heading east on Fifty-Fifth …”
The driver nodded. “Yeah. I saw a few people at the corner, not many. Three, maybe four. Then, just as I got close, this guy jumps out in front of my bus. No warning or nothing. One second he’s standing there, the next he’s in the street. I hit the brakes, but this thing doesn’t exactly stop on a dime. I hit him dead center. Launched him a good thirty feet.”
“What color was the light?” Porter asked.
“Green.”
“Not yellow?”
The driver shook his head. “No, green. I know, ’cause I watched it change. It didn’t turn yellow for another twenty seconds or so. I was already out of the bus when I saw it switch.” He pointed up at the signal. “Check the camera.”
Porter looked up. Over the last decade, nearly every intersection in the city had been outfitted with CCTV cameras. He’d remind Nash to pull the footage when they got back to the station. Most likely, his partner had already put in the order.
“He wasn’t crossing the street; that man jumped. You’ll see when you watch the video.”
Porter handed him a card. “Can you stick around a little bit, just in case I have more questions?”
The man shrugged. “You’re going to talk to Manny, right?”
Porter nodded. “Can you excuse us for a second?” He pulled Nash aside, lowering his voice. “He didn’t kill him intentionally. Even if this was a suicide, we’ve got no business here. Why’d you call me out?”
Nash put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay to do this? If you need more time, I get it —”
“I’m good,” Porter said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“If you need to talk —”
“Nash, I’m not a fucking child. Take off the kid gloves.”
“All right.” He finally relented. “But if this gets to be too much too soon, you gotta promise me you’ll tap out, got it? Nobody will think twice if you need to do that.”
“I think working will do me some good. I’ve been getting stir-crazy sitting around the apartment,” he admitted.
“This is big, Porter,” he said in a low voice. “You deserve to be here.”
“Christ, Nash. Will you spit it out?”
“It’s a good bet our vic was heading to that mailbox over there.” He glanced toward a blue postal box in front of a brick apartment building.
“How do you know?”
A grin spread across his partner’s face. “He was carrying a small white box tied up with black string.”
Porter’s eyes went wide. “Nooo.”
“Uh-huh.”
Porter found himself staring down at the body, at the lumpy form under the black plastic shroud.
Words escaped him.
Nash asked the other officers and CSI techs to step back and give Porter space, to give him time alone with the victim. They shuffled back behind the yellow crime-scene tape, their voices low as they watched. To Porter, they were invisible. He only saw the black body bag and the small package lying beside it. It had been tagged with NUMBER 1 by CSI, no doubt photographed dozens of times from every possible angle. They knew better than to open it, though. They left that for him.
How many boxes just like it had there been now?
A dozen? No. Closer to two dozen.
He did the math.
Seven victims. Three boxes each.
Twenty-one.
Twenty-one boxes over nearly five years.
He had toyed with them. Never left a clue behind. Only the boxes.
A ghost.
Porter had seen so many officers come and go from the task force. With each new victim, the team would expand. The press would get wind of a new box, and they’d swarm like vultures. The entire city would come together on a massive manhunt. But then the third box would eventually arrive, the body would be found, and he’d disappear again. Lost among the shadows of obscurity. Months would pass; he’d fall out of the papers. The task force dwindled as the team got pulled apart for more pressing matters.
Porter was the only one who had seen it through from the beginning. He had been there for the first box, recognizing it immediately for what it was — the start of a serial killer’s deranged spree. When the second box arrived, then the third, and finally the body, others saw too.
It was the start of something horrible. Something planned.
Something evil.
He had been there at the beginning. Was he now witnessing the end?
“What’s in the box?”
“We haven’t opened it yet,” Nash replied. “But I think you know.”
The package was small. Approximately four inches square and three inches high.
Like the others.
Wrapped in white paper and secured with black string. The address label was handwritten in careful script. There wouldn’t be any prints, never were. The stamps were self-adhesive — they wouldn’t find saliva.
He glanced back at the body bag. “Do you really think it’s him? Do you have a name?”
Nash shook his head. “No wallet or ID on him. He left his face on the pavement and in the bus’s grill. We ran his prints but couldn’t find a match. He’s a nobody.”
“Oh, he’s somebody,” Porter said. “Do you have any gloves?”
Nash pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and handed them to Porter. Porter slipped them on and nodded toward the box. “Do you mind?”
“We waited for you,” Nash said. “This is your case, Sam. Always was.”
When Porter crouched and reached for the box, one of the crime-scene techs rushed over, fumbling with a small video camera. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have orders to document this.”
“It’s fine, son. Only you, though. Are you ready?”
A red light on the front of the camera blinked to life, and the tech nodded. “Go ahead, sir.”
Porter turned the box so he could read the address label, carefully avoiding the droplets of crimson. “Arthur Talbot, 1547 Dearborn Parkway.”
Nash whistled. “Ritzy neighborhood. Old money. I don’t recognize the name, though.”
“Talbot’s an investment banker,” the CSI tech replied. “Heavy into real estate too. Lately he’s been converting warehouses near the lakefront into lofts — doing his part to force out low-income families and replace them with people who can afford the high rent and Starbucks grandes on the regular.”
Porter knew exactly who Arthur Talbot was. He looked up at the tech. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Paul Watson, sir.”
Porter couldn’t help but grin. “You’ll make an excellent detective one day, Dr. Watson.”
“I’m