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

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.

16

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.”