A Killer's Mind (Zoe Bentley Mystery #1)(34)

“It’s the cat, Tatum. Everything is the cat’s fault. I gotta go.” The line went dead.

Tatum’s hand went slack, the phone nearly dropping to the floor. Next time he would hire someone to babysit Marvin and Freckle. The ongoing destruction of his home was only half of his worries. Marvin, despite his behavior, was not seventeen years old. What if the old man had a heart attack? God knew that with the amount of alcohol he drank and the weed he smoked, it wasn’t a far-fetched idea. He needed someone around to watch over him.

Tatum needed a drink. There was a nice-looking pub just on the other side of the road, a place called Kyle’s.

He shoved his wallet into his pocket and holstered his gun on his hip. Then he left the motel and crossed the street to Kyle’s. On his way, he looked around him, soaking in the atmosphere. Damn, he missed the feeling of a real city. LA had been his home for the past ten years. At first, having grown up in Wickenburg, Arizona, a town where you knew almost everyone by sight, he had found LA to be loud and oppressive. His senses were constantly under attack—too many lights, too many people, too many smells, and way too many sounds. But slowly the place had grown on him. He had begun to enjoy the feeling of the constant vibrating life around him. And then, due to one small misunderstanding between him and his superiors, followed by about fifty similar misunderstandings, he found himself living in Dale City, Virginia. Hardly a place of endless thrills.

Chicago was not LA, but it was a place where he could once again feel the excitement of being in a place where things happened. A group of women passed him by, laughing hysterically as one of them blew him a kiss. Three men went past him, all looking at their phones in concentration. A taxi driver stopped, asking if he needed a ride. Movement. Life.

He reached Kyle’s and opened the door, welcomed by a Leonard Cohen song, which instantly made him like the place.

“Hey.” The hostess smiled at him, a cute redhead, looking fresh out of high school. “Joining a table?”

“Uh . . . no. I’m on my own.”

“Well, we’re quite full tonight,” she said apologetically. “We have a few spots on the bar, but—”

“The bar’s fine,” he said.

Hesitantly, she led him to the bar, and he was immediately struck by something strange. The place was packed, but there were four empty stools on the bar, two on each side of a woman sitting with her back to him.

“I’m sorry,” the hostess said. “We’ll tell her to clear the photos again. She’s making everyone uncomfortable.”

“It’s okay.” Tatum grinned at the hostess. “I can handle it.”

He sat on a barstool and glanced at the woman. Zoe, of course. She stared intently at a row of photographs she had spread on the bar top. The images were from the three crime scenes, as well as close-up images taken during the autopsy. No wonder the people around her had fled. The barman approached him.

“A pint of Honker’s Ale, please,” Tatum said.

The barman nodded. “If you can get her to put those away, the beer’s on the house,” he said.

“I don’t think I can get her to do anything,” Tatum answered truthfully.

The barman poured him a pint and walked away, trying to avoid looking at the pictures.

“You’re making everyone uncomfortable,” Tatum said.

“Can’t be helped. I can’t concentrate in my own room. There’s a couple screwing next door.”

“They’re bound to stop eventually,” Tatum said.

“You’d think so, right?”

Tatum sipped from his mug, relishing the taste. Sometimes nothing was as good as beer. “Any thoughts about the case?”

Zoe shook her head, frustrated. “I don’t get what he’s doing,” she said, pointing emphatically at the pictures. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s playing with them like a child plays with dolls. Dress them up, pose them, move them from place to place . . .”

“And that’s impossible? This isn’t a normal person.”

“No, he isn’t,” Zoe said. “But he isn’t completely delusional, either. This is him living out his fantasy. But I doubt his fantasy is to play with human-sized dolls.”

“How do you know he doesn’t hear voices telling him to do it?”

“Whoever did this is cold, calculated, calm. Anyone under delusions such as you describe would be prone to impulsiveness, acting out his delusions at the spur of the moment. He isn’t impulsive . . . well, mostly not impulsive, at least.”

“Mostly?” Tatum asked.

“The bodies have signs of sexual intercourse postmortem,” Zoe said. “That happened before the embalming. I think this was just him acting out an impulse craving. I don’t think any of those sexual acts were planned beforehand.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The bodies have almost no bruising, despite the fact that they’d been strangled to death and some of them bound before,” she said. “It makes sense. Any bruise wouldn’t heal after embalming. But the sexual intercourse is rough, violent. He lost control when it happened.”

Tatum took another sip. It wasn’t as enjoyable as the first. Zoe had managed to ruin beer.

“Listen,” he said. “You’re in a pub. Put those things away, okay? I’ll buy you any kind of drink you want.”