Thicker than Blood (Zoe Bentley Mystery)

by Mike Omer

  O’Donnell glanced at the time. Ten past four. “Any descriptions?”

  “Well, like I said, they wore hoodies, one black, one gray. People only got glimpses through their shades, so most of them didn’t give us a lot more than that. Caucasian, average height. But we have one witness whose house is right across from where they grabbed her. She got a good look at one of them. That’s why I called you.”

  O’Donnell tensed. She already knew what was coming. “What did she say?”

  “She said he was very thin, and pale, and that he seemed a bit familiar. When I pressed her for details it came back to her. She said he was the guy she saw in the newspaper.”

  “Rod Glover.”

  “Listen, I don’t know if it’s him. At first she said she wasn’t sure, he looked kinda different; then she said he had the same look in his eyes, which sounds like bullshit to me. But I thought you should have a word with her.”

  Both of them stopped talking as a uniformed cop strode over to them with an evidence bag in his hand. “Found this under one of the parked cars,” he said.

  Martinez took the bag from him and peered through the translucent plastic. He then showed it to O’Donnell. The bag contained a key chain with several keys.

  “Maybe belonged to the victim,” Martinez said. “We found her handbag; that’s how we have a possible ID. But it had no keys in it.”

  O’Donnell studied the keys closely. One of the keys seemed speckled with reddish-brown dots. “Lieutenant, I think there’s blood on one of the keys.”

  “You’re right.” Martinez turned to the cop. “Put those keys in a paper bag, or it might damage the DNA sample.”

  Another vehicle showed up, the headlights momentarily blinding O’Donnell.

  “Finally,” Martinez said, turning toward the van, which parked on the sidewalk. Crime scene technicians.

  He was about to walk away, and O’Donnell quickly grabbed his arm. “Where’s the witness?”

  She was a middle-aged woman in a turquoise robe, her blonde hair tangled, eyes puffy and red. A white cat sat on her lap, its tail swishing, eyes narrow in pure feline rage. She was petting it distractedly as she talked to O’Donnell, words pouring in a torrent that only stopped for the occasional sob.

  “Maybe I should have shouted at them to stop, but I was afraid. That poor woman—she’s the local vet, you know? She does Dana’s vaccines.”

  “Mrs. Weaver,” O’Donnell said. “You said you saw one of the men.”

  “It was that man from the paper—I’m sure of it. They were so violent! Slamming her head like that, I thought they’d killed her. But they didn’t; she was still struggling when they dragged her off.”

  “You weren’t so sure it was the man from the paper before.”

  “But I’m sure now. I was just confused, you know? He was just a bit thinner and paler. But he had the same eyes. Cold and angry, like a killer’s.”

  O’Donnell had to agree with Martinez. It didn’t sound promising. “Did you get a glimpse of the vehicle? A license plate?”

  “They took her to a black van. I ran for my phone to take a picture. I wish I would have thought of it faster. They took off by the time I got back.”

  “What about the other man? Did you see him?”

  “He had his back to me, and he wore a hoodie, so I couldn’t really see his face. But at one point, he . . . he forced himself on the poor woman, and I could see his cheek and his ear.”

  “What do you mean, he forced himself?”

  Mrs. Weaver shifted uncomfortably, and her cat’s eyes got even angrier. “He . . . I think he kissed her. It was so violent . . . it didn’t even look like kissing. But I was confused, and it was so fast and violent; he was probably just kissing her.”

  There was something there. “What do you mean, it didn’t look like kissing?”

  “He forced himself on her. She was struggling.”

  “But you said it didn’t look like kissing. What did it look like?”

  The woman hesitated. “It looked like he was licking her.”

  O’Donnell leaned forward. “Was she bleeding when he licked her?”

  A small pause. “Yes. She was. Blood ran down her face.”

  “Do you think he may have been licking her blood?”

  Mrs. Weaver’s eyes widened. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s what I thought at first. But that can’t be right. Why would he do that?”

  O’Donnell didn’t answer, feeling sick. If Glover and his partner really abducted Rhea Deleon, the chances that she was still alive were very slim.

