by J. D. Barker
“Yeah. Sometimes when you shift focus like that, something comes to you from left field. Something you didn’t catch with the first go-around. The case became more about our missing girl,” Porter said. “As we reviewed the evidence, Bishop weighed in. And I swear to God, even looking back now, that little shit seemed like all of this was new to him. He stared at the boards not only with a straight face, but I could see the gears turning in his head, I could see him thinking through the evidence, connecting dots, making things fit, and generating theories. I’ve played it over and over in my mind, and not once did he do anything to tip us off to the fact that he was really our killer. He played the part of Paul Watson CSI so well, I think even he forgot who he was—he looked like he wanted to catch 4MK as much as we did. I know you probably think I’m just making excuses, that I was sloppy, that someone should have seen through the ruse, but his character was that complete. He not only wore a mask, he became that mask.”
“He’s a sociopath,” Poole said. “In that moment, he may have been Paul Watson. People like him, when they don’t have a conscience of their own, they’re like a blank canvas, an empty vessel. They can drop a personality into that space and it takes over, fills that void. I’ve seen others like him. In some, the personality takes over completely, and in others they’re all somehow in there together, aware of each other.”
“Well, like I said, in that moment he was Paul Watson, and Paul Watson looked like he wanted to catch 4MK. As we reviewed the evidence, as we went over each victim’s story, he paused at McInley. He made a point to mention she was the only blonde. At the time, it just seemed like a rookie comment. I mean, we obviously all knew she was the only blonde, we’d stared at these photos for five years. But he lingered there, if only for a second. As a rookie comment, I let it pass, but now—”
“Now you’re replaying that scene, you know you were in the room with 4MK, and 4MK lingered on Barbara McInley,” Poole summarized.
“Yeah.”
“That’s not much.”
“I think I’ve said that a few times now. Nothing solid, only my gut,” Porter said. “There is the crime itself too. McInley’s sister killed a pedestrian in a hit-and-run, it was an accident. With all the other victims, Bishop played off the fact that someone related to them committed an intentional crime. Something premeditated, thought out, and orchestrated. A hit-and-run doesn’t fit.”
Poole looked back to the file. “According to the arrest report, she hit a pedestrian who was crossing the street against the light. He stepped out into traffic into the path of her car.”
“If she wouldn’t have run, she wouldn’t have been charged. Not for something like that,” Porter said. “There’s the similarity to the way Jacob Kittner died too. Don’t forget, Bishop paid that guy to step out into traffic. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Me either,” Poole replied. “Give me a second.” He pulled up Libby McInley’s record on his laptop and reviewed her file. “According to records, she was charged in March 2007 and convicted of manslaughter for the vehicular death of one Franklin Kirby in July 2007, sentenced to ten years, of which she served seven and a handful of months. She was released on parole six weeks ago.”
“What was the name of her victim again?”
“Franklin Kirby. Why? Do you know him?”
Again, Porter went quiet.
“Porter. If the name means something to you, you need to tell me,” Poole said.
“You should check on her. Let me know what you find.”
“Why?” Poole asked, but Porter had disconnected the call.
26
Porter
Day 2 • 1:04 p.m.
Across town, Porter stood at his mailbox in the lobby of his apartment building, his cell phone in one hand and the TV Guide in the other. He was staring down at the floor, at the picture that had fallen from the pages of the magazine when he freed it from his cluttered mailbox.
Porter knelt, leaned in closer.
The photo was five-by-seven, black and white, on matte paper. A picture of a woman in a prison jumpsuit being led through an outdoor chainlink walkway, one guard in front, another behind her. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, and her head hung low, her face barely visible in the shadows. It appeared to be a distance shot, grainy, as if enhanced with software beyond the capabilities of the original lens. Porter could make out ORLEANS PARISH PRISON on the wall behind her in block letters.
Porter dropped the TV Guide to the floor beside it, picked up the photograph with his gloved hand, and flipped it over. On the back was one simple sentence written in black ink.
I think I found her.
B
27
The Man in the Black Knit Cap
Day 2 • 1:14 p.m.
“Did she see?” the voice on the line said.
The man in the black knit cap pressed the phone against his ear. “No, she did not.”
He sat at a small desk made of pressboard and black plastic, the top littered with paper, colored markers, and drawings. So many drawings. The desk was under a window overlooking the street. Outside, his neighbor walked his dog, a small white Lhasa apso dressed in a red and green sweater. The dog lifted its back leg and peed in the snow. The man in the black knit cap watched the yellow stain grow, a stain besmirching his yard. His neighbor lived ten feet over, yet he walked his dog here every day to pee. The dog finished its business, scratched at the edge of the sidewalk with its stubby back legs, then tugged toward their house.
The wound on the side of his head itched, and he scratched at it, the knit cap shifting position under his fingers, slipping on his bald head.
“The next one will see,” the voice on the other end of the call said. “She will be the one.”
“I hope so.”
“Did you put her where I told you?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“Nobody sees me anymore.”
“Did anyone see you?” the voice repeated.
