A Killer's Mind (Zoe Bentley Mystery #1)(39)

“Uh . . . no.”

Maybe he tried and failed. “Perhaps just a body of a young woman, missing some large swathes of skin? As if someone had skinned her?”

Martinez looked ill. “No. I think I would have remembered if that had happened anywhere in Chicago last year.”

“All right. That’s probably good news.”

“Yes. I’d definitely file it in the good news section.”

Zoe returned to her seat and began reordering the reports according to their date. The first few reports were sporadic. Two in July 2014, one in August, two in September, one in October, then the next report was in March, but Zoe guessed there were other animals that had been taken in the interim. There were probably no complaints because people just assumed they had frozen to death when they found them.

But then in 2015, two pets in April, one in May, two in July . . . one or two pets every month, occasionally skipping one. But there had been five embalmed cats and dogs found in West Pullman in March 2016. He had gotten reckless and desperate. Propelled by a growing need.

He was anxious to do the real thing.

According to the estimated time of death, he had killed Susan Warner on April 5, give or take a day. Just a week after the last embalmed pet had been found. Monique Silva had been murdered around the first of July. And Krista Barker had been murdered on July 10 or 11.

Was he accelerating? She couldn’t be sure; there wasn’t enough data. But if she had to guess . . . she’d say he probably was. Just nine days between the last two murders.

How long did they have this time? A week? Five days?

Were they already too late?

She got up and walked over to Martinez’s desk again. “Listen,” she said. “He might kill again soon. Very soon.”

Martinez swiveled his chair and looked up at her. “How soon?” he asked.

“A few days at most.”

“You think he’ll target prostitutes?”

“I think they’re the highest-risk group, yes.”

“We can stake out a few likely areas,” Martinez said after a moment of consideration. “But we frankly have no idea what to look for.”

“Strong guy, not too intimidating, reasonably good-looking car . . .” Zoe’s voice faded. It was a very weak profile.

Martinez smiled sadly. “You just described most of the men in the department,” he said.

Zoe raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t ignore the possibility that it’s a law enforcement officer of some kind,” she said. “But we still don’t have enough to tighten the suspect list further.”

“Still, you think he might strike again soon . . . I’ll call vice. I know the lieutenant there. She’ll help—she gets things done. Maybe we can make some inquiries, see if anyone went missing. Tell them to keep their eyes open. Any particular area we should focus on?”

Zoe hesitated. She hadn’t done a thorough geographic profiling of the case yet, but from what she saw, this killer didn’t match the standard patterns. He struck all over Chicago, didn’t focus on a certain area. “I have no idea,” she finally admitted.





CHAPTER 26

Tatum rubbed his face and sighed. His head pounded, and when he shut his eyes, he could still see the glare of his monitor etched in his field of vision. He had been reading reports for the past three hours, and he needed some fresh air.

He was going over burglary reports in West Pullman. Serial killers often started on their path with “fetish burglaries.” They would break into homes of women and steal lingerie, clothes, or other items that sparked their fantasies. It was likely this serial killer had started the same way. With a bit of luck, they would find some fetish burglaries in the crime reports that could shed some light on the identity of the murderer.

Well . . . more than a bit of luck. West Pullman was a huge neighborhood, sprawling over two beats in district five. Burglaries were a frequent occurrence there, and Tatum got tired of reading about stolen laptops and jewelry. He managed to mark three suspicious reports, two because the list of stolen items included lingerie and one because it was reported by a widower whose dead wife’s jewelry had been stolen. Tatum reasoned that if the killer was turned on by death, stealing a dead woman’s jewelry could be in his list of earlier transgressions.

They would add these reports to the mounting pile of possible leads. They might find a connection there. Or just background noise. He was beginning to suspect they were chasing their own tails. He wanted a break.

He backed his chair up a bit, its wheels squeaking on the tiled floor. He looked around the room. Only Zoe and Martinez were sitting at their desks; the rest of the room was empty. Was there a party they hadn’t been invited to? He looked at the faces of the other unpopular kids of the team. Zoe’s face showed no emotion as she stared at her monitor, occasionally hitting a button with one finger. Martinez muttered to himself as he wrote down something on a pad of paper. Tatum assessed the distance between his own desk and Martinez’s. It was about fifteen feet, with no obstacles in the way. He grabbed his desk and, pulling hard, shot his chair across the room in a straight line toward Martinez.

Wheeeeeeeeee.

He misjudged his aim a bit and nearly crashed into the neighboring desk, knocking down a wastebasket. Sheepishly, he bent to pick up the discarded papers as Martinez looked at him, one of his serious eyebrows raised.