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

“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.