Thicker than Blood (Zoe Bentley Mystery)

by Mike Omer

  Now, back home after a torturous day, he paced his room like a trapped animal, an ugly feeling in the pit of his stomach. Daniel was angry with him. He didn’t even bother hiding it. He was angry at the loss of control the night before.

  It was like being a child again, lying in his bed after being caught, after his mother cried her eyes out, and he’d promised he’d never ever ever do it again. He’d lie in bed and hear her talk to his dad through the thin walls. Telling him that the teacher called again, that they caught him cutting himself with a pair of dull scissors, or that he’d drawn that painting again, the black and red shapes. His mother would sob, and his dad would try to reassure her, tell her that they’d find a different doctor. Someone who would figure out what the problem was.

  He’d spend the following week knowing his parents were angry with him, walking around the house as quiet as a mouse, sitting silently at school, doing his best not to attract any attention. And the unpleasant guilt and worry gnawed at his gut like a voracious intestinal parasite.

  And now, there it was again. He kept holding his breath and listening. Perhaps he’d hear Daniel talking silently with his father. “Last night he bit that woman like some sort of animal. I don’t know what to do with him.”

  But his father was dead, he reminded himself. And Daniel was his friend.

  In fact, in all the years they’d known each other, Daniel had never been angry at him. He’d always been so understanding, so gentle. Daniel was the only one who was always there for him, happy to talk to him when he was stressed, reassuring him that his thoughts and desires were normal, that everyone had them.

  His friend was changing. It was the tumor. The tumor was changing him.

  He suddenly recalled how angry Daniel had been when he’d seen the name Rod Glover on the news. As if it meant something. Perhaps it did.

  Perhaps that was the tumor’s name.

  No wonder Daniel was acting so differently. Something was devouring him. A ravenous, corrupt tumor. Rod Glover. He imagined the cancer spreading into the brain, destroying it, until all that was left of Daniel was an empty shell, piloted by the tumor.

  And as Daniel’s friend, he had to help in that fight. Help Daniel retain himself.

  He checked the mirror again, took a deep breath, put his mental costume on, his face slackening, a small casual smile on his lips. He entered the kitchen, opened the fridge, took one of the vials. Perhaps something was wrong with the last one. He shook it, then drank it in a quick, hungry gulp.

  Nothing. No momentary relief, no exhilaration.

  Behind him, he heard Daniel step into the kitchen. His friend leaned past him into the fridge, took a beer.

  “I’m sorry for last night,” he told Daniel.

  “Will you stop apologizing about it already?” Daniel growled. “You said you’re sorry ten times.”

  Had he? Maybe he had. “I just don’t want you to be angry at me.”

  “Not everything is about you,” Daniel said, taking a swig from his beer.

  “Then what are you angry about?”

  Daniel shook his head. “Nothing, don’t worry about it. It’s not about you, okay? I’m not angry at all. Everything is just great.”

  “Okay.” He knew better. He knew about Rod Glover. But he didn’t say anything. It might make Daniel feel ashamed.

  “I’m getting worse,” Daniel said. “I thought I’d get better by now, but the pains are worse, and yesterday . . .” He tightened his grip on the beer bottle, and for one fleeting moment it seemed as if he was about to smash it on the counter. But he didn’t. “Never mind.”

  “There are some vials in the fridge.”

  “Thanks, I’ll pass.” Daniel took another swig. “They still haven’t found the body. There was nothing in the evening news. Nothing on any of the usual websites either.”

  “Maybe they found it but haven’t told the press yet.”

  Daniel grunted, unconvinced. “Well, I don’t have the time to wait for them. We need to make the call.”

  The man in control felt a stab of fear. “Do you want me to do it?”

  “No. Someone might recognize your voice. I’ll do it tomorrow, early morning. They already know I’m involved.”

  “Okay.”

  A tiny grim smile stretched Daniel’s lips. “And we’ll have to go hunting again in a few days. Are you ready for that?”

  The man in control nodded. He was more than ready. He needed it. They both did.

