“I found the eyes. Is Emory still alive?”
Bishop sighed. “I am so sorry I didn’t have time to wrap them for you. I was half-afraid a rat might stumble upon them before you got here and walk away with a tidy snack in its jaws. Not much I could do about that, but I’m glad you got here first.”
Porter realized he should have covered them with something. He hadn’t thought about rats. “Where are you?”
Bishop chuckled. “Oh, you’ve got a ways to go, I’m afraid. The climb can’t be easy with that wound. I’m really sorry about that. I hope I didn’t hurt you too bad, but I had to improvise. You and your friends really put me on the spot.” He dropped off for a second, then: “You best pick up the pace, Sam. We don’t have a lot of time left. Wound or not, you’ve got a lot of stairs in your future.”
Porter started climbing the steps again. Standing still, even for such a short amount of time, had caused his leg to tighten up. He forced the muscles to respond and gritted his teeth when the pain came. With each step it felt as if the knife were back in his thigh, slicing through the muscle and fat. “Let me talk to her. You owe me that much. Let me know she’s still alive.”
He was answered by a moment’s static, then Bishop’s voice echoed through the tiny speaker. “I’m afraid Emory is not available right now.”
Porter rounded the corner of the fourth floor and kept going, his lungs burning.
“So, did you finish it?” Bishop asked.
“Finish what?”
“You know what.”
“Your little diary?”
“Don’t mock me, Sam. Don’t you ever mock me. Mocking is an evil all its own, and one I’m not very fond of.”
Sam wiped his forehead on the shoulder of his scrubs. “Your mother mocked you at the end. How did you like that?”
“So you did finish.”
“Yeah, I finished.”
“My mother was an evil witch of a woman who deserved whatever happened to her,” Bishop said.
“Sounds like your mother was one hell of a lay. She had everyone wrapped around her finger. The hot ones are always crazy.”
“I see what you’re trying to do, and it’s not going to work, so put an end to the jabs right now,” Bishop shot back.
“So they never came back? They just left you there?”
A clicking noise came from the radio. It sounded like Bishop was pushing the Talk button repeatedly at a rapid pace, like a nervous tic. “Remember the matches? I burnt the house to the ground with Talbot’s people roasting inside. Figured I’d follow through on the gasoline Mr. Stranger and Smith spread around. The fire department called child services, and they took me to something called a residential treatment center. I spent two weeks there before I was placed with my first foster family. Nobody had a clue I’d set the fire. If Mother ever came back for me, I wasn’t aware of it.”
“Sounds like she rode off into the sunset with that Carter woman and didn’t want her brat of a son tagging along on her Thelma and Louise fantasy. They never intended to bring you.”
“I was better off without them.”
“In foster care? I guess you’re right. If half of what you wrote actually happened, you grew up in one fucked-up household.”
“Language, Sam, language.”
“Right. Speak no evil. Sorry about that. I’d hate to violate one of your blessed father’s rules.”
Fifth floor.
“Your mother wanted your father to die that day, planned for it. She was done with him. Who was banging the blond guy? Your mother or Carter? Both of them? Hell, I bet that guy was tagging both of them while you played with your pecker in the corner.”
“Language, Sam.”
“Fuck you, Bishop. Hell is not a bad word.”
Bishop took a breath. “Cursing of any kind is a sign of a weak mind, and I know you are anything but weak-minded. I bet you’ve already worked out a plan to get even with the guy who shot your wife. What was his name? Campbell? You walked away all calm and forgiving, but I could see the anger burning behind your eyes, the hatred.”
“We’re not all out for revenge.”
Bishop chuckled. “If I were to lock you in a room with him and you were assured there would be no repercussions for whatever you did, you wouldn’t hurt him? You wouldn’t put a bullet between his eyes? You wouldn’t take a knife and gut him from neck to groin and watch him bleed out? Don’t kid yourself, Sam. We all have it in us.”
“We don’t act on it, though.”
“Some do, and the world is a better place for it.”
Porter snickered. “Maybe if you weren’t such a sniveling little twat of a boy, she wouldn’t have run off without you. Maybe the three of them would have included you in their little plan. You could have made a life with your new daddy and two mommies, and whatever the fuck they were hoarding in those safe-deposit boxes.”
Bishop let out a soft laugh. “I bet your friends at the Fifty-First plan to leave Campbell’s cell door open tonight. Let you in through the back so you can have a little private chat with him. If they found him hanging from the rafters in the morning, would anyone really care? Nobody sheds a tear over the loss of someone like that. You deserve that, right? For what he did?”
“What was his real name? The blond guy.”
At first Bishop didn’t answer, but then his voice came back with a crackle from the speaker. “Franklin Kirby.”
“Your mother and Mrs. Carter planned to run off with Franklin Kirby all along.”
“Yes.”
“Your father wasn’t part of that plan.”
Bishop said nothing.
“How did your mother and Mrs. Carter even know Kirby?” Porter was making small talk now. He didn’t give a shit about Kirby or the Carters or Bishop’s parents, but he knew as long as he kept Bishop talking, Bishop wasn’t hurting Emory further. He needed him to not be hurting Emory.
Bishop clicked at the microphone again—five times, a dozen times. “Kirby worked with Simon Carter at the accounting firm in the operations department. I believe he was responsible for moving the money out. Most likely, the two of them planned to split the funds and keep the documents as collateral to ensure nobody came after them.”
“Nobody’s going to chase after a few million dollars and risk information leaking that could take down their entire operation.”
“Correct.”
“But Kirby somehow double-crossed him, with your mother’s help,” Porter said. “His partner too. Just killed him like that.”
“Simon Carter abused his wife. She saw a way out and took it. I think Mother agreed to help her, and the other man was collateral damage.”
Porter felt a trickle of warmth on his leg and looked down; his stitches were bleeding again. He pressed his hand against his thigh and continued to climb. “You saw Talbot’s name on the vans, so you made the connection?”
The line went silent.