A Killer's Mind (Zoe Bentley Mystery #1)(93)

“That’s great.” Tatum grinned. “Except he has an alibi.”

“What alibi?”

“He was in Venice as an exchange student when all those animals got embalmed and taxidermied.”

“Oh, right,” Zoe said, slumping, and then she glared at Tatum. “You’ve already thought of all that.”

“Maybe.” He looked at her innocently. “Still, it’s worth considering other possible suspects, right?”

“I . . . it’s not a bad idea.”

He laughed, feeling a surge of warmth for the irate psychologist. “What are your thoughts? Want to share?”

Her lips moved a bit, no sound emerging, as if she were trying this new concept of conversation and failing at it. Finally, some words emerged. “The killings are all motivated by his fantasy, right? All four recent killings. We can see an arc of improvement in his implementation, though we don’t know what the purpose is yet.”

“Right,” Tatum agreed. “It looks like he’s creating and playing with human dolls.”

“Right.” She became silent again.

Did she think they were done brainstorming? “What is his fantasy, then?” he asked.

“It looks like some sort of power play, except he already had them tied up . . . and he can’t have sex with them once he embalms them, and that seems like a loss of power, right?”

“I suppose it is,” Tatum said slowly.

“So something else motivates him here. What is it?”

“Maybe he gets turned on by their immobile state and masturbates to it.”

“No, that’s not it. It doesn’t fit,” Zoe said impatiently and bit her lip.

Tatum cleared his throat. When this didn’t elicit a reaction, he said, “Brainstorming, remember?”

Zoe looked at him and rolled her eyes. “Okay. Let’s suppose he is turned on by their immobile state. Why is the flexibility so important? Why does he dress them up in clothes, put jewelry on them? Why not use some other, less complex method of preservation, like freezing them?”

“Okay, maybe he’s posing them like a certain image or a situation in his mind,” Tatum said.

“Like what?” Zoe asked. She sounded curious. Good sign.

“I don’t know. What is he saying in those scenes?”

“What scenes?”

“The last two crime scenes? They’re like . . . fragments of a story, right? When you played with dolls as a child, you used to sit Barbie on her chair and put some teacups on the doll table, and voilà, she was having a tea party.”

“I never had dolls.”

Tatum raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“I suppose I had some, but I’ve never played with them. I gave them all to Andrea. Did you play with dolls?”

“Well . . . not dolls, but you know. I had a bunch of Playmobil figures, and I’d act out all sorts of stories. For example, they would fight and shoot each other. Then I’d remove their hair and change it around—”

“Why?”

“Because it’s pretty much the only detachable thing.”

“That’s very strange.”

“Not as strange as a Playmobil figure without the hair. Their heads are hollow, and they look really freaky, and at a certain point you lose all the hair pieces, so you just have a bunch of lobotomized figures—”

“This isn’t helpful,” Zoe interjected sharply.

“Anyway, the point I was making is that when you pose those dolls, you’re acting out your own story, right? So what’s the story here?”

They looked at the pictures. Monique Silva standing on the bridge, hands on the rail, staring at the stream. Krista Barker sitting on the beach, face buried in her hands.

“They’re sad,” Zoe said.

“Yeah, Krista is posed like she’s crying.”

“Why are they sad?”

“Maybe the killer posed them like that because they’re sad they’re dead,” Tatum suggested.

“No . . .” Zoe said, shaking her head. “They were missing for a while. You’re right; there’s a whole story here. If they were just sad they’re dead, he’d drop them off as soon as he embalmed them. But he spent a long time with them, and in the end, he dropped them, posing them as if they’re sad.”

“Yeah.”

“They’re sad,” Zoe said ponderously, “because he dropped them off.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a ring on Krista Barker’s finger,” Zoe said. “An engagement ring.”

“Well . . . it was a ring.”

“It was an engagement ring. Susan Warner was found wearing an evening dress, as if she were out on a big date. And then, when he leaves them, they’re sad.”

“Hang on—”

“He’s having a relationship with them,” Zoe said. Her eyes focused on Tatum, sparkling. “That’s what this is all about. He is embalming these women so he can have a relationship with them.”

“What, like a sexual relationship?”

“Like a full relationship, Tatum. This isn’t about sex. I mean, he has necrophiliac tendencies, sure. But it’s about having someone with him, in his home. This is all about loneliness.”