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.”
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