32: Poole stood perfectly still, his breath caught in the air before him, thin wisps of white curling about.
The room felt so still.
When you enter a room with at least one person already present, you know they are there. The human body somehow feels this person on an instinctual level. Your sense of caution, self-preservation, these things heighten. There is a subtle surge of adrenaline as the body takes in the sight and sound of this person, the body language and demeanor. Nearly instantaneously, the brains jumps to judgment—am I attracted to this person or repulsed? Indifferent or taken aback? Our body, our minds, come to all these conclusions in less time than it takes to blink an eye.
If the person in the room is alive.
When you enter a room occupied only by the dead, there is none of this. Without the soul, the body is just a husk, a shell, and somehow the mind knows that too. Different signals are sent: How did this person die? When did she die? Is whoever or whatever killed her still here? Could that something hurt me?
Poole looked down at the body of Libby McInley, and he felt nothing but a profound sense of loss, one that caused his heart to ache.
He stepped closer to the bed, the beam of his flashlight slipping over her body.
Her fingers and toes had been removed. He found them lined up neatly on the nightstand, a pair of stained lobster shears beside them.
Bishop had never done that before. He was escalating.
Poole tried a lamp beside the bed. The bulb had been removed.
With 4MK’s previous victims, the kill room always eluded them. He staged the bodies when he wanted them to be found. Not once had they learned where he actually killed them. SAIC Hurless suspected that he killed them in the tunnels beneath the city, but Poole always felt differently. Poole believed Bishop had a kill room, someplace secluded, meaningful to him, someplace he could work without disruption, someplace that could eat the screams before they escaped.
Libby McInley died in immense pain. She died slowly. And she died here, alone.
There was blood everywhere. The beam of Poole’s flashlight traced it up the walls behind the bed, across the sheets, to the green shag carpet beneath his feet. He shouldn’t be stepping here, not like this. He was most likely contaminating potential evidence, but something told him they wouldn’t find anything here—nothing useful, anyway. They’d only find whatever Bishop wanted them to find.
Poole leaned in close to the body, his flashlight over her spoiled flesh, the tiny cuts.
Razor blade.
Each no more than a half inch. So many, her skin covered in dried blood.
Poole removed his glove and reached out to her, his fingers brushing over her forearm.
She was cold but not frozen. The heat had been turned off in the house long before she died—days, maybe a week earlier. She had died recently, within the past day or two.
It was then that he saw something in the cuts. He hadn’t seen it at first, probably because of the direction he faced. He didn’t see it until he looked down at her arm from the head of the bed.
Words.
He had not just cut her with a razor blade. He had written upon her, her body a canvas under his brush. Tiny words, barely visible under the blood. The arms bled less tied to the bedposts. They were above her heart.
You are evil—You are evil—YOU are evil—you
The same phrase, over and over again, every inch of exposed skin.
She had been alive when he did these things. The small pools of blood at each cut told him so. He started at her feet and worked his way up. He could tell that too from the amount of blood at each wound. She finally died somewhere near the rib cage. He continued beyond that point, but the cuts were swifter after.
He hadn’t enjoyed it after she died. He needed to finish his work, though.
This was violent, this was revenge.
“Who was Franklin Kirby to you?” Poole asked aloud of both Libby McInley and Anson Bishop. Neither answered.
Ten minutes later he retraced his steps back out of the house, back to his Jeep Cherokee. He climbed inside, started the engine, and placed a call to SAIC Hurless. He considered calling Detective Porter too but changed his mind. He wanted to see his face when he talked to him about this. He needed to understand exactly what Porter knew.