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

by Mike Omer

  They sat down, and Zoe put a dollop of the hummus on her plate. She tore off a piece of the pita, dipping it in the hummus thoroughly, and put it in her mouth. It was warm, and the taste—so different from what she was used to—was wholesome and delicious. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then allowed herself a small smile.

  “Good, huh?” Tatum said. He ate a big piece of pita and sipped from his Coke.

  “It’s great.” She nodded. “You say they deliver to Dale City?”

  “Yeah. It really improved the way I feel about living here, I gotta admit.”

  Zoe prepared herself another piece of pita and hummus. This, at least, was something they could talk about without arguing.

  “So,” Tatum said. “Guess where I was for the past two days?”

  “You weren’t here?”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “You don’t want to guess?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I was in Maynard,” Tatum said, sounding like a magician who just announced there was a rabbit in the previously empty hat. It was a tone of voice that anticipated shock or applause.

  “Really,” Zoe said dryly. She wasn’t about to give him any satisfaction, though she was curious.

  “The officer who used to be the lead detective on the serial killer case is now the chief of police,” Tatum said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, you know that alibi that Rod Glover had for the Clara Smith murder? I managed to break it.”

  This time, Zoe could not help letting the surprise widen her eyes. “How?” she demanded. How could he so easily have done what she’d failed to do for years? Had he located a witness who saw Glover leaving the search party? Perhaps there was a man whose body was similar to Glover’s and in the darkness—

  “You were focusing on the wrong profile,” Tatum said. “You should have been profiling the investigators.”

  “What do you mean?” Her palms were shaking. She quickly hid them under the table.

  “The police were desperate to implicate Manny Anderson,” Tatum said. “He had an alibi for Clara’s time of death, so they convinced the ME to rethink her estimated time of death.”

  “And it provided Glover with his alibi,” Zoe said, numb with shock.

  “That’s right.”

  How could she have missed it? She always looked at every angle, searched for every crack, went through every—

  “You couldn’t have figured it out,” Tatum said softly. “Not when you were fourteen.”

  He was right. At fourteen, she would never have even considered the possibility that the cops might mess with the evidence to implicate someone. The thought would have been completely alien to her. Though they angered her and she often thought of them as incompetents, it would never have occurred to her, at fourteen, that they might actually hurt their own investigation that way. It would be years before she would learn anything was possible.

  But when thinking of the Maynard killings, she was always fourteen years old. Always picking at the same ideas, deepening the grooves the thoughts left in her mind.

  “I should have picked up on that,” she said, frustrated. “You have no idea how many times I’ve turned the facts of this case over in my head. It should have been obvious.”

  “If you could have been detached, it would have,” Tatum said. “But you weren’t. This is your childhood, Zoe. The killer nearly got you too. He keeps sending you these envelopes, messing with your mind, scaring you—”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “Aren’t you? Stalked by this guy for years? What do you really feel when you get an envelope from him? Can you really say it doesn’t drag you back all those years?”

  She was silent.

  “And when these same envelopes came up during our investigation, how did you feel? Were you Zoe the forensic psychologist or Zoe the fourteen-year-old high school student?”

  “I was—” She started to answer, then stopped. Thinking back to that moment. Taking the envelopes from the reporter. Feeling the dread sinking in her gut.

  Tatum looked at her, his eyes sad and warm, and she wanted to slap him for his understanding. She wanted him to mock her and berate her and tell her she had been wrong. She turned away.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, her voice choked.

  “In case I wasn’t clear,” Tatum said, “I think you profiled Glover brilliantly all those years ago. And I believe you were brilliant in this case as well. You just made a small mistake.”

  “Small?” Zoe almost snorted.

  “Do you want to give it another try? With what we know now? And without Rod Glover interfering?” Tatum asked. “I mean . . . I know you’re resting, but—”

  “Come on,” Zoe said, standing up. She went to her office room and turned around. She watched Tatum’s eyes shift around as he entered the office and took in the new decor.

  “Holy crap,” he muttered.

  Zoe approached the wall and snapped off one of the taped articles. “Help me take these down,” she said, removing another one. “I want to clear my mind for this.”

  CHAPTER 65

  Zoe’s home office made Tatum feel like he was walking around inside the psychologist’s brain, and it was a mess. He helped her remove all the items related to the Maynard serial killer and to the 2008 Chicago killings. Now they were left with five dead women, three of them embalmed. Zoe began reorganizing the images according to a pattern she somehow deemed helpful, while Tatum went to the kitchen to make some coffee. He made the pot extra strong, knowing this was going to be a long night.

  He returned with the pot and two mugs and poured each of them some coffee. He handed one of the steaming mugs to Zoe, who thanked him distractedly, staring at the whiteboard. Tatum followed her eyes and cataloged the five faces on it. He had personally seen the bodies of two of the victims—Krista Barker, who had been left on the beach, and Lily Ramos, whom they had managed to contact before she died. Seeing their pictures alongside the three other women tugged at Tatum’s emotions. This killer roamed Chicago freely, killing at whim, neither the FBI nor the police managing to stop him. He turned to Zoe, waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, he sighed.

