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Face of Death
***
The plane journey home was even more awkward.
Shelley flipped casually through the pages of a women’s magazine that had been on sale in the airport, giving each page no more than a cursory glance before she gave up and moved on. After finishing it cover to cover, she glanced at Zoe; then, seeming to think better of starting up a conversation, she opened the magazine again, spending more time on the articles.
Zoe hated reading things like that. The pictures, the words, everything jumping out at her from the page. Clashing font sizes and faces, contradictory articles. Images purporting to prove a celebrity had plastic surgery, showing only the normal variance for changes in the face over time and with age, calculable easily to anyone with a basic grasp of human biology.
Multiple times, Zoe tried to force herself to think of something to say to her new partner. She couldn’t talk about the magazine. What else might they have in common? The words wouldn’t come.
“Good solve on our first case,” she said at last, murmuring it, almost not brave enough to say even that.
Shelley looked up in surprise, her eyes wide and blank for a moment before she lapsed into a grin. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “We did good.”
“Hopefully the next one will be just as smooth.” Zoe felt her insides shriveling. Why was she so bad at small talk? It was taking every ounce of concentration to find the next line to say.
“Maybe we can make it quicker next time,” Shelley suggested. “You know, when we’re really in tune with each other, we’ll be working much faster.”
Zoe felt that like a blow. They could have caught the guy quicker, gotten the helicopter above his precise location from the moment they arrived, if Zoe had just shared what she knew. If she hadn’t been so cautious about how she knew it that she kept it hidden.
“Maybe,” she said, noncommittal. She tried to direct a smile Shelley’s way that might be reassuring, from a more experienced agent to a rookie. Shelley returned it with a little hesitation, and went back to her magazine.
They didn’t speak again until they landed.
CHAPTER TWO
Zoe pushed open the door to her apartment with a sigh of relief. Here was her haven, the place where she could relax and stop trying to be the person that everyone else accepted.
There was a soft mewling from the direction of the kitchen as she switched on the lights, and Zoe headed straight over there after depositing her keys on the side table.
“Hi, Euler,” she said, bending down to scratch one of her cats behind the ears. “Where is Pythagoras?”
Euler, a gray tabby, only mewled again in response, looking across to the cupboard where Zoe kept the bags and cans of cat food.
Zoe didn’t need a translator to understand that. Cats were simple enough. The only interaction they really craved was food and the occasional scratch.
She took a new can out of the cupboard and opened it, spooning it into a food bowl. Her Burmese, Pythagoras, soon caught the scent and padded over from some other part of their home.
Zoe watched them eat for a moment, wondering if they wished they had another human to look after them. Living alone meant that they were fed when she got home, no matter what time that might turn out to be. Doubtless, they would have appreciated a more regular schedule—but there were always the neighborhood mice to track down if they got hungry. And looking at them now, Pythagoras had put on a couple of pounds lately. He could do to diet.
It wasn’t as if Zoe was about to get married anyway—for the cats or for any other reason. She’d never even had a properly serious relationship. After the upbringing she’d had, she had almost resigned herself to the fact that she was destined to die alone.
Her mother had been strictly religious, and that meant intolerant. Zoe had never been able to find anywhere in the Bible where it said you had to communicate like everyone else and think in linguistic riddles instead of mathematical formulae, but her mother had read it there all the same. She had been convinced that something was wrong with her daughter, something sinful.
Zoe’s hand strayed to her collarbone, traced the line where a silver crucifix had once hung on a silver chain. For many long years of her childhood and adolescence, she hadn’t been able to take the thing off without being accused of blasphemy—not even to shower or sleep.
Not that there had been much she could do, without getting accused of being the devil’s child.
“Zoe,” her mother would say, shaking a finger and pursing her lips. “You just quit that demon logic now. The devil is in you, child. You’ve got to cast him right out.”
Demon logic, apparently, was mathematics, especially when present in a child of six years old.
Over and over again, her mother would bring up how different she was. When Zoe didn’t socialize with the children her own age in kindergarten, or school. When she didn’t take up any after-school clubs except for extra study in math and science, and even then didn’t form groups or make friends. When she understood ratios in cooking after watching her mother bake things just once.
