The Fifth to Die

by J. D. Barker

  “I’d prefer not to get lost,” Nash said.

  “Hold—” Espinosa said. Then: “Our ambulances are here. Both will come in behind the SWAT vans on either end of the road, followed by the patrol cars to seal off the block on the off chance this guy gets out of the house. All teams in place?”

  “Back of house, in place,” Brogan said.

  “East street, copy.”

  “West street, copy.”

  “Patrol 6, 144, 38, and 1218, all in place.”

  Silence.

  “Nash?” Brogan again.

  Nash drew in a deep breath. “I’m ready, copy.”

  “Okay, pull up on the house whenever you’re ready. Number eight-three on your right. Blue with white trim. We’ll follow your lead.”

  “Copy.”

  Nash drew a deep breath through his mouth, held it, then let it out slowly from his nose.

  This didn’t do shit to calm him.

  His hands were shaking. His heart was pounding. He had been involved with hundreds of raids over the course of his career, yet this feeling never diminished. Porter had once told him the day it did, the day you entered something like this calm, was the day you got shot.

  “Ready or not, here we come,” he said.

  Connie’s gearshift always stuck in Park. He put some muscle behind it and dropped her into Drive. The old car crept forward.

  “Slow and steady, Nash, mindful of the ice. They plowed this morning, but the street’s a mess again,” Espinosa said. “Six more houses up on the right. You’ll see it when you hit the top of that hill.”

  Nash’s tires fought for purchase. There was a sweet spot when driving on snow and ice. Too fast or too slow, and cars slid, grappled for hold. Connie wanted to go faster, but he held her back. He saw the blue and white trim of the peaked roof first, and then the address numbers came into view next to the front door. There were a couple cars parked on the street, nothing but giant white mounds under all the snow, color, make, and model indiscernible. The space in front of the house was empty, though, and long enough that he didn’t have to parallel park. Nash guided the car in and slipped her back into Park.

  Espinosa crackled again in the small earpiece. “Nash at target, all teams stand by for my go.”

  Nash considered leaving the car running. Would a delivery driver leave the car running? He never paid attention. That made sense, though, in this cold. In and out, in and out, no reason to shut it off.

  Upchurch could use your car to run.

  He seriously doubted Upchurch would get all the way to the street, but the thought was enough for him to kill the engine and pocket the keys. Connie’s motor sputtered again, realized she was no longer running, then went quiet with a groan.

  Nash scooped up the Amazon box, opened his door, and stepped out into the storm. The snow had kicked up again, flakes an inch thick. He knew this would compromise visibility. The wind lashed at his bare cheeks as he stepped around the car and made his way to where he imagined the sidewalk probably was, lost beneath a blanket of snow.

  “We’ve got movement,” Espinosa said in his ear. “Second-floor curtain on the left.”

  Nash hadn’t seen it.

  He was at the steps.

  He took them carefully, one hand holding the box, the other gripping the metal railing.

  When he reached the small porch at the top, he saw a doorbell, began to reach for it, then remembered what Espinosa had told him only a few minutes earlier.

  Focus, asshat. Focus.

  He wanted to look behind him. He wanted to look up and down the street to confirm everyone was where they said they were, but he didn’t. Instead, he knocked at the door—three heavy knocks, enough to hurt his knuckles.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the SWAT vans approaching quickly from both ends of the street. They skidded to a stop in the middle of the road, the back doors already open, men in black body armor spilling out.

  In his ear, Espinosa called out orders. “Go, go, go!”

  Nobody answered the door.

  Nash could see inside through a thin window beside the door—nobody. When he heard boots crunching through the snow on the steps behind him, he pivoted to the left, away from the door. Thomas or Tibideaux, he couldn’t tell who, attacked the old wood-frame door with a large black metal battering ram—two hits and the deadbolt buckled, the door slammed in, and men in black streamed past him into the house.

  Another loud bang rang out from the back, rattling the windows. A stun grenade.

  Brogan: “We’re in! I’ve got a body on the kitchen table! Female! Otherwise, kitchen clear!”

