by J. D. Barker
I needed my knife.
Without my knife, the guard and nurses would be a problem.
I couldn’t get to my knife without passing the guard and the nurses, though, and this was also a problem. This was a serious problem for sure.
There were also the cameras.
Father would know what to do. Father always knew what to do.
The rain had not stopped, a steady patter against my window.
The power was flickering.
If the power went out, would there be a backup generator?
I imagined there was.
Or maybe there wasn’t.
Or maybe there was.
Nurse Gilman had a nice smile.
I wondered if the girl two doors down ever smiled. What was her smile like?
I closed my eyes again and thought about the hallway.
Father would puzzle it out.
I would puzzle it out.
106
Clair
Day 4 • 10:12 a.m.
Clair and Kloz hovered over the speakerphone in the small office Klozowski had claimed as his own upon arriving at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital. Nothing more than an unused exam room, really. Stacked floor to ceiling with boxes and outdated equipment, the room was down the hall from the cafeteria and blissfully out of sight of the people in there.
Nash was on the other end of the phone line, and Clair told him and Kloz what Poole had told her.
Nash must have covered the phone. He shouted something she couldn’t make out, muffled, then came back to the call. “It’s bullshit, you know that, right?”
Klozowski’s face had grown pale, nearly translucent in the light cast by his large laptop screen. “That’s got to be Bishop,” he said. “He fudged the county property records somehow.”
Clair wanted to believe that. “Electronic, maybe. But paper? Poole said he had to dig through a dozen boxes and old file cabinets with the sheriff in the basement of a municipal building to track this down. Even if Bishop could get in, and I’ve got no doubt he could, it sounded like they were so disorganized down there, how would Bishop know where to find the original to swap it out?”
Kloz’s brain was churning. She could see it in his eyes. “I don’t even think it would be that simple. Think about it, a paper document? He would have to break in twice. Once to steal the original, then again to replace the original with the fake. He’d need time with the original to duplicate everything—fonts, format, paper type . . . electronic records are easy—hack in, a couple keystrokes, and you’re out clean. Paper is old school, it’s tough.”
“Not impossible, though,” Nash said.
“Okay, we need to focus,” Clair said. “We can’t get distracted. Anything on the search?”
“Four blocks down. Between the feds and our guys, we’ve got a lot of people out here. This weather is tough, slow moving,” Nash told them.
She turned back to Kloz. “Did you match anyone else to the obits?”
Kloz sighed, then picked up a pen and began twirling it between his fingers, his eyes returning to his laptop. “I need more data.”
“I got you data. The hospital gave you access to all their employee records.”
Kloz nodded. “And that was very helpful. I was able to match up eight more potential victims against the obituary data we received from all the city papers. They’re all in that tent city you’ve constructed in the cafeteria. Here’s the problem, though. If you go back to our original three adult victims, Reynolds, Davies, and Biel, only Davies actually worked at the hospital. Reynolds worked for UniMed America Healthcare in insurance sales, and Darlene Biel is a pharmaceutical sales rep. The hospital doesn’t have employee names on their vendors.”
“So, let’s get them,” Clair said.
Kloz snapped his fingers. “Like that, huh? Do you know how many vendors a hospital this size works with?”
“We don’t have time to play Trivial Pursuit, Kloz.”
“Two hundred and thirty-three,” he told them. “I got that list about twenty minutes ago, and I’ve got my team back at Metro reaching out to all of them, but it’s going to take time.”
Clair said, “So you found eight potential victims here at the hospital, but since two out of three original victims worked outside of this building, that means his total victim pool is much larger?”
Kloz nodded slowly. “That’s what I’m saying. We’re protecting eight families, but that’s not going to slow Bishop, or our unsub, or both down. He’ll shrug it off and just move on to someone else on the list.”
Clair was looking at Klozowski’s screen. “Is that all of them?”
“That’s what we have so far, yeah.”
She studied the names. “I think . . . I think we need to focus on the smaller picture, look at what we have, not so much what we don’t. Bishop’s not targeting these people randomly. There’s a pattern.”
“That’s how we got here,” Kloz told her. “They all work in the medical field.”
“Yeah, but what do they do in the medical field? What ties them all together? There’s a thread. We’re just not seeing it.”
Kloz used the pen and began ticking off the potential victims by occupation. “Insurance sales, oncologist, pharmaceutical sales, an X-ray tech, an MRI tech, two nurses, a surgeon, a surgical nurse, a scheduling assistant, and the woman who runs Patient Intake downstairs. Do you see a pattern? ’Cause I’m pretty good with patterns, and I’m coming up blank.”
Clair took the pen from Kloz’s hand and set it down on the makeshift desk. “I still don’t see what any of these people have to do with what he did to the kids, drowning them like he did. There’s a secondary element at play here.”
“It’s got to be revenge for something the parents did, something we’re still not seeing,” Nash replied from the speakerphone. “Punish the children for the parents’ mistakes, that’s Bishop’s MO.”
