107: 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 was 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.