  CHAPTER 46

  Everything hurt. Her ribs and legs were bruised after one of the men had kicked and punched her several times. Her throat was raw from screaming into the rag they’d crammed in her mouth. Plastic zip ties bit into her skin, scraping her wrists raw. Worst was her head, which felt as if someone were tightening it in a vise.

  Sounds were warbled, accompanied by constant ringing, and spots danced in front of her eyes. A concussion, no doubt about it.

  Breathing was a problem too. She couldn’t use her mouth, and her right nostril was caked with blood. She breathed through the left nostril, inhaling softly. When she panicked and drew the air in fast, it sent a sharp stab of agony through her skull.

  Everything was hazy; she had trouble recalling what had happened. They’d driven for a while, one of them shouting at the other, a barrage of ignored instructions. At one point, the man had grabbed her around the throat and started squeezing, and after a few seconds of pure terror, she’d drifted away. She could vaguely hear both men arguing through the haze.

  She’d woken up as they’d dragged her out of the back into a dark garage. She’d tried to struggle, and that was when one of them had kicked her several times until she’d curled in a fetal position on the floor. Then they’d lifted her again. Took her here. Tied her to the sink’s drainage pipe.

  She was in a bathroom that smelled vaguely of piss. The floor was spotted by droplets, several of which had soaked into her pants.

  They were still arguing outside.

  “That bitch will end up getting us arrested, you idiot! We need to get rid of her. It’s not too late.”

  “No. She’s the real thing, Daniel. She is! She’ll make everything better. Didn’t you say it yourself? We needed someone pure. She’s pure.”

  “Then we’ll empty her into a damn bucket, and you can have a taste whenever you like.”

  “It doesn’t work when it’s not fresh. You said it yourself.”

  “Don’t tell me what . . . I know what I fucking said, it’s not . . .” The voice rose, the man losing his cool. “We’ll find another one, okay? But we gotta get rid of this one.”

  Rhea didn’t doubt what getting rid of meant. She struggled against the pipe. Maybe she could break it apart. Grab part of it. Hit them when they came in. She had to try. The pipe clunked as she struggled. Come on, you bastard, come on . . .

  The door opened, and one of them stepped in. It was the thin sickly one. His face twisted in fury, spittle at the corner of his mouth. He kicked her in her gut, and she groaned, her breath gone.

  Then the other guy strode inside, pulled the sickly man back.

  “You make any more noise, I’ll kill you,” the sickly man snarled at her.

  “Daniel, don’t. She won’t make any more noise. You see? She’s silent now.” The other man glanced at her. “You’ll be quiet while my friend and I talk, right?”

  She nodded, still trying to catch her breath, doing her best not to throw up into her gag.

  They left, shutting the door behind them. Their voices were low now, or maybe she faded away; she couldn’t be sure. She inhaled the fetid air and sobbed.

  After a while she calmed down. Began to think. That guy, the one named Daniel, he wanted her dead. He was the violent one. The dangerous one. A psycho, a monster.

  But his friend was different. He needed her alive, maybe for ransom. Isn’t that what he said? That she’d make ev
erything better? He was probably talking about money. Maybe they thought her parents were rich. What would happen when they found out that they weren’t?

  But then they said other things. Empty her into a bucket. It doesn’t work when it’s not fresh. What could it all mean?

  The door opened again. The other guy stood in the doorway. He beamed at her.

  “Don’t worry—we won’t hurt you. We need you alive. I’ll get you some food and drink later, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “But you need to stay quiet. If you make any noise, we won’t be able to keep you here. And we’ll have to kill you.” His voice was casual, straightforward. A man stating an unarguable fact.

  Two psychos. Two monsters.

  She tried to talk into her rag, and he shook his head. “Later. We can talk later.”

  Then he crouched by her side and raised his hand. To her horror, she saw he held a small disposable scalpel. She let out a muffled scream, and he instantly put the scalpel against her throat.

  “Remember,” he whispered. “You promised to be quiet. You’ll be quiet, right?”

