ll be shunned by Cubs fans. Warm-climate teams are the worst—no fan base. People are too busy driving around the beach all day in search of a parking spot or out playing golf. They don’t have time for real sports.”

  Kloz taped himself on the chest. “Me, IT guy. Do you think I know the first thing about sports?”

  Nash shook his head. “I will never sing with you.”

  “Whatever.”

  The door to the small office building was locked, but Nash could see the man moving around inside. He knocked at the glass and held up his badge and identification. The man inside turned from a file cabinet in the far corner, a coffee scooper in his hand. He had no trouble displaying his annoyance at the interruption and made a show of dropping the scooper back into a Costco-size can of coffee before shuffling over to the door. He still wore the blue coat, now unzipped halfway down his large belly. A green sweater poked out from beneath.

  The man studied the badge through the dirty glass door. “What do you want?”

  “That’s no way to greet public servants,” Kloz said.

  “We’re with Metro PD. We need to speak to you,” Nash shouted back, competing with the howling wind.

  The man gave a longing look back at the coffeemaker, then twisted the lock in the door and pushed it up, ushering them in. “Hurry up, don’t let the heat out.”

  Nash and Kloz slipped inside, and he locked the door behind them. He looked back at the coffeemaker.

  “You seem pretty intent on getting that thing going,” Nash said.

  He sighed. “Sorry, I quit smoking last year and quit drinking the year before that. Caffeine is the only vice I have left.”

  “Go ahead,” Nash said.

  They watched the man hustle back over to the file cabinet and carefully measure out ten scoops of coffee grounds and fill the machine’s reservoir from a small sink in the corner of the room. He pushed a button and the coffeemaker came to life, hissing and popping as the water heated. He turned back to them and finally relaxed. “I’m Mel Cumberland. What can I do for you fine officers of the law?”

  “I’m Detective Nash, and this is Edwin Klozowski.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, tapped at the screen, and held it up. “Do you know this girl?”

  Cumberland’s hand shot over to the desk at his side, and Nash nearly reached for his gun before he realized the man was only retrieving a pair of glasses. He heard Kloz snicker behind him.

  Cumberland slipped the glasses on and stepped closer. “May I?”

  Nash handed him the phone.

  He brought the phone to about an inch of his face, tilting his head slightly to get a better view through the glasses. “Should I know her?”

  “There’s the car,” Kloz said from behind him. Nash turned and followed his pointing finger to a bright green Mazda2 parked in the side lot.

  “Oh, her,” Cumberland said, handing the phone back to Nash. “Listen, I go through this with parents all the time. There is no law that says a kid can’t buy a car. They’re just not allowed to drive it until they get their license. She had no credit, so I told her she can’t take it off the lot until she’s made at least ten payments. She’ll be sixteen by then, so no harm, no foul. If her parents are going to call the cops on me, I suggest they review the rules and regulations before they start wasting taxpayer money. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do with your time. I know I do.”

  Behind Cumberland, the coffeemaker sputtered. With practiced care, he swapped the po
t with a stained mug, held it there, then swapped them again when the mug was full. Printed across the front in faded black letters were the words: NO FUNNY SAYING HERE, JUST SOMETHING TO HOLD MY CAFFEINE (AND SOMETIMES WHISKEY).

  “I wouldn’t mind a cup of that,” Klozowski said. “Maybe in one of those, though.” He nodded at a sleeve of Styrofoam cups lying on the side of the cabinet.

  Cumberland filled two cups and handed them to Kloz and Nash. “She made the first two payments on time, but she’s late on the third one, nearly two weeks now. Kids have no sense of responsibility these days. Probably blew her money on a prom dress or some shit and didn’t think to stop by and say she’d be late. I usually cut the kids a break and waive the late fee the first time around, try and get them to understand the importance of timely payments, but rather than fess up, some of them hide. They do it twice, and we got a problem.”

  “She’s dead,” Nash said, watching the man’s face for a reaction.

  There was no reaction, only: “Well, I didn’t do it.”

  “No?”

