Mike Omer - In the Darkness

“Is it?” Zoe held the barman’s gaze for a long second.

The barman’s smile faded, replaced with a perplexed, somewhat intimidated expression. He cleared his throat. “Sure, coming right up.”

Harry emptied his own glass. “And I’ll have another Miller.”

They sat in silence as the barman poured their drinks. Finally, Harry said, “You screwed me.”

“No, I didn’t. Settle down.”

“You told me you’d have something for me. Now everyone has it.”

“All they have is a stupid nickname and a bunch of conjectures.”

“They’ll have more tomorrow. Reporters in this town have their sources in the police. You know what I have? Nothing.”

The barman placed the drinks in front of them, avoiding Zoe’s gaze. Harry almost found it amusing.

Zoe took a deep swig from her glass, shutting her eyes, breathing through her nose. “God, I needed that,” she muttered. “It’s been a very long day.”

“You want me to feel sorry for you?”

“I want you to stop bitching, for a start,” Zoe said sharply. “You act like I’m your girlfriend. Let me remind you that you’re the reporter that’s actively badgering me.”

Harry grinned at her, cheered up by her annoyed tone of voice. “I’m not badgering you. I’m . . . tailing you from a respectable distance.”

“You booked a room in my motel!”

“It’s a good motel. It has a nice swimming pool.”

“Oh, give me a break!” She gave him a furious gaze.

He raised his glass in a mock toast. “Now who’s bitching?”

She blinked, then took another sip of her beer. “Listen, I want to give you an interview, but you have to publish it tomorrow morning.”

“I already wrote my story for tomorrow. My editor is working on it right now.”

“Tell him to trash it. We need a new one.”

“We?”

“I’m willing to give you an interview every day. An update on the case. I’ll talk to no other reporter.”

Harry peered at her skeptically. “Why?”

“I want to catch the killer off balance.”

“Are you talking about Schrodinger’s Killer?”

“That’s a dumb nickname.”

“It’s what everyone’s calling him,” Harry pointed out, starting to feel excited. “So . . . what exactly do you want to do here?”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “Who in the BAU is your source?”

Harry leaned back, confused. “What source?”

“Someone told you I flew here on a case. Who was it?”

Harry grinned. “Forget it. That’s off the table. You should know that. A reporter who gives away his sources is useless.”

“We’ll find him.”

“I’m sure you will. You’re so very clever. Now . . . we were talking about my daily interview.”

Zoe took a swig from her beer, licking the foam off her top lip. “I want to make this killer sound incompetent. To prod him, make him lash out. Maybe he’ll comment on the article. Do you have data on the people commenting on your articles? IP addresses, that sort of thing?”

Harry knew exactly how thorough their data was because he’d tracked down people who’d commented on his articles more than once. It was important to have a well-documented shit list. “Sure. We can get quite a lot from a comment.”

“Great.” Now it was Zoe’s turn to get excited. Her eyes sparkled in a way Harry found quite fetching. “If he comments, we might be able to track him down.”

“What makes you think he’ll react to the article?”

“He takes himself very seriously. So you’ll interview me, and I’ll slip in some details about how he keeps making mistakes. That we’ll catch him in no time. That sort of thing.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “And that’ll infuriate him and make him react?”

“He won’t like how I’m belittling him.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Harry said. “But when it comes to hurting people’s feelings, you’re like a six-year-old girl yelling at a boy who pulled her pigtails that he stinks.”

Zoe furrowed her brow in annoyance. “I’m good at what I do.”

“You’re good at getting into serial killers’ minds and understanding the way they tick, no doubt there.” Harry grinned. “But if you need to annoy people? I suggest that you let me take the wheel for a bit.”

“I suppose I can’t argue with that.”

“What you want to do is compare him to others. People are competitive, men in particular.”

“Serial killers often relate to other serial killers when talking about their own actions,” Zoe said. “BTK used to compare himself to the Son of Sam and the Green River Killer.”

“See? You tell everyone that he sucks, and he won’t bat an eyelash. But tell people that compared to Manson, he’s a clown, and this guy will blow a gasket.”

“That’s . . . that’s a good idea. So when we talk about it, we’ll compare him to some other serial killers. And he’ll come up short. That’ll get him riled up.”

“But that’s deep in the text, right? We need a headline. A headline sets the tone for the article. The headline can’t be ‘San Angelo Killer Isn’t as Good as Ted Bundy.’”

“Well . . . no. But I don’t think we can really get him annoyed just with a headline.”

“Can’t we?” Harry raised his eyebrow. “He named himself, right? Calls himself Schrodinger?”

“Yeah. And the press call him Schrodinger’s Killer.”

Harry folded his arms, smirking. “The Chicago Daily Gazette might have a different name for him.”

“The Digging Killer Strikes Twice in San Angelo.”

He glared at the article in disbelief, his fist spasming. He skimmed the article, feeling his heart pounding. It was one of the most detailed articles he’d found that morning, and while it linked him to both victims and even provided good images from the video clips, there were certain sentences that seared themselves into his retina.

“Profiler Dr. Zoe Bentley stated that the Digging Killer is inefficient . . .”

“Though he dubbed himself Schrodinger, he seemed to have misspelled the name, omitting the umlaut that the original Schrödinger had in his name . . .”

“When asked if this ‘Digging Killer’ is the next Ted Bundy, Dr. Bentley answered, ‘Not by a long shot.’”

It was worse. This was the only reporter Zoe Bentley had agreed to talk to. As a result, various other articles had quoted this article, and he constantly saw phrases like, “The Digging Killer, a.k.a. Schrodinger’s Killer.” The new nickname seemed to stick. It was mind boggling.

His eyes watered. He bit the side of his mouth, the taste of blood on his tongue. Before he knew what he was doing, he was already typing furiously, the comment box below the article filling up, a scroll bar appearing as he kept on going, correcting inaccuracies, explaining that Schrodinger was a completely legitimate way to spell the name, warning that by the time he was done, Ted Bundy’s body count would seem meager . . .

He paused and pushed his chair away from the computer. Scrutinizing the comment box and the wall of text within, he shook his head. What the hell was wrong with him?

Taking a long breath, he browsed back to Juliet Beach’s Instagram page. He scrolled through the images he knew so well, scrutinized the new picture Juliet had taken with her brother. He then read a few of the birthday greetings that showed up in the comments. Imagined his upcoming evening, feeling the excitement building up in his chest. Slowly, his frustration and anger dissipated.

Glancing at the time, he decided he had just long enough to write a short email to the article’s reporter. The man’s name was H. Barry. The article wasn’t badly written. The man had done his research, gotten all the facts right, and managed to snag a good interview. It was a man who was proud of his work.