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The Fifth to Die: A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller
There was one boy in their class, Zackary Mayville, notoriously shy. Gabby got partnered with him during science class last week, and just to mess with him, she unfastened two of the buttons on her blouse, just enough so her bra was visible when she bent down over their workbench. He turned bright red every time, looking but trying not to get caught looking, and Gabby managed to get through the entire hour with a straight face. Lili hadn’t, though. She couldn’t stop laughing and nearly didn’t get the assignment done. She had to —
Lili heard footsteps on the stairs. The man appeared.
He had changed clothes. Now he wore black jeans, a dark red sweater, and the same black knit cap from earlier. When he reached the bottom of the steps, he sat, and this time he did stare at her.
Only minutes earlier, Lili had told herself that she would stare back, that she would watch him with an intensity in her eyes, unflinching, unnerving. She would rattle him. She didn’t, though. Instead, she looked away. She focused her gaze on the concrete floor and watched him from the corner of her eye.
He sat there for a long time, at least twenty minutes, his breath coming in short, wheeze-filled gasps. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. “I’m sorry if I alarmed you. Sometimes it hurts.”
Lili wanted to ask him what he meant, but she didn’t. Instead, she remained silent.
“Sometimes,” he went on, “I feel like someone’s got their fingers around my eyeball and they’re squeezing with all their might, not enough to pop it, but almost. I have meds, but they make it hard to think, to focus, and I need to concentrate right now. I need my wits about me.”
Lili wanted to ask him about it, find out what was wrong, but kept her thoughts to herself. She wouldn’t speak to him.
He reached up and scratched at his cap, then stood. “It’s time to do it again.”
20
Clair
Day 2 • 11:49 a.m.
Kloz gave his chair a push with his right foot and sent it spinning. “No shit? Sam couldn’t stop being a cop? Not exactly a news flash.”
Nash sat on the edge of the conference table, Sophie and Clair at the opposite end. “He should have told us.”
“It’s not like we could have covered for him,” Clair said. “Sounds like the captain didn’t even give you a chance.”
Nash pointed across the hall. “It’s those ass clowns over there.”
Kloz gave his chair another spin. “This has conspiracy written all over it.”
“What do you mean?” Nash asked.
“Someone higher up is covering their ass. We should be working directly with the feds on this. Instead, they scooped up the investigation and cut us out. In what world does that make sense? I’ll tell you — in a world where someone higher up wants to distance this department from the case.”
“Who? Dalton?”
“Maybe higher. The mayor was friends with Talbot. He took a lot of flak when that all went down. Then you got the press saying Sam let Bishop go . . .”
Clair threw a pen at him. “Sam didn’t let anyone go. He saved that girl.”
Kloz caught the pen and put it in his pocket. “We know that, but it’s a juicier story if he lets him go. The mayor’s bestie is a criminal, the lead detective lets the serial killer walk . . . it makes perfect sense for the feds to come in and lock everyone else out.”
Clair turned to Nash. “Do you think he’s in contact with Bishop?”
“Sam?”
“Yeah.”
Nash shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Would he do that?” Sophie asked. “Talk to that man on his own?”
Nash shrugged again. “He’s been playing things close to the vest since Heather died.”
“Who’s Heather?” Sophie asked.
Clair tilted her head. “You didn’t hear?”
Sophie shook her head.
“Sam’s wife was killed in a convenience store robbery a few weeks before all this went down with Bishop. He probably shouldn’t have been working, but he had been on 4MK since the beginning, so when we thought he died we had to bring him back in. 4MK was his case. They caught the guy who killed her, and then he escaped police custody. Bishop killed Talbot, Porter saved Emory, then he spent a little time in the hospital recuperating. When he got home, he found a box on his bed. Inside there was a note from Bishop and an ear belonging to the man who killed his wife. Bishop got him,” Clair explained.
“What did the note say?”
“Bishop asked Sam to help find his mother,” Nash told her.
“His mother? What does she have to do with this?”
Clair rolled her eyes. “We don’t have time for this right now. I’ll fill you in when we’re back in the car. We need to keep moving, figure out how to proceed without Sam.” She turned back to Nash. “What happened at the Reynoldses’ house?”
Nash loaded up the photos on his phone and slid it across the table to Clair and Sophie.
Kloz leaned in to get a better look. “The same guy who killed Ella Reynolds did this?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Nash replied.
