by J. D. Barker
Poole returned his attention to the boards. “Okay. This is good. This is really good, we’ve got something different to go on, with Libby McInley anyway. Let’s take a closer look at the rest.”
Poole took a few steps to the left, leaving the Libby McInley board behind him, his focus back on the first whiteboard with ANSON BISHOP written at the top and photographs of the seven missing or dead beneath him.
Nash cleared his throat. “Back to what I said earlier. If this is all somehow Bishop, and he’s following the same MO as his past victims, that means the children were killed because of something their parents did. The kids aren’t the focus.”
“Nash is right,” Clair said. “Can you rearrange the pictures? Put the adults on top and the children under them?”
Poole nodded and reordered the images:
Floyd Reynolds
Ella Reynolds
Randal Davies
Lili Davies
Darlene Biel
Larissa Biel
He held up the picture of the boy frozen inside the cab of the Toyota Tundra. “That leaves your unknown boy.”
“We need to identify him quickly, then hone in on his parents,” Clair said. “They might be his next targets.”
“What do we know about the other parents?”
Clair found her phone and loaded her Notes app. “Floyd Reynolds, worked for UniMed America Healthcare. He was in insurance sales. We couldn’t find any debt or financial problems. No red flags with his home life. His wife said he went out to search for their daughter. The unsub strangled him with piano wire inside the family car, and his body was found in their backyard, hidden inside a snowman. There was a boot print on the back of the driver’s seat. We think the unsub placed his foot there for leverage when strangling Reynolds. A size eleven.”
“We don’t have a record of Bishop’s shoe size, do we?”
“Nope.”
Poole added this information to the board, then pointed at Randal Davies with the marker. “What about Mr. Davies?”
“He was a doctor. Oncologist. Worked at Stroger Hospital. Like Reynolds, no problems with his home life or his finances. He was killed with a high dose of lisinopril, a medication normally used to treat high blood pressure, something he was not prescribed. We think the unsub broke into the Davies home via the back door. The lisinopril was concentrated and placed in the family coffeemaker. He was the only member of the household known to drink coffee.”
Poole frowned. “So either the unsub knew this or didn’t really care who died.”
“The kitchen had several large uncovered windows. They provide visibility from the road,” Nash explained. “The unsub could have learned who drank what with a little surveillance.”
“That makes sense. I don’t think the adult targets are random, not even within the same household. If this is Bishop, he’s got a reason for each victim,” Poole said. “That leaves your only adult female victim.”
“Yeah, Darlene Biel. We’ve got an officer stationed at the hospital guarding her room. She’s stable but currently in an induced coma. Our unsub injected cyanide into her toothpaste tube. She ingested the poison brushing her teeth at what should have been a safe house.” Clair drew in a breath and looked down. “That was on me. She was in my custody, my care.”
Nash reached for her shoulder. “You saved her life. Anyone else, and she would be dead right now.”
He told Poole how she forced Darlene Biel to drink liquid soap.
“The base in the soap countered the acidic properties of the cyanide? I’m impressed. Where did you learn that?”
Clair said, “Back in high school, my science teacher accidentally poisoned himself with cyanide. When he realized what happened, he ran out of the room into the boys’ bathroom and drank the soap. He lived. I guess it stuck with me.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Poole told her. “Cyanide works fast. Another minute or two, and she would have been dead. Being in that safe house with you probably saved her life. If this had happened at home, she probably wouldn’t have survived.”
Clair ignored the praise. By the crease in her forehead, Poole knew she was already thinking ahead. When she spoke, she answered the question he was about to put out to the group. “Biel was, I mean, is a pharmaceutical sales rep. She travels a lot, had a go-bag ready when we asked her and her husband to leave their home. The poisoned toothpaste was in that bag. CSI tested the shared toothpaste on the bathroom counter in the master bedroom, and it came up clean. Like with Randal Davies, the unsub targeted her specifically. He had advance knowledge, knew about her bag, and went after her.”
“Anyone else see a pattern emerging here?”
“They all work in the medical field—we’ve got a doctor and two sales reps,” Nash said.
“What do the spouses do for work?”
Clair glanced down at her notes. “Grace Davies and Leeann Reynolds are both stay-at-home mothers. Larry Biel works construction.”
“All nonmedical.”
“All nonmedical,” Clair agreed. “Definite potential pattern there.”
Poole was nodding, studying the text on the board. “Okay, that’s good. We can work with that.” He pointed at Ella Reynolds’s name. “Let’s talk about the children.”
Clair turned to the other woman across the conference table. “Sophie, do you want to—”
Sophie was already nodding. “Yeah, okay. Ella Reynolds, fifteen years old. Her body was found on February twelfth under the ice at Jackson Park Lagoon. This initially threw us because the lagoon had been frozen since early January, at least twenty days before she went missing. We’ve since learned Anson Bishop cut a hole in the ice, placed her body in the water, then added water from the stolen tank, creating new ice at the same level as the old. We believe she was taken from Logan Square, about seven minutes from her house. We know she recently purchased a car at Cars R Us, a nearby dealer. She was making payments directly. Her parents had no idea. She only recently got her learner’s permit.”