  She nodded, trembling.

  He sliced the fabric of her right pant leg, exposing her thigh.

  “This will hurt just a bit,” he said. “No screaming.”

  The scalpel plunged through her skin. She tensed, her eyes widening, as the blood ran down her leg.

  And the man put his lips to the cut and sucked.

  CHAPTER 47

  “Rhea’s office is that way,” Tatum said, looking down the street. He held the photos from the crime scene, matching the sunlit, peaceful surroundings with the dark, ominous images of blood, tire markings, scattered possessions. “She was walking home from work.”

  “We don’t know that,” Zoe said, crouching to look at the tire markings on the sidewalk. “She might have been returning from a night out. Two in the morning is an unusual hour to return from work.”

  “Her office has an alarm system, and they checked the logs. The alarm system was turned on at two twenty-nine. Martinez is there now to see if he can figure out why she left so late at night.”

  Zoe stood up. “Look at all those windows,” she said. “Snatching a grown woman here, even in the middle of the night, is . . .”

  “Insane?”

  “Or very desperate.”

  Tatum looked at her worriedly. She had that distant look on her again. Was she storing the details in her mind to relive the event at night?

  It was after two o’clock. They’d gotten the lab report an hour before—the DNA retrieved from the blood on the keys matched the DNA taken from the saliva in the previous murders. It belonged to the unsub. The Rhea Deleon kidnapping case was officially part of their joint investigation.

  “The van came from the direction of her office as well,” Tatum said. “Do you think they were following her?”

  “Maybe,” Zoe said. “But I doubt it. She would have noticed a van driving slowly behind her. No, I think they were on their way somewhere, saw her, and decided to grab her. The unsub was probably driving. I don’t know if Glover realized it was about to happen.”

  “That matches our theory that Glover’s cognitive functions are impaired and that he can’t drive.”

  “It makes sense.” Zoe nodded. “Letting his accomplice take the wheel is a significant yield of control. Not typical for Glover, unless he had no other option.”

  Tatum’s phone rang. He checked the screen, frowned at the number on the display. Not a number he recognized. “Hello?”

  “Agent Gray? Uh . . . this is Damien.”

  “Who?”

  “Peter? From Night Fangs.”

  Oh yeah, the guy who sold fangs. “What is it?”

  “It’s probably nothing, but I was just contacted by that guy I told you about. Dracula2. He’s asking me stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Tatum tuned out the noise of traffic, his entire focus on the phone call.

  “It’s really normal stuff, for vampires. That’s why I thought it was nothing. I mean, there’s no creepy shit about pure blood, or nonconsensual biting, or anything like that. He just wanted to know how much blood he can take from a donor every day. So that’s good, right? I guess he found a willing donor.”

  Jesus Christ. “Did you answer him?”

  “Not yet. I called you first. But he’s still online. And he’s kind of impatient.”

  “Okay, listen, I need you to buy us some time. Ask for details, like how much his donor weighs, what’s her height . . . ask if it’s a woman. Tell him you need to check charts—”

  “There are no charts, dude.”

  “I know that! I don’t care. Just tell him you’re consulting with an expert and that you’ll have an answer in an hour.” He glanced at his watch. It was two thirty. “No! Forty-five minutes.”

  “Uh, okay, but—”

  “It’s important that you talk to him casually.” If this was the unsub, and Tatum was sure it was, he was probably extremely paranoid right now. “Like you always chat online, okay? Don’t ask him for any specific detail—not his name, not who his donor is, nothing.”

  “But what do I tell him in forty-five minutes?” Peter’s voice cracked, sounding panicky.

  “You won’t tell him anything. By that time, we’ll be taking over.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Tatum had a vague idea of what he needed. They would get one of the Chicago field office tech geeks in front of a computer. Then, they would wait for the unsub to log in, at which point the tech geek would start some sort of cyberattack, muttering sentences like, “I’m hacking into the mainframe . . . now,” and “I’ll just reroute the encryptions. He won’t see it coming.” Finally, the tech geek would whirl in his chair and give them an address.

