Thicker than Blood (Zoe Bentley Mystery)

by Mike Omer

  “Glover never gave a shit about baseball,” Zoe said in O’Donnell’s ear. “He just gave Swenson what he wanted to hear.”

  “We went to a game together. He seemed like a good guy. Fun to be with. He didn’t give any weird vibes or anything, and I’m a good judge of character.” Swenson’s tone was defensive.

  “Yeah, okay,” O’Donnell said impatiently. “But your friendship didn’t just focus on baseball, did it?”

  “No. We talked about our jobs. About women. I went through an ugly divorce and told him about it. He liked talking about porn.”

  “What kind of porn?”

  “He never got into specifics, and it was all in a sort of cheerful half-kidding sort of manner, you know? But he was interested in stuff that wasn’t the usual internet vanilla.”

  “Was there a reason he talked to you about it?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. It must have come up somehow.” Swenson seemed confused, as if now that he talked about it, he couldn’t fathom how things had taken that turn. “Anyway, we were just joking around. Except a couple of years later, I met a few people online, on the dark web. They were starting a sort of marketplace for porn.”

  “Why would they need to go to the dark web for that?” O’Donnell asked, already knowing the answer.

  Swenson glanced at Nelson, who nodded at him. This was covered by the deal. They wouldn’t be able to charge him with that. “They sold illegal porn. Underage girls, fake snuff, bestiality, some really rough BDSM. People pay a lot of money for that shit. Not me. I’m a vanilla sort of guy.”

  “So you told Glover about it?”

  “I mean, I was sorta joking, you know? We were drinking, and I told him I knew of a place where he could finally find anything for his weirdo fetishes. It’s the kind of thing we’d say to each other.”

  “So you led him to the marketplace?”

  “I first had to teach him all about Tor and bitcoin. He didn’t know anything about it. He was kind of a dinosaur when it came to technology, which I always thought was weird because he worked in tech support. Anyway, he was really into it, so I showed him around a bit. Not just the porn stuff. Like, he told me he had a problem with his passport, that they always gave him a hard time when he went to Canada, so I showed him a place where he could get fake papers. I never used those services, but I knew about them.”

  “That’s how he solidified his fake identity,” Zoe said.

  “What did he check out in the porn marketplace?” O’Donnell asked.

  “I have no idea. It’s not something we talked about, okay? Like, I asked him once, and he just told me he was into videos of my mom. That was the kind of conversations we had.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Nothing. We kept drinking together, occasionally going to a game.”

  “Ask him why there are hardly any photos of him talking to Glover in church,” Zoe said.

  “What about church?” O’Donnell asked. “Did you talk there? Sit next to each other?”

  Swenson shifted uncomfortably. “We both kind of avoided each other in church. Daniel wasn’t the kind of guy I wanted around when listening to a sermon about God, you know?”

  “So when did you notice Glover had a special interest in Catherine Lamb?”

  “Never. I had no idea. Look, that’s all I know about that guy, okay? A couple of months ago he disappeared. I called him a few times, he didn’t answer, and I left it at that.”

  “You didn’t have any contact with him after he left?”

  “Absolutely not. I mean, I would have told you otherwise as soon as I saw his photo in the paper. But I honestly had no idea he was back in Chicago. You can check my phone records or whatever. I’m telling you the truth.”

  “If we find out you were lying, the deal’s off,” O’Donnell pointed out.

  “I know that. I didn’t have anything to do with him.”

  “Let’s talk about Catherine Lamb.”

  A flicker of wariness, and he glanced at Nelson again. “They can’t charge me for the sex thing, right?”

  “Not unless you’re involved with the actual murder,” Nelson said.

  Swenson turned back to O’Donnell. “Three months ago, Catherine and I began having sex.”

  “Who initiated the relationship?”

  “I’d been flirting with her for a while, just for sport, you know? But one day I jokingly said we should meet in a motel. And she said yes.”

