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The Fifth to Die: A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller
Clair flipped the paper around so she could read the headline. “You don’t think one of us talked to the press, do you?”
Porter shook his head. “I think they’ll print anything to sell papers. And if they can’t get one of us to talk, they’ll make something up. When we’re ready, I’ll make a statement. Until then, aside from the Amber Alert on Lili, we’re on a press lockdown.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the group. Sophie was first to speak. “Is anyone gonna eat that last donut?”
Kloz’s head dropped to the tabletop, and he let out a sigh. “Take it.”
Evidence Board
ELLA REYNOLDS (15 years old)
Reported missing 1/22
Found 2/12 in Jackson Park Lagoon
Water frozen since 1/2 — (20 days before she went missing)
Last seen — getting off her bus at Logan Square (2 blocks from home/15 miles from Jackson Park)
Last seen wearing a black coat
Drowned in salt water (found in fresh water)
Found in Lili Davies’s clothes
Four-minute walk from bus to home
Frequented Starbucks on Kedzie. Seven-minute walk to home.
LILI DAVIES (17 years old)
Parents = Dr. Randal Davies and Grace Davies
Best friend = Gabrielle Deegan
Attends Wilcox Academy (private) did not attend classes on 2/12
Last seen leaving for school (walking) morning of 2/12 @ 7:15 wearing a Perro red nylon diamond-quilted hooded parka, white hat, white gloves, dark jeans, and pink tennis shoes (all found on Ella Reynolds)
Most likely taken morning of 2/12 (on way to school)
Small window = 35 minutes (Left for school 7:15 a.m., classes start 7:50 a.m.)
School only four blocks from home
Not reported missing until after midnight (morning of 2/13)
Parents thought she went to work (art gallery) right after school (she didn’t do either)
UNSUB
ASSIGNMENTS:
10
Porter
Day 2 • 9:08 a.m.
“Sam, you don’t have to do this.”
“Yeah, I do.”
He rang the Reynoldses’ doorbell.
They had driven straight here from police headquarters, lights blazing. Porter raced through at least three reds.
Nash shuffled his feet beside him on the stoop. “The department will send a uniform.”
Porter rubbed his hands together. The cold was slowly killing him. With the wind-chill, the temperature hovered at three degrees. “It’s after nine. They may have already seen the morning paper. It’s probably all over the morning news too.”
Porter rang the doorbell again.
The curtain over the glass window to the left of the door moved aside briefly, fell back into place. Someone worked the deadbolt. The door opened a few inches. A woman in her mid-forties peeked out, her eyes red and dark, the skin around them sunken with lack of sleep. Her brown hair looked oily, unwashed for days. She wore a thick brown sweater and jeans. “May I help you?”
Porter unfolded his badge case. “I’m Detective Porter, and this is Detective Nash with Chicago Metro. May we come in?”
She stared at him for a moment, as if the words took a second to register. Then she nodded and opened the door while staring past them to the street. “I think the cold finally scared away the last news van. They were still out there last night.”
Porter and Nash stomped the snow from their feet and stepped inside, closing the door behind them. The heat wrapped around them, stifling compared with outside. Porter didn’t care. He could stand in a fire pit for an hour, and his fingers would still be numb. He cleared his throat. “Is your husband home?”
Mrs. Reynolds shook her head. “He’s not back yet.”
“Did he go somewhere?”
The woman took a deep breath and sat on the arm of the leather sofa behind her. “He’s been driving around looking for Ella since the day she disappeared. He comes home long enough to eat and get a few hours of sleep, then just goes out again. I went with him the first few times, but it felt so futile. Driving up and down random streets like we’re going to spot her darting between houses or something, like a runaway dog. I can’t tell him not to go, though. It would break his heart. He tried staying home last Tuesday, and we were both climbing the walls. He went back out again last night after dinner.”
“It helps to stay active,” Nash said.
She looked at him, her face blank, then went on. “For the first week, I did nothing but make phone calls. All Ella’s friends and our family, our neighbors, anybody I could get to pick up. Shelters, hospitals, morgues . . . sitting here, trapped in this house, it feels so . . . helpless. But what else can I do? We’ve got posters hanging everywhere. Little good they do in this weather. Nobody is outside unless they need to be.”