Very quickly, Zoe had learned to suppress her natural instinct for numbers. When she knew the answers to the questions people asked without having to even work them out, she kept quiet. When she figured out which of the kids in her class had stolen the teacher’s keys and hidden them, and where they must have been hidden, all through proximity and the clues left behind, she didn’t say a word.
In many ways, not much had changed since that scared little six-year-old, desperate to please her mother, had stopped saying every little weird thing that came into her mind and started pretending to be normal.
Zoe shook her head, bringing her attention back to the present. That was more than twenty-five years ago. No use dwelling on it now.
She glanced out of her window at the Bethesda skyline, looking as she always did in the precise direction of Washington, DC. She had figured out the right way to look the day she had signed the lease, noting several local landmarks which lined up to show her a compass direction. It wasn’t anything political or patriotic; she just liked the way they matched up, creating that perfect line on the map.
It was dark out, and even the lights of the other buildings around hers were being extinguished, one by one. It was late; late enough that she should be getting on with things and going to bed.
Zoe fired up her laptop and quickly tapped in her password, opening her email inbox to check for any updates. The last task of her day. There were a few she could quickly delete—junk mail, mostly messages about sales for brands she had never shopped for and scams from supposed Nigerian princes.
Clearing the junk left her with a few more she could read and then discard, missives that needed no reply. Updates from social media, which she rarely visited, and newsletters from websites that she followed.
One was a little more interesting. A ping through from her online dating profile. A short but sweet message—some guy asking for a date. Zoe clicked through to his page and examined his images, considering them. She quickly assessed his actual height, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it matched up with what he had written in his details. Maybe someone with a little honesty about him.
The next was yet more intriguing, but even so, Zoe felt an urge to put off reading it. It was from her mentor and former professor, Dr. Francesca Applewhite. She could predict what the doctor was going to ask before she read it, and she wasn’t going to like it.
Zoe sighed and opened it anyway, resigned to the need to get it over with. Dr. Applewhite was brilliant, the kind of mathematician she had always dreamed of being until she realized she could put her talents to use as an agent. Francesca was also the only other person who knew the truth about the way her mind worked—the synesthesia that turned clues into visual numbers into facts in her head. The only person she liked and trusted enough to talk about it with.
Actually, Dr. Applewhite had been the one to turn her on to the FBI in the first place. She owed her a lot. But that wasn’t why she was reluctant to read her message.
Hi Zoe, the email read. Just wanted to ask whether you’ve contacted the therapist I suggested. Have you been able to schedule a session? Let me know if you need any help.
Zoe sighed. She had not contacted the therapist, and she didn’t truly know whether she was going to. She closed the email without replying, relegating it to one of tomorrow’s problems.
Euler jumped up onto her lap, obviously having satisfied himself with his dinner, and started to purr. Zoe gave him another scratch, looking at her screen, deciding.
Pythagoras let out an indignant mew at being neglected, and Zoe glanced at him with an affectionate smile. It wasn’t exactly a sign, but it was enough to push her into action. She went back to the previous message, from the dating site, and typed out a response before she could change her mind.
Would love to meet. When is good for you?—Z.
***
“After you,” he said, smiling and gesturing toward the breadbasket.
Zoe smiled back and picked up a piece of bread, her mind automatically calculating the width and depth of each piece to pick one that was somewhere in the middle range. Didn’t want to look too greedy now.
“So, what do you do, John?” Zoe asked. It was easy enough to get the conversation started this way—she had been on enough dates to know that it was standard form. Besides that, it was always a good idea to make sure that he had a good income.
“I’m a lawyer,” John said, taking his own serving of bread. Biggest piece. Somewhere in the region of 300 calories. He would be halfway to full before their main course came. “I mostly deal with property disputes, so there’s not much overlap between your work and mine.”
Zoe noted the average salary for a property lawyer in their area and nodded mutely, calculations flashing through her mind. Between them they would probably be well set for a mortgage on a three-bedroom property, and that was just for starters. Room for a nursery. Enough career scope to upgrade later on down the line.
