“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?”