The Fifth to Die

by J. D. Barker

  All the voices in the cafeteria came to her then, a growing mass of angry voices seeping into the hallway past the two patrolmen trying to hold them back.

  Clair looked down at the remaining questionnaires in her hand. She had made sure everyone had one right after she spent over an hour with Kati Quigley.

  The forms slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor.

  An ache roiled through her, deep in her bones.

  Clair sneezed.

  131

  Nash

  Day 4 • 9:43 p.m.

  Espinosa counted silently with his fingers, holding up five—

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Brogan rammed the door and burst through, the heavy wood splintering and cracking down the center.

  “Go!”

  “Go!”

  Nash watched the SWAT team disappear into room 405 of the Guyon Hotel one at a time until he was alone in the dilapidated hallway. They found a body down in the lobby. A woman in a prison jumpsuit and restraints, an execution wound in her head.

  Klozowski had traced the signal to here. Something about triangulating Wi-Fi transmitters in the neighborhood. Espinosa then used a handheld gizmo of some sort to seek out the only electrical signal in the building, somewhere behind the door to room 405.

  “Hands in the air!”

  “Don’t move!”

  “He’s got a gun!”

  Nash wasn’t sure which voice belonged to whom, the shouts overlapping between his earpiece and the open doorway.

  Another crash. Second door?

  “Nash! Get in here. Now!”

  Nash crossed the hallway to the door, the Kevlar vest cutting into his waist, making it difficult to breathe.

  He stepped through the doorway, into room 405, lit by a dozen or so candles and the concentrated beams of the flashlights mounted on the half dozen assault rifles all pointing to the same spot.

  A man.

  His back to the door. His hands raised above his head. A laptop glowed on an antique desk before him. A dozen or so black and white composition notebooks sat stacked beside the computer, a .38 sitting off to the side.

  “Sam?”

  Porter began to turn in the chair.

  “Don’t—” Tibideaux said.

  “Stand down!” Nash shouted. “Sam? What are you doing here?”

  Porter looked down at the edge of the desk, closed his eyes.

  Espinosa and Thomas both had their rifles pointed at the walls, the beams of their flashlights crawling over the faded floral wallpaper and the dozens of pictures hung about the room, all framed.

  Nash followed the light and stepped closer, studied one of the frames.

  It was a photograph of Sam, a much younger Sam, forties maybe. He was smiling at the camera. A boy stood at his side, also smiling. A boy of about fourteen or fifteen.

  Espinosa frowned. “Is that?”

  “I think it’s Anson Bishop,” Nash said, his voice low. He glanced at two others. “All of them.”

  Nash crossed the room, went to Porter. “Sam? What is this?”

  Porter opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  On the screen of the laptop, glowing bright enough to light Porter’s face—

  Hello Sam,

  I imagine you’re confused.

  I imagine you have questions.

  132

  Diary

  I did not know where the police station was.

  For that matter, I wasn’t sure where the Camden Treatment Center was located either. I had no idea where I’d spent the past few weeks.

  We drove for a long time.

  I watched the city of Charleston roll past outside my window. None of the buildings were very tall. Father once told me city ordinances prevented builders from reaching too close to the sky.

  I wanted to hurt the doctor.

  The anger that swelled within me was greater than any I’d ever experienced, but I did my best to suppress it. Like time, anger could be held in check, it could be bottled and stored, it could be opened when it was most needed.

  I would open that bottle when the time was right, I would pop that cork.

  Neither detective said a word.

  I expected a flurry of questions, but nothing came. They did not speak to me, they did not speak to each other.

  I said nothing in return, letting the silence speak for itself.

  Outside, I recognized nothing of where we were, the city behind us now.

  Detective Welderman glanced at me in the rearview mirror more than once. I met his gaze.

  We turned off the two-lane road that took us about thirty minutes outside of the city. We turned off the blacktop onto a gravel lane with tall weeds growing on either side.

  We did not stop at the police station, and this should have worried me, but I didn’t let it.

  We stopped at a large farmhouse at the end of the gravel road. A woman of about Mother’s age saw us, waved, and came to the car. She had brown hair, cropped short, and wore a yellow dress with white dots.

  Detective Welderman gave me another look in the mirror, then both men got out of the car.

  The doors in the back did not have handles. Even if I weren’t handcuffed, I could not get out on my own.

  The detectives went to the woman, and the three of them spoke. I could not hear what was said, but it was accompanied by the occasional glance back at the car, back at me.

  Welderman stood with the woman when Detective Stocks finally opened my door and helped me out.

  The woman let out a soft gasp. “My, are those really necessary?”

