71: “I’m not going to sit in here, locked up like a common criminal, while some maniac has our daughter,” Larry Biel spouted. He continued to pace the small hotel room—they had been there for nearly two hours, and he had yet to stop moving.
“Larry, this isn’t helping. Please come here and sit next to me,” Darlene Biel said from the bed.
Clair watched them both from the small table just inside the door.
Uniformed officers had arrived at the Biel household within four minutes of Clair’s call. Both were found safely inside their narrow three-story home on West Superior Street. Darlene Biel was on the phone cycling through her daughter’s friends for the fifth time, while her husband, Larry, sat at Larissa’s computer, digging through the data. He knew his way around a computer and had installed a parental monitoring program called KidBSafe on her PC two years earlier. He reluctantly handed the laptop off to Clair, who in turn had it rushed to Klozowski’s team back at Metro.
Clair then explained that while they had no reason to believe their current unsub had their daughter, particularly since it had only been half a day since she was last seen, she would like to place them both in protective custody anyway while they ruled it out. It took twenty more minutes for her to convince them to leave their home. Darlene moved fast. She was in pharmaceutical sales, spent a lot of time on the road, and kept a travel bag packed and ready. In less than five minutes she was at the front door. Larry was not so fast. He lingered in each room as if expecting his daughter to appear from some shadowed corner, an extended game of hide-and-seek, until finally Darlene packed a bag for him and helped get him into a waiting cruiser.
Although Chicago Metro owned three safe houses, Clair opted to take them to a hotel downtown, one she picked at random and paid for with cash. If Bishop was somehow involved, she had no intention of leaving a paper trail. Only Nash knew her location. He and Sophie Rodriguez remained at the Biel house to supervise the search. Undercover cars were parked a few houses down on both ends of the block, ready if the unsub made an appearance.
“Larry, you’re making me nervous, please sit down,” Darlene said again.
Larry Biel crossed the room one more time, then dropped onto the bed beside his wife, his red face turned to Clair. “How many girls did you say this guy has grabbed?”
“At least two others that we are aware of. But let me stress, we have no reason to believe this person has your daughter. You said yourself she could be with one of her friends. We’re just taking every precaution.”
“She’s not with any of her friends,” Darlene Biel said. “She planned to go to Carrie Ann’s house to get ready for the dance, and Carrie Ann hasn’t heard from her all day. None of her other friends have heard from her today either. She doesn’t disappear like this, never. She always tells me where she’s going. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”
“And this guy killed the girls’ parents too?” Larry Biel said, ignoring his wife. “The man they found in his backyard packed in snow, is that what happened to him? Is that who you’re talking about?”
“I can’t comment on an open investigation.”
“The reporter said his throat was cut so bad, his head almost came off.”
“You’re safe here. We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”
Larry ran his fingers over the pressboard nightstand, tapping them nervously. Clair was beginning to think the man was better off pacing.
There was a knock at the door, and Larry jumped up.
Clair held up a hand. “I got it, please stay there.”
With a hand on her gun, she looked through the small peephole, relaxed, and opened the door. She had ordered a patrol officer to pick up pizza.
He handed both boxes to her and held his hand out, hoping for a tip.
Clair closed the door on him, secured the deadbolt and the inner latch, then placed both boxes on the table. “We’ve got plain cheese and pepperoni.”
“I can’t eat anything,” Larry said.
“Hopefully this will be over quickly, but it’s always best to keep your strength up,” Clair told him.
Darlene pulled a slice of plain cheese and sat on the corner of the bed. Although she appeared calm, her hand was shaking. A clump of cheese slipped off the side of the slice and splatted on the carpet. “I’m so sorry, I’m a bit of mess right now.”
Larry stood up and resumed pacing. On his third pass, he took a slice of pepperoni. “We should be hanging posters, we should be talking to the media. I can get a bunch of guys from the construction site to help comb the neighborhood. I can’t sit here like this. I can’t do nothing while some psycho has my baby girl. This guy’s not gonna hurt me. I’ll tear him apart if he tries to hurt me. I’ll kill him if he touches my baby.”
Larry was a big guy. His job kept him in shape. But Randal Davies had been more than six feet tall and exercised regularly. Floyd Reynolds too. Both were dead now.
Clair’s phone rang.
“Hey, Kloz, did you find something?”
Darlene stood up from the bed, looking at her hands. Both were covered in pizza sauce. “I’m gonna clean up.”
Clair nodded at her and watched her disappear into the bathroom. Larry continued his pacing.
“I found the obituary. It ran two days ago in the Sun Herald,” Kloz said from the other end of the line.
“So not the Chicago Examiner?”
“Either our guy is branching out, or he’s been placing ads in multiple papers and the Examiner was just a lucky break.”
“What does it say?”
“I texted it to you. Did you get it?”
Clair’s phone dinged. “Yeah, hold on.” She glanced down at the display:
DEALER OF DOPE
MOTHER AND WIFE
DARLENE BIEL FINALLY FOUND PEACE
AT THE BUSINESS END OF DEATH’S KNIFE.
A crash came from the bathroom, the sound of a body hitting the floor.