“Fine,” he said. “Set up a meeting with him. But if we don’t hear from you soon—”
“You will,” she exclaimed. “I promise you will.”
CHAPTER 16
Zoe fished another pizza slice from the box, her eyes intent on the screen, poring through a long document in fascination.
She’d been half-sure Carmela was deluded when she had talked about the number of self-proclaimed vampires. As soon as they returned to the office, she began researching it online and quickly found something named the Atlanta Vampire Alliance. The alliance published the results of some surveys filled out by over a thousand individuals from the vampire community. The amount of data was immense, and Zoe was pleasantly surprised by its quality. Data and graphs were her drug of choice, and she was happy to see at least one vampire seemed to share her affection for them. She read off her findings to Tatum.
“There’s a high correlation between self-identified vampires to self-identified Goths.” She took a bite from her pizza.
“Not much surprise there.” Tatum grunted.
“Yeah.” Zoe had to agree. She scrolled down a couple of graphs. Her bandaged finger prickled slightly. She half regretted her decision to let the librarian drink her blood. It was a bit creepy, and she kept remembering the sensation of the woman’s mouth around her finger. A shiver ran down her spine. Yuck.
When she was a teen, she loved shows and books about vampires. They had an inherent sexiness to them. But whatever the allure was, Carmela the librarian didn’t have it.
Tatum rolled his chair over to her cubicle and took the last slice of pizza from the box. “I have a few leads from ViCAP, but nothing that really clicks,” he said. “And none of the cases are in Chicago. I’ll do some phone calls tomorrow, follow up on the names, see if I can locate them.”
“Okay.” Zoe closed the document. As much as she was interested in the vampire community, she doubted these statistics could help them tighten their killer’s profile. “There’s a Chicago PD database for local crimes. I used it in the Alston case.”
Tatum groaned. “Fine, I’ll talk to O’Donnell tomorrow about it.”
“Why don’t we do it together right now?” she asked. “We could finish up with it in a few hours.”
“Seriously?”
She glanced at him. He seemed weary, his eyes bloodshot, his shirt rumpled. They’d been working nonstop on this case for more than a week, trying to squeeze every minute from their time in Chicago. But it took its toll. She opened her mouth to tell him never mind, it really was late, when someone cleared his throat behind her. It was one of the agents, a guy named John. Or was it Jerry? She was almost sure it was John.
“Hey,” John-or-Jerry said. He stretched it out, saying it throatily, like Fonzie from Happy Days. “How are you two doing?”
“Fine,” Zoe answered.
“You leaving for the day, John?” Tatum asked.
She was right—it was John. Zoe felt an inkling of satisfaction.
“Yeah, I wanted to tell you a few of us are going to head out for a drink. We were wondering if you want to come.”
He spoke to them both but looked solely at Tatum.
“That sounds nice,” Tatum said. He glanced at her, giving her a smile. “What do you say? I could use a break.”
She was surprised to realize that a small voice in her head wanted to go. Not because she needed a drink or because she was tired. But because it sounded nice to go out with a group of people.
But it was a very small voice. Drowned by the fact that it would be a waste of time. That Glover was out there. That they wouldn’t have invited her if it wasn’t for Tatum. That she’d have to make small talk, and the music would be loud.
“You go ahead,” she said to Tatum. “I might join you in a little while. I want to wrap up some stuff.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. “Leave me the car. I’ll call you once I’m done.”
Tatum left with John. She heard him say something unintelligible, John laughing heartily. She considered getting up and following them.
Instead, she called O’Donnell.
The detective answered almost immediately. “Hello?”
“It’s Zoe Bentley. I wanted to ask—you have some sort of database of local criminal activity, right?”
“Yeah,” O’Donnell replied. “The CLEAR system.”
“That’s right,” Zoe said, recalling the acronym. “Can I log into CLEAR?”
“You’ll need a username and password, but it’s no big deal; federal agents can get them. You need to submit a security form signed by your chief.”
“I hoped to log in today.” Zoe bit her lower lip. “Can you give me your username and password?”
“Forget it. I’m not giving you my user. I can’t even imagine the shit I’d go through if anyone found out I gave my user and password to someone unauthorized.”
Zoe expected as much. “Can you run a few searches for me yourself?”
“Listen, Bentley, it might surprise you, but I have my own leads to pursue.” She sounded edgy, exhausted. “If you want, you can drop by here. The office is almost empty—we’d practically have it for ourselves. I’ll let you use the system from my computer. How’s that?”
“Drop by the station?” Zoe asked.
“You’re in the FBI office, right? It’s just a ten-minute drive. Call me once you get here.”
Zoe had already put her coat on. “See you soon.”
O’Donnell wasn’t kidding when she’d said they’d have the office to themselves. Zoe found the silence almost eerie.
The Violent Crimes Section in the station was a large open space with three rows of L-shaped desks, each one with its own tidbit of personality. One had a bunch of potted flowers, the next was covered in Post-its with brisk unintelligible scrawls, a third lined with family photos. But they were all empty, their occupants long gone for the night. When Zoe had arrived, one other detective still worked in the corner of the room, but he hardly bothered glancing at Zoe as she followed O’Donnell to her desk. When the detective left, he grunted something that could have been good night, and O’Donnell answered in kind. And then it was just the two of them. The desk was just wide enough so they could sit side by side, their shoulders inches apart.
O’Donnell was going through a thick stack of printed papers—Catherine Lamb’s phone call activity—matching calls to contacts, marking numbers that appeared repeatedly. Zoe sat by her side in front of the computer, the CLEAR system open. She carefully went through murder cases or violent cases that involved bite marks, needles, or strange cuts. She made a note of any case that seemed worth investigating further, noting the location, the date, the detectives in charge. Zoe usually accompanied this kind of methodical work with music. But in the thunderous silence that encapsulated them, she suspected it would bother O’Donnell, even if she wore earphones.
The problem with her search was that needle marks appeared frequently in the case files when the crimes were drug related. That added a lot of noise to the results, making the search for patterns almost impossible. She wondered if she should ignore the cases that involved needles altogether. After all, the medical examiner had mentioned that the needle marks on Catherine’s arm indicated inexperience. Even if unsub beta had attacked someone before, it was more likely he’d bite them or cut them to drink their blood. On the other hand, she didn’t want to miss anything important. She bit her lip as she contemplated her dilemma.