by Blake Pierce
Zoe looked over at Flynn, numbers swarming her eyes. He was too new. There was too much to see. He was all acute angles, his bones strong and sharp, his suit cut just so. At least with the people she knew well, she could tune out the numbers that were all the same. Working with him would be impossible.
And yet, she had never told anyone at work—except Shelley—about the numbers. They already looked at her like she was a freak, and she didn’t want to give them more of a reason to think it. All of which meant that she couldn’t use them as an excuse now. Couldn’t tell Maitland that all she could see were numbers everywhere, crowding the surface of his desk, and that was distraction enough.
Zoe was self-aware enough to know that such an admission would not only make her look like a freak, but also probably force Maitland to put her on sick leave and require her to attend sessions with a mental health professional provided by the agency—maybe even have her sectioned. She wasn’t going to risk that.
“You are not giving me any choice?” she said, instead, wanting to know if there was any remote possibility that she could get around this new partner.
“Of course, there’s a choice,” Maitland said. “You get on the plane, or you go home. I can have you out there in a matter of hours. What’s it to be?”
Zoe sighed. It was obvious what the answer had to be. She couldn’t work with this new idiot, with his shiny shoes and his rich-boy smile. And yet, there was no way she could go back home now, not to just sit on the couch with her cats, staring into the distance, stalking Shelley’s family by night. She had a duty, not just to her dead partner but to the victims who needed justice. The victims who would die over the next days and weeks if the killer wasn’t caught.
The cats would be fine without her. Her slow-release feeding system would take care of them. And there was no one else in the whole world that needed her. Not like this case did.
She was going to have to swallow down the objections that clogged her throat and push through it. She knew that it was what Shelley would have wanted her to do.
She opened her mouth to tell them, begrudging every word.
***
Zoe glanced over the files again, familiarizing herself with the case. It was a short flight, but she had enough time to memorize the details and start to think about the next steps to take when they landed. They would want to see the latest crime scene and both bodies, for a start.
“Can you read it out to me?” Flynn, sitting next to her, had been trying to peer over at the paper the whole time she had been leafing through the pages. His long legs were set at an awkward angle in the cramped plane seat, his elbows sharp edges that kept threatening to impinge on her space. “I want to be prepared.”
Zoe sighed mentally, wanting nothing more than for him to leave her alone. But it was not an unreasonable request. He didn’t know that she was going to have to translate the whole thing in her head, take out the numbers that she saw everywhere, read it like a robot. No context, no inflection, only the words on the page. It was as difficult for her to see them like that as it would have been for an infant to read them at all.
“The first body was found north of Syracuse, and the second in Syracuse itself,” she said. “First victim was a forty-one-year-old female named Olive Hanson, strangled and left at the curve of the Oneida River where she was apparently hiking.”
Zoe handed over crime scene photographs, images that she had already studied. The woman sprawled on the bank, her neck purpled while the rest of her was pale and filmy, her eyes staring up empty. Then the final image: her exposed stomach, shirt lifted out of the way with no other indication of tampering with her clothing, and the symbol carved into already dead flesh. It stood out starkly, as these things always did. A wound through pasty white skin to the red, the texture of corned beef, just visible for that thin sliver of less than half an inch.
Zoe kept her eyes on Flynn’s hands. She couldn’t focus on his face to read his expression, not with those new angles and calculations jumping out at her every time his muscles twitched. But she could watch for the shake. And she saw it, as he flicked to that last frame: a tremor in his hand which made the paper shake minutely, only just enough to be visible. He was rattled by it.
It was more or less a good thing. If he was spooked, maybe he would be easier to control. To shut up when she needed time and space to think. And if he was spooked, it meant he was human—had that empathy that Zoe was often accused of lacking. In a cynical way, it was good to have someone with empathy to speak to victims’ families. When they felt that someone understood their pain, they were more likely to tell the truth.
Zoe picked up the next couple of sheets, reading over the material they had been given for the other woman. “The second victim is also a female. An astronomer named Elara Vega who was found dead at the planetarium where she worked. Age fifty-nine. Time of death is estimated to be late the night before. She was drowned in a mop bucket.”