  “Living room, clear!”

  “Basement steps—heading down!”

  “This is Espinosa, at second-floor landing.” His voice low, a whisper. “Bathroom, clear. Bedroom one, clear. Bedroom two—”

  His voice dropped off. Nash pushed the earpiece deeper into his ear.

  “Freeze! Don’t move! Don’t—”

  Nash pulled the assault rifle from the Amazon box and ran inside. The steps leading to the second floor were at the back of the living room. He took them two at a time. On the small landing at the top, Espinosa had his weapon trained on something or someone in the second bedroom. Another member of his team stood behind him, his gun pointed at the floor.

  Nash watched Espinosa step into the room.

  Brogan’s voice came over his earpiece again, no longer shouting. “Oh hell, what the fuck is this . . . Christ . . . we’ve got another body down here, another girl. Basement otherwise clear.”

  113

  Poole

  Day 4 • 4:06 p.m.

  Weidner sat in a metal chair bolted to the floor behind a matching table. His eyes darted around the room, his fingers fidgeted, tripping over one another, one hand on the table, the other on his lap.

  Poole watched him through the one-way window. “Did he say anything when they picked him up?”

  Warden Vina shook his head. “Didn’t put up any kind of fight, just surrendered. He had a bag packed, a little over two thousand in cash, and a bus ticket to Chicago. Ten more minutes, and he might have slipped out.”

  “Mind if I talk to him?”

  The warden shrugged. “He’s not talking to me. I gave it a go already. Be my guest.”

  Captain Direnzo stood to Poole’s left. He felt the heat rising off the man.

  “He’s all yours when I’m done,” Poole told him.

  Direnzo grunted but said nothing.

  Poole opened the metal door separating the two rooms and stepped into the interview space, closing the door behind him.

  Weidner looked up, then back to his hand on the table.

  Poole took the chair across from him. “Hello, Vincent. I’m Special Agent Frank Poole with the FBI. Sounds like you have had quite an eventful morning. Why don’t you start by telling me who Libby McInley is to you?”

  Weidner’s fingers stopped tapping. “Lawyer. Sarah Werner. Right now.”

  “You can most certainly go that route. I imagine you’ve worked in the system long enough to understand how this will play out if you do, though,” Poole said. “If you don’t help me, if you run interference with a lawyer, I can’t help you. That means we go full boat on all the charges—aiding and abetting, orchestrating a prison break, fleeing law enforcement . . . you’re looking at a lot of time. You answer a few questions, you help me, then I can help you.” Poole leaned in closer, across the table. “I want to be clear on something, Vincent. I’m not here for you. You’re a means to an end for me, that’s all. I’ve got no reason to be hard on you. On the other side of that glass, though, you’ve got the warden and your captain, neither of whom are happy with you. I leave you here with them, and they’ll make an example out of you. They’ll use you to prove a point. You help me, I’ll take you back with me to Chicago and we avoid all that. You were heading there anyway, right? Forget the bus. I’ve got a jet on the tarmac at Louis Armstrong.”

  Weidner lea
ned forward. “Lawyer. Sarah Werner. Now.”

  “Tell me about Anson Bishop. Why are you helping him?”

  Weidner said nothing.

  “Who was the woman you helped escape? Is she Bishop’s mother?”

  Silence.

  Poole would spend the next two hours in this room with Weidner.

  114

  Nash

  Day 4 • 4:07 p.m.

  Nash stepped to the open doorway.

  Espinosa was inside the small room, his weapon trained on a man sitting at a desk in front of the window, the same window where they caught movement from the outside.

  The man had seen them approach.

  He did not attempt to flee.

  The man sat there, his back to them, his head hung low, staring at the desk. Both his hands rested on the desktop, fingers splayed. “I have no weapon.”

  Espinosa was on him then. He pulled a thick zip tie from the back of his belt, grabbed the man’s left arm and yanked it behind his back, then the right, fastening them together behind the chair with the tie. The other SWAT officer, Tibideaux, kept his rifle trained on the man, the muzzle pointed at his head.

