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

by Mike Omer

  “Almost midnight, I think.”

  “Okay . . .” A pause. “Are you drunk?”

  “No,” Zoe said sadly. “Though that’s not such a bad idea.”

  “What’s going on, Zoe?”

  “I don’t know. I think I just needed to hear your voice.”

  “Okay. It sounds better in the morning.”

  “Ray-Ray, do you remember Rod Glover?”

  There was a moment of silence. “Do I remember the serial killer who nearly murdered us both?” Andrea finally asked. “It sounds familiar.”

  Andrea didn’t remember what Glover had said that night. But she was the only one who’d really believed everything Zoe had said. As a child, she’d quickly gotten over the terrible night they’d spent locked in Zoe’s room with Glover screaming on the other side of the door. She’d had her big sister to protect her; she’d known nothing would happen to her.

  “I think he may be in Chicago.”

  “Did you see him?” Andrea asked, her voice sharp. She was now wide awake.

  “No, but . . . I have reason to suspect it.”

  “Is he killing again?”

  “I think so.”

  Silence. Finally, Andrea asked, “Did you tell the cops?”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Do you want me to fly over?”

  “To Chicago?” Zoe asked in surprise. “No, there’s no need.”

  “Could be a nice vacation,” Andrea said.

  “No . . . it’s okay. But thanks.”

  “All right. Be careful, okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for talking to me.”

  “Good night, Zoe.”

  “Night, Ray-Ray.” She hung up, staring at the ceiling. She hoped she would fall asleep soon.

  CHAPTER 50

  Chicago, Illinois, Friday, July 22, 2016

  “You want to grab some breakfast before going to the station?” Tatum asked. They were on their way from the motel to the police department. Zoe gazed outside the passenger’s side window. She’d been acting subdued all morning. Tatum wasn’t entirely surprised. He wasn’t sure when she had gone to sleep the night before, but it had looked like she’d been planning a late night. She probably hadn’t slept much.

  He had to hand it to her: she worked harder than most agents he had partnered with. And she got results too. The link to Veronika Murray’s murder was a big win for the investigation, and it had earned both of them a measure of respect. Martinez was now actively involving them both in the investigation, his suspicions of the FBI’s nefarious plans laid to rest.

  “Hey,” he said. “Did you hear what I said?”

  They were sitting at a traffic light on Thirty-Seventh Street. Traffic was thick, rows and rows of people on their way to work, participating in mankind’s dumbest dance—rush hour. More than a hundred years before, the German engineer Rudolf Diesel had invented something amazing called the combustion engine—a manmade engine that could propel a wheeled vehicle down a paved road at an incredible speed. And right now, millions of such vehicles were crowding the streets of Chicago, driving at a speed that would embarrass a kid with a tricycle. Poor Rudolf must be turning in his grave. Whatever the German word for grave was. Probably graven, spoken in an angry, curt tone.

  He shook his head, derailing his moronic train of thought. “Zoe,” he said aloud for the third time. “Breakfast, please?”

  She jolted and stared at him in confusion. He was getting worried.

  “Yeah,” she mumbled. “Sure.”

  “Excellent.” He smiled. There was a diner just past the next traffic light, a place called Wilma’s. It had a badly drawn imitation of Wilma Flintstone for a sign. Tatum parked the car, got out, and entered the restaurant. Zoe followed a step behind him, silent and withdrawn.

  The Flintstones theme pretty much ended with the sign outside. The decor inside was pink walls, a black-and-white checkered floor, and peach-colored seats. Tatum hoped the food would be better than the owner’s skill at interior design.

  They sat down, and a waitress approached them with a cheery smile.

  “Hi,” she squawked. “What can I get you?”

  Tatum winced at the high-pitched tone. It really was too early for this helium-inhaling bubble of cheerfulness.

  “Do you have cheese omelets?”

  “Of course. It’s one of the best—”

  “That’s great,” he said hurriedly. “Get me that and some strong coffee.”

