her knees, and strangled from behind . . . but not raped. And then there was the pentagram and the knife in the woman’s stomach. And that damn phone call. Zoe tried to turn those things in her mind, find some explanation for them. It didn’t fit with Glover’s profile, nor with his partner’s.
“Any progress on the Lamb case?” Bright asked.
“So far we have no definite suspect, but we are quite certain he belongs to a church in McKinley Park,” O’Donnell said.
She summarized what they had so far, mentioning Zoe and Tatum’s involvement at profiling the suspect. “We already have several statements that confirm that Rod Glover was part of the congregation, and considering the choice of Catherine Lamb as the first victim, we think it’s probable that Glover’s accomplice, unsub beta, belonged to that congregation as well.”
“That’s quite a leap, isn’t it?” Valentine asked. “Since we know Rod Glover was familiar with the victim, the unsub could be anyone at all.”
“There are indications that the unsub knew Catherine Lamb as well,” Zoe said.
“Like what?”
Zoe explained about the necklace and mentioned the covering of the body.
“But Rod Glover could have done that as well, right?” Valentine pointed out.
“It doesn’t fit his profile.”
“Killers can be unpredictable. We can’t base the investigation on a theory that has nothing solid to support it.”
Was Valentine only arguing because she’d made him look like an idiot? Well, for one, he could blame only himself. “I’m not saying we limit our work to investigating the congregation members, but this is a highly likely theory.”
“We have limited resources,” Valentine said. “We have to decide how to allocate them.”
“Okay, okay.” Bright raised his hands. “How many parishioners in that church?”
“We couldn’t get a definite number, but over the last few years, there have been hundreds,” O’Donnell answered.
“Hmm. For now I agree with Agent Valentine,” Bright said. “There’s nothing concrete that ties the second murderer—the unsub—to the church’s congregation, and interviewing hundreds of parishioners is something we can’t spare any time on.”
“We’re already working on the list,” O’Donnell said. “And we can start by checking the ones with a criminal record.”
“Fine. Start by making a list, and then we’ll see.” Bright checked his watch. “It’s been nine hours since Henrietta Fishburne was found and about thirty-eight hours since she was killed. I want both these cases investigated together. I’ve discussed it with Captain Miller from South, and with the chief of the bureau’s Chicago field office, and we’ve agreed to form a task force, led by me.”
Zoe saw O’Donnell’s eyes narrow. She had been the one to catch the first murder case. Zoe intuited that O’Donnell had expected to lead the investigation herself. Instead, Bright had just taken over.
“We can use this room as a situation room,” Bright continued. “We will assign additional manpower to the task force later. Let’s get going. We need to get these monsters off the streets of Chicago.”
CHAPTER 30
Three glowing monitors flickered in the dark room. Each monitor displayed angry Twitter arguments, vicious forum debates, toxic comments, violent images. The room was lit not by lamps or by ceiling lights, but by hate.
Laughing_Irukandji leaned back in his chair, slurping ramen noodles, occasionally putting the bowl down to click a link or type a quick angry comment.
He had an actual name, but he didn’t call himself by that name anymore. That name belonged to his physical body, which he no longer cared about. His real life was beyond those monitors, traveling at light speed through cables that spanned the world. And there, he was Laughing_Irukandji.
He opened Twitter feeds on two of his monitors, watching raging arguments bloom, dozens of furious Twitter users screaming in revulsion, a new comment appearing every second. He smiled, reading through choice comments as they shouted about racism and misogyny. They assumed they were arguing with actual people. They were actually engaged in a shouting match with five bots. Bits of brainless scripts, just vomiting whatever Laughing_Irukandji told them to. He got that tingle of satisfaction, imagining all those people gnashing their teeth as they hammered responses, arguing with nothing.
He had at any given moment a few hundred bots, his small army of chaos, masquerading as men and women, Democrats, Republicans, teenagers, middle-aged men and women. His favorite at the moment were three bots pretending to be celebrities. Just that morning, thousands of Instagram users were shocked to see one of their favorite fashion models announce that Hitler was right about many things.