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

not because she wanted the details, and I didn’t see the point in burdening her with those details. It was my nightmare. There’s no reason for her to suffer too, have those thoughts in her head.”

      “Did you see a shrink?”

      Emory laughed and shook her head. “They sure wanted to see me. I don’t know how many dozens of them reached out. I tried to talk to one, but I couldn’t stop thinking she planned to write a book about whatever I told her, and the idea of walking past a book at the store, knowing this ordeal was carved in stone for others to read, the idea of all that shut me right up. I couldn’t tell her anything.”

      “I don’t think they’re allowed to do that. She would have lost her license.”

      “I suppose.”

      Emory’s hands rested in her lap. Porter could still see a faint scar on her right wrist, but for the most part, the surgeons had done a wonderful job repairing the damage. On her left wrist, a small figure-eight tattoo — Bishop gave her that too.

      She raised her right wrist and pulled back the sleeve. “They did a good job, right?”

      “If I didn’t know what happened, I’d never guess. It’s barely noticeable.”

      “I’m going back in next May. The doctor says he can wipe it out completely, but we need to give it a chance to heal up first,” she told him, rotating the wrist. “I still don’t have full motion, but it seems like it’s coming back.”

      Porter’s eyes inadvertently went to her left ear, hidden behind her long chestnut hair. He caught himself, almost looked away, then figured he wasn’t fooling anybody. “How’s the ear?”

      A wide grin spread across her face. “Wanna see?”

      Porter couldn’t help but smile back. He nodded. “Is it gross?”

      “You tell me?” Emory pulled her hair back, revealing a perfectly natural-looking ear. “Pretty cool, huh?”

      Porter leaned in closer. Aside from a small scar visible at the base where doctors had attached the extremity, he couldn’t tell it wasn’t her original ear. “That’s amazing.”

      Emory rolled up the sleeve of her right arm and showed him a small scar below her elbow. “They grew it here, using cartilage from my ribs. It only took a few months. The surgery was about six weeks ago. The doctor said Bishop removed mine with near surgical precision, so they had no trouble attaching the new one. Usually when they do this, the ear is torn off in some kind of accident and they have to try and piece the mess back together again. I guess I got lucky.”

      “I think you’re a very strong girl.”

      “You wanna know the best part?”

      “What’s that?”

      She turned her head and showed him her other ear. “Notice something different between the two?”

      It took Porter a minute, and then it came to him. “Your right ear is pierced and your left one isn’t?”

      “Yep.” She beamed. “The left was, but not anymore. I think I’m gonna leave it that way.” She held up her left wrist, showed him the small infinity tattoo. “I’m on the fence about keeping this. I think a small reminder of what happened isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it’s good to remember the bad. It makes other things seem not so terrible.”

      “You are one remarkable, inspiring girl.”

      She let her hair fall back. “Why, thank you, Detective.”

      The two went quiet for a minute, not an awkward silence, but something a little more comfortable. Porter found himself watching the flames as they wrapped around the logs in the fireplace, the wood slowly growing red and white. The crackle they produced was soothing, relaxing. This girl had lost her mother as a child, now her father, and yet she smiled. Porter wanted desperately to smile. He wanted to smile and mean it.

      As if reading his mind, Emory leaned in closer. “He wasn’t much of a father to me. I barely knew him. If not for the money, the way my mom drafted her will, I’m not so sure he would have wanted me around at all.”

      “He was your father. I’m sure he cared for you. He just had trouble showing it.”

      “He was a horrible man,” she said quietly. “Not to me but to so many other people.”

      Porter considered telling her something to the contrary, try to build him up, thought better of it. She was a big girl. She deserved the truth. “It’s important to remember he’s not you. He never was.”

      Tears welled up in her eyes, and she fought them back. “That’s not what the press says. They say it’s worse now than ever. All his assets going to a kid, leaving nobody to run the business. Building inspectors shut down one of his skyscrapers last month, and the press blamed me. Nearly four thousand lost jobs.”

      Porter knew the building. Talbot had used substandard concrete in the construction. When the shortcut was discovered, he’d tried to retrofit the building (and most likely pay off inspectors), but the project was shut down anyway. The building cost a little over $700 million dollars, and it was set for implosion. Better to end it now, Porter supposed, than let construction complete and the thing topple over down the road.“They’re trying to sell papers. How could that be your fault?”

      “There’s a lot of fighting going on at Talbot Enterprises,” Emory explained. “Three of my father’s senior officers are contesting his will. They’re saying he drafted it under duress, that my mother forced him to leave everything to me. With all of them making grabs for the money, key decisions aren’t happening, and things are falling apart. I’m not old enough to assume control, so Patricia Talbot stepped in as interim CEO until somebody can take over full-time.” Emory let out a sigh. “She’s suing me directly. She claims my father didn’t have the right to leave all that he did to me, that everything rightfully belongs to her. Then there’s Carnegie . . .”

      Porter knew all about Carnegie, Talbot’s other daughter. She regularly made the papers before Talbot died. Constant partying and arrests, a fixture on the Chicago social scene, and not a good one.

      “She’s been badmouthing me on social media and in every interview she does, whenever she gets the chance,” Emory said. “She calls me Bastard Bitch. She ends every message with hashtag BastardBitch. I’ve never met her, and she acts like she’d stab my eyes out with a pen in the street if we were to cross paths.”

      With that, the tears did come, and Porter put an arm around her.

      After a minute or so she wiped her eyes. “I’m being so selfish, going on about me. What about you? How are you doing?” Emory asked. “I heard about those girls. The papers say it’s 4MK. That they wouldn’t have been taken if it wasn’t for you. The Tribune actually said you let him go, which is silly. I should know.”

      “It’s not 4MK.”

      “No?”

      “Nope,” Porter replied.

      Emory shook back the tears and forced a smile. “You’ll find them. You found me.”

      Porter hoped to God she was right.

      Nearly an hour had passed. He had to go.

      Emory somehow understood. She rose from the couch, and when he did too, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. “I can’t talk to a shrink. Maybe we can talk sometimes? If you’re willing to listen?”

      “I think I’d like that.”

      “Yeah. Me too.”

      When Porter left Flair Tower, the hole in his heart felt a little smaller.

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