by J. D. Barker
Nash set his cup down and stared at it. “How much in mine?”
“Zero, unless you add sugar. It’s just black coffee.”
Kloz took another drink. “Don’t judge me.”
The manager glanced at the computer screen. “Any luck?”
“This thing is a piece of shit.”
He nodded. “I told that to the detective who came by the last time. Corporate rarely upgrades them unless they break down, and believe me, I’ve tried to break this one, but it’s a workhorse. They really don’t care about long-term storage. If we get robbed, corporate wants to capture the event, but there is really no reason to keep more than a day or two’s worth of footage.”
The manager’s phone dinged, and he pulled it from his pocket, read the message on the display, then put the oversize Samsung away.
Kloz was staring at him. “You have Wi-Fi here, right?”
“Of course.”
“What kind?”
“A, B, G, N, and AC at 2.4GHz and 5,” he replied.
“All the best, right? Your customers probably demand it.”
He nodded. “Corporate does stay on top of that. Our best customers park themselves here for hours.”
“What are you getting at?” Nash asked.
Kloz stood up and began tracing the wires, particularly a thick blue one. He followed the cable behind three cases of cups stacked in the corner. There were shelves behind them. He slid the containers aside, revealing a number of gizmos with flashing lights, nothing Nash recognized. He stopped at one device in particular, a small black box with two antennae sticking out the top. Kloz flipped it over.
“This is their Wi-Fi router and access point. It’s a Ruckus ZoneFlex, state-of-the-art. Remember all those people staring at their laptops and smartphones out there? They’re all connecting to the Internet through this,” Kloz told him. He opened the lid on his MacBook. “See? I’ve connected to Starbucks Wi-Fi before, so my computer connected automatically. Now I’m on the same network as all the people here.” He was pointing at an icon in the corner near his clock.
“How does this help us?” Nash asked him.
Kloz clicked at his keyboard. A new window opened, and data began to fly past much faster than Nash could read. “This is the traffic on their router in real time.” He turned to the manager. “You shouldn’t keep your username and password on a sticker attached to the router. That’s the first place a potential hacker will look if they have access.”
He raised both hands. “That’s all Corporate. I don’t touch that thing.”
Kloz went back to his MacBook. “I can see every e-mail, web page, picture, or song accessed by the people out there, right here, right now, by watching this log file.”
“I’m still not sure how that helps us,” Nash said.
Kloz smiled. “If I were a hot leading lady and you were Tom Cruise, this is the part where you would try to kiss me.”
“I’m not going to kiss you, Kloz.”
“I’m not going to let you.”
“What does all this mean?”
Kloz held up his index finger and began typing again. Nash watched him cut and paste some data from an e-mail into the program he was running. Then he clapped his hands and grinned. “We can’t watch Ella Reynolds on video because that is long gone, but we can view everything she did while she was here dating back over a year and ending on January twenty-first. Her phone and computer.”
Nash thought about this for a second. “The twenty-first? That’s the day before she was reported missing. That means she never made it here on the day she disappeared. That narrows down our timeline a little bit. What else you got?”
Kloz wasn’t listening to him. He was busy typing again. He didn’t speak for nearly three minutes, then: “Kids will always be one step ahead of their parents.”
“What do you mean?”
Kloz had two windows open on his screen. He selected the one on the left. “This represents all the data we pulled from Ella’s computer and her online accounts. Her phone disappeared with her, but we have her laptop. Her browser history was nearly nonexistent. She either used a secure browser or encrypted her traffic. Most kids know how to do it—they don’t want their parents snooping around. So, I took her Mac address—that’s an ID unique to her computer—and ran it through the Starbucks router. That’s this window here.” He clicked on the box on the right. “The router captures all her activity, encrypted or not. If I compare the two windows, filter one against the other, I can see what she looked at while encrypted. Basically everything she didn’t want her parents to find.”
“Is it porn?” the manager asked. Nash had forgotten he was still standing there.
“Sadly, it is not porn,” Kloz said. He opened another window and turned the computer so Nash could see.
Nash clucked his tongue. “Huh. I wouldn’t have expected that.”
24
Clair
Day 2 • 12:46 p.m.
“There it is, 3306,” Sophie said, pointing out her window at the blue and white awning above the storefront’s large picture window, THE LEIGH GALLERY printed in large block letters.
Clair maneuvered her Honda into a vacant space in front, and the two women shuffled across the cold street, careful not to slip on the icy sidewalk.
A tiny bell rang as they pushed through the doorway, and a woman with shoulder-length blond hair and glasses looked up at them from a desk at the back of the store. “Good afternoon, ladies.” She smiled. “Let me know if you have any questions or if there is something I can help you with.”