“She was found wearing the clothing of our second victim, Lili Davies,” Clair said, weighing in. “That just smells like something Bishop would do to try and sensationalize the crime and draw attention.”
“I agree,” Poole said. “It’s part of the noise I mentioned at the start of this. Let’s leave that out for now. We can always put it back, if it becomes relevant. What do we know about Lili?”
Sophie went on. “Seventeen years old. She was last seen walking to school at Wilcox Academy on February twelfth. She didn’t make it. The school is close, only four blocks from her home. Her body was found at Leigh Gallery, where she worked. She was posed in a storage room at the back, clearly meant to be discovered. Although the unsub used a black electrical cord around the neck to prop her up, it was clear she was already dead. Like Reynolds, she died from repeatedly drowning in salt water. As Clair said, she was found in Ella Reynolds’s clothing, so the unsub somehow switched them.”
Klozowski poked his head up from his laptop. “Didn’t you say something about her trying to buy a car too?”
Clair nodded. “Sophie and I spoke to her best friend, Gabrielle Deegan. She said Lili’s father told her he’d buy her a car at graduation, but she wanted something sooner.”
“Any connection to the car lot where the first girl bought a car?” Poole asked.
“They didn’t know her,” Nash said. “We checked out the dealership staff and couldn’t find any real connection there. Every teenager wants a car. I think this is just another coincidence. More noise, like you said.”
Poole turned back to the board. “Okay, what about Larissa Biel?”
“Larissa is different,” Sophie said. “She only went missing as of this morning, and there’s no body. There’s a good chance she’s still alive. At this point, we don’t know much more than that. She had planned to go to a dance at school tonight, and she was home when both parents left for work this morning. Her mother had planned a spa day as a surprise. If no
t for that, we probably still wouldn’t know she was missing.”
“Judging by what we’ve seen with Ella Reynolds, and particularly Lili Davies, she doesn’t have much time. Davies died within a day of her disappearance,” Clair said, turning to Klozowski. “Any luck with her laptop or phone?”
“Her parents installed KidBSafe on the laptop. Teenagers have been sharing the override to that one for nearly two years now. We found the hacks installed on her computer. Larissa could essentially turn the monitoring software on and off whenever she wanted to and limit what her parents could see.” Kloz shifted his weight. “We also found PrivaShield running in the background. PrivaShield destroys cache data as it’s created, basically erasing digital fingerprints. This girl is smart. She gave her parents just enough data that they could feel like they were monitoring her, then hid the rest. We’re still digging, but the laptop may be a bust. We think she had her cell phone on her when she was abducted. We tracked her movements this morning to the corner of West Chicago Avenue and North Damen, and then the signal drops. Most likely, the unsub removed the battery or destroyed the phone. We filed an emergency request for the data, but the phone company hasn’t produced it yet. I’ll report back as soon as I know something.”
Poole returned to the conference table. He studied the photo of the boy frozen inside the cab of the pickup truck, then turned it toward the others. “That leaves us with him.”
“I’m sure Eisley is doing everything he can to get us an ID, but the ice will slow things down,” Clair said, studying the picture of the boy frozen inside the cab of the truck.
“The truck is registered to Kalyn Selke,” Klozowski said.
“Libby McInley’s alias,” Nash said. “Another dead end.”
“Yeah.”
Poole turned back to the boards. “Is that everything?”
“We haven’t talked about the obituaries,” Nash replied.
He turned back to the table. “Obituaries?”
Clair nodded. “A call came in this morning on 911, an older woman claiming that Floyd Reynolds had died twice. His obituary ran in today’s paper and last Wednesday. When we dug deeper, we found more. Apparently our unsub has been running obituaries for his victims in the local papers before attempting to kill them.”
Poole had stopped listening. “Died twice,” he said slowly before turning back to the boards. He found the board with the poems and flipped it back over so the others could read them. “I think Bishop killed Special Agent Diener because he saw these poems. They were written on the wall in the abandoned house. See how certain words are underlined? Death is the only word that appears twice.” He explained how the poems had been cut out of the drywall and removed.
“Look at some of the other underlined words,” Clair said. “Ice, water, fear . . . all of this fits the kills.”
“Did you run a trace on the 911 call?”
All heads turned toward Klozowski. He held up a finger for a moment, then frowned. “According to the report, the call came in from Lasting Harmony Retirement Center down by the loop. Staff says it was a ninety-three-year-old woman named Ingrid Nesbit—she reads the obituaries daily and got all ruffled when she caught the dupes for Floyd Reynolds. She insisted on making the call.”
“Dead end,” Nash grumbled.
Clair was still studying the board. “If the poems tie in and he wanted us to find all this, why cut them out? Why kill Diener?”
Poole sighed. “I think he wanted Porter to find all of this, not me. Probably not you either.”
Clair turned to Klozowski. “You said all the bogus obituaries were filed from the same computer, right? Anything on the trace?”
Klozowski didn’t answer her. Instead, his eyes were glued to his screen.
