A Killer's Mind (Zoe Bentley Mystery #1)(14)

The airplane’s steady hum vibrated in Zoe’s ear as she flipped through the thin folder in her hand. She wasn’t able to ignore the constant noise, and it made her feel irritable. She suspected that the problem wasn’t really with the engine. She hated to be yanked from what she was doing. There was a certain joy in starting a project and seeing it to completion. She was fascinated with the highway serial killer case. It kept jumping into her thoughts even at home, and she searched for patterns within the crimes, trying to find not one but two profiles for the murderers.

And then Mancuso had called on Saturday night to tell her she had been reassigned. There was a serial killer in Chicago, and the agent in the field wanted her help. While the details they had about the case were intriguing, Zoe had pointed out that the murder rate and the victim count of the highway killings were much higher. Mancuso had agreed with her and then said again that Zoe was going to Chicago.

Mancuso had sent the case file over, and Zoe had left it untouched on her nightstand, intent on getting a bit of rest before her flight. But a nightmare had woken her up after only three hours, and she hadn’t managed to fall back to sleep.

She read the autopsy report of the first victim, Susan Warner. The thing that kept drawing her attention was the decomposing left foot. She had already made some definite assumptions based on that fact. And there was the interesting detail about the mouth . . .

“Working on the plane, huh?” a friendly voice asked.

Zoe shut the folder and looked at her neighbor. He was a middle-aged man with thinning blond hair, a tan that seemed fake, and a you-gotta-love-me smile. He held a small glass of whiskey in his hand, swirling it to melt the one cube of ice. Zoe sighed inwardly, preparing for the arduous task of the small-talk ceremony.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a good way to save time.”

“I’m Earl Havisham.”

“Zoe.”

“I try not to work while traveling,” he said. “It’s a good time to focus on myself, you know?”

Zoe nodded, somehow managing not to comment that he wasn’t focusing on himself right now. “Well, I like to work while traveling,” she said and opened her folder, hoping they were done.

The time of death had been several days before the body was found, but the location it was found in was a public place. What had the killer done with the body during that time span? There was the torn dress that—

“I have a slight fear of flying,” Earl said.

He glanced at her folder’s contents, the top page clearly marked “Autopsy Report.” Annoyed, she shut the folder again.

“That’s why I drink,” Earl continued.

“Okay,” Zoe said. She was done being polite.

“I’m a technical writer for a start-up company in Silicon Valley.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Well . . . not as much as you’d think.”

He sounded completely serious. Was it a subtle display of sarcasm? Didn’t feel like it.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a forensic psychologist.”

“Oh, wow.” His eyes shifted just a bit, his body tensing.

It was a typical reaction to her profession. Some people were cautious with psychologists, feeling they might be analyzed at any moment. And almost everyone was weirded out by the word forensic because it made them think of dead bodies. The combination of the two brought many conversations to a screeching halt—which would be great in this instance.

When people did ask her what that meant, she’d explain that what she mostly did was analyze crimes to try to come up with a profile of the criminal. This helped the investigators narrow their suspect pool from “all the people in the world” down to a tight, manageable group. It was a very careful explanation that avoided the terms serial killers, sex crimes, victim profiles, crime scenes, and other phrases that tended to make people shift uncomfortably in their seats.

“Do you like it?” he finally asked.

“It has its moments.” Her tone was curt and unpleasant, and she gave him a narrow-eyed stare. She had been told several times she had intense eyes. She hoped they would shut him up.

She opened her folder for the third time and thumbed to the second victim. The victim’s mouth had been sewn shut with a black thread. Did that have any significance? Perhaps he’d killed them to—

“So where are you headed once we land?” He leaned toward her, his voice lower.

Zoe shut her folder, her jaw clenched tight.

He kept leaning closer. “I need to go to my company’s branch at the Gogo Building. But I’m not expected there until ten, so—”

“Then maybe you should use that time to find a woman who is interested in hearing about all the times your mother was disappointed in you,” Zoe said. “If you get lucky, she might not notice that wedding ring outline in your pocket . . . nice tan on your finger, by the way. It’s a good thing you remembered to take the ring off before they sprayed you. And then maybe you’ll have sex, and your self-confidence will be bolstered enough for that business meeting you’re clearly so worried about.”

Some of it was just guesswork. Everyone’s mother was disappointed in them at one point or another. It was nothing more than a psychological parlor trick. But from the outrage in his eyes, it seemed she was right on every mark—even his business meeting. She was beginning to enjoy their conversation.