A Killer's Mind

by Mike Omer

  “Okay,” Zoe said, nodding.

  “He thinks he’s found a pattern, and he’s matched it to a group of possible suspects.”

  “That’s great,” Zoe said. “What do you need me to—”

  “The group consists of two hundred seventeen truckers.”

  “Ah.”

  Mancuso opened a drawer, took out a thick folder, and slammed it on the table.

  “Are these the suspects?” Zoe asked.

  “Oh, no,” Mancuso said. “Those are just the crime files from the various police departments involved.” She took out two additional folders and put them on top of the first one. “These are the suspects.”

  “You want me to narrow it down?” Zoe asked.

  “Yes, please.” Mancuso smiled. “If you can give me a group of ten suspects by the end of next week, that would be great.”

  Zoe nodded, excitement rising within her. It was the first real-time profiling she’d been asked to do since she’d joined the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Narrowing a group of 217 suspects down to 10 in a month would be a difficult job. Could she do it in a week?

  She could. This was what she did best.

  “Oh, and the weekly report . . . do you have it ready?” Mancuso asked, her voice growing thorns. “You should have submitted it on—”

  “Almost done,” Zoe said. “I just need to add a few last notes.”

  “Send it to me by lunchtime.”

  Zoe nodded and got up. She picked up the three folders and left Mancuso’s office. Walking back toward her own office, she was already flipping the top folder open. The first page was a crime report describing the body of a nineteen-year-old girl found in a ditch in Missouri, along I-70. She was naked and bruised in multiple places, with bite marks on her neck. Zoe was trying to flip to the next page when she ran into a man. Her folder rammed his stomach, and he emitted a surprised ooof.

  He was tall, with wide shoulders and a mane of jet-black hair. His eyes were brown and deep, hidden under thick dark eyebrows. He looked like an older version of a smug college boy on a football scholarship. He placed his palm on his stomach, a half smile on his face. Zoe was instantly irritated with him, as if it were his fault she’d crashed into him.

  “Sorry,” she said, bending to pick up the folders that had dropped on the floor.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said and crouched to help her.

  She snatched the last folder from the floor before he could touch it. “I’ve got it—thanks.”

  “I see that,” he said, his grin widening as he stood up. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Tatum Gray.”

  “Okay,” Zoe said distractedly, trying to organize the folders in her hands.

  “Do you have a name, or do I need a higher security clearance to know it?” Tatum asked.

  “I’m Zoe,” she said. “Zoe Bentley.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Tatum gave Zoe a cursory look. At first, he only noticed her angular nose and the way she wrinkled it in irritation when he asked what her name was. But then she raised her face and looked straight at him, and he almost took a step back. Her eyes were light green and intense. He felt like she could look into his brain and pick at his thoughts as if browsing a bookstore. The nose and eyes together almost gave the impression of a bird of prey, but the effect was broken by a sweet, delicate mouth. Her hair was cut just above her shoulders, and a few strands were in her face, the result of their collision. She tossed her head back in a careless manner he found quite charming, removed the offending hairs from her eyes, and smiled thinly at him.

  “Well, it was nice meeting you, Tatum,” she said and turned to leave.

  “Hang on,” he said. “Can you tell me where Chief”—it took him a moment to recall the name—“Mancuso’s office is?”

  She glanced down the corridor. “Three doors down,” she said.

  “Are you a part of the BAU?” he asked.

  “I’m a consultant,” she said, and he could almost hear the defensiveness in her tone. Her eyes narrowed, as if she expected a snide remark.

  “Oh, right.” He recalled someone telling him about her. “You’re the psychologist from Boston.”

  “That’s me,” she said. “And you’re the agent from LA.”

  “Yeah,” he said, surprised. “You know about me?”

  “There was an email yesterday,” Zoe said. “Please welcome Agent Tatum Gray, assigned to us from the field office in LA, and so on and so forth.”