  With Swenson, everything was “jokingly.” O’Donnell knew the type all too well. Men who would say anything with a smile, but you knew they always meant every word. They could tell you that you had nice tits, and why didn’t you sit on their lap, and smile all the time, like you were in on the joke. And if you became even slightly hostile, you were the bitch who had no sense of humor. You couldn’t win.

  Why had Catherine fallen for that? It had probably been gradual. It hadn’t happened in a single day. Maybe her way of dealing with Swenson’s “jokes” was convincing herself it was actually some sort of love. Or maybe she felt a need to rebel. Or maybe she was actually attracted to the little goblin. They’d probably never know for sure.

  “But you didn’t always have sex in a motel.”

  “No, we never actually went to a motel. It was always my home.”

  “Where you took videos.”

  “I only do that for fun. And it wasn’t like it was only her, you know? A lot of the women in those videos don’t mind. They find it sexy.”

  Fun, sure. “Then what happened?”

  “I wanted to try some other stuff with her. I mentioned the videos, and she flipped out.” Swenson’s eyes widened; his face looked hurt. “I wasn’t going to show those videos to anyone. They were just for me. I told her I could make a copy for her, but that just upset her more.” He paused.

  O’Donnell didn’t prompt him again. There was the cash, and they both already knew Catherine had given it to him. She waited him out.

  He sighed. “She wanted to buy those videos from me. She said she had cash. I would have said no, except . . .”

  There it was; let’s hear the rationalization.

  “My business was going under. I needed that money. I told her it would be a loan.”

  Of course you did. Asshole. Bastard. O’Donnell suddenly wished she could chuck the whole deal away. He’d given them almost nothing. And they couldn’t even charge him for what he had given them. He was going to get away with it all.

  “Did you still tell her it was a loan when she told you she had no more money? And how come you still had the videos? Wasn’t she buying them from you?”

  “She never told me anything about the money, okay? I just thought she had a bunch of money from her dad or the church or something. And . . . yeah, okay, I kept a copy of the videos. I mean, it was a loan anyway, and she didn’t know I kept them. I wasn’t even going to watch them again.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then Patrick Carpenter called me to say she was dead. He called a lot of people that day, not just me. And yeah, I kinda freaked when I heard about it. I mean, I was sad, sure, but I was worried you guys might get the wrong idea. And when I saw the agent here at the church, looking at the photos, I remembered that I once saw Terrence take a photo of us when we were close. So I went over and told him to delete those photos. But that was it. I never had anything to do with Catherine’s murder. I swear.”

  CHAPTER 64

  Zoe sat in the task force room going through the interview transcript for the tenth time, hoping to spot something they’d missed. O’Donnell and Tatum were still with Swenson, grilling him. Trying to catch him at an inconsistency, at a lie. Searching for any tidbit that would shed light on Glover’s whereabouts. Or Rhea’s.

  Every piece of evidence recovered from Swenson’s house just solidified his testimony. Could he still be unsub beta? Glover’s accomplice?

  She tried to imagine a chain of events that fit the evidence they’d uncovered. Swenson had a short fling with
Catherine, filming her in the process. Meanwhile his obsession about blood consumption grew. He began fantasizing about drinking her blood. Maybe he bit her during sex; Zoe would have to look through the videos. He went off his meds, becoming more and more volatile.

  Then, when Catherine found out about the videos, Swenson began blackmailing her. Eventually she threatened to blow the whistle, and he killed her with Glover, also giving in to his urges and drinking her blood.

  Once he did it the first time, he had to do it again. Already off his meds, he lost himself to his urges. So he worked with Glover, helping him to kill Henrietta. Then Rhea . . .

  It was tenuous. It didn’t work. The evidence didn’t indicate that unsub beta had any sexual interest in Catherine Lamb. The blackmail didn’t fit with the profile of unsub beta either, who wasn’t one to take the initiative. Unsub beta didn’t plan. He followed. He reacted. And, of course, it didn’t explain all the missing pieces. The pentagram and the knife. Glover’s agenda in all this.

