by J. D. Barker
“Would that work?”
Eisley shook his head. “No. The electricity would dissipate across her skin. It would need to be directed to the heart. Maybe if he placed a metal plate under her when he did it, but I’m skeptical even that would work. CPR, though, he could have brought her back with CPR.”
“Multiple times,” Clair said.
“Six or seven, at least.”
“My God.”
Nash lowered his head, scratched at his eyebrow. “So he drowned her repeatedly until he was unable to revive her.”
“That would be my conclusion as well, yes,” Eisley said.
Clair stepped back from the table. “Why . . . why would . . .” she said, more to herself than anyone else.
Eisley frowned. “I’m afraid there’s more.”
Clair watched as he crossed the room and pulled back the sheet covering a body against the wall.
Ella Reynolds.
“I reexamined 14982F and found the same marks. The near-freezing and thawing of the body damaged her cells, making this condition less pronounced. I should have noticed regardless. I have no excuse—it slipped by me. I focused primarily on the drowning aspect itself, and my attempts to minimize damage from the conditions in which you found the body.”
“Ella,” Nash said softly. “Her name is Ella.”
Eisley raised his left palm. “Well, yes. Ella. Of course.”
“He drowned and revived her over and over again too?” Nash asked.
Eisley nodded grimly. “In her case, it appears this took place over a much longer period of time. Sometimes days between each event, whereas with 149 . . . with Lili, only an hour or less elapsed between each. There is a clear escalation in your unsub’s behavior. Had Lili been permitted more time to recover, she may have been able to survive. Unfortunately, the human body can only take so much. She wasn’t given a chance.”
“What about Ella’s father?” Clair asked. “What did you find there?”
Eisley gently replaced the white sheet covering Ella’s body, then crossed the room to the metal drawers built into the wall. He tugged one open and gestured for them to come closer. “I’ve been trying to call Porter, but I’m getting voice mail.”
“Sam had to take a step back for a little while,” Nash said.
“Everything okay?”
“Just a personal matter.”
Eisley looked like he was about to press further, then changed his mind. The body of Floyd Reynolds was encased in a thick black body bag. He slid the zipper down from the head to midsection, then spread the plastic so they could see inside. The skin was pale white save for the thick purple and black cut at his neck. It was worst at the center, above the Adam’s apple, and grew thinner and lighter as it spread out across his neck, ending at about the ears.
Eisley followed the line, with his finger hovering about an inch above the surface. “This is from a very thin wire, piano or electric guitar string, most likely. They sell thin cable at most hardware stores, but to me this appears thinner than what you would find there. Like I said, resembling string from a musical instrument. Porter had mentioned finding a footprint on the back of the car seat. That fits with what I’m seeing here. The unsub got the string around this man’s neck, then pulled at it with tremendous force. Because the back of his head was cradled against the headrest, the unsub had tremendous leverage. If you look closely at the center here, you’ll see the string cut nearly to the windpipe. The trauma lessens at the sides, consistent with strangulation from behind.”
“So, definitely the cause of death?” Nash asked.
Eisley nodded. “I’m confident of that. I found nothing else.”
Clair’s cell phone vibrated. She plucked it from her belt and read the text. “Randal Davies just suffered a major stroke.”
30
Clair
Day 2 • 6:51 p.m.
Clair and Nash fought the tail end of rush hour traffic and pulled into the emergency room drive of John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital about thirty minutes later. They found Sophie Rodriguez sitting in the corner of the waiting room with Grace Davies, Lili’s mother.
Sophie spotted them as they came through the automated glass doors and quickly walked over to meet them. “We were in their kitchen. I broke the news about Lili, and they took it about as well as could be expected. He was holding his wife, then his body just went limp. She tried to hold him up, but he’s a big guy. He fell to the floor and began to convulse. I dialed 911 immediately, and the paramedics arrived about four minutes later. The convulsions stopped by that point, but his breathing was labored and his heart rate was very low. I had trouble finding a pulse, but when I did, I only recorded about forty beats per minute.”
