50: “Oh, holy hell. I’m gonna catch shit for this.” Vernon Bedard plopped down into the wooden chair behind his desk and let out a slow breath. “I was supposed to check on her last Wednesday, a ‘surprise’ visit, and I never had the chance. My caseload is bullshit.”
Libby McInley’s parole officer had called Poole back about an hour ago, and he met Poole and Agent Diener in the lobby of the Cook County Adult Probation Department downtown, not far from Metro HQ.
Bedard had spotted them both the moment he stepped off the elevator. A pudgy man with thick hands and even thicker glasses, he wore a yellow button-down shirt and brown slacks that looked about two sizes too small. He escorted them to his office on the third floor—a small box with a single window overlooking the parking lot. Stacks of files covered his desk and the cabinets lining the far wall.
Three staplers sat on his desk. Poole found his eyes drifting to them as the man spoke.
“Gave me a bad feeling, that one.”
“When did you see her last?” Diener asked.
Bedard swiveled in his chair, dug through yet another stack of files on the credenza behind him. “Here we go.” He turned back around and opened McInley’s file. His thumb slipped down a log attached to the inside flap. “January ninth. She was quiet and adjusting well after release,” he read, his voice tapering off.
“You seem hesitant. Is that not an accurate assessment?” Poole asked.
Bedard leaned back in his chair, pulling the file with him. His index finger flicked at a yellow Post-it note in the corner. “Here’s the thing. Many inmates have trouble when they first get out. Five years or more seems to be the magic number, in my book. When they’re incarcerated for more than five years, the prison lifestyle tends to feel more normal to them than life on the outside. I think it’s the structured routines—meals at the same time every day, yard at the same time, lights out, lights on. Every day they spend in there with someone else driving the car, they get a little more dependent on the structure, a little more of their free will dies off. This is great while they’re in prison. They become easier to control over time but they also forget what it’s like to be self-sufficient. When they get out, some of them are overwhelmed by all the decisions, the choices. Little things we take for granted, like where, when, and what we’re gonna have for lunch, can become monumental, staggering problems.”
Poole leaned forward and studied the log in Libby McInley’s file. “So she wasn’t ‘quiet and adjusting well after release’?”
Bedard studied both men for a moment. “She was neither of those things. She was a mess.”
“Then why write it?”
“I’m here to help these people put together a life on the outside. Hold their hand, teach them how to take care of themselves again while also avoiding all the temptation and problems that landed them in prison in the first place. It isn’t easy, for me or them.” He laid a hand on the file. “My files are easily accessible by nearly everyone in the system, not by just my superiors. Certain employers—government jobs mostly—educators with work release, government-controlled housing landlords . . . law enforcement.” He eyed them both. “I write the wrong thing in a file, and I create a problem for this person, a handicap that follows them for a very long time. I write Libby McInley is experiencing problems adjusting on the outside, and before you know it, she’s denied educational opportunities because another parolee seems better suited. Work release may gloss over her. Before you know it, she can’t function at all out here.”
“Is that what the yellow Post-it note means?” Poole asked. “Some kind of internal code so you know what’s really happening regardless of the notes?”
Bedard nodded. “Green means all good, red signifies problems. Blue means adjusting but slowly.”
“Her tag is yellow.”
“Yellow means she wanted to go back. I’ve seen parolees commit a felony, then turn themselves in to the nearest police station just to get back inside.” Bedard glanced down at the photo of Libby McInley in the file. “I was hoping to get her into a halfway house. She was on the list for an opening. If that didn’t work, I would have pushed her to take on a roommate or two. Sometimes the extra contact helps.”
Poole found himself looking at the three staplers again. He forced himself to turn back to the parole officer. “Mr. Bedard, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to think about your answer very carefully.” He leaned forward, an elbow on the man’s desk. “In your opinion, did Libby McInley want to go back because she wasn’t self-sufficient and couldn’t take care of herself or because she feared something on the outside and felt safer in prison?”
Bedard frowned. “You mean like was she in danger? Somebody could have been after her?”
“Yes.”
Bedard drew in a long breath, let it out slowly. “That’s tough. She didn’t communicate anything to me. The last time I saw her, she seemed frazzled. She got me a glass of water from the sink, and I noticed her hands were shaking. Her eyes were dark and puffy from lack of sleep. She appeared thin to me, she had dropped weight, probably wasn’t eating well. Nothing to indicate she thought she was in danger, though. I think I’d pick up on that. I see it a lot with gang members.”
“Do you ever search a parolee’s residence?” Agent Diener asked.
“Sure, if there is probable cause.”
“Did you ever search Libby McInley’s residence?”
The parole officer shook his head. “She was in on a hit-and-run. Not drugs or weapons. Even in prison, she steered clear of those things. Drug testing is mandatory while on parole, and she passed every time. I never had cause to search her house. What are you boys getting at? Was she mixed up in something?”
Bedard shifted in his seat.
