42: Clair heard Nash and Klozowski in the hallway a few seconds before they came through the door. They were arguing, something about Neil Diamond.
She shook her head.
When Nash walked into the war room, she tossed a pen at him. He caught it mid-flight.
“What the hell, Clair-bear?”
Kloz ducked past him and shuffled to his desk. “Didn’t Porter instigate a ‘no throwing stuff at the other detectives’ rule?”
“Porter’s on suspension, so that rule is null and void,” she told them. “I’ve got something. This could be big.”
Nash sat on the edge of the conference table. “Good, because we struck out at the car dealer. Turns out Ella Reynolds was paying off a Mazda behind her parents’ backs. We talked to all three employees. Brandon Stringer, one of the sales guys, recognized Ella from her photo, but that was the extent. He was with another customer when she first came in. Cumberland, the owner, handled her from there. None of them knew Lili Davies outside of the news. There’s a mechanic on site, Douglas Fredenburg, but he’s not our guy. He’s got a wife and five kids at home. He wouldn’t have the time to orchestrate a poker game let alone multiple kidnappings and murders. Besides, Cumberland gave him a full alibi. None of them seem right for this. More dead ends.”
Clair had a number of printouts laid out on her desk. She picked one of them up and handed the page to Nash.
“What’s this?”
“Read.”
Nash held the page up and read aloud. “In loving memory of Floyd Bernard Reynolds, May 11, 1962—February 13, 2015. Please join us Monday, February 16, 2015, at 5:00 p.m. at Saint Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin Catholic Church for a memorial service honoring Floyd, who was a loving husband and father. There will be a reception immediately following in the church hall.” Nash lowered the page. “It’s the obit for Reynolds, so what?”
Clair retrieved another printout and handed it to Klozowski.
He gave her a sidelong glance, then cleared his throat. “In loving memory of Floyd Bernard Reynolds, May 11, 1962—February 13, 2015. Father of lies, husband of death, finally found peace among the roses. No more flowers please, send only your blessings.”
“That’s a bit dark,” Nash said.
“That’s ex-girlfriend dark,” Kloz agreed, handing the sheet back to Clair.
Clair turned back to Nash. “The one you read appeared in this morning’s Chicago Examiner. This one”—she shook the page in her hand—“ran last Wednesday, before Reynolds died, also in the Examiner.”
Nash reached for the paper. “Let me see that one—”
Clair ignored him and went to the whiteboard. She taped both pages up beneath Floyd Reynolds’s information.
“Or not,” Nash said under his breath.
Clair went back to her desk. “There’s more.”
She snatched up another sheet and read aloud. “Dr. Randal Frederick Davies, husband of Grace Ann Davies, father of Lili Grace Davies, has left us with bated breath, smelling of lavender and cat’s claw at both the end and start of his wasted journey as he walks in hand to the light.”
“Not exactly ringing of sunshine and rainbows either,” Kloz said.
“Davies died?”
Clair nodded. “Late last night. He suffered a severe stroke. A complication from the drop in blood pressure.”
“They got the obit out that fast?”
Clair walked back to the board and taped the page up under the name Randal Davies. “Whoever ran it didn’t wait for him to die. His obituary ran four days ago, also in the Examiner.”
“So this guy is running obituaries in advance for the people he plans to kill?”
“Yep.”
“What about the girls?” Kloz asked, pulling his laptop from his bag.
“I looked, but I couldn’t find anything on the girls, only the fathers.”
Nash walked over to the whiteboards and studied the printouts. “Do we know who ran them?”
“That’s the odd part.”
“That’s the odd part?”
“I just got off the phone with the woman in charge of obits at the Chicago Examiner. She’s been there for forty-three years, says she personally reads every obituary before they go to print because, in her words, ‘common folk have no respect for grammar,’ and she swears she has never seen the two messages that appeared last week. She did remember the one from today—she even recalled the corrections she made before going to press. When I read her the other messages, she scoffed at them, said she would have flagged both. Apparently obituaries are submitted via a form on the Examiner’s website, and they get their share of false deaths, mainly kids playing pranks. Normal practice is not to run anything without verification. She usually gets a copy of the death certificate or confirms with the funeral home. There is also a charge.” She crossed the room and sat back at her desk. “Obits are big moneymakers for the papers. In all three cases, credit card data was provided. The card used for both of Reynolds’s obituaries is the same and belongs to his wife. The card used for the false obituary on Randal Davies was Grace Davies’s American Express. On the false obits, somebody submitted the data online, then immediately hacked their system and coded them as ‘approved’—they essentially bypassed this woman and the paper’s safeguards by sending them directly to print without any verification.”