  “Oh, right,” Tatum said again and smiled. This woman made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. “Well . . . see you around, Zoe.”

  She strode on, carrying her heavy-looking folders. Tatum stared after her, momentarily entranced. Then he realized he was standing in the corridor, essentially watching a woman’s ass as she walked away from him. He quickly turned around, went to Chief Mancuso’s door, and knocked on it.

  “Yeah?”

  He opened the door. Christine Mancuso, the new unit chief, sat behind her desk, framed by a huge aquarium in the back of the room. He had asked around about Mancuso. She had quite a record in the Boston field office. After managing the task force on a very public kidnapping case, she had been promoted to unit chief in the BAU. There was a lot of resentment about this. The assistant section chief had wanted to promote someone from within the unit but had apparently been ordered to assign Mancuso instead, and she’d immediately begun changing protocols and assignments. Even worse, she’d brought in a civilian as a consultant.

  “Chief Mancuso?” he said. “I’m Tatum Gray.”

  “Come in,” she said and gestured at the chair in front of her. Tatum closed the door and sat down. He found his eyes were repeatedly drawn to the beauty mark by the chief’s lips.

  “So . . .” she said, opening a folder on her desk. “Special Agent Gray, from the Los Angeles field office.”

  “That’s me,” he said, smiling.

  “Recently promoted after the successful conclusion of a yearlong pedophile ring case.” The way she emphasized the word “successful” made it sound less than successful—almost unsuccessful, in fact, which Tatum resented.

  “Just doing my job.”

  “Did you? Your chief didn’t see it in the exact same light. And I see there’s a possible pending internal affairs investigation . . .” She flipped a page and appeared to read it, though Tatum guessed she knew it well. He felt a sliver of rage growing in his gut.

  She put down the folder. “Let’s lay our cards on the table. You were promoted because this was a high-profile case.”

  “Must sound familiar.”

  She tensed up.

  Nice work, Tatum. Less than five minutes, and your superior already hates you.

  “But it wasn’t really a promotion,” Mancuso continued, her voice steely. “They just wanted you out of there, somewhere you can’t do much harm. Behind a desk in the BAU, looking at pictures of crime scenes.”

  Tatum said nothing. Mancuso was right. This was essentially what they’d told him behind closed doors when they’d “promoted” him.

  “And you were assigned to me,” she continued, “because I’m the new unit chief, and it’s fun to mess with me.”

  He shrugged. He didn’t bother with upper-management politics and couldn’t care less where Mancuso stood in the pecking order.

  “I’m not going to let you sit behind a desk and look at crime scenes,” Mancuso said. “That would be a waste.”

  Tatum said nothing, unsure of where this was going.

  Mancuso pushed another folder toward him. He leaned forward, picked it up, and opened it. The top image was of a girl standing on a wooden bridge above a stream, staring at the water, her eyes vacant. Her skin seemed strange, pallid.

  “This is Monique Silva, a prostitute from Chicago,” Mancuso said. “She was found dead in Humboldt Park a week ago. As you can see, she’s posed as if she’s staring at the water.”

  “Dead?” Tatum frowned and looked at the image. The girl looked very lifelike. �
�How—”

  “She was embalmed,” Mancuso said. “The medical examiner says she’d been dead for five to seven days before her body was found. She went missing two weeks ago, according to her pimp. She’s the second victim to turn up that way. Because of the public places these girls are left in and the way they’re posed, this has become a very public case. The Chicago PD is under a lot of pressure to find the killer. Enough to ask for our help.”

  “What’s the Chicago field office saying?”

  “The bureau’s field agents in Chicago have their hands full at the moment. A large arrest of Latin Kings members is about to take place soon.”

  Tatum nodded. The Latin Kings was a huge street gang with bases of operations across the country. The top brass of the Latin Kings were located in Chicago.

  “While the Chicago field office would be interested to help in the matter of this killer, it has been decided that their resources were better allocated elsewhere.”

