86: Special Agent Frank Poole, Detectives Clair Norton and Brian Nash of Chicago Metro, Sophie Rodriguez from Missing Children, and Edwin Klozowski from Information Technology sat at the conference table in the war room, all eyes on the six whiteboards at the front of the room.
Behind them the coffeemaker beeped. Nobody got up.
“This is overwhelming,” Klozowski finally said, the first to speak in nearly five minutes.
It was overwhelming, Poole thought. Sixteen years with the Bureau, four with the Behavioral Science Unit out of Quantico before transferring to Chicago. He had never seen anything like this, not in an investigation, not in all the case histories he studied. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no real pattern. Serial killers always kept to a pattern, a signature. That pattern may evolve as the killer tuned his efforts, became more comfortable in his skin, but they were never random. There was always a pattern.
Why couldn’t he see the pattern?
“There’s too much noise,” Poole said quietly.
Nash turned toward him, frowning. “What does that mean?”
“We need to get rid of the noise.”
Poole stood up and went to the front of the room, his eyes fixed on the boards.
“I think we’ve lost him,” Klozowski said.
Poole stood there for a moment, taking in the text, every word, every letter, every curved fumble of the dry-erase marker, he memorized it all. Then he turned the first board around backward, all those words lost to the back, replaced by a clean, white surface. He turned the next one and the one after that, until all six faced the wall and they all stared at nothing.
Kloz snickered, leaned back in his chair. “Now I know we’ve lost him.”
Poole walked around to the back of the boards and pulled all the photographs down, picked up a black marker from one of the trays, and returned to the front. “We’ve learned a lot over the past few days, too much. We need to filter out the noise and focus on what is really important, find the real evidence, piece it together as if it were fresh.”
“Puzzle it out,” Kloz said.
Nash and Clair both glared at him. He shrugged.
Poole took the photograph of Anson Bishop and taped it to the top center of the board. He then sorted through the remaining photographs in his hand, placing the following beneath Bishop’s picture:
Ella Reynolds
Lili Davies
Floyd Reynolds
Randal Davies
Libby McInley
Larissa Biel
Darlene Biel
John Doe/Truck
“These are the people directly impacted by this case,” Poole stated. “The victims or intended victims.”
Clair asked, “Who does that leave?”
Poole held up the remaining pictures in his hand. “Three of the spouses—Leeann Reynolds, Grace Davies, and Larry Biel, and the remaining children of the families.” He set the pictures on the conference table, facedown. “If we find a reason to connect these people to the case, other than relations, we’ll put them back on the board. Let’s focus on the others for now.”
Nash drummed his fingers over the tabletop. “If this is all somehow Bishop, and he’s following the same MO as his past victims, that means the children were killed because of something their parents did. The kids aren’t the focus.”
“But he also killed the parents this time,” Sophie interjected.
“And look at how he killed the children,” Clair said. “Both girls drowned in salt water. This unknown boy frozen in the truck. They were all tortured.”
“He didn’t remove the eyes, ear, or tongue on any of the children, which is a major departure,” Nash pointed out. “Completely different from what he did in the past.”
“He did with Libby McInley,” Poole reminded them. “He killed her, just like he would have his past victims.”
“Not exactly like his past victims,” Clair said. “Her toes and fingers were removed. He’s never done that before.”
“More torture,” said Nash. “An escalation, maybe?”
“A different kind of torture, different from everything else,” Poole said. He gathered the coffee cups from the table and went to the machine, began to fill them. “Fingers and toes are usually removed to get information. This is a major break from the norm for him. With all his other victims, he removed the eyes, ear, and tongue to send a message to whoever found the bodies, to taunt law enforcement, to sensationalize the murders. He went after the past victims because of information he already possessed, everything he learned from Talbot’s business activities. He didn’t need to learn anything from those victims. He had it all.”
Poole returned to the table and passed out the coffee.
Clair reached for her mug and took a sip. “So Libby McInley is different from all the rest—she knew something, something he needed, something he was willing to torture to learn.”
Poole returned to the board at the front. “He was willing to torture Libby more than anyone else in order to get some information.”
He removed the picture of Libby McInley from the center of the board and placed it at the top right. “Her murder is nothing like these others. Let’s separate her for now too.”
“What do we know about Libby McInley? What makes her such a special target?” Nash asked.
Poole rattled off the information from her file. “Charged in March 2007 and convicted in July 2007 of manslaughter for the vehicular death of one Franklin Kirby, sentenced to ten years, of which she served seven and a few months before being released on parole six weeks ago.”
“What was the name of her victim?” Nash asked.
“Franklin Kirby.” Poole took a step toward the conference table. “That name meant something to Porter too, but he didn’t expand on what he knew. Who is he?”
“Holy hell, how did we miss that?” Kloz blurted out.
Clair shook her head. “He’s in Bishop’s diary. Kirby worked for Talbot. He stole a lot of money from him and ultimately ran off with Bishop’s mother when Bishop was a kid. He also shot and killed Bishop’s father.”
“The diary again.” Poole frowned. “I need to see that book.”
“Let me try and get this straight,” Nash said, “because I have read the diary. Kirby kills Bishop’s father. Kirby runs off with Bishop’s mother. Libby McInley accidentally hits and kills Kirby with her car. Bishop kills Barbara McInley, Libby’s sister, in retaliation for her killing Kirby, then he ultimately kills Libby, even though the two of them are somehow working together? That doesn’t make any sense. Bishop would have been dancing in the street with Kirby dead.”
Kloz cleared his throat. “What if Bishop didn’t kill Libby? Maybe somebody else did and just made it look like he killed her. That might explain why her fingers and toes were cut off. Somebody other than Bishop did it. Somebody after something.”
“Who?”
Shuffling in his chair, Klozowski went on. “What if Bishop didn’t kill Barbara McInley either?”
Clair scratched at the back of her head. “We know he did.”
“Do we?”
Silence again.
Kloz wrapped his hands around his mug. He looked down at the coffee swirling inside. “Every one of Bishop’s initial victims died because their families were involved in some type of criminal activity, every single one, except his fifth victim, Barbara McInley. Her death was attributed to her sister’s hit-and-run. An accident.” He turned to Nash. “Like you said, Bishop had no reason to kill her, not for killing Kirby, that’s for sure.”
“Who, then?” Poole asked.
Kloz answered quietly. “Bishop’s mother.”