Porter took a deep breath. “There’s no easy way to say this —”
Mrs. Reynolds raised her hand, silencing him. “You don’t have to. I saw it on the news this morning. The television hasn’t been turned off in three weeks. I dozed off on the couch, and when I woke up last night, they were running footage at the park. They never came out and said it was Ella, only that a girl’s body had been found in the lagoon. A mother knows, though. I guess I’ve known for weeks. I think I saw you on TV. You look familiar.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She nodded and blotted at eyes that looked like they had shed their last tear two weeks earlier. “My Ella wouldn’t run away, we knew that from the moment she went missing. I think I lost a little bit of hope with each minute after that. A girl can’t just disappear in today’s world, not with cameras and the Internet everywhere. A girl disappears completely, and you gotta know something bad happened.” She took a deep breath. “How did she die?”
“We think she drowned. We’re still waiting on the full report.”
“She drowned in the lagoon?”
Porter shook his head. “No . . . someplace else. She drowned and was placed in the lagoon.”
“You mean, she was drowned. Somebody did this to her, right?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Mrs. Reynolds’s eyes drifted to the floor. “I want to ask you if she suffered, but I think I already know the answer, and I’m not sure I really want to hear it out loud. I mean, somebody took her weeks ago. Do you know when she drowned? Do you know what this monster did to my baby in all that time?”
Nash’s eyes had also drifted to the floor. “At this point, we don’t know much more than that. We had hoped to tell you before you —”
“Before I heard it somewhere else? That’s very noble of you, but those reporters . . . well.”
“Do you have a way of reaching your husband? Maybe we should call him? Tell him to come home?”
Again, her gaze went blank as these words sank in. Porter had seen this before, the disconnect. People who are greatly traumatized sometimes separate slightly from reality; they watch the events around them rather than live within them. Mrs. Reynolds nodded and pulled a cell phone from the folds of the blanket on the couch. After a few seconds, she mouthed voice mail, then looked to the floor as she left a message. “Floyd? It’s me. Please come home, honey. They . . . the police are here. They found her, our baby.”
She disconnected the call and dropped the phone back onto the couch.
A back door slammed, and a little boy came marching into the living room, leaving a snowy trail behind him on the kitchen floor. Bundled in a navy blue snowsuit with a floppy yellow hat, scarf, and black gloves, he couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. “Mama? Somebody built a snowman in our yard.”
Mrs. Reynolds glanced at him, then turned back to Porter and Nash. “Not now, Brady.”
“I think the snowman is hurt.”
“What?”
“He’s bleeding.”
11
Lili
Day 2 • 9:12 a.m.
Lili had been alone, and now she wasn’t.
The man came down the steps and just stood there for maybe two minutes, watching her. He held something in his hand, but she couldn’t make out what it was.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low, deliberate, and practiced in its delivery. “You didn’t drink the milk.”
Lili had not drunk the milk, and she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t eat or drink anything this person planned to offer her. She would sooner starve to death than accept something from him.
“Why not?”
She didn’t answer, she only pulled the quilt tighter around her body as she pressed into the far corner of her cage.
“This doesn’t have to be unpleasant. Not unless you want it to be. I’d prefer you to be comfortable and relaxed,” he said. “Are you warm enough?”
Against the wall to her right stood the HVAC system and water heater for the house. The unit had run on and off since she woke here but was silent now. The vent in the side pointed directly into her cage and was, in fact, very warm. She wasn’t about to tell him that, though.
“If you get too cold, be sure to let me know.”
He stepped from the shadows at the base of the stairs and approached her cage. Funny, she thought, how she quickly grew to consider this her cage. From the inside, it seemed to offer her safety from the threat outside. As he stepped closer, she was grateful for the chainlink and metal bars separating them, the protection they offered. Her free hand reached around behind her, her fingers wrapping around the chainlink mesh and squeezing, the cold steel digging into her skin.
As the man stepped into the light, she got a good look at him. His skin was incredibly pale, the color of paper; she could make out the webs of veins at his neck, tiny roadways on his cheeks and forehead. He wore a black knit cap pulled down tight on his head, covering his hair — if he had any at all. His eyebrows were thin, barely there. When she saw his eyes, she wished she had not. The way he peered at her, a deep gaze from behind cloudy gray. They were the eyes of an old man, lost behind cataracts and film. He didn’t look old, though, maybe thirty at the most. The eyes did not fit; they weren’t natural. The right eye seemed darker than the left, bloodshot. Lili wanted to look away but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. She wouldn’t show weakness.
“I apologize for my appearance. I haven’t been well. Today is a good day, though. I promise you it’s not contagious. Please don’t be frightened,” he said, the lisp evident.
Lili squeezed the chainlink, welcoming the pain it brought, the distraction. She set her jaw, firm and defiant.
The man’s mouth hung open slightly. She heard a slight wheeze with each drawn breath. “I’m going to let you out, and you’re going to do as I say.” His eyes flicked to the object in his right hand, a stun gun. He said nothing of it. Lili knew they weren’t fatal. She wondered just how much they hurt. Would she be able to push past him and get up the stairs, even if he shocked her?