“I’m looking at the code behind the Examiner’s web form. Their system captures information the user cannot see. Their operating system, IP address . . . a few other data points,” Kloz said, his eyes scanning the text rolling across his screen.
“The woman I spoke to at the Examiner sent me a file of all the submissions in the past thirty days. It should be in your inbox,” Clair told him.
“Got it, reviewing the data now too.”
Nash studied the false obituary for Randal Davies. “If this ran four days ago, that puts it before Lili Davies disappeared.”
Clair nodded.
“So who was the real intended victim? The father or the daughter?”
Clair had spent the past hour puzzling over that exact question, and she didn’t have an answer. “I think he’s going after both but for different reasons. He’s drowning the daughters, over and over again. That was consistent with both girls. He takes his time, revives them, and repeats until their bodies finally give out—weeks for Ella Reynolds, days for Lili Davies. With the fathers, he killed them in completely different ways, and he killed them fast, almost like an afterthought.”
“Not an afterthought, not if he’s planting the obituaries,” Nash said.
“Okay, not an afterthought. More of a statement,” Clair said. “What he’s doing to the girls, the drowning, that serves some kind of purpose for him.”
“Like he’s trying to learn something.”
“Like he’s trying to learn something,” Clair agreed.
“So his focus is the girls, and the fathers are some kind of smokescreen?”
Clair pressed her fingers to her temples. “No, they’re more than that. I’m not sure why, not yet.”
“Fathers, daughters . . . this is beginning to sound a lot like 4MK,” Nash pointed out.
“Drowning doesn’t fit, and Bishop made it a point to not kill the parents. He felt they suffered more alive after the loss of their child.”
“Maybe he evolved, or devolved.”
“Why would Bishop change his MO?”
“I found the records,” Kloz interrupted. “In all three cases, the IP addresses originated at the homes of the victims. That means the obituaries were either sent from each home or made to look that way.”
“Can something like that be faked?”
Kloz touched a finger to the top of his laptop screen, thinking. “It would be tricky. You can’t really fake the incoming IP on a form. The string is captured after the data leaves the host machine.”
Clair launched a pen at him. He hadn’t seen her pick one up. She was getting fast. The pen bounced off Klozowski’s shoulder and fell to the floor beneath his desk.
“Hey! I don’t mind you throwing things at Nash, but I gotta draw a line when you try to hit me,” Kloz said.
“Keep it in English, and you can avoid the hurt.”
Kloz crouched down, putting the laptop screen between him and Clair. “To send the message with their IP address, the request would have to originate within their house, from their router. There are a few ways to do this.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One, hack into their computer from a remote location. This is fairly difficult. The unsub would need to gain access by sending them malware to open a backdoor or finding a hole in their OS. If they don’t update their OS on the regular, this gets easier, but it’s still a crapshoot because you wouldn’t know if and how you can get in until you try—risky. Two, hack the family’s Wi-Fi. This is a bit easier. It can be done from the street outside their home and only requires a few tools anyone can download off the web.”
“Getting so close sounds dangerous too,” Nash pointed out.
“He’s sending these messages before he’s taken or hurt anyone. Nobody would be watching for him. He could be in and out in a few minutes, particularly if the family doesn’t update the firmware on their router.”
“Nobody updates their firmware. We learned that at that Starbucks.”
“Exactly.” Kloz nodded. “There’s also the newspaper itself. That would be option number three. The unsub would need to place the ads via the web form, then hack the data stored on the newspaper’s servers. Once he got in, he’d have to change the IP addresses. This would be the most difficult. If it were me, I’d go after the Wi-Fi.”
