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

by Blake Pierce

  There was only one thing she could do. One path that gave her the potential for a successful outcome.

  Zoe didn’t think anymore. She crossed the path at a run, rounded the grave marker from the opposite side to where he was expecting her.

  He was there! She had no time to think—no time to do anything but react. He was coming for her, a snarl on his face as soon as he saw her. His hands were fists. He meant to do her harm. If she let him, he would knock her down. Only one thing to do—one way to use his momentum against him. Too close to duck or dive—she would have to move—

  They connected as she threw herself headlong at him, tackling him to the ground in a mess of limbs and spent breath and hard ground.

  Matthias tried to struggle, but Zoe had the advantage of being on top. He managed to get a knee up and aim for her stomach, but she shifted her weight and it slammed into her hip instead. Painful, yes. Not as winding as the stomach would have been.

  His leg was between them, enough to give him leverage. If he used it, he could push her, fling her against the stone grave marker. Follow up with a smash to her head. His eyes flicked to the side and she knew he was going to do it.

  She rolled.

  He yelped in surprise as her momentum drew him over too, first on top and then over again, Zoe’s legs grappling for purchase, pushing his down. She flung him to the side with all of her weight so that he was lying on his stomach. She had only a split second before he might get his legs under him. She threw her body forward, covering his, knocking him flat to the ground.

  She pulled the handcuffs out from her belt and groped for one of his wrists, fitting them on as he kicked and swore. The second one was even easier.

  Just like that, he was done.

  He knew it, too. He stopped fighting and lay still. The wind was knocked out of him, and he pressed his face down against the cold floor.

  “Matthias Kranz,” Zoe panted, feeling the pain as acid flooded her muscles. “I am… arresting you… for the murder of… Ralph Henderson, Cole Davidson… and Dr. Edwin North.”

  The rest of the Miranda warning could wait until they had him in for questioning. For now, Zoe needed every last drop of oxygen in her lungs to call her partner and request backup.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Zoe hung back awkwardly. She was not sure what she should do, now that the moment was here. Inside, she was ecstatic, but that happiness was tempered by the still-guilty knowledge that she had caused all of this in the first place.

  Dr. Applewhite stepped out into the reception area, where family members and friends would wait to pick up their loved ones upon their release from custody. Zoe wasn’t sure exactly which category she fit into at that moment, but relief flooded her heart when Dr. Applewhite saw her and broke into a smile.

  “Zoe! You did it!”

  Zoe wasn’t often one to give in to physical shows of affection, but for this once, she couldn’t help herself. She stepped forward and allowed herself to be embraced by Dr. Applewhite, craving the forgiveness and warmth that came from her arms. As she rested her head over Dr. Applewhite’s shoulder, if there were tears that sprang to her eyes, she told herself that it was a result of extreme fatigue and nothing else.

  “They told me you caught the actual killer. That’s why I’m being released,” Dr. Applewhite said, pulling back altogether too early for Zoe’s tastes and looking into her face.

  Zoe hastily wiped a hand over her eyes. “Early this morning. I came straight to see you as soon as we had him booked. Shelley is preparing to interview hm now.”

  Dr. Applewhite frowned. “Is it a good idea for you to take part in that? You look exhausted. If your partner has been up all night as well, I’m sure she’s feeling the same way.”

  Zoe gave her a wan smile. “We are FBI agents. If we cannot deal with one night without sleep, we are not worthy of the badge. Besides, this is our case. Handing it off to someone else now would be excruciating.”

  Dr. Applewhite smiled back ruefully. “Well, I suppose that’s the way you do things around here.”

  “Oh, not at all. If our superior knew, we would be in trouble. Probably sent home to rest.”

  Dr. Applewhite laughed, and though there was certainly some tiredness in it, at least she could still laugh. “I’d better call my husband, get him to come and get me.”

  “I already called. I had your home number saved.” Zoe nodded toward the parking lot. “I imagine he will be along very soon.”

