A Killer's Mind (Zoe Bentley Mystery Book 1)

by Mike Omer

  The detailed profiles Ressler came up with astounded her. What would Ressler say about the Maynard serial killer?

  She wished the Maynard chief of police would ask for the help of an FBI profiler.

  She’d just begun reading about Ressler’s interview with David Berkowitz, who had been nicknamed the “Son of Sam.” Berkowitz had shot multiple men and women, though he targeted women. Zoe was reading the interview summary with morbid fascination when she reached a paragraph that gave her chills. Berkowitz told Ressler that on nights he couldn’t find a victim, he’d go to one of his earlier crime scenes to look at them and masturbate. Ressler pointed out in the book that this was the first time they had actual proof that killers returned to the scene of the crime, as well as an explanation for it.

  She read the paragraph several times, feeling something niggling at her. It was itching in her mind, a sickening feeling that she didn’t want to pinpoint. Instead, she shut the book, shoved it under the bed, and tried to sleep again.

  She might as well have tried to fly. Sleep visited other beds in Maynard that night.

  Her mind kept conjuring that day a month and a half ago.

  What had Rod Glover been doing at Durant Pond? She had asked him that question and never received a straight answer. Instead, he had told her about a fire and how he had saved the life of their secretary. A strange story.

  It occurred to her she hadn’t heard about this fire from anyone else. Maynard was a small town. If someone had a flat tire, half the town would know about it by the end of the day.

  A fire in an office? A woman rescued heroically by her coworker? Even with the murders going on, it would have been mentioned and discussed endlessly.

  And then she thought of other strange stories he had told her about. Hadn’t he once told her he’d been an extra in one of the first episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but they’d cut his sequence out because he had an argument with the producer? And he claimed that he used to be a CIA informant, though he couldn’t tell her anything about it.

  Zoe was not naive. She always assumed he was yanking her chain or stretching the facts a bit. But now, as she thought about those stories, they seemed less like humorous anecdotes and more like lies, serving no purpose.

  She got her notebook and flipped through it until she found what she was looking for. She had photocopied a section from an article about psychopaths, describing the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. This list detailed traits that correlated with psychopathy. Zoe, loving bullet-point lists, had taped the list in her notebook. Third in the list: pathological lying.

  She looked at the rest of the list. Superficial charm—check. He always smiled when he talked to her, often touching her arm in a friendly manner. His endless imitations and corny humor, trying to make her laugh. And it worked, she was embarrassed to admit to herself. She liked him. That was all it took to get on her good side.

  Lack of empathy. She tried to think what that meant. Understanding what other people felt, right? But Rod understood feelings. He would listen to her when she complained about her parents or school, nodding sympathetically. And she could see the care in his eyes. She tried to imagine the eyes of someone who didn’t care. Empty, dead.

  She put the list aside. Rod was a good guy. And of course he understood other people’s feelings; he—

  He had shown zero interest when she spoke of the first murder, immediately trying to make her laugh. She compared that to other people whom she talked about the murder with. Her friends, the sadness and fear on their faces. Mrs. Hernandez, crying as she spoke to the class about it. Teary red faces in the hallways.

  And Rod, making an impression of a Buffy character.

  Psychopaths weren’t zombies. Their eyes still worked. She got out of bed and looked at her reflection in the mirror. How hard would it be to feign caring? She crinkled her eyebrows a bit, looking in the mirror. Her reflection gazed sadly at her. Full of “empathy.”

  How hard would it be to feign caring? Not hard at all, apparently. The look in someone’s eyes meant nothing.

  She slid back into bed, careful not to wake Andrea up. She picked up the list again and scanned it.

  Parasitic lifestyle. She suddenly remembered the dozens of times Rod had dropped by to borrow gardening tools. Or small things like milk or sugar or beer. Often showing up during dinner, commenting about how tasty everything looked, receiving a belated invitation to join them from her parents. She had heard her mother muttering about it more than once, had always assumed she was just petty and cheap.

