by J. D. Barker
“A diary Bishop left for us at a crime scene a few months back. It details specific events from his childhood. If that’s really her, she should recognize those events.”
She frowned. “You say recognize and events, and all I hear is implicate and crimes. You told me if I let you see her, you wouldn’t do anything that would lead to additional charges.”
“At best, the information in that book is circumstantial.”
“How did you get it past the guards, anyway?”
“Down the back of my skivvies.”
Werner’s eyes narrowed. “For future reference, as her attorney, I could have given it to her. No need to smuggle in contraband—”
“Good to know. I’m prone to chafing.”
“. . . and as her attorney, I’d appreciate a heads-up before you share anything with her.”
“Noted. How long will they leave her in there?”
“Until lights out, if that’s what I tell them to do,” Werner said. “Why?”
“Can we observe her?”
The attorney locked eyes with him. Porter knew she was upset. She had every right to be. But he didn’t think she was that upset. This was more about setting a pecking order, putting him in his place.
Porter gave her his best poker face.
She clucked her tongue as she thought it over, then shook her head and turned toward the door to their left. “Come on.”
The small observation room was little more than a narrow hallway. Judging by the doors, similar rooms were placed between each of the interview rooms. There was a large one-way mirror window on the wall to the left overlooking the interview room. There was also a small desk with a computer monitor. On the monitor was a close-up of Jane Doe sitting at the table from the angle of the camera in the corner of the room.
A single chair stood at the desk. Porter offered it to Werner, but she declined, opting to stand.
Jane Doe hadn’t moved. She faced them, the small book in front of her on the table, her fingers drumming over the cover. Her eyes were fixed on the mirrored side of the glass, yet Porter still felt she could see them.
Five minutes passed, then ten. Porter was ready to go back in when she sighed, flipped the cover open with a finger, and began to read. His body relaxed, and he leaned on the desk. Werner stood beside him, the envelope bouncing against her thigh.
“Has she been in other fights?”
She stopped tapping the envelope, crossed over to the desk, and sat on the corner. “This prison is horrible, one of the worst I’ve seen. The staff turnover is so high—more than fifty percent just in the past year—I have yet to see the same guards twice. There’s a revolving door on this place. Most of the inmates know the facility better than the guards at this point. Many of those inmates are lifers with absolutely nothing to lose and an axe to grind on any surface presenting itself.”
“Like a new prisoner who refuses to speak?”
“Like a new prisoner unwilling to play by any of the rules. She keeps to herself in the yard. If someone tries to talk to her, she walks off. You send those kind of signals in a place ruled by hierarchy, you’re bound to piss someone off.” She raised the envelope. “Now, with this, she’s declared hunting season. I’m worried other prisoners smell blood and they might gang up on her. They’ll join just about any cause to help break up the boredom.”
“Can you confine her to isolation?”
She grunted. “Sure, if there’s room. Violence is at a record high, and prisoners see those spaces as the only reprieve. It’s gotten so bad, the feds are considering taking over management of this prison from the City of New Orleans and the sheriff’s department. Who knows if that would even help. A report came out last month—in the past twelve months there have been over two hundred inmate-on-inmate crimes, forty-four uses of force by the staff, three reports of sexual assault—who knows how many others unreported. They’ve had sixteen suicide attempts, twenty-nine inmates transported to a hospital with injuries too severe for the on-site infirmary. Here’s the real kicker, though—when the feds published their findings, they said these numbers were seriously understated.”
“How so?”
“They keep a log in the infirmary, a handwritten log. Only the warden has access. The log listed one hundred and fifty incidents of assault since last January. One hundred and nineteen of those were never reported by the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office. Broken bones, stitches . . . traumatic injuries, all swept under the proverbial rug. Prisoners are supposed to be housed based on a classification system—risk factors like mental health, past violence both outside and inside. The guards don’t seem to take any of that into account. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them get off on the violence. I’ve heard rumors of backroom betting and purposeful placement of problem inmates together to get something going. Internal investigations are a joke, just memos between staff and management, the warden. Nothing concrete gets to the files.”
She must have realized Porter was staring at her. She looked down at her feet. “Sorry, I get a bit passionate about this. I’ve seen some relatively good people go in here over the years and come out not-so-good people.”
Porter smiled. “It’s nice to know someone is passionate about something. This isn’t an isolated problem. We’ve got the same issues in Chicago. Sometimes the only clear difference between an inmate and a guard is the side of the bars they happen to be standing on that particular day.”
Werner stood up and turned back to the one-way window. “I don’t know what to make of her yet.”
Jane Doe turned the page, the faint sound of her chains clanking through the observation room’s speakers.
“Ask the guard to remove her restraints,” Porter told her. “Let her get comfortable.”
50
Poole
Day 3 • 11:02 a.m.
“Oh, holy hell. I’m gonna catch shit for this.” Vernon Bedard plopped down into the wooden chair behind his desk and let out a slow breath. “I was supposed to check on her last Wednesday, a ‘surprise’ visit, and I never had the chance. My caseload is bullshit.”