  “Thank you, dear.” Dr. Applewhite squeezed Zoe’s upper arm. “Really. You don’t have to wait with me. I know you must be eager to get back to it.”

  “I do not mind,” Zoe said, but then Dr. Applewhite was exclaiming and waving at someone through the door, and her husband was parking the car, and Zoe was no longer needed.

  ***

  Zoe sat down next to Shelley, sipping at the fresh, hot coffee she had just retrieved from the machine out in the hall. It was so hot it burned, but she needed it. The energy boost would get her through this last little bit of what needed to be done.

  According to Shelley, it wouldn’t be needed for long. Before they entered, they had observed Matthias through the one-way mirror, and Shelley was confident that he would talk. Zoe settled into her chair, uncomfortable as it was, looking forward to watching Shelley do what she did best.

  “So, Mr. Kranz,” Shelley said, pretending to consult her notes. An old trick. As if she hadn’t already memorized everything on the pages. “Why don’t we start right at the beginning—with your accident?”

  Matthias Kranz was surly, arms folded across his chest, gaze fixed firmly on the table. Even so, there was something curiously blank and detached about his expression as he spoke.

  “Huh. Accident. Funny.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Matthias looked up, his eyes spitting venom as they fixed on Shelley. Even Zoe could see the hate radiating from them. “Hell of a coincidence. You ask me, not an accident at all. A—a—push.”

  “A push?”

  Matthias snarled. “Don’t jo—jo—mock me.”

  Shelley raised her chin an inch, something clearing up in her eyes. Zoe watched her with amazement. She wasn’t quite sure about what was going on, but watching Shelley read everything she needed to know from tone and body language was like a master class.

  Zoe wondered briefly if this was what it was like for Shelley, to watch Zoe work with numbers.

  “You mean, you think it was a set-up?” Shelley said, with new understanding. “Someone made you crash your car.”

  “Something was tampered with. The brakes or something. No way it was me that crashed like that. I’m better at driving my—my…”

  “Your car.”

  “Yes!”

  Shelley nodded and made some quick notes in pen on the sheet that she was looking at. Zoe read over her shoulder: delusional.

  “All right. And what was their motive, whoever did this?”

  “They knew,” Matthias said, sneering and jabbing a finger toward his own head. “They knew.”

  Shelley’s eyes narrowed momentarily before she spoke again. Watching her, Zoe understood intuitively that she was reading, interpreting. That she was waiting for the pattern to clear up in her head, the way that Zoe would stare at a complex equation or series of numbers and wait for them to make sense in the context of the case.

  “You believe that someone targeted you because of your gift with mathematics?” Shelley asked.

  Matthias nodded vigorously. Perhaps he did not trust himself to get the right words.

  “Okay. And after the accident, what changed?” Shelley’s agreement was light, uncomplicated. Not exactly a statement that she believed him, but not a judgment either. Something that could be taken as reassurance for a person who needed to hear it.

  “Everything. The, um. The, um. The—the snakes.”

  “Snakes?”

  Matthias gestured toward his head again, bowing his neck, his gaze back to the tab
le. “The snakes. I can’t—get there.”

  There was a pause while Shelley watched him. “There’s something wrong in your head now, isn’t there, Matthias?”

  He slammed a hand down on the table with loud and sudden force, enough to make Zoe—in her tired state—jump. His voice was strained when he spoke, and she was more than a little surprised to see tears escaping down his cheeks. “Everything’s wrong. Everything I had—all I worked for—the snakes ate it all up.”

  “Talk us through what happened, in your own words.”

  “There was a—a—a paper. Physics with the new guy. Professor Wardenford was gone. Cole was the SI. I—didn’t—I f—I…”

  “You failed the paper.” Shelley was leaning forward in her seat, paying close attention. There was some kind of synergy between them now, some kind of wavelength that was working. She was understanding him.

  “Yes.” Matthias hung his head. “I got my words mixed up. Had to explain a—known theory and I got my words mixed up. Then the numbers. He told the other one. Professor Henderson.”

