by J. D. Barker
Larissa’s fingers gripped a handful of the glass from the concrete with her other hand, little diamonds of glass, and without a second thought, she got them to her mouth, as many as she could, and she swallowed. Five, ten, twenty, she didn’t know how many. She thought they would hurt as they slipped down her throat, but they didn’t, like swallowing a pill or a piece of an ice cube.
The instructor wrestled the large shard of glass from her hand. He tossed the makeshift weapon out through the door of the cage, causing it to shatter into several smaller pieces when it hit the concrete. By the time he forced her other hand from her mouth, it was too late. She swallowed. He threw her back against the floor, tossing her like a discarded rag doll as a scream erupted from his own throat, a scream louder than any she could have managed. He screamed for nearly a full minute before finally backing out of the cage and securing the locks.
“What have you done?” he growled.
Larissa felt the tiniest of pains in her belly, nothing more than a pinprick.
46
Nash
Day 3 • 10:07 a.m.
“Why the hell are they still here?”
Nash slowed to a crawl and parked his Chevy about two blocks from the Davieses’ house. Two news vans were parked across the street from the home. One had its large antenna extended into the sky. There was no sign of the reporters or cameramen. Most likely they were inside the vehicles, sheltered from the cold.
“We need to get closer,” Kloz said beside him, his face buried in his laptop. “I can’t see their Wi-Fi from here.”
Nash wasn’t sure it mattered. When Klozowski logged in to the Wi-Fi at the Reynoldses’ house, they discovered that the logs on the router had been wiped clean. The unsub had cleared all records after sending the obituaries.
“Fuck it.” Nash pulled back out into the street, passed the vans, and parked in front of the first one.
Kloz chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“They named their Wi-Fi network ‘FBI Surveillance Van.’ Anyone trolling the local Wi-Fi signals would think the FBI is camped out somewhere nearby.”
“That doesn’t seem to be scaring away the media.”
“Most people just use their last name or their street address, which is a bit silly. Why tell the bad guys which house the Wi-Fi belongs to? That’s like putting your address on your house key,” Kloz said.
Nash eyed the news van behind them. The back door had opened the moment they parked. “We’ve got about thirty seconds before the sharks ascend.”
“That’s going to be a problem.”
“Why?”
“I’ve got the make and model on their router, but it looks like they changed the default password when they changed the name of the Wi-Fi. I’m running a brute-force attack on the password,” Kloz explained.
“How long?”
“Minute, maybe two.”
The cameraman was out of the van, pulling the hood of his coat up over his head to shield himself from the snow. He reached inside for his camera and rested it on his shoulder.
Nash glanced toward the house.
All the blinds were closed. If anyone was inside, he couldn’t see them. A woman climbed out of the van wearing a thin trench coat that highlighted her figure but couldn’t have done much to protect her from the cold.
Lizeth Loudon from Channel 7.
She said something to the cameraman and looked toward Nash’s car, one hand holding a microphone, the other fixing her hair.
Someone stepped out of the second van, a man in a suit. Nash didn’t recognize him. He started for their car too. A cameraman jumped out and followed behind him. “Shit.”
Kloz’s eyes remained fixed on the screen.
A knock at the window.
Lizeth Loudon.
She made the universal sign for roll down your window. Nash waved at her. “Now would be a good time to finish up.”
“Almost got it.”
The second reporter walked past her, barked out an order to his cameraman, and pointed at the space in front of Nash’s car, directly in their path. The cameraman unfolded a tripod and started walking there.
“Oh, hell no,” Nash said. He dropped the Chevy into gear and pulled forward with a lurch. The cameraman jumped back, the bumper nearly clipping the tripod.
“I’m in,” Kloz said. “Careful, don’t pull out of range.”
Nash reversed and came within an inch of the van. When the cameraman again started for the front of the car, he dropped the Chevy back into first and pulled forward. This time he did hit the tripod, and the cameraman slipped on the ice and dropped into the snow, his camera beside him.
Another knock at the window.
Loudon was shouting at them.
Nash smiled, waved back at her. The red light on the camera behind her came on. “Now would be a great time to finish up,” he said, grinning through clenched teeth.
“Got it,” Kloz said. “Go!”
Nash floored the accelerator. The Chevy skidded and fishtailed as the back wheels spun, attempting to gain traction. Snow flew up in all directions, covering the reporters and their equipment. The car shot forward, a cloud of white smoke behind them.
47
Porter
Day 3 • 10:36 a.m.
Sarah Werner parked her BMW in a side lot, and Porter followed her across the parking lot to a small side entrance about two hundred feet down from the line of people at the main visitors center. Two guards searched her thin leather briefcase and patted them both down after a pass with a handheld metal detector. Porter was asked to provide his driver’s license, then remove his belt and shoelaces. The license was returned, the other items placed in a locker behind the guards. He was handed a key with a numbered tag. Werner wore no belt, and she had swapped her heels for flats before leaving her office. Their photos were taken and printed on large red identification stickers with the word VISITOR across the top.