“Does he have any kind of history?” Clair asked.
Sophie shook her head. “Nothing, according to his wife. He exercises daily. Even with all this going on, he was prepping for a run when I got there, said it helped him clear his head.”
“His daughter is missing, and he wanted to go for a jog?” Nash said.
“People cope in strange ways.” Sophie glanced back at Grace Davies. “She lost her daughter, and now her husband is in ICU. I can’t imagine what she’s going through.”
A doctor pushed through the double doors at the back of the ER, scanned the crowd, and started toward Grace Davies. Clair, Nash, and Sophie rushed back over.
“I am so sorry, Grace,” the doctor said. “This is the last thing you need in your life right now.”
“You know each other?” Clair asked.
The doctor’s eyes went narrow. “And you are?”
“I’m Detective Clair Norton, this is Detective Nash, and Sophie Rodriguez with Missing Children.”
His face softened. “You’re helping to find Lili.” He nodded, then: “She’s such a sweet girl. I’ve known her her entire life. Who would do such a thing?”
Grace’s face went white, and her red, puffy eyes again filled with tears. Sophie put an arm around her.
Clair told the doctor Lili had been found. His eyes were on Grace Davies the entire time. When she finished, he took a deep breath. “This is horrible.” He went to Grace and wrapped his arms around her, whispered something at her ear.
“How do you know the Davies family?” Clair asked.
“Randal works here in Oncology. I’ve been head of ER going on six years now, we’re a tight group at this hospital,” the doctor said. “Randal and I both completed our residency at McGaw.”
Nash took a step closer. “What is Dr. Davies’s condition? Is he going to pull through?”
“He’s stable for now, but the stroke may have caused permanent damage. I’m waiting for the results of the CT scan to come back.” He released Mrs. Davies and took a step back. “Grace, how long has Randal been taking lisinopril?”
The woman’s forehead puckered. “What’s lisinopril?”
“It’s used to regulate high blood pressure.”
“Randal doesn’t have high blood pressure.”
The doctor placed a hand on her shoulder. “Is it possible he had high blood pressure and didn’t want to tell you? Maybe he didn’t want to worry you.”
Mrs. Davies shook her head. She pulled her phone from her purse and began tapping at the screen. “He doesn’t have high blood pressure. We both test a few times each week with this Bluetooth cuff he brought home from a conference last year.” She handed him the phone. “See, it records our results.”
The doctor scrolled through the readings. “These are all normal.”
“Randal exercises daily,” she told him. “At his last physical, the doctor told him he was as fit as a thirty-year-old.”
“If that’s the case, we have a serious problem,” the doctor said, stroking his chin.
Clair had remained silent through all of this. Something was wrong. “What is it?”
At first the doctor didn’t speak, lost in his own thoughts. Then: “We found a concentrated level of lisinopril in his blood. If I had to guess,
he took a rather large dose—three, maybe four hundred milligrams.”
“What’s considered normal?” Nash asked.
“Anywhere from two-point-five milligrams to forty, no more than that.”
Clair turned to Sophie, but before she could ask her a question, Sophie started nodding. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking . . . we were in the kitchen. I had a glass of water, Mrs. Davies was drinking—”
“I was drinking orange juice,” Mrs. Davies said. “Randal made a pot of coffee. I don’t drink coffee. It tends to keep me up at night.”
“You think someone spiked the coffee?” Nash said to Clair.
Clair began to speak, then pulled him aside, outside of earshot. “Our unsub killed Ella Reynolds’s father,” she said in a low voice.
“He strangled and nearly removed the head of Ella Reynolds’s father with piano wire,” Nash said. “This a drug overdose, hardly the same MO. Maybe Dr. Davies had high blood pressure and was self-medicating to manage the condition, hiding it from his wife for some reason. Who else takes their blood pressure on a regular basis at home?”