  “And what will you be having?” the waitress asked, her supersonic voice aimed at Zoe.

  Zoe gazed at the wall. It almost looked as if she didn’t hear the waitress, but that wasn’t humanly possible.

  “Excuse me? Miss? What will you have? We have pancakes, banana bread, waffles . . .”

  She was about to recite the entire menu. Tatum’s cranium would not be able to withstand it. “She’ll have bacon and eggs,” he said. “Make the bacon extra crispy and the eggs sunny-side up. And strong coffee for her as well.”

  “Okay.” The waitress turned around. Tatum would not have been surprised if she’d hopped to the kitchen to deliver the order. But she just walked. Like a normal person with a normal voice.

  “She’s like an extreme version of Alvin and the Chipmunks,” he said in a low voice.

  Zoe looked at him, though she seemed to be actually looking through him. And through the wall behind him.

  “What’s going on, Zoe?” he asked.

  “I’m just . . . preoccupied,” she said.

  “I can see that,” he said dryly. “Preoccupied with what?”

  “This case,” she said. She bit her lip again. By now he knew she bit her lip when thinking, when she wasn’t sure of something. He decided to give her some time to organize her thoughts.

  The waitress came over with two mugs of coffee and put them on the table, emitting a batlike, high-pitched “Here you go.” Tatum drank from his cup, the coffee banishing the tiredness from his brain and the droopiness from his eyes. Blessed coffee. He had been told by several people that he drank too much coffee, that it wasn’t good for him. As far as he was concerned, those people were just jealous and cranky because they didn’t drink enough coffee.

  Wilma’s apparently had some pretty fast cooks in the kitchen, because their orders were on the table just five minutes later. Tatum took a bite from his cheese omelet, happy to find it was good. Zoe ate as well, slicing large pieces of egg and shoving them into her mouth distractedly.

  “Okay, something’s wrong,” he said, feeling concerned.

  “What?” Zoe asked.

  “The way you eat—usually you treat your food like it’s a miracle sent by God to your plate. Right now, you’re swallowing it like it’s some sort of chore. Talk to me.”

  “There were two murders in 2008 here in Chicago,” she said.

  “Okay, go on, but lower your voice, please.”

  “Both murdered women were found submerged in water, strangled. The murderer was never caught.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I think it’s the same guy.”

  Tatum frowned. “Why?”

  “The locations were public and had large bodies of water involved.”

  “That’s far from enough.”

  “There was . . . I think . . .”

  He leaned forward to hear her better.

  “When I was a . . . young girl, there was a serial killer in my hometown. In Massachusetts.”

  “Okay.”

  “No one was ever convicted. They caught someone, he hanged himself in his cell, and the killings stopped. The Maynard serial killer—that’s what they called him—also had a thing with leaving bodies next to bodies of water.”

  “So you think the same need propelled those killers?”

  “No,” Zoe said. “I think it was the same guy.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Zoe,” Tatum said. “This sounds . . .” He searched for the right word.

  “No, listen. The th
ing is, I had this neighbor who—”

  “It sounds tenuous,” he said. “You’re looking for connections in places that aren’t there.”

  He knew what would come next. She’d explode. She’d yell at him or storm out or become cold and furious.

  To his surprise, her shoulders drooped. “Okay,” she said, her voice small. “Forget it.”

  “Hang on,” he said. “Let’s talk about this. Maybe I don’t see the whole picture. Or maybe you’ve got something there, and we need to talk it out.”

  “No,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  It doesn’t matter?

  “Zoe—”

  “Let’s pay and go,” she said. Her plate was half-full. “It’s getting late.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Zoe trudged behind Tatum to the task force room, dispirited. As soon as she had begun to lay out the reasons why she suspected the killer was Glover, she had realized how dumb it sounded. It was like being a teenager again, trying to convince her mother and the cops. What she knew in her gut to be right came out as a string of dubious connections and half-assed theories once spoken aloud. Because essentially, it all came down to what she felt. When she had decided to break into Glover’s house, it was mostly because she had felt his behavior was strange and suspicious; she hadn’t had any tangible proof. Even after she knew what was in his room, it was still mostly the feeling that the items she found were mementos from victims. And now she felt Glover was telling her, via their one-sided creepy conversation, that he was the killer in Chicago as well.

