Face of Murder (A Zoe Prime Mystery—Book 2)

by Blake Pierce

Matthias shook his head. “I’m just glad the real killer has been caught.”

  One thing about that struck Wardenford as odd, and then as he thought about it more, two things. The “real” killer? Did Matthias know that he had been arrested and spoken to?

  Did everyone know it?

  The other point was that Wardenford had thought he was the only one to know about the latest development. Had the police somehow made it public overnight? He had checked both local and national news this morning, and seen no updates about an arrest in the case.

  “Caught?” he replied, treading cautiously. “Did they say who it was?”

  Matthias made a face. “Pear. Uh, white. Pear white. No, something…”

  “Dr. Applewhite,” Wardenford corrected quietly. So. They really had arrested her. Well. When he had presented what he could see himself, the equations pointing the way, he did not know if he really believed it could be true. But if they had taken her in—“How did you hear about that? I haven’t seen anything in the news.”

  Matthias shrugged. He was depending on gestures today, Wardenford noticed. Fewer words and more gestures. As if he was unwilling to spare any more words to get his point across. “Campus rumors,” he said.

  Ah, yes. The old rumor mill. Wardenford had been quite fond of it once, before he became the headline story for a while. Since then, of course, he had barely heard a thing. Even if someone had been willing to tell him, he wouldn’t have remembered any of it, not with the amount he had been drinking.

  Still, it sent a shiver down his spine. News traveled fast around here, and if someone had managed to see Dr. Applewhite being arrested and spread it around the campus already, it seemed quite likely that they had done the same for him. So, another dent to his already battered reputation.

  Mind you, at least he had been released. Maybe that would help matters.

  The sound of a car horn blaring outside startled Wardenford, and he rose to look out the window. “Goodness me,” he muttered, shaking his head. “They shouldn’t be making that kind of racket this early in the morning. Some people are still asleep. What time is it now, anyway?”

  “It’s nine-sixteen.”

  Nine-sixteen…? That didn’t sound right, surely? Had so many hours flown by while Wardenford was staring into the bottom of a coffee cup? No, and the city was still quiet, people only just getting onto their commutes, school buses just starting to go past for the first time. Wardenford glanced at his watch, scratched and battered from many a drinking session that ended badly, and saw that he was right.

  It was six-nineteen.

  He opened his mouth to laugh and tell Matthias that he had got it the wrong way around, but then stopped himself. Hang on a second, here, James, he told himself. Now, just hang on and think about this.

  The equations were all jumbled up, all out of order. The numbers, the letters, in the wrong places.

  And Matthias was speaking so carefully, with so much control, using as few words as he possibly could.

  Not that there was any need to read too far into that, was there? Perhaps he was overtired. Yes, that was probably all. To read any more into it would be absurd.

  “Well,” Wardenford said briskly, turning back from the window and resuming his spot on the sofa. “Some people just don’t have any sense of what’s right, do they? I imagine there was barely any reason for them to hit the horn at all. You know what these road-rage inner-city drivers are like.”

  Matthias laughed politely, nodding his head.

  And Wardenford remembered something—something he had not thought of for a long time. The equation that Dr. Applewhite had shared with him. The fact that he had then shared it with Matthias, hoping that the lad would be able to use his talents to find the correction.

  He’d been working on it, hadn’t he? Back then. Before the scandal hit.

  Matthias had seen the equation, and there was something wrong with him now. The numbers. He had mixed up the numbers when he read the time.

  Just like the numbers had been mixed up in the equations.

  And, oh god, there it was: Matthias had been a student of Henderson’s. He’d known Cole. God, there it all was.

  It was him.

  This benign-looking, innocuous student. This college dropout who had once had everything at his feet thanks to his supreme intelligence. This boy who Wardenford had spoken with and come to know, and hoped to lead to greatness.

  He was a murderer.

