A Killer's Mind (Zoe Bentley Mystery #1)(72)

“This case,” she said. She bit her lip again. By now he knew she bit her lip when thinking, when she wasn’t sure of something. He decided to give her some time to organize her thoughts.

The waitress came over with two mugs of coffee and put them on the table, emitting a batlike, high-pitched “Here you go.” Tatum drank from his cup, the coffee banishing the tiredness from his brain and the droopiness from his eyes. Blessed coffee. He had been told by several people that he drank too much coffee, that it wasn’t good for him. As far as he was concerned, those people were just jealous and cranky because they didn’t drink enough coffee.

Wilma’s apparently had some pretty fast cooks in the kitchen, because their orders were on the table just five minutes later. Tatum took a bite from his cheese omelet, happy to find it was good. Zoe ate as well, slicing large pieces of egg and shoving them into her mouth distractedly.

“Okay, something’s wrong,” he said, feeling concerned.

“What?” Zoe asked.

“The way you eat—usually you treat your food like it’s a miracle sent by God to your plate. Right now, you’re swallowing it like it’s some sort of chore. Talk to me.”

“There were two murders in 2008 here in Chicago,” she said.

“Okay, go on, but lower your voice, please.”

“Both murdered women were found submerged in water, strangled. The murderer was never caught.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think it’s the same guy.”

Tatum frowned. “Why?”

“The locations were public and had large bodies of water involved.”

“That’s far from enough.”

“There was . . . I think . . .”

He leaned forward to hear her better.

“When I was a . . . young girl, there was a serial killer in my hometown. In Massachusetts.”

“Okay.”

“No one was ever convicted. They caught someone, he hanged himself in his cell, and the killings stopped. The Maynard serial killer—that’s what they called him—also had a thing with leaving bodies next to bodies of water.”

“So you think the same need propelled those killers?”

“No,” Zoe said. “I think it was the same guy.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Zoe,” Tatum said. “This sounds . . .” He searched for the right word.

“No, listen. The thing is, I had this neighbor who—”

“It sounds tenuous,” he said. “You’re looking for connections in places that aren’t there.”

He knew what would come next. She’d explode. She’d yell at him or storm out or become cold and furious.

To his surprise, her shoulders drooped. “Okay,” she said, her voice small. “Forget it.”

“Hang on,” he said. “Let’s talk about this. Maybe I don’t see the whole picture. Or maybe you’ve got something there, and we need to talk it out.”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

It doesn’t matter?

“Zoe—”

“Let’s pay and go,” she said. Her plate was half-full. “It’s getting late.”





CHAPTER 51

Zoe trudged behind Tatum to the task force room, dispirited. As soon as she had begun to lay out the reasons why she suspected the killer was Glover, she had realized how dumb it sounded. It was like being a teenager again, trying to convince her mother and the cops. What she knew in her gut to be right came out as a string of dubious connections and half-assed theories once spoken aloud. Because essentially, it all came down to what she felt. When she had decided to break into Glover’s house, it was mostly because she had felt his behavior was strange and suspicious; she hadn’t had any tangible proof. Even after she knew what was in his room, it was still mostly the feeling that the items she found were mementos from victims. And now she felt Glover was telling her, via their one-sided creepy conversation, that he was the killer in Chicago as well.

But once those feeling were spoken aloud, it was easy to see how she sounded even more questionable than Dr. Bernstein. A fragment of a memory filled her mind, of her standing in the police station in Maynard, doing her best to hold it together, as the officer had told her, “I can think of other brown substances that might soil a pair of underwear.”

Never again. She had to build a stronger case this time.

As she passed by the meeting room on their way down the hall, she saw Martinez inside through the half-open door. Peeking in, she saw the entire team sitting around the table.

“Zoe,” Martinez called, noticing her. “Get in here. It’s a quick status meeting.”

She called Tatum back and walked into the room, sitting down. Tatum followed her, closing the door behind him.

“Okay,” Martinez said. “As I was saying, we now have the full autopsy report of Lily Ramos as well as a detailed report of the findings from the crime scene. We have very little to go on. Cause of death is strangulation, and the cut on the throat was performed postmortem. The cut was to the”—Martinez glanced at the paper in his hand—“common carotid artery, and we’ve found that embalmers use this as an entry point for embalming fluid. There were traces of what seems to be embalming fluid near the cut . . . we’ve sent those for testing to verify. The body didn’t have the postmortem sexual intercourse signs that we’ve found so far.”