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

rubbed his hands together. The cold was slowly killing him. With the wind-chill, the temperature hovered at three degrees. “It’s after nine. They may have already seen the morning paper. It’s probably all over the morning news too.”

      Porter rang the doorbell again.

      The curtain over the glass window to the left of the door moved aside briefly, fell back into place. Someone worked the deadbolt. The door opened a few inches. A woman in her mid-forties peeked out, her eyes red and dark, the skin around them sunken with lack of sleep. Her brown hair looked oily, unwashed for days. She wore a thick brown sweater and jeans. “May I help you?”

      Porter unfolded his badge case. “I’m Detective Porter, and this is Detective Nash with Chicago Metro. May we come in?”

      She stared at him for a moment, as if the words took a second to register. Then she nodded and opened the door while staring past them to the street. “I think the cold finally scared away the last news van. They were still out there last night.”

      Porter and Nash stomped the snow from their feet and stepped inside, closing the door behind them. The heat wrapped around them, stifling compared with outside. Porter didn’t care. He could stand in a fire pit for an hour, and his fingers would still be numb. He cleared his throat. “Is your husband home?”

      Mrs. Reynolds shook her head. “He’s not back yet.”

      “Did he go somewhere?”

      The woman took a deep breath and sat on the arm of the leather sofa behind her. “He’s been driving around looking for Ella since the day she disappeared. He comes home long enough to eat and get a few hours of sleep, then just goes out again. I went with him the first few times, but it felt so futile. Driving up and down random streets like we’re going to spot her darting between houses or something, like a runaway dog. I can’t tell him not to go, though. It would break his heart. He tried staying home last Tuesday, and we were both climbing the walls. He went back out again last night after dinner.”

      “It helps to stay active,” Nash said.

      She looked at him, her face blank, then went on. “For the first week, I did nothing but make phone calls. All Ella’s friends and our family, our neighbors, anybody I could get to pick up. Shelters, hospitals, morgues . . . sitting here, trapped in this house, it feels so . . . helpless. But what else can I do? We’ve got posters hanging everywhere. Little good they do in this weather. Nobody is outside unless they need to be.”

      Porter took a deep breath. “There’s no easy way to say this —”

      Mrs. Reynolds raised her hand, silencing him. “You don’t have to. I saw it on the news this morning. The television hasn’t been turned off in three weeks. I dozed off on the couch, and when I woke up last night, they were running footage at the park. They never came out and said it was Ella, only that a girl’s body had been found in the lagoon. A mother knows, though. I guess I’ve known for weeks. I think I saw you on TV. You look familiar.”

      “I’m so sorry.”

      She nodded and blotted at eyes that looked like they had shed their last tear two weeks earlier. “My Ella wouldn’t run away, we knew that from the moment she went missing. I think I lost a little bit of hope with each minute after that. A girl can’t just disappear in today’s world, not with cameras and the Internet everywhere. A girl disappears completely, and you gotta know something bad happened.” She took a deep breath. “How did she die?”

      “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