Thicker than Blood (Zoe Bentley Mystery)

by Mike Omer

  The real story was the Lamb case. Deep in his heart, he’d known it even before this phone call. And now he needed it. But if he just offered to trade stories, Nick would sniff Harry’s desperation.

  Instead, he strode into their editor’s office, closing the door behind him.

  Daniel McGrath sat behind his desk, frowning at his monitor. He glanced at Harry briefly, then turned back to whatever he was reading. “What, Harry? I’m busy.”

  “I figured the cocaine bust could use a journalist with a bit more experience in the drug cartels.”

  Daniel blinked in surprise, turning his full attention to Harry. “What are you talking about? You were positively thrilled to write about it just an hour ago.”

  “I was willing to do it, sure. But—”

  “You stood here and repeatedly said, ‘Who da man.’”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “You said it four times. I counted.”

  “I think Nick should do it.”

  “Just last week you told me Nick’s style was . . . let me see if I can quote you accurately: ‘The boring drone of a fourth-grade history teacher.’”

  “I may have been a bit harsh. Nick’s great. He should definitely get this important story.”

  “What’s your angle, Harry?”

  “No angle.”

  “Nick is working on the Lamb story. Do you want the Lamb story?”

  “The Lamb story is old news. This is the big item of tomorrow.”

  Daniel leaned back in his chair. “So you want the Lamb story.”

  “I want what’s best for the team. Remember the email from our wise and generous boss, about teamwork?”

  “Vaguely. Is it the one where he said we won’t be getting raises this year?”

  “I care about teamwork. I scrub your back, you scrub mine.”

  “That phrase isn’t about teamwork. It’s about exchanging favors. Not the same thing.”

  “Fine! Sometimes I scrub both our backs. It’s a team—why not all of us scrub each other’s backs? Me, you, Nick. Get some lather on our hands, scrub each other real hard.”

  “I’m getting uncomfortable with this metaphor.”

  “Teamwork! It includes everyone. We can invite Albert, from accounting, scrub his back too.”

  “Oh god.”

  “Not just the backs. There are other parts it’s hard to reach in the shower. We can scrub each other’s—”

  “Fine! If Nick wants to exchange stories, I don’t have a problem with it, okay? Just shut up about this communal shower we’re all having. I have a very graphic imagination. I feel like I need to bleach my brain.”

  Harry grinned at him. “Thanks, Daniel, you’re the best.”

  “You’ve ruined showers forever. Get out of my office.”

  Harry left Daniel’s office, took a long breath, and wiped the smile from his face. Then he walked over to Nick Johnson’s desk, muttering curses to himself, loud enough that anyone could hear.

  “Something wrong, Harry-Barry-Garry?” Nick asked. This was the man’s notion of wit. Adding additional rhymes to Harry’s name. Rhymes that literally made no sense. Kids at Harry’s kindergarten had come up with better taunts.

  “I just had a talk with Daniel,” Harry spat. “He said I should give you the cocaine-bust story. I’m supposed to tie up the leftovers of the Lamb story.”

  “Really?” Nick swiveled his chair, grinning. “Did he say why?”

  “He thinks you have more experience.” Harry made a double quotes gesture with his fingers. “We’ll see what he thinks tomorrow when you make a mess of it.”

  Nick snorted. “Whatever. Forward what you have so far. Maybe some of it is barely usable.”

  “Yeah, yeah. And where are we at with the Lamb story?”

  “I have the interview with the father, but it’s done. I already gave it to Daniel. And the detective in charge just sent me a picture of someone they’re looking for. You know the drill: the police are looking for this man, if anyone has information about him, yada yada yada. I’ll forward you the details. There’s a template somewhere. Even you can’t mess this up, Harry-Barry-Larry.”

  “Send me the detective’s contact number too. I might have some follow-up questions.”

  Nick had already turned his back, ignoring him. Harry returned to his seat, his earlier gloating mood replaced with something much better.

  Excitement and anticipation.