“Kloz?”
“Ah, no. Nothing on the IP trace, but if that computer pops up anywhere on the city’s Wi-Fi, I’ll see it right away. I think . . .” His voice trailed off, and he leaned in closer.
“What is it?” Clair asked.
“I see something, it might be nothing. It’s probably just my brain looking for something that isn’t really there,” Klozowski replied.
Clair stood up and walked over to him. “Spit it out, Kloz. Before I’m forced to hit you again.”
“I’ve been plotting out the locations where the children were abducted and bodies have been found on an area map. If I draw lines from one to the other, they more or less center around John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital.”
Nash leaned over to get a look at the map. “That’s where Randal Davies worked.”
“Insurance and pharmaceutical sales. I imagine our other victims are there a lot too,” Clair said. “Darlene Biel is there right now.”
Poole leaned in. “If I obtain a list of employees, can you cross-reference that against obituary data? Maybe we’ll get lucky and find his next target before something else happens.”
Kloz was already typing. “Oh yeah, I’m all over that.”
Nash had stood up and was staring at the boards. “We’re still missing something.”
“What?” Poole asked.
“I’m not so sure Bishop is doing all of this on his own. Even if he somehow had help from Libby McInley, this is just too much for one person. There’s still something bigger going on here.”
“Maybe.”
“You can’t play God without being acquainted with the devil,” Nash read aloud. “Is that what he’s doing here with these kids? Killing them and bringing them back? Playing God?”
“. . . with the devil,” Clair said.
“All of the poems are about life and death. Maybe that’s what he’s trying to tell us.” Poole brushed back his hair. “I’ve been getting sleep in patches. I’m having trouble focusing.”
That was when Poole’s phone rang.
He pulled the phone from his pocket and looked down at the small screen: UNKNOWN CALLER.
He pressed the Talk button.
A voice spoke before he could say anything.
“Frank, this is Sam.”
88
Poole
Day 3 • 10:15 p.m.
Poole’s heart thudded. He set the phone down on the conference table and pressed a button. “Sam, I’m in the war room with your team. I’ve got you on speaker.”
“You’re not allowed in the war room.”
“I brought him in, Sam,” Clair answered. “The case has gotten complicated. There’s a link to Bishop. More than a link. He’s all over it.”
Poole leaned in close. “Where are you? Where is the diary?”
He heard Porter breathing on the other end, but the man did not reply.
Poole looked up at the others, then back to the phone. “Libby McInley is dead.”
Porter said nothing.
“We found her bound to her bed. Ear, eyes, tongue, in white boxes, identical to Bishop’s other victims. Her fingers and toes were removed too. She was tortured. Every inch of her body had been cut.”
When Porter spoke, his voice was even, measured. “It wasn’t Bishop. Bishop wouldn’t kill Libby McInley any more than he killed her sister.”
Poole looked up at Klozowski. “Your IT guy thinks it was Bishop’s mother. I’d like to know what you think.”
Again Porter went silent.
Poole heard Porter talking to someone, muffled, the phone covered, and then he returned to the call.
“Sam?”
“I’m going to text you an address. When you arrive at that address, follow the path at the back of the property. It’s overgrown, but if you look close you’ll find it, like a deer path. It will lead you to a lake. You’ll need a team. You’ll want to sweep the lake,” Porter told him.
“Where are you, Sam?”
“When you get to the lake, look for the cat.”
“You’re not making sense, Sam. If you—”
The line went dead.
Poole cursed under his breath.
The phone vibrated and an address appeared:
12 Jenkins Crawl Road
Simpsonville, SC
“He must have found it,” Nash said, still staring at the phone.
“Found what?”
“Bishop’s childhood home.”
“I don’t like this,” Clair said. “Why is he being so secretive? That didn’t sound like him. Who was he talking to?”
Klozowski had entered the address into a browser on his computer. He turned the screen around so everyone could see. “That’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“I’m not sure why I should trust him at all,” Poole said. “He stole the diary. He’s clearly holding something back. Libby’s death didn’t seem to surprise him. What else does he know?”
Nash leaned back in his chair. “I think if he knew something he thought would be useful to us, he would have shared it. He’s got no reason to hide anything.”
“Yet he disappeared with the diary and left his phone behind so we couldn’t track him.”
“Sam’s working the case,” Nash said. “You can trust him.”
Poole clucked his tongue, then nodded. “I’ll call the Charlotte office and get them out there right away. We have a jet at O’Hare. I can be there in a few hours.”
Clair rose and went to the boards. “If you can get us that list of employees at Stroger Hospital, we can work that angle. Maybe we can box Bishop in from both sides.”
Poole nodded and disappeared out the door, his walk quickening to a run.
* * *
Evidence Board
Anson Bishop
Floyd Reynolds—UniMed America Healthcare/Insurance Sales—Strangled/body hidden in snowman
Ella Reynolds—Found in Jackson Park Lagoon/recently bought car—drowned, salt water
Randal Davies—Oncologist. Worked at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital—overdosed with lisinopril