  Tatum’s bullshit decoder decrypted the sentence to “Someone on top decided that they should keep their nose out of this. They are shitting themselves in rage.”

  He sighed, looking up at her. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to go there tomorrow. Talk to the lead police detective, see exactly where the investigation is going, and report to me. Then we’ll decide how to move forward.”

  “Do I report to the Chicago field office as well or . . .”

  “It would be best if you let me handle that.”

  “Okay,” Tatum said. He would be happy to leave that political tiptoe dance to someone more capable. This assignment would mean a weekend in Chicago, but he didn’t mind. He’d never been to Chicago before.

  “Agent Gray, the FBI is there to consult. I don’t want to hear that you took over the case or in any way behaved as if you were in charge. We’re working hard to get the police to trust us enough to ask for our assistance in future cases. Got that?”

  He nodded. “Got it, Chief.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” he said and got up. “Nice fish.”

  “Yeah, you want one?”

  He looked at her, confused. “You want to give me a fish?”

  “I can spare one for your new home,” Mancuso said, glancing at her aquarium. “But I’m warning you—he’s a bastard.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Zoe unlocked the door to her apartment automatically, her thoughts far away, sifting through crime scene data. She had spent the entire day reading and rereading the cases of the eight murders Mancuso had given her, the two folders of suspects untouched. She should have been faster, she knew, worked harder. But something jarred her, preventing her from carrying on. Some of the details didn’t mesh, and she had pored over the evidence trying to home in on them, figure out the problem.

  The case had hounded her on her way home, and she had nearly missed her exit off I-95. It was a constant buzz in her head, and she already knew she’d have a hard time falling asleep.

  She stepped into the apartment and immediately tensed at a sound from the kitchen.

  “Zoe, is that you?” a voice asked.

  She relaxed and dropped her shoulder bag by the door. “Hey, Andrea,” she called.

  Her sister’s smiling head popped out of the kitchen’s doorway. “Hey,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “I made pasta, so I hope you feel like Italian,” Andrea said and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Zoe wanted to say something funny, something about the kind of Italian she wanted. She tried to frame her witty repartee: Sure, if it’s an Italian man with a sexy body. But it didn’t sound funny at all, not even in her mind. Like most of Zoe’s jokes, this one died an early death in her head. Wit was something that happened to other people, and if it happened to Zoe at all, it was usually three hours too late. “Yeah, pasta sounds great,” she finally said.

  “Awesome,” Andrea said happily.

  Zoe stepped into the kitchen, then paused. “Holy crap, this is amazing.”

  Andrea had placed two plates on the checkered tablecloth that hid the ugly square table. Each one was layered with green basil leaves on which a serving of yellowish-white spaghetti was placed. On top of the mouth-watering pasta lay a small slice of salmon with a garlic-spotted light-brown crust.

  “I don’t deserve this magical meal,” Zoe said weakly.

  “Sure you do. Come on—dig in. I brought a couple of beers as well.”

  Zoe sat down and took a bite of the salmon. The crust was paper thin and crispy, and the fish practically melted in her mouth. She closed her eyes and inhaled. It was the first time all day that her mind had emptied completely, and she savored the pure physical joy of eating a wonderful meal.

  Andrea placed a bottle of beer in front of her, the glass perspiring, a slice of lemon on top.

  “This is like eating in a restaurant,” Zoe said.

  “I suppose you meant that as a compliment.” Andrea smiled at her and swirled her spaghetti around her fork. “So . . . how was work?”

  The eight dead girls flooded back into Zoe’s mind.

  “That bad?” Andrea asked, watching Zoe’s face.

  “No, no,” Zoe said quickly. “It was actually very good. Very interesting. Just . . . intense.”

