Face of Death

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

With Shelley gone, the investigation room was a lonely place. Zoe was used to working alone—liked it, even—but she needed some kind of reassurance with all of the mistakes that she had been making. Shelley had been able to provide that.

Hours had passed now without her, as Shelley bounced from one part of the dragnet to another, following useless lead after useless lead. It was incredible just how many green Ford Tauruses there were on the roads, but none of them had turned out to be their killer. There was always something—an alibi, the fact that the driver was a petite single mother without the strength to kill taller women, an incorrect flag with the wrong make of car.

It wasn’t that she cared about the cold shoulder she was being given by the local cops. The threat to her job was neither here nor there. Either she would solve it, or she wouldn’t. She didn’t base her investigative decisions on what would save her job—she was trying to save lives.

It was the fact that they were right.

She had failed—entirely. Another woman was dead.

She felt like a small child again, kneeling at her mother’s feet and being told to try again, because she must have been praying wrong so far. She had failed to move God to change her, to rid her of her demonic powers. Now she was failing again, unable to figure out just where they were going wrong in chasing this killer down.

It didn’t help that she was closer to solving it than she suspected anyone else could have been. No one else had the insight that she did—the ability to think the same way that the killer did.

That just meant that it was more on her shoulders. If she was the only one who could stop him, then she had to stop him. There was no other choice. The alternative was to just stand by and watch them all die, victim after victim, and there was no way she could do that.

This one had a name already. Aisha Sparks, the seventeen-year-old working at the fair in the evenings to earn enough money to get into college. She was still missing, and if it hadn’t been already, it was getting more obvious with each passing hour that he had taken her.

Zoe had watched from the sidelines as the state troopers led a press conference, asking for volunteers to search the local woods around the area of the fair. They were deep and thickly grown, and it would take them many hours to even be sure that they had checked everywhere.

But Zoe knew they would not find her there. There was no chance. He had taken her.

So many had died already. Zoe couldn’t let Aisha die as well.

The locations between his killings were getting closer together, the spiral getting tighter now at the end. But the problem was that she couldn’t be absolutely, mathematically sure about where he would strike next. Sure, it was a Fibonacci spiral, and that was great—but on the map, even plotting everything carefully, there was still a zone where he could attack next which was not so precise. With the fair, it had been easy—the only thing for miles around, and the scale of the fair itself had filled the whole of the box she had marked on the map.

The little town in the next zone had a number of different buildings. How could she be sure which one he would go for? Or which street? How could they manage to cover all of their bases with such a densely populated area?

And what if Aisha was already dead?

That thought made Zoe’s stomach churn, but it had to be considered. The locations in his spiral were for attacks, not deaths. What if he killed her some other way, just to plan to cut her throat after the fact when the time came?

No, that didn’t feel right. It would have been too much of a symbolic gesture, a throwaway act instead of the real thing. Somehow, the real thing mattered. It had to be the act of spilling blood at the right moment, the right spot. Zoe could see that. The more she tried to get inside his head and think like he did, the better she thought she could figure out the importance he attached to things. The choice of a new day for each kill, the deliberate action of using the garrote. That had to be followed to complete the pattern.

Yet he had broken his previous MO by abducting a girl instead of finding someone on the actual night, so it was all up in the air now. She could trust her gut, but there was nothing behind it. No real evidence or fact she could put her finger on to tell her that Aisha would still be safe.

Zoe couldn’t do this alone. It was too much—so much pressure to heap onto one person’s shoulders. She would not begrudge it, not if she could save Aisha’s life. But she couldn’t get there—couldn’t finish the job. Especially not with all the local police turning on her, thinking she didn’t know what she was doing.

Zoe picked up her cell and dialed a familiar number from her contact list, hoping that the call would connect.

“Hello?”

Zoe almost sighed with relief. Hearing the voice of her mentor, Dr. Francesca Applewhite, already made her feel better, and all she had said was hello. Talking to someone who understood her completely was a salve for all of the stress.

“Dr. Applewhite,” Zoe said. “Are you free to talk?”