  But once those feeling were spoken aloud, it was easy to see how she sounded even more questionable than Dr. Bernstein. A fragment of a memory filled her mind, of her standing in the police station in Maynard, doing her best to hold it together, as the officer had told her, “I can think of other brown substances that might soil a pair of underwear.”

  Never again. She had to build a stronger case this time.

  As she passed by the meeting room on their way down the hall, she saw Martinez inside through the half-open door. Peeking in, she saw the entire team sitting around the table.

  “Zoe,” Martinez called, noticing her. “Get in here. It’s a quick status meeting.”

  She called Tatum back and walked into the room, sitting down. Tatum followed her, closing the door behind him.

  “Okay,” Martinez said. “As I was saying, we now have the full autopsy report of Lily Ramos as well as a detailed report of the findings from the crime scene. We have very little to go on. Cause of death is strangulation, and the cut on the throat was performed postmortem. The cut was to the”—Martinez glanced at the paper in his hand—“common carotid artery, and we’ve found that embalmers use this as an entry point for embalming fluid. There were traces of what seems to be embalming fluid near the cut . . . we’ve sent those for testing to verify. The body didn’t have the postmortem sexual intercourse signs that we’ve found so far.”

  Zoe tried to concentrate. That all indicated, as she had previously assumed, that the killer had tried to hurriedly embalm the victim, even skipping his sexual abuse of the body. She was satisfied, knowing they had prevented Lily’s body from being defiled that way.

  Martinez glanced at his paper again. “There were scratches on the victim’s back, which have been attributed to her being dragged into the alley. Also, both of her heels were bruised.”

  “Why?” Dana asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If she was dragged out of a vehicle’s trunk, that could cause it,” Tatum said.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “When people grab bodies, they mostly do so by grabbing under the armpits,” he said. “If the killer got her out of the trunk that way, assuming no one helped him, both her feet would hit the ground forcefully. She was barefoot, so it would cause a bruise.”

  Martinez nodded slowly. “That sounds like a probable explanation,” he said. “Mangled wrists, as you all saw in the crime scene pictures. The victim was probably handcuffed, and she struggled against them. No results from the toxicology tests yet. That’s about it for the autopsy.” He looked around the room. “Questions?”

  A second of silence followed.

  “All right. Let’s talk about the crime scene. Some cigarette butts, a candy wrapper, and a piece of string found at the crime scene, all sent for testing. There were multiple tire marks from vehicles driving in reverse to the opening of the alley, at least two of them recent. The rain was unfortunate, but we still have some decent photos, and we’re trying to match them. Also, once we have a suspect, this will be useful as evidence. Both vehicles have wide tires and are probably vans of some sort. We’re trying to match the tire marks to the vehicles parked nearby, to eliminate them. There was also a smudged footprint—not really useful for the investigation, but again, might be useful for court. Right. Now . . . security cam footage. Tommy?”

  Tommy cleared his throat. His eyes were red rimmed. “We’ve procured some footage from nearby establishments. Nothing in the immediate vicinity of the alley. I’m going over the footage, but without any indication of what I’m looking for, it’s like looking for . . .” He seemed to be searching for a fitting analogy.

  “A needle in a haystack?” Scott suggested.

  “No. If I had a haystack and a needle inside, I’d eventually find it. You just have to be methodical. This is more like finding hay in a haystack . . . except this hay I’m looking for is a bit different, but I don’t know what’s different about it.”

  His brain was probably half-dead from staring at security cam footage for hours.

  Martinez coughed. “An apt description. Right . . . we’re doing a door-to-door investigation of the entire segment of Huron Street where we suspect Lily Ramos was held. Dana?”