  CHAPTER 14

  Tatum sat by the desk at the FBI field office, logged into ViCAP from his laptop, and began reviewing cases that involved blood consumption or any unusual interaction with blood.

  Violent cases with actual blood consumption were few and far between. Tatum first checked the closed cases, reviewing the perpetrators’ identities and the locations of the crimes. He followed up on any case that seemed to be even remotely connected, making calls to the detectives in charge of the case. Several of the apprehended criminals were still incarcerated. Two were dead. But he ended up with four names, though none of them had a last known address in Illinois. He made a note to check the current address of each of those men and see if they would fit as suspects.

  He expanded the search of cases in Chicago, using looser search terms. There were two open cases in Chicago in which the killer wrote messages with the victim’s blood. The cases weren’t linked—the DNA samples and fingerprints definitely pointed to two different men. Tatum rolled his chair out of his own cubicle and drove it Flintstones-style into Zoe’s cubicle.

  Her earphones were plugged in her ears, and he heard the vague sounds of pop music from them. How loud was Zoe playing her abysmal music? His grandma had always warned him that if he listened to his music too loud, it would rip his eardrums to shreds, and her vivid descriptions had managed to instill a slight anxiety in him.

  Zoe chewed her pen, her notebook in front of her. She had kicked her shoes off under her desk and sat cross-legged, her left foot jiggling with the music. She almost looked like a bored teenager, trying to think of her next diary entry. Aside from the horrific photos spread around her, of course. Still, it made Tatum smile.

  She must’ve felt his eyes on her, because she turned her head, her eyes catching his, the teenager look gone in an instant. She removed her earphones. “What?”

  “I talked to Mancuso earlier. She gave us a few more days, and we need to send her daily reports.”

  “Good.” She turned back to the computer, already replacing her earphones.

  Tatum cleared his throat. “I wondered about two cases here. Messages written in the victims’ blood on the wall. What do you think? Is it relevant?”

  She removed the earphones again. “It depends. Unsub beta consumed the victim’s blood. The medical examiner said it had to be done quite vigorously to leave that mark. The question is why.”

  “Because he’s batshit crazy.” He said that mostly to poke the bear. Zoe hated when investigators reduced the actions of murderers to “crazy.”

  She didn’t rise to the bait. “Well, one option is some sort of psychotic disorder that would lead to a temporary loss of control. In that case, anything is possible, not just writing with blood on the wall. His actions would be spurred by hallucinations or delusions that we’d have no way of foretelling.”

  “But you said Glover wouldn’t work with a gibbering madman.”

  “That’s true, but there’s a spectrum, and many people with psychotic disorders function reasonably well in society. We can’t rule it out. But if that’s the case, like I said, there’s no point in looking closely at any particular case, because there might not be any pattern. Previous cases could have involved blood, or cannibalism, or nothing of the sort.”

  “What are the other options?”

  “Paraphilia, focusing on blood.”

  Paraphilia. That was Zoe’s professional way of saying people who get off on really weird kinky shit. Tatum mulled it over. “If it’s paraphilia, it would probably be focused on blood consumption, not messages i
n blood.”

  “I’d say it depends on the message,” Zoe said. “Writing with the victim’s blood could be an earlier fantasy, which had since mutated to blood consumption. But then I’d expect the messages to be sexual, and there would probably be semen at the scene.”

  “Not the case,” Tatum said. “In one instance, the murderer wrote bitch on the wall. In the other, part of a verse from the Bible. And they found no semen in either scene.”

  “Right.” Zoe counted the options on her fingers. She raised a third one. “The third option is named Renfield’s syndrome.”

  “Renfield? He’s the freaky dude from Dracula, right?”

  Zoe’s eyebrows shot up, and Tatum let out a short laugh. “What?” he asked. “Surprised that I read books?”

  “I . . . no, I mean . . .”

  She seemed so flustered that he laughed again. “Don’t worry about it. Okay, so what’s Renfield’s syndrome?”

  “Renfield’s syndrome, or clinical vampirism, is a condition in which the person suffering from it is obsessed with drinking blood, for no other reason than blood consumption. There’s no sexual aspect and no hallucinations or delusions.”