“But why?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
Sophie swiped back through the images. “That doesn’t make sense. If the unsub is targeting the Reynolds family, why would he take Lili Davies? They don’t know each other. There’s no connection.”
“There must be a connection, we just haven’t figured it out yet. What do we know about the father?” Clair asked.
Nash stood and went to the whiteboard. He wrote FLOYD REYNOLDS and underlined it, then wrote WIFE: LEEANN REYNOLDS under it. “He worked for UniMed America Healthcare, has for the past twelve years. Sold blanket insurance and health-care policies. According to his wife, he brings home about two hundred thousand a year before bonuses, and they have no debt aside from an American Express card they pay off every month.”
Klozowski whistled. “That’s some nice scratch. I’m clearly in the wrong line of work.”
“We have UniMed,” Sophie pointed out.
“They’re the number three provider in the state,” Nash told them before writing SIZE II WORK BOOT PRINT FOUND on the board under UNSUB.
“Where?” Sophie asked.
“On the back of the driver’s seat in the Reynoldses’ car. A Lexus LS. Looked like the unsub tried to wipe it away but must have been in a hurry. Sam thinks he put his foot there for leverage when he strangled the father.”
Kloz’s eyes turned toward the ceiling. “Size eleven would put him around seventy-one point five inches, about six feet tall.”
“How do you know that?” Sophie asked.
“The average person is six and a half times taller than their shoe size. Any smaller or larger and their feet are out of proportion with their body, which means they’d have trouble walking, standing, balancing,” Kloz replied.
“Huh.”
“Hang with me, and I’ll school you on all kinds of trivia.”
“No, thank you,” Sophie told him.
Clair said, “I’m not sure I buy the no-debt thing. Maybe they don’t have traditional debt, but what about something not so traditional, like gambling or something he may not have shared with the wife? If you owe the wrong person money, I can see them making an example out of Reynolds’s daughter.”
“They wouldn’t take him out, though,” Kloz said. “Do that, and there’s nobody left to pay.”
“What about the wife? Maybe she owes somebody, and they made examples out of her daughter and her husband,” Sophie said. “Women bet on the ponies too.”
“They have time for that between all the cooking and the cleaning and baby making?” Kloz said, raising his notepad to shield his face from flying pens.
He lowered the notepad a moment later to find Clair just staring at him. “You are such a douche-nozzle.”
Sophie was shaking her head at him. “I don’t like you much.”
Nash studied the board. “That’s actually a good point.”
“Thank you,” Kloz said, smiling triumphantly.
“Not you, asshat. Sophie,” Nash said. “Clair, ask Hosman to dig into their finances in case things are amiss in suburbia.”
“On it.”
“Is somebody watching the mother?” Klozowski asked.
Nash nodded. “We left two uniforms there to keep an eye on her and their little boy. There were also three news vans outside when I left. I don’t think they’ll get much alone time in the near future. Probably a good thing.”
Clair was flipping through the images of Reynolds on Nash’s phone again. “This doesn’t really feel like a collection hit. Those guys tend to work efficiently, a double tap to the head, no mixed signals. They don’t build snowmen or spend hours positioning a body under the ice just right. Whoever this is, they’re trying to send some kind of message.”
“They’re not afraid of getting caught, either,” Sophie said. “They’re spending a lot of time in visible places.”
Clair nodded. “Somebody with nothing to lose has no fear, no remorse, they just act. That makes this guy very dangerous.”
Nash drew a line between Ella Reynolds and Lili Davies. “These two are connected somehow.”
Klozowski’s phone buzzed, and he glanced down at the display. “We’ve got a make and model on the truck from the park footage. It’s a 2011 Toyota Tundra.”
“See if you can get a list of matches within a hundred-mile radius of the city.”
Klozowski was already tapping at his phone. “Yep.”
“Any luck enhancing the image of the driver?”
“Nope,” Klozowski replied. “I tried before I came down here. The camera is old and doesn’t have the resolution.”
Nash went back to the board, crossed out the completed items, and studied the remaining list of assignments. “This is getting long, and now we’re down a man.”
Kloz set down his phone and raised his hand.
“Yes, Kloz?” Nash said, pointing at him.
Klozowski grinned. “See what I did there? Remember when Bishop raised his hand? That’s a ‘callback.’”
“Do you have something to add?”
Kloz nodded. “Yes, sir. I can go out in the field. I need to run to that Starbucks anyway to tackle their video footage.”
