Face of Death

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The air was cold on Zoe’s face and hands, but not so chill that it had deterred the crowds. Judging by the full parking lot, it was obviously a popular event with locals.

Above the lines of cars already parked, haphazardly in spaces painted on the ground, the fence stretched, encircling the whole fair. No entry without a ticket, and only one single ticketing gate. Every man, woman, and child who attended had to enter through that space. That, at least, would make it a little easier to watch the flow of people through the parking lot.

Higher still, when Zoe tilted her head, she saw the dinosaurs. Crude yet imposing statues, their mouths perennially bared to the elements, exposing sharp teeth. A Tyrannosaurus Rex stood about a foot taller than a Velociraptor, which was patently ridiculous; in life the T. Rex ought to have been at least three and a half times larger in scale.

“Pair off,” Zoe said, nodding to the troopers arranged in a loose group around her. “We do not risk attracting attention. You two, stand by the entrance as if you are waiting for friends. Use your radios immediately if you see a green sedan entering the lot. Everyone else, stroll together, and check the plates in your assigned sections. Carefully.”

With her last word of warning, the troopers—along with Shelley—began to move out. They had divided the vast parking lot into segments, each of them checking plates on a set section of cars. Security at the fair was lax—the parking lot was free, and so they did not bother to hire security to cover it. There would be no assistance from the fair organizers unless there was evidence that their killer was inside the fair itself, past the fence and ticket gate.

The trooper assigned to pair up with Zoe, a six-foot-four-inch-tall man who had introduced himself as Max but insisted on calling her “ma’am,” surveyed their area. “Ready to walk?” he asked her.

Zoe nodded tersely and fell into step beside him. She felt smaller with him at her side, deliberately close together so that they seemed like a couple. Just a couple, walking down the rows back to their own car, or to meet friends, or any number of unsuspicious activities.

But if Max was intimidating, he had nothing on the giant sculptures in the fair. They loomed even from here, where on the flat ground they towered into the distance, rising many feet above the fence. Dusty and sun-cracked in places, they were painted with garish colors, reds and oranges and greens. Camouflage for giant beasts that had nowhere to hide.

At their feet, the stalls were thronging with people. A large part of the crowd was made up of children, excitedly gawping up at the statues and wielding their own dinosaur toys which now paled in comparison. Zoe estimated them in groups of tens and twenties, adding up beyond five hundred visitors—and those were the ones that she could see from this point.

The parking lot, which had seemed overly large on the map, was evidently used to its full capacity at these special events. There were spaces left, but not very many. Zoe saw only twenty percent left at a sweep.

Zoe watched everything around them on either side, numbers and calculations appearing before her eyes everywhere she looked. She saw plates from different states, but none of them on green sedans. There were so many cars in the lot, it was beginning to feel like a much bigger task than anticipated.

She was distracted, tense, on edge. Every muscle in her body felt strained, every part of her mind carefully tuned to look for him. He would be here, she was sure of that. The knowledge put the numbers into overdrive, telling her things she did not need to know. The exhaust pipe on one car, one inch longer than regulations. The tires on the old pickup truck with less than the legal requirement of 1/16^th of an inch tread, coming in at 1/20^th. The heavy footprints in the loose dirt where a man of at least two hundred pounds had stood for around ten minutes, the cigarette butt loose next to them explaining why.

“That’s it,” Max said, coming to a halt.

Zoe looked up and realized she had been about to step over the mental line she had drawn, dividing the parking lot into segments. They were done, and with no luck.

Zoe turned and look across the parking lot. The way she had split the teams, they had all moved from opposite sides of the lot across to the middle, and now stood in more or less a uniform line across the four double-parked rows of cars. All of them stood still, none reaching for a radio to inform the others of a big discovery.

He wasn’t here yet.

“Move to secondary positions,” Zoe ordered over the radio, hidden in the sleeve of her denim jacket so that she could hold it to her mouth discreetly. “Wait for alert from gate team.”

Zoe waited and watched, pretending to look back toward the entrance to the attraction, as Shelley and the troopers all moved off. They had predetermined posts to take up—some of them outside the gates, some of them throughout the parking lot.

