Thicker than Blood (Zoe Bentley Mystery)

by Mike Omer

  She kept sorting the list, occasionally glancing at the photos, trying to see any indications to support her deductions. Finally she had two smaller lists.

  Alpha—Victim choice, plan, rape and murder, trophy

  Beta—Familiarity with victim, blood consumption, covering victim, necklace

  What about the bloody footprints? Checking the case report, she found there were multiple size 9 bloody footprints in the bedroom, from which beta had probably taken the necklace. Okay, the majority of the bloody footprints belonged to beta as well. He was the one who blundered into the bloodstain, who paced around the body multiple times.

  One partial print of the other shoe size had been found in the entire apartment. Alpha had noticed that he’d stepped in the victim’s blood and wiped his shoe sole. Careful, calm, mindful of the traces he left behind. Alpha had probably done this before. Beta was a first timer.

  Her stomach rumbled noisily. She was starving. She paused the music and took off her earphones.

  “Hey,” she called to the adjacent cubicle. “Are you still hungry?”

  “Must . . . eat,” Tatum rasped, sounding like a parched man in the desert.

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. But let’s find somewhere nice. I need a change of scenery.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The belly of a man was a fickle thing.

  There was quite a long culinary negotiation, and Tatum had to admit it was mostly his fault. He had a sudden craving for a burger joint and shot down several of Zoe’s suggestions, none of which included burgers. Then, annoyed, she demanded that he decide, and suddenly he didn’t want a burger anymore.

  They ended up in a place named Niko’s Taverna, which got a nice rating on Yelp, including one five-star review that said, Got engaged here to my sweet Tony, who is the love of my life!!!!!!! The souvlaki was good.

  The place was crowded, but they had a free table for two at the far corner, and the window faced the bustling street. It was noisy inside, the sound of dozens of people talking, clanking kitchen utensils, and the background music of a cheerful bouzouki-played tune from overhead speakers.

  Their waiter was a chubby man with gray hair, a thick mustache, and a wide grin. He suggested they try the “Niko couple special,” which was an assortment of small dishes, enough for two people. Despite not being a couple, they quickly agreed it sounded perfect and ordered it. Tatum also ordered a glass of ouzo for himself.

  “The music is driving me insane,” Zoe said.

  “I think it’s nice.” Tatum grinned. “Very atmospheric.”

  Zoe shook her head. They remained silent for a while. The music played on. At a nearby table, a woman laughed, way too loud, sounding a bit like a hyena. On the other side of the restaurant, a group sang “Happy Birthday,” the song clashing with the music. Tatum hoped the food would be worth it.

  “How’s Marvin?” Zoe asked.

  Tatum sighed. His grandfather had sent him a cryptic text an hour before. Do we have a hacksaw? Though Tatum did have one, he responded reflexively that they didn’t, only to get a second text—Liar, I found it. Feeling that mild panic that always accompanied interactions with his grandfather, he asked carefully what Marvin was doing with a hacksaw. His grandfather didn’t reply, nor did he answer Tatum’s three phone calls. Tatum still debated with himself whether to ask the neighbor to make sure Marvin hadn’t sawed off his own hand by mistake.

  “He’s fine,” he said. “Keeping himself busy. He has a smutty book club that meets twice a week, mostly in my apartment. Him and about a dozen women. He’s also trying to learn to play the harmonica, which I suspect he’s doing to scare the cat. Oh, and he’s practicing tai chi.”

  “Tai chi is a good idea,” Zoe said. “It’s really good exercise, and it’s very meditative.”

  “Not the way he does it,” Tatum muttered. Marvin did tai chi as if he were Bruce Lee fighting a hoard of nunchaku-wielding villains. “Did you ever do tai chi?”

  “No, but Andrea had a phase. She did it every morning for a whole year.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s fine. My mom is probably driving her insane.”

  Tatum nodded. That pretty much covered their non-work-related life.