  But the thing that struck her the most was that Swenson kept it together throughout the interrogation. Sure, they rattled him, and he was scared, but he didn’t exhibit any behavioral patterns that Zoe would expect from a man going through a psychotic episode. He was lucid and rational.

  Had she been wrong about the whole thing? Could Glover’s relationship with his accomplice be just that—a friendship between two cold-blooded killers?

  No. The evidence didn’t support it, and her gut didn’t support it either. Unsub beta was spiraling out of control.

  Which meant only one thing. Swenson wasn’t the unsub. He wasn’t a killer. And Glover’s accomplice, the real killer, was still out there.

  CHAPTER 65

  “I’m sorry,” the pharmacist said. “I can’t give you antibiotics without a prescription.”

  “It’s for an infection,” he said again, battling the frustration, no, the rage that bubbled up in his gut. He had to stay in control. “From a nasty scratch.”

  “I understand, sir, but I need a prescription.”

  She stared at him strangely. Could she see the real him, beyond his facade of normalcy? Had it emerged through his skin? He reflexively touched his cheek, but it felt the same as always.

  “Do you have something for cancer? Brain cancer?” He wasn’t certain about the exact terminology. Perhaps he should have brought Daniel’s latest test results. But he didn’t even know if Daniel kept them, or where.

  The pharmacist exchanged glances with her coworker. As if he couldn’t see it. As if he didn’t understand what was going on. They thought he was weird. Maybe they knew. Maybe they knew about Catherine, and about the woman in the train station, and about the third one currently in his house.

  “Do you mean pain medication?”

  “No . . . something . . .” Something that would fix the tumor. But that was idiotic; he should have known that. If there had been such a thing, Daniel would have taken it already.

  It was the third pharmacy he’d gone to. Third. And that was after being delayed earlier. He checked the time, and a wave of dizziness made him lean against the counter, faint.

  “Sir, are you okay?”

  How was it possible? Could it really be the afternoon already? He tried to recall the day, remembered bits and pieces. Fragments of conversations. He’d panicked for a while and had been forced to catch his breath in the car. But that had been just ten or twenty minutes, right?

  “Sir?”

  He turned around and left. The man behind him in line seemed to shrink to the side to avoid touching him. They could all see. He’d finally lost control.

  He’d go to a different pharmacy. The pharmacist was just a bitch, like the others. She didn’t want to help him. Daniel had been right: some women were just bitches. They just wanted men to suffer. He’d talk to a male pharmacist next time.

  And then he saw the newspaper stand.

  It was as if someone had punched him in the stomach. There were pictures of that woman on most of them. Rhea Deleon, the headlines called her. And pictures of Daniel.

  But it was the picture of Catherine that really got to him. One of the newspapers had a picture of her on the front page. It wasn’t the usual picture the newspapers used, the pretty one from the picnic. No, they used one when she looked slightly sideways, with a tiny sad smile. A real-life version of the Mona Lisa. His dad had once told him, when he was a child, that the Mona Lisa always seemed to look at you, no matter where you stood. It had scared him back then. And he could see it now.

  Catherine watched him.

  The dark secrets. He knew what they were talking about. Catherine knew about him. About his craving for blood. She would tell everyone all about him. Just like Daniel had said she would.

  That cryptic smile. He knew it all too well. How many times had she smiled like that when he’d talked to her? It was the smile of a person who saw right through all your facades. Saw your twisted, sick true self.

  He stumbled away. Began walking hurriedly back home. All the people he brushed past followed him with their gazes. He wanted to shut his eyes so he couldn’t see them staring. Halfway home he remembered that he had actually driven to the pharmacy, and now he’d left the car in the parking lot.

  It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going back for it. He could walk; his house wasn’t too far anyway.

  It started raining.

  He would get home and have a hot shower. And then maybe later, Daniel and he could watch some TV.

