Clair showed the man her badge. “I’m Detective Norton with Chicago Metro, and this is Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children. We’re investigating the disappearance of one of your students, Lili Davies.”

The security guard’s smile fell away. “Heard about that on the way in. I’m so sorry for her family. She’s a good girl.”

Sophie’s head tilted slightly. “You know her?”

He nodded. “This is a small school, only about two hundred kids total. I see each of them every day, hard not to get to know them. I’m former Pittsburgh PD, retired about six years ago. If there is anything I can do to help, I’m here for you.”

“What can you tell us about her?” Clair asked.

“Like I said, never gave me any trouble. Usually got here around seven thirty or so. Many of the students hang out across the street there in the lot until first bell, but not her. She’d try to beat the crowd and get up to class. Not too many friends.” He waved a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, she was well liked, just a bit of an introvert. Could always tell there were big plans cooking behind her eyes. Always thinking, that one.”

Sophie glanced out the window at the cars across the street. “Did she ever ride in with anyone?”

He shook his head. “If she did, I never noticed. If I saw her outside, she was usually coming up the walk the same way you did.”

Clair pulled off her hat and scarf. “What about Gabrielle Deegan? Do you know her?”

The corner of his mouth turned up, and he brushed at his chin. “Gabby can be a bit rough around the edges, but she’s a good girl too. The two of them are together a lot, a bit of yin and yang thing there.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked down the hallway, then turned back to them, lowering his voice. “I have to be a bit hard on her, you know? Being the law here. But I see her for what she is: just a girl looking for some attention. She’s not fooling me none. She’d never admit it — in fact, I bet she’d outright deny it — but I think she may be one of the smartest students here. I think she acts out because she’s bored, not because she’s a troublemaker. She’ll come into her own one day. Until then, it’s my job to steer her away from big trouble and let her get away with a bit of little trouble, find that balance. Every class has at least one.”

“Do you know where we can find her?”

“I’ll call upstairs, see if I can get someone to bring her down for you,” he replied, reaching for the phone on his table. “Watch your wallets and jewelry.” He winked.

Porter

Day 2 • 9:14 a.m.

Porter and Nash stood at the Reynoldses’ back door, staring out into their yard.

About fifty feet out, toward the left corner under a large birch tree, a snowman stared back at them.

The beady black eyes glistened under a stovepipe hat. The snowman was tall, at least six and a half feet, maybe more, the body thick and wide, glistening with ice, a red rose at his snowy lapel.

The arms were fashioned from tree branches, each capped with a black glove. The right hand held the handle of a wooden broom. A corncob pipe jutted from the corner of its makeshift mouth, and dark blood trickled down from an icy neck.

Snow fell, filling the air with a white haze. The scene was so odd, so picturesque. Porter felt he was looking at the page of a childhood storybook, not a real yard. There was a swing set off to the far right and woods behind the yard.

“Nobody in your family made that?” Nash asked.

Mrs. Reynolds had her arms wrapped around her son. “No.”

The single word escaped her lips, but she didn’t take her eyes off it, this stranger in her yard.

Porter tugged at his zipper and reached inside his coat, retrieving his Glock.

Brady’s eyes went wide. “Whoa, is he going to kill the snowman, Mom?”

“I’m not going to hurt the snowman. I’m worried he may try to hurt me,” Porter said quietly. “Did you see anyone else out there? Anybody at all?”

“No, sir.”

“How about you and your mother go back into the living room for a few minutes? Think you can take care of your mom while my partner and I check this out?”

Brady nodded.

Porter looked from the boy to his mother. “Go along now.”

When they were gone, he turned to Nash. “Stay here and keep a bead on those trees back there.”

Nash withdrew his own weapon, his eyes scanning the woods.

Porter stepped out the back door, into the falling snow. From somewhere in the back of his mind, an old children’s song began to play.