  He knew that Zoe would eventually use the lull in conversation to start talking about the case. He preferred to nudge the conversation away from the topic. For one, Zoe’s preoccupation with Rod Glover had been bordering on obsession in the past week. She spent nearly every waking hour thinking about the killer, analyzing his past behavior, trying to anticipate his actions. She was getting more frantic every day, as the deadline of their return to Quantico loomed closer. And besides, talking about murders tended to mess up his appetite.

  “So what do you think of Detective O’Donnell?” he asked.

  “She seems capable. But she doesn’t like me,” Zoe said.

  “Why do you say that? She seemed interested in your opinions.”

  “She is very impatient when I talk to her. She interrupted me several times and sounded really annoyed whenever I expressed an opinion.”

  “I think that’s just her style. She did the same with me.”

  “Well, her style makes me think she doesn’t like me.” Zoe shrugged.

  Tatum was about to ask another question, when their waiter showed up, balancing a dozen plates on his arms with no tray, a stunt that seemed dangerous in the crowded restaurant. Just one wrong move, and an innocent diner would end up with a bowl of tzatziki upturned on his head. Their table was small, and it took a certain amount of Tetris-related knowledge to get all the plates onto it. While he did it, the waiter announced the dishes he was putting down. “Taramosalata, it’s fish roe. These here are artichokes with potato and lemon. Stuffed grape leaves with yogurt . . .” On and on the list went until the table was completely covered, and the waiter left.

  Zoe seemed overwhelmed. She always gave a lot of thought to the way she ate her food, what to eat first, and which portions to combine together in a single bite. It seemed like the amount of possibilities momentarily short-circuited her brain functions.

  Tatum stuck his fork in one of the stuffed grape leaves and took a bite.

  They said smells could trigger memories, but Tatum didn’t know tastes could do the same. All of a sudden he was back in Wickenburg, sitting at the table, his mother trying to teach him yet again how to hold a knife, her tone exasperated, while his dad told her to “leave the kid alone.”

  “My mom made stuffed grape leaves just like these,” he said, his mouth half-full.

  Zoe had managed to compute herself out of her dilemma and now dipped a piece of roasted cauliflower in the bowl of tzatziki. “I didn’t know your mother was Greek.”

  “She wasn’t, but she liked trying new recipes. She had a shelf in the kitchen with dozens of cookbooks.” Tatum smiled. “They had these amazing pictures, and I used to look through them, imagining what they’d taste like.”

  “That was probably nice.”

  Tatum snorted. “Not to a kid. Most of my friends would have steak and fries for dinner. We’d have Peking duck or falafel. I used to beg my mom to make something normal for a change.”

  Zoe combined a sliced tomato and a piece of artichoke on her fork with the concentration of a nuclear physicist handling uranium. “Kids have almost three times as many taste buds as adults, so they experience taste differently and prefer simpler tastes.”

  Tatum smiled. “Whatever. I just wanted some fries.”

  Zoe closed her eyes as she took the bite, breathing through her nose. Tatum sipped from his ouzo and looked at her, for a moment unable to pull his gaze away. When her eyes were open, Zoe always seemed like a deadly predator, poised to pounce. But when she shut them, her entire face suddenly became so delicate, almost like a porcelain doll.

  “How was the food at your grandparents’ home?” she asked.

  Tatum’s smile wavered. “Well, it should have made me happy. Mashed potatoes, roast beef, hamburger,
fries. My grandma bought vanilla ice cream for me every weekend because she knew it was my favorite. Of course, being a little asshole, I responded by telling her she cooked like shit and that my mom used to cook much better.”

  “Well, you lost your parents. You were probably struggling.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t say it’s an excuse. But you shouldn’t feel guilty about it.”

  “Who says I’m feeling guilty?” Tatum asked, his tone becoming raw, angry. “And what if I am?” He picked up his fork, noticed that his hand trembled, and put it down. Then he flattened his palm on the table in embarrassment.

  She gawked at him in surprise. Then she put her own hand on his. Her skin was warm and dry, and its touch made the trembling subside. “You should eat the artichokes. They’re really good.”

  Tatum blinked and stared at the plate. One single artichoke piece lay on the plate, the rest already eaten by Zoe, apparently. “I’m not really hungry, thanks.”

