There was a moment of silence. “What?” Marvin’s voice sounded much sharper. This woke him up.
“Dr. Nassar said that one of the symptoms of high blood pressure is erectile dysfunction. But you’re feeling fine, right?”
“I . . . what exactly did he say about the symptoms?”
“Apparently, the arteries become hard and narrow,” Tatum said, reading the info on the screen, “and that limits the blood flow. So you get less flow to the penis. I mean . . . that’s what it says here online. Do you want me to send you a link? There’s a diagram.”
There was some disgruntled muttering on the other side of the call.
“Maybe if you drink some tea with honey after you take the blue pill, your throat won’t itch as much,” Tatum said brightly.
“Yeah.”
“It’s worth a try, right?”
“You’re a pain in the ass, Tatum.”
“Have a nice day, Marvin. I gotta go.” Grinning, Tatum hung up the phone. He checked his email and realized that Dana had forwarded a message from the morgue. The autopsy of Lily Ramos was scheduled for that morning. He glanced at his watch. It was about to start in less than an hour.
CHAPTER 42
Zoe sipped from her third cup of coffee that morning, the lingering headache in the back of her skull kept at bay with the combined efforts of caffeine and Tylenol. She had managed to fall asleep slightly after three and woke up less than five hours later. She was grumpy and tense, feeling like an overstretched rubber band, ready to snap at any moment.
“Zoe,” Tatum said behind her. “I’m joining Dana to observe the autopsy. Want to come?”
“No. I have too much to process here. You’ll fill me in later?”
“Sure.”
He left. The task force room was empty, and it occurred to her it was the first time this had happened since she’d arrived. Zoe had gotten so used to having her own office in the BAU; she didn’t realize how much she missed the silence. This was how she worked best: no people to interrupt, no distractions, just her and a mountain of evidence and theories.
She still didn’t have printed pictures of the crime scene, and the squad room’s printer was black and white. She was used to the high-quality printer they had at Quantico, and this irked her. She preferred surrounding herself with images of the crime scene when she worked.
She opened the email with the images from the alley and looked over them. After going through them several times, she opened a wide shot of the crime scene, displaying the entire body lying on the alley floor. She then opened a close-up of the slashed throat and positioned both images side by side. Looking at the close-up carefully, she could see a brownish-blue bruise on the neck’s side. Then she looked through the previous case files, selected a few images from each of the previous crime scenes, and stood up, thinking.
Her desk was positioned in the room’s corner, and she had a wall to her right, another in front of her. She tacked the images to the two walls, Susan Warner and Monique Silva in front of her, Krista Barker to her right. Satisfied, she rolled her chair backward to inspect her handiwork. And the prize for the most morbid workspace decoration ever goes to . . . Zoe Bentley. All she needed was a dead potted plant on her table, and everyone in the Chicago PD would think she was a lunatic.
A new email popped up in her inbox. She didn’t recognize the sender, but it was from a Chicago PD email address. It was a reply to Martinez’s request for the recording of the conversation from the night before. The email had the sound file attached as well as the details of the call—phone number, start time and end time of the conversation, and some technical details that meant nothing to her. She played the call.
Listening to the conversation made her sick. The adrenaline she’d felt yesterday, the desire to help this girl, the hope that they’d manage to get her out alive—those were all gone. This was a conversation with a helpless, terrified, gagged girl who was going to die horribly very soon. It went on and on, the girl’s muffled cries, trying to point the detectives to the right address. Zoe wanted to yell at the recorded Martinez, “It’s Huron Street, damn it. Get to Huron Street.” By the time she got to the end of the call, Zoe was clenching her fists tight, anticipating and dreading the hysterical muffled screaming. She took a long breath and looked at the sound file length. Fourteen minutes and thirty-four seconds. It felt like ten hours.
Zoe picked up a pen and played the sound file a second time. As it played, she jotted down several time stamps. The first was 01:43. Mel asked Lily if she could describe the man who had taken her. A completely inane request, since the woman was gagged. But Lily responded by trying to say something. The gag swallowed her word completely, the tone frustrated, desperate. Just a jumble. Zoe played the sound bite three times. Maybe there was some sort of sound-manipulation algorithm that could extract what she had tried to say.
The second one, at 02:52, was when Martinez took charge of the call. As he spoke, Lily’s heavy, labored breathing could be heard in the background. But Zoe could also hear the sound of two people talking. They sounded far away and muffled, but she was sure there were two people there. And they seemed completely oblivious to Lily’s screams. Couldn’t they hear her? Or were they simply ignoring her? Was one of them the killer?
Finally, she jotted down the time stamp when Lily began screaming in panic. Just before that, Martinez had actually said, “Huron,” but Lily hadn’t stopped him. Did they get the street name wrong? Zoe listened to this segment over and over, frowning. Prior to Lily’s frightened screams, there was a slight sound, almost imperceptible. A squeak.
A door opening.
Lily had probably stopped paying attention to Martinez because she’d heard the killer coming for her. And then he’d walked in and disconnected the call.
Zoe played the sound file again, focusing on the sound bite when the two men could be heard. Zoe frowned. She had also heard them several times during the call. Completely apathetic to Lily’s screaming. They sounded almost casual. She increased the volume and listened a few times more. It sounded like one man asking a question, and the other man giving a lengthy answer. She listened again to the entire file, volume high, flinching when Lily’s screams echoed in the empty room. Nine minutes into the recording, one of the voices changed, while the other stayed the same. The man asking the questions was talking to a third person. Who also completely ignored Lily’s screams. Because, of course, he wasn’t there.
It was the sound of a talk show.
She shook her head in disgust. Stupid. Time wasted.
She focused on the monitor. The bloody throat drew her attention. She frowned, her eyes moving from the cut throat to the bruise on the side.
Finally, she dialed Tatum.
“Zoe, we’re in the middle of the autopsy,” he said, sounding cranky.
“I know. Sorry. Listen, do you know yet if the victim was strangled?”
“Yeah, the ME says he thinks she was strangled before her throat was cut.”
“Was that the cause of death?”
“He thinks so. The victim has hemorrhages in the eyes, which often happens in cases of death by strangulation.”
“Then why did he cut her throat?”
“I don’t know, Zoe. Because he’s crazy.”
“Was the body embalmed?”
“No, definitely not.”
That didn’t surprise her. She doubted the killer had had time to embalm the body. “Okay, let me know what else you find.”
“Right,” Tatum said and hung up.
Zoe bit her lip, thinking. Could the killer have slashed the woman’s throat postmortem out of rage? It didn’t sound like the kind of action he’d take. What, then?
She glanced at her phone. She had an idea. She called a second number.
“Abramson Funeral Home. This is Vernon.”
“Mr. Abramson, this is Zoe. I was at the funeral home the other day . . .”
“I remember. How can I help you?”
“I have a dead body, and her throat is cut. I was wondering . . . would that make embalming problematic?”