Clair took in the store. She had never seen so much color in one place. The walls were covered in paintings from floor to ceiling, every inch of space filled with canvases ranging in size from a few inches to four or five feet big. The works ran the gamut from abstract to landscapes, lit by strategically positioned track lights at the ceiling. Tables filled the open floor space on either side, covered with statues, vases, figurines. Clair couldn’t spot a method to the organization. It appeared to be total chaos, yet it was wonderful. If she wasn’t working, she could have spent hours here.
Sophie had picked up a small statue from a table on the right. “I love penguins, they’re so cute.”
The woman stood up from the desk, placed her glasses on top of her head, and walked over. “Those are made by a local artist named Tess Marchum. She crafts each one by hand. I love the way they stand guard at the table, watching over all the other pieces. She made the giraffes and zebras too. Such a talent.”
Clair made a mental note to return to this place when she had time to browse. She turned to the woman. “Are you Ms. Edwins?”
“Yes. Please, call me Collette.”
Sophie set the penguin back down on the table, patted it on the head. “My name is Sophie Rodriguez. I’m with Missing Children, and this is Detective Clair Norton with Chicago Metro. We’d like to ask you a few questions about Lili Davies.”
The woman’s smile left her face. “Have you found her? Is she all right?”
“Not yet, but we have a lot of people out looking for her,” Clair said. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“The night before last; she closed for me. She was supposed to work last night too, but she didn’t come in. When five o’clock came around, I really began to get worried. It wasn’t like her. I can’t remember the last time she missed a shift, and if she was running late, even only a few minutes, she always called or texted.”
“What time was she due in?”
“She usually works the four-to-close shift and locks up,” Collette replied.
“The night before last, when she did come in, did you notice anything strange about her?” Clair asked.
The woman shook her head. “Not at all. She got in a few minutes early and was her usual bubbly self. Always smiling, that one. The customers love her.” She hesitated for a moment, then lowered her voice. “I saw the paper this morning. Do you think the Monkey Killer took her?”
“But somebody took her?” Collette asked.
“We think so, yes,” Clair told her.
“Have you noticed anyone strange in the gallery over the past few weeks? Someone you didn’t recognize or someone who may have paid just a little too much attention to Lili and not enough to the artwork?” Sophie asked.
The woman chewed at the inside of cheek. “Most of our customers are regulars. We do host events here a few times each month and tend to draw in a couple new faces. On a regular day like today, we get our share of browsers too, people I don’t know, but nobody in recent memory jumps out at me. Usually, Lili gets in at four and I leave around five, so our schedules don’t overlap much. It’s very possible someone came in after I left. Lili is such a pretty thing, I’m sure she’s got her share of male suitors who stop by after I leave. I’ve caught her friends hanging out in here on more than one occasion, but they’re never any trouble. I don’t mind it, as long as they don’t interfere. It can get quiet in here sometimes, all alone.”
Clair eyed the ceiling. “Do you have any security cameras?”
Collette shook her head. “I’m afraid not. This is a nice neighborhood, and we don’t work with cash, so I’ve never felt the need to install them.”
“You mentioned events,” Clair said. “Do they draw a large crowd?”
“Oh yes, we’ll get a few hundred people in and out of here whenever we feature a local artist. We have our regulars, then they invite their friends and fans. There’s food and drinks. We try to do them as often as possible,” she replied.
Clair turned to Sophie. “If I wanted to stalk a young girl, get close to her, that seems like the best time to do it, right? Large crowd, strange faces. Much less likely to stand out than coming in on his own.” She turned back to Ms. Edwins. “Any chance you keep some kind of sign-in sheet for those events?”
Collette nodded. “We do. We gather names, addresses, and e-mails so we can add visitors to our mailing list. We also supply a copy to the featured artist.”
“Would it be possible to get copies of those lists?” Clair asked.
At this, Collette hesitated, then reluctantly nodded. “If it will help Lili, of course. Give me a moment.”
Clair watched the woman head toward the back of the store and disappear down a hallway behind the desk. She turned back to Sophie. “If our guy came in, I doubt he provided his real name or contact information.”
“Then what good will the lists do us?”
“We’ll review all the names and isolate the bogus ones—names that don’t tie out to the address provided, bad e-mail addresses . . . hopefully that will narrow it down to only a handful of records. Once we do that, we can—”
A scream erupted from the back of the gallery.
Clair tugged her Glock from the holster at her shoulder and ran toward the sound with Sophie behind her. They maneuvered around the desk, down the small hallway, past a dark bathroom, and found themselves in a small storage room. Collette Edwins stood just inside the doorway, one hand still on the light switch, the other pressed to her mouth. She stared at the center of the room.
Clair followed her gaze, her grip on the gun tightening.
Lili Davies’s lifeless body hung motionless against a metal shelf, her eyes glossy, empty, her mouth slightly agape. A black electrical cord encircled her neck, the flesh around it purple. She looked horribly pale.
Clair swept the room, holstered her Glock, then went to the girl, her fingers going to her neck in search of a pulse. Nothing. Her skin was cold. The cord around her neck had been tied to the supports of the metal shelf, holding her up.