“Francesca, as I’ve told you a million times,” she laughed. “Yes, I’m free. I’m always free for you, even in the middle of a session. But I don’t have any appointments today. It’s Saturday.”

Zoe glanced at her smartwatch reflexively, surprised to hear the date. Time had been slipping away from her, maybe faster than she had realized. “I am sorry to disturb your weekend.”

“You don’t have to be sorry with me, Zoe. You know I don’t mind. Now, what’s bothering you?”

Dr. Applewhite always understood when Zoe needed help. “It is regarding a case I am working on,” she started, and quickly told her everything. Or at least, everything that was relevant. With it being an ongoing case, she could not use names or even give away the locations precisely. But it was worth taking the risk of being sanctioned if it meant getting some help from the one person who always knew the right thing to say.

Now Dr. Applewhite was chuckling, and Zoe could not quite understand why. “What is funny?” she asked, seeing nothing amusing at all in the tale of a serial murderer and schizophrenic.

“The pattern,” Dr. Applewhite replied. “Our boy here has it all wrong. He might be operating under delusions, but they are bigger than he realizes. He has misunderstood the reality of the Fibonacci spiral.”

“I do not understand.”

“It’s like this. The Fibonacci spiral is a theory, a formula that can be applied to many visual patterns in nature and that are naturally occurring. But the mistake the killer has made is assuming that the spiral should be perfect. In fact, in nature, it is almost always imperfect.”

Zoe frowned. “But I thought the point was that it is a specific sequence. Each number the sum of the two previous.”

“Yes, but nature is not so neat as mathematics might have you believe. Think about the instances where we can see Fibonacci spirals: a snail’s shell may grow slightly tilted. A plant’s leaves may experience growth spurts due to exposure to water or light that can throw off the pattern. A hurricane fits within the spiral, but it does not have well-defined and sharp edges. Wind forces clouds to stream back alongside the spiral itself, making a feathered edge which does not always conform exactly to the pattern.”

Zoe got the point. “So the pattern should be imperfect. But how does that help? If it is imperfect, we have even less chance of catching him.”

“No,” Dr. Applewhite said, and Zoe could almost hear her smiling. It was the same look she had always had on her face when making an important point, knowing that she was delivering important knowledge to her student. “The mistake that the killer has made is believing that the pattern should be perfect. It will be precise—exceedingly precise.”

Zoe turned this over in her head. “He is so obsessed with the pattern that he cannot see the fact that there are variances in nature. His pattern will have to be perfect.”

“Just the same way that you, my dear, sometimes find it hard to look past the numbers in order to see the variances of human nature. How you can struggle to understand the subtleties of small talk or emotional responses, because you are watching the calculations in your head.”

Zoe bowed her head slightly over the table of maps and papers. Dr. Applewhite was right. Even though she was the only person who had the ability to see things as the killer saw them, that also meant that she was victim to the same mistakes and foibles.

Being the same as a serial killer—that sent a shudder through her again.

“There is beauty in imperfection,” Dr. Applewhite continued. “Our flaws are what make us human. That’s why I have never judged you for yours. But this perpetrator… he does not see the beauty. He is incapable of looking past the numbers of the spiral itself. He objectifies it, just the same way that a serial killer looks at a victim instead of seeing a wife, mother, sister, friend. The end goal is all that matters to him. Because of this, he has made himself a predictable man.”

“You mean that we can be more precise with the calculations. Find out exactly where he intends to commit the final murders, to a much closer degree.”

“Yes. Why look at a whole town? He can only see a precise coordinate. You could take it down through decimal places, rather than looking at whole grids on the map.”

“I understand,” Zoe said, grabbing a pen. “I have the precise coordinates of each of the attacks.” She was starting to scribble out calculations, make the numbers smaller.

Dr. Applewhite laughed, a sound of joy and friendship that never failed to warm Zoe’s heart. “Hit me with the numbers.”

