Because they knew what he was looking for. Girls on the streets. Whores. Next time he stopped by a street corner, there might be a police stakeout waiting just for him. He felt a shiver of fear. And he wanted to talk to someone. Wanted a sympathetic ear, someone who would listen to his terror. There was no one.
A visit to the fridge earned him a cold can of beer. He walked over to his apartment’s balcony and watched the view from above. It was hardly a luxurious home, but the view wasn’t half-bad, considering the rent. Chicago’s buildings blocked the view of Lake Michigan, but he didn’t care about that. You couldn’t really see the lake at night, only a black shape. It was much better to look at the windows, some of them alight even at this late hour. The city never really went to sleep. And somewhere in it, there was someone for him.
CHAPTER 40
Zoe’s eyes were wide open, staring at the motel ceiling. The paint peeled at several points, and a diagonal crack zigzagged across almost the entire ceiling. The light had a dusty glass cover in which two distinct dead flies could be spotted. But her brain hardly registered all that. It was too busy processing the image of a dead woman, her neck bloody, her eyes vacant. And the detachment was gone, as she had known it would be.
Once she had a moment of quiet, a second to process, it always hit her. Her brain, wired to try to imagine everything, began working in high gear. What would the parents of this victim feel when they heard about it? How would her partner feel or children, if she had any? And, of course, how had she felt when it had happened? Scared? In pain? Violated?
During Zoe’s fifteen minutes of fame, after helping catch one of the most infamous serial killers of the twenty-first century, she’d heard people talking about how clever she was. Her credentials would often be touted—PhD and JD from Harvard, top of her class, and so on and so forth. But they didn’t get it. What made her so damn good was her vivid imagination. When she tried to, she could get into the killer’s mind, imagine what he felt, what he saw. It was a double-edged sword because she’d also see things from the victim’s point of view. And she’d see them clearly.
Tied by her wrists somewhere, trying desperately to tell the cops where she was, her mouth gagged. She’d been taken almost twenty-four hours earlier. Had she been tied that entire time? Probably. That meant her throat was parched; she was weak from thirst, hunger, and fear. Her jaw would ache from whatever had been shoved into her mouth to gag her, her shoulders throbbing in pain. And mix all that with the knowledge that death could be moments away, and then the killer came for her—
A knock on the door startled her. She was breathing hard, her palms sweaty. She took a moment to steady her breath and got off the bed. She padded over to the door.
“Yeah?” she said. She didn’t ask who it was. Who else would knock on her motel door at two in the morning?
“Did I wake you up?” Tatum’s voice sounded muffled from the other side.
“No, I was still awake.”
“Can you open the door? I come bearing gifts.”
Zoe considered this. She wore a wide, long shirt that covered her up to midthigh and a pair of underwear. She could go and put on a pair of jeans, maybe a bra, but it sounded like the worst sort of idea, and the glimpse of a dead young woman put the notions of modesty in a certain perspective.
She opened the door. Tatum stood outside, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, holding a 7-Eleven bag in his hand. His eyes widened slowly.
“Uh, sorry,” he said. “I just thought neither of us had anything to eat for dinner, and I figured—”
“Come in,” Zoe said, opening the door a bit wider. He slid in, and she caught a whiff of soapy lavender from him. He had showered before coming. She was relieved. She didn’t want the smell of the crime scene in her room.
He sat on the small couch in the room’s corner, putting the bag on the glass table. “I brought two meals. You can pick whichever you like. There’s a . . .” He pulled out the first box from the bag and read the label. “Buffalo chicken roller . . . and there’s, uh . . . something else . . . with cheese, I guess. And two hotdogs, with some toppings I selected randomly.”
“You know how to spoil a girl,” Zoe said dryly, sitting on the other side of the couch, readjusting the shirt to cover as much as possible. “I’ll take the something-else-with-cheese.”
“And also”—Tatum pulled two bottles of Honker’s Ale out of the bag—“something to drink. Because I think otherwise there’s no way we can force this food down our throats.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and used one of them to remove the cap from a bottle. He then handed it to Zoe.
Zoe took a bite from her something-else-with-cheese. It was stale and soggy and tasted like morning breath. She put it down and took the beer bottle. “Beer has caloric value,” she said. “I think it can be considered a meal.”
Tatum chewed the buffalo chicken roller, his face far from a warm endorsement. “This is terrible.”
“Here. Allow me,” Zoe said, holding out her hand. He gave her the roller, and she thrust it in the bag. Then she took the entire thing and dumped it in the trash. She bent by her suitcase on the floor and rummaged inside, locating the Snickers bars. It occurred to her that in this pose, dressed as she was, she was giving Tatum quite a view. She quickly straightened and turned toward him. He stared at the wall with fascination, his cheeks slightly red.
“Here,” she said, handing one over. “I always pack a bunch of Snickers bars when I travel.”
“Wise woman,” he said, tearing the wrapper.
She unwrapped her own bar and took a bite. The peanuty crunchiness and the sweetness of the chocolate began tangoing in her mouth, and she shut her eyes, breathing deeply through her nose. She had tried yoga, meditation, running, and swimming. So far, nothing cleansed the soul better than a Snickers bar. It was the ultimate therapy. It was cheap, and it could be carried in her bag. She drank a swig of beer. The tastes meshed well together. She was enjoying this dinner of Snickers à la Honker’s.
“Yum,” Tatum said in a muffled voice, chewing happily.
Zoe smiled, her body relaxing. She was only half looking at Tatum, enjoying the first moment of serenity that evening.
“So, about today . . .” Tatum said.
“What about today?” Zoe asked, taking another swig from her beer bottle. She had finished half her Snickers bar, and her brain was mostly consumed by the complex process of dividing the Snickers bar bites evenly throughout the beer. She didn’t want to drink the final third of the bottle with no chocolate to accompany it. Bad planning of chocolate division was how things went downhill.
“You practically bit my head off when I said I don’t agree with you.”
“I just said you’re entitled to your own opinion. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I mean, your tone was—”
“Look, I’m sorry I hurt your sensitive feelings. There was another dead woman in that alley, and every moment we dawdle increases the danger of another killing. This is what I’m focusing on right now.”
“Me too. You know, I’m part of the BAU just like you. I’m not just a pretty face in a suit. I have good instincts and experience.”
“You’re not wearing a suit,” Zoe remarked.
“I was speaking figuratively,” he said, his eyes flicking downward, as if to stress the fact that compared to her, he was in very formal clothing.
She wasn’t sure what he wanted—an apology? She wasn’t about to apologize for doing her job. She decided to do the next best thing: change the subject. “Are you unhappy with your new position in the BAU?” she asked, her voice soft, placating.
He eyed her, frowning. He crumpled the empty Snickers wrapper, his beer bottle still half-full. Amateur. “I don’t know,” he said and sipped from the bottle. “It’s not what I wanted. And I loved LA. But so far it hasn’t been boring.”
“Why were you . . . promoted?” Zoe asked. She tried to ask delicately, but her voice rose when she said promoted in a way she immediately knew was offensive.
He grinned at her. “Because I was great. Why else?”