She plodded to the kitchen and switched on the light. Her eyes immediately focused on the king of the kitchen: the coffee machine. She walked over and picked up the jar of Colombian ground coffee that stood next to it. She never ran out of coffee, not since the debacle back in the summer of 2011. Two filters went in the machine to make it stronger. She needed an aggressive caffeine jolt to get her going in the morning. She put a small mountain of coffee inside the filters, then added a bit more. She poured the water on top and turned the machine on, watching the beautiful sight of coffee trickling into the pot.
While she waited for the liquid of life to brew, she walked to the shopping list on the fridge door and stared at it. There was something she had to add. Finally, she wrote down toilet paper. It was a safe bet; she was always running out of toilet paper. She returned to the machine and poured the coffee into her favorite, albeit chipped, white mug, ignoring the row of unused mugs on the shelf. They had been exiled from use for being too small or too large or having a thick lip or an uncomfortable grip. The coffee mug hall of shame.
She sipped the brew, inhaling as she did. She stood next to the machine, just drinking and enjoying the feeling of coffee spreading through her body, until the mug was empty.
One. Six more to go.
The brown envelope lay on the wooden kitchen table, the gray strip of cloth protruding from it. She had discarded it there the night before, as if trying to prove to herself that she didn’t care, that it didn’t matter anymore.
Now, in the darkness of early morning, it seemed like a stupid thing to have done. She picked up the envelope and walked over to her home office, where her desk was. She gathered her courage and opened the desk’s bottom drawer, the one that she almost always kept closed.
A small stack of similar envelopes lay inside. She shoved the newest envelope onto the pile, crumpled it, and slammed the drawer shut. She felt better. She walked back into the kitchen, her steps a bit lighter.
As the clutches of the nightmare faded, she realized she was starving. Here was the one good thing about waking up early: she had ample time to make herself some breakfast. She cracked two eggs into the frying pan, let them sizzle, put a piece of bread in the toaster. She decided she deserved a dollop of cream cheese on her plate as well. She smiled as she slid the eggs out of the frying pan and laid them gently on the plate. Both yolks remained unbroken. A win for Zoe Bentley. She cut the toast into triangles, then carefully dipped one of them in the round yellow yolk and bit into it.
Exquisite. How could a simple egg taste so good? And the thing to really go with this breakfast was a cup of coffee. She poured herself another one.
Two.
She glanced at her phone again. Five thirty. Still too early to go to work. But the thought of staying in this silent apartment, with the envelope lurking in the drawer, was unpleasant.
If I need to break this door, you’ll regret it, Zoe.
The hell with it. She could do some paperwork. Chief Mancuso would be happy.
She went downstairs and slid into her cherry-colored Ford Fiesta. She switched the engine on and put on Taylor Swift’s Red, fast-forwarding to “All Too Well.” Taylor’s voice and guitar filled the car’s small interior, soothing Zoe’s frayed nerves. She could always count on Taylor to make it all better.
The streets of Dale City were nearly empty. The sky was still dark, and a shade of dark blue signified the approaching sunrise. Zoe enjoyed the silence as she drove down Dale Boulevard. Maybe she should start waking up every day at four in the morning. She had the world to herself. Just her and the bastard trucker who cut in ahead of her, forcing her to slow down. Taylor’s song was now mixed with the torrent of curses that Zoe hurled into the open air, honking furiously. The trucker sped on.
She got on I-95 and drove south as Taylor switched to “22.” Zoe pressed the gas pedal, relishing the acceleration. She cranked up the volume and sang along, her head rocking slightly with the song’s cheerful beat. Life was pretty good after all. She’d make herself a third cup of coffee when she got to work, she decided. Those three cups should carry her until lunchtime. She got off on Fuller Road, the road signs to Quantico leading the way.
She parked her car in the nearly empty parking lot, a small smattering of other cars dotting her surroundings. A short walk, an ID card flipped at the entrance, two flights of stairs, and she was in her office. The silence of the entire floor was a bit disconcerting. The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit was hardly a noisy place even in the middle of the day, but she could usually hear agents talking in the corridor or the occasional hurried footsteps passing by her doorway. Today, it was all quiet except for the hum of the air-conditioning. She sat down in front of her computer, preparing herself mentally for the weekly report she knew Mancuso would demand as soon as she arrived. Zoe was required to turn in a weekly report every Monday, summarizing her previous week’s work. She typically handed it over on the following Friday, by which time Mancuso would have threatened to send her back to Boston. But today would be different. For once, she’d have the report ready on Thursday, only three days late, freeing her from this bureaucratic nightmare until next week. Zoe smiled as she started typing it in.
The phone on her desk jolted her awake. She gazed in confusion at her monitor, where the words Weekly Report July 4–8, 2016 remained orphaned, with no report following. She must have fallen asleep trying to think of how to start. The time on the bottom right of the monitor was 9:12 a.m. So much for getting an early start. She answered her phone, rotating her head in an attempt to relieve the pain in her neck. “BAU, this is Bentley.”
“Zoe,” Mancuso’s voice said. “Good morning. Can you drop by my office? There’s something I want you to have a look at.”
“Sure. On my way.”
The unit chief’s office was four doors down the corridor. The bronze plaque on the door read UNIT CHIEF CHRISTINE MANCUSO. Zoe knocked on the door, and Mancuso immediately called her in.
Zoe sat down in the visitor’s chair across from the desk. Mancuso sat on the other side of the desk, her chair turned sideways. She was staring in deep concentration at the aquarium that stood against the rear wall. She was an impressive-looking woman, her tawny skin smooth and hardly touched by age, her black hair pulled back, silvery-white strands intermingled in it. She faced sideways, and the beauty mark by her lips pointed directly at Zoe.
Zoe looked at the object of the chief’s fascination. The aquarium’s interior changed often, matching Mancuso’s whims. It was currently designed to look like a lush forest, clusters of aquatic plants coloring the water green and turquoise. Swarms of yellow, orange, and purple fish swam lazily this way and that.
“Something up with the fish?” Zoe asked.
“Belinda is depressed today,” Mancuso muttered. “I think she’s upset Timothy is swimming with Rebecca and Jasmine.”
“Well . . . maybe Timothy just needed some time off,” Zoe suggested.
“Timothy’s a bastard.”
“Right . . . uh, you wanted to see me?”
Mancuso turned her chair and faced Zoe. “You know Lionel Goodwin, the analyst?”
“He’s the one who always complains everyone is stealing his food.”
“He’s a part of the Highway Serial Killings Initiative.”
Zoe took a moment to remember what that was. A disturbing pattern of women’s bodies discarded along interstate highways had emerged over the past ten years. Analysts in the FBI had found some common ground for the murders. The victims were mostly prostitutes or drug users; the suspects were predominantly long-haul truck drivers. To try to match specific patterns to suspects, the FBI had launched the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. They would search for similar crimes on ViCAP, the FBI’s database of violent crimes, then try to match them to routes and timelines of the suspects.
“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.