  Nash’s eyes were fixed on a large surgical incision beginning at the man’s left ear and running up under a black knit cap. The flesh was red and inflamed, crusted with dried blood. He crossed the room, nearly tripping over a pile of clothing, and pulled off the black cap.

  The man was almost bald, his head shaved a few days ago, the hair growing back in thin, irregular patches.

  “The chemo does that. I’m sorry, I must look awful. I apologize.”

  He had a lisp, trouble with the word sorry.

  “Paul Upchurch?” Espinosa said, lifting the man from the chair. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

  Espinosa’s words dropped into the background. Nash found himself studying the room.

  A little girl’s room. Pink and bright. The small bed covered with a Hello Kitty quilt and stuffed animals. The walls were filled with drawings. Some appeared to be done by a child, and others by the talented hand of an adult, perfectly lined and colored.

  In the corner of the room stood a mannequin, child-size, the shape of a little girl. The mannequin was dressed in little girls’ clothing. A red sweater, blue shorts. As Espinosa dragged Paul Upchurch away from the desk, Nash saw the drawings where the man’s hands had rested, drawings of a young girl in the same clothing as the mannequin. Apparently, he had been attempting to color them, but they had become a scribbled mess. Uncapped colored pens littered the desk.

  “Please, don’t hurt her,” the man said as Espinosa and Tibideaux led him past the mannequin and out the room, his bloodshot eyes on the images.

  “Detective Nash?” Brogan said from the earpiece.

  “Yeah?”

  “We need you in the kitchen.”

  “On my way.”

  When Nash reached the bottom of the stairs, he caught sight of Upchurch in the upper hallways, now surrounded by SWAT, moving toward the steps. Nash heard him sobbing over the exposed microphones, but he didn’t care.

  He crossed the small, sparsely furnished living room.

  Two men flanked the kitchen table in the next room.

  On the table was the body of a young girl, dressed in the same red sweater and blue shorts as the mannequin and drawings upstairs. Her hands lay crossed on her chest, palms up. Resting in her open palms—a small white box sealed tight with a black string.

  “She’s alive but unconscious,” Brogan said, his fingers tenderly feeling her head. “I’ve got dry blood here, but I don’t see a wound.” He turned back to Nash. “We’ve got another girl in the basement. She’s unconscious too. No visible wounds.”

  Nash’s eyes fixed on the white box in her hands. “Could they be drugged?”

  “Maybe.”

  The paramedics burst in then, surrounded her. A woman and two men. Within moments a blood pressure cuff was around her arm. One man held her eyelid open and studied her eye with a penlight, while the female paramedic held her wrist. “Pulse is sixty-three.”

  “Pressure is 102 over 70.”

  Fingers ran over her torso, head, and extremities. “No signs of physical trauma. I don’t think the blood is hers. I think it’s from there—” She nodded toward the puddle on the floor, streaked and crusted into the linoleum.

  Nash hadn’t noticed it until now.

  They wheeled a stretcher through the door, set up next to the table.

  “Wait.” Nash pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and carefully lifted the white box from her outstretched hands.

  The paramedics moved the girl to the stretcher, began fastening her in.

  Nash set the small box down on the table and tugged at the black string. It fell away.

  Nash didn’t notice the silence that fell over the room, nor did he realize everyone had stopped moving, including the paramedics. He lifted the small lid and set it aside.

  Clearly one of Bishop’s boxes.

  Inside, a small silver key with blue plastic on the head, J.H.S.H. carved into the metal, rested on a bed of cotton. Nash lifted it out and set it beside the box. There was nothing else inside.

  “I think that’s a hospital locker key,” the female paramedic said. She turned to the man still holding the blood pressure cuff. “Rick? What do you think? Stroger key, right? J.H.S.H.?”

  He nodded, faced Brogan. “You said there was another girl?”

  “She’s in the basement. Same condition. Drugged, I think. Lacerations around her mouth, but they look superficial.”