  “Okay, listen,” he said. “This won’t work like that.”

  “What won’t work?” Zoe asked, glancing at him.

  “You’re locked in your own head. You never try and talk it out.”

  “Yes, I do. I talk to you all the time.”

  “Only when you know what you want to say,” Tatum pointed out. “Then, you’re more than happy to lecture me and tell me about your amazing conclusions. But if you’re unsure, you just keep working by yourself.”

  She opened her mouth, her eyes narrowing, then closed it. Tatum folded his arms and waited.

  “Fine,” she finally spat. “What do you want?”

  “Well, you say what you’re thinking about, then I contribute my own thoughts on the matter. Maybe I have a different idea. Then, instead of shooting me down, try going along with what I say, even if it’s dumb. I call it brainstorming.”

  “Don’t patronize me. I know what brainstorming is.”

  Tatum grinned.

  “All right, you start,” Zoe challenged him.

  “You’ve been spending the past few days assuming the killer was Glover, but I think we both agree now that it’s likely there is another killer out there, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think we should start by looking at our existing possible suspects, narrow the pool down. Maybe one of them meets the narrow profile you created.”

  “I don’t think that’s the way to—”

  Tatum raised an eyebrow. “Don’t shoot it down yet,” he said. “Roll with me.”

  “Okay, okay,” Zoe grumbled. “So we’re looking at people who knew Susan Warner, right? We have an ex-boyfriend, a handicapped uncle, some friends from college . . .” A thought occurred to her. “It could, for example, be Daniella’s b
oyfriend, right? What was his name? Ryan.”

  Tatum smiled, enjoying the new spark in her eye. “There you go. Does he fit the profile?”

  “He’s the right age; he has a van. She mentioned that he disappears without telling her where, which might mean he has another place to stay . . . he works as an auto mechanic, which displays a lot of the characteristics we’re looking for. He was in Susan’s apartment. He is a very likely suspect.” She was clearly getting excited.

  “That’s great.” Tatum grinned. “Except he has an alibi.”

  “What alibi?”

  “He was in Venice as an exchange student when all those animals got embalmed and taxidermied.”

  “Oh, right,” Zoe said, slumping, and then she glared at Tatum. “You’ve already thought of all that.”

  “Maybe.” He looked at her innocently. “Still, it’s worth considering other possible suspects, right?”

  “I . . . it’s not a bad idea.”

  He laughed, feeling a surge of warmth for the irate psychologist. “What are your thoughts? Want to share?”

  Her lips moved a bit, no sound emerging, as if she were trying this new concept of conversation and failing at it. Finally, some words emerged. “The killings are all motivated by his fantasy, right? All four recent killings. We can see an arc of improvement in his implementation, though we don’t know what the purpose is yet.”

  “Right,” Tatum agreed. “It looks like he’s creating and playing with human dolls.”

  “Right.” She became silent again.

  Did she think they were done brainstorming? “What is his fantasy, then?” he asked.

  “It looks like some sort of power play, except he already had them tied up . . . and he can’t have sex with them once he embalms them, and that seems like a loss of power, right?”

  “I suppose it is,” Tatum said slowly.

  “So something else motivates him here. What is it?”

  “Maybe he gets turned on by their immobile state and masturbates to it.”

  “No, that’s not it. It doesn’t fit,” Zoe said impatiently and bit her lip.

  Tatum cleared his throat. When this didn’t elicit a reaction, he said, “Brainstorming, remember?”

  Zoe looked at him and rolled her eyes. “Okay. Let’s suppose he is turned on by their immobile state. Why is the flexibility so important? Why does he dress them up in clothes, put jewelry on them? Why not use some other, less complex method of preservation, like freezing them?”

  “Okay, maybe he’s posing them like a certain image or a situation in his mind,” Tatum said.

  “Like what?” Zoe asked. She sounded curious. Good sign.

  “I don’t know. What is he saying in those scenes?”

  “What scenes?”

  “The last two crime scenes? They’re like . . . fragments of a story, right? When you played with dolls as a child, you used to sit Barbie on her chair and put some teacups on the doll table, and voilà, she was having a tea party.”

  “I never had dolls.”

  Tatum raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “I suppose I had some, but I’ve never played with them. I gave them all to Andrea. Did you play with dolls?”

  “Well . . . not dolls, but you know. I had a bunch of Playmobil figures, and I’d act out all sorts of stories. For example, they would fight and shoot each other. Then I’d remove their hair and change it around—”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s pretty much the only detachable thing.”

  “That’s very strange.”

  “Not as strange as a Playmobil figure without the hair. Their heads are hollow, and they look really freaky, and at a certain point you lose all the hair pieces, so you just have a bunch of lobotomized figures—”

  “This isn’t helpful,” Zoe interjected sharply.

  “Anyway, the point I was making is that when you pose those dolls, you’re acting out your own story, right? So what’s the story here?”

  They looked at the pictures. Monique Silva standing on the bridge, hands on the rail, staring at the stream. Krista Barker sitting on the beach, face buried in her hands.

  “They’re sad,” Zoe said.

  “Yeah, Krista is posed like she’s crying.”

  “Why are they sad?”