  Slowly, she began to spot other connections, moments in the past aligning themselves with the list. It was far from a perfect fit. She had no idea if he’d had early behavioral problems or juvenile delinquency. In fact, she didn’t know anything about him beyond the fact that he had moved to Maynard three years before. Moved from where? Why? Did he have a family somewhere? The little things he had told her or her parents all revolved around implausible stories. Suddenly, his past seemed very foggy.

  Still, what she knew began to click.

  Was Rod Glover a psychopath?

  Maybe. But that hardly made him a serial killer. One in every hundred people was a psychopath. A lot of them were mostly harmless.

  She tried to imagine him crouching, waiting for Clara to come closer. With his big toothy smile and his ridiculous acts. His messy hair. Would a serial killer have such messy hair? It felt wrong.

  What had he been doing at Durant Pond that day? Had he come because it was a nice place to stroll or because he was revisiting the scene of the crime? What had he been doing when she’d seen him there?

  She had thought he was peeing.

  She shivered, her fingers clenching into fists. She thought of his fast breathing. She felt bile in her throat. This couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be.

  Except she knew it could. She would have to tell someone.

  CHAPTER 25

  Chicago, Illinois, Wednesday, July 20, 2016

  Zoe sat at her temporary desk, reading the morning news on her laptop, her mouth twisted in distaste. The media was hyping up the serial killer. The involvement of the FBI was mentioned. There was a picture, the fuzzy faces of her and Tatum with Martinez at the crime scene enlarged for the reader’s enjoyment. According to “sources within the police department,” the murderer was probably a white male working in a funeral home.

  She wanted to kill Bernstein. That sack of bloated self-importance had probably called every journalist and blogger in the city. He was probably appearing daily on several news shows, charging them a tidy sum for his “expertise.” She was willing to bet he wouldn’t turn up at the police station again. He had a better-paying, less ego-bruising gig with the media.

  A stack of papers landed on her desk. She raised her eyes to meet Martinez’s face.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A list of reports from the Department of Animal Care and Control,” he said. “Starting July 2014 and ending March 2016. A total of twenty-seven cases. Guess what they all are.”

  “Animal embalming?”

  “Well, the first six were taxidermies. But all twenty-seven cases are from West Pullman. That’s a neighborhood in the southern part of Chicago.”

  “That was probably his initial plan,” Zoe said, leafing through the reports. “To taxidermy his victims.”

  “Why did he change his mind?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a big expert on the difference between taxidermy and embalming,” Zoe said. “It doesn’t say any of those animals were embalmed, though.”

  “Dead cats and dogs usually don’t undergo an autopsy. But you can see varying descriptions of rigidity and unnatural poses, which I am guessing is what happens when you embalm an animal.”

  “Yeah,” Zoe muttered, reading through the report of a dog found lying on its side, dead and rigid as stone. “Were all these animals taken from the same neighborhood?”

  “All the ones whose owners were located.”

 
“Did any of them see who took their pets?”

  “Not in the reports, but Scott and Mel went to start interviewing them all and verify it. You think he lives in West Pullman?”

  “Or used to,” Zoe said. “He was a lot more careless about discarding his animal carcasses than he was about his human victims.”

  “He must have assumed, and rightly so, that Chicago PD wouldn’t start a major hunt for a pet serial killer,” Martinez said.

  Zoe didn’t answer, flipping through the reports. Martinez walked away.

  She opened the browser and did a quick search about taxidermy. She clicked WikiHow, her favorite guide site for dummies. She mostly loved it because of the illustrations, which were sometimes comical and absurd. The “How to Do Taxidermy” page wasn’t as funny as others, though. She quickly learned that taxidermy was vastly different from embalming.

  According to the reports, he had taxidermied six cats and dogs before abandoning the idea. Probably reached the conclusion that it wouldn’t work well with humans. She scribbled the word Methodic on a half sheet of paper on her desk. Then she underscored the phrases Self-tutored and Fast learner she had written on the top of the page two days before.

