J.D. Barker - The Fifth to Die - A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller

Nash plucked the top box off and carried it back to his desk.

“Don’t go too far with those,” Kloz implored. “They need to last me for the week.”

“What is it?” Porter asked.

“Three dozen from that new place down the block, Peace, Love, and Little Donuts,” Clair told them. “The little bugger was going to hoard them back at his desk, until I explained the virtues of sharing with his coworkers.”

Kloz snickered. “You said if I didn’t bring them down here, you’d send a mass e-mail to the department telling everyone I had these in my desk. I couldn’t leave them upstairs undefended with all those vultures. They’d be gone in a minute. And there’s only eighteen — six in each box, not twelve.”

Nash opened the box he pilfered, and his eyes grew wide. “My baby Jesus, these are beautiful.”

Porter grabbed the second box from the pile and settled at his desk. Clair grabbed the third.

“Hey!” Kloz cried out. “Those are mine!”

“Why are they so small?” Porter asked, his mouth full of cream filling.

Clair plucked a donut from her box and held it up. It was covered in Oreo crumbles. “They’re gourmet . I’d do air quotes, but my fingers are busy. They make them small and sell them as artsy-fartsy fancy food for twice the price of regular donuts. If they didn’t taste so damn good, they’d never get away with it, but these little guys are heaven. I can feel my ass getting bigger with each bite, and I don’t care.”

Kloz settled into his usual desk next to the conference table. He placed both palms on the metal top and took a long, soothing breath, his face turning red. “Okay, you can each have one, only one.”

“I may have eaten four,” Nash said, wiping the culinary evidence from his lips. His eyes fell on the decimated box before him. “And I’m keeping the rest.”

Ten minutes later all three boxes were empty with the exception of one strawberry-frosted donut. Porter felt the sugar kick in. He stood up, walked over to their single remaining whiteboard, and wrote ELLEN REYNOLDS at the top.

“It’s Ella Reynolds,” Nash told him.

Porter grunted, wiped away the first name with the back of his hand, replaced it with ELLA. “Okay, what do we know?”

Clair said, “Ella Reynolds was reported missing on January twenty-second and found yesterday, February twelfth. Her body was discovered frozen under the ice at Jackson Park Lagoon.”

“She wasn’t frozen,” Nash broke in. “Not entirely, anyway. That’s what Eisley said. But the lagoon was.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Clair said. “According to the park, the lagoon was completely frozen over by January 2, twenty days before she went missing. Also, I have something on video we’ll want to watch after we update the board.”

Porter nodded. “When found, she wasn’t wearing her own clothes but clothes believed to belong to our second missing girl, Lili Davies.” He wrote her name on the board, then went back to Ella’s column. “Ella was last seen getting off her bus about two blocks from her house in a black coat, near Logan Square, approximately fifteen miles from where she was found. I think we can safely say the unsub staged the scene at the lagoon to appear as if Ella’s body had been there for weeks, which would be impossible if her clothes turn out to be Lili’s.”

Nash got up from his desk and went to the conference table in front of the whiteboard, taking a seat. “What’s the point of that? He went through a lot of trouble to put Ella under the ice, but then he dresses her in Lili’s clothes, giving us a firm date on the timeline. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes sense to him,” Porter pointed out. “All of this does. Including this —”

Porter wrote DROWNED IN SALT WATER beneath Ella’s name.

“Are you serious?” Kloz said.

“Eisley said he found salt water in her lungs and stomach. He’s fairly certain cause of death was drowning,” Porter told him.

“Drowning,” Clair repeated. “In salt water.”

Nash added, “The nearest ocean is about seven hundred miles away.”

“We’ll need to check out local aquariums and aquarium supply houses,” Porter said. “I think we can rule out a trip to the coast. This timeline is too tight.”

Clair was shaking her head. “I haven’t slept enough to deal with this.”

“I think we’re all running on fumes,” Porter agreed. “What do we know about the second girl, Lili Davies?”

Nash opened his small notebook. “Parents are Dr. Randal Davies and Grace Davies. Her best friend is Gabrielle Deegan. She goes to Wilcox Academy. She was last seen wearing a red coat, according to her mother — a Perro red nylon diamond-quilted hooded parka. She also had on a white hat, white gloves, dark jeans, and pink tennis shoes. She never made it to school yesterday, which means she was most likely taken on the morning of February twelfth. Her mother said she saw her leaving for school. That was about a quarter after seven in the morning. Classes start at ten to eight, and she’s walking distance to the school.”

“Does she walk with anyone to school?” Porter asked.

Nash shook his head. “Her mother said the school is only four blocks, so she goes alone.”

Kloz gave the donut boxes a sad glance, then went to the conference table. “Four blocks isn’t very far. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for someone to grab her.”

Clair took a seat next to Nash. “Assuming she went straight to school, which we can’t assume. She might’ve run into a friend on the way and gotten into their car. I know it’s only a few blocks, but I used to do that all the time when I walked to school. When you’re that close to campus, the drivers and walkers tend to converge in the parking lot, and many of the students hang out there waiting on that first bell.”

“May I come in?”

The three of them looked up. Sophie Rodriguez stood at the door. Porter noted she was wearing the same tan sweater she had on at the Davieses’ house. Most likely she hadn’t gone home yet, either. “Please,” he said. “Take a seat, we’re running through everything.”

“Uh, Sam?” Kloz said, his eyes giving her a once-over. “Remember what happened the last time you invited a stray into the clubhouse?”

Clair smacked his shoulder. “I’ve known Sophie for almost four years. She’s been vetted.” She motioned to the chair to her left.

Sophie set her bag down by the door, removed her coat, and took a seat studying the board. “I know you’re all working this from Homicide and Lili is just missing at this point, but we have an obvious connection. Probably best for us to work together, at least for now. Until we have a handle on what’s going on.”

“Welcome to the team, Sophie,” Porter said.

Nash gave him a weary look but said nothing.

Sophie studied the faces in the room. “Ella was one of my girls, too. You always hope for the best, but when they don’t turn up for more than forty-eight hours, it usually means they’re a runaway or something worse. Both of these girls have solid home lives, so I think my heart was telling me it was ‘something worse.’ When you told me about the clothes, I guess you confirmed it for me. I’m just hoping we find Lili in time.”

“Did you show the clothing photos to Lili’s parents?” Porter asked. He had e-mailed them to her from the morgue.

Sophie nodded. “Her mother confirmed they belonged to Lili. She said she wrote the initials in the hat herself.”

Porter wrote FOUND IN LILI DAVIES’S CLOTHES under ELLA REYNOLDS on the board. Then he turned back to her. “What else can you tell us about Ella?”

Sophie studied the board for a moment. “I walked the scene a few weeks back, right after she disappeared. The bus lets her off about two blocks from her house, near Logan Square, but her parents told me she would sometimes go to Starbucks on Kedzie to do her homework. I took both routes. It took me four minutes to walk from the bus stop to her house, seven minutes to walk from the bus stop to Starbucks, and nine minutes for me to walk the route from Starbucks to her house. The entire area is very public, people everywhere. I don’t see how someone could have grabbed her without being seen.”