  Wardenford made sure to smile at him, willing himself to carry it right through to his eyes. Matthias had never been stupid, and he wasn’t now. If there was any way that he suspected that Wardenford knew who he really was—and, he realized with an extra thrill of fear—why he was really there, it would be over.

  Because Matthias Kranz wasn’t there for a cup of coffee and a nice chat about old times.

  He was there to murder James Wardenford.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  Zoe hit the brake hard and quickly shifted into reverse. “Damn it! This one?”

  “Yeah, down there,” Shelley said, doing her best to juggle her attention between the GPS and the phone in her hand. “No, not you, Fred. Right. And there’s no connection?”

  Zoe didn’t like the way Shelley’s conversation sounded like it was going. They were flying blind at the moment, heading for Matthias Kranz’s student housing because it was the only logical lead that they had as to his location. A trace on his cell would make it a lot easier to track him down, but Shelley didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with setting that up.

  “Okay. Keep an eye on it, please, Fred. Just let me know as soon as it pops up again. This is an active pursuit, okay? Thanks. You’re a star. Okay, talk later.”

  Shelley ended the call, shifting in the passenger seat and looking around. “It should be one of these ones coming up, right? Fred says he can’t get a trace on the kid’s cell. We’ll just have to hope that he’s home.”

  “Why do I feel like I already know he is not?” Zoe growled, slowing down as she peered through the side windows at numbers posted outside of houses.

  “Because you’re an optimistic, happy-go-lucky kind of gal,” Shelley joked, without so much as cracking a smile. “Here. It’s this one.”

  Shelley was out of the car and halfway across the sidewalk by the time Zoe had managed to get it into park, and she was a few steps behind still by the time Shelley was banging on the front door.

  “I will go around the back,” she said, spotting a dilapidated wooden door in the poorly maintained fence between the house and the one next to it. Sure enough, the door flew open without much effort on her part, the wood too dry and old to fit snugly into the frame anymore. It wasn’t locked.

  At the back of the house, a yard grown almost knee-high with weeds and grasses took up only fifteen feet by ten—enough for it to attract a higher price tag, but apparently not enough for the student residents to want to take care of it.

  Zoe assessed the back of the house: two sets of windows on the ground floor, three sets of windows above, almost the same as the front. The difference was that the middle window was small and slotted—a bathroom window, not big enough for anyone to climb out of. Still, Zoe kept her eye on the others for a sign of movement.

  It was the back door that opened instead, and her instinct to spring toward it and prevent anyone from leaving was met with owlish concern from a young man in spectacles. He was five foot four—short for a male, and certainly too short to be their killer.

  “Your partner told me to let you in,” he said, leaning back away from her as if concerned that she would tackle him. “She headed upstairs to check the rooms, but I told her there’s no point. Matthias isn’t here. He went out early this morning.”

  “How early?” Zoe asked, stepping inside. From here, she could see both the front and back exits. A good enough place to wait for Shelley to finish her checks, in case someone decided to make a break for it.

  “I don’t know, man. Before I woke up. His sho
es are gone, that’s how I know.”

  “Do you have any idea where he went?”

  “No.” The student seemed taken aback, confused even, by her questioning. “What’s this about?”

  “This is about an FBI investigation, which you are obstructing if you do not answer all of our questions truthfully,” Zoe snapped. Perhaps Shelley wouldn’t have approved, but there was no time for the light touch here. Lives were at stake. “Think very carefully. Do you have any idea—even the smallest clue—about where Matthias is right now?”

  The kid was still half-asleep, clearly, but that seemed to snap him awake. “Uh, okay, okay, just let me think! Uh… well, last night he said something.”

  “What did he say?” Zoe asked, impatient and angry that she even had to ask the question to drag the information out of him.

  “He talked about this guy who used to be his professor. He got, like, fired or something. Or quit, I don’t know. Anyway, Matthias was saying how he wanted to go check the guy was good or whatever. I don’t know. I thought it sounded kind of dumb, but Matthias actually likes his professors, you know? Like they’re people. Not like they’re professors or whatever.”