  Cumberland set his mug down on the filing cabinet and raised both hands. “I’m not sure what you’re thinking, but all I did was sell her a car. I’ve seen her maybe four, five times tops. She came in, looked around the lot a few times, settled on the Mazda, then set up an in-house payment plan, that’s it. Like I said, she’s two weeks behind on the latest payment. Last I saw of her, it was right after the first of the year. Technically, she didn’t even buy that car. She needed to build up ten percent down before we could make it official.”

  “So you haven’t seen her since January?” Nash asked.

  Cumberland walked around to the other side of the desk and hit a few keys on his computer keyboard. “Ella Reynolds, right? She last came in on January third and put down three hundred and twelve dollars. I told her she only needed to do two hundred, but she didn’t want someone to buy that car out from under her, so she paid extra to try and get the deposit together. Month before that she paid two hundred seventy-three. That was on December second.”

  “Wonder where she was getting the money,” Kloz said. “We don’t have a record of her working.”

  Cumberland scrolled through his file. “According to her application, she tutored other students. That’s what she wrote for employment, anyway.”

  “She might not have told her parents about that,” Klozowski said. “I used to tutor too and I never told Pops. He would have cut my allowance. I kept my mouth shut and collected from both.”

  “I’m sure you were a stellar example of a child,” Nash replied. “Tutoring explains all the Starbucks visits. Aside from browsing for a ride, she might have been meeting students there.”

  “Starbucks and the library, that’s where I always did it,” Kloz agreed.

  Nash scrolled to a photograph of Lili Davies on his phone and showed it to Cumberland. “How about her? Have you ever seen her here?”

  He peered at the tiny display, squinting behind his glasses. “Nope. Her I do not know.”

  “Could she have come in and met with another salesman?”

  Cumberland shook his head. “Even if she did, I’m always here. I make it my business to know every face that comes through the gate. Some of these younger sales guys are good, but I’m better. Somebody may walk away from them without buying, but not me. I always get the sale.”

  “We’re going to need a list of all your employees,” Nash said.

  “That’s easy. There’s me, Brandon Stringer, and Doug Fredenburg. Doug’s my mechanic. He’s been out sick the past two days with the flu. Brandon is due in at eight.”

  “Did either of them have contact with the Reynolds girl?”

  “Not that I know of,” Cumberland told Nash. “The first time she came in, Brandon was with another customer. She was a determined little thing, gave the Mazda a quick once-over outside, then came right up here into the office and told me she wanted to buy it. No test drive or nothing. Not that I would have let someone without a license test-drive, but I would have taken her for a ride in it.”

  “Where was the other guy? Fredenburg?”

  Cumberland tapped at his computer again. “Looks like he was under a Pontiac in the garage, changing out a master brake cylinder. He rarely has contact with the customers. You’re more than welcome to wait for Brandon to get in. Maybe take a look around the lot?” He nodded at Nash’s Chevy Nova parked across the street. “Your car’s got the potential to be a sweet ride, but do you really have the time and resources to get it there? How about trading it in on something nice, something turnkey.”

  “Something with working heat and maybe a stereo without a crank on the side,” Kloz said. “Your car is so old, you have to feed the horses under the hood.”

  Both men stared at him.

  “Come on, that was funny.”

  “No, son, it really wasn’t,” Cumberland said.

  Nash and Kloz climbed back into the Chevy. Snow swirled over the windshield.

  Nash started the car and glanced back across the street. “I don’t think the coffee king is our guy.”

  “I’ll defer the actual detecting to you detectives, but I’d have to agree, he doesn’t fit. Grabbing a girl from his own lot seems downright stupid, and frankly, he doesn’t seem motivated enough to pull something like that off.”

  “He’s too old,” Nash said. “These kind of crimes tend to have a sexual motivation typically reserved for the thirty-five-and-under set. Even if there is no actual sex, it’s the driving factor. Cumberland’s easily in his fifties. Overweight. A teenage girl would beat the hell out of him if he tried to offer her candy and flowers. He’s got no shot of kidnapping out in the open like this. We’re looking for someone younger, stronger, someone with motivation.”

  “It could still be one of his employees,” Kloz pointed out. “Just because he said Lili Davies didn’t come in doesn’t really make it so.”