His face was almost symmetrical, too. Funny how that was coming up lately. There was just one twist, a certain way he had of smiling that lifted up his right cheek while the left stayed more or less in position. A lopsided smile. There was something charming about it, perhaps because of the asymmetry. She counted the correct number of perfectly straight, white teeth flashing between his lips.
“So, how about your family? Any siblings?” John tried, his tone faltering a little.
Zoe realized she had been expected to at least make some kind of comment on his work, and picked herself up mentally. “Just me,” she said. “I was raised by my mom. We are not close.”
John lifted an eyebrow for the barest second before nodding. “Oh, that sucks. My family is pretty tight. We get together for family meals at least once a month.”
Zoe’s eyes flicked over his lean physique, and she decided that he must not have been eating too badly at those dinners. Mind you, he clearly went to the gym. What could he bench? Maybe 200 pounds, judging by those arm muscles rippling under his blue striped shirt.
There had been silence between them for a few moments now. Zoe ripped off a piece of bread and shoved it into her mouth, then chewed it as fast as she could to free her mouth again. People didn’t speak while they ate, at least not in polite society, so that served as kind of an excuse, as far as she was concerned.
“Is it just you and your parents?” Zoe asked, as soon as the bite had sunk down her throat, thick and clinging. No, she thought. Two siblings, at least.
“I have an older brother and sister,” John said. “There’s only four years between us, so we get along pretty well.”
Behind him, over his shoulder, Zoe saw their five-foot-three waitress struggling with a heavy tray of drinks. Two bottles of wine split amongst seven glasses, all destined for a rowdy table at the end of a line of booths. All the same age. College friends, having a reunion.
“That must be nice,” Zoe said distantly. She didn’t think it would have been nice, really, to have older siblings. She didn’t have a clue at all about what it must have been like. It was just a different experience that she had never had.
“I’d say so.”
John’s responses were getting more distant. He wasn’t asking her questions anymore. They hadn’t even gotten through to the main course yet.
It was with some relief that Zoe saw the waitress bringing over two plates, balanced expertly on her arm, the weight distributed evenly between elbow and palm.
“Oh, our food is here,” she said, just to distract him more than anything else.
John looked around, moving with a lithe grace which certainly underscored his commitment to the gym. He was a good enough man. Handsome, charming, with a good job. Zoe tried to focus on him, to apply herself. When eating it should be easier. She stared at the food on her plate—twenty-seven peas, exactly two inches thick on the steak—and tried not to let anything distract her from what he was saying.
Still, she heard the awkward silences just as much as he did.
At the end, he offered to pay for everything— $37.97 her fair share—and Zoe gratefully accepted. She forgot that she was supposed to argue at least once, to give him the chance to insist, but she remembered it when she saw the slight downturn at the corners of his mouth as he offered his credit card to the waitress.
“Well, it’s been a great night,” John said, looking around and buttoning up his suit jacket as he stood. “This is a lovely restaurant.”
“The food was wonderful,” Zoe murmured, getting up even though she would have preferred to sit for longer.
“It was nice to meet you, Zoe,” he said. He offered her his hand to shake. When she took it, he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, as briefly as possible, before moving away again.
No offer to walk her to her car, or drive her home. No hug, no request to see her again. John was pleasant enough—all lopsided smile and careful gestures—but the message was clear.
“You too, John,” Zoe said, allowing him to walk out of the restaurant ahead of her while she gathered her purse, so that there would be no awkward small talk on the journey to the parking lot.
In the privacy of her car, Zoe slumped into the driver’s seat and buried her head in her hands. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Imagine being so preoccupied with the stride length of the various members of the wait staff that you can’t even focus on your charming, handsome, extremely eligible date.
Things were going too far. Zoe knew it, in her heart of hearts, and had maybe known it for a while. She was getting so she could barely concentrate on social cues at all without getting her head turned by calculations and exploration of patterns. It was bad enough that she didn’t understand all of the cues when she heard or saw them, but not to notice them at all was even worse.
“What a freak,” she muttered to herself, knowing she was the only person who would hear it. That made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.
The whole drive home, Zoe tossed and turned the events of the evening through her mind. Seventeen awkward pauses. Twenty occasions, at least, when John must have wanted her to show more interest. Who knew how many that she didn’t even notice. One free steak dinner—not enough to make up for feeling like the kind of outcast who was going to die alone and lonely.