“Did she hang herself?” Collette choked out.
“No,” Clair said. “She was dead before her body was placed here.”
“Who else has access to this room?” Sophie asked.
Collette was shaking. “I . . . I was just back here not two hours ago. I had to restock some of the figurines out front. She wasn’t here. Nobody was here. I’ve been alone all morning.”
“What about that door?” Clair asked. There was a steel door at the far corner of the room.
“We keep that door locked. It’s only opened for deliveries.”
Clair reached into her pocket and produced a latex glove, pulled it over her hand, and tested the doorknob. It was locked, as was the deadbolt above it. “Everybody out,” she said.
25
Poole
Day 2 • 1:03 p.m.
Special Agent Frank Poole settled into the rusty metal desk he had been assigned in the basement office of Chicago Metro. The boxes of information taken from Detective Porter’s apartment were on the table beside him. SAIC Hurless and SA Diener had gone back to the FBI’s field office on Roosevelt to check on their other cases after a rushed lunch at a small diner on Wabash. Poole decided to come back here. He expected Hurless to fight him, but instead his supervisor only helped him load the boxes into his car and instructed Poole and the techs to bring everything straight here.
Poole closed the door and switched off the overhead fluorescents, plunging the room into total darkness except for the small lamp burning at his desk.
He opened the file on Barbara McInley and flipped through the contents. He preferred to work like this, in the dark, no distractions. No noise, no bustling office around him, not a single voice except the evidence.
Barbara McInley. Seventeen years old. The Monkey Killer’s fifth victim. Bishop took her because her sister, Libby McInley, hit and killed a pedestrian on March 14, 2007. He flipped back to the inside cover of the folder, to the photo of Barbara McInley stapled inside. Beautiful girl. Blond.
He looked up at the whiteboard in the corner of the room, his eyes straining to see the images of Bishop’s victims. All brunettes, all but Barbara. He lost himself in those images, and when he glanced back at his watch, he realized nearly ten minutes had passed. He reached for his phone and dialed a number he’d programmed in at the start of this investigation but had yet to use.
The line rang three times before a gruff voice picked up. “Hello?”
Poole cleared his throat. “Detective Porter?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Special Agent Frank Poole.”
Silence, then: “Okay.”
Poole went on. “We’re here, on this investigation, because we were asked to be here. You understand that, right? We can’t take over a case unless we’re invited.”
“Who invited you?”
Poole ran his hand through his hair. “If they wanted you to know, they would have told you. I don’t think it’s my place to communicate that information.”
“You called me,” Porter said. “What would you like to communicate?”
“If given a choice, I wouldn’t intrude like this. I wouldn’t want someone else to butt into one of my investigations, and it’s not something I want to be party to.”
“Yet, here you are.”
“Here I am,” Poole agreed.
“Someone feels I messed up, and they brought you in to save face—not your fault you’re here, just doing your job, is that it?”
“They say you let him go, that you’re too close.”
“You can believe whatever you want. It’s your case now,” Porter said.
Poole stood up, his chair squeaking in protest, and walked over to the whiteboard, to the pictures of the girls. “The truth is, I don’t care much for the political bullshit of all this. I get the feeling you don’t either. You and I, I think
we’re both after the same thing. We just want to put this monster down.”
Porter said nothing.
Poole went on. “My boss and Diener are hoping to make a name for themselves with this case. I think that’s their agenda.”
“And you don’t have an agenda?”
“I don’t want this guy to hurt anyone else,” Poole replied.
Neither man spoke for a long while. Porter was the first to break the silence. “Why did you call, Agent Poole?”
“Frank,” he said. “Call me Frank.”
“Why did you call me, Frank?”
Poole returned to his desk, to the file. “Barbara McInley. I got the feeling you were holding something back earlier.”
“I told you and your boss, I haven’t had a chance to look at the folder.”
“But your gut tells you there’s something there?”
Again, Porter said nothing.
Poole continued. “My gut is telling me to trust your gut.”
Poole heard nothing from the other end of the line. He said nothing either. He’d wait for the other man to speak.
Porter finally let out a sigh. “That day when I got called back into the case, I had been out on leave for a few weeks because of my wife’s murder. Nash caught the body, the one we thought was the Monkey Killer. Things moved so fast. We brought Bishop in from CSI because he seemed sharp. We weren’t looking for a killer anymore. We thought he was dead. Our entire focus fell on finding Emory. We got back to the war room, all the key players from the 4MK task force were there, and there was Bishop, the new guy. We ran the evidence. It sometimes helps me to run from start to finish to keep it all straight in my head, sometimes it sparks something new, something jumps out. Anyway, we ran the evidence for Bishop but also for the rest of us, a bit of a refresher.”
Poole nodded. “You wanted to run the data from a new angle, no longer looking for the man behind the evidence, but use the data to try and piece together who he was, where he would have taken Emory.”