These images showed a similar story, if not precisely the same, to the first. The body left sprawled where it had dropped, her hair still wet from where her colleague had pulled her away from the bucket to check her vital signs. Her shirt, too, had been hiked up, the lower buttons undone, to allow the killer to carve that symbol into her skin. A sharp line across and then two lines down.
“So, there’s no real correlation between them except for the symbol,” Flynn said. He was looking back and forth between the images closely, comparing them. “No match for location, method, type of woman—except that they’re both older. But the cops on the ground think the cases are linked.”
“Clearly, they are,” Zoe stated calmly, trying not to snap at him. “The symbol is a calling card. It marks them as being done by the same hand.”
“Hmm.” Flynn passed the photographs back, watching her tuck them away into the folder. “Hey, I heard you’ve been an agent for a long time.”
“I have ten years on you,” Zoe replied. She turned her head to look out her window. It would be excellent if Flynn would shut up. So long as she looked out there, and managed to ignore the glass of the window itself, she could focus on the white, fluffy nothingness of clouds. There were no numbers out there.
“You’ve had a lot of partners, too, right?” Flynn asked. “They told me about you when I was getting assigned.”
Zoe stiffened. If he asked her about Shelley, she would get up and walk to the front of the plane and pretend she was using the bathroom. She didn’t want to—such a tight space would be crowded with numbers, the tiny dimensions of a room shrunk down to the size of a cupboard—but it would be better than talking about that. No one ever wanted to discuss their biggest failures. Not when they were so recent and weighed so heavily.
“They said you were one of the best agents at solving these kind of complicated cases,” he said. He had shifted closer to her, almost imperceptibly. Almost, but not—not when you were counting the millimeters. “You’re some kind of savant, or something.”
“Am I?” Zoe asked flatly, not willing to rise to his bait.
“Seriously. They told me I’ll learn a lot from you.”
“Who is ‘they’?” Zoe asked, turning around to meet his gaze with sharp eyes. She wanted to know who had been talking about her behind her back—not that it would make much difference. The cocky smile on Flynn’s face faded and faltered, the muscles around his mouth twitching down by turns.
“Uh, just, everyone,” Flynn said, his voice uncertain now. He shifted back in the other direction again, returning to his original position. “So, I mean, we’ll probably solve the case really quick, right? You and me, working together? Maybe I can take lead and you can let me know if I miss anything.”
Zoe continued to stare at him for a moment, letting out only one small blink, and then turned back to stare out the window again.
She didn’t like him, this Aiden Flynn. He was cocky, maybe even more so than most of the new recruits. A rookie who hadn’t yet found his limitations. His background like
ly had something to do with it. It was doubtful that anyone had ever told him no.
She wasn’t interested in sharing anything with him, and especially not her abilities. Whether it was a blessing or a curse was something she had yet to square away within her own mind, but whatever it was, she wasn’t about to let this stranger hear about it. Not only was it not something she confided in anyone, ever, but it would have been an insult to Shelley’s memory. Only one partner in the whole of her career had ever made Zoe want to reveal her true self.
This arrogant young man with his silky hair and fitted suit was not going to be joining the list.
Which meant that Zoe now faced a battle on two fronts: not just to push through past the numbers that invaded everywhere her eyes turned, every sound her ears heard, so that she could solve the case, but also to keep him from knowing how she was doing it.
Zoe kept her eyes on the clouds, relishing this small bit of calm before it all began. This wasn’t going to be an easy case. She just hoped she could get it solved quickly, so she wouldn’t have to put up with this new partner for much longer.
CHAPTER SIX
Zoe pulled the seatbelt away from her neck again, holding onto it more firmly. She had to take several steadying breaths to calm her stomach. She had never been a fan of being a passenger—it always made her carsick—but it was even worse with the rookie driving. He took corners far too fast, and sped up straight roads even though he was in unfamiliar territory. Every time the GPS barked at him to take an exit, he had to perform a tight turn at breakneck speed just to make it. It was a wonder he hadn’t resorted to using the handbrake and drifting.
“Looks like this is it,” Flynn said, bending his neck to see ahead more easily. They were pulling up outside a sheriff’s station, the building quiet except for the few patrol cars parked outside and a single reporter in a downy coat.
