A Killer's Mind (Zoe Bentley Mystery #1)(84)

“Look . . . it would let me sleep easier at night, okay?”

There was a moment of silence. “Fine,” she said. “I live in the Dale Forest Apartments. It’s in—”

“I know where that is,” Tatum said, glancing at the sign out the car’s window that said DALE FOREST APARTMENTS. “I’m nearby. I can be there in five minutes.”

“Okay,” she said. She gave him her apartment number and hung up.

He patiently waited four minutes. There really was no need for Zoe to know he had already found her address. Then he got out of the car and went over to her apartment.

A young black-haired woman with mesmerizing green eyes opened the door for him.

“Well, hello,” she said, smiling, one eyebrow raised. “You must be Tatum.”

Her resemblance to Zoe was strong. “And you’re Andrea,” he said.

“Come in,” she said, giving him another top-to-bottom look. Tatum felt very objectified. He was more than a pretty face, damn it.

He walked inside, taking in the small living room. Zoe sat on one of the couches, a brown folder open in her lap. She looked at its contents, frowning, and raised her eyes to meet his as he walked inside. He felt a pang in his heart as he saw her black eye, the purple bruise on her forehead, the black stitches on her neck. Her eyes were bloodshot and tired. Tatum considered himself progressive—“go, girl power” and all that—but seeing her in that state made him want to take her in his arms and hug her. And then annihilate the man who had done this.

The sharp look she gave him clarified that if he tried to hug her, she would bite his face off. He cleared his throat.

“Hey, glad to see you’re”—he searched for a happy word—“sitting.”

As if to aggravate him, she stood up, wincing as she did so. “Happy you could stop by,” she said. “Do you want anything to drink?”

“Uh . . .”

“I’ll get you a cup of coffee,” Andrea said.

Zoe turned to her sister. “Andrea, I can—”

“You need to sit or lie down,” Andrea said, in the same stubborn tone he had been hearing from Zoe all week. It made him smile.

“What?” Zoe asked.

“Nothing,” he said innocently.

She sat back down and set the folder on the coffee table, next to a stack of similar folders and some scattered papers.

“What’s that?” he asked. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be working.”

“Well, since we’re no longer assigned to the Chicago case, this isn’t work,” Zoe said. “I guess it’s a hobby.”

He sat down on the other couch and picked up one of the folders and flipped it open. It was a case file, all the paperwork photocopied. The papers were yellow with age, and the printed crime scene photos had a grainy quality. There was a wide shot of a nude female body, lying in what looked like a pond. The victim’s name was Jackie Teller.

“Is this one of Rod Glover’s victims?” he asked, scanning the details.

“That depends on who you ask,” Zoe said. “It’s one of the three Maynard serial killer victims from 1997. If you ask the police, they’ll either say it’s unresolved or claim a teenager named Manny Anderson killed her. Which is easy to say, because he’s dead.”

Tatum nodded and checked out the rest of the files. He glanced at Zoe. “You got copies of the Chicago murders?”

“Yeah.”

Andrea walked into the living room as Tatum was reading another of the Maynard case files. She handed him a cup of coffee.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going. I have a shift tonight. I’ll come back once I’m off.”

Zoe glanced at her. “You don’t need to—”

“I’m sleeping here. You might need me. This is not a discussion,” Andrea said. “Bye, Tatum. It was nice meeting you.”

She closed the door loudly behind her.

Tatum put down the folder and looked at the papers scattered on the table. They were handwritten; some looked aged, some fresh. He leaned forward to get one of them. Zoe nearly leaped at the pages, slapping her hand down onto them.

“That’s private,” she said.

“Is it?” Tatum asked calmly. He suspected he knew what these were. “I saw you writing down notes when you were doing the profile for the Chicago killer. That page over there looks suspiciously like those notes.”

“I composed the profile into a report,” she said sharply.

“You did.” He nodded. “But this is the raw material.”

“So?”

“I want to see it,” he said.

“No.”

He sighed. “Zoe, we were tracking this guy together. The only reason everything went to shit is that you didn’t tell me everything.”

Her mouth tightened into a line so thin it was nearly two dimensional.

“Listen,” he said, his voice softening. “I admit I didn’t really have a lot of faith in your . . . profession. But watching you work this past week opened my eyes. You’re the real thing. You can read a crime scene in a way I would never be able to.”

Her face softened, her eyes widening.

“But even you can make mistakes,” he said. “Can you please share your notes with me? We can talk them over. I promise you I won’t tell anyone about these notes, okay?”