“What has she done?”
“We’re following a lead, Mrs. Talbot. If she’s here right now, there is nothing to worry about. We’ll be on our way. If she’s not”—Porter didn’t want to frighten her unnecessarily—“if she’s not, there may be cause for concern.”
“There’s no need to cover for her,” Nash explained. “We just need to know she is safe.”
She turned the mug in her hand. “Miranda? Could you fetch Carnegie, please?”
The housekeeper opened her mouth, considered what she was about to say, then thought better of it. Porter watched as she turned and left the library, crossing the hallway and ascending the staircase that wound up the opposite wall.
Nash elbowed him, and he turned. Porter followed his eyes to a framed picture on the fireplace mantel. A young blond girl dressed in riding gear beside a chestnut horse. He stood and walked over to it. “Is this your stepdaughter?”
Mrs. Talbot nodded. “Four years ago. She turned twelve a month before that photo. Came in first place.”
Porter was looking at her hair. The Four Monkey Killer had only taken one blonde before today; all the others had been brunette.
“Patricia? What’s going on?”
They turned.
Standing at the doorway was a teenager dressed in a M?tley Crüe T-shirt, white robe, and slippers. Her blond hair was frazzled.
“Please don’t call me Patricia,” Mrs. Talbot snapped.
“Sorry, Mother.”
“Carnegie, these gentlemen are from Chicago Metro.”
The girl’s face went pale. “Why are the police here, Patricia?”
Porter and Nash were staring at her ears. Both her ears. Right where they should be.
7
Porter
Day 1 ? 7:48 a.m.
A drizzle had begun to fall. The flagstone steps were wet and slippery as Porter and Nash rushed from the Talbot residence back to their car at the curb. Both jumped inside and pulled the doors shut behind them, eyeing the foreboding sky. “We don’t need this shit, not today,” Porter complained. “If it starts to rain, Talbot may call his game off and we lose him.”
“We 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.