  “It’s not that simple,” the tech geek said.

  The tech geek, whose name was Barb Collier, was a woman in her midtwenties who chewed gum. She occasionally made a small bubble gum balloon and popped it with her sharp fingernail. The chewing and balloon popping were distracting.

  “Listen, Barb,” Tatum said, checking the time for the tenth time. “We have fifteen minutes. A woman’s life depends on it. We need you to trace him.”

  “I can’t do that. No one can do that,” she said. “He’s using a Tor-based browser. The whole point of Tor is that it can’t be traced.”

  “But we’re the FBI,” Tatum said. “We have back doors, right? For emergencies?”

  “No.”

  “What do we have?”

  “Can you get him to open a file?” She made a small balloon and looked at him expectantly.

  Tatum considered it. “What sort of file?”

  She popped the balloon with her fingernail. “Any executable. Any Microsoft Office file. Get him to run a JavaScript or Flash. A PDF file—”

  “I can get him to open a PDF file,” Tatum interrupted.

  “Good. PDF files have a ton of exploits I can use. I can hide a Trojan horse in the file . . . you know what a Trojan horse is, right? It’s a hidden program inside another benign program. Like the Greeks did with the wooden—”

  “I know what a Trojan horse is,” Tatum said. “Vaguely.”

  “So I can hide a Trojan horse in the PDF file. If he opens the file, I’ll gain complete control over his computer. I’ll be able to give you his IP, look through his files, activate his webcam . . . basically, he’ll be toast.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  They browsed online, found a few charts that had to do with blood donations, and pasted them into a document.

  “It doesn’t have to make a lot of sense,” Tatum told her. “But we need to make sure he doesn’t suspect he’s being duped.”

  “Is he technically savvy enough to know PDF files can hide Trojan horses?”

  Tatum considered it. “I’m not sure. He’s using Tor, so that shows some knowledge. But more to the point, it’s likely that he’s very paranoid. So if he feels like something isn’t right, he might concoct a
paranoid delusion that’ll make him unpredictable.”

  “Hey, you’re not paranoid if they’re really chasing you, right?” Barb asked.

  “Trust me, this guy probably is paranoid, no matter what.”

  She prepared what she called the “payload” while chew-chew-chewing her gum to oblivion. Meanwhile, Tatum phoned Peter-call-me-Damien to get his username and password for the forum. It took some very specific threats, which Tatum was totally willing to actually follow up on, before Peter relented. The username was Abchanchu. Tatum also instructed Peter to stay off the forum for the foreseeable future.

  Logging in as Abchanchu, Tatum checked the list of members currently logged on to the forum. Dracula2 was offline. He opened the chat between Abchanchu and Dracula2, skimming it. Dracula2 had told Abchanchu that his donor was female, weighed about 125 pounds, and was five feet, six inches tall. Tatum forwarded this information to Martinez to make sure it matched with Rhea. Then he sent a message with the chart to Dracula2 and wrote, Hey, you can see the recommended amount of donated blood in the attached chart. He fought the urge to ask for details. Who is your donor? or Where do you live? I know a good place to buy syringes. Any unprompted question could spook Dracula2. And he needed him to open the file.

  He checked the online members. Dracula2 was still offline.

  Tatum glanced at the time at the bottom corner of the screen. It was twenty minutes past three. “Come on, you bastard,” he muttered. “Where are you?”

  CHAPTER 49

  Zoe scrutinized the photos on the table. Shots of the street from different angles, a close-up image of a bloodstained lamppost. A handbag discarded on the sidewalk, its contents scattered. A picture of Rhea Deleon from her clinic’s website, smiling at the camera, hugging a large dog.

  She leaned back, her eyes glazing, hardly taking in the other occupants of the room. Martinez in one corner, talking to Captain Bright, both of them hunched over a stack of reports. Agent Valentine pacing the room, talking on the phone. O’Donnell, Koch, and Sykes arguing about their actions going forward. Status reports, instructions, questions. She lowered her eyes, filtered it all out, concentrated.