  She chewed her pen. Did he really abandon the idea? Or did he try it?

  She got up and walked to Martinez. “Say, Lieutenant, did you find a taxidermied body of a young woman sometime between 2014 and 2015?”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  Maybe he tried and failed. “Perhaps just a body of a young woman, missing some large swathes of skin? As if someone had skinned her?”

  Martinez looked ill. “No. I think I would have remembered if that had happened anywhere in Chicago last year.”

  “All right. That’s probably good news.”

  “Yes. I’d definitely file it in the good news section.”

  Zoe returned to her seat and began reordering the reports according to their date. The first few reports were sporadic. Two in July 2014, one in August, two in September, one in October, then the next report was in March, but Zoe guessed there were other animals that had been taken in the interim. There were probably no complaints because people just assumed they had frozen to death when they found them.

  But then in 2015, two pets in April, one in May, two in July . . . one or two pets every month, occasionally skipping one. But there had been five embalmed cats and dogs found in West Pullman in March 2016. He had gotten reckless and desperate. Propelled by a growing need.

  He was anxious to do the real thing.

  According to the estimated time of death, he had killed Susan Warner on April 5, give or take a day. Just a week after the last embalmed pet had been found. Monique Silva had been murdered around the first of July. And Krista Barker had been murdered on July 10 or 11.

  Was he accelerating? She couldn’t be sure; there wasn’t enough data. But if she had to guess . . . she’d say he probably was. Just nine days between the last two murders.

  How long did they have this time? A week? Five days?

  Were they already too late?

  She got up and walked over to Martinez’s desk again. “Listen,” she said. “He might kill again soon. Very soon.”

  Martinez swiveled his chair and looked up at her. “How soon?” he asked.

  “A few days at most.”

  “You think he’ll target prostitutes?”

  “I think they’re the highest-risk group, yes.”

  “We can stake out a few likely areas,” Martinez said after a moment of consideration. “But we frankly have no idea what to look for.”

  “Strong guy, not too intimidating, reasonably good-looking car . . .” Zoe’s voice faded. It was a very weak profile.

  Martinez smiled sadly. “You just described most of the men in the department,” he said.

  Zoe raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t ignore the possibility that it’s a law enforcement officer of some kind,” she said. “But we still don’t have enough to tighten the suspect list further.”

  “Still, you think he might strike again soon . . . I’ll call vice. I know the lieutenant there. She’ll help—she gets things done. Maybe we can make some inquiries, see if anyone went missing. Tell them to keep their eyes open. Any particular area we should focus on?”

  Zoe hesitated. She hadn’t done a thorough geographic profiling of the case yet, but from what she saw, this killer didn’t match the standard patterns. He struck all over Chicago, didn’t focus on a certain area. “I have no idea,” she finally admitted.

  CHAPTER 26

  Tatum rubbed his face and sighed. His head pounded, and when he shut his eyes, he could still see the glare of his monitor etched in his field of vision. He had been reading reports for the past three hours, and he needed some fresh air.

  He was going over burglary reports in West Pullman. Serial killers often started on their path with “fetish burglaries.” They would break into homes of women and steal lingerie, clothes, or other items that sparked their fantasies. It was likely this serial killer had started the same way. With a bit of luck, they would find some fetish burglaries in the crime reports that could shed some light on the identity of the murderer.

  Well . . . more than a bit of luck. West Pullman was a huge neighborhood, sprawling over two beats in district five. Burglaries were a frequent occurrence there, and Tatum got tired of reading about stolen laptops and jewelry. He managed to mark three suspicious reports, two because the list of stolen items included lingerie and one because it was reported by a widower whose dead wife’s jewelry had been stolen. Tatum reasoned that if the killer was turned on by death, stealing a dead woman’s jewelry could be in his list of earlier transgressions.

  They would add these reports to the mounting pile of possible leads. They might find a connection there. Or just background noise. He was beginning to suspect they were chasing their own tails. He wanted a break.