A female officer waited for them on the other side of Security, summoned automatically when Werner had said they were here to see Jane Doe #2138. She nodded at both of them. “This way, please.”
A buzzer sounded at a heavy metal door, and they stepped into the stale air Porter remembered from earlier.
The walls in this portion of the prison were downright cheerful compared with the warden’s offices—a muted aqua with beige border and an off-white ceiling. Cameras positioned at all corners followed as they passed, blank, all-seeing eyes that swiveled slowly on their bases. The officer led them through three other doors before they entered a large room filled with tables. Most of the tables were occupied with inmates on one side and their visitors on the other. Noise was deafening, echoing off the cinder-block walls. Along the west wall were individual rooms. The officer handed an envelope to Werner, then opened the door to the second one and ushered them inside; the door closed behind them with a clack.
Werner dropped her briefcase onto the aluminum table and sat at one of the four chairs bolted to the ground. She opened the envelope and scanned the text on the single page inside. “Holy hell.”
“What is it?”
“Ms. Doe got herself into a bit of an altercation last night. One of the other inmates tried to stab her with the business end of a modified toothbrush. Before the guards could get the two women apart, Jane Doe wrestled the toothbrush from the other inmate’s hand and stabbed her three times—once in the neck, and twice more in the thigh. Then she dropped the toothbrush and stepped back with both hands up. She managed to miss all the major arteries, but she still put the woman in the prison’s infirmary. The first woman claims our Jane started the little scuffle, but two other witnesses say inmate number one struck first and Jane was defending herself. Depending on the results of the investigation, additional charges may be filed against her.” She set the paper down on her briefcase and swore. “Nothing like attempted murder to start the morning.”
“I’m guessing Jane Doe still isn’t talking?”
A loud buzz sounded, and the door swung open. One guard in front, another behind her, Jane Doe #2138 shuffled into the room.
Her feet were shackled together, and a chain connected those restraints to similar handcuffs at her wrists. This forced her to bend awkwardly forward, her long brown hair covering her face and trailing down over her red jumpsuit. The guards led her to one of the chairs and fastened her restraints to an eyehook in the table. She raised both hands to her head and brushed the hair back out of her eyes. Porter caught a glimpse of the figure-eight tattoo on her inner wrist before it disappeared back into her sleeve.
“Hello, Jane,” Werner said. “I brought a friend today. This is Detective Sam Porter with Chicago Metro PD.”
Porter watched the woman’s eyes lift and land upon him. He fought the urge to look away. She tilted her head slightly and leaned back in the chair, interlacing her fingers. There was no smile, no frown, nothing but her dark, piercing stare. Porter took the seat beside Werner, across from the woman. He reached into his pocket, took out the photograph, and set it on the table between them.
Her eyes flicked down to the picture, then settled back on him.
Porter turned the photograph over. “Your son sends his regards.”
If she looked back down, Porter didn’t see it. Her eyes remained on him. She steepled her index fingers and leaned against them, pressed them to her full lips.
Her sleeve drifted down. Porter pointed at the tattoo. “Why don’t you tell me about Franklin Kirby? Did he have one of those tattoos too?”
At the mention of Kirby’s name, the corner of her mouth drew up in a slight smile. She forced it away with another tilt of her head.
Werner let out a frustrated sigh. “Do you want to tell me what happened last night? You’ve got zero chance of getting out of here if you’re gonna pick fights with the other guests. The wrong witness statement, and you’ll find attempted murder charges on your sheet. A grifting charge is one thing, but laying out bodies is sure to tie you up for a bit.”
Jane Doe’s eyes remained on Porter.
Werner continued. “Look, you can keep up the silent treatment as long as you want, I don’t care if you talk to me or not, but keep in mind you’re not helping yourself with this, you’re just digging a deeper hole. We’ve got less than a week to work out some kind of defense, or at the very least poke some holes in what happened so we can plea down to a lesser charge, and I can’t do anything without your help.”
While she didn’t speak, Porter could see the intelligence behind her eyes, something in the sparkle at the corners. Her breathing was slow, steady. No doubt her pulse beat at a measured pace. No anxiety, no worry—she wouldn’t allow those things. The shackles, the locks on the door, this place, all an illusion to her, meaningless, a hindrance at best.
Porter thought of Emory Connors and all the people who had died at Bishop’s hand. He thought of the little boy raised by this woman, the little boy shaped by this woman.
An anger welled up inside him. He leaned forward. “Calli Tremell, twenty years old. Elle Borton, twenty-three. Missy Lumax, eighteen. Susan Devoro, twenty-six.” He ticked them off on his fingers, one at a time, slowly, deliberately. “Allison Crammer, nineteen years old. Jodi Blumington, twenty-two. Gunther Herbert, Arthur Talbot, Harnell Campbell. All of them dead. The attempted murder of Emory Connors. Because of your son, your child. Who else? How many others?”
Porter had purposely left Barbara McInley off the list, watching her expression closely as he skipped over the name. She betrayed nothing, though. He might as well have been reciting a grocery list.