“No.”
“Good.”
“Yeah.”
The man picked up a green marker and began coloring one of the drawings on his desk. His hand began to shake, the ink crossed the lines, and he threw the marker across the room.
He heard a sigh through the phone. The man behind the voice could see him, somehow—he could always see him. “Sooner or later, they all see. It’s just a matter of time.” He was talking about the girls again.
The man in the black knit cap missed the girls. The house seemed so quiet without them. He picked up a red marker, held it to the drawing, and watched his hand begin to shake. He put the marker down, and the shaking stopped. He stretched his fingers out, made a fist, stretched again. The movement felt good, felt normal. He stopped. His hand wasn’t shaking. He picked up the marker. His hand wasn’t shaking. He touched the marker to the paper. His hand did not shake. He began to color. The small lines he made grew longer, wider, the marker taking on a mind of its own, scribbling, the hand shaking. He pressed harder, but it did no good. The ink crossed the lines. The red ink spread over the green he had tried moments earlier, the color turning a muddled brown. The lines of the drawing disappearing under these involuntary scribbles, the image slowly dying under his touch.
He dropped the marker and turned in the chair, facing the room.
His daughter’s red sweater lay crumpled on the floor behind him, her tiny shoes beside the bed.
“I want to get the next one now, before it gets dark,” he said.
“You must be patient.”
He knew the voice was right. The voice was always right.
He scratched at his head again, his nails digging into raw flesh, his fingers coming away moist with blood. “But you’ll tell me when?”
“I will.”
“I’m ready.”
“I know.”
The line went dead then.
The man in the black knit cap turned in the chair, again facing the desk, and set the phone
down. He looked out the window. The dog was gone, his neighbor was gone, and the stain in the bright white snow remained.
He picked up a yellow marker and began to color the drawing.
28
Porter
Day 2 • 2:17 p.m.
Porter had spent the last hour sitting on his couch, the photograph on the coffee table before him. He had brought over the reading lamp from his bedside, removed the shade, and swapped out the bulb for a hundred-watt. The light was bright, unforgiving. He leaned over the picture, studying every inch, every pixel.
His mind raced.
Libby McInley killed Franklin Kirby. Barbara McInley died for the crime.
Of course, he knew the name.
Bishop told him that name right before he pushed Arthur Talbot into the elevator shaft. The name Franklin Kirby was etched into his skull along with all the loose strings surrounding 4MK. Franklin Kirby was the real name of the man who ran off with Bishop’s mother and neighbor, a lover to one, possibly both. He killed his partner, the man Bishop called Mr. Stranger in his diary. The man Bishop later told him was really named Felton Briggs. Briggs had been some type of security officer or private investigator employed by Talbot. Neither name had ever turned up in the various databases Porter searched.
Ghosts, just like Bishop.
Until now.
He looked back at the photograph. His eyes fixed on the woman.
He sat there for a long while, unmoving.
When he looked up, he eyed his apartment. The feds had made a mess of the place, pulling down books, emptying cabinets, dumping drawers. Heather’s picture stared up at the ceiling, knocked over in their search.
He didn’t want to be here.
He couldn’t be here.
Not now.
Porter stared at the photograph on the coffee table.
Ten minutes.
Twenty minutes.
“Fuck it.”
He stood, went to the bedroom closet, and pulled out his suitcase. Five minutes later the bag was packed and sitting at the front door.
He went to the freezer, removed the foil package labeled ground beef, peeled it open, and removed the contents—nearly three thousand dollars in cash at last count. He folded the bills, shoved them into his pocket, and returned to the living room.
He surveyed the room again, then went over to his La-Z-Boy, his favorite chair. He picked it up by the base and turned the chair on its side. The loud bang as it hit the hardwood echoed through the otherwise quiet apartment.
Porter slipped his fingers under the material at the bottom and tugged. It came away, held only with Velcro.
Bishop’s diary was duct-taped to the wood frame under the cloth. He never did log it into evidence. He pulled the small book free, removed the tape, and slipped the black and white composition book into his pocket with the money. Returning to the table, he retrieved the photograph from Bishop, his hand no longer gloved, and pocketed that too.
Porter took out his cell phone, switched it off, and placed it on the coffee table.
At the front door, he took one last look at his apartment, at Heather’s fallen picture, then picked up his suitcase and left, locking the door behind him.
29
Clair
Day 2 • 6:23 p.m.
Clair handed Nash a cup of coffee and fell down into the chair beside him. “This guy is like a ghost. You could have heard a pin drop in that gallery, and somehow he managed to pick the back-door locks—two of them, mind you—get into the storeroom, and position Lili’s body, all without making enough noise to get the attention of the manager, who wasn’t more than ten or fifteen feet down the hall.”
Nash took a drink of the coffee, his nose wrinkling. “This is horrible.”
“It may have been sitting in that pot a while. It looked a little crusty around the edges.”
He looked down into his cup, shrugged, and drank some more.
