can try and help with this case. We can allocate federal resources.”
That was what O’Donnell had been hoping to hear all along. DNA tests in Chicago had a ridiculous backlog. But if the feds got involved, volunteering their own labs? O’Donnell could use a lucky break like that.
Besides, she was curious. She’d heard a lot of people talking about Zoe Bentley and the Strangling Undertaker case. People loved talking about Bentley almost as much as they enjoyed talking about O’Donnell and the recent scandal. The profiler was depicted as everything from a sham to a genius. There had been some sort of mess in the Strangling Undertaker case. Bentley had managed to get severely injured during the investigation. She and her partner had possibly held back crucial information from the cops. O’Donnell had even heard an absurd rumor that when they’d arrested the murderer, Bentley had been half-naked. The profiler sure made people talk.
She wanted to see her in action.
“Fine,” she said. “You can have a look. But if I ask you to step away, you leave.”
“Hey, it’s your scene.” Agent Gray flashed her a smile.
She led them back to the house. Bentley and Gray signed the log and followed her inside. Garza was still in the living room, sketching. The photographer had joined him and took close shots of one of the bloody footprints. O’Donnell made a note to make sure he got a few wide shots of all the footprints together.
“Gloves and shoe covers.” O’Donnell pointed at the boxes by the entrance. She watched Bentley’s expression as the profiler noticed the large bloodstain.
“The victim was bleeding,” Bentley muttered as she put on a pair of gloves.
So far, O’Donnell wasn’t particularly impressed by the woman’s deductive skills. “Martinez didn’t mention that?” she asked innocently. She knew he hadn’t. It wasn’t on the initial report of the first officers on the scene.
Bentley ignored her and put on the shoe booties. She approached the bloodstain. Without even pausing, she leaped over it, landing in the living room.
O’Donnell was irked. Zoe Bentley was even shorter than she was, but she had managed to jump over the bloodstain with the grace of a damn gazelle.
CHAPTER 3
Zoe scrutinized the large bloodstain and the footprints that crisscrossed the room’s floor. At first, it was hard to make sense of the mess; the footprints were smeared and cut across each other. Slowly she managed to untangle them in her mind. Someone had paced in a circle near the room’s entrance several times and had gone to the far corner and back. He’d stepped in the pool of blood several times, which probably indicated he was confused or distraught.
The bra, discarded on the floor, had been torn by force, the metal clasp on the back twisted. What about the rest of the clothes? Torn as well? She tried to keep the obvious question from clouding her judgment. Could this be Glover’s work?
If she kept focusing on Glover, she’d invariably morph the facts to match what she wanted to see. But she wasn’t sure she could avoid the question. Glover grew and filled her mind like a parasitic vine, crawling into every nook and cranny, suffocating every other thought.
For the past few weeks, she and Tatum had meticulously traced Glover’s footsteps, going back ten years, like a movie in rewind. They’d started in the place where he’d last been. An apartment in her own building. He rented it under the name Daniel Moore and stalked Zoe and her sister, Andrea, for over a month. When Zoe left to investigate a case in Texas, Glover struck. It was pure luck that Andrea managed to escape unharmed. Glover was shot in the process and hunkered in his dank apartment, recuperating. The forensic team estimated Glover nearly died but managed to stop the bleeding. And once he could stand on his feet, he ran.
There was more. Glover was dying. Not from a bullet, but something much more mundane. He had a terminal brain tumor, and that made him more dangerous than ever. A dying beast had nothing left to lose.
She turned to O’Donnell. The detective stood on the far side of the room, her dark eyes following the photographer. He half knelt as he took a series of shots of the bloody footsteps.
“Can I see the photos of the body?” Zoe asked Detective O’Donnell.
O’Donnell frowned, contemplating it for several seconds, as if the request was unreasonable. Finally, she asked the photographer to show them the images.