  Dana nodded. “The relevant stretch of Huron Street is one point one miles long, and the search is conducted by me and three additional patrol officers. So far, no one has seen anything that pertains to the case. We’ll double back on doors where no one opened, and hopefully we might eventually find the place where Lily was kept. Though it’s like looking for hay in a haystack.”

  Martinez raised an eyebrow. “See that, Tommy? You’ve coined a new phrase. I hope you’re pleased with yourself. Okay. Dr. Bentley, any progress with the profile?”

  The question jolted her. Ever since the reporter had handed her the three envelopes, any attempt at profiling the killer had been forgotten. What was the use of creating a profile when she was almost certain she knew who the murderer was? She just had to tie the case together better. For now, she frowned, trying to remember her last notes.

  “The fact that he decided to practice his preservation techniques on animals, and that he kept at it for a long time, indicates a methodical person. When he decides to pursue his fantasy, he doesn’t improvise. He plans ahead and then executes the plan patiently and carefully. This stems from the leading attribute of his personality . . .” She bit her lip.

  “Which is?” Martinez prompted her after a second.

  “An obsession with control. We can see it in everything he does. His victims are tied up. He preserves them in a way that enables him to pose them however he wants. He chooses high-risk, weak victims and takes them to a location where he has absolute control over them. Even his strangulation method has absolute control. A noose tightened by twisting it from behind, probably while his victims are tied. No messy blood, no physical contact with the victim, no chance for the victim to cry out . . . total control.”

  The room was silent.

  “I believe this is a man who had little to no control over his life as a child. When we finally catch him, we’ll find he had an abusive parent and an unstable childhood. He’s making up for it now.”

  Zoe became silent, thinking over her own words. She’d pegged him completely.

  “All right,” Martinez said. “Now, as most of you know, Dr. Bentley linked those murders to the murder of Veronika Murray in 2014. Dana is in charge of investigatin
g that case with the new facts we have, once she’s done with the door to door. Scott is still in charge of the Susan Warner case, trying to establish suspects from her acquaintances. Tommy is on the security feeds, and Mel is checking the missing prostitutes—”

  “What missing prostitutes?” Tatum asked.

  “Vice informed us of two missing prostitutes since yesterday,” Martinez said. “Tiffany Styles and Amber Dew. We’re trying to establish if they’re really missing. If they are, they might have been our killer’s latest victims. Amber Dew was seen entering a dark Ford Focus, and we’ve alerted dispatch about it.”

  Zoe cleared her throat. “I think it’s unlikely that was him. He’d almost certainly target a different group now that he knows we’re on to his interest in prostitutes—”

  “He doesn’t necessarily know that,” Martinez said. “He might simply think he should watch out for mobile phones in the future. We can’t ignore those leads.”

  “You’re stretched too thin as it is. Don’t underestimate this man’s intelligence. We’re talking about a man who learned how to embalm on his own and is even improvising and refining the technique—”

  “Thank you, Dr. Bentley. I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think we can overlook these cases. Mel, you have your assignment. Anyone who is finished with his task or just bored can help out Tommy since we have . . . how many video hours of security camera feeds in the nearby streets, Tommy?”

  “A bazillion.”

  “There you go. A bazillion hours of security camera feeds. And I have a meeting with the captain and the chief because it’s Friday, another week has passed, and the killer is still out there. See? I get all the real fun.”

  CHAPTER 52

  Harry glanced at the time. It was half past five, and he really had given Zoe Bentley fair warning. He had the article ready; all he had to do was think of a good clickbait headline. “FBI Profiler Gets Chilling Messages at Crime Scenes” or maybe “Three Mysterious Envelopes Left for FBI Profiler, and You Won’t Believe What’s in Them.” With an article like this, the headlines practically wrote themselves. Just publish, watch as the endless online readers flocked to read his article, and enjoy the songs of praise from his editor.