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

Nash asked, “Did you talk to the manager at the Starbucks?”

Sophie nodded. “He recognized Ella from the photo I showed him, but he couldn’t tell me if she was in on that particular day. She typically pays with cash, so I couldn’t reference debit or credit card receipts.”

“Any security cameras?”

“There is one, but it recycles daily. They don’t store the footage. By the time we got there, it was gone.”

Kloz cleared his throat. “Maybe I should take a look? I’ve never known a security system that really erased the previous day’s footage. If the system is hard-drive-based, fragments may still exist, even if the manager thinks the footage is gone.”

Porter nodded and wrote STARBUCKS FOOTAGE (I DAY CYCLE?) — KLOZ on the board. “What else?”

“We searched her computer and e-mail but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary,” Sophie replied. “Her phone disappeared with her. It last connected to the tower near Logan Square and dropped off four minutes after the bus’s scheduled stop.”

“Kloz?”

Kloz was already nodding, making a note on his laptop. “I’ll take a look at that too.”

Porter turned back to Sophie. “Did you find anything in Lili’s room?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Lots of clothes strewn about. Nothing hidden in any of the drawers or under the mattress, the typical places. There was a photo taped to the mirror of her and another girl. Her mother said it was her friend Gabby. Her father said she had both a cell phone and a laptop, but neither were in her room. Her mom told me she would have taken them to school, said she was carrying her backpack when she left.” She paused for a second, reading a text message on her phone. “My office pinged her cell, but it was off. The results just came back. The last tower it hit was near her house. It went dark at twenty-three after seven. That’s only about eight minutes after she left home.”

“Kloz, see if you can pull anything from her social media accounts or e-mail,” Porter pointed out.

“On it,” Kloz replied.

Sophie pulled a folder from her bag and spread the contents on the table. She had pictures of both girls. “Ella and Lili have a similar look, which would suggest an attraction or sexual motive, but the ME said there was no sign of assault with Ella. I’m not willing to write that off as a coincidence just yet.”

“Good point. May I?” Porter said, pointing at the photos.

Sophie handed the pictures to him, and Porter taped them to the board. “How old is Lili?”

“Seventeen,” Sophie replied.

“Both have blond hair, roughly shoulder length. Ella had blue eyes, Lili has green. They’re two years apart. Where did Ella go to school?” Porter asked.

Sophie flipped through her notes. “Kelvyn Park High. She was a sophomore.”

“Any reason to believe they knew each other?”

“None that I’m aware of,” she replied. “Different schools, different social circles, two years apart. Neither drove.”

“What about the gallery?” Porter asked. “Could they have met there?”

“I haven’t been to the gallery yet. They don’t open until ten.”

Porter scratched at his cheek. “I’d rather you and Clair walk to school, then maybe interview her friend, Gabrielle Deegan. Nash tends to scare the children.”

Nash smiled. “I can’t help if I’m intimidating.”

Porter nodded at him. “You and I will check the gallery.”

“Love me some art.”

“I’ll text you the address,” Sophie said. “It’s on North Halsted.”

Porter glanced back at the board. “What else?”

The group fell silent.

“Should we watch the video?” Clair asked.

“Yeah, fire it up.”

Clair tapped at the screen of her iPad, then set it in the middle of the table. The image was frozen. A horrible angle on a narrow blacktop road. The time stamp indicated 8:47 a.m., February 12.

Clair pressed Play, and the time stamp moved forward in real time. Two cars rolled past — a yellow Toyota and a white Ford. When a gray pickup truck came into view, Clair hit Pause. “I’m going to advance slowly,” she said, and the image moved forward a few frames at a time.

When the back of the truck came into view, Porter understood. “Freeze there,” he said.

The pickup truck was towing a large water tank, the kind belonging to pool cleaners.

“There’s no pool in the park, and pool service during the dead of winter is not in high demand,” Clair said. “I think that’s how he got the water in.”

“Do you have any other angles?” Porter asked.

Clair shook her head. “That’s the only camera.”

Kloz leaned in. “Not much I can do with it. The image is clear, the angle just sucks.”

“Roll back a few frames?” Porter suggested.

Clair pressed Rewind. The image reversed one frame at a time with each touch.

“Stop,” Porter said. “What’s with that glare, and why such a horrible shot?”

The camera pointed at a severe angle, nearly straight down. Normally they either pointed up a road or down a road, the best possible angle to capture cars either approaching or leaving.

They froze the shot that captured the most of the truck’s windshield, but a bright white glare obscured their view inside.

Porter could make out the shape of the driver but nothing that would help them identify the person. “Kloz, do you think you can enlarge this and clean it up at all?”

Kloz chewed on the tip of his thumb. “Maybe — tough to say. I’ll give it a shot.”

“The park manager said they rarely review the footage. The camera is there as more of a deterrent than anything. At some point either it got loose and pointed down toward the ground, or someone loosened it and purposely pointed it that way. He had no idea when or how it happened,” Clair explained. “He said the camera used to point down the road to capture the cars and their drivers as they approached.”

Porter turned to Kloz, but Kloz waved him off before he could speak. “Yeah, I know. I’ll go back through old footage and see if I can determine when it happened, on the off chance we catch our unsub smiling at the camera holding a wrench.”

“Sometimes they slip up,” Porter pointed out.

“Yep.”

“This is good. At the very least we should get a make and model on the truck. If we cross-reference that against pool cleaning companies, we may get lucky.” Porter turned back to the board. “Anything else we can add?”

Again, the room went silent.

Porter capped the black marker and took a seat at the conference table. “I want to get a better handle on the abductions themselves. This unsub works fast and appears to have no trouble taking these girls from public places. That means he either blends in well or possibly gets to know them in advance so they don’t feel threatened by him. He couldn’t pull them kicking and screaming off the street into this pickup truck without being noticed, so somehow he convinces them to go willingly.”

“He may have access to other vehicles,” Nash suggested. “Public works or a utility company van. Something that disappears in the background.”

Kloz flipped his laptop around so the others could see. The screen had a detailed map of Chicago and the surrounding areas. There was a red dot near Logan Square, one at Jackson Park, and a third on King Drive in Bronzeville. “We’ve got a distance of about ten miles between the two abduction sites. In a city this big, that’s a sizable hunting ground. Jackson Park, where Ella was found, is actually closer to Lili’s house than Ella’s own.”

Porter studied the map for a moment. “So Lili was abducted close to where Ella was found. That may be important.”

“Ella drowned in salt water?” Sophie was frowning up at the board. “That doesn’t make any sense.”