Eisley had agreed to perform an emergency autopsy on the body of Lili Davies; they’d been waiting in his office at the Medical Examiner’s Office for a little over an hour. Aside from Lili’s body, no evidence was found at the gallery. Not a single fingerprint or shoe track. The unsub most likely wiped everything down on his way out. There was only the girl.
Eisley had ordered she be brought straight here so he could get to work.
Clair and Nash agreed to wait for the results, while Klozowski checked in with his IT team. Sophie Rodriguez went straight to the Davies home. They didn’t want the family to learn about all this on the news, like the Reynoldses had.
“So Ella Reynolds was looking at cars?” Clair asked.
Nash had told her what they found in her browser history at Starbucks.
He took another drink of the coffee, forcing it down. “Cars R Us on Pulaski Road. For about two weeks she searched their inventory nearly every day. Then she seemed to find something she liked, a 2012 Mazda2 Sport for $7,495, bright green with cloth interior, 1.5-liter engine, automatic transmission, and seventy-five thousand miles.”
“That’s high mileage.”
“Yeah.” Nash forced a smile. “That was my first thought too.”
“You said the searches were encrypted, right? Why would she hide something like that from her parents?” Clair asked.
Nash shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t want her buying a car yet. She was only fifteen. Maybe they thought she was too young.”
“Seems weird to be looking at cars when you’re not even old enough to drive.”
“Hell, I was ready to buy when I was eight years old,” Nash replied.
“At fifteen, girls are usually interested in guys with cars, not buying their own car.”
“Not all girls.”
“Guess not.”
“Kloz and I planned to head there next, when you called about Lili,” he told her. “We’ll drive over when we’re done here.”
Clair remembered something Gabrielle Deegan said. “You know, Lili Davies’s best friend, Gabby, said that Lili was in the market for a car too. For the last few weeks, all she texted were pictures of cars, trying to figure out what she wanted. Her dad said he’d buy her one when she graduated.”
She watched Nash take another drink of his coffee, mulling this over.
“Any chance she visited this dealer? Maybe that’s our link.”
“Our unsub is a used-car salesman?”
Nash stood and slowly paced the office. “He’d have easy access. Think about how that process works. Somebody like Ella or Lili finds a car they like, they go down to the lot, and they’re met by our unsub. It’s unthreatening, they’re going to him instead of the other way around. He shows them the car they came to see, or shows them other cars on the lot. They spend some quality time together. When was the last time you got off a car lot in less than an hour? They rope you in. They ramble around with the salesperson, get to know each other, maybe go for a few test drives. All of these things are disarming. Girls like Lili and Ella may have their guard up when a guy approaches them on the street, but a scenario like this? Hell, they’d be trying to get on the unsub’s good side, so he puts in a word with the finance guy.”
Clair’s eyes went wide. “When you go for a test drive, they take a copy of your driver’s license, all your personal information. He’d have that when they left.”
Nash shook his head. “Neither girl had a license yet, remember?”
“Maybe they had to fill out a form or something.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s worth checking, for sure.”
“Yeah.”
Eisley pushed through the double doors, drying his hands with a paper towel. He tilted his head back toward the examination room. “Come on.”
Clair stood and followed him back inside, with Nash behind her. She popped a piece of gum into her mouth and offered one to Nash.
He shook his head. “I think I’m getting used to the smell.”
“In this office, the day you get used to the smell i
s the day you retire,” Eisley told him.
Lili Davies’s naked body was laid out on the table, her chest still open with a large Y incision that began at her shoulders and ended above her pubic bone. When she came into view, Nash went pale and reached out a hand to Clair. “I’ll take that gum now.”
Clair snickered and handed him a piece. She leaned over the body. Lili’s face looked so peaceful.
Eisley tilted the large light above the table, focusing the beam on the open chest cavity. “Normally, I would have closed her up, but I wanted you to see this.” He reached inside, pointing beneath her ribs. “See these marks on the lungs?”
Clair followed his finger to dark streaks across the pink surface. There were dozens of them on both lungs. “What are they?”
“When the lungs fill with fluid and strain against the pressure, it can sometimes cause bruising,” Eisley told her.
“So, she drowned? Like Ella?” Nash said.
Eisley nodded. “In salt water, just like Ella.”
Clair leaned in closer. “I thought our bodies don’t bruise after the heart stops pumping. If she died from drowning, should there be bruising?”
“It’s normal to find both pre- and postmortem bruising on the lungs from drowning,” Eisley told her.
“Then why are you showing this to us?”
Eisley leaned back in, his finger tracing the girl’s lungs. “See how some of the marks are much darker than others, like these here?”
Clair nodded.
“This indicates multiple traumas. Some are older than others.”
“You mean, she drowned more than once?” Nash said.
“From what I am observing, this girl drowned six, maybe seven times over a twenty-four-hour period.”
Clair frowned. “How is that possible?”
“I think your unsub drowned her, then revived her,” he said. “If you look closely at her ribs, you’ll see micro fractures. I think he performed CPR on her. I also found multiple electrical burns from a stun gun, so he used one either to subdue her or to revive her.”