“Would that leave some kind of footprint? Like what you found at Starbucks?” Nash asked.
Again, Kloz nodded. “The newspaper didn’t capture Mac addresses in their data, but the routers at each location would. I just need access.”
“Would you need to go inside their houses?” Clair asked. “With all they’re going through . . .”
“I could do it from the street, same as the unsub. No need to disturb the families.”
Nash said, “The list the newspaper sent over of all the submitted obituaries, can we run the names? Look for obits on people without a death certificate on file? Maybe we’ll get lucky and find his next target before he hits.”
“It will be tricky without social security numbers or something concrete to rule people out, but I can give it a shot,” Kloz said.
Clair read over the assignments on the whiteboard. “Any luck putting together a list of saltwater swimming pools around the area?”
“If I tell you yes, will you promise to stop throwing things at me?” Kloz said.
“No.”
“You’re an evil woman,” Kloz said. “File sent. You should see it in your inbox. We can rule out saltwater swimming pools. The water Eisley found in the girls’ lungs had too high a salt content. Pools are kept around three thousand parts per million, and the water we’re looking for is around thirty-five thousand, on par with ocean water. That in mind, I found eighteen aquatic stores selling saltwater fish and supplies. I sent you that list too.”
Clair stood up from her desk and updated the board. “Okay, I’ll check those first thing. The two of you do a drive-by at the victims’ houses and get what you need from their routers. Then we’ll touch base.”
“Sam would make me get a warrant for the router data,” Kloz said.
Clair leveled another pen, ready to throw. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that out loud.”
ella reynolds(15 years old)
Reported missing 1/22
Found 2/12 in Jackson Park Lagoon
Water frozen since 1/2—(20 days before she went missing)
Last seen—getting off her bus at Logan Square (2 blocks from home/15 miles from Jackson Park)
Last seen wearing a black coat
Drowned in salt water (found in fresh water)
Found in Lili Davies’s clothes
Four-minute walk from bus to home
Frequented Starbucks on Kedzie. Seven-minute walk to home.
lili davies(17 years old)
Parents = Dr. Randal Davies and Grace Davies
Best friend = Gabrielle Deegan
Attends Wilcox Academy (private) did not attend classes on 2/12
Last seen leaving for school (walking) morning of 2/12 @ 7:15 wearing a Perro red nylon diamond-quilted hooded parka, white hat, white gloves, dark jeans, and pink tennis shoes (all found on Ella Reynolds)
Most likely taken morning of 2/12 (on way to school)
Small window = 35 minutes (Left for school 7:15 a.m., Classes start 7:50 a.m.)
School only four blocks from home
Not reported missing until after midnight (morning of 2/13)
Parents thought she went to work (art gallery) right after school (she didn’t do either)
Found in Ella Reynolds’s clothing
Drowned and resuscitated multiple times—salt water
floyd reynolds
Wife: Leeann Reynolds
Insurance sales—works for UniMed America Healthcare
No debt? Per wife. Hosman checking
Strangled with thin wire (piano?) outside of own home (in car)
Body hidden in snowman
Father of Ella Reynolds
randal davies
Doctor, John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital
Father to Lili Davies
Wife = Grace Davies
Overdosed—lisinopril (blood pressure medication)
■ Possibly driving a gray pickup towing a water tank: 2011 Toyota Tundra
■May work with swimming pools (cleaning or servicing)
■ Size 11 work boot print found—back of driver’s seat, Reynolds car (Lexus LS). Used for leverage?
■Starbucks footage (1-day cycle?)—Kloz
■Ella’s computer, phone, e-mail—Kloz
■Lili’s social media, phone records, e-mail (phone and PC MIA)—Kloz
■Enhance image of possible unsub entering park—Kloz
■ Park camera loosened? Check old footage—Kloz
■Get make and model of truck from video?—Kloz
■Clair and Sophie walk Lili’s route to school / talk to Gabrielle Deegan
■Clair and Sophie visit gallery (manager = Ms. Edwins)
■Put together a list of saltwater pools around Chicago via permits office—Kloz—Clair to visit
■ Check out local aquariums and aquarium supply houses—Clair
■ Hosman to check debt on the Reynoldses