“I cannot stand and wait,” Zoe said, tilting her head up at Max. “We should walk. We can go over our section again, slowly. Work our way around.”

With pauses here and there to make it less obvious that they were actively searching the parking lot, Zoe led Max up and down the rows of the cars, alert all the while. The darkness of night was already coming down, the cars arriving with their headlights on now. It was getting harder to make out the details of the cars, and harder to see license plates—harder to do anything at all.

Zoe admitted defeat when they reached the road entrance during their slow move through the rows, and stopped nearby, leaning on the fence to watch vehicles passing by. Every time she saw something that could pass for the vehicle they were looking for, her heart rate skyrocketed, her eyes catching on comparisons. Tire width, vehicle length, probable age of the driver, height, all played into her mind. But each time, the car drove by, or it was driven by a woman with her kids in the backseat, and couldn’t possibly be what they were looking for.

Hours passed. It was a strange feeling, to stand and watch almost in silence for so long, while just a short distance away the riotous noise of people having fun could not be ignored. Children screamed and laughed, carnival games played merry bursts of tune to lure people in, and others thronged from or to their cars while talking loudly. Those with younger children began to leave, bowing to the lateness of the hour. Then the older children, and then anyone at all, as the closing time edged closer and closer.

Zoe watched the parking lot begin to empty out, narrowing down their options. The car still hadn’t turned up. If it did now, they would spot it easily. Zoe could feel him out there, moving closer. He had to be getting closer.

She checked her watch and saw that it was past eleven. No newcomers should be entering now. But where was he?

The answer had to be somewhere close by. There was no way he would miss this chance. The pattern demanded a death at this spot, and he would do whatever the pattern required. Zoe knew that—could feel it in her bones. Unless he was dead himself, he would not stop.

So, where was he?

A prickling feeling was moving up and down her arms. At the far side of the lot, a car moved out, revealing something behind. “What’s that over there?” she asked, angling her head toward it rather than pointing.

Max looked, squinting his eyes to make out what he could in the darkness. “Looks like some of the fencing got knocked down. Someone’s driven through and parked on the grass.”

Zoe set out at a stride, not waiting for Max to follow her. “Did someone check it out earlier?”

“I-I’m not sure,” Max stuttered, rushing to keep up. “They should have, right? If it was in their section?”

“Ask,” Zoe said, handing him her radio. “There is someone at the car. Find out, and then follow me with backup.”

She should have taken him along with her; that was protocol. But Zoe had never agreed with the simple math that two heads were better than one. She worked better alone, without someone else’s flawed assumptions and calculations getting in the way. She worked better not having to see angles and trajectories and wonder whether her partner was in danger. Knowing her own safety was much easier.

The sound of Max’s voice asking the other teams if they had stopped at the boundary of the fence faded into the distance behind her as Zoe moved forward carefully and quickly. She kept her head pointed off to one side, as if she were looking for her car, but her eyes were fixed on the vehicle. A sedan, and no mistaking it. But what was the color?

Zoe watched a man lifting up the hood at a seventy-degree angle to peer inside. The angle of his gaze and the tense, straight line of his shoulders told her that he was having car trouble. Or at least pretending to. The mind flashed to Ted Bundy easily. There were all kinds of ways a man could trick someone into getting close enough to slip a garrote around their neck, and being vulnerable—asking for help—was certainly one of them.

Zoe eased off her pace, remembering to keep her own safety in mind. There was no use in rushing in and becoming a victim herself. In her mind’s eye, she sketched the area she had calculated as that which their killer would target. Wasn’t this car parked beyond those boundaries? She had suspected it more likely to happen within the grounds of the fair itself, not out here. Yet here he was, if it was him.

He was tall and skinny. Just a smidge over five foot eleven, and the right weight, matching the clues she had seen at the crime scenes. Zoe calculated everything, the numbers flashing in front of her eyes as she moved slowly closer. The car was the right age, the right shape and make. The tires would fit the marks left behind, the correct distance between them, the correct width.

And, as she moved close enough to see clearer, she was sure of it: it was green. An older model green sedan, driven by a tall, thin man, with out-of-state plates.

