Chicago, Illinois, Thursday, July 21, 2016
The alley was lit by flickering red and blue lights shimmering on the brick walls that enclosed it. The body of Lily Ramos had been discarded on the ground. It was a tight space, and Tatum and the detectives pushed their way ahead of Zoe, who made no effort to get there first. She could see glimpses of the victim between the people who huddled around the body. A palm, facing the sky, fingers outstretched. The woman’s face, her eyes wide open and vacant, mouth parted. Her hair, disheveled, spread on the ground.
“Do you have an estimate for the time of death?” Martinez asked.
Someone answered, but Zoe couldn’t see past the wall of people in her way.
“Time of death is between nine thirty and ten thirty.”
Zoe assumed it was the medical examiner. She sighed and walked closer, shoving her way forward a bit until she could see the man crouching by the body.
This body was not posed, and there was no mistaking it for a living woman. Her arms sprawled on the ground, her left leg bent at the knee, the other straight. She wore a shirt and underwear, no pants. There was a dark-crimson gash on her throat. The entire neck was covered in dried blood as well as some on the body’s chin. The blood had also trickled under her collar.
“She was still alive at nine thirty,” Martinez said. “We know she was alive until nine thirty-seven.”
“Unless it wasn’t her on the phone,” Tatum said.
Martinez nodded, conceding the possibility.
“Well,” the medical examiner said, “she didn’t die after ten thirty.”
“And she didn’t die here, either,” Martinez said. “There’s no blood on the ground.”
The detachment came over Zoe, as it always did. As far as her brain was concerned, the body on the floor wasn’t a dead woman. It was a collection of clues and indications. A footprint left by the killer. This was how her brain coped, and she knew it well by now. She also knew it was a temporary reprieve, that the body in the alley would haunt her later.
But that was later.
She crouched by the woman, looking at her intently.
“This doesn’t look like the work of the same killer,” Tatum said.
“Really?” Zoe glanced at the sides of the woman’s neck. “Why not?”
“Well, she isn’t embalmed, her throat is cut, she isn’t posed, and we found her almost immediately after she disappeared . . . nothing is similar.”
“She was tied,” Zoe said, indicating the woman’s wrists, which were scraped and bloody. “And I think she might have been strangled as well.” She pointed at a bruise on the side of the neck.
“This looks all wrong for our killer.”
“I definitely agree that this isn’t what he wanted.”
“But you think it’s the same guy?” Tatum sounded very skeptical.
“I think it’s too soon to tell,” Zoe said.
“Why did he slash her throat?”
Zoe chewed her lip. That was a very good question. Everything else could be explained by the fact that the victim had contacted the police. The killer had panicked, killed the woman, and put her in the trunk, fleeing the crime scene. Realizing there were roadblocks everywhere, he had driven up to the alley and dumped the body.
But why slash her throat? It wasn’t his MO; he always strangled the victims.
“I don’t know,” she finally admitted.
“I think it’s a different guy, Zoe.”
“Well,” she said, irritated, “you have a right to your own opinion, Agent Gray.”
Tatum sighed and stood up.
Zoe blocked the interaction with Tatum from her mind. The man was needlessly contrary and wasn’t helping. She focused on the body. Around her, others were trying to figure out what had happened, tracing forensic evidence, perhaps finding a breadcrumb that would lead to the killer. Their job was to look at the past. Her job was to study the past, sure—then look at the present and the future.
What was the killer going through right now? What would his next move be?
This had not gone as he had planned. The body was not posed, probably not even embalmed. As far as this killer was concerned, the killing was not the point. It was the time after the killing that mattered. That was what he fantasized about.
And he hadn’t gotten it. His fantasy had not been fulfilled this time. His need was still there. Perhaps even worse than before.
Serial killers usually had a learning curve. The killer had a fantasy. He killed, trying to fulfill the fantasy, but it didn’t work as well as he hoped it would. It didn’t match the fantasy. So he would think of ways to improve his actions so that the next murder would work out better. Killed again. Improved his methods even more. Killed again.
This was something people rarely understood about serial killers. Most people assumed killers had a constant signature. But often, the killer changed his methods and signatures to accommodate the elaborate fantasies in his mind.
This killer obviously adapted. His techniques became more refined with each murder. How would he adapt this time?
They’d nearly caught him. He was scared. He would need time to regroup, to understand what had happened and what had gone wrong. He knew the big screwup was leaving the phone with his victim, so they could be sure that wouldn’t happen again. But that wouldn’t be enough. Next time he grabbed someone, he’d kill her faster, not give her time to contact anyone. And he might change his target as well. He knew they thought he was targeting prostitutes. So he would search for a different victim—still vulnerable but not a working girl.
“Hey,” Martinez said, crouching by her side. “Are you okay?”
“He’s going to strike again,” Zoe said. “And he’ll adapt. We won’t be able to find him through his future victims anymore. We’ll have to find him by tracing the breadcrumbs he left in his past crimes. His past mistakes.”
CHAPTER 39
He gazed at the shower’s porcelain floor, watching the foamy water, pink with blood, swirling into the drain. There was something mesmerizing about it—the translucent white, pink, and red bubbles crowding the dark hole, sliding inside one after the other. A sob emerged from his throat, uncontrollable.
It had all gone so wrong.
He had thought that by the end of this evening, they would be together. Served him right for trusting a woman before the treatment. He should have finished her last night as soon as he had her. Instead, he’d decided to wait, and this was what happened.
He was alone.
Finally, the water running down his body became colorless, transparent. He switched the water off, stepped out of the shower, and grabbed his towel.
The shirt and pants he had worn, soaked in that woman’s blood, were in a tied trash bag on the floor. He considered burning it, but that sounded like a hassle. Would anyone really go through a tied trash bag? He resolved to dump it in a public trash bin once he went out. Removing the evidence from his house was good enough.
He still found it difficult to believe the cop at the roadblock had let him drive through with his clothes looking like that.
He plodded to his room slowly. He could almost feel the oppressive emptiness of the apartment. No one but him in the bedroom. If he sat down to drink a beer, he would do so alone. No one to talk to about his day, to hear how he had evaded the police, slipped right through their fingers.
He put on a pair of jeans and a plaid button-down shirt and took a look in the mirror. His reflection stared back at him. He looked closely at his face and neck, made sure there was no speck of blood he had missed. There wasn’t.
That bitch. And the cops had been looking for her; he was sure of it. They knew he had taken her. How?