A voice behind her made her jump. She turned around, looking up at Tatum’s smiling face. He stood with briefcase in hand, on his way out. She checked the time: 9:00 p.m. The room was completely deserted. She hadn’t even noticed the people around her leaving.
“No, thanks,” Zoe said. “I’m, uh . . . I’ll take a taxi when I’m done. I really just want to get that report to Mancuso this evening.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
He left, and she turned back to her computer. She kept looking up to 2016 and found no other cases. This didn’t discourage her at all. The claim that serial killers never stopped, that they had to keep on killing, was nothing but a myth. Serial killers often stopped for months and years, fulfilling their needs with self-relief. Sometimes they didn’t stop but hid the bodies well or killed in faraway places. There was nothing strange about the long pause between the two murders in 2008 and the five murders that began in 2014.
She read through the case reports slowly. Though the item used to strangle Shirley Wattenberg had been missing, the marks on her throat indicated a wide, smooth, flexible noose. One of the detectives on the case had theorized that it was a belt, though there were no markings that indicated a belt buckle. This definitely seemed to fit Zoe’s theory that a tie had been used. The crime scene photos showed a naked body of a woman lying on her stomach, partially in the water. This was identical to the way the bodies had been found in Maynard, back in 1997.
Pamela Vance’s photo looked similar. The autopsy report detailed several indications that the victim had struggled violently before dying. There were several overlapping markings of ligature, and the ME concluded that the first attempt to strangle the victim had been unsuccessful due to her struggling. The murderer had had to try again, and the noose had shifted a bit, resulting in the overlapping bruises. There were injuries due to sexual assault both antemortem and postmortem.
The victim had died of strangulation as she was being raped. And he had kept on going.
Zoe leaned back, feeling sick. Was this it? The moment that Glover had changed? It definitely fit.
Was it enough?
She imagined herself presenting the case to Tatum and Martinez. Three murders in 1997 in Maynard, the suspect never convicted because he had killed himself while incarcerated. Two murders in 2008 matching the MO and the signature of the Maynard serial killer. And five murders between 2014 and 2016 with clear links in the MO and the signature to the murders in 2008. And the gray ties. She tried to figure out a way to bring up the gray ties sent to her. How would she explain Glover’s obsession with her?
She’d have to tell them about that night. About what she had seen in his home. And she had to make them see she had been right then and that she was right now.
A fear she hadn’t felt for many years crept in. The fear that they wouldn’t listen.
She needed more. And then it occurred to her. If it really was Glover, he had to have known Susan Warner somehow. Perhaps he’d been her neighbor or someone she’d dated. He had to have known she was alone, that no one would barge in as he embalmed her in her home. And if that was the case, maybe Daniella Ortiz knew him.
Daniella seemed subdued somehow when she opened the door. Her happy rainbow outfit gone, she wore a black pair of yoga pants and a pink shirt that said LIVE SLOW, DIE WHENEVER. Her eyes seemed a bit puffy.
“I’m sorry for the late hour,” Zoe said.
“No, please, come in. I’m happy to have a bit of company.”
Zoe entered the apartment. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, just a rough couple of days.” Daniella sniffed. “They happen to everyone, right?”
“Sure.”
“Can I get you any coffee?”
Remembering the condensed caffeine monstrosity from last time, Zoe said, “No, uh . . . maybe tea?”
“Sure.” Daniella stomped to the kitchen. Zoe sat down, looking around her. The pictures bombarded her already-frayed brain, and she shut her eyes, taking a deep breath. She was still reeling from the implications of the envelopes the reporter had found, and memories from the past kept emerging. People and places she hadn’t thought of in years were swimming in her mind.
“Here,” Daniella said. She handed Zoe a cup of tea. She had one for herself as well. This time she didn’t get a chair for herself, sitting next to Zoe on the couch. Zoe didn’t mind. There was plenty of room for both of them, and she wasn’t there to question Daniella, just to show her a picture.
She sipped from her tea, which turned out to be thick with sugar. Grimacing, she put the teacup on the table and fished the printed image from her pocket.
“Do you recognize this man?” she asked, handing Daniella the page. It was a print of the only picture she had of Rod Glover. She had acquired it when she was fifteen, from the office he had worked at. They had a picture of him from a Thanksgiving party. He looked happy and slightly drunk. Not the face of a killer. But then, most killers didn’t have a particularly violent face.
Daniella took the picture and stared at it for a long time. “No,” she finally said.
“Look carefully. Are you sure you’ve never seen him before? Maybe Susan knew him somehow?”
“If she did, I don’t think she told me. He doesn’t look familiar. I’m sorry.”
Disappointed, Zoe took the printed image from her. “Do you think Ryan might recognize him?”
Daniella shrugged. “He might. He’s not here, though.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“He never tells me, and if I ask, I’m nagging, right?”
Zoe nodded in kinship. “Do you have a pen?” she asked.
“Sure.” Daniella went to the kitchen. The kitchen was the place where pens were in the Ortiz household. She returned a moment later, handing the pen to Zoe.
Zoe wrote her phone number on the paper. “Can you show Ryan this picture when he gets back?” she asked. “If he’s seen this man, just give me a call, okay? Or if you recall seeing him.”
Daniella nodded. “Sure,” she said. “We’ll call.”
“Thanks.” Zoe got up. “And, uh . . . I hope you have a nice evening.”
Daniella nodded, staring down. Zoe followed her eyes to the bare floor. There was nothing there. Only loneliness.
It was as if she were dragging heavy chains behind her as she walked up the motel stairs, lifting one foot after the other, each step heavy and tired. During the past years, whenever she would get an envelope, she’d feel as if Glover were reaching out and pulling her back. For him, she was still a fourteen-year-old girl who could be intimidated and terrorized with little to no consequence. Sometimes years would pass between the envelopes. She’d start relaxing her guard. And then another envelope would arrive in the mail. Always with a gray tie inside.
Now it was worse. He was somewhere in this city. He was killing young women. And he was laughing at her, taunting her, so sure she couldn’t find him.
She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. That twisted, psycho bastard. She’d find him. She would get him arrested. He would die in prison.
She reached her room, unlocked the door, and stumbled inside. She lay on her bed, too drained to brush her teeth or shower. Too worked up to fall asleep. Stuck in her own looping thoughts.
Finally, she pulled out her phone and called Andrea.
“Zoe?” her sleepy sister said over the phone.
“Hey, Ray-Ray.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost midnight, I think.”
“Okay . . .” A pause. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” Zoe said sadly. “Though that’s not such a bad idea.”
“What’s going on, Zoe?”
“I don’t know. I think I just needed to hear your voice.”
“Okay. It sounds better in the morning.”
“Ray-Ray, do you remember Rod Glover?”
There was a moment of silence. “Do I remember the serial killer who nearly murdered us both?” Andrea finally asked. “It sounds familiar.”
Andrea didn’t remember what Glover had said that night. But she was the only one who’d really believed everything Zoe had said. As a child, she’d quickly gotten over the terrible night they’d spent locked in Zoe’s room with Glover screaming on the other side of the door. She’d had her big sister to protect her; she’d known nothing would happen to her.