95: Poole had touched down at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport at a little past one in the morning. A black Subaru Forester with federal plates was waiting for him at the tarmac, driven by SAIC Robert Granger. The man’s eyes were red and heavy.
He offered his hand and shouted over the engine noise winding down from the jet. “You must be Frank. Welcome to South Carolina.”
Poole put him in his mid-fifties only because SAIC Hurless was fifty-four and he mentioned they knew each other from the academy. Granger looked far older than fifty-four. If Poole had met the man on the street, he would have easily tacked on ten years. Heavyset and bald, he wore thick glasses and a bushy goatee. Poole found this odd because the FBI dress code did not permit facial hair beyond a mustache. The rules in the South must be lax.
Granger gestured toward the passenger door, and both men climbed in the car. They were moving away from the jet before Poole had his seat belt on. Granger waved at the security station before coasting through and heading for the highway. “So, 4MK, huh? Down here?”
“We think he’s still in Chicago, but apparently this lake is connected to him somehow,” Poole told him.
“It took some doing, but I finally got Sheriff Banister on the phone a little after midnight. That’s Sheriff Hana Banister. You’ll like her, she’s a bit of a firecracker. Been sheriff around Simpsonville for the better part of twenty years, keeps running unopposed, which is fine with the locals. Not many people out there, and they’re not too big on change. She said she’s got two experienced divers in town. I had three in Charlotte, so we rounded them all up and got them out to your lake straightaway. She’s familiar with the property, said it’s been deserted since a fire wiped out the main house. There’s a trailer out there the owners used to rent out. Teenagers use it nowadays for things teenagers do. From what she told me, not much to look at.”
“Can the divers work in the dark?”
Granger leaned up over the steering wheel and maneuvered around a slow-moving semi. “Didn’t seem to faze my guys at all. They jump at just about any chance to get in the water.”
“How far is this place?”
Granger glanced at the GPS on his phone. “We’re about thirty minutes out. Looks like this place is buried good and deep.”
Two hours later Poole stood at the edge of the lake, watching the divers as Granger and Sheriff Banister (who was very much the firecracker) barked orders at their teams.
A generator hummed in the distance, with snakes of cords running off in various directions. Large floodlights had been erected at the water’s edge, the bright beams illuminating the black pool.
One of the divers broke the surface and raised her hand. “I’ve got another one! Twenty feet down, directly below me. I’ve got a cord on it, affixing a balloon now.” She pulled a small canister from her belt and flicked a switch. The canister popped and released a self-inflating bright orange balloon. She attached the cord she held in her other hand to the base and set it bobbing in the water.
“Holy Christ, how many is that now?” Banister said from somewhere behind Poole.
Poole glanced to his right, at the black body bags lining the shore. “Four. That makes four.”
“Complete body or partial?” Granger shouted out to the diver.
“Complete.” The diver replaced her regulator and disappeared back below the surface, the beam of her high-powered flashlight quickly fading away.
They found small garbage bags containing remains as well, six of those so far. Only one had been opened, containing a human leg bone. Each of the others was carefully placed inside clear plastic bags while still below the surface, then brought up and stored in plastic bins in an effort to not contaminate the contents and preserve the findings. They would be opened at the medical examiner’s office at the federal building back in Charlotte. Sheriff Banister made no squabble about relinquishing jurisdiction to Poole and Granger. This was clearly beyond her department’s available resources.
Poole pressed his hands together. This wasn’t Chicago cold by any means, but the air off the lake had a bite to it. Sheriff Banister stood behind him, the beam of her flashlight pointing down toward the base of one of the large trees. “Agent Poole? I think I’ve got your cat.”
When you get to the lake, look for the cat.
He walked over to her and followed the beam of her flashlight.
A rusted metal lunchbox was buried at the base of a laurel tree. He’d walked the entire perimeter of the lake when he first got here, studying the ground for any sign of a cat. He expected to find whatever Porter was talking about near the shore, then the first body was found and he forgot all about the cat. This was about ten feet back, hidden in the trees.
Poole bent down and brushed the dirt from the surface.
Hello Kitty.
“Cute.” He looked up at the sheriff. “Do you have any gloves?”
“Yeah, here.” She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her jacket pocket and handed them down. Some of her graying blond hair fell loose from her ponytail. She pulled out the rubber band holding it all in place, twisted the hair together into one tight lock, then replaced the band. She did all this with one hand—the other, still holding the flashlight on the lunchbox, didn’t falter.
Poole couldn’t help but wonder if she handled a gun with the same dexterity, if she ever had cause to use her weapon out here.
“I’ve got one!” came another shout from the lake.
Five now.
Granger came over, the beam of his flashlight joining Banister’s. “That it? What you were trying to find?”
Poole released the rusted metal latch on the front of the lunchbox and opened the lid. The diary stared back at him from inside. “I’ll need to see the property records, plat records, whatever you have for this place, the houses we passed on the way in too.”
Banister leaned down, her breath white in the chilled air. “They’re stored down at town hall. I’ll make a call, wake some folks up.”