  CHAPTER 27

  Wednesday, October 19, 2016

  “Oh, shit,” Zoe muttered as Tatum maneuvered the car into the parking lot of the Kickapoo Woods.

  She counted eleven news vans parked in a row. The gaggle of onlookers surrounding the yellow crime scene tape looked like the crowd at a rock concert, all shoving and jostling each other to get to the front row.

  This crime scene was very far from the relatively private murder of Catherine Lamb.

  The tape was stretched across the paved trail that led down to the river, and it cordoned off a large stretch of the woody area that surrounded the water. Beyond it, Tatum saw uniformed police officers moving slowly through the brush.

  “There’s O’Donnell.” Zoe pointed at the detective, who was getting out of her car.

  O’Donnell motioned them over. There was a section of parking designated for the officers, EMTs, and crime technicians. Tatum parked the car by an ambulance.

  Zoe got out and hunched her shoulders against the morning chill. The air smelled of wet earth and wood, but another odor intermingled with it. A stench of death and rot.

  “Glad you could make it,” O’Donnell said.

  Zoe nodded. “Thanks for calling us.”

  “What do we have?” Tatum asked.

  “Got a call from Officer Ellis, from Chicago South,” O’Donnell said. “A woman named Henrietta Fishburne went missing on Monday night. A patrol officer found her body this morning when he followed up on a call to dispatch about suspicious individuals entering the woods here.”

  “Why did they call you?”

  “The ME saw a similarity between this and the Lamb case and suggested contacting me.”

  “So this Ellis is the detective in charge?” Tatum asked as they reached the crowd surrounding the crime scene tape.

  O’Donnell took point, jostling through the gaggle of onlookers toward the yellow tape. “No, he was the officer who got the missing person report. He kept at it after his shift, found her car in the 147th Street train station’s parking lot, about a mile from here. There were bloodstains near the vehicle, but nothing conclusive. He was on shift again when the body was found and drove straight to the crime scene. There’s a detective from Chicago South in charge here, but it’s up to the brass to figure out who’s leading the investigation.” She shrugged. “For now everyone’s playing nice.”

  Zoe followed O’Donnell and Tatum to the cop who stood by the tape. O’Donnell flashed her badge, which didn’t seem to impress him. She explained who they were, and it turned out he hadn’t been told to expect them. He had to check it out with the detective in charge.

  Zoe scrutinized her surroundings, waiting for the officer to let them enter the crime scene. It seemed like a good place to dump a body. Anyone could drive a few hundred yards into the park, and the foliage was wild, creating a dense hideaway from prying eyes. A killer could just pick his spot, walk ten yards through the bushes and trees, and hide the body. She glimpsed patches of the river between the trees.

  “What river is that?” she asked.

  “It’s the Little Calumet River,” a familiar voice said by her ear. “Fancy that.”

  She turned around and saw the waggling thick eyebrows, and her gut sank.

  “Harry Barry,” she said dryly.

  “Zoe Bentley! What an amazing coincidence. We keep meeting in the strangest places.”

  “It’s not a coincidence. You’re following me everywhere.”

  He widened his eyes, his face twisting in a wounded e
xpression. “Me? I’m not following you anywhere. I live here.”

  “You live in the Kickapoo Woods?”

  “Well, no,” he conceded. “But when I heard a young woman was killed, so soon after the Lamb murder, it made me wonder. After all, with you here, it could mean only one thing.” He mimed with his lips, Serial killer.

  Zoe’s expression remained wooden. “I’m just here as a professional courtesy. As far as I know, this case has no connection to what I’m investigating.”

  “I was just wondering about that. Wasn’t there another murder some years ago by the Little Calumet River?”

  She felt sick. She’d known he’d bring it up. One of the two murders they believed Glover was responsible for in Chicago occurred by the Little Calumet River. She’d told Harry this when he’d written his long article about her, months before. And the obnoxious man forgot nothing.

  “Zoe,” Tatum said. “We can go through.”

  “Don’t write anything without talking to me first,” Zoe said, her teeth clenched. Then, before he could respond, she turned away and crouched under the crime scene tape.

