25: Special Agent Frank Poole settled into the rusty metal desk he had been assigned in the basement office of Chicago Metro. The boxes of information taken from Detective Porter’s apartment were on the table beside him. SAIC Hurless and SA Diener had gone back to the FBI’s field office on Roosevelt to check on their other cases after a rushed lunch at a small diner on Wabash. Poole decided to come back here. He expected Hurless to fight him, but instead his supervisor only helped him load the boxes into his car and instructed Poole and the techs to bring everything straight here.
Poole closed the door and switched off the overhead fluorescents, plunging the room into total darkness except for the small lamp burning at his desk.
He opened the file on Barbara McInley and flipped through the contents. He preferred to work like this, in the dark, no distractions. No noise, no bustling office around him, not a single voice except the evidence.
Barbara McInley. Seventeen years old. The Monkey Killer’s fifth victim. Bishop took her because her sister, Libby McInley, hit and killed a pedestrian on March 14, 2007. He flipped back to the inside cover of the folder, to the photo of Barbara McInley stapled inside. Beautiful girl. Blond.
He looked up at the whiteboard in the corner of the room, his eyes straining to see the images of Bishop’s victims. All brunettes, all but Barbara. He lost himself in those images, and when he glanced back at his watch, he realized nearly ten minutes had passed. He reached for his phone and dialed a number he’d programmed in at the start of this investigation but had yet to use.
The line rang three times before a gruff voice picked up. “Hello?”
Poole cleared his throat. “Detective Porter?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Special Agent Frank Poole.”
Silence, then: “Okay.”
Poole went on. “We’re here, on this investigation, because we were asked to be here. You understand that, right? We can’t take over a case unless we’re invited.”
“Who invited you?”
Poole ran his hand through his hair. “If they wanted you to know, they would have told you. I don’t think it’s my place to communicate that information.”
“You called me,” Porter said. “What would you like to communicate?”
“If given a choice, I wouldn’t intrude like this. I wouldn’t want someone else to butt into one of my investigations, and it’s not something I want to be party to.”
“Yet, here you are.”
“Here I am,” Poole agreed.
“Someone feels I messed up, and they brought you in to save face—not your fault you’re here, just doing your job, is that it?”
“They say you let him go, that you’re too close.”
“You can believe whatever you want. It’s your case now,” Porter said.
Poole stood up, his chair squeaking in protest, and walked over to the whiteboard, to the pictures of the girls. “The truth is, I don’t care much for the political bullshit of all this. I get the feeling you don’t either. You and I, I think we’re both after the same thing. We just want to put this monster down.”
Porter said nothing.
Poole went on. “My boss and Diener are hoping to make a name for themselves with this case. I think that’s their agenda.”
“And you don’t have an agenda?”
“I don’t want this guy to hurt anyone else,” Poole replied.
Neither man spoke for a long while. Porter was the first to break the silence. “Why did you call, Agent Poole?”
“Frank,” he said. “Call me Frank.”
“Why did you call me, Frank?”
Poole returned to his desk, to the file. “Barbara McInley. I got the feeling you were holding something back earlier.”
“I told you and your boss, I haven’t had a chance to look at the folder.”
“But your gut tells you there’s something there?”
Again, Porter said nothing.
Poole continued. “My gut is telling me to trust your gut.”
Poole heard nothing from the other end of the line. He said nothing either. He’d wait for the other man to speak.
Porter finally let out a sigh. “That day when I got called back into the case, I had been out on leave for a few weeks because of my wife’s murder. Nash caught the body, the one we thought was the Monkey Killer. Things moved so fast. We brought Bishop in from CSI because he seemed sharp. We weren’t looking for a killer anymore. We thought he was dead. Our entire focus fell on finding Emory. We got back to the war room, all the key players from the 4MK task force were there, and there was Bishop, the new guy. We ran the evidence. It sometimes helps me to run from start to finish to keep it all straight in my head, sometimes it sparks something new, something jumps out. Anyway, we ran the evidence for Bishop but also for the rest of us, a bit of a refresher.”
Poole nodded. “You wanted to run the data from a new angle, no longer looking for the man behind the evidence, but use the data to try and piece together who he was, where he would have taken Emory.”
“Yeah. Sometimes when you shift focus like that, something comes to you from left field. Something you didn’t catch with the first go-around. The case became more about our missing girl,” Porter said. “As we reviewed the evidence, Bishop weighed in. And I swear to God, even looking back now, that little shit seemed like all of this was new to him. He stared at the boards not only with a straight face, but I could see the gears turning in his head, I could see him thinking through the evidence, connecting dots, making things fit, and generating theories. I’ve played it over and over in my mind, and not once did he do anything to tip us off to the fact that he was really our killer. He played the part of Paul Watson CSI so well, I think even he forgot who he was—he looked like he wanted to catch 4MK as much as we did. I know you probably think I’m just making excuses, that I was sloppy, that someone should have seen through the ruse, but his character was that complete. He not only wore a mask, he became that mask.”
“He’s a sociopath,” Poole said. “In that moment, he may have been Paul Watson. People like him, when they don’t have a conscience of their own, they’re like a blank canvas, an empty vessel. They can drop a personality into that space and it takes over, fills that void. I’ve seen others like him. In some, the personality takes over completely, and in others they’re all somehow in there together, aware of each other.”
“Well, like I said, in that moment he was Paul Watson, and Paul Watson looked like he wanted to catch 4MK. As we reviewed the evidence, as we went over each victim’s story, he paused at McInley. He made a point to mention she was the only blonde. At the time, it just seemed like a rookie comment. I mean, we obviously all knew she was the only blonde, we’d stared at these photos for five years. But he lingered there, if only for a second. As a rookie comment, I let it pass, but now—”
“Now you’re replaying that scene, you know you were in the room with 4MK, and 4MK lingered on Barbara McInley,” Poole summarized.
“Yeah.”
“That’s not much.”
“I think I’ve said that a few times now. Nothing solid, only my gut,” Porter said. “There is the crime itself too. McInley’s sister killed a pedestrian in a hit-and-run, it was an accident. With all the other victims, Bishop played off the fact that someone related to them committed an intentional crime. Something premeditated, thought out, and orchestrated. A hit-and-run doesn’t fit.”
Poole looked back to the file. “According to the arrest report, she hit a pedestrian who was crossing the street against the light. He stepped out into traffic into the path of her car.”
“If she wouldn’t have run, she wouldn’t have been charged. Not for something like that,” Porter said. “There’s the similarity to the way Jacob Kittner died too. Don’t forget, Bishop paid that guy to step out into traffic. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Me either,” Poole replied. “Give me a second.” He pulled up Libby McInley’s record on his laptop and reviewed her file. “According to records, she was charged in March 2007 and convicted of manslaughter for the vehicular death of one Franklin Kirby in July 2007, sentenced to ten years, of which she served seven and a handful of months. She was released on parole six weeks ago.”
“What was the name of her victim again?”
“Franklin Kirby. Why? Do you know him?”
Again, Porter went quiet.
“Porter. If the name means something to you, you need to tell me,” Poole said.
“You should check on her. Let me know what you find.”
“Why?” Poole asked, but Porter had disconnected the call.