  “So, Cole Davidson was the first person who noticed you were having difficulties. That was why you killed him?”

  Matthias’s eyes had hardened like flint. “Henderson, he had me take these—exams. Not exams, but…”

  “Tests,” Shelley supplied.

  “Tests. He came back and said I probably had dyslexia. But the numbers were off too and he thought that was strange. Then he told—then he told Cole.”

  “Did Cole bring it up in class?”

  “He offered help. Said I might need more—hours for my work. Get extra time on my deadlines.”

  “What happened next?” Shelley leaned her head on steepled fingers, listening carefully.

  “Sent me to Dr. North.” Matthias’s anger flared up again, and he kicked the metal table legs to either side of him. “Snakes—saw the snakes. He found the snakes all knotted up and he showed me. Showed me how I was changed.”

  The picture was emerging. Every single victim, someone who had simply known about Matthias’s problems. Someone who had been instrumental in diagnosing them. Even though the injury was not the fault of any one of them, Matthias had latched his anger—which had no other outlet—onto them. One by one.

  “The doctor was one of the people who tried to help you. Why kill him?”

  Matthias scoffed, his hands bunched into tight fists on the table. “Help me? He said the snakes were—were there to stay. No way to kill them. Just have to live with them. Take pill this or pill that, make it better. Happy snakes. But always still the snakes.”

  Shelley moved down her notes, to the final line. “What about your Professor Wardenford? We’ve heard that you looked up to him, even considered him a mentor. Why did you go to kill him?”

  “He didn’t know.” There was real regret in Matthias’s eyes, at least as far as Zoe knew what it looked like in order to diagnose it. Another tear slipped down his cheek. His emotions were swinging wildly out of control. “I just wanted to talk. He didn’t know about the snakes like everyone else did. But then he knew. I saw it. I told him the time and I knew the snakes spat it out all wrong.”

  “So you attacked him as well.” There was a little reproach in Shelley’s voice, creeping in as if she couldn’t help it.

  “Is he…?”

  Shelley met his eyes directly, eschewing a smile. “James Wardenford is in the hospital being treated for a fractured skull. They say he will pull through just fine.”

  Matthias sighed, another flood of tears escaping from his eyes.

  “There’s one thing I don’t yet understand,” Shelley said, flicking to another page of her notes. Here was a blown-up image of each of the equations, along with Dr. Applewhite’s theoretical calculations below. “You deliberately implicated Dr. Francesca Applewhite. You planted her hairs at Dr. North’s home, am I correct?”

  He nodded.

  “For the tape,” Zoe said, quietly, “the suspect nodded.” She wanted to make sure the records were absolutely clear on that part.

  “You must have had to do some very creative work to get hold of those hairs, and to place them so carefully,” Shelley continued.

  Matthias smiled faintly at the praise. “Got from her office chair. People’s head—head—hair falls out. They just leave it there. Easy to take.”

  “What I don’t understand is why it had to be her. This was a focused decision, but as far as I can see, Dr. Applewhite has no involvement in your medical history. She hadn’t even met you.”

  Matthias scoffed, his facing turning into a mask of disgust. “I didn’t need to meet her. She went and published that faulty equation for everyone to see, hasn’t she? She will ask for help from others. Couldn’t even get it right herself.”

  Zoe’s head hurt. It was hard enough keeping up with the way normal people spoke. Matthias was a nightmare—tenses changing, words out of order, misused. She was thinking that she would probably have to ask Shelley for a full translation once this was over. Matthias clearly tried to talk as little as possible to hide his defects, but he could not help himself—he wasn’t yet used to staying quiet. He had to explain himself.

  “So, this was about the equation—the one that you included in your own equations?” Shelley prompted.

  “You figured it out, huh? Well, I’m impressed.” Matthias leaned back in his chair, looking off to the side as he thought. “Mind you, you did have Professor Wardenford’s help. But anyway, I solved it. I—found it. I had it all ready, just needed to write something up so that I could publish it. In a real journal. My first one.”