With his left hand, he slipped a key into first the top padlock, then the bottom, sliding each from the door and hanging them on the chainlink. Then he lifted the latch and pulled open the door.
Lili remained still, her fingers tightening on the back of her cage.
“Please come out,” he said quietly. “I could shock you and take you out, but then we would have to wait or possibly start over. It’s best that you just do as I say.”
His eyes bore into her, those cloudy eyes. There was a bandage on his right hand near the wrist, dirty, stained with dried blood.
“Out now!” he screamed.
Lili jumped and drew in a deep breath.
“Why do you make me shout? Please don’t make me shout. I don’t want to be loud. I don’t want to be mean. Just come out so we can begin, please. The sooner we start, the sooner it will be over.”
She didn’t want to, Lili knew she shouldn’t, but she forced herself to stand and walk toward the man, toward the door of the cage, her eyes looking over his shoulder at the stairs behind him, at the light pooling toward the top.
“Others have tried to make the stairs, but nobody ever has. You can try if you like, but it will only lead to a shock and delays. We would have to start over, but we would start over. It’s best that you just do as I say,” he said again in the most reassuring of voices. She felt his hand on the small of her back through the quilt, guiding her, nudging her toward a large white freezer against the wall with the stairs.
He lifted the lid.
Lili expected a rush of icy-cold air — they had a similar freezer at her house. Instead, warm, humid air rose from inside. The freezer was filled with water. She took a step back, tried to push away from him, but the prongs of the stun gun against her back held her still.
“The water is nice and warm. Go ahead and touch it.”
Lili watched her hand reach for the water, operating with a mind all its own. She dipped her fingers into the water. It was warm, far warmer than the air.
“You’ll want to take off your clothes. It’s better that way.”
He said this so nonchalantly, casually, a conversation between two old friends.
“I’m not —” The words slipped out before Lili realized she spoke. She capped them off and shook her head. Her hands gripped the quilt and pulled it tighter around her small frame. She wanted to step away from the water tank, but he was standing behind her. His warm breath drifted over her neck.
His left hand fell onto her shoulder and tugged at the quilt.
Lili screamed, the first real sound she’d made since waking here. She screamed as loudly as she could, the sound so powerful it felt like a knife grating at the inside of her throat. It echoed off the basement walls and cried back at her in a voice that wasn’t her own. This voice sounded like a terrified little girl, like someone who’d lost control, someone who’d given up, someone she didn’t want to know.
The metal prongs of the stun gun bit into her neck, two cold metal teeth followed by a pain so intense, it sliced at every inch of her, a blade cutting from her toes to her fingertips. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and her legs gave out from under her. Lili’s scream died away in an instant as silence enveloped her.
She awoke on the floor, lying atop the quilt. The man was tugging her panties down. He had removed all her other clothes. Lili tried to reach for the edge of the quilt to cover herself, but her arm wouldn’t work. She stared at her fingers, still twitching.
“I didn’t want to shock you. I don’t want to hurt you. Please don’t make me hurt you again,” the man said. “You can have the clothes back when we’re done. It’s better this way, you’ll see.”
Lili understood what would come next, and she tried to mentally prepare herself.
The man wrapped one arm around her back and the other under her knees and lifted her from the ground. Although he appeared sick, he was surprisingly strong. He lifted her over the freezer filled with warm water and gently lowered her inside. Lili was five-two. Her toes brushed the far side as her legs drifted out, flattening. He held her up at the shoulders, keeping her face above the water.
“Warm, isn’t it? Nice.”
The warm water was oddly comforting; it felt like slipping beneath the surface of a pool, allowing the water to hold you as you drift along. Lili noticed the feeling returning to her fingers, her arms, the warmth massaging her limbs back to life.
“Close your eyes, relax,” he said in a soothing tone, his lisp barely catching. Calm. “Take in a deep breath, a nice, long breath.”
Lili did as he said, not because he told her to, but because she wanted to. She allowed her lips to part and pulled in the basement air, allowed it to fill her lungs, a breath like those she learned in yoga class, a cleansing breath, deep and full.
“Now let it out slowly, feel the air leave your body,” he said in a whisper. “Feel every bit of it.”
Lili released the —
The man pushed at her shoulders and plunged her into the water with such force, her head banged on the bottom of the tank. Her legs kicked and her arms flailed. Her fingers caught at the top edge for one brief second before the smooth plastic slipped from her grasp.