Small footprints littered the newly fallen snow, crisscrossing the yard near the door, then petering down to a single set ending at the snowman. Porter followed the footprints as best he could, taking small strides so he could place his feet where the child had rather than create another trail. Snow had fallen most of the night, a few inches at least, but it seemed inconceivable that someone could build such a thing without leaving any tracks. His eyes drifted to the broom perched in the snowman’s hand. He supposed it was possible that whoever did this used the broom to sweep away their tracks, but that didn’t explain how they got the broom back into his hand without leaving a final trail. Porter also noted that their yard was fenced. A four-foot chainlink. The gate leading to the front yard was open.

Porter saw a faint trail leading from that gate to the snowman. Not footprints, more of an indent, as if something heavy had been dragged from the front of the house to the back, to here.

He stood in front of the snowman.

It towered over him by nearly a foot. From this angle, the smile upon its face, made from tiny pieces of a broken branch, looked more like a smirk.

Porter remembered building hundreds of these as a kid — pushing the snowball along until it became a snow boulder, too heavy to push at all. Normally, a snowman is constructed by starting with a large snow boulder at the base, then placing another smaller one on top of that to form the torso, then another at the very top to take the place of a head.

This snowman was not constructed that way.

The snow on this snowman had been packed in place. Someone took the time to sculpt the snow into the shape of a snowman rather than use the far faster traditional method.

All of these thoughts rushed through Porter’s mind in an instant as he glanced over the creation from top to bottom, his eyes finally landing on the dark red at the neck — dark red seeping through the white like a giant snow cone.

Porter snapped a branch of a nearby oak and, using the splinted end, carefully plucked at the snow beneath the darkest red spot, where it congealed at the base of the neck. Whoever built this had sprayed the snow with water as they worked, causing it to harden into ice — another trick Porter learned as a child. If made properly, a snowman would be as sturdy as a stone statue, standing tall for the remainder of the winter. If you failed to harden the snow, chunks would break away with the first sun. By midafternoon, half your work would be piled at the ground.

Porter used the stick to break through the ice and to scrape away the packed snow, digging deep enough to reveal the torn neck of the man beneath.

Lili

Day 2 • 9:15 a.m.

It hurt.

It hurt so bad.

Lili’s body convulsed in one big spasm as her lungs fought to expel water, to cough it out. She inhaled in a quick gasp even though she didn’t want to, she didn’t want to breathe in more water, she didn’t want to die. She did inhale, though, the motion as involuntary as listening, and this time her lungs filled with air. She coughed again, ridding her lungs and throat of more water. This was followed by another gasp.

She was cold.

So cold.

No longer in the water but lying on the concrete floor.

Her eyes snapped open.

The man was above her, his palms pressing down into her chest.

As her eyes met his, he stopped. His eyes went wide, and he leaned in, his stale breath rushing over her face. “What did you see?”

Lili gulped another breath of air and swallowed, then another after that.

“Slow down, you’ll hyperventilate.” He reached for her right hand and pressed his thumb into her wrist. “Your pulse is still a bit irregular, but it will even out. Lie still. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, calming breaths.”

Lili forced her breathing to slow, doing as he said. Sensation returned to her fingertips, to her toes. She was so cold. She began to shiver uncontrollably.

The man reached for the quilt and draped the sour material over her body. “Your body temperature began to drop the moment you died. It will return to normal in a moment. What did you see?”

She tried to blink away the haze from her eyes, but it hurt to try and keep them open. The thin light seemed incredibly bright, hot, burning. When she pinched her eyes shut, she felt a light slap at her cheek.

Died?

“What did you see?” he asked again. He rubbed her arms through the quilt, the friction slowly warming her.

“I . . . I died?” She coughed again, the words scratching at her throat with the last bit of water.

“You drowned. Your heart stopped for a two full minutes before I brought you back. What did you see?”

Lili heard the words, but it took a moment for them to sink in. Her brain was sluggish, thoughts moving slowly, groggily.

Her chest hurt. There was a deep pain at her ribs. She realized he had probably performed CPR to expel the water and kick-start her heart. “I think you broke my ribs.”

