“Zoe,” Tatum said. “We need this to be an actual conversation.”
“This is a conversation.”
“No. This is you spewing your thoughts at us.”
O’Donnell watched them both with apparent amusement. Then the barista said, “O’Donnell? Your order is ready.”
While O’Donnell went to get her order, Zoe tried to frame her thoughts into concrete sentences. Glover’s accomplice went to the same church. Did Glover meet him there? Was Glover even religious? She recalled meeting him at church once or twice as a child, but she had never gotten the impression that—
“Your coffee is getting cold,” Tatum said.
“Oh!” She was surprised to see a cup of coffee in front of her. She sipped from it. It was fine.
“I just told O’Donnell about your sister.”
“What about my sister?”
“She was in the photograph with Glover,” O’Donnell pointed out. “I thought it was weird.”
Zoe nodded. “Yes. That’s what Glover . . . what are you drinking?”
“Hot chocolate,” O’Donnell said and sipped from it.
Zoe followed the mug’s movement intently. It was topped with whipped cream, cocoa powder sprinkled on top. Suddenly, Zoe’s own coffee seemed tasteless. She noticed O’Donnell had a sandwich as well. God, she was starving.
“Hang on a minute,” she blurted and went over to the barista. She asked for hot chocolate and a sandwich named the Centaur. She waited by the counter, trying to marshal her thoughts, occasionally glancing over at Tatum and O’Donnell. They were leaning toward each other, Tatum talking in a low voice. Filling her in on Glover’s past, probably. That and his connection with Zoe.
After a few minutes, the barista handed Zoe her hot chocolate and sandwich. Zoe carried them back to the table, sat down, and took a tentative sip from the hot chocolate. The sudden creamy sweetness filled her mouth and nose, sharpening the world around her, focusing the chaos in her head more than anything else. She let the chocolaty liquid run down her throat, warming her up.
“I think both murderers knew Catherine Lamb,” she said. “We know Glover did, but he wasn’t the one who consumed her blood, or covered her body, or put the necklace on her throat. That was the other one. We can call him beta.”
“That’s assuming Glover really killed Catherine Lamb,” O’Donnell said.
Zoe took a bite from the sandwich. Either centaur meat tasted like turkey, or this was a turkey sandwich. “Detective, at some point you need to narrow your focus down to an actual suspect. I’m not telling you how to do your—”
“I’m just saying nothing is final yet.” O’Donnell frowned, tilting her head slightly.
Zoe glanced at Tatum, raising her eyebrows to make sure he saw that. He ignored the gesture.
“Presumably Glover met beta in the church,” Zoe said.
“Either that, or Glover knew beta before, and beta introduced him to the church,” Tatum suggested.
O’Donnell finished her hot chocolate. “So Rod Glover returned to Chicago from Dale City a few weeks ago. From what I understand, he was wounded, and terminally ill, and needed a place to stay.”
“And he had at least one friend who could help him,” Tatum said.
“He might actually be staying with him.” Zoe spooned some foam off her hot chocolate. “It makes perfect sense that Glover would return to Chicago. This is where he feels safest. For the past decade he’s been building a life here. Now that he is ill and has no job, he came back to get help from his friends.” She licked the spoon but stopped when O’Donnell looked at her with a bemused frown.
“He’s probably getting cancer treatment,” O’Donnell said. “We can get a warrant, check the hospitals for a patient named Rod Glover or Daniel Moore.”
“We already did that,” Tatum said. “Got the warrants and had them look for him in hospital records. Nothing. We also showed his picture around, but there are over ten thousand cancer patients in Chicago, so it’s looking for a needle in a haystack. Not to mention that hospitals aren’t wild about divulging patient information. We have an analyst in Quantico still following up on that paper trail.”
O’Donnell nodded thoughtfully. “If he’s been living here for a decade, that’s good for us. We can use the press, get his picture out there. Maybe someone saw him recently. And it might make his so-called friends come forward.”
Zoe considered this. “I think that’s a good idea,” she said slowly. “Even if no one comes forward, it’ll increase the pressure on him and might cause him to make a mistake.”
“What if media interest prods him to kill again?” Tatum asked.
“That’s not likely. Glover never showed any inclination of responding to the press in that manner,” Zoe said. “He isn’t interested in fame.”
“I’ll make sure the press get his photo,” O’Donnell said. “I’ll also talk to Patrick Carpenter and Albert Lamb again, see what more they can tell me about Daniel Moore, and check if I can get any names. What about the other man? This beta dude?”
“It’s likely that he has a criminal record that starts with theft or harassment,” Zoe said. “The theft might include strange objects like women’s underwear, or shoes, or makeup.”
“It’s called fetish burglaries,” Tatum said.
“Glover wouldn’t partner with someone who would put him in serious risk, someone who’d attract suspicion, so this killer isn’t a gibbering madman or a serious drug addict. It’s likely he has some source of income Glover could leech.”
O’Donnell raised her eyebrow. “I hoped for a more specific profile. On TV, you guys say stuff like, ‘The subject is twenty-five years old, white, thin, has a limp, and probably stutters.’”
Zoe gave it some thought. “I don’t see why any of that would be particularly likely.”
“We’ll try to create a more accurate profile of the other killer,” Tatum said. “We need to move fast, before they both act again.”
“Again?” O’Donnell said. “You think they might attack another victim?”
“Glover is dying,” Zoe said. “He knows he doesn’t have a lot of time left, and that diminishes his fear of being caught. As long as he is healthy enough, he will do this again. As for his partner, it’s too early to say. But he was there to drink the victim’s blood. That indicates a powerful obsession with blood consumption, and it is likely he’d want to repeat it.”
“No pressure or anything,” O’Donnell said.
Zoe blinked. Hadn’t the detective listened to what they just said? “There’s a lot of pressure,” she stressed.
O’Donnell rolled her eyes. “I got that.”
Zoe glanced at Tatum. “We need to update Mancuso. We can’t leave yet.”
Tatum sighed deeply, doing his martyr impression. “Fine. I’ll talk to her.”
“We’ll check ViCAP, see if there are any other similar crimes where blood was consumed or taken,” Zoe said.
O’Donnell snorted as she stood up. “Good luck with that. No one in our department bothers with your ViCAP system.”