Lili could hold her breath for a long time, almost two minutes the last time someone timed her. But that only worked when she filled her lungs with fresh air first, when she was prepared. She hadn’t filled her lungs, she’d emptied them, just as the man asked, and when he pushed her beneath the surface she inhaled instead, her body’s attempt at grasping for air. Instead of air, she gulped down water and immediately coughed, expelling it even before her head hit the bottom, expelling the water only to inhale more. The water filled her throat, her lungs, resulting in a pain so severe, Lili thought she might implode. When she stopped kicking, when she stopped flailing, the pain went away, and for one brief second Lili thought she would be okay, she thought her body had somehow found a way to survive on water, and she went still. She saw the man looking down at her from above with those gray, bloodshot eyes, his mouth agape. He was distorted through the water, but she could see him. Then everything went black, and she saw nothing at all.
12
Clair
Day 2 • 9:13 a.m.
Clair and Sophie Rodriguez pulled up to Lili Davies’s house on South King Drive and parked Clair’s green Honda Civic behind two news vans. Both had their satellite antennae raised, but there was no sign of the reporters or the camera operators.
A light snow filled the air, leaving the sky a hazy white.
“It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here,” Clair said, rubbing her hands together.
“I never understood that expression,” Sophie replied, eyeing the vans.
“Witches get no love.”
“Oh, I know that feeling.”
Clair glanced over at her. “What happened to that guy you were dating, James, John, Joe —”
“Jessie. Jessie Grabber.”
Clair chuckled. “Really, that’s his name? Grabber?”
Sophie rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry. It’s a bit high school to make fun of a name, but come on, Grabber? No sneak attack down at Lover’s Lane with a name like Grabber.”
“Well, he was anything but. I think that was part of the problem. I was hoping for a little something, but he was nothing but a gentleman. All the way on through date number four I got nothing but a peck on the cheek. A girl’s got needs.”
“Like witches.”
Sophie nodded. “Like witches.”
“I’m still not warm.” Clair frowned.
“Me either.”
“Witch tit.”
“Witch tit.” Sophie shivered.
Clair shuffled in her seat, looking up and down the street, then pointed at the graystone beside them. “That’s Lili Davies’s house, right?”
“Yes, 748.”
“And her school is where?”
Sophie pointed out her window. “Four blocks east of here. You can nearly see it.”
The snow shifted from tiny flakes to something a little larger than Clair’s favorite breakfast cereal, and her body gave an involuntary quiver. She zipped her jacket all the way up, wrapped a heavy-knit purple scarf around her neck, and donned a fluffy pink cap. When she turned back to Sophie, the woman had done the same. “You look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”
Sophie smirked. “You look like Willy Wonka’s long-lost sister.”
“Perfect. Let’s do this.” Clair tugged at the door handle and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The snow was about two inches deep and still coming down, flying at her at an angle. She jogged in place for a second as Sophie rounded the car, her breath leaving a white plume in the air. The two women started walking east on Sixty-Ninth Street, hunched against the snow.
They crossed Vernon Avenue, and Clair stopped, staring ahead. “If I wanted to grab a girl, that seems like a good spot.”
She stared at the dark tunnels one block up where the Skyway crossed over Sixty-Ninth Street, three lanes of traffic running in each direction. At approximately fifteen feet per lane, that meant she was looking at a space about one hundred feet wide with only a small break at the median in the middle. Although three lights burned under each section, they offered little to break up the gloom.
Clair looked up at the sky, searching for the sun. “What time is sunrise?”
Sophie tilted her head, a line appearing between her brows. “About seven or so.”
“So our girl made this walk about two hours earlier in the day, a little after the sun poked out. If it came out at all. This stretch is fairly deserted now, but that may be different closer to school time. Still, though, someone could easily park around here, maybe feign a breakdown, then grab her when she walked by. The tunnel would be my bet; everything else is fairly wide open.”
They had reached the start of the underpass. Sophie pressed a hand to the concrete. “This is a good neighborhood. There’s not a bit of graffiti on these walls and no sign of homeless activity. I can’t imagine someone could stand around very long without getting noticed.”
They followed the sidewalk under the Skyway, their footfalls echoing off the walls. When they came out the other side, Sophie pointed. “There’s her school.”
Wilcox Academy was a private school housed in what appeared to be a repurposed factory or warehouse building. The red brick façade was immaculate. It could have been built a year ago. The parking lot beside it was posted FACULTY ONLY and was full. A public lot sat across the street, most likely utilized by the students.
Clair pulled open the large glass door, and both women stepped inside, a wave of heat wafting out. “This makes me want to hop back in the car and drive straight to Florida.”
“Can I help you?”
Clair turned to find an elderly security guard sitting at a table to their left. She took a step forward, and a buzzer went off.