  Detective Stocks’s face went red. “Turn around, kid.”

  He removed the handcuffs.

  I rubbed at my wrists.

  Welderman opened the trunk of the car and took out a green duffel bag. He handed the bag to the woman. “The hospital put together some clothes. Not much, they didn’t have much in his size. He lost everything in the fire.”

  The woman came around to me then, stood in front of me and smiled. “Anson, my name is Ms. Finicky. You’re going to be staying with me for a while.”

  Looking back over her shoulder, she called out, “Paul? Come here. Meet your new roommate.”

  I hadn’t seen him standing there, this boy on the porch, tall and lanky. He emerged from the only shadow able to evade the climbing sun. He pattered across the gravel and took the bag from the woman, extending his free hand. “Hi, Anson, I’m Paul Upchurch. You’re going to like it here.”

  Detective Stocks snickered at this.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, then her smile returned. “Take him upstairs, Paul. Show him to his new room.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Anson?” Detective Welderman said.

  I looked up at him, at the scowl on his face.

  “We know what you did, Anson. We all do. It won’t take us long to prove, we just need to put a few pieces together. Feel free to unpack. Those clothes are only on loan. You’ll get new clothes soon enough—a new room, a new roommate too.”

  I smiled up at him, at Detective Stocks. “Thank you for the ride, Detectives. It was a pleasure meeting you both.”

  I followed Paul Upchurch.

  I followed Paul into the gaping mouth of that farmhouse.

  The house was much bigger than it appeared from the outside. Maybe it was the many dividing walls breaking up the many rooms, or it could have been because the house was much deeper than wide, maybe a combination of both, but I felt I was lost the moment I stepped inside.

  I paused in the small living room, past the foyer, and looked back out through the front door. Paul had told me to leave it open.

  The two detectives were still out there, wrapped up in conversation with Ms. Finicky. The world seemed brighter outside, just past that doorway. There was a stillness to the air inside this house, not stale or musty, just still. I couldn’t help but think of the air trapped inside a coffin s
hortly after the lid was nailed tight.

  “What is Ms. Finicky’s first name?” I asked.

  Paul stopped at the base of a staircase and looked back at me. “Who cares?”

  “I care.”

  The other boy shrugged. “Dunno. She’s just Ms. Finicky, always has been. Finicky, Finicky, Finicky. Not Fin or Mrs. Finicky, maybe ma’am but never you. I imagine the other kids have come up with a few good names for her over the years, but you can bet nobody is going to say any of them to her face.”

  “Other kids?”

  He paused again, five steps up, two before the landing. “You do know where you are, right? They told you? Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. We all trudge through that door from our own path. Some are old hacks and others are fresh to the game. You don’t have that scared, deer-about-to-meet-bumper look on your face, so I assumed your rodeo has been running for a while now.”

  He came back down the stairs, took my hand, and pumped vigorously. “You, my friend, have just entered the System. Congratulations! I’m afraid there’s no cake or welcome wagon, just little ol’ me, but there are worse things to run into when you step into a stranger’s house. You’d think there’d be an instructional video or a pamphlet or something, but funds are tight. If there were a video in the works, I’d like to see Rod Serling narrate. That guy is awesome. Old school, but awesome.”

  Paul jumped back up the stairs to the landing and spun in a circle with his arms up high, his voice dropping an octave. “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call”—he stopped spinning and steadied himself on the railing—“the Finicky House for Wayward Children.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. I had never heard so many words come out of one mouth so fast.

  He nodded toward the top of the large staircase. “Onward.”

  Pictures of children lined the walls with such abundance, the flowered wallpaper beneath was barely visible. At least a hundred, maybe more. Boys and girls of all ages, some smiling, others not, all standing in the driveway with the large house looming at their backs.

  Paul pointed at a brown frame near the top. “I’m right here. Don’t worry, you’ll get your turn in front of the camera soon enough, we all do.”

  There was something about the way he said this, something in the tone of his voice, the way he trailed off, his thoughts lingering a little longer than his words.

  “How many kids are here?”

  He reached the top of the stairs and turned back around. “You are number eight, my friend. Three girls and five boys, ranging in age from seven to sixteen. I myself am fifteen. Three more years and they’ll be forced to unleash me upon the unsuspecting world. May God have mercy on them all.”

  I reached the top of the stairs, which opened on a long, narrow hallway—more photographs up here, nearly every inch of wall space, closed doors sandwiched between them on either side.

  Paul pointed to a closed door on the left. “That there is Vincent Weidner. We don’t talk to Vincent Weidner. Avoid Vincent Weidner and he will avoid you. That seems to be best for all.”

