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

by Mike Omer

  “You practically bit my head off when I said I don’t agree with you.”

  “I just said you’re entitled to your own opinion. Aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I mean, your tone was—”

  “Look, I’m sorry I hurt your sensitive feelings. There was another dead woman in that alley, and every moment we dawdle increases the danger of another killing. This is what I’m focusing on right now.”

  “Me too. You know, I’m part of the BAU just like you. I’m not just a pretty face in a suit. I have good instincts and experience.”

  “You’re not wearing a suit,” Zoe remarked.

  “I was speaking figuratively,” he said, his eyes flicking downward, as if to stress the fact that compared to her, he was in very formal clothing.

  She wasn’t sure what he wanted—an apology? She wasn’t about to apologize for doing her job. She decided to do the next best thing: change the subject. “Are you unhappy with your new position in the BAU?” she asked, her voice soft, placating.

  He eyed her, frowning. He crumpled the empty Snickers wrapper, his beer bottle still half-full. Amateur. “I don’t know,” he said and sipped from the bottle. “It’s not what I wanted. And I loved LA. But so far it hasn’t been boring.”

  “Why were you . . . promoted?” Zoe asked. She tried to ask delicately, but her voice rose when she said promoted in a way she immediately knew was offensive.

  He grinned at her. “Because I was great. Why else?”

  She raised her eyebrow.

  He sighed. “I was working on a pedophile ring case. We were closing in on one of the main suppliers of content. When we were about to arrest him, he ran.”

  Zoe nodded, saying nothing.

  “I caught up to him and told him to put his hands up. He reached for his shoulder bag, and I shot him.”

  “What was he reaching for?”

  “We can’t be sure, but we think he was reaching for his camera. There were some photos on it, and we think he wanted to delete them. He had no gun in his bag.”

  Zoe thought it over. “Wasn’t the shooting justified? You thought he was reaching for his gun.”

  “What I was thinking is a subject of much controversy. We were alone in an alley. No one saw the shooting. Before the shooting, I’d stated more than once my thoughts about this guy.”

  “Which were?”

  “That I thought he should get the death penalty,” Tatum said, his tone dry.

  “So they think you . . . what? Executed him?”

  “Some people do.” He shrugged. “In general, they weren’t happy with how I handled the case. Too emotional. Some things weren’t according to protocol. And I guess it wasn’t the first time. But my chief also wanted to present this as a win to the press. There was a lot of data in that guy’s home computer, and we managed to take down a lot of suppliers. So they couldn’t really fire me.”

  “They promoted you to work in the BAU instead.”

  He smiled. “You keep saying that word. I don’t think you know what it means.”

  “What word? Promoted?”

  “I was just joking . . . never mind. So what about you? Do you enjoy working in the BAU?”

  “It’s what I always dreamed of doing,” she said.

  “That’s nice. But doesn’t really answer the question.”

  She blinked and looked away. “I don’t really . . . enjoy a lot of things,” she said. “I find them interesting. And I like being busy. But I don’t skip merrily on my way to the office every day.”

  “Well, skipping all the way from Dale City to Quantico sounds like quite a chore.”

  They were silent for a second, and then Tatum said, “You’re a psychologist. You could be helping people or working with kids. Why did you decide to be a forensic psychologist?”

  She broke a piece from her Snickers bar and put it in her mouth, hesitating. “I’m just not . . . I’m not very good with people.”

  She was half expecting him to feign shock, mock her. But he said nothing, just looked at her, his eyes soft.

  She wasn’t sure if she was talking because of the emotional toll of the evening or because Tatum’s presence reassured her somehow. She found herself saying things she had only told Andrea before. “I seem to always say the wrong thing or offend someone. When I practiced counseling—we do it in front of a class—my peers would always say I was cold, too clinical. I knew I’d never be really good at counseling. I’m too insensitive for that.”

  She stopped, looking at the bottle and last bite of her Snickers bar. She ate the final piece of chocolate and then drank the remainder of the bottle, not enjoying them like she’d hoped she would.

  “I don’t think you’re insensitive,” Tatum said, his voice breaking the silence. “I think you’re just very focused.”

  She smiled weakly. “That’s pretty much the same.”

  “No. It isn’t.”

  She looked at him, almost as if for the first time. His smile no longer seemed self-satisfied. It was warm. The blood rushed to her face.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, for what it’s worth, you’re good at what you do. And you help the victims’ relatives and friends get closure. And prevent others from getting hurt. You’re doing good.”

  Zoe nodded. He had a small spot of chocolate by his lips. She was overcome with the image of leaning over and kissing the chocolate off, could imagine his hand on her back, the taste of his tongue, the rough stubble scraping her lips as they kissed.

  “You have some chocolate on your face,” she said.

  He licked it off. “Gone?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I’m really tired. Thanks for dinner. See you tomorrow morning? I’ll ride with you to the station.”

  “Sure,” he said. “What time?”

  “Nine?”

  “You got it.”

  He got up, finished his beer while standing, and walked out, bidding her good night.

  An overactive, vivid imagination. It was her blessing and curse. Her chest and stomach were warm, her head dizzy. She blamed the beer, knowing it wasn’t that. She lay down in bed, her mind finally clear of thoughts of death.