  The paramedic pointed at the girl on the stretcher, at her leg. “She’s got a needle mark on her thigh. Definitely a recent injection site. Based on her initial vitals, my guess would be propofol or some other sedative. She’s stable, which is consistent with a pharmaceutical-induced state—high-grade, not homegrown. If she were unconscious due to trauma, her vitals would be irregular.” He turned back to the others. “Kat, you and Diaz get her in the bus, ride with her to Stroger. Tell Mike to meet me down in the basement with a flatbed stretcher. We’ll get the other girl and follow behind you. Draw blood en route, radio ahead for a full tox screen on both.”

  She nodded and took one end of the stretcher; her partner took the other, and together they wheeled the unconscious girl out of the small kitchen.

  Nash followed the remaining paramedic, who disappeared down the stairs at the back of the kitchen into the mouth of darkness below, Brogan behind him.

  115

  Diary

  For the next three days, I thought about kinesics.

  I thought about Father.

  I thought about Mother.

  I thought about what the doctor had told me about the police and the bad place he said I would go.

  I listened to the girl cry. In the deepest of night, I listened to her cry.

  I pulled within myself and sealed out all the rest.

  Her sobs were warm to me, they were her touch, her fingers reaching across the distance of our two rooms as if we were mere inches apart. I imagined her lying in her own bed, able to hear the pitter-patter of my heartbeat, and wanting to listen for it, the only thing to bring her comfort between the hellish thoughts that brought on those cries.

  I imagine they came each day to take me to the doctor, but I did not remember these things. The world outside my mind became darkness, a black place, a distant void. As Father taught me, I suppressed time, I swam in it, got lost in the waves.

  116

  Nash

  Day 4 • 5:23 p.m.

  After more than an hour inside, he felt the walls of Upchurch’s house closing in. Nash dialed Clair at the hospital. “Clair, this is bad, really bad. Bishop and this guy . . .” He pressed the phone to his ear and slowly crossed the basement, retracing his steps from the makeshift cage to the large freezer converted into a water tank next to the stairs, then back again, carefully using the clear step plates placed on the floor to prevent contamination.
He found himself standing inside the cage. CSI techs scoured every surface. He watched one carefully collect bloody vomit from the far corner.

  Clair sounded like she was walking and talking, out of breath. “We’ve positively ID’ed the girl you found upstairs as Kati Quigley, the Jehovah’s Witness who went missing yesterday afternoon with the boy we found in the truck, Wesley Hartzler. She’s stable and in ICU, still unconscious. The tox screen confirmed propofol in her system. They’re going to let her sleep it off. As soon as she wakes up, I’ll talk to her. She has several electrical burn marks on her body. They appear to be superficial, no permanent damage.”

  Nash’s eyes dropped to a series of car batteries positioned beside the water tank. He had already told Clair about that. He didn’t want to think about it. “How about Larissa Biel?”

  Clair said something to someone else, then returned to the call. “She’s in critical condition. Drugged too, which looks like a blessing. She went into surgery about thirty minutes ago.” Clair’s voice dropped lower. “They made her swallow glass. She has lacerations in her mouth, her throat, her stomach. She’s all torn up inside. I can’t imagine how painful that must have been.”

  Nash closed his eyes. “What are we looking at here, Clair? This is way beyond anything Bishop has done in the past. What is his connection to Upchurch?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach Poole, but his phone is going to voice mail. Kloz has been looking for something to tie the two of them together since we got his name, but he’s coming up blank. We’ve always profiled Bishop as a loner. None of it makes sense. We think they converted the freezer into some kind of deprivation tank.”

  “A what?”

  “A deprivation tank. They were popular in the fifties. Salt water is heated to exactly 93.5 degrees, basically skin temperature. Once you’re inside, all your senses are gone—you can’t see or hear anything from the outside. With the water at skin temp, you’d feel like you were floating. They’re supposed to be relaxing, a Zen thing.”

  Nash’s eyes fell to the rusty metal of the jumper cables next to the tank. “This was anything but relaxing.”