  “You should try them,” Zoe said, her voice tense. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  “Okay.” He picked up his fork and stuck it in the remaining artichoke.

  “With the tzatziki. It’s the best with the tzatziki.” She pointed at the bowl, as if she doubted his ability to discern what she was talking about. “Just dip it.”

  He dipped the artichoke in the tzatziki and put it in his mouth obediently. “It’s good.”

  She seemed to relax as he chewed. He had to smile. He swallowed the artichoke, which really was very nice.

  “I used to say horrible things to my mom when I was a teenager,” Zoe said after a moment. She speared a roasted eggplant. “Never to my dad. Just my mom. We used to get into these long screaming arguments. My dad would work, and Andrea would hide in her room, and we would just . . .” She shook her head.

  “What did you argue about?” Tatum asked. He dipped a piece of bread in the tzatziki distractedly. Zoe almost never talked about her parents.

  “Oh, everything. My choices of clothes, the books I read, the shows I watched, why I didn’t go out more . . . she’d start every discussion in this really delicate tone of voice.” Zoe clutched her fork hard, eyes narrowing. “Ugh, just thinking of it now . . . ‘Zoe, why won’t you put that book down and go meet a friend?’” She said the last sentence in a sweet, high, tilted tone.

  “Most parents like it when kids read books.”

  “I think it was my taste that she wasn’t happy with. Serial killer biographies, books about forensics . . .” Zoe had a distant look in her eyes. “Some steamy romance books too.”

  “Really?”

  She ate the eggplant. “I was still a teenager, you know. Then I’d say something nasty, just to get her to stop talking to me as if I was a moron. And she’d get angry and scream . . .” She twirled the fork in the air. “It all went downhill from there. She made me so furious.”

  “I guess most teenagers get pissed at their parents.”

  “It was more than that. I blamed them. For Glover. For not believing me. For leaving Andrea and me alone that night.”

  When Glover had been Zoe’s neighbor, she’d figured out he was the Maynard serial killer. She told the cops and her parents, and no one believed her. And then, soon after, he came for her. She locked herself with her sister in her room while Glover ranted and screamed through the door, trying to break in. Finally, another neighbor had called the cops, and he’d fled. Tatum couldn’t even guess how that trauma had affected Zoe as she’d grown up.

  Zoe’s voice became silent, almost a whisper, and Tatum leaned in to hear her over the music. “And I blamed them for later.”

  “What happened later?”

  She smiled ruefully. “Nothing. Glover disappeared. And despite what I’d told the cops, no one thought he was the murderer. They had a solid suspect. They figured I just spooked Glover, and he ran. Word got around. It was a small town. I was the crazy girl who chased her neighbor away. Kids started avoiding me at school. I mean, I still had one good friend. But I think her parents told her to stay away from me or something.”

  She bit her lip, her eyes far away. Tatum’s heart squeezed.

  “So anyway, I blamed my parents for all that,” Zoe said, her voice much louder. She shook her head. “Teenagers, right?”

  “Yeah,” Tatum said softly. “Teenagers.”

  “You know what I think?” Zoe said.

  “What?”

  “I think I could go for dessert.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The problem with maintaining control was that the pressure kept rising. He’d always known that. The term out of control was misleading. You didn’t run out of control as if it were milk or fuel. Instead, the control you maintained so carefully might shatter under the immense pressure building inside you. People were just walking pressure cookers, and if they didn’t let out some steam occasionally, they exploded.

  Ordinarily, the man in control vented steam while sleeping. But that didn’t happen lately. And he had to admit that some of the pressure had been regulated by those drugs he used to take. And while those things were harmful, and even poisonous, flushing them down the toilet might have been a bit hasty.

  He felt the pressure building. When he talked to people, his skin prickled, and it sometimes seemed like he was seconds away from screaming, or bursting into tears, or even tearing his hair out in clumps. Could people see it building up inside him? Perhaps he gritted his teeth too hard? Or was his skin flushed?