  “So we’re talking about people who just feel like drinking blood. Like what, a culinary choice?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Zoe admitted. “It’s not entirely clear if that’s even a thing. I actually wrote an acquaintance of mine who’s researching it. Hang on, I’ll check to see if he responded.” She opened her email.

  “But if that’s the case, then the messages on the wall aren’t relevant either, right? Because as far as we know, blood wasn’t consumed.”

  She turned her eyes from the screen. “That’s true. There’s no reason for someone suffering from Renfield’s syndrome to write messages on walls with blood. It makes no sense.”

  “So that’s out.”

  “Then those cases probably aren’t related, since those are the possible reasons.” She frowned at the screen, reading an email. “Looks like I have a meeting with a vampire.”

  Tatum was caught off guard. “Wait, what?”

  “A clinical vampire. My acquaintance answered my email. Like I said, he specializes in clinical vampirism. He asked around, and it turns out there’s a community of supposed vampires in Chicago. He organized a meeting with one.”

  “Today?”

  “He said she’d be there until six. Not a lot of time left.”

  “You’re not going alone,” Tatum said, incredulous.

  “She specifically asked I come alone. It’s a public place.”

  “No way. I am not letting you meet a vampire by yourself. That’s seriously horror movie material. What next? Are you going to say we need to split up to cover more ground?”

  “You’re being ridiculous. She’s not really a vampire.”

  “Does she drink human blood?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Yeah, you’re definitely not going alone.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Are you sure this is the place?” Tatum asked, his voice hushed.

  “That’s what my acquaintance said. Richard J. Daley Branch, Chicago Public Library,” Zoe said.

  “Why meet in a library?”

  “I wanted a public place. She suggested meeting here.”

  “What’s wrong with a café?”

  “You know, you weren’t even supposed to come, so I don’t know why you think you can complain about this.” Zoe’s whispers were becoming louder, and an irate reader glanced at them and frowned.

  “Okay, fine. How do we find her here?”

  Zoe shrugged. “There aren’t a lot of people. I’m assuming she would stand out.”

  Tatum shook his head. “We should have brought a wooden stake, like I said,” he whispered as they began walking across the room, between tall shelves full of books.

  He’d had lots of fun on the way, suggesting they stop next to a church to get some holy water, then repeatedly pointing out they were literally going to interview a vampire. Zoe had mostly ignored him.

  Tatum inhaled, enjoying the smell. Libraries had a scent that nothing else did. Was it simply the intermingling smells of old pages, dust, adhesive, and ink? Or did the stories have a scent of their own? If you took papers and book glue and ink and mixed them together, would it smell the same? He was sure it wouldn’t. He turned to ask Zoe what she thought, but she’d drifted away to another aisle.

  He was at the far end of the library when he saw the woman. She stood in an aisle full of particularly old, thick books, thumbing through an enormous tome. She was thin and so pale she was nearly white, her lips as red as . . . well, blood. Her long jet-black hair seemed to shine strangely in the shadowy light. Tatum found himself pausing, hesitant. Though the library was public, this area was as quiet as a tomb, and though he was obviously larger and armed, there was something otherworldly about her.

  He approached her slowly. She gave him a brief glance as he got closer, then returned to her book.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  She raised her eyes but said nothing.

  “Are you Carmela Von Hagen?”

  She frowned. “No.”

  “Oh, right.” Zoe had told him the woman had a weird nickname. What was it? “Um . . . Night Temptress?”

  The woman’s eyes widened in outrage. She marched out of the aisle, half pushing him out of her way. As she left, she muttered, “Can’t go anywhere without a pervert harassing me.”

  Tatum blinked and followed her out of the aisle. He was about to chase after her when Zoe said, “Tatum.”

  He glanced at her. She stood by the librarian’s desk and waved him over. He joined her.

  “I think she just left,” he said.