Zoe hadn’t thought to ask for help, but it was welcome. There was always a security to be found in your work being checked. Even though she had already completed the calculations, there was no harm in accepting the offer. She flicked through each case file to read out the coordinates to four decimal points, waiting for Dr. Applewhite to run the logarithmic function and determine precisely where the next points would be. There were only two left, and that made their job easier—they had almost all of the clues, and none of the mystery. It took time to input the data—time Zoe desperately wished she had spent earlier in the investigation—but then it was done, and they had what they needed.

“All right,” Dr. Applewhite said, after a moment’s pause for the calculations. “Take down these numbers.”

Zoe checked them against her own and saw that they matched, then used the battered old computer in the corner of the investigation room to input them in a map search. “Got it,” she said, focusing in on the square highlighted on the search. “Thirty square meters. Close enough that we can watch it all at once.”

“Well done! And will it be an easy target to stake out?”

Zoe studied the map again, checking that she had not made a mistake. “It is a diner,” she said. “It looks like the whole space is taken up by the building. I will have to check with the local authority that this map is accurate.”

“No—the killer wouldn’t have been able to do that,” Dr. Applewhite pointed out. “He is going on the same data that you have. A publicly available map. Trust in what you see.”

“Then it is only part of the building. The front area, facing the street with the entrance doors, is not even included. The full boundary encompasses only the middle and back part of the diner.”

“You know where to find him. I suppose you had better hurry—didn’t you say that he always strikes after dark?”

Zoe checked her watch. In the isolated, windowless investigation room, she had not even noticed how far along the day had progressed. It was nearly time for the sun to start going down, and after that it would not take long for him to strike.

They needed to move—and now. She would have to travel along his route, figuring out the roads he would take, where he would be. There was still every chance that Aisha was dead, that he would only arrive to dump her body. Or that she was alive but would not be by the time he reached the diner. Zoe would have to keep her wits about her, and her eyes open.

Leaving the math behind, breaking away from the pattern, felt uncomfortable. Zoe thought it would be the same for the killer, but how could she really know? As much as she understood the numbers with an instinctive resonance, the human mind was something else altogether. That was what truly terrified her and made her heart jump into her throat: the idea that he might deviate now, at this late stage.

“Thank you,” Zoe said, breathlessly, into the phone.

“Don’t mention it,” Dr. Applewhite said. “You can show your gratitude by booking an appointment with that therapist I recommended.”

“I will talk to you soon.” Zoe signed off with a small smile, unwilling still to commit.

There was not much time to be wasted on pleasantries, after all. Zoe knew where the killer was going to be, and she knew when—and it was soon. She ended the call and dialed Shelley’s number instead. They would have to meet there—she could not wait for her partner to get back to their base of operations when someone’s life was going to be on the line.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Zoe sat at the counter, alone. She was nursing a cup of coffee, but barely drinking it. Instead, she occupied herself by looking around, checking every direction on a regular basis.

She could not stand the waiting. She had considered every angle, every option. That he would bring Aisha in alive, then kill her in the middle of a room full of people. No, that didn’t make sense. That he would bring her in dead—but how would he expect to leave there alive afterward?

Zoe had spent her time approaching the diner carefully, checking the roads, the parking lot, looking inside every car parked there. Not just Ford Taurus vehicles of any color. She was not going to make that mistake twice. No, she had looked over everything thoroughly, and there was no sign of him.

But there was a little light of hope remaining in her heart. This was the fact that there were two kills remaining, not just one. Two locations. And maybe, just maybe, the killer would keep Aisha for last, to make sure his final point would not be ruined.

That made more sense than trying to kill a girl, or bring one already dead, into a crowded diner. He must have known that this would be his ticket to the inside of a jail cell.

And then again, with a schizophrenic off his medication, how could you know that his mind would work logically?

But Zoe had to take a stab. She was only one person, and she could not be everywhere at once. She had alerted Shelley to move in carefully and cover a wider area with the state troopers, observe the parking lot, keep eyes everywhere they could. They were stretched thin with leads in so many different directions now, and the stakes were high. One little movement in the back of a car could indicate Aisha’s struggle. Something easy to miss before her life was over. But the troopers would be out there on the road, in the lot, waiting.