  “Maybe the killer posed them like that because they’re sad they’re dead,” Tatum suggested.

  “No . . .” Zoe said, shaking her head. “They were missing for a while. You’re right; there’s a whole story here. If they were just sad they’re dead, he’d drop them off as soon as he embalmed them. But he spent a long time with them, and in the end, he dropped them, posing them as if they’re sad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re sad,” Zoe said ponderously, “because he dropped them off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a ring on Krista Barker’s finger,” Zoe said. “An engagement ring.”

  “Well . . . it was a ring.”

  “It was an engagement ring. Susan Warner was found wearing an evening dress, as if she were out on a big date. And then, when he leaves them, they’re sad.”

  “Hang on—”

  “He’s having a relationship with them,” Zoe said. Her eyes focused on Tatum, sparkling. “That’s what this is all about. He is embalming these women so he can have a relationship with them.”

  “What, like a sexual relationship?”

  “Like a full relationship, Tatum. This isn’t about sex. I mean, he has necrophiliac tendencies, sure. But it’s about having someone with him, in his home. This is all about loneliness.”

  “Okay,” Tatum said. Her enthusiasm was not infectious, and he felt mostly disturbed. “So what does this mean?”

  “Well, the killer would be someone who never had a long, successful relationship,” Zoe said. “He’s witnessed other people in love and wants the same. But he can’t manage it himself—”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I would imagine his obsession with total control makes a relationship almost impossible. He’s also erratic, and it’s possible that if the woman is alive, he can’t sexually function.”

  “Okay, so he grabs a woman, strangles her to death . . . why embalm her?”

  “Because he wants a lasting relationship.”

  “That’s crazy logic, but fine. And then what? He puts her in his bed? Does he carry her to the dining room table in the morning? Put her in front of the TV with him? Hold her hand?”

  Zoe nodded slowly. “Pretty much, yes.”

  “Okay,” Tatum said. He began to feel it. “And then he dumps them . . . why?”

  “Because it doesn’t work out.”

  “Come on. Are they having issues?”

  “No. But he stops feeling it, whatever it is. He gets lonely again. Her presence stops reassuring him. The playacting becomes . . . empty.”

  A shiver ran up Tatum’s spine. “So he looks for another one. That’s pretty deranged thinking, Zoe.”

  She shrugged.

  “So how do we use this?” Tatum asked.

  “I don’t know yet. We know how the story ends, right? The killer presumably breaks up with the woman, leaves her somewhere, poses her as if she’s heartbroken.”

  “Corniest serial killer ever.”

  “Sure. How does the story begin?”

  “Well, he finds a prostitute—”

  “That’s not the beginning. That’s like . . . preparation. He doesn’t have full control yet, right? The story starts when he finishes embalming the body.”

  “Okay. So I guess he takes her home—”

  “I’m going to stop you right there, but it’s not because I don’t appreciate your opinion, okay?” Zoe said, trying to smile encouragingly.

  Tatum burst out laughing. “I’m glad to see you don’t want to hurt my feelings.”

  “I just have a . . . knack. I can imagine these things. He finishes embalming her. Now, embalming is a messy business, so I assume he’s taken off
most of her clothes first. Remember Lily’s body? There was blood all over her neck, but her shirt was mostly clean.”

  “Okay, so he cleans them up and dresses them. He didn’t clean Lily up.”

  “No, he didn’t have time, and he was panicking. He wasn’t thinking straight. But with the other victims, I think you’re right. He cleans them up, dresses them . . .” She stopped, staring at the pictures.

  “What is it?”

  “He doesn’t dress them in their own clothing. He doesn’t want to be in a relationship with a prostitute. He would dress them up in new clothing.”

  “Okay, I guess that makes sense,” Tatum said. “So he bought the clothing beforehand . . .”

  “Their clothing fits, Tatum. All of them.”

  “So?”

  “How did he know what to buy?”

  “They’re all thin girls. I mean, he probably—”

  “But Krista Barker was much taller than Monique Silva. And Lily wasn’t as thin as them. And these aren’t cheap one-size-fits-all clothes. With Susan Warner there was no issue—he had her entire wardrobe at his disposal, since he killed her at home. But the prostitutes only had what they were wearing.”

  “You’re saying he took them shopping,” Tatum said slowly.

  Zoe nodded. “Before he killed them, when they still thought he was a client. He probably told them he wanted to dress them up nicely for their night. And then he took them somewhere—”

  “A shopping mall.”

  “Probably.”

  “All right.” Tatum smiled. He sat down at her laptop and opened the browser.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We know where he picked up Lily, right? At the corner of Clark and Grand, at River North.” He opened up Google Maps and found it.

  “Yeah.”

  “And we know he took Lily to Huron Street, somewhere . . . here.” Tatum pointed at a segment of Huron Street on the map. “He would have taken Lily somewhere in the route between those two locations, right? Either that or a place near where he killed her.”

  “You can’t be sure,” Zoe said. “He may have a shop he prefers. Somewhere that’s halfway across Chicago.”

  “That’s true. But I can guess, right? If it’s halfway across Chicago, we have nothing. But if it’s on this route . . . we have a finite number of malls.”