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

across the chainlink a few inches from her foot, and she pulled away, pushing deeper into the corner.

      With each footfall upstairs, a tiny bit of dust rained down from the rafters, a thin fog in the gloomy light. Lili tried to pretend this was snow and she was looking out a window. She tried to pretend she was safely back in her room at home, but the illusion broke whenever the man cried out.

      He screamed, a lot.

      His words were incoherent, a muffled blast of nonsense, and they were followed sometimes by crying, other times by a pain-filled wail. But they broke the relative silence of the home and lingered on the air, somehow living in those tiny bursts of dust drifting down.

      Nothing preceded the cries.

      Lili’s father once hit his index finger with a hammer while trying to help her build a birdhouse for school, and he let out a similar wail but it hadn’t lingered — like he caught himself about the scream, realized his daughter was watching, and bit his tongue. The scream came to an abrupt halt, dying somewhere in his throat as his face flushed with red.

      The screams from the man upstairs did not drop off so suddenly. He would be silent for a really long time, no movement or noise at all. Then his voice would fill the house with the sharpness of a blade, then linger as they morphed into sobs.

      Lili didn’t know what brought on his screams. She didn’t want to know. She preferred he keep whatever it was upstairs.

      He had come down only once in the past hour. He emptied the bucket he had left for her waste, washing it in the utility tub before returning it to her cage. He then eyed the still-full glass of milk with the fly floating on top, picked it up, and carried it back up the stairs, all without uttering a word. He looked sickly pale, though. When Lili met his gaze, she couldn’t help but turn away, her eyes unwilling to look upon him — somehow, that had caused him to stay a little bit longer. If she wasn’t looking at him, he felt more comfortable looking at her, staring even. Who knew what thoughts ran through his head.

      When he came back again, Lili would lock her eyes on him and not turn away, maybe say something about his wound. Maybe that would make him go away sooner.

      Lili knew plenty of boys like this.

      The confident ones had no problem glaring at her. Some made sure she knew they were watching. The shy boys, though — they may look, but the moment she felt their eyes on her, the moment she looked over at them, they would turn away and lose themselves in something else, pretending she wasn’t there at all. Her friend Gabby thought of it as some kind of game, always calling out the shy boys and making them feel all embarrassed whenever she caught one.

      There was one boy in their class, Zackary Mayville, notoriously shy. Gabby got partnered with him during science class last week, and just to mess with him, she unfastened two of the buttons on her blouse, just enough so her bra was visible when she bent down over their workbench. He turned bright red every time, looking but trying not to get caught looking, and Gabby managed to get through the entire hour with a straight face. Lili hadn’t, though. She couldn’t stop laughing and nearly didn’t get the assignment done. She had to —

      Lili heard footsteps on the stairs. The man appeared.

      He had changed clothes. Now he wore black jeans, a dark red sweater, and the same black knit cap from earlier. When he reached the bottom of the steps, he sat, and this time he did stare at her.

      Only minutes earlier, Lili had told herself that she would stare back, that she would watch him with an intensity in her eyes, unflinching, unnerving. She would rattle him. She didn’t, though. Instead, she looked away. She focused her gaze on the concrete floor and watched him from the corner of her eye.

      He sat there for a long time, at least twenty minutes, his breath coming in short, wheeze-filled gasps. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. “I’m sorry if I alarmed you. Sometimes it hurts.”

      Lili wanted to ask him what he meant, but she didn’t. Instead, she remained silent.

      “Sometimes,” he went on, “I feel like someone’s got their fingers around my eyeball and they’re squeezing with all their might, not enough to pop it, but almost. I have meds, but they make it hard to think, to focus, and I need to concentrate right now. I need my wits about me.”

      Lili wanted to ask him about it, find out what was wrong, but kept her thoughts to herself. She wouldn’t speak to him.

      He reached up and scratched at his cap, then stood. “It’s time to do it again.”

       20

       Clair

       Day 2 • 11:49 a.m.

      Kloz gave his chair a push with his right foot and sent it spinning. “No shit? Sam couldn’t stop being a cop? Not exactly a news flash.”

      Nash sat on the edge of the conference table, Sophie and Clair at the opposite end. “He should have told us.”

      “It’s not like we could have covered for him,” Clair said. “Sounds like the captain didn’t even give you a chance.”

      Nash pointed across the hall. “It’s those ass clowns over there.”

      Kloz gave his chair another spin. “This has conspiracy written all over it.”

      “What do you mean?” Nash asked.

      “Someone higher up is covering their ass. We should be working directly with the feds on this. Instead, they scooped up the investigation and cut us out. In what world does that make sense? I’ll tell you — in a world where someone higher up wants to distance this department from the case.”

      “Who? Dalton?”

      “Maybe higher. The mayor was friends with Talbot. He took a lot of flak when that all went down. Then you got the press saying Sam let Bishop go . . .”

      Clair threw a pen at him. “Sam didn’t let anyone go. He saved that girl.”

      Kloz caught the pen and put it in his pocket. “We know that, but it’s a juicier story if he lets him go. The mayor’s bestie is a criminal, the lead detective lets the serial killer walk . . . it makes perfect sense for the feds to come in and lock everyone else out.”

      Clair turned to Nash. “Do you think he’s in contact with Bishop?”

      “Sam?”

      “Yeah.”

      Nash shrugged. “Dunno.”

      “Would he do that?” Sophie asked. “Talk to that man on his own?”

      Nash shrugged again. “He’s been playing things close to the vest since Heather died.”

      “Who’s Heather?” Sophie asked.

      Clair tilted her head. “You didn’t hear?”

      Sophie shook her head.

      “Sam’s wife was killed in a convenience store robbery a few weeks before all this went down with Bishop. He probably shouldn’t have been working, but he had been on 4MK since the beginning, so when we thought he died we had to bring him back in. 4MK was his case. They caught the guy who killed her, and then he escaped police custody. Bishop killed Talbot, Porter saved Emory, then he spent a little time in the hospital recuperating. When he got home, he found a box on his bed. Inside there was a note from Bishop and an ear belonging to the man who killed his wife. Bishop got him,” Clair explained.

      “What did the note say?”

      “Bishop asked Sam to help find his mother,” Nash told her.

      “His mother? What does she have to do with this?”

      Clair rolled her eyes.