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her limp body. “Tell me what you saw! You have to tell me now before you forget! Before it goes away!”

The pain at her chest burned like a knife gouging her belly — Lili shrieked.

The man released her, pulled back from her. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You just have to tell me, and this will all be over, just tell me.”

Lili thought about it then, her mind jumping back to the moment she plunged beneath the water, the moment she . . . had she really drowned? She remembered breathing in water, consciousness pulling away. She remembered blackness.

She remembered nothing.

“I didn’t see anything. I think I passed out.”

“You were dead.”

“I . . .” Her words drifted off. She didn’t remember anything at all.

He was staring down at her, his bloodshot eyes wide and wild, spittle dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“I remember blacking out, then you waking me. Nothing else.”

“You must remember something?”

Lili shook her head. “Nothing.”

He released her shoulders and sat back, his back pressed against the large freezer. He pulled off his knit cap and scratched at his head in frustration.

Lili gasped.

There was an enormous fresh surgical incision running across his bald head. It started above his left ear and trailed around to the back of his head. It was stitched together with black thread, the flesh raised and purple.

He pulled the cap back down, covered up, and stood, favoring his right leg. Reaching down, he pulled Lili to her feet. The blood rushed from her head, and she swooned, her vision going white. He held her still until she could stand on her own, then led her back to the cage, guiding her inside. He tossed her clothes in behind her and slammed the door, then clicked both locks back in place.

“You can get dressed. We’ll try again in a few hours. You will remember next time,” he told her.

He started for the stairs, his right leg dragging slightly behind him. “Drink the milk. You’ll need your strength.”

Lili eyed the glass, now warm. A fly had landed in it and drowned.

Clair

Day 2 • 9:17 a.m.

The security guard had ushered Clair and Sophie to the far corner of the school’s lobby, then made a few phone calls. There was a small sitting area with a black leather couch, two matching chairs, and a small sign that read: FREE WILCOX WI-FI — PASSWORD AVAILABLE AT SECURITY.

Clair studied the leaf of a large potted tree. “How do they keep this alive indoors? There’s no light.”

Sophie glanced over. “A ficus? They’re like the weeds of the tree world. They’ll eat up whatever light you cast on them. This one is probably sucking up the fluorescents overhead and whatever it can pull from the windows by the door back there.”

“It’s like a frankentree. Looks completely healthy on a diet of artificial junk. I wish I could do that,” Clair replied.

“The one next to it is a philodendron. They’re easy to maintain too — just water whenever the dirt feels dry. I’ve got a few at home. They’re near impossible to kill.”

Clair glanced over. “Oh, I could kill it. My plant love leaves nothing but brown branches and shriveled blooms in its wake. I’m not fit to be a plant owner.”

They heard footsteps from above and glanced up to see a teenage girl coming down the stairs with a purple backpack slung over her shoulder. Not very tall, about five feet or so, with shoulder-length brown hair and pink highlights. She slowed as she saw them, eyeing them warily.

“Gabrielle Deegan?” Clair said, looking up at her.

The girl nodded, descended the remaining steps, and rounded the corner to the sitting area. “Are you looking for Lili?”

“We are,” Sophie said, gesturing toward one of the empty chairs. The girl glanced at the security guard, who offered a reassuring smile, then plopped down into the seat. Sophie and Clair sat opposite her on the couch. “I’m Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children, and this is Detective Clair Norton with Chicago Metro.”

Clair noted that Sophie didn’t mention she was with Homicide at Chicago Metro.

“Gabby, call me Gabby. Nobody calls me Gabrielle but that guy over there.” She nodded at the security guard. “Captain Law and Order. I should be out looking for Lili, and he’s got these doors locked up tighter than his daughter’s chastity belt.”

Clair exchanged a glance with Sophie, trying not to smile.

“Do you have any leads?”