  Zoe could barely contain her exasperation. As if professors were not people. This young man needed some sense put into him, but there was hardly any time to address that now. “Which professor? What was his name?”

  “Oh, uh… I don’t think he gave me a name,” the student stuttered.

  Shelley clattered down the stairs, the heels of her shoes striking each of the steps with a staccato cacophony. “Upper floor is clear,” she said.

  “Did you check down here?”

  “No. Watch the doors.” Shelley disappeared from view momentarily, first on one side of the hall and then on the other, as she checked the downstairs rooms. Then she was out again, shaking her head.

  “This one says Matthias went to visit an old professor.”

  “Mathematics?”

  “I don’t know!” The student raised his hands, looking back and forth between both of them. “I swear, I have no idea. I don’t even like Matthias. This was just a cheap option so we could split the rent. We got matched up by this service at the college. Seriously, I don’t know where he spends his time.”

  Shelley snapped her fingers, apparently struck by sudden inspiration. “Was it James Wardenford?”

  “Oh, yeah,” the student replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Now that you said it, I remember. Yeah. Professor Wardenford.”

  “You have been almost useless,” Zoe informed him, before nodding to Shelley and leading the way back out of the building.

  “I’m calling him now,” Shelley said, hitting buttons on her cell and lifting it to her ear. “We’d better get over to his apartment. If Matthias is there right now, he’s in danger.”

  “And probably stinking drunk,” Zoe remarked, getting back behind the wheel of the car.

  Shelley slid into the passenger seat, then swore and took the cell from her ear. “No answer. I’ll try him again.”

  Zoe paused only to search for the address in her GPS—easy enough to find, since she knew how many places she had been since then and could simply choose the right option in the history—before hitting the accelerator and pulling out. “How did you think of Wardenford?”

  Shelley was playing with her pendant with the hand that wasn’t holding her cell. “He was dismissed before Matthias had his accident. If he’s been out of the loop, he might be the only person from Georgetown who Matthias had contact with that doesn’t know about it. Either that, or Matthias has already been to him for help before and Wardenford figured out what was wrong, and now Matthias wants revenge. I don’t know. Wardenford didn’t mention Matthias when we knew the equations were all tangled up. I’m guessing he would still be in the dark.”

  “Why would he go there, if not to kill him?” Zoe frowned, hitting the gas to avoid colliding with a slow-moving car as she made a sharp turn.

  “If he isn’t aware that Matthias has been having any difficulties, then he could represent the last person from Matthias’s old life who will act as though nothing has happened. Treat him as though he’s still as capable as he was. That could be huge for him.”

  Zoe thought about it. She had something that was entirely the opposite: the relief of being around the very few people who did know her diagnosis, and no longer having to pretend that she was like everyone else. But if everyone knew, except from a select few? She could see how there might be comfort in that, too. If her cover was blown and people started treating her even more like an alien, then she would want to go back to the one person who still thought she was just rude and aloof.

  “But Wardenford knows about the equations now,” Zoe realized. “If he connects the dots in any way—if Matthias somehow shows his hand—”

  Shelley finished her thought. “Matthias will kill him.”

  Zoe pushed her foot down further on the accelerator. This was a matter of timing only. Either they got there before Wardenford was murdered, or after.

  She hoped to god that it would be before.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  Matthias shook his head. He was getting the hang of this now. The focus. He was able to get the words out. “I’m just glad the real killer has been caught.” There! See! A whole th—a th—a sentence. A whole sentence.

  He was too busy being proud of himself to watch Waterfo—Wardenford. But when he spoke he sounded nervous, like his head snakes were all swimming, like something churned within him.

  “Caught? Did they say who it was?”

  Matthias twisted his face up with the concentration. Say it. Say. The words. Come on. “Pear. Uh, white. Pear white. No, something…” He knew he was so far off. So far off. He was about to get caught. Wardenford would know. He would know about Matthias’s snakes and how they all slithered in the wrong direction now.