Nash glanced up at the evidence board. “What about your other assignments?”
“I’m not running a one-man show upstairs. I’ve got staff. I’ll bring my laptop, and they can feed information to us as they get it,” Kloz said.
Nash nodded. “Done. Ladies, let’s divide and conquer. You take the art gallery. They should be open by now. Kloz and I will hit Starbucks and tackle some of these other items on the list. At this point, we’ve got to assume Lili is still alive. We need a break.”
Clair stood up and stretched. “Should someone check on Sam?”
“Nope,” Nash replied.
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)
FLOYD REYNOLDS
Wife: Leeann Reynolds
Insurance sales — works for UniMed America Healthcare
No debt? Per wife. Hosman checking
UNSUB
ASSIGNMENTS:
21
Porter
Day 2 • 12:18 p.m.
Porter needed a Big Mac.
Not only a Big Mac but a large fry, chocolate shake, and an apple pie for dessert.
He needed it so badly, the craving drove him to walk steadfast from his apartment, three blocks down Wabash, and directly into the nearest McDonald’s, which was hopping this time of day. He ordered, took his meal to a small table in the back, and devoured every bit. Seven minutes later, he found himself staring at an empty tray, his stomach still rumbling.
He desperately wanted to talk to Heather. The immense hole in his heart once filled by the sound of his wife’s voice burned.
Heather had been gone for six months now, and it felt like six thousand lifetimes. People told him he would heal with time, the hole would grow smaller, fill with other loves, with life lived. It hadn’t, though. Instead, the void only seemed to grow larger, and he found himself missing her more each day.
Heather understood. Heather listened.
Porter wanted to tell her about the past six months. He needed her advice. He needed the sound of her voice.
“You kept me from venturing down the rabbit hole, Button,” Porter said quietly. “Now I’m knee deep and sinking fast.”
Last month he canceled her cell phone service. Until then, he’d called her regularly, sometimes three or four calls in a day, just to hear her sweet voice on the other end of the line, enough distance to make it sound real, to make her sound real. Silly, he knew, but it was all he had. Her presence slowly faded from his life no matter how tight he held on. Her body may have died suddenly, but her spirit lingered. Porter held that spirit’s hand with all his might, unwilling to let go at first, finally coming to the realization that he had no other choice. That was the night he turned off her cell phone, and when he called her the next morning, it wasn’t her voice that answered but instead a robotic operator telling him the number was no longer in service. At that point, her hand slipped from his and she was gone.
He would kill to have her back.
Even if only for five minutes, to have her back, to hold her, to ask her what to do next.
“I love you, Button,” he said quietly.
With a deep sigh, Porter stood up, gathered his trash, and dumped everything into the overflowing can at the door. He stepped out into the icy day, welcoming the numb of it.
Then he wandered.
Twenty minutes later Porter found himself standing in the lobby of Flair Tower on West Erie, a small puddle forming at his feet. He hadn’t planned on coming here, and as he pushed through the doors he considered turning right back around, but instead he found himself standing still, his eyes looking out across the lobby but not really taking anything in, dazed.
“Detective?”
Porter hadn’t heard her walk up. He hadn’t expected her to walk up, a building this size, but there she was, standing in front of him.
“Hello, Emory.”
The last time he had seen her was at the hospital shortly after she was rescued from 4MK. Bishop had placed her at the bottom of an elevator shaft in that building on Belmont, used her as bait to lure Porter in. She had been malnourished, gaunt, her skin pale. Her right wrist had been badly damaged by the handcuffs he used to restrain her, and Bishop had removed Emory’s left ear, yet she still managed to smile that day. Her hair was longer now, her face fuller, color in her cheeks.
“Detective, are you okay?”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry. I’m not really sure why I’m here. I meant to come and see you, you know, after, but things have been so hectic, the time got away from me,” he said.
“Let’s sit.” She took his hand and led him to some couches placed in front of a fireplace in the corner of the lobby. A log crackled, wrapped in thick flames, the heat reaching out and lapping at the air.
Porter tugged off his gloves, his fingers nervously twitching together. “I probably shouldn’t be here.”