With cats, of course.
Not even Euler and Pythagoras, mewling and attempting to rival one another for the right to jump into her lap on the sofa, could make her feel better. She scooped them both up and settled them down, not at all surprised when they both immediately lost interest and started prowling along the back of the sofa.
She opened the email from Dr. Applewhite one more time, looking at the number she had sent her for the therapist.
It couldn’t hurt, could it?
Zoe entered the number into her cell one digit at a time, even though she had memorized it at a glance. She felt her breath catch as her finger hovered above the green call button, but forced it down anyway, the cell up to her ear.
Ring-ring-ring.
Ring-ring-ring.
“Hello,” said a female voice on the other end of the line.
“Hello—” Zoe started, but cut herself off immediately as the voice continued.
“You have reached the offices of Dr. Lauren Monk. Apologies, but we are currently out of office hours.”
Zoe groaned internally. Voicemail.
“If you would like to book an appointment, change an arranged appointment, or leave a message, please do so after the t—”
Zoe yanked the cell away from her ear as if it was on fire, and cancelled the call. Into the silence, Pythagoras mewed heartily, then jumped from the arm of the sofa up onto her shoulder.
She was going to have to make the appointment, and she was going to have to do it soon. She promised herself that. But it wouldn’t hurt to leave it one more day, would it?
CHAPTER THREE
“You’ll burn in hell,” her mother announced. She had a triumphant look on her face, a kind of madness lighting up her eyes. Looking closer, Zoe realized it was the reflection of flames. “Devil child, you’ll burn in hell for all eternity!”
The heat was unbearable. Zoe struggled to get to her feet, to move, but something was tying her down. Her legs were like lead, anchored down to the floor, and she could not lift them. She could not get away.
“Mom!” Zoe cried out. “Mom, please! It is getting hotter—it hurts!”
“You’ll burn forever,” her mother cackled, and in front of Zoe’s eyes, her skin turned red as an apple, horns growing from the top of her head and a tail sprouting behind her. “You’ll burn, daughter mine!”
The shrill ring of her cell woke Zoe from her dream with a start, and Pythagoras opened one baleful green eye on her before scrambling off his position on top of her ankles and stalking away.
Zoe shook her head, trying to get her bearings. Right. She was in her own bedroom in Bethesda, and her cell was ringing.
Zoe fumbled with the device to accept the call, her fingers slow and thick from sleep. “Hello?”
“Special Agent Prime, I apologize for the late hour,” her boss said.
Zoe glanced at the clock. Just after three in the morning. “That is okay,” she said, dragging herself to a sitting position. “What is it?”
“We’ve got a case in the Midwest which could use your help. I know you just got home—we can send someone else if it’s too much.”
“No, no,” Zoe said hastily. “I can take it.”
The work would do her some good. Feeling useful and solving cases was the only thing that made her feel like she might have something in common with her fellow humans. After last night’s debacle, it would be a welcome relief to throw herself into something new.
“All right. I’ll get you and your partner on a plane in a couple of hours. You’re going to Missouri.”
***
A little south of Kansas City, the rental car rolled up outside a little station and came to a stop.
“This is it,” Shelley said, consulting the GPS one last time.
“Finally,” Zoe sighed, relinquishing her tight grip on the steering wheel and rubbing her eyes. The flight had been a red-eye, chasing the sun as it rose across the sky. It was still early morning, and she already felt like she had been awake for a whole day. A lack of sleep followed directly by a rush to catch a plane could do that to you.
“I need some coffee,” Shelley said, before jumping out.
Zoe was inclined to agree. The flight, brief as it was, had been interruption after interruption. The rise into the air, stewardesses offering breakfast and juices no fewer than five times, and then the descent—no time to snatch a little more sleep. Even though the two of them had spent most of the journey in silence, discussing only their plans for landing and where they would get the rental car, they had not gained any extra rest.
Zoe trailed after Shelley into the building, once again belying her role as the superior and more experienced agent. Shelley might have received more praise, but Zoe was no green rookie. She had more than enough cases under her belt, the days of her training faded so far into the distance that she barely remembered them. Still, it felt more comfortable to follow.