  CHAPTER 41

  “Hello, Mr. Gray?” The voice on the other side of the call was collected and calm. It was the voice of a man whose entire life was in order, where nothing was unpredictable, everything was according to schedule, and each event had a reasonable explanation.

  “That’s right,” Tatum said. Zoe and he had just entered the task force room when his phone rang. He sat down by his desk, plugging in his laptop as he held the phone between his ear and shoulder.

  “This is Dr. Nassar.”

  Tatum took a moment to place the name. “You’re Marvin’s . . . my granddad’s doctor.”

  “That’s right. Your grandfather was here to see me.”

  “Oh, good.” Tatum was pleasantly surprised.

  “Not good, Mr. Gray. Not good at all.”

  Fear clutched at Tatum’s chest. “Is he ill?”

  “I am not at liberty to discuss your grandfather’s medical condition, but I feel that your intervention is required for your grandfather’s health. Apparently, he’s not taking one of the pills I’ve prescribed for him.”

  “It makes his throat itchy.”

  “Instead, he’s taking a pill that someone else prescribed him—”

  Tatum turned his laptop on. “It wasn’t prescribed to him. It was given to him by an eighty-two-year-old woman with a cocaine habit.”

  “His blood pressure is extremely high.” Dr. Nassar’s voice was morphing, becoming less calm. “This can’t go on.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “I told him that this would end in a stroke or a heart attack.”

  “So he’s taking the pill now?” Tatum leaned back, trying to silence the beating of his heart.

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because,” Dr. Nassar said, his voice becoming unhinged, “he said it m
akes his throat itch.”

  Tatum gritted his teeth, swallowing the endless tirade of curses that threatened to spew from his mouth. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “He will die if he doesn’t take his medication.”

  “My grandfather isn’t really worried about dying, but I’ll get some sense into his head.”

  “In all honesty, sir, your grandfather is one of the most frustrating patients I’ve ever had the pleasure of—”

  “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll talk to him.”

  He hung up his phone and counted to ten. Then he counted to thirty-nine, since just counting to ten didn’t do the job. He had to get the point across, but Marvin was a stubborn bastard. Tatum suspected that his grandfather thought he was made of stronger material than most and that things like high blood pressure were problems that weak people endured.

  He googled the symptoms of high blood pressure and read through them. Finally, he found the key to fight Marvin’s mule-like stubbornness. He dialed him.

  “Tatum.” Marvin sounded sleepy. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s past nine in the morning. What are you doing asleep?”

  “It was a late night.” Marvin yawned.

  “I just received a phone call from your doctor.”

  “He’s a very nice man, Tatum, but very uptight. He can get really worked up over nothing.”

  “He’s worried about your high blood pressure.”

  “I told him I feel fine, Tatum. Really, never better. And I stopped taking Jenna’s green pills like he told me to. But really, his blue pill makes my throat itchy.”

  “So you feel fine?”

  “Totally fine, Tatum. A bit of a hangover, and your cat attacked me again, but other than that—”

  “No chest pain?”

  “No, don’t worry. I’m as healthy as a mule.”

  “No vision problems?”

  “I told you, Tatum, I’m fine. There’s really no—”

  “No erectile dysfunction?”

  There was a moment of silence. “What?” Marvin’s voice sounded much sharper. This woke him up.

  “Dr. Nassar said that one of the symptoms of high blood pressure is erectile dysfunction. But you’re feeling fine, right?”

  “I . . . what exactly did he say about the symptoms?”

  “Apparently, the arteries become hard and narrow,” Tatum said, reading the info on the screen, “and that limits the blood flow. So you get less flow to the penis. I mean . . . that’s what it says here online. Do you want me to send you a link? There’s a diagram.”

  There was some disgruntled muttering on the other side of the call.

  “Maybe if you drink some tea with honey after you take the blue pill, your throat won’t itch as much,” Tatum said brightly.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s worth a try, right?”

  “You’re a pain in the ass, Tatum.”

  “Have a nice day, Marvin. I gotta go.” Grinning, Tatum hung up the phone. He checked his email and realized that Dana had forwarded a message from the morgue. The autopsy of Lily Ramos was scheduled for that morning. He glanced at his watch. It was about to start in less than an hour.

  CHAPTER 42

  Zoe sipped from her third cup of coffee that morning, the lingering headache in the back of her skull kept at bay with the combined efforts of caffeine and Tylenol. She had managed to fall asleep slightly after three and woke up less than five hours later. She was grumpy and tense, feeling like an overstretched rubber band, ready to snap at any moment.

  “Zoe,” Tatum said behind her. “I’m joining Dana to observe the autopsy. Want to come?”

  “No. I have too much to process here. You’ll fill me in later?”

  “Sure.”

  He left. The task force room was empty, and it occurred to her it was the first time this had happened since she’d arrived. Zoe had gotten so used to having her own office in the BAU; she didn’t realize how much she missed the silence. This was how she worked best: no people to interrupt, no distractions, just her and a mountain of evidence and theories.