  Zoe noticed that he seemed to be clearer when he talked about the things he cared about the most. It was as if the anger was driving his focus, allowing him to get closer to the issue, find the right words.

  “That must have been disappointing.”

  Zoe almost missed it—Shelley’s words came out of left field for her. Disappointing, how? But she looked at Mattias and how he seemed to agree in every line of his downcast posture and expression, and it dawned on her. Ah. He couldn’t publish a paper if he couldn’t write one. Not only that, but even if he managed it, his debut publication would be his last. His bright future, extinguished in a single crash.

  “I wanted that—dog to know. I wanted her to know someone else had solved it. I wanted her to know that I was smarter than her. And then I wanted her to pay for publishing something like that without getting it right. I knew you’d let—Teacher Wardenford go if you thought it was her.”

  “You included yourself in the equation too, didn’t you?”

  He looked up, almost with shock. “You saw that?”

  “The capital ‘M.’ It was hard to miss.”

  He looked down at the table, his eyes moving over invisible patterns there. Trapped by his own hubris. His need to leave a signature. Perhaps he had never imagined that law enforcement would be smart enough to spot it.

  They were almost done. All of the loose ends were tied up: they had his motivation, his method, and his confessions. There would be time later, after they’d all had a good sleep, to go back in exhaustive detail and find out how he committed each crime in the minutiae. It was unlikely that he would try to protest his innocence in court, and even if he did, the evidence they had against him was building. They had access to credit card records now, to his phone records, to his license plate that could be traced through surveillance footage to track his movements. They had him up against the wall, and he knew it.

  But Zoe wanted to clear up one last thing, before she let him go and sit in a cell for a few hours.

  “I have the report from your car accident here, Mr. Kranz,” she said.

  That got his attention. He looked up at her, eyes narrowed slightly, waiting to see what she would say.

  “The interesting thing,” Zoe continued, “is that there was an investigation into the accident, because at first it was not clear what had happened. You claimed no memory of the events, and it was important to
find out whether the car was faulty and so on. Well, it says here that they figured out what had happened after looking into your cell phone records. You were in the middle of a text conversation at the moment of the accident. In fact, you had just fired off a message when you lost control of the car.”

  “Lies,” Matthias hissed. He made to lunge at her, or perhaps at the report, but all he accomplished was to rattle the chains of his handcuffs against the desk.

  “We will be seeing you later, Mr. Kranz,” Zoe promised, standing up. “For now, this interview is terminated.”

  She exchanged a look with Shelley, and they left the room, walking away from the seething rage and indecipherable noises that were issuing from Matthias Kranz.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  “That is the last of it.” Zoe placed one more piece of paper on top of the pile they had worked through together. “Everything should be in place now.”

  “I hope you’re right about this idea of doing all the paperwork first so you can relax later,” Shelley said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I could sleep for a week. I probably made a ton of mistakes.”

  “You did not. I was checking,” Zoe said, gathering the neat pile and pushing it into a folder for easier filing. “I will get these over to SAIC Maitland. You can go home.”

  “Are you sure?” Shelley asked. “Wait—Zoe, didn’t you get a lift here? Where’s your car?”

  Zoe had to think about it for an embarrassingly long time, tracing back all of her steps across the morning, the night, and the evening before. “I left it at home. I got the subway to meet John, and he drove me here.”

  “I’ll wait and drop you home first, then,” Shelley said.

  “You do not have to do that. I am capable of getting home by myself.”

  “I know you are. But as your partner, I’d like to make that easier for you.” Shelley paused and ran a hand back over her hair, checking whether it was still neatly fitted into her ponytail. It was. “Zoe, I… I wanted to apologize. I think sometimes I think of you as being this fragile person that needs protecting from the outside world, but that’s not it at all. You know what’s good for you. I just have to listen to what you’re telling me, and stop going all Mama Bear about making sure you eat and sleep and relax.”