  “This is her.” Zoe gestured at the librarian behind the desk. Tatum frowned at the woman. She was short, wearing a pair of square eyeglasses, her hair a curly brown. She wore a yellow flower-patterned dress. She pursed her lips, looking at him disapprovingly.

  “You’re Carmela Von Hagen?” he said.

  “Yes,” the librarian piped, her voice a tad high.

  “The Night Temptress?”

  “That’s just my online nickname. I don’t go around calling myself that.” She sniffed and glanced at Zoe. “You were supposed to come alone.”

  “He insisted on coming,” Zoe said. “I think he was worried for my well-being.”

  “What did you think?” the librarian asked him, her voice shrill. “That I would swoop down in the form of a bat and lunge at her throat?”

  “I’m not sure,” Tatum said weakly.

  “Right.” Carmela turned back to Zoe. “Never mind that. Are we doing this?”

  “Doing what?” Tatum asked.

  “Your girlfriend agreed to be my donor,” Carmela said.

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” Zoe hurriedly corrected.

  “Fine, whatever. Sign this.” Carmela put a form in front of Zoe. “This says you are a willing donor.”

  “Hang on, what the hell is going on?” Tatum skimmed the form, incredulous. “You agreed to let this woman drink your blood?”

  “I wouldn’t meet you otherwise,” Carmela said. “Do you think I’d be outing myself to any stranger who comes my way?”

  “You can’t be serious,” Tatum said.

  Zoe read the form, forehead crinkled in concentration, as if she were signing a simple bank statement. “This isn’t a big deal, Tatum. Stop fretting. I want to see how she does it.”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Your boyfriend is a pain in the ass,” Carmela said.

  “I’m not her boyfriend, and she’s not your damn food,” Tatum snapped.

  “It’s safe.” Zoe looked at him in exasperation. “My acquaintance vouched for her.”

  “I can drink your blood, if you prefer.” Carmela scrutinized him as if she were inspecting meat in a butcher’s shop. “Frankly, I’d prefer it.”

  “No one is drinking my blood.”

  Zoe
signed the form. “Okay, I’m ready,” she said.

  “Let’s go to the science fiction aisle,” Carmela suggested. “It’s usually empty around this time of the day.”

  Tatum followed the two women, feeling lost in a surreal dream. The science fiction aisle smelled different than the rest of the library, almost sweaty. The visible book covers displayed spaceships, planets, a red-eyed robot.

  “Are you left handed or right handed?” Carmela asked Zoe.

  “Right handed.”

  “Give me your left hand.” Carmela fished in her purse, retrieving a box of disposable scalpels. She took one out, tearing the sterile wrapping.

  Zoe hesitated for just a fraction, and Tatum immediately stepped forward, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  She shot him a furious glance and gave Carmela her hand. Carmela took it and carefully pricked Zoe’s thumb, making a small incision, about half an inch long. A large drop of blood materialized. Carmela pressed the skin by the thumb, and more blood emerged, starting to trickle. She then bent forward and licked the blood from Zoe’s finger.

  Tatum held his breath, his entire body tense. His right hand was just above his hidden holster, as if he was about to pull the gun and shoot the librarian vampiress. He forced himself to relax, breathing deeply. This weirdo was creepy as hell, but she wasn’t dangerous.

  She pulled away, smacked her lips, and watched Zoe’s thumb as blood emerged a second time. She licked it again, then nodded, satisfied. “Not bad.”

  “The food is to your liking?” Tatum asked derisively.

  “You’d be surprised—some people’s blood tastes like shit,” Carmela said. She retrieved a Band-Aid box and a small bottle of disinfectant from her purse and handed them to Zoe.

  Zoe dabbed the cut with the disinfectant, then pried a single Band-Aid from the box. Her fingers shook as she put it on her thumb. As much as she tried to hide it, she’d been rattled by the eerie experience.

  “Come on,” Carmela said. “I’ve got a job to do.”

  She walked back to the counter, and Tatum followed her, eyeing Zoe worriedly. She was frowning, biting her lip, probably still processing the strange ordeal. Carmela grabbed a pile of books and began scanning them, one at a time.