  She managed to hook three strands of spaghetti, twirling them around the fork. She topped them with a basil leaf, then sliced a piece of salmon and put the well-crafted bite into her mouth. Sublime. “I’m just looking at some murder cases. Eight girls were discarded in ditches in several states, and we think they may be connected. They all have bite marks on them. All eight were raped vaginally; four were raped anally; two had some teeth missing. But the weird thing is—” She paused.

  Andrea took a drink of her beer, her fork discarded on the plate. She looked quite pale.

  “Are you okay?” Zoe asked.

  “So . . . when I ask you, ‘How was work?’ I want more stories about how your boss was bitchy or how the printer stopped working. And fewer stories about, uh . . . anal rape and missing teeth.”

  “I’m sorry,” Zoe said. “I just—I was looking through those cases all day, and I didn’t think . . .” She cursed herself. She had always been careful to avoid talking about her work with Andrea. She didn’t want her sister exposed to this, not again.

  “I just don’t understand how you can look at these things every day,” Andrea said, staring at the table. “Especially considering what happened in Maynard.”

  Zoe said nothing. It would have been easy to tell her sister that it was her coping mechanism. That “this was how she made sure what happened in Maynard wouldn’t happen again” or some other piece of drama. But it would be a lie. She liked what she did. She was good at it. She was very much aware that her past had shaped her, but she wanted to believe that she was over that.

  It was better not to discuss her work at all. Protect her sister from that part of her life. As she had always done. As she had done that night long ago.

  Don’t worry, Ray-Ray. He can’t hurt us.

  “It’s okay.” Andrea shook her head. “I mean, this is your job.”

  Zoe nodded. “Yeah, sorry for mentioning that, Ray-Ray.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “You haven’t called me that in years,” Andrea said, raising an eyebrow.

  Zoe grinned at her sheepishly. “I guess that this dinner you cooked is making me sentimental.”

  Andrea snorted and pushed her plate away. “Whatever. I think I’ll eat the rest a bit later. I stuffed myself with salmon before you even got home.”

  “Okay,” Zoe said, taking another bite. “Did you season this with lemon?”

  “Just a bit,” Andrea said, standing up.

  “I can taste it,” Zoe said happily. “It really adds a lot. I think—”

  The puzzle pieces suddenly clicked.

  All bodies had been found naked, their clothes discarded nearby, but in three of
the murders, the underwear and the shoes had been missing. This wasn’t in the crime reports; the reports only listed the evidence found. None mentioned the things that were unaccounted for. The missing underwear and shoes were trophies taken by the killer. But in the other five cases, no trophies were taken. Two different signatures. It was possible there were two killers, not one.

  “Everything okay?” she heard her sister say. “You’re just staring at your plate.”

  “I just figured something out,” Zoe said.

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Just work.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Dale City, Virginia, Friday, July 15, 2016

  The loud thumping woke Tatum up with a start. His vision snapped into focus only to see a pair of large, menacing green eyes staring at him, mere inches from his face. His hand shot down to pull his Glock from its holster, but he was in his underwear, no gun in reach. Reflexes took hold, and he pushed himself backward, away from his attacker. He tumbled to the floor, scrambling for any sort of protection. His attacker disappeared from sight as Tatum bounded to his feet, his heart racing. He turned on the light and blinked.

  His ugly orange tomcat stared at him with disdain.

  “Damn it, Freckle!” Tatum yelled at him. “I told you not to get on the bed.”

  Freckle blinked and yawned, clearly bored. Tatum looked for the water pistol, Freckle’s nemesis, but it was nowhere in sight. In all likelihood, the cat had destroyed the thing when Tatum wasn’t around, like he’d done to the three previous ones.

  There was another thump. Someone was knocking on the door; that was what had woken him, not his sociopathic cat. He put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, grabbed his Glock from the night table, and walked over to the front door. He’d gotten used to the new apartment in Dale City, but he was groggy from sleep, and in the dark, the hallway felt almost unfamiliar. He missed his previous apartment in LA, even though this one was much more spacious, in a better neighborhood.