  Except the woman was in the bathroom. And Daniel’s brain had been consumed by a malignant tumor that wanted to infect him as well.

  Was Daniel still in his own body, somewhere? Could he maybe still save him? Daniel had been there for him so many times. He owed it to Daniel to do everything in his power to save him.

  He reached the front door of their house, unlocked it, stepped inside.

  Something was wrong; he could feel it as soon as he closed the door behind him. Daniel waited for him in the kitchen, holding a bottle of beer, smiling warmly.

  “You’re drenched!” Daniel said cheerily. “You must be freezing. Go change—I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  The bathroom door was shut. He stepped toward it, and Daniel stepped into his path.

  “We need to talk. Something happened while you were gone,” Daniel said.

  “What?” His voice was high. Panicky.

  “That woman managed to free herself. She had a knife. I had to take care of it.”

  He pushed Daniel aside, lunged at the door, swung it open.

  The woman lay in the bathtub, motionless, eyes staring at nothing.

  It was then that he finally knew. Daniel was beyond saving. The tumor had consumed him completely. Because Daniel would never have done this to him.

  “I know you’re upset,” the tumor said in a measured tone behind him. “And I promise we’ll find someone else. With even better blood. But first we need to fix this.”

  He had to stay focused. Because the most important thing right now was to stop the tumor from infecting him as well. He saw the scalpel on the floor, bent, and picked it up.

  “See? She had that thing with her. I don’t know how she got it. I think you may have been a bit careless when—”

  He turned around and thrust the scalpel at the tumor. The tumor stepped back, shouting, and the blade nicked its shoulder.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the tumor screamed. “Put that down, you psycho!”

  He swung it in a wild arc, cutting the tumor’s chest. Panic and rage churned in his mind. He was truly out of control now.

  “Jesus,” the tumor blurted, stumbling back. It raised its hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Listen, put the knife down, we can talk about—”

  Another swing. A spurt of blood from the tumor’s hand.

  The tumor turned around and bolted outside.

  He stood there, staring at the open door. The rain had built up to a torrent, water pouring from the sky, crashing on the earth in a
horrendous constant cacophony that matched the noise in his mind. He trembled with fury at the unfairness of it all. They’d been doing so well.

  He shut the door, stumbling to his room, letting the scalpel tumble from his fingers to the floor. A feral, helpless sob escaped his mouth. It had all gone to pieces. He noticed the laptop on his desk. Abchanchu had sent him a message, asking him if he’d gotten what he needed. For a moment he panicked, thinking he was somehow talking about Daniel. About the tumor. How did he know? Did everyone know?

  But then he recalled that chart. Useless now.

  He put on his costume and typed a quick answer. Sure, thanks. Maintain that semblance of control. The costume. The disguise.

  Suddenly, he couldn’t see the point. The woman was gone. Daniel was gone. Everything had gone to hell despite his effort to stay in control.

  Screaming, he tore his laptop from the few wires it was connected to and bashed it over and over on the desk. Storming out to the kitchen, he grabbed the beer bottle that the tumor had left behind and smashed it on the counter, feeling a blaze of pain in his palm as he cut himself. Dripping blood, he went through the house throwing and kicking chairs, books, discarded takeout boxes. He destroyed Daniel’s computer as well, slamming it against the wall repeatedly until the screen was a spiderweb of cracks, the keyboard keys scattered everywhere.

  Breathing hard, he entered the bathroom and touched the woman’s cheek, leaving a red streak of blood on it.

  She was still warm. He touched her neck and felt a weak, but steady, pulse.

  He let out a shuddering, relieved breath. The rain poured on, great cacophonous torrents of water hitting the house’s shuttered windows.

  CHAPTER 66

  “Guess what?” Tatum said, walking into the task force room. “I just talked to Barb.”

  “Who’s Barb?” Zoe asked tiredly.

  “The computer wiz. The one who made the Trojan horse? It turns out that Dracula2 answered in the chat and logged off an hour ago.”