I didn’t like Father using my wagon without asking me.
I knew this was a silly thought. He’d purchased the wagon, but still, it was mine and it was rude to borrow someone’s wagon without first seeking permission. I would never do such a thing, and even at such a young age, I was bothered.
“I need you to do me a big favor, buddy. I need you to take these packages down to the lake, tape some heavy rocks to them, and throw them out into the water as far as you possibly can. Think you can do that for me? Can I count on you?” He handed me half a roll of duct tape. “I planned to do it, but I got called into the office. I’m afraid if I let this little task go until later tonight, we might find a tad of a stink permeating the house, and we don’t want that, particularly since we have a guest.”
I picked up the wagon’s handle and gave it an experimental tug. “It’s heavy.”
Father smiled. “It’s about a hundred eighty pounds of bad beef—should make our little fishy friends very happy, don’t you think?”
Do fish eat beef? I’d heard of exotic fish such as piranha that love to dine on a pound of flesh, but I was fairly confident there were no piranhas in our lake. Our lake had plenty of trout and bass, though I hadn’t been schooled on their dietary habits. I still harbored suspicion about whether or not they even ate worms.
“Do you still have your knife with you? Maybe cut a small slit in each package before you toss it into the water. Give them a little taste of the feast to be found inside. That would be splendid.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks.” He glanced over at the Carter house. “We still need to pack a couple bags and stage the house.”
“I can do it,” I told him earnestly.
He looked down at me and cocked his head. “Yeah?”
I nodded. “Absolutely, Father. You can count on me!”
His eyes grew narrow as he contemplated this. Then he nodded. “Okay, champ. I’ll leave this man’s work in your capable hands. Load some stuff in their car, and I’ll get rid of it tonight.”
“Where are you going to leave it?”
Father shrugged. “Not sure yet. The airport is a bit of a drive. I was thinking about the bus depot over in Marlow. I’ll come up with something.”
He started toward the front of the house, then paused. “One more thing, champ. Can you keep an eye on your mother? You know how she gets after . . .”
I nodded. I did, in fact, know how she gets.
He grinned. “My little boy is almost a little man. Who’da thunk it? Surely not me.” He turned and rounded the corner. “Surely not me, no sir,” he said as he disappeared from sight.
Mother tended to get a little emotional after a kill. She could be unpredictable. Sometimes she would shut down completely, just disappear into her room and not come out for days. When she did emerge, she would be right as rain, but for those few days it was best to leave her alone. Other times she’d overflow with joy, laughing and joking in the merriest of ways. She would dance in the kitchen and skip down the street. I liked this Mother best—Chipper Mother, Elated Mother, the Mother of Many Smiles. We never knew which Mother would emerge after a kill, only that one of them would, and no less than a handful of days would pass before Original Mother returned from her mental journey.
I considered checking on her before I left for the lake but decided against it. If today was the day for Chipper Mother, hearing what I was about to do might cause her to revert to one of the others, and nobody wanted that. Best to leave well enough alone until I completed my morning chores, then devote the remainder of the day to her company, helping her cope with the events of last night.
With a rough tug, the wagon fell into step behind me and I started down the path to the lake while whistling a merry little tune by Eddie and the Cruisers. Luckily, it was downhill. Mr. Carter had been a large man.
38
Porter
Day 1 ? 6:18 p.m.
Porter followed Espinosa out of the kill room to the main subbasement. Three of Espinosa’s men were huddled in the far right corner, a stack of crates at their side. As Porter approached, he took note of the names stitched into their uniforms: Brogan, Thomas, and Tibideaux.
Tibideaux spoke first. “It was just like you said. We followed the rats, and most of them made a beeline from the body to this corner. They disappeared behind this mess of crap, so we figured something must be back here. We found the tunnel opening buried behind the crates.” He gestured to a wide mouth carved into the cement wall.
The rounded opening was about seven or eight feet tall and six feet wide, reinforced with a stone parameter. Small railroad tracks started just inside the passage and disappeared down its throat.
“My grandfather told me about these. They used them to transport coal from the river to buildings downtown in the early 1900s,” Brogan said. He shined his light into the opening, revealing a small railcar a little larger than a shopping cart. Although the car must have been a hundred years old, the wheels glimmered with newly applied oil.
“Do any of you have a printing kit? Someone’s been using that.”
Thomas nodded. “I’m on it.” He pulled a small pack from his belt, knelt down beside the cart, and began brushing powder. His fingers moved with the dexterity of a seasoned professional. Porter couldn’t help but wonder what previous assignments the man held before finding his way into SWAT.
Porter had lived in the city for more years than he cared to count, and before today he had no idea these tunnels existed. His mind began to race back through 4MK’s previous victims, where they were abducted, where they were found. If these tunnels did run throughout the city, it was feasible he had been using them this entire time to transport the bodies. It made sense. They’d never determined how he moved through the city unseen. After all, he deposited some of the bodies in heavily trafficked areas without a single witness. Susan Devoro had been positioned on a bench near the center of Union Station, covered in a filthy blanket. The odds that one of these tunnels intersected with Union was high. To get her body there aboveground, he would have passed through security, a dozen vendors, and who knows how many pedestrians. Even in the middle of the night the route was bustling. Underground, though? That had to be it.
“It’s been wiped,” Thomas said. “But I’ve got a partial down here at the left rear wheel. Should be enough to make a match if he’s in the system.”
“4MK never left a print behind. I guess if you’re planning on stepping in front of a bus, stealth no longer matters.”
Thomas lifted the print and handed the latent preservation tape to Porter in a plastic bag. “Here you go, sir.”