A Killer's Mind (Zoe Bentley Mystery #1)(63)

“Even worse,” Zoe said. “They’re disappointed.”

“That’s not worse.”

“It kinda is.”

“Why are they angry?”

“Because I . . . said some things that weren’t true.”

Andrea’s eyes widened. “You lied?”

“No. I was just wrong.”

“Oh.”

They lay on the bed, curling against each other. Zoe listened to Andrea’s breathing, drawing strength from her sister’s innocence. She could hear footsteps in the street and then the front door lock clicking. Their mother had probably forgotten her purse again. She always did.

“Mommy?” Andrea called, obviously thinking the same.

There was no response and no footsteps. Frowning, Zoe got off the bed and walked to the doorway. There was a shadowy figure in the dark hallway. Too tall to be their mother, too thin to be their father. Their eyes met.

It was Rod Glover.





CHAPTER 46

Chicago, Illinois, Thursday, July 21, 2016

Veronika Murray, the woman found dead in West Pullman two years before, had been engaged to a man named Clifford Sorenson, according to the police report. Zoe called him and asked if they could meet. Sorenson had a plumbing business in West Pullman and told her she was welcome to drop by his office.

Sorenson’s Plumbing was more like a warehouse than an office. A small white sign hung above the front door with the business name on it in an uninspiring blue font. The same logo was printed on two blue vans parked in front. Zoe paid the taxi driver, a middle-aged man with a scruffy gray beard and mustache.

“You want me to wait outside?” he asked.

“It might take a while,” she told him. “I can call a cab when I leave.”

“Well,” he said, glancing at a nearby burger joint’s sign, “it’s past my lunchtime, and I haven’t eaten yet. I’ll be around.”

Zoe sighed. He was a talkative sort of guy, and she wasn’t in the mood for another chat about North Korea on her way back, but she could see no way to shake him off politely. “That’s great,” she said. “But if you get tired of waiting, feel free to leave.”

He shrugged. She got out of the cab and entered the warehouse.

The space inside was lined with long metallic shelves, all of them brimming with pipes, faucets, and tools Zoe couldn’t even name. In her past, she was proud to have dealt with a clog in the sink all by herself, but anything beyond that resulted in an immediate panicked phone call to a plumber. Of all the problems that could occur in her home, she felt a plumbing problem was the worst, a crisis that would empty her bank account and turn all of her worldly possessions into a soggy mess.

Two men stood by one of the shelves, picking pipes and placing them in a large cardboard box. She approached them.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for Clifford Sorenson.”

“That’s me,” one of them said. “You’re Zoe?”

“That’s right. Thank you for meeting me.”

He nodded. She looked at him. He was a tall, wide-shouldered man with thinning brown hair and rough stubble on his cheeks. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired. “You said this is about Veronika?”

“I wondered if you could answer a few questions.”

“Let’s talk outside,” he said, frowning. He turned to the other man. “You got this?”

The man nodded. “Sure, Cliff.”

They stepped outside, and Clifford fished a cigarette pack from his pocket. He put one in his mouth and offered the pack to Zoe. She shook her head. He shrugged, lit his own cigarette, and inhaled. “I assumed the police were done with the case.”

“It resurfaced in relation to another case that’s under investigation right now.”

“Yeah? At the time, they told me they were investigating a local drug addict. Is this about him?”

Zoe shook her head. The drug addict questioned during the investigation was in prison for armed robbery. “Not really.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, his voice tense. “Who, then?”

“We’re not sure yet. Would you mind if I ask you some questions about that week?”

The police had questioned Clifford three times, and Zoe had read the transcripts. The first interview was intended mostly to establish if he was a suspect. He had an alibi for the night his fiancée had disappeared—he had gone fishing with three friends. They all verified they had been with him during that time. One of his friends had actually walked inside the house with him because he needed to use the bathroom. They’d found the house in disarray, Veronika missing.

The second interview was when the police arrested the drug dealer as a suspect. They had showed Clifford some mugshots, trying to see if he could maybe recognize the dealer. He could not, said he had never seen any of the people in the pictures as far as he remembered.

The third interview was after the police had dropped the drug dealer as a suspect and were trying to poke holes in Sorenson’s alibi. Sorenson had quickly lost his cool, screaming at the cops that they were trying to frame him, and he had demanded to have an attorney present. The rest of the interview had been quite short and proved nothing.

Zoe knew that when an investigator had a suspect or goal in mind, the interview was often skewed to that purpose. There was a very clear example of this in the first interview when Clifford had mentioned that Veronika had seemed a bit on edge in the weeks before she had gone missing. A series of questions had been asked to establish if she had been on edge because of strain in her relationship with Clifford. But after asking him about that, they’d moved on. No one had raised the issue of her being on edge again. The matter had been ignored.