  “Dr. Applewhite,” Wardenford corrected quietly. “How did you hear about that? I haven’t seen anything in the news.”

  Mistake, mistake! Didn’t check the news, didn’t read the—scrolls. Should have checked. Oh, Matthias, you got yourself caught. Those snakes were getting away.

  Matthias shrugged to get the message down to as few words as he could. He couldn’t risk it, not now, with the—picnic in him. Not picnic. Focus. Explain it. “Campus rumors,” he said.

  There was silence. Maybe Matthias said too much. Maybe the picnic—the panic was justified. Oh, but how awful it would be if he knew! If he saw the snakes!

  A loud noise outside, and Wardenford rose to look out the window. “Goodness me,” he muttered, shaking his head. “They shouldn’t be making that kind of racket this early in the morning. Some people are still asleep. What time is it now, anyway?”

  Matthias looked at his watch. Read it confidently without thinking. “It’s nine-sixteen.”

  There was a long silence.

  Matthias saw Wardenford look back at his watch and checked his own again. Focused. Squinted his eyes one way, then another. Wardenford was still looking outside. The time was wrong. The time he read out was wrong.

  “Well,” Wardenford said, turning back from the glass and sitting on the—bench. “Some people just don’t have any sense of what’s right, do they? I imagine there was barely any reason for them to hit the horn at all. You know what these road-rage inner-city drivers are like.”

  Wardenford gave his happy smile. Matthias looked at him and smiled back, and behind it all the snakes were foaming. He knew. Wardenford knew.

  What a stupid mistake.

  But maybe all was not—gone. After all, his mentor could guess about the snakes. The mind snakes. That didn’t mean he knew about the blood snakes.

  “I try not to drive,” Matthias said. He had to be careful because he could not find his way to the word for the thing that people drove, the—refuge, and he had to control his expression as well. Wardenford might just think it was a one-off mistake. Not snakes but silliness. Maybe Matthias could pret
end it was a—funny.

  It wasn’t true, anyway. He’d been driving a lot, lately. But at least if he said he didn’t, he could distance himself from the suspicion. A killer didn’t get on the sub-sub—coach.

  Wardenford hadn’t said anything for a minute. He was looking at his coffee. Matthias wondered if he was figuring it out.

  “I haven’t driven at all, since…” Wardenford began, then stopped. “Well. All that unpleasantness. Best left in the past. Anyway, how are your studies going?”

  Matthias picked up his coffee and sipped. Best left in the past too. But a direct question needed an answer. “Dropped out,” he said. Immediately he was unhappy smiles, raging at himself, the snakes all hissing and biting their own tails. Such an answer would mean—following. He would have to talk more. He looked into the black coffee and hoped it would end there, knowing it wouldn’t.

  Wardenford set his coffee down on the table, ringing, ringing, ringing. “You dropped out? Matthias, what happened? You were doing so well when I left. One of my best students. Are you planning to study somewhere else?”

  Matthias shook his snakes slowly.

  “Good god. It must have been bad, whatever it was. Is it money? You can’t afford the tuition anymore? Please tell me it’s something like that, something we can fix. There are grants I can help you to apply for.”

  Matthias shook his snakes again, slow, slow, slow.

  Wardenford swallowed. His—pear bobbed up and down in his throat. He must have been nervous, Matthias realized. He was trying not to show it.

  “Just let me know if there’s something I can do to help,” Wardenford said at last. “If you don’t want to talk about it just now, I understand.”

  Matthias looked down into his coffee. Drank a bit. Wardenford knew about the snakes.

  Not just the head snakes.

  The blood snakes.

  “Actually, you know, I do have to get somewhere,” Wardenford said, his voice suddenly pepping up. “I hadn’t realized the time. But what with it being so far on, I should really get ready. It’s been wonderful to see you, Matthias. Do come visit again. And consider my offer for help, yes?”