Libby McInley’s parole officer had called Poole back about an hour ago, and he met Poole and Agent Diener in the lobby of the Cook County Adult Probation Department downtown, not far from Metro HQ.
Bedard had spotted them both the moment he stepped off the elevator. A pudgy man with thick hands and even thicker glasses, he wore a yellow button-down shirt and brown slacks that looked about two sizes too small. He escorted them to his office on the third floor—a small box with a single window overlooking the parking lot. Stacks of files covered his desk and the cabinets lining the far wall.
Three staplers sat on his desk. Poole found his eyes drifting to them as the man spoke.
“Gave me a bad feeling, that one.”
“When did you see her last?” Diener asked.
Bedard swiveled in his chair, dug through yet another stack of files on the credenza behind him. “Here we go.” He turned back around and opened McInley’s file. His thumb slipped down a log attached to the inside flap. “January ninth. She was quiet and adjusting well after release,” he read, his voice tapering off.
“You seem hesitant. Is that not an accurate assessment?” Poole asked.
Bedard leaned back in his chair, pulling the file with him. His index finger flicked at a yellow Post-it note in the corner. “Here’s the thing. Many inmates have trouble when they first get out. Five years or more seems to be the magic number, in my book. When they’re incarcerated for more than five years, the prison lifestyle tends to feel more normal to them than life on the outside. I think it’s the structured routines—meals at the same time every day, yard at the same time, lights out, lights on. Every day they spend in there with someone else driving the car, they get a little more dependent on the structure, a little more of their free will dies off. This is great while they’re in prison. They become easier to control over time but they also forget what it’s like to be self-sufficient
. When they get out, some of them are overwhelmed by all the decisions, the choices. Little things we take for granted, like where, when, and what we’re gonna have for lunch, can become monumental, staggering problems.”
Poole leaned forward and studied the log in Libby McInley’s file. “So she wasn’t ‘quiet and adjusting well after release’?”
Bedard studied both men for a moment. “She was neither of those things. She was a mess.”
“Then why write it?”
“I’m here to help these people put together a life on the outside. Hold their hand, teach them how to take care of themselves again while also avoiding all the temptation and problems that landed them in prison in the first place. It isn’t easy, for me or them.” He laid a hand on the file. “My files are easily accessible by nearly everyone in the system, not by just my superiors. Certain employers—government jobs mostly—educators with work release, government-controlled housing landlords . . . law enforcement.” He eyed them both. “I write the wrong thing in a file, and I create a problem for this person, a handicap that follows them for a very long time. I write Libby McInley is experiencing problems adjusting on the outside, and before you know it, she’s denied educational opportunities because another parolee seems better suited. Work release may gloss over her. Before you know it, she can’t function at all out here.”
“Is that what the yellow Post-it note means?” Poole asked. “Some kind of internal code so you know what’s really happening regardless of the notes?”
Bedard nodded. “Green means all good, red signifies problems. Blue means adjusting but slowly.”
“Her tag is yellow.”
“Yellow means she wanted to go back. I’ve seen parolees commit a felony, then turn themselves in to the nearest police station just to get back inside.” Bedard glanced down at the photo of Libby McInley in the file. “I was hoping to get her into a halfway house. She was on the list for an opening. If that didn’t work, I would have pushed her to take on a roommate or two. Sometimes the extra contact helps.”
Poole found himself looking at the three staplers again. He forced himself to turn back to the parole officer. “Mr. Bedard, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to think about your answer very carefully.” He leaned forward, an elbow on the man’s desk. “In your opinion, did Libby McInley want to go back because she wasn’t self-sufficient and couldn’t take care of herself or because she feared something on the outside and felt safer in prison?”
Bedard frowned. “You mean like was she in danger? Somebody could have been after her?”
“Yes.”
Bedard drew in a long breath, let it out slowly. “That’s tough. She didn’t communicate anything to me. The last time I saw her, she seemed frazzled. She got me a glass of water from the sink, and I noticed her hands were shaking. Her eyes were dark and puffy from lack of sleep. She appeared thin to me, she had dropped weight, probably wasn’t eating well. Nothing to indicate she thought she was in danger, though. I think I’d pick up on that. I see it a lot with gang members.”
“Do you ever search a parolee’s residence?” Agent Diener asked.
“Sure, if there is probable cause.”
“Did you ever search Libby McInley’s residence?”
The parole officer shook his head. “She was in on a hit-and-run. Not drugs or weapons. Even in prison, she steered clear of those things. Drug testing is mandatory while on parole, and she passed every time. I never had cause to search her house. What are you boys getting at? Was she mixed up in something?”
Bedard shifted in his seat.
Poole knew what the man was really asking. Was she mixed up in something I should have caught? How much trouble am I in here?
“Does the name Kalyn Selke mean anything to you?”
“No.”
Diener leaned in closer. “Are you sure?”
Bedard turned to his left, located his computer keyboard under a few sheets of notepaper, and keyed in the name. “I don’t recognize the name. She’s not one of my parolees. I don’t see her in the system, either.”