  He crossed the hall and opened the second door on the right. “This here is us, only a couple solos in this place. Most of us double up. That’s still better than some of the places I’ve been. I once shared a room with six other kids, and it was smaller than this one. You couldn’t sleep without someone else’s foot in your face.” He ducked inside, then poked his head back out. “Bathroom is the door at the end of the hall on this side. Right side is boys, left side is girls. Leave the door open when you exit so everyone else knows it’s vacant. We keep matches in the medicine cabinet to take care of the aroma after a most glorious evacuation, and the latest girly magazine can be found in a plastic bag in the bowl—be sure to seal that ziplock back up. Nobody likes soggy porn. Return everything to where you found it upon exit, or there will be repercussions. We take turns cleaning. A schedule is on the refrigerator downstairs.”

  Paul ducked back into the room. “You coming?”

  I stood there for a moment, outside the room, and looked up and down the narrow hallway at all the pictures on the wall. Ms. Finicky wasn’t very old; I wondered how long she had been doing this, how many children had passed through here.

  I stepped into the room.

  Bunkbeds.

  I’d always wanted a bunkbed.

  The duffel bag containing my loaner clothes sat in the middle of the bottom bunk.

  “I’ve got seniority, so I officially lay claim to the top,” Paul said. “If you outlast me, maybe someday it will be yours. Dare to dream, my friend. Dare to dream.”

  Like the hallways, the walls of the room were also lined with pictures. Unlike the ones in the hallway, these were not photographs but drawings, cartoons, and sketches. “Are these yours?”

  Paul nodded proudly. “Every last one is a Paul Upchurch original.” He crossed the room to a small desk, picked up a sketchpad, and carried it over. “I’ve been working on my own comic. It’s about this little girl who is constantly stepping in all kinds of trouble. Just because it’s about a girl doesn’t make me a queer or anything. She’s a major tomboy and she’s a little sexy, right? I’ve done some serious market research, and I determined that by using a girl as the main character, the comic book will appeal to all kids.” He tapped at the side of his head. “Always thinking . . . you’ve got to consider these things, because I’m sure the publishers do.”

  I studied the image of the girl. She was cute. About our age, with a mischievous little smile curling up at the corner of her mouth and a glisten in her eyes. The detail was amazing. I had read my share of comics and was a bit of a connoisseur. Paul’s drawing was as good, if not better, than most I had seen.

  “Do you have a name for the comic book?”

  Paul’s eyes brightened. “Do I have a name, of course I have a name. I call it The Misadventures of Maybelle Markel.”

  “You’re very good.”

  Paul lifted the sketchpad to his lips and kissed the drawing. “She’s like the daughter I never had. Baby girl here is going to make her daddy a rich man one of these days.”

  I heard a sob then, a soft, muted cry from behind the closed door across the hall.

  I knew that sound, that cry.

  Paul set the sketchpad back down on the desk, then followed my gaze to the door. “She came in yesterday, hasn’t really been out of her room yet. She kept most of us up last night with the waterworks, but we all try to cut some slack when someone first gets here. The other girls have been taking shifts with her so she’s not alone.” He paused, his thoughts elsewhere. “Some fosters can be rough. She’ll like it here. You will too. I think Ms. Finicky said her name was Libby.”

  I took a step closer to the door.

  I felt Paul’s hand on my arm. His fingers tightened.

  The boy’s voice dropped low, barely a breath. “I think they listen to us. Be careful what you say.”

  To be concluded . . .

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to my agent, Kristin Nelson, for finding a home for Sam Porter and his story. Tim Mudie, who edited this book with a sharp eye. And my first readers—Summer Schrader, Jenny Milchman, Erin Kwiatkowski, Darlene Begovich, and Jennifer Henkes—all of whom helped me shape what I found after cracking the pages of Bishop’s diary and poking around in his mind.

  Thanks to my wonderful wife, Dayna, for believing . . . for being you.

  Finally, to Anson Bishop—are you ready to finish this little dance?

  JD

  Visit www.hmhco.com to find all of the books in the 4MK series.

  About the Author

  J. D. Barker is the internationally bestselling author of The Fourth Monkey and Forsaken. He was
a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel and winner of the New Apple Medalist Honors, and his work has been compared to that of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Thomas Harris. He has been asked by the Stoker family to co-author the forthcoming prequel to Dracula, due out in fall 2018. His novels have been translated into numerous languages and optioned for both film and television. Barker lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Dayna, and his daughter, Ember.

  Learn more at jdbarker.com

  Or connect with J. D. on social media

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