Clair’s cell phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket. “Sophie Rodriguez.” She hit the Accept button. “Sophie? You’re on speaker. I’m here with Kloz, and we’ve got Nash on the other line.”
The woman was breathing heavily, out of breath. “Where are you? It’s Gabrielle Deegan. We need to talk.”
107
Poole
Day 4 • 12:58 p.m.
The flight from Greenville to New Orleans took a little over three hours. They ran into some turbulence over Alabama, which made it feel as if the G4 might drop out of the sky. The small aircraft made the types of noises you didn’t want to hear in a plane—creaks and groans and protests. Although Poole was a seasoned flyer, this would have been more than enough to rattle him had he noticed any of it. He didn’t, though. He had been completely engrossed in Bishop’s diary for the duration of the flight.
Poole burned through the small composition book, turning each page faster than the last, and when he reached the end, he began to go back through the various pages he’d dog-eared, the ones related to specifics at the property in South Carolina, the lake and shell of a house and trailer. He also folded over the pages concerning Bishop’s parents.
Damn near all the pages were now folded.
What the hell should he make of this?
Why had Porter held the diary back?
Why had he really held it back?
You can’t play God without being acquainted with the devil.
The words rolled back into Poole’s consciousness like a freight train.
How deep was Porter willing to go?
Much of the diary rang true, but there was something off about the text. Not only minor details like the Volkswagen rotting away in the driveway rather than the Porsche originally mentioned, or the trailer in the backyard rather than the house Bishop said belonged to their neighbors, the Carters. There was something else, something deeper. The entire text had a fairy-tale feel, a Beaver Cleaver shimmer that crossed the line between documentary fact and carefully crafted fiction. Somewhere within that shimmer the truth lived, he w
as sure. The words were those of a little boy, the memories of a child who walked that property, who lived there, that was part of it for sure. The world seen through a child’s eyes was much different than that of an adult, and the story had been documented as such. If this diary had been written by a child, that would make sense. Poole had seen Bishop’s handwriting, though. He had studied his handwriting closely. An individual’s handwriting evolves over time, as a person ages. The style surely finds root in our childhood, but as we age, some edges grow sharper while early edges can grow soft. A child’s handwriting always has a tenderness to it, a hesitation, as our brain recalls how a letter or word should look before we commit that letter or word to paper. As we get older, that fades and we pull more from our subconscious. A child’s writing, although it may appear sloppy, is usually meticulously thought out, done slowly, while as adults we rush through the words, take shortcuts. At Quantico, Poole took a series of handwriting analysis courses, and the one thing that always stood out was the difference between a child and an adult’s writing.
The language here, the word choice, the flow—it was very much the work of a child, yet the handwriting itself belonged to an adult. Poole was sure if he compared the diary to current writing samples from Bishop, this fact would solidify. Bishop wrote it recently. Not just the opening page taunting police, but all of it, yet he tried to make the story sound like the words of a child.
That thought, that singular thought, made him suspect of all that he read.
Poole had no doubt much of the diary was true.
He also believed other segments were not.
Bishop didn’t write this simply to tell a story. He wrote the diary to control the narrative, plant seeds in the minds of those who read his words, play those who followed him. Of all he just read, he only knew one thing for certain—the dismembered body they found in the lake was most likely that of Simon Carter. How his body got there and who ultimately killed him couldn’t be determined by this text, only by the evidence they would eventually uncover.
The diary did not provide any explanation for the other five bodies they found, nor did it provide a true explanation for the bodies found in the house, and nothing about the fire. The only explanations offered were those Bishop wanted them to believe—to buy into that was dangerous. Poole wasn’t about to do that.
He felt the diary should be approached from a very different angle. The book should be treated as a laundry list of facts Bishop wanted them to believe, whether they were true or not. Understanding why Bishop wanted to communicate this particular message, and not the diary text itself, would lead to the truth.
Poole wiped at his eyes and looked out the small window. He watched the clouds give way to green below, roads and buildings take shape, the airport come into view followed by the runway. When the plane’s wheels touched pavement, they did so with a skilled bump, barely noticeable, a far cry from the roller coaster ride of only a few hours earlier.
As they taxied toward the federal hangar on the north end of the airport, a white SUV drove out from a small parking lot on the side of the building: his ride to the prison.
Poole grabbed the diary and had the small hatch of the plane open even before the G4 stopped moving.
108
Diary
“I received a rather interesting call from the police this morning. Would you like to know what they asked me?”
Red argyle.
Today’s sweater.
The doctor had had pancakes or waffles for breakfast. There was a small syrup stain below the collar. I could smell the sugar. This made me hungry. I had been given Cheerios and milk, a favorite of mine to be sure, but most definitely not as good as pancakes or waffles.
I missed Mother’s pancakes. She made terrific pancakes.
“Anson, you’re wandering again. When someone is speaking to you, you need to attempt to focus on their voice. It helps to look them in their eyes, try to shut down the babble in your head.”
I had been looking at the doctor’s eyes, although I didn’t see him.
