Читать книгу The Fourth Monkey: A twisted thriller you won’t be able to put down - Джей Ди Баркер, J.D. Barker - Страница 8
ОглавлениеPorter took Lake Park Avenue and made good time, arriving at about a quarter to seven. Chicago Metro had Woodlawn at Fifty-Fifth completely barricaded. He could make out the lights from blocks away — at least a dozen units, an ambulance, two fire trucks. Twenty officers, possibly more. Press too.
He slowed his late-model Dodge Charger as he approached the chaos, and held his badge out the window. A young officer, no more than a kid, ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape and ran over. “Detective Porter? Nash told me to wait for you. Park anywhere — we’ve cordoned off the entire block.”
Porter nodded, then pulled up beside one of the fire trucks and climbed out. “Where’s Nash?”
The kid handed him a cup of coffee. “Over there, near the ambulance.”
He spotted Nash’s large frame speaking to Tom Eisley from the medical examiner’s office. At nearly six foot three, he towered over the much smaller man. He looked like he’d put on a few pounds in the weeks since Porter had seen him, the telltale cop’s belly hanging prominently over his belt.
Nash waved him over.
Eisley greeted Porter with a slight nod and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “How are you holding up, Sam?” He held a clipboard loaded with at least a ream of paper. In today’s world of tablets and smartphones, the man always seemed to have a clipboard on hand; his fingers flipped nervously through the pages.
“I imagine he’s getting tired of people asking him how he’s holding up, how he’s doing, how he’s hanging, or any other variation of well-being assertion,” Nash grumbled.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” He forced a smile. “Thank you for asking, Tom.”
“Anything you need, just ask.” Eisley shot Nash a glance.
“I appreciate that.” Porter turned back to Nash. “So, an accident?”
Nash nodded at a city bus parked near the curb about fifty feet away. “Man versus machine. Come on.”
Porter followed him, with Eisley a few paces behind, clipboard in tow.
A CSI tech photographed the front of the bus. Dented grill. Cracked paint an inch above the right headlight. Another investigator picked at something buried in the right front tire tread.
As they neared, he spotted the black body bag among a sea of uniforms standing before a growing crowd.
“The bus was moving at a good clip; its next stop is nearly a mile down the road,” Nash told them.
“I wasn’t speeding, dammit! Check the GPS. Don’t be throwing accusations like that out there!”
Porter turned to his left to find the bus driver. He was a big man, at least three hundred pounds. His black CTA jacket strained against the bulk it had been tasked to hold together. His wiry gray hair was matted on the left and reaching for the sky on the right. Nervous eyes stared back at them, jumping from Porter, to Nash, then Eisley, and back again. “That crazy fucker jumped right out in front of me. This ain’t no accident. He offed himself.”
“Nobody said you did anything wrong,” Nash assured him.
Eisley’s phone rang. He glanced at the display, held up a finger, and walked a few paces to the side to take the call.
The driver went on. “You start spreading around that I was speeding, and there goes my job, my pension … think I wanna be looking for work at my age? In this shit economy?”
Porter caught a glimpse of the man’s name tag. “Mr. Nelson, how about you take a deep breath and try to calm down?”
Sweat trickled down the man’s red face. “I’m gonna be pushing a broom somewhere all because that little prick picked my bus. I got thirty-one years behind me without an incident, and now this bullshit.”
Porter put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Do you think you can tell me what happened?”
“I need to keep my mouth shut until my union rep gets here, that’s what I need to do.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
The driver frowned. “What are you gonna do for me?”
“I can put in a good word with Manny Polanski down at Transit, for starters. If you didn’t do anything wrong, if you cooperate with us, there’s no reason for you to get suspended.”
“Shit. You think I’ll get suspended over this?” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “Jesus, I can’t afford that.”
“I don’t think they’ll do that if they know you worked with us, that you tried to help. There might not even be a need for a hearing,” Porter assured him.
“A hearing?”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened? Then I can talk to Manny for you, maybe save you the pain of all that.”
“You know Manny?”
“I worked my first two years on the job as a uniform with Transit. He’ll listen to me. You help us out, and I’ll put in a good word, I promise.”
The driver considered this, then finally took a deep breath and nodded. “It happened just like I said to your friend here. I made the stop at Ellis right on time — picked up two, dropped off one. I ran east down Fifty-Fifth, came around the bend. The light at Woodlawn was green, so there was no need to slow down — not that I was speeding. Check the GPS.”
“I’m sure you weren’t.”
“I wasn’t, I was just moving with the traffic. I might have been a few miles over the limit, but I wasn’t speeding,” he said.
Porter waved his hand dismissively. “You were heading east on Fifty-Fifth …”
The driver nodded. “Yeah. I saw a few people at the corner, not many. Three, maybe four. Then, just as I got close, this guy jumps out in front of my bus. No warning or nothing. One second he’s standing there, the next he’s in the street. I hit the brakes, but this thing doesn’t exactly stop on a dime. I hit him dead center. Launched him a good thirty feet.”
“What color was the light?” Porter asked.
“Green.”
“Not yellow?”
The driver shook his head. “No, green. I know, ’cause I watched it change. It didn’t turn yellow for another twenty seconds or so. I was already out of the bus when I saw it switch.” He pointed up at the signal. “Check the camera.”
Porter looked up. Over the last decade, nearly every intersection in the city had been outfitted with CCTV cameras. He’d remind Nash to pull the footage when they got back to the station. Most likely, his partner had already put in the order.
“He wasn’t crossing the street; that man jumped. You’ll see when you watch the video.”
Porter handed him a card. “Can you stick around a little bit, just in case I have more questions?”
The man shrugged. “You’re going to talk to Manny, right?”
Porter nodded. “Can you excuse us for a second?” He pulled Nash aside, lowering his voice. “He didn’t kill him intentionally. Even if this was a suicide, we’ve got no business here. Why’d you call me out?”
Nash put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay to do this? If you need more time, I get it —”
“I’m good,” Porter said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“If you need to talk —”
“Nash, I’m not a fucking child. Take off the kid gloves.”
“All right.” He finally relented. “But if this gets to be too much too soon, you gotta promise me you’ll tap out, got it? Nobody will think twice if you need to do that.”
“I think working will do me some good. I’ve been getting stir-crazy sitting around the apartment,” he admitted.
“This is big, Porter,” he said in a low voice. “You deserve to be here.”
“Christ, Nash. Will you spit it out?”
“It’s a good bet our vic was heading to that mailbox over there.” He glanced toward a blue postal box in front of a brick apartment building.
“How do you know?”
A grin spread across his partner’s face. “He was carrying a small white box tied up with black string.”
Porter’s eyes went wide. “Nooo.”
“Uh-huh.”
