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

have a bigger problem.” Nash was tapping at his iPhone.

      “Captain Dalton again?”

      “No, worse. Somebody tweeted.”

      “Somebody what?”

      “Tweeted.”

      “What the hell is a tweet?”

      Nash handed him the phone.

      Porter read the tiny print.

       @4MK4EVER IS THIS THE FOUR MONKEY KILLER?

      It was followed by a photograph of their bus victim from this morning, facedown against the asphalt. The edge of the city bus was barely visible at the corner.

      Porter frowned. “Who released a photo to the press?”

      “Shit, Sam. You really need to get with the times. Nobody released anything. Somebody snapped a picture with their phone and put it out there for everyone to see,” Nash explained. “That’s how Twitter works.”

      “Everyone? How many people is everyone?”

      Nash was tapping again. “They posted it twenty minutes ago, and it’s been favorited 3,212 times. Retweeted more than five hundred.”

      “Favorited? Retweeted? What the fuck, Nash. Speak English.”

      “It means it’s out there, Porter. Viral. The world knows he’s dead.”

      Nash’s phone rang. “Now that’s the captain. What should I tell him?”

      Porter started the car, threw it into gear, and sped down West North Street toward 294. “Tell him we’re chasing a lead.”

      “What lead?”

      “The Talbots.”

      Nash looked puzzled. “But it’s not the Talbots — they’re home.”

      “It’s not those Talbots. We’re going to chat with Arthur. I’m willing to bet the wife and daughter aren’t the only women in his life,” Porter said.

      Nash nodded and answered the call. Porter heard the captain screaming from the tiny speaker. After about a minute of repeating “Yes, sir,” Nash cupped his hand over the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

      “Tell him I’m driving. It’s not safe to talk on the phone while driving.” He tugged the wheel hard to the left, circling around a minivan traveling much slower than their current speed of eighty-seven.

      “Yes, Captain,” Nash said. “I’m putting you on speaker. Hold on —”

      The captain’s voice went from tiny and tinny to loud and booming as the iPhone switched to the Bluetooth speaker system in the car. “… back at the station in ten minutes so we can get a team together and get in front of this. I’ve got every television and print reporter clawing at me.”

      “Captain, this is Porter. You know his timeline as well as I do. He was about to mail the ear this morning. That means he grabbed her a day or two ago. The good news is he never kills them right away, so we can be sure she’s still alive … somewhere. We don’t know how much time she’s got. If he just planned to run out and mail the package, chances are he didn’t leave her with food or water. The average person can live three days without water, three weeks without food. Her clock is ticking, Captain. At best, I think we’ve got three days to find her, maybe less.”

      “That’s why I need you back here.”

      “We need to chase this down first. Until we figure out who he’s got, we’re spinning wheels. You want something — give me an hour, and hopefully I can give you a name for the press. You put a picture of the missing girl out to them, and they’ll back down,” Porter said.

      The captain fell silent for a moment. “One hour. No more.”

      “That’s all we need.”

      “Tread gently around Talbot. He rubs elbows with the mayor,” the captain replied.

      “Kid gloves, got it.”

      “Call me back after you speak with him.” The captain disconnected the call.

      Porter raced up the ramp onto 294. Nash plugged Wheaton into the GPS. “We’re twenty-eight miles out.”

      The car picked up speed as Porter forced the accelerator down just a little more.

      Nash flipped on the radio.

      … Although Chicago Metro has yet to make an announcement, speculation is that the pedestrian killed early this morning by a city transit bus in Hyde Park is, in fact, the Four Monkey Killer. A box photographed at the scene matches those sent by the killer in the past. He was dubbed the Four Monkey Killer by Samuel Porter, a detective with Chicago Metro, and one of the first to recognize his behavior, or signature.

      “That’s not true; I didn’t come up with that —”

      “Shh!” Nash interrupted.

      The four monkeys comes from the Tosho-gu Shrine in Nikko, Japan, where a carving of three apes resides above the entrance. The first covering his ears, the second covering his eyes, and the third covering his mouth, they depict the proverb “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.” The fourth monkey represents “Do no evil.” The killer’s pattern has remained consistent since his first victim, Calli Tremell, five and a half years ago. Two days after her kidnapping, the Tremell family received her ear in the mail. Two days after that, they received her eyes. Two days later, her tongue arrived. Her body was found in Bedford Park two days following the postmark on the last package, a note clenched in her hand that simply read, DO NO EVIL. Later it was discovered that Michael Tremell, the victim’s father, had been involved in an underground gambling scheme funneling millions of dollars into offshore accounts …

      Nash clicked off the radio. “He always takes a child or sibling to punish the father for some kind of crime. Why not this time? Why didn’t he take Carnegie?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “We should get someone to check out Talbot’s finances,” Nash suggested.

      “Good idea. Who do we have?”

      “Matt Hosman?”

      Porter nodded. “Make the call.” He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out the diary, and tossed it into Nash’s lap. “Then read this aloud.”

       8

       Diary

      Mother and Father were rather close to our neighbors, Simon and Lisa Carter. As just a boy of eleven the summer when they first joined our wonderful neighborhood, I considered them all to be old in the limited pages of my book. Looking back, though, I realize that Mother and Father were in their mid-thirties, and I can’t imagine the Carters were more than one or two years younger than my parents. Three, at most. Maybe four, but I doubt more than five. They moved into the house next door, the only other house at our end of the quiet lane.

      Have I mentioned how incredibly beautiful my mother was?

      How rude of me to leave out such a detail. Blubbering on about such minute matters and neglecting to paint a picture that properly illustrates the narrative you so graciously agreed to follow along with me.

      If you could reach into this tome and slap me silly, I would encourage you to do so. Sometimes I ramble, and a firm swat is necessary to put my little train back on the rails.

      Where was I?

      Mother.

      Mother was beautiful.

      Her hair was silk. Blond, full of body, and shimmering with just the right amount of healthy glimmer.