  He backed his chair up a bit, its wheels squeaking on the tiled floor. He looked around the room. Only Zoe and Martinez were sitting at their desks; the rest of the room was empty. Was there a party they hadn’t been invited to? He looked at the faces of the other unpopular kids of the team. Zoe’s face showed no emotion as she stared at her monitor, occasionally hitting a button with one finger. Martinez muttered to himself as he wrote down something on a pad of paper. Tatum assessed the distance between his own desk and Martinez’s. It was about fifteen feet, with no obstacles in the way. He grabbed his desk and, pulling hard, shot his chair across the room in a straight line toward Martinez.

  Wheeeeeeeeee.

  He misjudged his aim a bit and nearly crashed into the neighboring desk, knocking down a wastebasket. Sheepishly, he bent to pick up the discarded papers as Martinez looked at him, one of his serious eyebrows raised.

  “Hey,” Tatum said, straightening up.

  “Everything okay, Agent Gray?” Martinez asked in a tone usually reserved for a principal approaching an unruly student in the schoolyard.

  “Yeah. Didn’t find anything so far. Just some weak leads, nothing concrete,” Tatum said. “What about you? Any news from your detectives?”

  Martinez double-clicked an icon on his desktop, opening a document with a list of names and assignments.

  “Let’s see,” he said. “Scott is talking to people whose animals were embalmed or taxidermied. Dana and Brooks are looking into Susan Warner’s friends and family, following up on our assumption that the killer knew her. Mel is down in Organized Crime, talking to people from vice. Tommy is checking out some security cam feeds of streets near the Ohio Street Beach crime scene, trying to see if he can find a likely candidate for our killer’s car. So far I have no news.”

  “What contacts do you have for Susan Warner?”

  “Her parents, of course. An uncle who lives nearby. One ex-boyfriend, a few friends from art school.”

  “I can go talk to some of them,” Tatum said hopefully.

  Martinez raised an eyebrow. “I think my detectives can handle these intervie
ws, Agent. No need for—”

  “I’m not trying to barge in on the investigation, Martinez.” Tatum raised his hands. “I need to clear my mind a bit, and I’m going insane reading burglary reports.”

  “Okay,” Martinez said, his lip quirking in what could be interpreted as a smile. “You can talk to . . .” He glanced at the screen. “Daniella Ortiz. Another art student, Susan Warner’s friend.”

  “You’re a good man.”

  “I just want you out of my task force room.” The lieutenant grinned.

  Tatum rolled his chair back to his desk and headed for the exit. Then he paused and turned around, approaching Zoe. He glanced at her monitor. She was reading burglary reports as well and showed no signs of boredom or tiredness. She was probably a robot; it would explain everything.

  “I’m going to talk to one of Susan Warner’s friends,” Tatum said. “Want to join me?”

  “Aren’t the detectives doing it?”

  “I’m giving them a helping hand.”

  “We need to go over these reports.”

  “Fine.” He shrugged. “I’ll go alone.” He turned to leave.

  “Wait.” Zoe grabbed her bag and stood up quickly.

  “You were dying to join me—you just wanted to play hard to get,” Tatum said accusingly.

  “That’s not true,” Zoe said, marching out of the room. “I’m driving.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Harry Barry watched the plume of smoke rising from his cigarette. It spread slowly as it intermingled with the general pollution that lingered over Chicago.

  He was leaning against a soot-covered brick wall, wondering if he should smoke two cigarettes or settle on one and go back to work. He was leaning toward a second cigarette.

  Up until a few years before, Harry’s boss, the owner of the Chicago Daily Gazette, had been content to let the smokers that worked for him smoke leaning out of the window, as if they were contemplating suicide in a half-assed manner. But after a litany of complaints by people citing the Chicago Clean Indoor Air Act, Harry’s boss had caved. Harry and his three smoking comrades were told politely to keep their stench far away from the office.