  She signed the crime scene logbook and took a pair of latex gloves that O’Donnell handed to her, sliding them on. Then she followed the detective down the paved trail.

  A young uniformed officer approached them, wearing latex gloves as well. “Are you O’Donnell?” he asked.

  O’Donnell nodded. “That’s right. Ellis, right? Thanks for contacting us.” She introduced them, and Ellis motioned them to follow as he turned toward the trees.

  “You have a positive ID on the victim?” O’Donnell asked as they stepped off the trail and into the brush, leaves and twigs crackling under their feet.

  “We took her fingerprints to verify, but it’s Henrietta Fishburne. She matches the photographs we have of her, and there are two small scars on the left ankle, which match scars that Fishburne got in a bicycle accident as a kid. We didn’t find her bag. No phone either.” He paused and glanced at them. “They told me this might be related to another case. Was there anything in that case that pointed to devil worship?”

  “Devil worship?” Zoe asked, bewildered.

  “Better see for yourselves,” he said grimly and resumed walking.

  A few people were milling around by the trees, all wearing gloves. The river was now in full view in front of them, its green water shimmering in the sunlight, tiny eddies upon its surface. Both banks were lined with trees. A crime scene technician crouched by the muddy bank, placing another evidence marker. There were officers on the opposite bank, too, spread to keep away an enterprising media crew and curious bystanders who were trying to catch a glimpse of the proceedings. The stench of death was much worse as they got closer, and Zoe took short shallow breaths.

  As Zoe moved forward, she got her first glimpse of the body, a dark foot. She took a few more steps, eyes widening in disbelief.

  It was a graphic account of the woman’s last moments, told in violence. She lay naked on her back. Curly hair, spattered in mud and filth. Black bruises on ribs, face, thighs, scraped knees. A knife, stuck deep in her belly. Flies buzzed around the body, and Zoe did her best to avoid looking at the eyes, where she’d glimpsed maggots crawling.

  The body was framed within a large uneven white circle, splotched on the ground, lines crisscrossing it inside. It took Zoe a few moments to realize what it was. A pentagram, drawn in paint on the rough earth.

  She could already feel the toll she would pay later for this glimpse of pain. A dark churn in the back of her mind, trying to get free. She mentally boxed it, shoving it away, and stepped toward the body, focusing. The medical examiner, Dr. Terrel, was crouching by the victim, placing a paper bag over one of her hands, her movements slow and careful, almost gentle.

  Zoe knelt by Terrel, carefully avoiding the white paint on the ground, and scrutinized the body. The killer hadn’t been concerned about covering this one. On the contrary. He’d taken effort in posing her after her death. This didn’t align with the Lamb case. What did?

  The woman’s skin was dark, which made it hard to see the bruises, but they were there. Ligature strangulation, same angle, same width. But was that enough to connect the two cases?

  O’Donnell cleared her throat behind Zoe. “What do we have so far?”

  Terrel didn’t slow down to glance at either of them. “Lividity completely set, but there’s almost no rigor mortis left, so the time of death was probably between twenty-four and thirty-six hours ago. I’ll be able to give you a better estimate once I conclude the autopsy. Lividity patterns indicate the body was moved shortly after death.”

  “Cause of death?” O’Donnell asked.

  Terrel glanced at her, raising a single eyebrow.

  “I won’t quote you on it,” O’Donnell said in a low voice. “Just a hunch.”

  “No way to be sure yet, but I’m guessing the knife was thrust into her belly postmortem,” Terrel said. “Or they did a hell of a cleaning job. You can see the bruising on the neck, indicating ligature strangulation.”

  Zoe checked the knife again. The entry wound was clean, hardly any blood around it. If the victim had been alive when stabbed, the blood would have gushed out. And cleaning it thoroughly during the night would have been difficult. Which meant, like Terrel had said, this wound hadn’t killed the victim.

  She’d probably been strangled to death, just like Catherine.

  “Is that why you called me?” O’Donnell asked. “Because she’d been strangled?”