  He couldn’t let this go on. He needed some way to reduce the pressure. And the answer was right there. The calmest he’d ever been was when he’d drunk Catherine’s blood. And didn’t he still have some vials in the fridge?

  They weren’t supposed to be for his own use, but this was an emergency.

  Hurrying to the kitchen, he darted past the guest room. He couldn’t talk to Daniel, not now, not so close to an imminent explosion. First the blood.

  He nearly tore the fridge door open and paused, blinking in the light emanating from it. Only one vial left. How?

  Hazy memories came back to him. Throughout the day, he’d drunk four himself. He recalled the sensation: his hand trembling, unscrewing the cap, and drinking it all in three hurried swallows, the salty metal taste feeling sublime. How had he forgotten?

  He reached for the last vial, then froze. This vial was not for him.

  Should he talk to Daniel and tell him they needed more? He could already imagine his friend’s disappointed expression. Daniel would ask him if he finished all the vials already. And what could he say in response?

  He’d have to go get some more on his own. He put on his coat and silently slipped out of the house. Daniel wouldn’t notice anyway; he was used to his frequent trips out.

  Being outside made him feel even worse. Inside, it was his home turf. Out in the street, he was exposed. The lit windows of houses down the street watched him, square yellow eyes in the darkness. His neighbors could be standing behind those windows. They would know something was off with him; they must have seen things that made them wonder. He resisted the impulse to hurry back inside and instead strode down the street, as fast as he could without looking strange. There was a fine line between man-in-a-hurry and man-in-a-panic. He didn’t want to give the people looking at him any reason for suspicion.

  At first, he saw only one person, walking his large menacing dog. But as he got closer to the mall, the streets filled with people. His nostrils flared. He could smell it.

  Blood.

  Every one of those people had, on average, nine to twelve pints of blood. The quantity made him feel dizzy. He imagined fifteen beer bottles in his fridge, all brimming with blood. Of course, that wasn’t practical. He couldn’t really empty a body efficiently. He just needed enough blood to make it a few more days.

  A woman walked past him, reeking of perfume. She tried to mask the scent of blood, like prey had been doing for millions of years. But he wasn’t fooled; he could st
ill easily sniff it underneath. Once you knew how blood smelled, you couldn’t ignore it. It was everywhere. He carefully turned around and began following her. She was walking in high heels, tap-tap-tapping on the sidewalk.

  He tracked her for about five minutes, keeping a distance, his mouth salivating. She glanced back. Her footsteps quickened. Had she noticed him? He panicked and froze in his spot, and she was gone.

  Angry, he whirled around, thinking of returning home, then caught his breath.

  Two teenage girls, no older than fourteen, strolled on the other side of the street. They were chatting, laughing, and he could smell them over the traffic’s stench.

  It smelled better, fresher, purer.

  With a blood so pure, all he’d need would be a few drops a day.

  Katy regretted the chocolate cake she’d had. Sure, Mel had a piece of cake, too, but the way Mel looked, she could afford to eat cake every day. Katy knew she wasn’t that lucky. When she ate cake, it stayed there.

  Besides, it wasn’t even the good kind of chocolate cake. It was too sweet and a little dry, and now she felt nauseated.

  Mel kept talking about the cute waiter at the café. Katy nodded and laughed at the right moments and tried not to throw up.

  “Let’s see if anyone commented on our picture.” Mel took out her phone. They’d posted a selfie of themselves on Mel’s Instagram account, the cakes in the background. In the selfie, the cakes looked good, especially after Mel had applied the Ludwig filter. Mel used the Ludwig filter on everything. She used it as a verb—“I just Ludwiged it,” or “Let’s do some Ludwiging.”

  “Twenty-seven likes,” Mel said, satisfied. “And Pat says she’s jealous, but I told her we’re going, and she said it’s too cold.”

  Katy peered over Mel’s shoulder, already sorry she’d posed for the picture. Taking a selfie with Mel was just another way to underline all of her faults—her weird ears, her chubby cheeks, her big front teeth. Mel was always perfect in photos, Ludwiged or not. And all the Ludwigs in the world couldn’t make Katy as pretty.