And Zoe was left watching the diner. It seemed unlikely that he would find a victim here, didn’t it? But there were private spaces—the kitchen, the bathrooms. Places a little more out of sight. She just had to watch for suspicious behavior somehow. If he came in, she would see him. She would stop him. She swore that to herself.

There were ten booths at the sides of the room, with a wider central area containing several tables that were easy to see in a glance. Then there was also the counter. That allowed twelve places where the killer could possibly be—fourteen, if she counted the bathrooms. She had already checked out the ladies’ room on entering, in case he would lurk for a victim there. A trooper she had never seen before had come in, looked around the men’s bathroom, and left again with a subtle nod to Zoe earlier. His job done, he had returned to watching cars. There was no killer here—not yet.

Zoe tried to keep her knee from jiggling up and down, to keep the numbers from overwhelming her. She knew the height and weight of every person in the whole place, from the waitresses who swirled around with pots of coffee and order pads to the twenty-seven others sitting in various positions around her. The diner was busy—almost full. He would not have to look hard for a victim, though the challenge would be in taking a life without being seen.

Zoe was determined that she should see him.

She tried not to let it bother her that there was one more sugar dispenser than there were salt, and that there were two more of each than there were tables—spares, taken at some point into circulation and then left to occupy odd spots rather than tidied back away. She tried also to ignore the seventeen burgers, twenty servings of fries, twenty-eight coffee cups (some not yet cleaned away after being abandoned by their previous owners) and four milkshakes on the tables. These things, she did not need to know.

She did not need to know that there were seven empty seats, but only one totally free table. There was no reason for her to know that there were thirteen light fixtures dotted around the room, or three air conditioning vents, or that the waitresses each wore their apron strings at a slightly different length.

What she did need to know was everything possible about the people already in the diner, and she applied herself to this with as much effort as she could. She turned her back to the counter and leaned, surveying the room in a way that she hoped seemed casual. She ordered a second cup of coffee and set it down next to her, as if she were waiting for a friend.

Over half of the occupants of the diner were female, the ratio weighted by the wait staff made exclusively of women. Several were also children. Zoe could dismiss those out of hand. Then there were the overweight men, a familiar sight in an establishment that served mostly sugary or fatty food. Two of them were far too old, of retirement age, lacking the necessary arm strength to do the deeds.

That left five men, one of them being too short to reach the necks of the tallest victims without difficulty, meaning that Zoe could rule him out. Down to four.

Groups sat in obvious structures, patterns dictated by social expectations. Man—woman—child, family unit. Girlfriend opposite boyfriend. Two girls facing two boys, sweethearts sitting together. Predictable and strong. But there were those she could not place—two men and a woman, she on her own while they faced her, no clear lines of family or love. Those were the most enigmatic, the ones that forced wonder the most.

A group of three—a man, woman, and child—got up from their seats and left. That gave her three. But another party was coming in, four young men, not much older than teenagers. That brought her back up to seven, and they were followed by a young couple. Eight, now. Another couple were getting up to leave, freeing up one of the booths, and—had she eliminated that one already? Was it seven or still eight?

Zoe furrowed her brow and concentrated. She had to get this right. It was not certain that the killer would be easily apparent, on the surface. He might be a local—might have planned to end up here, even despite their assumption that he came from out of state. That meant he could be with friends, even family members.

Zoe had felt he would be a loner, but maybe that was just her own bias. She was, so he should be. Maybe he wasn’t like her at all, and could maintain relationships and have friends easily in spite of his way of seeing things.

Maybe not.

The dinner rush was starting to cool down, the sun already set outside. Another group got up to leave, having finished their evening meal, taking the kids back home to sleep. That was one of her suspects. She was at seven now, for certain. She surveyed the group of four male friends, trying to take them in, to wonder if one of them was looking around too much or seemed nervous.

The door opened again to allow in a young man on his own. He looked unremarkable: plain but respectable clothing, five foot eleven, slim. He sat a few stools down from Zoe, past an overweight trucker and a woman who had checked her phone eighteen times in the last ten minutes.