This is it.

Zoe spared a glance behind her for Max, who was still talking over the radio, but moving step by slow step in her direction. No doubt issuing orders for the others to move in. Backup was only minutes away.

She was close enough now. Close enough to see the color of his shirt and know that his hair was a regular two inches long, at least around the back. No closer. Any closer, and he would be within distance to turn and jump, loop it around her neck and pull.

Zoe stopped and unholstered her gun. For a single moment there was nothing but the dwindling noises from the fair behind her, and silence all around, and the man leaning in to fiddle with something in the engine. He was completely unaware that she was there.

It wouldn’t stay that way for long.

“Turn around and put your hands in the air,” Zoe called out, raising her gun and dropping into the correct stance to aim it. “Slowly.”

The man froze, his hand still within the hood of the car somewhere. Did he think she was talking to someone else?

“FBI! Turn around and put your hands in the air!”

This time, the message seemed to go through. He slowly and stiffly moved, raising his hands a little—only a little—and starting to turn. His right hand was clenched around something, something that glinted in the light coming from the fair as he turned, holding it at chest height. Not high enough. Not safe enough. What was that, glinting like metal? That thin object—could it be a garrote looped in his hand?

“Drop what you’re holding!” Zoe shouted, her heart pounding a mile a minute in her ears. Her hands were shaking, and she willed herself to find that calm center and hold steady. Now was no time for nerves.

He flinched at her voice but finished turning, the item still clutched in his hands. The way the light fell, the shadow of the hood cut across his face. She couldn’t make out his expression, his eyes.

“Drop it!” she yelled again, loud enough that there could be no mistaking it.

The man seemed to consider it for a single second. His hand moved, as if he were about to drop the item onto the floor.

Or to throw it at her, lunge forward, go on the attack. Zoe’s finger tightened on the trigger, ready for him to make his move. Everything slowed, stilled, millennia going by in a single breath as she reacted to his sudden change of posture. Muscles bunched, tensed, kicked, and he was springing away from her, not toward.

The split second of relief was tempered with alarm as Zoe recognized that he was running—making his escape.

He could not be allowed to escape.

She squeezed down on the trigger, trusting her aim, hoping she had guessed the trajectory of his body correctly. There was a flash of light and noise from the gun, and a recoil that snapped her hands back briefly even though she was used to it. Zoe trained her sights on him again, just as she practiced every time she needed to brush up at the gun range, bring the weapon back to aim before she could react to anything else.

He was on the ground, crying out, clutching at his leg. Her aim was true.

Behind her, Zoe could hear the clatter of running footsteps as the troopers moved in. She approached her target cautiously, keeping the gun trained on him, ensuring that the angle and trajectory were always correct even as she stepped closer.

“You are under arrest for suspicion of murder,” Zoe said, reading him his rights as she waited for Shelley to step past her and snap a pair of handcuffs onto his wrists. He made no more attempt to move or run, though he gasped in pain and tried to keep his hands clutched on the wound.

And as Shelley finished closing the cuffs, Zoe looked to the ground and saw the object he had been holding, that had caught the light and her attention.

It was the oil dipstick from his car.

No.

Zoe whirled around immediately, dropping the angle of her gun to point it at the ground as she stared helplessly in all directions. Her eyes took in the crowds that were quickly amassing, keeping a respectful distance from the source of the gunfire but wanting to see what it was all the same. Curious faces of families and couples, teenage kids with their friends, grandparents. All attention was on their corner of the parking lot.

Their cover was blown. If Zoe had taken down the wrong guy, they would never find the right one now. He would be long gone.

The arrest was made, and it was all they could do here and now. Zoe returned her attention to the suspect as Shelley helped him into the back of a patrol car that had come flying up the road at the sound of the shot. They had him in custody. She just had to pray that she had made the right call—and that this man was not as harmless as he seemed.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

He sat in his car, waiting for an opportunity.

The Kansas Giant Dinosaur Fair was busy, busier than he could have hoped for. Some kind of special event bringing plenty of people his way. Just another example of the pattern making everything easy for him, clearing his way.