I could look right through the doctor if I wanted to, just as easily as I could see inside that head of his and—
“Anson.”
I smelled the syrup on the air.
I looked at his eyes.
I smiled.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Would you like to know what the police asked me?”
“Yes, Doctor. I would like that very much.”
He glanced down at his notes. “This was a Detective Welderman with the Greenville PD. He said they have been out to your house a number of times to interview your neighbors, the”—he fumbled through his notes again—“Carters, Simon, and Lisa. Apparently they haven’t returned home. That prompted them to check with Simon Carter’s place of employ, and he hasn’t been to work in some time. His wife, who did not work, appears to be missing as well.”
The doctor’s eyes remained on his notepad for a second, scanning the text, then he looked up at me and frowned. “So we have four adults, including your parents, either missing or dead. Three bodies found after a horrible fire in your house, a fire that has been confirmed as arson, and we have one boy, a boy who does not appear to cry, left behind and now sitting across from me in my office.” The glasses came off again, but this time there wasn’t the showmanship behind it. He pulled them from his nose and let them drop to his chest. “I’ve got to tell you, Anson, this doesn’t look good. This doesn’t look good at all. The police are most certainly in an uproar. They want to talk to you. They want to talk to you desperately. Of course, I told them that they couldn’t. You’re a minor under my care, and I wouldn’t subject you to that.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “Not an hour after I hung up the phone with Detective Welderman, I got another call from that attorney general I mentioned to you the other day. Do you remember him? The one who wanted to speak to your mother. He told me it would be in my best interest to allow the police to speak to you, with me in attendance, of course. He was fairly insistent. He asked to see my notes as well. I told him our conversations were strictly confidential, that absolutely everything you’ve told me is considered private, and there was no way that was going to happen. I pushed back, Anson, I pushed back hard on your behalf. But these people, the police, the attorney general . . . they seem to think you were somehow involved in all this, and I have to be honest, you haven’t told me anything that would make me believe otherwise. I can only hold the wolves at bay for so long, Anson. You need to tell me what happened.”
My knife was sitting on his desk again. I don’t think he’d left it out, because today it was on the corner of the desk, nearest me, not where he had placed it yesterday. I could reach the blade if I wanted to. I could have it out of that plastic bag and embedded in the good doctor’s neck before he could scribble potentially dangerous on his little notepad, certainly before he could underline it.
Potentially dangerous
He was watching me again, allowing the ticks of silence to stack one atop the other like Jenga blocks. I knew he would spend the next hour sitting here quietly, waiting for me to speak. He used this tactic repeatedly, his efforts so transparent.
“Father set the fire and left with Mother.”
The glasses went back on. “Well, that’s an interesting thought, but why would he leave his car? Why leave her car too? Where did they go? Why leave without you?”
“I don’t know where they went, and I don’t know why they left me behind.”
“Who were the dead men in your house?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are your neighbors?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who set the fire?”
“Father.”
He wanted to ask me about the picture. I knew he had it, probably on him, probably in the pocket of those khaki pants or hidden somewhere between the pages of his notepad.
“Why would your father set the fire?”
“I don’t know.”
<
br /> “Who were those other men, the ones we found in the house, were they there to hurt him? Did they try to hurt your mother?”
I didn’t like this.
I didn’t like this one bit.
The rapid fire of questions. I was answering too fast.
I was providing answers without taking the opportunity to fully think them through. He was controlling the conversation. Father would not approve. I needed to control the conversation. Paint and corners, paint and corners. I was being—
“Anson, do you know the term kinesics?”
I shook my head.
“Kinesics is the interpretation of body motion, body language. Facial expressions, gestures, nonverbal behavior related to any part of the body. I have had extensive training in kinesics, the interpretation of body language, and this training allows me to know when someone is not being honest with me. We’ve already discussed how I feel about people who lie or fib. When someone lies or fibs verbally, the rest of their body offers clues that allow me to see through these lies and fibs. The longer I speak to someone, the easier this becomes. Eventually, it becomes impossible for someone to effectively tell me a lie. You and I, Anson, are nearing that point. What does this mean for you? Well, it means that you can continue to lie to me, and I will know you are lying, or you can tell me the truth, in which case I will also know you are telling the truth. It means you have arrived at a crossroad and you need to make a decision. You can begin to answer my questions truthfully, which will fall under the protection of doctor/patient privilege and cannot be used against you. Or you can continue to try and lie to me. Should you decide to take that path, there will be little I can do for you.” Oglesby leaned back in his chair. “As your doctor, I will allow the detectives to question you and pursue whatever course of action they deem fit. I will aid that attorney general in his pursuits. You will be transferred from this facility to someplace far less hospitable, the kind of place where a young, good-looking boy such as yourself is considered currency, nothing more than a thing, a possession to be used and discarded. You will be broken and die a little each day, and there will be no coming back. Once a boy finds himself in a place like that, there is never coming back, there is only deeper into the abyss. You’ll spend your days with a shovel, digging a deeper hole to hide in only to find the monsters prefer the dark and will gladly follow.”