Shelley introduced herself to the local sheriff, and he nodded and shook hands with both of them when Zoe parroted her own name.
“Glad to see you folks coming in,” he said. That was something of note. Usually the locals were resentful, feeling that they could take care of the case themselves. It was only when they knew they were out of their depth that they were glad of the help.
“Hopefully, we can get this tied up nicely and be out of your hair by the end of the day,” Shelley said, throwing an easy grin at Zoe. “Special Agent Prime here is on a roll. We got our first case together closed in a matter of hours, didn’t we, Z?”
“Three hours and forty-seven minutes,” Zoe replied, including the time that it had taken to get their escaped convict through processing.
She wondered briefly about how Shelley could give her that open, easy smile. It looked genuine enough, but then Zoe never had been good at telling the difference—not unless there was some kind of tic or sign in the face, a crease around the eyes at the right angle to indicate that something was off. After their last case, not to mention the almost silent plane and car ride here, she had expected there to be some tension between them.
The sheriff inclined his head. “Would be mighty good to get you on a plane back home by nightfall, if you don’t mind me saying so. Would mean a weight off my shoulders.”
Shelley laughed. “Don’t worry. We’re the guys you never want to see, right?”
“No offense meant,” the sheriff cheerily agreed. He weighed one hundred and eighty-five pounds, Zoe thought, watching him walk with that particular wide-foot angle that was common to the overweight.
They moved into his office and started going over the briefing. Zoe picked up the files and started leafing through.
“Hit me with it, Z,” Shelley said, leaning back in her chair and waiting expectantly.
It seemed like she had a nickname already.
Zoe looked up with some surprise, but seeing that Shelley was serious, she began to read aloud. “Three bodies in three days, it looks like. The first one was in Nebraska, the second in Kansas, and the third in Missouri—here.”
“What, is our perp going on a road trip?” Shelley scoffed.
Zoe marked the lines in her head, drawing a connection between the towns. A mostly southeastern direction; the most likely continued course was down through the rest of Missouri to Arkansas, Mississippi, maybe a bit of Tennessee down near Memphis. Presuming, of course, that they didn’t stop him first.
“The latest murder occurred outside of a gas station. The lone attendant was the victim. Her body was found outside.”
Zoe could picture it in her head. A dark and lonely gas station, a postcard picture of any other lonesome gas station in this part of the country. Isolated, the lights above the parking lot the only ones for miles around. She started to rifle through the photographs of the scene, handing them over to Shelley when she was done.
A firmer picture was emerging. A woman left dead on the ground, facing back toward the entrance—returning from somewhere. Was she lured outside and then attacked as she let her guard down? Some kind of noise she could pass off as coyotes, or maybe a customer complaining of car trouble?
Whatever it was, it was enough to lure her outside into the dark, at night, in the cold air—away from her post. It had to have been something.
“All female victims,” Zoe continued reading. “No particular match in their appearance. Different age groups, hair color, weight, height. Their only thing in common is their gender.”
As she spoke, Zoe pictured the women in her head, standing up against a mugshot board. One five foot four, one five foot seven, one five foot ten. Quite a difference. Three inches each time—was that a clue? No; they were killed out of order. The short woman was the heaviest, the taller one light and therefore thin. Probably easier to overwhelm physically, despite her size.
Different altitudes. Different distances from crime scene to crime scene—no hint of a formula or algorithm that would tell her how far away the next one would be. Topography at the murder sites was different.
“They look… random.”
Shelley sighed, shaking her head. “I was afraid you would say that. What about the motive?”
“Crime of opportunity, maybe. Each woman was murdered at night, in an isolated place. There were no witnesses and no CCTV cameras turned on at any of the sites. The CSIs say there was hardly anything left behind in the way of evidence at all.”
“So, we have a psycho with a need for murder, who has just now decided to go on a rampage, and yet has enough control to keep himself safe,” Shelley summarized. Her tone was dry enough that Zoe could tell she was feeling just as uneasy as Zoe herself.
This wasn’t going to be the easy, open-and-shut case she had been hoping for.