The young man ordered a tea, and Zoe watched him from the corner of her eye, as best as she could past those in between them. It was possible. He could be the one. Zoe added him to her mental tally and did another sweep of the room, watching the other tables, eliminating one man for his messy eating habits.

The woman sighed and got up, leaving quickly with her head ducked down. Zoe glanced to the side. She could see the young man a little better now. He, too, seemed to be surveying the room.

Another family group got up and walked out, a single mother with three children in tow. Zoe watched the door, but no one else came in. Where was Shelley? Surely she would arrive soon?

The trucker threw some cash down on the table to pay his bill and got up, letting out a belch as he did so. Zoe looked at him, unable to stop herself. As he moved away, her eyes met those of the young man, who looked similarly disgusted.

For a second, they held one another’s gaze. There was a flicker in his eyes, something that she could not quite pinpoint, before he looked away.

Zoe continued to watch him. He was studiously not looking toward her now. There was no doubt about that.

That glimmer. Could it have been… recognition?

Zoe’s mind raced. Height, weight, age. All of it added up. The timing of his entrance to the diner, after the sun had completely gone down. The fact that he was alone, while the other single men in the diner looked to be there for a purpose—truckers stopping on a long journey, dates anxiously waiting for their partners, and one man in a rumpled suit who Zoe had pegged as an alcoholic trying to sober up before going home.

This young man—he was there for a reason as well.

He was there to kill.

She knew it in her bones. It was him.

There was only going to be one shot at this. If she messed up, he could get away. Showing her cards as an FBI agent would force the real killer to run, if it wasn’t who she thought it was. But she felt sure. It had to be him.

Zoe stood, about to go over and question him, just at the same moment that he also got up from his seat. She hesitated, pretending to adjust her jacket, as he walked over to the back of the diner and entered the bathroom. Thwarted, Zoe sat again, thinking that she would have to wait until he returned.

She grabbed her phone and fired off a quick text to Shelley. A warning, but not yet an order for backup. Suspect sighted. Gone into bathroom. Waiting to approach for questioning and arrest when he emerges.

Zoe waited, keeping the bathroom door in her peripheral vision so that she would see it as soon as it opened. Another man went into the bathroom, Zoe’s skin prickling as she tried to catch a glimpse of anything beyond the door as it swung shut.

A quick glance around the room at her other suspects, none of whom seemed to be anywhere near as interesting.

The bathroom door opened again, and Zoe looked around, her body tensing—but it was only the other man coming out.

Her blood rushed in her veins. It had been long enough for the second man to go in and come out—why not her suspect?

What was he doing in there? Was he trying to escape?

Had he already climbed out the bathroom window and run out of sight, to where she would have no clue about where to track him down?

There was only one thing to do. Zoe took a sip of her coffee for fortitude and got up from the stool. Checking her gun in its holster with a light tap, she headed resolutely for the bathroom, avoiding eye contact with anyone around her as she deliberately entered the men’s door.

Zoe drew her gun as she stepped through, letting it shut behind her. The last thing she needed was a civilian coming in at the worst possible moment. She considered locking the door, but that would only trap herself as well as the killer.

She gave a quick glance around, moving with the gun pointed ahead of her as she had been trained. The urinals were abandoned, the sinks empty. One by one, she moved past the stalls. Each of them were open, doors hanging in such a way that she could see there was no one inside.

The bathroom was empty.

The window was open, a predictable conclusion to the lack of any occupants. Zoe looked up; the aperture was wide enough, she calculated, for a man of his slim bulk to fit through. The shoulders may have been tight. She approached and touched the glass, finding that the pane opened further upward, going flat in such a way that it would have allowed him one more inch. Just enough, leaving a spare centimeter and a half of wiggle room. He would have made it.

Zoe moved closer and stood on her tiptoes, relaxing her posture with the gun as she peered out of the window. There was nothing to be seen outside, no mark that he was nearby, no footsteps on the ground that she could make out. Not even from the impact. He was not a heavy man, but surely he should have made an impact…?

Too late, Zoe realized the truth. He had not leaped out the window at all; that was why there was no evidence of it. She heard the creak of a door behind her and dimly remembered seeing a janitor’s closet, and one footstep on the tiled floor, and she knew that she had made a mistake in turning her back on him.

