“I wasn’t speeding, dammit! Check the GPS. Don’t be throwing accusations like that out there!”
Porter turned to his left to find the bus driver. He was a big man, at least three hundred pounds. His black CTA jacket strained against the bulk it had been tasked to hold together. His wiry gray hair was matted on the left and reaching for the sky on the right. Nervous eyes stared back at them, jumping from Porter, to Nash, then Eisley, and back again. “That crazy fucker jumped right out in front of me. This ain’t no accident. He offed himself.”
“Nobody said you did anything wrong,” Nash assured him.
Eisley’s phone rang. He glanced at the display, held up a finger, and walked a few paces to the side to take the call.
The driver went on. “You start spreading around that I was speeding, and there goes my job, my pension . . . think I wanna be looking for work at my age? In this shit economy?”
Porter caught a glimpse of the man’s name tag. “Mr. Nelson, how about you take a deep breath and try to calm down?”
Sweat trickled down the man’s red face. “I’m gonna be pushing a broom somewhere all because that little prick picked my bus. I got thirty-one years behind me without an incident, and now this bullshit.”
Porter put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Do you think you can tell me what happened?”
“I need to keep my mouth shut until my union rep gets here, that’s what I need to do.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
The driver frowned. “What are you gonna do for me?”
“I can put in a good word with Manny Polanski down at Transit, for starters. If you didn’t do anything wrong, if you cooperate with us, there’s no reason for you to get suspended.”
“Shit. You think I’ll get suspended over this?” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “Jesus, I can’t afford that.”
“I don’t think they’ll do that if they know you worked with us, that you tried to help. There might not even be a need for a hearing,” Porter assured him.
“A hearing?”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened? Then I can talk to Manny for you, maybe save you the pain of all that.”
“You know Manny?”
“I worked my first two years on the job as a uniform with Transit. He’ll listen to me. You help us out, and I’ll put in a good word, I promise.”
The driver considered this, then finally took a deep breath and nodded. “It happened just like I said to your friend here. I made the stop at Ellis right on time—picked up two, dropped off one. I ran east down Fifty-Fifth, came around the bend. The light at Woodlawn was green, so there was no need to slow down—not that I was speeding. Check the GPS.”
“I’m sure you weren’t.”
“I wasn’t, I was just moving with the traffic. I might have been a few miles over the limit, but I wasn’t speeding,” he said.
Porter waved his hand dismissively. “You were 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.”
3
Porter
Day 1 ? 6:53 a.m.
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.