Poole knew what the man was really asking. Was she mixed up in something I should have caught? How much trouble am I in here?
“Does the name Kalyn Selke mean anything to you?”
“No.”
Diener leaned in closer. “Are you sure?”
Bedard turned to his left, located his computer keyboard under a few sheets of notepaper, and keyed in the name. “I don’t recognize the name. She’s not one of my parolees. I don’t see her in the system, either.”
Poole said, “We found a driver’s license and passport in Libby’s house, both in the name of Kalyn Selke, but with Libby McInley’s photo.”
“Real or fake?”
“Real.”
“Not easy to put that together.”
Poole went on. “The real Kalyn Selke died at age seven. She was hit by a car while riding her bike. That was twenty-four years ago.”
“Probably got a birth certificate and used it to get a passport, then used both of those for the driver’s license,” Bedard said, thinking aloud. “If she did this while in prison, she had help. If she did it after she got out, she still had help.”
“What makes you say that?”
Bedard shrugged. “It happens more than you think. Like I said earlier, starting over for these guys is tough. Some of them feel they have a better shot under a new identity. About ten years ago, a guy doing life at Ohio State Pen was busted for running an ID assembly line. He’d isolate prisoners closing on release, sell them on the benefits of starting over, then sell them again on package deals. The prisoner would arrange for payment through someone on the outside to this man’s cousin, also on the outside, then the cousin would set up the ID and it would be waiting when the prisoner got out. You can’t do this from the inside, there are too many phone calls to make, letters to write. You need a physical address to receive the documents. They won’t mail them to the prison care of your inmate number.”
“I suppose not.”
Bedard scratched his neck, looked at his finger. “This ring in Ohio? It was believed they were pulling in nearly two hundred K a year running identities. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if someone was doing it up at Stateville Correctional where she was housed. Probably somebody at every prison. Maybe multiple somebodies. As the technology improves, the business becomes more specialized and more profitable.”
“We also found a .45 in the same drawer,” Diener said.
Bedard sighed. “Could have got that from the same guy. They sell a la carte—identification, weapons, travel plans. The right amount of money and you can buy whatever life you want, I suppose.”
Poole said, “Did she have money?”
Bedard skimmed her file again. “Her parents are both deceased. 4MK took care of her only sibling. I don’t see any visitors during her last year. You’d have to check with the prison to go back further. No phone log, either. The way I understand it, she did her time alone, stayed out of trouble. What kind of resources did she have before she went in?”
Diener glanced down at the notes on his phone. “She owed twelve thousand on her car, forty-eight thousand in student loans, and her checking account had thirty-two dollars in it. The funds were eaten up by bank fees over the years, until the account eventually closed.”
The parole officer spread his hands. “Well, there you go. No scratch. There are two types of payment in prison: cold, hard cash and favors. If she didn’t have money to pay for this, I’d look into the latter. She may have agreed to do something for someone once she got out in exchange for the identification. Maybe a hit—that would explain the gun.”
“You had contact with her. Did she seem capable of something like that?” Poole asked.
“After a few years in prison, I think anyone could go there, even an innocent girl from the suburbs.”
Ten minutes later, they stood outside next to Poole’s Jeep. The snow had lessened into light flurries, and everything was white. Poole wiped the windshield clear with the sleeve of his coat. “Any luck with the neighbors?”
Diener shook his head. “The uniforms learned a whole lot of nothing. I canvassed the houses four deep on either side. Not a very savory lot. The only one who remembered seeing her at all was this old woman across the street. She spends her day planted at her picture window with her nose firmly in everybody else’s business.” He glanced down at his phone. “Name is Roxy Hackler. Said she saw Libby a total of three times since she moved in. The day of the move, a cab dropped Libby off with a single duffel bag. The next day, Roxy spied her walking back from the grocery store with an armload of bags. Then last week, she said Libby came outside and paced the sidewalk, talking on a phone. She thought it was strange on account of the weather. Who goes outside in this to make a call?”
“Any idea who she talked to?”
“No record of a phone in her name. We didn’t find one at the house.”
“Could the house be bugged?”
Diener kicked at a small pile of blackened snow at the curb. “Doubtful. The techs didn’t find anything, and they’ve been through the house top to bottom and bottom to top several times now. Doesn’t mean she didn’t think the place was bugged, though. Wouldn’t be the first person to get out of prison and think someone was watching or listening in.”
“In this case, somebody might have been.”
Diener blew out his cheeks, his white breath lingering in the air. “Bishop never went back after a second family member. She’s the first. She knew he was coming and tried to run. He was faster.”
Poole nodded. “That’s how I see it. We figure out why, and we get closer to Bishop.”
“So what’s next? I’m freezing my balls off out here.”
“I’m heading back to Metro. I need to finish going through the box Bishop left behind. Why don’t you work on the IDs? Try to determine where Libby got them. We need to know who was helping her.”
“Should we be watching the families of his other victims?”
Poole didn’t have an answer to that one.