36: They had been there all night.
CSI moving in and out of Libby McInley’s battered house in thin plastic suits, at least a dozen of them in all. Poole watched from the driver’s seat of his Cherokee. Careful as they were, he tried not to think about what all that traffic was doing to his crime scene.
SAIC Hurless was on the front stoop, his cell phone pressed to his ear. Special Agent Diener was somewhere inside.
Poole watched as Hurless disconnected his call and crossed the street to where Poole was parked.
He rolled down the window.
“She’s been dead a few days, according to the ME. We think he started . . . we think she was bound to the bed around this time Wednesday, and he took his time with her, ten to twelve hours from the first wound to the last. He started with her toes, finished with her fingers. The eyes, ear, and tongue were somewhere in between.”
“What about the cuts?”
“The ME says he did those as he went along. Probably alternated between cuts and removing appendages,” Hurless explained. “He kept her in the bed. She urinated and defecated in place. The bindings at her right ankle cut clean through to muscle.”
Poole wouldn’t close his eyes. He knew if he did that, he would see all of this play out. He would see Bishop tying this woman to the bed and torturing her for the better part of half a day as her screams went unanswered. “This seems sloppy . . . for him. For Bishop.”
“He’s evolving. We know who he is now. He doesn’t have to be as careful as he was before,” Hurless said.
“Maybe.”
“You think it’s something else?”
“Something, yeah.”
“That’s a bit cryptic.”
Poole said, “He never cut a body like that. The toes and fingers, that’s all new.”
“Like I said, escalating.”
“I suppose.”
Hurless shuffled his feet. His breath hung around him in the icy air like a smoker’s cloud. Snow had begun falling again, thick, heavy flakes. “You followed Porter’s bread crumbs out here, didn’t you.”
This was more of a statement than a question. Poole nodded. “He’s got good instincts.”
“Good instincts? He worked with this guy for the better part of a week and had no clue. Then, when he had the chance to bust him, he let him go. Let him walk right out from under half of Chicago Metro. He should have caught Bishop five years ago, we shouldn’t be here, and that woman”—he nodded back at the house—“should still be breathing. Keep this in perspective.”
Poole said nothing to this, his eyes on the house. The broken-down car in the driveway, the bike on the side. “She was isolated here, a shut-in. When we check with her parole officer, I think we’re going to find he couldn’t get her out of the house at all. He came to her.”
It was Hurless’s turn to go quiet. A year ago he might have jibed Poole for such a statement, but Poole had proven himself time and time again. He requested his assignment to this task force for precisely that reason.
Special Agent Diener came out onto the front stoop of the house, saw both of them, and waved. “There’s something you need to see,” he shouted.
Poole got out of the Jeep and followed Hurless back across the street, his head low to block the flakes that had taken on the feel of ice and sleet.
Inside, the power was still off. CSI had set up a generator in the backyard, and orange extension cords snaked through the hallways and rooms. Double halogen floodlights on yellow metal stands were positioned around the residence, filling every inch with bright light and harsh-lined shadows. Hurless and Poole followed Diener from the front door to the back bedroom, where Libby McInley still lay. A photographer slowly made his way around the bed, capturing every inch of her horror. Poole could hear her screaming from that frozen, blood-filled mouth.
Another tech was dismantling the 3D imaging camera set up on a tripod at the center of the room. When operating, the camera spun at the top of the stand and took a full image of the room from all angles, stills and video. The camera would then be moved to another room to repeat—images would be captured from the entire house, and possibly outside. A computer would stitch the images together, and agents could virtually walk the crime scene from anywhere at any time, as it appeared today. Poole had no need for this technology. For better or worse, he had near-perfect retention, eidetic memory. He wouldn’t be able to cleanse his mind of what he saw here if his life depended on it. The sights, scents, and sounds all burned into his brain.
Four of the halogen lights illuminated the bed. They were bright, but the photographer’s flash was brighter. Poole looked away.
Diener stood next to the dresser, in front of an open drawer. He held a small Mag-Lite, the beam pointed inside.
Poole followed the light, peered down into the drawer.
“Any one of those things could send her back to prison. Why risk it?” Diener said.
Poole pulled a pair of purple latex gloves from his pocket and slipped them on, then reached into the drawer. He removed a driver’s license and passport, both with Libby McInley’s photograph, both with the name Kalyn Selke. He set the fake identification down on the top of the dresser, then reached back inside, retrieving the gun, a matte-black .45. “It’s loaded.”
“Doesn’t look like she even made a play for it,” Hurless pointed out.
“She wouldn’t have had a chance,” Poole said. “Bishop would have taken her by surprise, subdued her. The ME will find something in her toxicology, some kind of sedative, propofol or Nubain. He’s used both in the past.”
Hurless turned to Poole. “You said she was a shut-in. This looks like she was planning to run.”
“You only have to stay ahead of the demons. An inch outside their grasp will do,” Poole said under his breath.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Diener scoffed.
“Just something I read once, in a Thad McAlister novel,” Poole told him. “I don’t think she was agoraphobic. She was hiding from someone. She was scared.”
“Bishop?”
“He killed her sister, maybe he somehow got a message to her in prison, threatened her in some way. I think this Franklin Kirby person she killed was important to him somehow. That’s why the scene is different. He didn’t kill Libby McInley because of Talbot or in relation to the crimes Talbot was involved with. I think this is some kind of revenge killing. He wanted her to suffer, to feel pain,” Poole said.
He spotted something poking out from beneath a folded brown sweater. Poole reached inside and took it out. It was a Polaroid of two women in bed, naked. The edges were frayed, the color muted.
“I’m beginning to like this girl,” Diener said.
“It’s old. Fifteen, twenty years, I’d guess. Nobody uses Polaroids anymore.”
“There’s something else in there.” Hurless was pointing at the edge of the sweater, under the opposite corner.
Poole saw it. He reached inside. It was a lock of blond hair about six inches long, held together with nylon-covered black rubber hair ties on each end.