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

Автор: J.D. Barker

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика

Серия:

isbn: 9780008250409

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ wore the traditional school uniform, but Clair noticed her white blouse was untucked and her skirt looked like it had been hemmed up an inch or two from the norm. Her ears, eyebrow, and lip all had piercings, but she wore only a single set of small matching silver loops at each ear. No doubt dress code prohibited anything else— someone seeking individuality in a sea of the same would not be doing so here. Every time Clair entered one of these private schools, she recalled the scene from The Wall with all the identical students marching in unison into a giant meat grinder.

      “She’s been gone a full day,” Gabby went on. “She could be lying in a ditch right now or tied to a bed with some crazy psycho telling her to call him Daddy while he jerks off on her chest. If that 4MK guy took her, who knows what he’s doing to her. You need to find her.”

      “When was the last time you spoke to her?” Clair asked.

      “Wednesday night. She was working,” Gabby said. “She texted me from the gallery.”

      “What did she say?”

      “She didn’t say anything, she just sent me a picture of a new Mustang. Cherry red. It was gorgeous. Her dad said he’d buy her a car when she graduates next year, so we’ve been doing this thing where we send each other pictures of cool cars when we find them. She’s not sure what she wants yet. But her dad said if she graduates with straight As, he’ll buy her whatever. He’s a doctor, so I think he’s serious. I told her she should get a Maserati, but she doesn’t want to take advantage of him. She’s trying to find something cool but still affordable. I keep telling her to break the bank if she can, so she sent me the Mustang pic, and I sent her this one.”

      She held up her phone. Clair leaned in closer. “What is that?”

      “A Tesla Roadster. They don’t make them anymore, but it’s a way cool car. Fully electric and can do zero to sixty in two point seven seconds. It will even get a few hundred miles per charge. They stopped making them in 2012, but the specs are much better than anything else out there, even the new electric cars. You can find them for around seventy thousand now, even though they went as high as a few hundred when they first came out.”

      Clair thought about her seven-year-old Honda Civic parked down the street and made a mental note to call her dad and ask for a car. Apparently that route was much more fruitful than saving pennies followed by a visit to the buy-here pay-here lot. “May I see that?”

      Gabby handed her the phone.

      Clair scrolled through her text messages. No actual words were exchanged with Lili, only photos of cars over the past few weeks.

      Gabby went on. “She was hoping to get her license soon and maybe talk her dad into buying the car earlier. She’s had straight As since finger painting in grade school. That’s not gonna change between now and graduation. We thought it would be cool to drive to school every day, even though it’s only a few blocks.”

      Clair returned the phone to her. “Do you have a license?”

      Gabby shook her head. “I don’t really need one, not now anyway. I get along fine on the bus or the train. Parking in the city can be a bitch. I figured riding in someone else’s car was the way to go.” She offered a wry smile. “Particularly if it’s a Tesla Roadster.”

      “Have you ever done that?” Sophie asked. “Ridden in someone else’s car to school?”

      Gabby shifted in her seat and scratched her elbow. “Sometimes, if the weather is bad. We always see somebody we know on Sixty-Ninth. If it’s raining or snowing heavily, we might catch a ride.”

      “What about yesterday morning? Think Lili caught a ride with someone?” Clair asked.

      Gabby thought about this for a second. “It was snowing pretty good, so I guess it’s possible.”

      “We’re going to need a list of everyone who might’ve given her a ride. Do you think you can do that?” Sophie asked.

      Gabby chuckled. “You think one of the boys here took her? Not a chance. She’d kick their ass before they got their pecker out of their pants.”

      Sophie tilted her head. “Would she get in the car with a stranger?”

      “No.”

      “Then . . .” Sophie let the word hang.

      Gabby leaned forward, twisting her fingers together. “Right before school, Sixty-Ninth is full of students, driving and walking. If someone tried to pull her into a car or something, somebody would have seen her.”

      “What about if she got into a car with someone she knows?” Clair asked. “Think somebody would notice that?”

      Gabby sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

      “Think you can make that list for us? Anyone you can think of who may have given her a ride?”

      Gabby nodded and pulled a notepad out from her backpack.

       16

       Porter

       Day 2 • 10:26 a.m.

      They found Floyd Reynolds within the body of the snowman, a deep gash in his neck. Someone had tied him to the metal pole of a large bird feeder, then built the snowman around him, slowly covering him in ice and snow.

      Porter and Nash watched in awe as CSI painstakingly removed the snow in bits and pieces, carefully bagging and tagging each one for analysis back at their lab, slowly revealing the man beneath.

      “This took time, a lot of time,” Nash said under his breath.

      “Few hours at least,” Porter agreed.

      “How can he do something like this completely unnoticed?”

      Porter motioned around the yard. “We’ve got nothing but a tree line at the back here, hedges to the right blocking the view from the neighbors, a wood fence on the left. For someone to really see what was going on back here, they’d have to come through the gate at the front yard. This isn’t visible from the street.”

      “Mrs. Reynolds is preoccupied, and the boy was probably in bed by the time he got started,” Nash added, thinking aloud.

      Porter’s gaze fell to the ground. He started for the front yard.

      Nash followed a few paces behind him, careful to duplicate his steps and avoid multiple tracks. He did this more out of habit than necessity. CSI had already searched the snow and found nothing.

      Porter pushed through the gate, paused for a second, then went to the silver Lexus LS parked in the driveway. The car was parked at the side of the house, not visible from the front door. Mrs. Reynolds thought her husband had left, but most likely he’d never gotten the car in gear.

      The unsub opened the rear door and slipped into the car behind the driver’s seat. “He was hiding back here when Reynolds came out, probably ducked down in back. There’s a СКАЧАТЬ