He had to be cautious, however. Night had fallen, and hours had passed while he sat in the driver’s seat, occasionally shifting his back to prevent getting too stiff. When the fair was at its busiest, it was too risky to attempt an attack. He would be seen.

Besides that, the lights from the fair were bright, and even cast some of their glow this way. He would be better off hunting in the shadows, finding someone who would not be seen until passersby were right on top of them.

There was a point at the far end of the parking lot where the fence had been broken down, perhaps rammed by an over-merry visitor who had forgotten their car was in reverse. Through there, people had begun to drive their vehicles over onto the grass, taking advantage of the extra space to squeeze in. It was here that he kept a careful watch. It was far enough into the shadows that it might afford him an opportunity.

Still, it was a long wait. The stream of cars into the parking lot slowed down and then began to reverse, people leaving with their families. He was getting twitchy now. The balance had to be right. If the parking lot emptied out too much, he would be seen—caught. He had to act in such a way that he would not be noticed.

A man got into his car beyond the fence, a green sedan parked just beyond the real boundary. He turned the engine over a couple of times, only managing a rough grating noise that clearly cut through the distant noise of the fair.

The watcher shifted in his seat, angling himself for a better view, as the man got back out of his green sedan and lifted the hood. Here was potential. Distracted as he was, he would never notice the watcher approaching him. Even if he did, there was opportunity for pretense here: playing the good Samaritan, come to help with the car.

His hand lingered on the car door handle, just about to stealthily get out and make his approach, when a woman came into view.

The watcher let his muscles sag immediately. There was no way that he could approach the man at his car, now that someone else was on the scene. With any luck, she would get into her own car and drive away, before the engine came back to life. Then he would be back on track.

Come to think of it, the woman would have been a better choice. She was smaller and slim, while the man at his engine was tall. It would have been easier to slip the garrote around her neck instead. She was slowing down, coming to a stop just a few paces away. This could be interesting. Perhaps there was a way he could lure her deeper into the rows of cars, toward the edge of the parking lot, away from the potential witness of the man?

But wait—what was that in her hand?

“Turn around and put your hands in the air. Slowly.”

The watcher froze, his eyes going wide. A gun. It was a gun.

“FBI! Turn around and put your hands in the air!”

No! Law enforcement—here?

The watcher saw with growing panic how she ordered the man to drop what was in his hand once, then twice. His mind was racing. It was only now that he looked closer and realized that the man was driving a similar car—only green, not red, but like his in all other particulars. Could it be that they knew?

Could they be onto him already?

A gunshot rang out, loud and startlingly close, and the man hit the ground, dropping out of the watcher’s line of sight. Had she killed him? Shot him right there, on sight?

There was only one thing on the watcher’s mind, and it was escape. That could have been him, lying on the ground now, bleeding out. In agony. The pattern would never be completed if he was shot by the FBI.

No, he had to get out of here—he had to get out right now. Other people were coming running, plain clothed but carrying radios and guns as they ran—they had to be police. Maybe a whole FBI taskforce. The idea of that was a slightly prideful one, that they would send so many people after him, but that could wait until later. Right now, he just had to make sure he was gone before they realized they had shot the wrong man.

He switched on his ignition, the engine roaring to life, and shot out of his parking space. He cursed and had to swerve to avoid a woman with a small child, who were both moving toward the source of the shot and gawking, their mouths wide open. This was not the time to get in his way. He would have run them both down if he weren’t surrounded by others, all of them holding guns, some even glancing his way as he peeled around them and out of the parking lot.

A cold trickle of sweat made its way down his spine as he glanced in his rearview mirror again and again, watching unmarked cars speed over to the lot with a determination that seemed deliberate. More undercover units. He passed a group of cars on the shoulder of the highway, the drivers standing and talking with one another. A roadblock waiting to happen.

His fingers were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that it hurt, and he made a conscious effort to relax them. He eased off the accelerator pedal. Now was not the time to be pulled over for speeding.

Besides, he couldn’t go too far away. The pattern still needed to be completed. If he left and didn’t come back, it would be broken. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

He still needed to make tonight’s kill.