Jane Doe #2138, Bishop’s mother, this evil woman, she leaned back in her chair, rolled her fingers across the top of the table with a steady tap, then laced them back together.
Porter wanted to strangle her.
He stood, retrieved Bishop’s diary from his pocket, and dropped the small book down on the table at her hands. “I know exactly who you are,” he told her. “I know exactly what you are.”
Porter crossed the tiny room and banged twice at the door, her eyes burning at his back.
48
Nash
Day 3 • 10:40 a.m.
Nash pressed the End Call button on his phone and dropped it back into his pocket. “I’m getting nothing but voice mail for Sam. His line’s not even ringing.”
Klozowski didn’t look up. His gaze was fixed on his center monitor, a 27-inch surrounded by four 22-inch screens.
Nash felt like he could get a tan standing here. Although Kloz had his laptop in the car, he insisted he could analyze the data faster at his desk at Metro.
“You said we shouldn’t call him,” Kloz said in a distant voice as he scrolled through text. “He made his bed and all that.”
Nash pulled his phone back out of his pocket and dialed Porter’s home number. “It’s not like him to go silent.” Four rings, then an answering machine picked up. He hung up. “Maybe we should swing by there.”
“I think I’ve got something.” Kloz studied the screen.
Nash leaned in, carefully avoiding the Batman memorabilia and candy bar wrappers scattered haphazardly around Klozowski’s desk. The screen was filled with strings of numbers and letters paired off, separated by colons. “What am I looking at?”
“See this here?” Kloz pointed at a series of dates. “Notice how the data starts on February ninth?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the data should go back much further than that. Months, maybe years. The data writes to this file until it runs out of room, and then old data is purged for new data. Thing is, they never run out of room.”
“So if it starts on February ninth, that means our unsub wiped the file like he did at the Reynoldses’ house, right? So we’ve got nothing?”
Kloz pointed at the screen with a pen. “We’ve got something. See this first one?”
He indicated a line that read:
02-09-2015 21:18:24 a8:66:7f:04:0c:63
“The first part is the date, the second part is the time, and this last section is a Mac address. I combed through the entire file, and this particular Mac address only appears one time—right here, the very first entry,” Kloz explained.
“What does that mean?”
“I think our unsub wiped the router data and disconnected, but not before the new log recorded his or her presence for one second. I’ve accounted for all the other Mac addresses listed during this forty-eight-hour period. Every one ties back to a device at the house but this one.”
“Can you trace it?”
Kloz shook his head. “Sort of. The ID is unique to this computer. Mac addresses are built into the hardware so nobody can change or modify the string, but you can’t trace it across multiple networks to find a current location. Not like an IP address, anyway.”
Nash let out a sigh. “Then how does this help us?”
“It’s still a bit like a fingerprint,” Kloz said. “I ran this unique Mac address through the data we pulled from the Starbucks and found a record in the log. The unsub was connected to that network for a total of thirty-three minutes with the same computer.” Kloz leaned back in his chair. “Chicago has a pretty hefty public Wi-Fi system. We’ve got towers in the parks, the libraries, the trains—they’re everywhere. On February twelfth, this same Mac address connected to the public system at Jackson Park for nearly an hour and a half in the morning.”
“When he hid Ella Reynolds in the water.”
Klozowski nodded. “The activity appears to be passive, occurring at intervals rather than randomly. This tells me the unsub probably had his laptop in the truck we saw on that video, but he didn’t actually use the computer. The traffic I found is most likely automated tasks like e-mail, just his computer working in the background. One hit every minute. If he had actually used it to browse the web, we’d see more random hits.”
“Why would he connect to the Wi-Fi and
not use it?”
“I don’t think he purposely connected this time,” Kloz said. “Most likely, he connected the laptop to the public network at some time in the past and didn’t delete the connection. By leaving the entry in the system, his computer would automatically connect whenever he’s in range of that same network again, like mine did at Starbucks. It’s a time saver. In this case, anytime he’s within range of the city Wi-Fi.”
“So back to my original question—can you trace it?”
“Back to what I said earlier. An IP address is a bit like a landline telephone installed at a house. The number is always the same and always on, so it can be traced back to a static physical location. A Mac address is specific to the device, in this case a laptop. That laptop can be switched on or off and connect to a million different networks. It can move from one to the next or go dark for an indefinite period of time. This means we can’t trace it, but we can watch for it.”
“How?”
“When the city planners rolled out free public Wi-Fi, they built in a backdoor for law enforcement. I can write a bot and put it out there. If our unsub’s laptop connects to the public system, we would be alerted. At that point, we’d be able to narrow his location down to the specific hub he’s attached to. That’s going to be a much wider grid than an IP would give us, though—the towers have about a quarter-mile radius.”
“A quarter mile of city blocks might as well be different countries,” Nash said.
“We’ll know where he is in the city. It’s a start. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will cross with something else.”
49
Porter
Day 3 • 10:42 a.m.
Sarah Werner followed Porter out into the hallway. The guard closed the door behind them, locking Jane Doe in the interview room.
Werner glared at Porter. “What was that you gave her?”