Gabby wore the traditional school uniform, but Clair noticed her white blouse was untucked and her skirt looked like it had been hemmed up an inch or two from the norm. Her ears, eyebrow, and lip all had piercings, but she wore only a single set of small matching silver loops at each ear. No doubt dress code prohibited anything else— someone seeking individuality in a sea of the same would not be doing so here. Every time Clair entered one of these private schools, she recalled the scene from The Wall with all the identical students marching in unison into a giant meat grinder.

“She’s been gone a full day,” Gabby went on. “She could be lying in a ditch right now or tied to a bed with some crazy psycho telling her to call him Daddy while he jerks off on her chest. If that 4MK guy took her, who knows what he’s doing to her. You need to find her.”

“When was the last time you spoke to her?” Clair asked.

“Wednesday night. She was working,” Gabby said. “She texted me from the gallery.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t say anything, she just sent me a picture of a new Mustang. Cherry red. It was gorgeous. Her dad said he’d buy her a car when she graduates next year, so we’ve been doing this thing where we send each other pictures of cool cars when we find them. She’s not sure what she wants yet. But her dad said if she graduates with straight As, he’ll buy her whatever. He’s a doctor, so I think he’s serious. I told her she should get a Maserati, but she doesn’t want to take advantage of him. She’s trying to find something cool but still affordable. I keep telling her to break the bank if she can, so she sent me the Mustang pic, and I sent her this one.”

She held up her phone. Clair leaned in closer. “What is that?”

“A Tesla Roadster. They don’t make them anymore, but it’s a way cool car. Fully electric and can do zero to sixty in two point seven seconds. It will even get a few hundred miles per charge. They stopped making them in 2012, but the specs are much better than anything else out there, even the new electric cars. You can find them for around seventy thousand now, even though they went as high as a few hundred when they first came out.”

Clair thought about her seven-year-old Honda Civic parked down the street and made a mental note to call her dad and ask for a car. Apparently that route was much more fruitful than saving pennies followed by a visit to the buy-here pay-here lot. “May I see that?”

Gabby handed her the phone.

Clair scrolled through her text messages. No actual words were exchanged with Lili, only photos of cars over the past few weeks.

Gabby went on. “She was hoping to get her license soon and maybe talk her dad into buying the car earlier. She’s had straight As since finger painting in grade school. That’s not gonna change between now and graduation. We thought it would be cool to drive to school every day, even though it’s only a few blocks.”

Clair returned the phone to her. “Do you have a license?”

Gabby shook her head. “I don’t really need one, not now anyway. I get along fine on the bus or the train. Parking in the city can be a bitch. I figured riding in someone else’s car was the way to go.” She offered a wry smile. “Particularly if it’s a Tesla Roadster.”

“Have you ever done that?” Sophie asked. “Ridden in someone else’s car to school?”

Gabby shifted in her seat and scratched her elbow. “Sometimes, if the weather is bad. We always see somebody we know on Sixty-Ninth. If it’s raining or snowing heavily, we might catch a ride.”

“What about yesterday morning? Think Lili caught a ride with someone?” Clair asked.

Gabby thought about this for a second. “It was snowing pretty good, so I guess it’s possible.”

“We’re going to need a list of everyone who might’ve given her a ride. Do you think you can do that?” Sophie asked.

Gabby chuckled. “You think one of the boys here took her? Not a chance. She’d kick their ass before they got their pecker out of their pants.”

Sophie tilted her head. “Would she get in the car with a stranger?”

“No.”

“Then . . .” Sophie let the word hang.

Gabby leaned forward, twisting her fingers together. “Right before school, Sixty-Ninth is full of students, driving and walking. If someone tried to pull her into a car or something, somebody would have seen her.”

“What about if she got into a car with someone she knows?” Clair asked. “Think somebody would notice that?”

Gabby sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Think you can make that list for us? Anyone you can think of who may have given her a ride?”

Gabby nodded and pulled a notepad out from her backpack.

Porter

Day 2 • 10:26 a.m.

They found Floyd Reynolds within the body of the snowman, a deep gash in his neck. Someone had tied him to the metal pole of a large bird feeder, then built the snowman around him, slowly covering him in ice and snow.

