Lost Time Antiques and Collectibles appeared dark. He limped to the front door and tried the handle—locked. Cupping his hands, he pressed his face against the glass.
“They’re closed,” the driver said from behind him. “Their hours are posted by the door,” he said. “They lock up at five. We missed them by about fifteen minutes.”
Porter took a step back and found the small red sign with the posted store hours. He was right. He went back to the glass and peered inside. The walls were covered in clocks. Everything from small digital models to freestanding grandfather clocks. The pendulums swung back and forth tirelessly, some moving in sync, others independent of the group. It was mesmerizing. He could only imagine what it sounded like inside when they struck at the top of the hour.
Porter pounded his fist on the door, then stepped back and eyed the apartment upstairs. Maybe the owner lived up there?
“I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job, but if you got some urgent business with this place—and I’m guessing you do, considering you’re willing to stand there and beat on the door while bleeding on the sidewalk—maybe you could ask next door? They might know how to reach the manager or the owner.”
Porter turned and followed the man’s gaze. A woman exited the shop next door, holding three dry cleaning bags. She nearly tripped off the curb as she circled the parking meter to get to the trunk of her car.
Porter felt his heart pound. He stepped up to the parking meter in front of the cab and read the rate card.
$0.75 per hour.
“Can I borrow your cell phone?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Porter’s face must have said he was not, because the man shrugged his shoulders, walked around to the driver’s door, and pulled his cell phone from a clip on the dash. Porter punched in a number.
“Klozowski,” came the voice on the other side.
“Kloz, it’s Porter.”
“Did you get a new number?”
“Long story. Are you near the evidence board?”
“Yeah, why?”
Porter took a deep breath. “How much change did we find in the bus victim’s pocket?”
“You mean Kittner, AKA no longer 4MK? Seventy-five cents. Why?”
He started toward the cleaners next door. “What was the receipt number on the dry cleaning ticket?”
“What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“Kloz, I need that ticket number.” He pushed through the door and went straight to the counter.
An overweight man with dark hair, thick glasses, and two large laundry bags gave him a dirty look. The kid behind the counter had no such scruples. “Back of the line, buddy.” Then he saw the bloodstain on Porter’s pants. “Shit, do you need a doctor?”
Porter reached for his back pocket to retrieve his badge and remembered for the second time he didn’t have it. “I’m with Chicago Metro. I need you to pull up a ticket for me.” Back to the phone: “Kloz, the ticket number?”
“Ah, yeah, it’s 54873.”
He repeated the number back to the clerk, who eyed him suspiciously, then punched it into his computer. “Give me a second.” He disappeared through a doorway, heading toward the back of the store.
Behind him, Porter heard the overweight man drop both laundry bags on the floor and let out a sigh.
“Sorry.”
The man grunted but said nothing.
The kid returned, holding three hangers all bunched together. He hung them on a hook attached to the side of the counter.
Porter peeled back the plastic, revealing a pair of women’s jogging shorts, a white tank top, socks, and undergarments. All had been cleaned and pressed. White and pink Nikes were in another bag fastened to the hangers.
The kid pointed to the shoes. “I told the guy when he dropped those off that we don’t clean shoes, but he insisted we keep it all together.”
“Porter? Talk to me,” Kloz said. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve got Emory’s clothes.”
75
Diary
“Get Lisa and bring her up here,” Father instructed Mother.
She nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. I heard the squeak of the basement door and her steps as she descended. He turned to me. “Champ, go in the kitchen and pull out Mother’s soup pot—you know which one I mean? The big one with the glass lid?”
I nodded.
“Fill the pot about an inch with vegetable oil, and put it on the stove, full heat. Think you can do that?”
I nodded again.
“Okay, hurry up now.”
I ran into the kitchen, pulled the soup pot out from the lower cabinet, and placed it on the burner. I found the vegetable oil in a cabinet next to the stove, nearly a full gallon. I twisted off the cap and poured about a quarter into the pot, then spun the burner control knob to the highest setting. Nothing happened. A second later I smelled gas. “Poppycock,” I said to nobody in particular, then dug out the box of matches from the drawer beside the stove. The pilot light always seemed to go out; Mother probably went through a box of matches each week. I struck one on my jeans and watched it flare to life, then guided the flame under the pot. The gas caught with a poof. Blue flames licked out across the bottom of the metal. I dropped the box of matches into my pocket and went back out to the living room, giving Father a thumbs-up.
He nodded.
Another knock at the door. “It’s awfully quiet in there. Everything okay? Four minutes left by my watch.”
“Simon Carter is dead!” Father shouted back.
Only silence on the other side of the door for a moment, then: “What happened?”
“Unfortunate things sometimes happen to unfortunate people.”
“That they do,” Mr. Stranger replied. “Didn’t much care for him anyway. What about the missus?”
Mother and Mrs. Carter appeared in the living room. Mother had draped a towel over the woman’s shoulders in an effort to cover up her bared chest. Her hands were cuffed in front of her. I couldn’t help but blush at the sight of her. Even after days in the basement living in her own filth, she still looked beautiful. The tip of Mother’s knife was pointed an inch below her rib cage, pressing into the naked flesh.
Father eyed her, then returned his attention to the man on the front porch. “She’s been a houseguest of ours for the past few days, but I’m afraid she’s overstayed her welcome. I’m perfectly willing to send her on out there to you, providing you load her up into that fancy car of yours and head back to the city. My family and I have nothing to do with this and just want to be left alone. You leave us peacefully, and I see no reason for any of us to ever mention this to anyone. You get what you want, we get what we want, everybody wins.”
“Is that a fact?”
Mrs. Carter shook her head urgently. “You hand me over to those men and they’ll kill us all, including your boy. They’re not the kind of people to leave loose ends. You can’t trust them.”
“Three minutes!” Mr. Stranger shouted.
“She doesn’t know anything about this missing paperwork. Whatever her husband was up to, he didn’t share the details with her,” Father said.
“I’m supposed to believe that?”