“Has he written any letters to the newspapers or the police?” Zoe asked.
“No,” Martinez said.
“Then how do you know he isn’t just doing it as part of his fantasy, getting off on danger? Or maybe those locations hold some significance for him. I see no demonstration in these murders of any search for fame or a game of cat and mouse. The spots he chose are public, that’s true, but they’re also guaranteed to be quite empty at night and have no security cameras in them. And posing the body seems to have a meaning for him. The chosen spot could have something to do with this meaning.”
“That’s your interpretation,” the doctor said. “But—”
“Well, if we have two contradictory interpretations, we can’t really assume one of them is probable until we’ve agreed that the other is not likely,” Zoe said firmly.
“Okay,” Martinez said, raising his hands as if trying to control the heated discussion. “Perhaps we should start with the points we’ve definitely agreed upon. Dr. Bernstein said that since the man is acquainted with embalming practices, he’s likely worked in a funeral home before. I definitely agree, and—”
“Why?” Zoe asked.
“Why?” Martinez looked at her, annoyed. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you agree? Did you look for suspects in funeral homes before Dr. Bernstein did his profile?”
“Well, no, but it sounds quite logical that—”
“It does,” Zoe said, deciding she’d had enough. “Everything sounds logical when spoken by a man with the cultivated appearance of knowledge. Definitely when he is elderly and has white hair and tends to appear on TV with the tagline serial killer expert. But if our killer is so experienced in embalming, why was the foot of the first victim decomposing when she was found? Let me tell you why. It was decomposing because he hadn’t embalmed many times before, and he was still learning the process. The second victim was completely embalmed. Our killer is learning. Also, Agent Gray told me the second victim was embalmed with a different mixture of embalming fluid. He’s experimenting because he’s new at this. I’d say that if you want to exclude a portion of the population, I’d exclude all people who have worked more than a few weeks in a funeral home. They already know their job.”
The room was silent, and Zoe realized she was practically yelling. Andrea often complained that she raised her voice when she was excited or agitated. She took a deep breath, then turned toward Martinez.
“There is a well-known phenomenon that always follows serial killers. I’m talking about pseudoexperts who talk on TV about serial killers. They mislead the public, contribute to mass hysteria, and taint jury pools. They cause immeasurable damage. They have a name. In my profession, we call them talking heads.”
She looked at the doctor, who was crimson by that point. Was he about to have a heart attack? She rehearsed her first aid training in her mind as she said, “Dr. Bernstein is a talking head. You can keep listening to his so-called profiling opinions, but you won’t find your killer that way.”
The doctor blinked and his jaw clenched, and then he stood up and grabbed his briefcase. For a moment he seemed about to say something; then he simply turned and left, slamming the door behind him. There was a moment of silence. Tatum looked at her, his eyes wide. Zoe met his stare calmly. He’d brought her to deal with the profiler, hadn’t he? Had he expected it to go nicely?
“That was unnecessary,” Martinez said curtly.
“I have to disagree,” Zoe said. “I’m sorry things got a bit heated, but this man has given you some bad advice, and it could potentially lead to a waste of valuable time.”
“Now what?” Martinez asked. “You tell me your friend was right? That we should stake out the current crime scenes in case the killer returns?”
Zoe and Tatum’s eyes met. “Not this killer,” Zoe said.
“I’m sorry?” Tatum said, his voice tense.
“It’s true. Serial killers often return to the scene of the crime, mostly to recall the act and masturbate. But these crimes were not committed where you found the bodies. The first victim was killed in her own apartment, and I doubt he’ll go back there. The second victim disappeared from the street, and there’s an indication she’d been tied up. This leads me to assume she was taken somewhere and killed there—otherwise why tie her? The locations where you found the bodies won’t fulfill the killer’s fantasies; he’d be drawn to the actual places where he killed the women. There’s no point in staking them out. It would be a waste of manpower.”
Another tense silence settled upon the room as Zoe sent a challenging glance toward Tatum. His face darkened, but he said nothing.
Martinez cleared his throat. “So what do you think—”
The door opened, and a man stood in the entrance, his eyes wide. “Lieutenant,” he said. “We have another one.”
CHAPTER 12
There was a crowd of spectators alongside the lake beach on Ohio Street, standing as close as they could to the yellow crime scene tape. Some of them, inevitably, were taking pictures with their phones. Tatum could spot two news crews, the reporters talking animatedly to the cameras. He followed Lieutenant Martinez to one of the cops on the scene, who was trying to get the spectators to stand back. He was holding a small notebook.
“Lieutenant Martinez.” The lieutenant flipped his badge. “These two are with me.”
They identified themselves to the cop, who dutifully scribbled their names in the crime scene log, the wind flipping the pages as he did so. One of the media crews ran in their direction, spouting questions. Tatum turned his back to the camera and marched onto the beach, Zoe by his side. He did his best to ignore her. He was furious at her for undermining his influence with the lieutenant and was already thinking of ways to tell Mancuso she had to call the woman back to Quantico.
His black shoes sank into the sand, leaving deep footprints behind him. He knew he would have a mound of sand in each shoe when he left, as well as in his socks. He was definitely not dressed for the beach.
They walked toward a group of people who shuffled around a woman sitting on the sand. If Tatum hadn’t known the woman was dead beforehand, he would have assumed she was just enjoying the sunny day. When he got closer, he saw that the body was posed as if she had buried her face in her hands.
Zoe paused five yards from the body.
“Are you okay?” Tatum asked, despite himself. “You don’t have to be here.”
“I’m fine,” Zoe said shortly.
“It’s one thing to see pictures of dead bodies, Bentley. It’s another thing to actually be in—”
“I’ve been at dozens of crime scenes and have seen plenty of dead bodies,” Zoe said, not looking at him. “I’m just trying to get the big picture, and frankly, Agent Gray, you’re disturbing my concentration.”
The profiler was insufferable. Tatum gritted his teeth and kept walking. As he got closer, he scanned the people around the body. One man, clearly in shock—probably the one who had discovered the body—was talking to a Chicago PD uniformed cop. Another man circled the body, taking pictures. To the body’s left, a woman, her black hair swept back into a ponytail, carefully picked something up from the sand and placed it in a paper bag. Those two were probably from the Forensic Services Division called for the scene. Another man, who Tatum guessed was the medical examiner, was inspecting one of the body’s feet.
Tatum crouched next to the woman with the ponytail. There was a box of latex gloves at her feet.
“Hi,” he said. “Agent Gray, FBI. Mind if I borrow a pair of gloves?”
She turned to face him, her dark-brown eyes looking at him closely. For a moment he almost blurted, “Tina?” Her face was nearly identical to his high school sweetheart’s. But she wasn’t Tina, and his lips moved weirdly as he tried to get them under control.