The Fifth to Die: A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller. J.D. Barker

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       13

       Porter

       Day 2 • 9:14 a.m.

      Porter and Nash stood at the Reynoldses’ back door, staring out into their yard.

      About fifty feet out, toward the left corner under a large birch tree, a snowman stared back at them.

      The beady black eyes glistened under a stovepipe hat. The snowman was tall, at least six and a half feet, maybe more, the body thick and wide, glistening with ice, a red rose at his snowy lapel.

      The arms were fashioned from tree branches, each capped with a black glove. The right hand held the handle of a wooden broom. A corncob pipe jutted from the corner of its makeshift mouth, and dark blood trickled down from an icy neck.

      Snow fell, filling the air with a white haze. The scene was so odd, so picturesque. Porter felt he was looking at the page of a childhood storybook, not a real yard. There was a swing set off to the far right and woods behind the yard.

      “Nobody in your family made that?” Nash asked.

      Mrs. Reynolds had her arms wrapped around her son. “No.”

      The single word escaped her lips, but she didn’t take her eyes off it, this stranger in her yard.

      Porter tugged at his zipper and reached inside his coat, retrieving his Glock.

      Brady’s eyes went wide. “Whoa, is he going to kill the snowman, Mom?”

      “I’m not going to hurt the snowman. I’m worried he may try to hurt me,” Porter said quietly. “Did you see anyone else out there? Anybody at all?”

      “No, sir.”

      “How about you and your mother go back into the living room for a few minutes? Think you can take care of your mom while my partner and I check this out?”

      Brady nodded.

      Porter looked from the boy to his mother. “Go along now.”

      When they were gone, he turned to Nash. “Stay here and keep a bead on those trees back there.”

      Nash withdrew his own weapon, his eyes scanning the woods.

      Porter stepped out the back door, into the falling snow. From somewhere in the back of his mind, an old children’s song began to play.

      Small footprints littered the newly fallen snow, crisscrossing the yard near the door, then petering down to a single set ending at the snowman. Porter followed the footprints as best he could, taking small strides so he could place his feet where the child had rather than create another trail. Snow had fallen most of the night, a few inches at least, but it seemed inconceivable that someone could build such a thing without leaving any tracks. His eyes drifted to the broom perched in the snowman’s hand. He supposed it was possible that whoever did this used the broom to sweep away their tracks, but that didn’t explain how they got the broom back into his hand without leaving a final trail. Porter also noted that their yard was fenced. A four-foot chainlink. The gate leading to the front yard was open.

      Porter saw a faint trail leading from that gate to the snowman. Not footprints, more of an indent, as if something heavy had been dragged from the front of the house to the back, to here.

      He stood in front of the snowman.

      It towered over him by nearly a foot. From this angle, the smile upon its face, made from tiny pieces of a broken branch, looked more like a smirk.

      Porter remembered building hundreds of these as a kid — pushing the snowball along until it became a snow boulder, too heavy to push at all. Normally, a snowman is constructed by starting with a large snow boulder at the base, then placing another smaller one on top of that to form the torso, then another at the very top to take the place of a head.

      This snowman was not constructed that way.

      The snow on this snowman had been packed in place. Someone took the time to sculpt the snow into the shape of a snowman rather than use the far faster traditional method.

      All of these thoughts rushed through Porter’s mind in an instant as he glanced over the creation from top to bottom, his eyes finally landing on the dark red at the neck — dark red seeping through the white like a giant snow cone.

      Porter snapped a branch of a nearby oak and, using the splinted end, carefully plucked at the snow beneath the darkest red spot, where it congealed at the base of the neck. Whoever built this had sprayed the snow with water as they worked, causing it to harden into ice — another trick Porter learned as a child. If made properly, a snowman would be as sturdy as a stone statue, standing tall for the remainder of the winter. If you failed to harden the snow, chunks would break away with the first sun. By midafternoon, half your work would be piled at the ground.

      Porter used the stick to break through the ice and to scrape away the packed snow, digging deep enough to reveal the torn neck of the man beneath.