Poole said, “We found a driver’s license and passport in Libby’s house, both in the name of Kalyn Selke, but with Libby McInley’s photo.”
“Real or fake?”
“Real.”
“Not easy to put that together.”
Poole went on. “The real Kalyn Selke died at age seven. She was hit by a car while riding her bike. That was twenty-four years ago.”
“Probably got a birth certificate and used it to get a passport, then used both of those for the driver’s license,” Bedard said, thinking aloud. “If she did this while in prison, she had help. If she did it after she got out, she still had help.”
“What makes you say that?”
Bedard shrugged. “It happens more than you think. Like I said earlier, starting over for these guys is tough. Some of them feel they have a better shot under a new identity. About ten years ago, a guy doing life at Ohio State Pen was busted for running an ID assembly line. He’d isolate prisoners closing on release, sell them on the benefits of starting over, then sell them again on package deals. The prisoner would arrange for payment through someone on the outside to this man’s cousin, also on the outside, then the cousin would set up the ID and it would be waiting when the prisoner got out. You can’t do this from the inside, there are too many phone calls to make, letters to write. You need a physical address to receive the documents. They won’t mail them to the prison care of your inmate number.”
“I suppose not.”
Bedard scratched his neck, looked at his finger. “This ring in Ohio? It was believed they were pulling in nearly two hundred K a year running identities. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if someone was doing it up at Stateville Correctional where she was housed. Probably somebody at every prison. Maybe multiple somebodies. As the technology improves, the business becomes more specialized and more profitable.”
“We also found a .45 in the same drawer,” Diener said.
Bedard sighed. “Could have got that from the same guy. They sell a la carte—identification, weapons, travel plans. The right amount of money and you can buy whatever life you want, I suppose.”
Poole said, “Did she have money?”
Bedard skimmed her file again. “Her parents are both deceased. 4MK took care of her only sibling. I don’t see any visitors during her last year. You’d have to check with the prison to go back further. No phone log, either. The way I understand it, she did her time alone, stayed out of trouble. What kind of resources did she have before she went in?”
Diener glanced down at the notes on his phone. “She owed twelve thousand on her car, forty-eight thousand in student loans, and her checking account had thirty-two dollars in it. The funds were eaten up by bank fees over the years, until the account eventually closed.”
The parole officer spread his hands. “Well, there you go. No scratch. There are two types of payment in prison: cold, hard cash and favors. If she didn’t have money to pay for this, I’d look into the latter. She may have agreed to do something for someone once she got out in exchange for the identification. Maybe a hit—that would explain the gun.”
“You had contact with her. Did she seem capable of something like that?” Poole asked.
“After a few years in prison, I think anyone could go there, even an innocent girl from the suburbs.”
Ten minutes later, they stood outside next to Poole’s Jeep. The snow had lessened into light flurries, and everything was white. Poole wiped the windshield clear with the sleeve of his coat. “Any luck with the neighbors?”
Diener shook his head. “The uniforms learned a whole lot of nothing. I canvassed the houses four deep on either side. Not a very savory lot. The only one who remembered seeing her at all was this old woman across the street. She spends her day planted at her picture window with her nose firmly in everybody else’s business.” He glanced down at his phone. “Name is Roxy Hackler. Said she saw Libby
a total of three times since she moved in. The day of the move, a cab dropped Libby off with a single duffel bag. The next day, Roxy spied her walking back from the grocery store with an armload of bags. Then last week, she said Libby came outside and paced the sidewalk, talking on a phone. She thought it was strange on account of the weather. Who goes outside in this to make a call?”
“Any idea who she talked to?”
“No record of a phone in her name. We didn’t find one at the house.”
“Could the house be bugged?”
Diener kicked at a small pile of blackened snow at the curb. “Doubtful. The techs didn’t find anything, and they’ve been through the house top to bottom and bottom to top several times now. Doesn’t mean she didn’t think the place was bugged, though. Wouldn’t be the first person to get out of prison and think someone was watching or listening in.”
“In this case, somebody might have been.”
Diener blew out his cheeks, his white breath lingering in the air. “Bishop never went back after a second family member. She’s the first. She knew he was coming and tried to run. He was faster.”
Poole nodded. “That’s how I see it. We figure out why, and we get closer to Bishop.”
“So what’s next? I’m freezing my balls off out here.”
“I’m heading back to Metro. I need to finish going through the box Bishop left behind. Why don’t you work on the IDs? Try to determine where Libby got them. We need to know who was helping her.”
“Should we be watching the families of his other victims?”
Poole didn’t have an answer to that one.
51
Larissa
Day 3 • 11:21 a.m.
Larissa Biel rolled over on the cold concrete, her legs pulled to her chest. From the corner of her eye, she saw a puddle of vomit beside her head, flecked with red. She had lost count of how many times she threw up in the past few hours. Her throat hurt terribly. She couldn’t swallow, she couldn’t speak.
She’d thrown up some of the glass. She saw that too, sparkling among the bits of red and yellow. But her stomach ached something fierce, so she knew she had not gotten it all.