Clair raised her wrist and showed him her Apple Watch. “This thing tracks every step I make during the day, monitors my heart rate, it even tells me when I’ve been on my ass too long. Everyone is tracking their health stats these days.” She poked his oversize belly. “Everyone should be, anyway.”
“I’m comfortably plump, Clair-bear. I don’t need some gizmo on my wrist to remind me of that four times per day.”
“If a normal dose is two-point-five milligrams to forty, and he had ten times that, it’s no accident. Someone tried to kill him,” Clair said.
“It could be a suicide attempt,” Nash pointed out.
“Only one way to find out,” Clair said. She pulled out her phone, dialed Metro. “I’m getting CSI out there.”
Nash nodded reluctantly. “I’ll ask Mrs. Davies where she hides the spare key.”
31
Poole
Day 2 • 7:04 p.m.
Special Agent Frank Poole parked his red Jeep Cherokee on the 300 block of Mckeen Road in Downers Grove a few houses down from 317 on the right. Barbara McInley’s file lay open on the passenger seat.
This was the only known address for Libby McInley, noted in her file by her parole officer upon her release six weeks earlier.
He shouldn’t be out here.
He knew better.
A late-eighties Ford Taurus sat in the driveway. By the looks of it, the car had sat there for some time. The color appeared to be a faded burgundy or brown, hard to tell in the remaining trickle of evening light. There were no tracks in the driveway, snow piled high on top. Substantial rust, low tire pressure, neglected, forgotten. Long blades of brown grass and weeds poked out of the fresh white layer of snow, winter’s attempt at covering up an unkempt lawn, failing. The house was a single-story box of a thing, no real discernible style. Four walls and a roof with an attached one-car garage. White paint had long ago given up its hold on the siding, and dark wood shone through from beneath where it had peeled away. The roof was in need of replacement, visibly sagging over what was most likely a very small living room.
Lights began coming on in the surrounding houses, but 317 remained dark, lifeless.
You want to take a look, a voice at the back of his mind whispered. Just a quick peek, and you can be on your way. No harm, no foul, nobody will ever be the wiser.
Poole did want to take a peek. He wanted to talk to her. Porter had been right. Something felt off about her sister’s death. It nagged at him, and Poole knew if he didn’t do this, he’d spend the next two weeks thinking about doing it. The only way to get it out of his system was to walk up to that house, ring the bell, and have a few words with Ms. McInley.
After hanging up with Porter, Poole had run a detailed search for Franklin Kirby, McInley’s hit-and-run victim. He came up blank. The man had been identified by the driver’s license in his wallet. There was a photo of it in the McInley file but no record of him in the driver’s license database. The number on the license was assigned to a woman named Lesley Carmichael, forty-six, living in Woodlawn—not Franklin Kirby. Libby McInley hit and killed a man carrying false identification, although still a name Porter clearly recognized.
Poole stepped from the Cherokee out into the cold evening wind, closed the door behind him, and crossed the street to 317. Neither the public sidewalk nor the stone walkway leading to the front door had been shoveled. The front porch was also lost beneath a layer of at least four inches of snow. He pressed the bell with a gloved finger, heard the double chime inside, and waited.
Nothing.
He rang again, glancing back at the driveway.
Poole turned back to the door.
No sound from within.
No lights.
Libby McInley might have spotted him, killed the lights. She wouldn’t be the first person on parole to hide from a cop on their doorstep. There was no current employment information listed in her file. She probably had little reason to leave the house. Hell, he wouldn’t be out in this weather if he didn’t have to be.
He knocked on the door, three loud raps. “Ms. McInley? I’m Special Agent Frank Poole. I know you’re in there. Open the door.”
He had no idea if she was in there, but the ruse typically worked.
Poole blew into his gloved hands. He felt like he was standing in a tub of ice water. His breath fluttered through the air and dissipated.
Poole stepped off the porch and over a small hedge, then pressed his face to the large picture window. The glass was cold, covered in frost. He couldn’t see inside.
If the heat were on, you’d feel it at the glass, right? Who doesn’t have their heat on in this kind of weather?