  She still didn’t have printed pictures of the crime scene, and the squad room’s printer was black and white. She was used to the high-quality printer they had at Quantico, and this irked her. She preferred surrounding herself with images of the crime scene when she worked.

  She opened the email with the images from the alley and looked over them. After going through them several times, she opened a wide shot of the crime scene, displaying the entire body lying on the alley floor. She then opened a close-up of the slashed throat and positioned both images side by side. Looking at the close-up carefully, she could see a brownish-blue bruise on the neck’s side. Then she looked through the previous case files, selected a few images from each of the previous crime scenes, and stood up, thinking.

  Her desk was positioned in the room’s corner, and she had a wall to her right, another in front of her. She tacked the images to the two walls, Susan Warner and Monique Silva in front of her, Krista Barker to her right. Satisfied, she rolled her chair backward to inspect her handiwork. And the prize for the most morbid workspace decoration ever goes to . . . Zoe Bentley. All she needed was a dead potted plant on her table, and everyone in the Chicago PD would think she was a lunatic.

  A new email popped up in her inbox. She didn’t recognize the sender, but it was from a Chicago PD email address. It was a reply to Martinez’s request for the recording of the conversation from the night before. The email had the sound file attached as well as the details of the call—phone number, start time and end time of the conversation, and some technical details that meant nothing to her. She played the call.

  Listening to the conversation made her sick. The adrenaline she’d felt yesterday, the desire to help this girl, the hope that they’d manage to get her out alive—those were all gone. This was a conversation with a helpless, terrified, gagged girl who was going to die horribly very soon. It went on and on, the girl’s muffled cries, trying to point the detectives to the right address. Zoe wanted to yell at the recorded Martinez, “It’s Huron Street, damn it. Get to Huron Street.” By the time she got to the end of the call, Zoe was clenching her fists tight, anticipating and dreading the hysterical muffled screaming. She took a long breath and looked at the sound file length. Fourteen minutes and thirty-four seconds. It felt like ten hours.

  Zoe picked up a pen and played the sound file a second time. As it played, she jotted down several time stamps. The first was 01:43. Mel asked Lily if she could describe the man who had taken her. A completely inane request, since the woman was gagged. But Lily responded by trying to say something. The gag swallowed her word completely, the tone frustrated, desperate. Just a jumble. Zoe played the sound bite three times. Maybe there was some sort of sound-manipulation algorithm that could extract what she had tried to say.

  The second one, at 02:52, was when Martinez took charge of the call. As he spoke, Lily’s heavy, labored breathing could be heard in the background. But Zoe could also hear the sound of two people talking. They sounded far away and muffled, but she was sure there were two people there. And they seemed completely oblivious to Lily’s screams. Couldn’t they hear her? Or were they simply ignoring her? Was one of them the killer?

  Finally, she jotted down the time stamp when Lily began screaming in panic. Just before that, Martinez had actually said, “Huron,” but Lily hadn’t stopped him. Did they get the street name wrong? Zoe listened to this segment over and over, frowning. Prior to Lily’s frightened screams, there was a slight sound, almost imperceptible. A squeak.

  A door opening.

  Lily had probably stopped paying attention to Martinez because she’d heard the killer coming for her. And then he’d walked in and disconnected the call.

  Zoe played the sound file again, focusing on the sound bite when the two men could be heard. Zoe frowned. She had also heard them several times during the call. Completely apathetic to Lily’s screaming. Th
ey sounded almost casual. She increased the volume and listened a few times more. It sounded like one man asking a question, and the other man giving a lengthy answer. She listened again to the entire file, volume high, flinching when Lily’s screams echoed in the empty room. Nine minutes into the recording, one of the voices changed, while the other stayed the same. The man asking the questions was talking to a third person. Who also completely ignored Lily’s screams. Because, of course, he wasn’t there.

  It was the sound of a talk show.

  She shook her head in disgust. Stupid. Time wasted.

  She focused on the monitor. The bloody throat drew her attention. She frowned, her eyes moving from the cut throat to the bruise on the side.

  Finally, she dialed Tatum.

  “Zoe, we’re in the middle of the autopsy,” he said, sounding cranky.

  “I know. Sorry. Listen, do you know yet if the victim was strangled?”

  “Yeah, the ME says he thinks she was strangled before her throat was cut.”

  “Was that the cause of death?”

  “He thinks so. The victim has hemorrhages in the eyes, which often happens in cases of death by strangulation.”

  “Then why did he cut her throat?”

  “I don’t know, Zoe. Because he’s crazy.”

  “Was the body embalmed?”

  “No, definitely not.”

  That didn’t surprise her. She doubted the killer had had time to embalm the body. “Okay, let me know what else you find.”

  “Right,” Tatum said and hung up.

  Zoe bit her lip, thinking. Could the killer have slashed the woman’s throat postmortem out of rage? It didn’t sound like the kind of action he’d take. What, then?

  She glanced at her phone. She had an idea. She called a second number.

  “Abramson Funeral Home. This is Vernon.”

  “Mr. Abramson, this is Zoe. I was at the funeral home the other day . . .”

  “I remember. How can I help you?”