Instinctively, Zoe’s arm shot up, holding the gun. She wanted to turn and point it at him, but there was no time.

All she succeeded in doing was catching her arm in the wire that was intended for her neck, her hand and wrist knocking into her own face as he pulled tightly, drawing it into a loop. She managed only to articulate a strangled gasp as she dropped the gun, flinching as it hit the floor with a loud clatter.

It was sheer luck that it did not go off—good or bad—perhaps it might have hit him if it did. But he was pulling resolutely, hard, with the same determination that had dispatched all of his victims so far. Zoe heard herself cry out involuntarily as the fabric of her jacket gave way, the wire cutting through into the flesh of her arm.

She could not go down like this. She could not allow the three-centimeter wound to grow larger, could not allow the wire closer to her neck. The killer had a strong grip, but he was off balance, his usual stance thrown off by the interference of her arm.

She threw the other elbow back, connecting fully with his lower chest, hearing him wheeze as some of the air was knocked out of him. He stumbled back but took the wire with him, making Zoe cry out again as the wire bit deeper into her skin. She could feel hot blood running down her arm already inside her sleeve, pooling inside the material where it bent.

He was standing just an inch or an inch and a half outside of her elbow range now, still pulling hard, the wire so sharp Zoe feared it might go through her arm before she could defend herself. He was bent forward slightly in her peripheral vision as she turned her head, his neck bent at thirty degrees, his hips at sixty. Top-heavy. Unbalanced. Humans had been designed with finesse, but they had weak points.

Zoe dropped to her knees, going down without any safety net, knowing it would likely hurt. Her kneecaps collided with the tiled floor with a dull thud that echoed through her body, shaking more blood from the wound of her arm, splattering it across the tiles in front of her. A clue for investigators in the future. The killer held on tight, but as the wire dipped under the weight of Zoe’s body dropping, he was pulled further off balance, tumbling down with her.

His body struck hers with a heavy weight, shoulder colliding against spine, head glancing off shoulder. They were on the floor and Zoe was free of the wire at least for a moment, falling loose like a halo around her, but her arm was gushing blood and the gun was out of her reach on the other side of the bathroom…

He saw it at the same moment that she realized it, and then they were both lunging for it, fighting to get their hands on it first. Zoe undercut him at a leaner angle and knocked him out of the way, down again, as she struggled to her feet. The wire forgotten behind her, she had not a moment to hesitate as she saw him lunging forward again. She had not succeeded in winding him a second time. He would reach it first.

She had to do something. In desperation, Zoe whirled, seeking something that would provide a moment of advantage. Distraction. There! Flinging out her elbow, using the arm that had already been damaged, she struck a mirror and shattered it into pieces.

“Look!” she shouted, her voice underpinned by the tinkling of shattered glass falling down. “The pattern!”

The killer glanced back toward her, startled. She saw his eyes change, widen, in recognition and surprise at the understanding. His gaze darted then toward the floor, as if unable to resist. The glass was settling, some of it fallen into the sink, some in a semicircle around it on the floor. The empty space within, the curved shape, the spray of errant pieces—it was irresistible to him.

Zoe leaped forward and got her hands on the gun as she slid along the floor. Her shoulder hit the back wall, and she ignored the pain racing through not just that spot but her whole arm as she rolled to raise the gun. She got it up in front of her, waiting for the world to stabilize just long enough to see him lunging for her again, and she pulled the trigger.

Point blank range, almost. Only a millisecond more and he would have been on her. Even if she hadn’t known how to aim, she almost certainly would not have hit him.

He slumped to the floor, taken back a few inches by the impact of the bullet, and raised a hand to his chest to examine the hole that had suddenly appeared there.

Zoe panted for breath, adrenaline washing over her in waves. She felt faint, light-headed. Looking at the blood smattered around the disordered bathroom, she thought she knew why. Things were getting fuzzy as the world cleared and settled, the ringing of falling glass in her ears, the mad dash for the gun and for breath, the hot wet slick of her right arm.