90: “Sir, I need to see this through,” Poole said, tugging the steering wheel of his Jeep Cherokee hard left. He skirted four cars at a standstill in the right lane.
Why is there traffic? It’s damn near eleven o’clock at night.
A 727 buzzed over him, the belly exposed as it approached O’Hare Airport.
“You should be on administrative leave. You lost your partner today. The last place you need to be is in the field,” SAIC Hurless said through the Jeep’s speakerphone.
“Clear the jet, sir. I’m nearly to the airport.”
“You need to turn around, come back to the field office, and brief me so we can get someone else on this,” Hurless said.
Poole took a deep breath, tried to calm himself. He jerked the wheel and barely missed a brown Mitsubishi Outlander trying to make a left turn. The driver hit his horn and held it down.
“According to Tech, he called you from a burner phone, and the nearest cell tower matches the location data he gave you, so he was standing somewhere close to that lake he mentioned. I pulled up satellite photos, but there’s not much to see. The tree cover is so heavy, you can’t make out what’s happening on the ground. This is odd . . .”
“What?”
“The phone was a burner purchased and activated in New Orleans,” Hurless said, his voice flat, sounded like he was reading.
“New Orleans? Could that be a mistake?”
Bishop was in Chicago as of a few hours ago. Porter was outside of Greenville, South Carolina, middle of nowhere.
“The signal died right after he hung up with you. Probably pulled the battery to avoid a trace. Run through it again. What did Porter tell you?”
Poole recounted the conversation again, word for word.
“I don’t like this. Porter is too much of a wild card,” Hurless said when he finished. “If he’s working with Bishop, this may be a smokescreen.”
“I think Libby McInley is somehow the key to everything, the key to catching Bishop. Porter knows more than he’s telling us, but he hasn’t steered us wrong. If he says we need to sweep a lake in South Carolina, I think we’ve got to believe him. The team is still processing the two houses from earlier, so we’ve got nothing else to go on right now. I need to do this. Please clear that jet.”
Poole took the airport exit from Kennedy and followed the signs toward Fixed-Base Operator hangars, where they housed the charters and private flights. “Bishop somehow communicated with Libby McInley when she was in Stateville Correctional. We need to know how he was able to talk to her and help her obtain the fake identification. We figure that out, we’re one step closer. I follow Porter’s bread crumbs and we take another step. Hold on a second, sir—”
Poole pulled up to the security gate and passed his identification to the guard. Something clicked when he saw the man in uniform. “I’d check the security guards at the prison, sir, all the correctional officers. That’s got to be it. Mail, phones, and electronics are all under constant surveillance. That only leaves the human element.”
The security guard handed him a clipboard, pointed to a line, and Poole signed. The man then pointed to a lot on the right, mouthing the words, “Anywhere over there.”
Poole nodded and pulled the Jeep into a space next to the small federal building shared by Homeland, FBI, and ATF.
He shifted into Park.
“I’m here, sir. What do you want to do?”
SAIC Hurless sighed. “I ordered them to fuel the plane ten minutes ago. You should be wheels up in twenty. I’ll reach out to the local field office while you’re in the air. That’s Bob Granger in Charlotte. We go way back. I know him from the academy. He can scramble the local sheriff’s office and find Porter’s lake. Put a team in the water. Touch base with me when you’re back on the ground.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You better be right on this.”