The Fourth Monkey: A twisted thriller you won’t be able to put down. J.D. Barker

were painted a cheerful light blue, which did little to help one forget one was surrounded by dead people. The employees all seemed to wear the same nonchalant expression, one that made Porter wonder what he’d find if he took a gander inside their home refrigerators. Nash didn’t seem to mind, though. He had stopped halfway down the hallway and was peering into a vending machine.

      “How could they run out of Snickers bars? Who’s in charge of this shit show?” he grumbled to nobody in particular. “Hey, Sam, can I borrow a quarter?”

      Porter ignored him and pushed through the double swinging stainless steel doors opposite a green leather sofa that might have been new around the time JFK took office.

      “Come on, man. I’m hungry!” Nash shouted from behind him.

      Tom Eisley sat at a metal desk in the far corner of the room, typing feverishly at a computer. He glanced up and frowned. “Did you walk here?”

      Porter considered telling him that they did, in fact, drive quite fast, lights and all, but thought better of it. “We were over at Flair Tower. We tracked down the victim’s apartment.”

      Most people would have asked him what they found, but not Eisley; his interest in people started when their pulse stopped.

      Nash came through the double doors, the remnants of a Kit Kat on his fingers.

      “Feel better?” Porter asked him.

      “Cut me some slack. I’m running on fumes.”

      Eisley stood from the desk. “Put on gloves, both of you. Follow me.”

      He led them past the desk and through another set of double doors at the back of the space into a large examination room. As they stepped inside, the temperature felt as if it dropped twenty degrees. Low enough for Porter to see his breath. Goose flesh crawled across his arms.

      A large round surgical light with handles on either side swung over the exam table at the center of the room, a naked male body lying atop. The face had been covered with a white cloth. The chest had been splayed open with a large Y incision that started at his navel and branched at the pectoral muscles.

      He should have brought gum — gum helped with the smell.

      “Is that our boy?” Nash asked.

      “It is,” Eisley said.

      The dirt and grime from the road had been washed away, but there was no cleansing the road rash, which covered his skin in patches. Porter took a closer look. “I didn’t catch that this morning.”

      Eisley pointed at a large purple and black bruise on the right arm and leg. “The bus hit him here. See these lines? That’s from the grill. Based on the measurements we took at the scene, the impact threw him a little over twenty feet, then he slid on the pavement for another twelve. I found tremendous internal damage. More than half his ribs cracked. Four of them punctured his right lung, two punctured the left. His spleen ruptured. So did one kidney. The head trauma appears to be the actual cause of death, although any one of the other injuries would have proved fatal. His death was near instantaneous. Nothing to be done.”

      “That’s your big news?” Nash balked. “I thought you found something.”

      Eisley’s brow creased. “Oh, there’s something.”

      “I’m not big on suspense, Tom. What’d you find?” Porter said.

      Eisley walked over to a stainless steel table and pointed at what appeared to be a brown ziplock bag filled with —

      “Is that his stomach?” Nash asked.

      Eisley nodded. “Notice anything odd?”

      “Yeah. It’s not in him anymore,” said Porter.

      “Anything else?”

      “No time for this, Doc.”

      Eisley let out a sigh. “See these spots? Here and here?”

      Porter leaned in a little closer. “What are they?”

      “Stomach cancer,” Eisley told them.

      “He was dying? Did he know?”

      “This is advanced. There’s no corrective treatment when the disease gets to this point. It would have been very painful. I’m sure he was well aware. I found a few interesting things in the tox screen. He was on a high dose of octreotide, which is typically used to control nausea and diarrhea. There was also a concentration of trastuzumab. It’s an interesting drug. They first used it to treat breast cancer, then discovered it helped with other types of cancer too.”

      “You think we can track him down with the drugs?”

      Eisley nodded slowly. “Probably. Trastuzumab in particular is administered intravenously for an hour, no less than once a week, possibly more often at this stage. I’m not aware of anyone offering this particular medication in private practice, which means he probably went to a hospital or a high-end cancer treatment center. There are only a handful of options in the city. It can cause heart complications, so they monitor patients closely.”

      Nash turned to Porter. “If he was dying, do you think he stepped out in front of that bus intentionally?”

      “I doubt it. Then why kidnap another girl? I think he’d want to see it through.” He turned back to Eisley. “How much time do you think he had left?”

      Eisley shrugged. “Hard to say. Not much, though — a few weeks. A month on the outside.”

      “Was he on something for the pain?” Porter asked.

      “I found a partially digested oxycodone tablet in his stomach. We’re testing his hair for older medications, things that left his system. I imagine we’ll turn up morphine,” said Eisley.

      Porter glanced at the man’s dark hair. Hair retained trace evidence of medication and diet. 4MK cut it short, no more than an inch long. The average person’s hair grows half an inch per month, meaning they should be able to get a history dating back at least a couple of months. Drug testing of hair was nearly five times more accurate than a urine sample. Over the years, he had seen suspects flush drugs out of their system with everything from cranberry juice to consumption of actual urine. There was no flushing out your hair, though. This was the reason many drug addicts on probation shaved their heads.

      “He has hair,” Porter said quietly.

      Eisley furrowed his brow for a moment, then realized Porter’s point. “I didn’t find any sign of chemotherapy, not even a single cycle. It’s possible they discovered the cancer too late and traditional treatment wasn’t an option.” Eisley walked over to another table. The man’s personal effects were neatly laid out. “That little metal tin right there” — he pointed to a small silver box — “is full of lorazepam.”

      “That’s for anxiety, right?”

      Nash smirked. “Being a serial killer is an odd choice of pastime for someone with anxiety issues.”

      “Generic Ativan. With stomach cancer, doctors sometimes prescribe it to help manage acids. Anxiety leads to increased production, lorazepam cuts it back,” Eisley said. “Chances are, he was calmer than any of us.”

      Porter glanced down at the pocket watch, now tagged and sealed in a plastic evidence bag. The cover was intricately carved, the hands visible beneath. “Were you able to get prints from this?”

      Eisley nodded. “He got a few abrasions on the hands, but the fingertips weren’t damaged. I pulled a full set and sent them to the lab. Haven’t heard back yet.”

      Porter’s eyes landed on the shoes.

      Eisley followed his gaze. “Oh, I almost forgot about those. Check this out, very odd.” He picked up one of the shoes and returned to the body, then placed the heel of the shoe against the man’s bare foot. “They’re nearly two sizes too big for this guy. He had tissue paper stuffed in at the toes.”