He stepped back and began to circle the house, attempting to look in each window as he went. If one of the neighbors saw him, they’d surely be dialing 911 right now. At the side of the house he nearly tripped over a rusty bicycle, an old red Schwinn lost beneath the thick snowdrift. There were also the remains of potted plants, long since dead, and random lengths of garden hose, coiled and forgotten for the winter.
Around back he found a wood deck. A black Weber BBQ lay on its side, lost to slumber, lawn chairs piled up around it, no rhyme or reason. He stepped up onto the deck, the boards creaking under his weight, popping noises.
Could be rotten. Might fall through.
He carefully made his way to the back door.
The screen was cut.
A straight cut, about five inches long, enough for a man to get his hand inside the door.
Enough to unlock the screen door, get to work on that deadbolt with a lock picker’s kit.
Poole tried the doorknob. Unlocked.
He reached inside his coat, unsnapped and removed his Glock 22, held it low, against his hip, pointing at the ground. A small LED flashlight was attached to the barrel. He flicked it on with his forefinger.
He gave the door a little push. It protested, frozen in the frame. Again, with more force. When it finally opened, it did so with a loud thwack.
The smell hit him first, the sweet, sickly odor of something turned, something gone bad. It wafted out, warning him off, telling him to get back into his car and drive away.
“Ms. McInley? This is Special Agent Frank Poole. I’m coming inside.”
The wood door opened into the kitchen. Poole gave it a push with the toe of his shoe while sweeping the room with the barrel of his gun, the light. Dishes were piled high at the sink, the counter buried under them. There were also pizza boxes and cartons from Chinese take-out, empty soda cans and water bottles.
The heat was off.
As he approached the sink, he realized the dishes were frozen in a block of ice. A thin coat of frost covered everything.
Still, the smell.
Poole walked past the kitchen counter into a small dining room. Boxes and paper littered the table—job applications, copies of a résumé, “Elizabeth McInley” pri
nted in bold font at the top. There were newspapers, unopened bills, clothing—a woman’s blouse and bra, all haphazardly tossed about.
“Ms. McInley? Are you in here?”
Poole’s breath floated through the cold air. He spotted the thermostat on the wall and glanced at it. The heat was switched off, the dial turned to the coldest position.
An open doorway stood to his left. Poole followed it into the small living room, the gun and flashlight pointed forward now, leading him. To his right stood the front door, along with the picture window he had tried to peer into, as opaque from this side as it was from the front yard. On his left, a couch lined the wall, facing a small television propped up on milk crates. There was a cheap pressboard table in front of the couch. Someone had shoved the contents to the floor—magazines, a remote, a few utility bills, and some advertising circulars.
Sitting on top of the table, spaced evenly, centered, were three white boxes tied off with black string. The white of the boxes was riddled with specks of brown and crimson, a spatter of sorts.
There was a small bathroom directly across from where he stood, and another door to the left of the television, most likely a bedroom.
Poole stepped forward and swept his eyes over the bathroom. The white tub was ringed with brown, the sink covered in dry toothpaste. A moldy towel was on the floor, bunched up and shoved to the side near the toilet. Someone had wiped at a spot in the middle of the mirror; Poole’s hazy reflection stared back at him.
He backed out of the bathroom into the living room, his gun now pointed at the bedroom door. He saw the boxes on the table from the corner of his eye. He tried not to look at them. Poole approached the open bedroom door with a wide arc, preferring to enter the room straight on rather than sliding against the wall and going in from the side. The beam of his flashlight dancing over the walls revealed a ratty dresser, the bed.
A woman’s body was tied to the bed at all four corners. Her clothing had been cut away, the tattered remains scattered about the floor. Her flesh was covered in tiny red cuts, thousands of them, every exposed inch. The eyes were gone, two black sockets. Her mouth was filled with dry, crusty blood. Poole knew that beneath her matted hair her ear was gone too. He’d find those things in the boxes.