Emory smiled. “That’s silly — it’s good to see you. I meant to stop by the station a dozen times but couldn’t bring myself to go. Silly. I guess it’s hard to find the words after something like that. The whole thing feels like a bad nightmare that happened to someone else. Like a movie I watched a few months ago and left at the theater. I can’t talk to my friends, they don’t understand. Ms. Burrow, either. She tried to coax the story out of me a few times, but I couldn’t . . . it all made her very uncomfortable. She wanted me to talk for my own sake, not because she wanted the details, and I didn’t see the point in burdening her with those details. It was my nightmare. There’s no reason for her to suffer too, have those thoughts in her head.”
“Did you see a shrink?”
Emory laughed and shook her head. “They sure wanted to see me. I don’t know how many dozens of them reached out. I tried to talk to one, but I couldn’t stop thinking she planned to write a book about whatever I told her, and the idea of walking past a book at the store, knowing this ordeal was carved in stone for others to read, the idea of all that shut me right up. I couldn’t tell her anything.”
“I don’t think they’re allowed to do that. She would have lost her license.”
“I suppose.”
Emory’s hands rested in her lap. Porter could still see a faint scar on her right wrist, but for the most part, the surgeons had done a wonderful job repairing the damage. On her left wrist, a small figure-eight tattoo — Bishop gave her that too.
She raised her right wrist and pulled back the sleeve. “They did a good job, right?”
“If I didn’t know what happened, I’d never guess. It’s barely noticeable.”
“I’m going back in next May. The doctor says he can wipe it out completely, but we need to give it a chance to heal up first,” she told him, rotating the wrist. “I still don’t have full motion, but it seems like it’s coming back.”
Porter’s eyes inadvertently went to her left ear, hidden behind her long chestnut hair. He caught himself, almost looked away, then figured he wasn’t fooling anybody. “How’s the ear?”
A wide grin spread across her face. “Wanna see?”
Porter couldn’t help but smile back. He nodded. “Is it gross?”
“You tell me?” Emory pulled her hair back, revealing a perfectly natural-looking ear. “Pretty cool, huh?”
Porter leaned in closer. Aside from a small scar visible at the base where doctors had attached the extremity, he couldn’t tell it wasn’t her original ear. “That’s amazing.”
Emory rolled up the sleeve of her right arm and showed him a small scar below her elbow. “They grew it here, using cartilage from my ribs. It only took a few months. The surgery was about six weeks ago. The doctor said Bishop removed mine with near surgical precision, so they had no trouble attaching the new one. Usually when they do this, the ear is torn off in some kind of accident and they have to try and piece the mess back together again. I guess I got lucky.”
“I think you’re a very strong girl.”
“You wanna know the best part?”
“What’s that?”
She turned her head and showed him her other ear. “Notice something different between the two?”
It took Porter a minute, and then it came to him. “Your right ear is pierced and your left one isn’t?”
“Yep.” She beamed. “The left was, but not anymore. I think I’m gonna leave it that way.” She held up her left wrist, showed him the small infinity tattoo. “I’m on the fence about keeping this. I think a small reminder of what happened isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it’s good to remember the bad. It makes other things seem not so terrible.”
“You are one remarkable, inspiring girl.”
She let her hair fall back. “Why, thank you, Detective.”
The two went quiet for a minute, not an awkward silence, but something a little more comfortable. Porter found himself watching the flames as they wrapped around the logs in the fireplace, the wood slowly growing red and white. The crackle they produced was soothing, relaxing. This girl had lost her mother as a child, now her father, and yet she smiled. Porter wanted desperately to smile. He wanted to smile and mean it.
As if reading his mind, Emory leaned in closer. “He wasn’t much of a father to me. I barely knew him. If not for the money, the way my mom drafted her will, I’m not so sure he would have wanted me around at all.”
“He was your father. I’m sure he cared for you. He just had trouble showing it.”
“He was a horrible man,” she said quietly. “Not to me but to so many other people.”
Porter considered telling her something to the contrary, try to build him up, thought better of it. She was a big girl. She deserved the truth. “It’s important to remember he’s not you. He never was.”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she fought them back. “That’s not what the press says. They say it’s worse now than ever. All his assets going to a kid, leaving nobody to run the business. Building inspectors shut down one of his skyscrapers last month, and the press blamed me. Nearly four thousand lost jobs.”
Porter knew the building. Talbot had used substandard concrete in the construction. When the shortcut was discovered, he’d tried to retrofit the building (and most likely pay off inspectors), but the project was shut down anyway. The building cost a little over $700 million dollars, and it was set for implosion. Better to end it now, Porter supposed, than let construction complete and the thing topple over down the road.“They’re trying to sell papers. How could that be your fault?”