  Terrel pointed to the victim’s arm, and Zoe leaned to look closely. Two tiny holes punctured the skin. “The other arm has them too,” Terrel said. “Looks like syringe marks. I can’t say for sure it’s the same size; I’ll verify it during the autopsy.”

  Zoe frowned, getting up to look at the other side of the victim’s neck. The skin was ravaged and torn, and a thick trickle of dried blood ran down it. “Any idea what that wound is?” she asked, pointing.

  “From what I could see, it’s a bite mark,” Terrel said. “I’ll get saliva samples from it, compare it to the ones from the previous murder.”

  “Sounds like a form of escalation,” Tatum said. “At first he only used syringes. Now he bites the victim.”

  Zoe frowned. She wasn’t sure about that. “But he still used syringes.”

  “Maybe he stores some of the blood, and that’s what he uses the syringe for,” Tatum suggested. “But the fantasy evolved. He wanted to bite her. Like a predator.”

  Zoe thought about the spattered blood next to the victim’s car, which O’Donnell had mentioned. The body had only two visible deep wounds—the knife and the bite. And the knife was postmortem. “He probably bit her by the car,” she said slowly. “That’s where he attacked her. But that wasn’t the plan.”

  “Who said there was a plan?” O’Donnell asked.

  Zoe gestured at the image on the ground. “This wasn’t easy to draw, and there’s a lot of paint here. They brought it with them. Took the time to do it for some reason. There was a plan here, an agenda. But something went wrong.” She straightened. “One of them lost control. Bit her.”

  “I can see another loss of control here,” Tatum said darkly, gesturing at the victim’s bruised ribs. “I’ve seen marks like these before. Someone kicked her when she was down.”

  Zoe nodded. “That’s a clear sign of anger.”

  “Or domination,” O’Donnell suggested. “A show of force.”

  “No,” Tatum and Zoe said at once. Zoe glanced at Tatum and nodded at him. You go.

  Tatum cleared his throat. “Offenders who rape and murder for power or domination are called power-assertive offenders. They typically plan to rape the victim, and the actual murder is an accident. This murder was definitely planned. They brought the paint and the syringe. And then they . . .” He frowned. “Hang on. We assume they attacked her in the train station’s parking lot Monday night, right?”

  “That sounds like a logical assumption,” O’Donn
ell said.

  “They probably killed her and drove here to dump the body.”

  “Most likely so they could pose her like this, without the train station’s security seeing them,” Zoe said.

  “Then who are the suspicious individuals that our caller saw?” Tatum asked. “The person who called dispatch to tell them about suspicious individuals called this morning, not last night.”

  “Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” O’Donnell suggested. “He saw a bunch of teenagers going into the park to party and decided to do his civic duty and ruin their fun.”

  “Uh-huh.” Tatum peered at her dubiously. “Let’s check.” He stepped away, pulling out his phone.

  “Having paint in their car doesn’t mean they planned all this. It doesn’t mean they had an agenda,” O’Donnell told Zoe. “I once had a can of paint in my trunk for two months. But I had no nefarious agenda except painting my living room.”

  Zoe felt frustrated. The smell of the body, strong even in the open air, made her sick, and the constant pounding in her skull was impossible to ignore. She bit down a sharp response and turned to look at the river’s murky water until she was calm enough to answer. “Anything is possible,” she said. “Our job, as profilers, is to point out what’s likely. Like Dr. Terrel astutely noticed, there is a lot of similarity between this murder and Catherine Lamb’s murder. I think this murder was planned, but they deviated from the original plan. And I think Glover and his partner from the previous murder killed this woman as well.”

  “Fine,” O’Donnell said. “Then what’s with the pentagram and the knife? From what you told me, it doesn’t fit in anywhere.”

  It was true. She’d called it a plan, but a plan for what? This fit with neither of the men’s profiles. She shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s something we’re still missing.”

  “Zoe.” Tatum walked over and handed her his phone. “I just got dispatch to send me the recording of the phone call. Listen to it.”