Porter and Nash watched in awe as CSI painstakingly removed the snow in bits and pieces, carefully bagging and tagging each one for analysis back at their lab, slowly revealing the man beneath.

“This took time, a lot of time,” Nash said under his breath.

“Few hours at least,” Porter agreed.

“How can he do something like this completely unnoticed?”

Porter motioned around the yard. “We’ve got nothing but a tree line at the back here, hedges to the right blocking the view from the neighbors, a wood fence on the left. For someone to really see what was going on back here, they’d have to come through the gate at the front yard. This isn’t visible from the street.”

“Mrs. Reynolds is preoccupied, and the boy was probably in bed by the time he got started,” Nash added, thinking aloud.

Porter’s gaze fell to the ground. He started for the front yard.

Nash followed a few paces behind him, careful to duplicate his steps and avoid multiple tracks. He did this more out of habit than necessity. CSI had already searched the snow and found nothing.

Porter pushed through the gate, paused for a second, then went to the silver Lexus LS parked in the driveway. The car was parked at the side of the house, not visible from the front door. Mrs. Reynolds thought her husband had left, but most likely he’d never gotten the car in gear.

The unsub opened the rear door and slipped into the car behind the driver’s seat. “He was hiding back here when Reynolds came out, probably ducked down in back. There’s a motion light up there. Mrs. Reynolds said her husband left after dinner, so it was probably dark out. He would have tripped the light — only place to hide is the backseat. He waited for Reynolds to get in, maybe get the seat belt around him, and close the door. Then he came up and got something around the man’s neck, something thin like a piano wire, judging by the way it cut into his throat.” As Porter spoke, he climbed into the back of the car and acted everything out, moving in slow motion.

He looked at the back of the driver’s seat. “We’ve got a shoe print here in the leather. Looks like he tried to wipe it away and missed part. He must have put a foot against the back of the seat for leverage.”

“CSI said it’s a size eleven work boot. They don’t know the make,” Nash said.

“It takes a lot of strength to kill a man like that. He’d be thrashing about, fighting back, trying to work his hand under the cord. Reynolds’s movement would be highly restricted — the steering wheel would see to that. He might have tried to get the door open, but most likely both hands went to his neck. The power position is in the backseat. Reynolds wouldn’t have been able to get the cord off, even if he were the stronger man. The leverage and angles all work against him,” Porter said.

Porter climbed out of the backseat and opened the front door. “The blood spatter on the windshield and dashboard fits.”

The steering wheel and door were covered in black fingerprint powder. “Our unsub kills him, climbs out, reaches into the front, takes Reynolds by the shoulders, and drags him out, drags him all the way to the back.” Again, Porter mimics the movement, his back hunched, hauling an invisible body through the snow until he reached the remains of the snowman. Reynolds’s body was completely visible now, all the snow and ice removed. Porter looked at the props on the ground, the stovepipe hat, the black gloves, and the broom. “He must have used the broom to sweep away what he could of his tracks. Last night’s snow did the rest.”

“We think he walked off into the woods,” one of the CSI officers said. It was the same woman Porter and Nash had met at the Jackson Park Lagoon crime scene.

Porter nodded in agreement. “That’s how I would have left. You’re Lindsy, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Rolfes replied. She pointed at the ground leading into the trees. “The snow isn’t as thick under the trees, but he brushed it anyway. Looks like he used a branch or something, something not as effective as the broom. We’ve got a faint trail. It comes out one block over on Hyicen Street. He probably parked his own vehicle there.”

“Any tire tracks?”

Rolfes shook her head. “Nothing to identify the unsub’s vehicle. Two uniforms are going door to door to see if anyone saw a car parked there last night.”

Porter’s phone rang. He glanced down at the display. “It’s the captain.”

“You gonna answer?”

“Nope.”

Nash frowned. “Balls. You know what that means.”

Porter’s phone went silent. A moment later Nash’s phone rang.

“Double balls.”

“Tell him we’re still at the scene. We’ll come in as soon as we wrap up here,” Porter said.

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