  “Both girls were in the market for a car. This is the closest thing to a lead we’ve got. We’ll wait for them to get in.”

  Kloz reached for the power button on the stereo.

  “Don’t.”

  36

  Poole

  Day 3 • 6:44 a.m.

  They had been there all night.

  CSI moving in and out of Libby McInley’s battered house in thin plastic suits, at least a dozen of them in all. Poole watched from the driver’s seat of his Cherokee. Careful as they were, he tried not to think about what all that traffic was doing to his crime scene.

  SAIC Hurless was on the front stoop, his cell phone pressed to his ear. Special Agent Diener was somewhere inside.

  Poole watched as Hurless disconnected his call and crossed the street to where Poole was parked.

  He rolled down the window.

  “She’s been dead a few days, according to the ME. We think he started . . . we think she was bound to the bed around this time Wednesday, and he took his time with her, ten to twelve hours from the first wound to the last. He started with her toes, finished with her fingers. The eyes, ear, and tongue were somewhere in between.”

  “What about the cuts?”

  “The ME says he did those as he went along. Probably alternated between cuts and removing appendages,” Hurless explained. “He kept her in the bed. She urinated and defecated in place. The bindings at her right ankle cut clean through to muscle.”

  Poole wouldn’t close his eyes. He knew if he did that, he would see all of this play out. He would see Bishop tying this woman to the bed and torturing her for the better part of half a day as her screams went unanswered. “This seems sloppy . . . for him. For Bishop.”

  “He’s evolving. We know who he is now. He doesn’t have to be as careful as he was before,” Hurless said.

  “Maybe.”

  “You think it’s something else?”

  “Something, yeah.”

  “That’s a bit cryptic.”

  Poole said, “He never cut a body like that. The toes and fingers, t
hat’s all new.”

  “Like I said, escalating.”

  “I suppose.”

  Hurless shuffled his feet. His breath hung around him in the icy air like a smoker’s cloud. Snow had begun falling again, thick, heavy flakes. “You followed Porter’s bread crumbs out here, didn’t you.”

  This was more of a statement than a question. Poole nodded. “He’s got good instincts.”

  “Good instincts? He worked with this guy for the better part of a week and had no clue. Then, when he had the chance to bust him, he let him go. Let him walk right out from under half of Chicago Metro. He should have caught Bishop five years ago, we shouldn’t be here, and that woman”—he nodded back at the house—“should still be breathing. Keep this in perspective.”

  Poole said nothing to this, his eyes on the house. The broken-down car in the driveway, the bike on the side. “She was isolated here, a shut-in. When we check with her parole officer, I think we’re going to find he couldn’t get her out of the house at all. He came to her.”

  It was Hurless’s turn to go quiet. A year ago he might have jibed Poole for such a statement, but Poole had proven himself time and time again. He requested his assignment to this task force for precisely that reason.

  Special Agent Diener came out onto the front stoop of the house, saw both of them, and waved. “There’s something you need to see,” he shouted.

  Poole got out of the Jeep and followed Hurless back across the street, his head low to block the flakes that had taken on the feel of ice and sleet.

  Inside, the power was still off. CSI had set up a generator in the backyard, and orange extension cords snaked through the hallways and rooms. Double halogen floodlights on yellow metal stands were positioned around the residence, filling every inch with bright light and harsh-lined shadows. Hurless and Poole followed Diener from the front door to the back bedroom, where Libby McInley still lay. A photographer slowly made his way around the bed, capturing every inch of her horror. Poole could hear her screaming from that frozen, blood-filled mouth.

  Another tech was dismantling the 3D imaging camera set up on a tripod at the center of the room. When operating, the camera spun at the top of the stand and took a full image of the room from all angles, stills and video. The camera would then be moved to another room to repeat—images would be captured from the entire house, and possibly outside. A computer would stitch the images together, and agents could virtually walk the crime scene from anywhere at any time, as it appeared today. Poole had no need for this technology. For better or worse, he had near-perfect retention, eidetic memory. He wouldn’t be able to cleanse his mind of what he saw here if his life depended on it. The sights, scents, and sounds all burned into his brain.