Zoe took a deep breath of relief, finally letting go of the seatbelt. Even as they came to a stop, the pressure of it against her neck was enough to make her feel nauseous until she unbuckled it and let it go. The nausea combined with the headache that was still lingering at the edges of her consciousness, as well as the numbers crowding her vision, left Zoe feeling winded, unable to focus. She wanted to just sit, rest her head back against the seat, maybe sleep for a while—not that there was any chance of that.
The rookie was already opening his door and getting out, so Zoe begrudgingly followed suit. She couldn’t afford to lag behind, not with a partner who didn’t yet know what he was doing. She’d been partnered with rookies fresh out of training before. All they wanted to do was rush in and prove themselves, and they tended to be annoyingly procedural. Unwilling to bend from the precise structure they had been taught. That meant a headache for her, and a lot of arguing. Just exactly what she needed at a time like this.
She caught up with Flynn on the approach to the double doors of the squat, low, gray sheriff’s building. It was getting late in the day; a check of her watch showed her that it was past seven at night, and the sun had long since set. Artificial yellow light from security bulbs around the building kept it fully visible, with tiny flies and moths wobbling around each of them, dancing forward and back under the irresistible pull. The reporter, who was trying to warm his hands as he bounced up and down on his feet, watched them go in but didn’t call out.
A receptionist in a fleece jacket looked up as they entered, taking the end of a pen out of her mouth. “Hi, can I help you?” she asked. Zoe noted that she was wearing three earrings in each of her ears, and that her fingernails were two-inch-long plastic painted with a complex mottled pattern.
She opened her mouth to answer, but found another voice seemingly coming out of it. “We’re from the FBI,” Flynn said, raising his badge to show it. “We’re supposed to meet with the sheriff.”
The receptionist nodded disinterestedly and picked up the phone on her desk. She spoke a few words into it; Zoe was too busy counting the spirals in the desk phone’s cord to hear them. After putting the phone down, the receptionist put the pen back into her mouth and proceeded to ignore them, poring over something that lay flat on her desk, just out of sight.
Zoe turned impatiently under the fluorescent strip lights at the sound of footsteps. A door up ahead in the corridor opened, and a woman stepped through. She wore a brown sheriff’s uniform, complete with radios and gun tucked into her belt. Around fifty years old, she had slightly graying hair that had been dyed over, though the roots were showing through at least an inch long.
Zoe clocked her height at five foot six, shorter than herself by four inches. She weighed about a hundred fifty pounds, and she walked with a determined gait—though slightly hunched over, her back a curve rather than a line.
“Sheriff Danielle Petrovski,” she said, in a broad New York City accent, sticking out a hand in front of her. She directed it toward Zoe first, which was a nice surprise; in the majority of cases, people tended to assume the male was the superior.
“Special Agent Zoe Prime,” Zoe said, taking the offered hand and showing her badge with the other. She shook firmly, calculating the sheriff’s grip strength as she did so. “This is Special Agent Adrian Flynn.”
“Aiden,” he corrected her, taking his turn to shake hands. Zoe kept her face blank. It wouldn’t do to let him know she’d made the slip on purpose, to try to knock him down a peg or two.
“You’ll be wanting to get stuck in right away, or find a motel for the night?” Petrovski asked, looking between them expectantly.
“We will get stuck in,” Zoe said, talking over whatever Flynn had been trying to say. He was a rookie. He probably wanted to go to sleep. “If we could start by seeing the crime scene?”
“Of course.” The sheriff nodded. She patted her pocket, indicating the presence of keys. “I’ll drive you over, if you’re comfortable. It’s about ten minutes away.”
Zoe nodded easily, then lapsed into silence as they turned and walked back toward the entrance and the parking lot. She allowed Flynn to begin talking, asking questions. Nothing that he said, or the answers that he gained, gave them any further information than what had already been presented in the briefing notes. He was still green enough not to begin investigating immediately. He wanted to verify the information he had already been given, like he had been told to. He didn’t yet know how to dig.
Not that Zoe had ever been particularly good at getting the deeper truth out of people, either, but she found her answers in other places.
She was content to climb into the back seat of the sheriff’s car, even though it was a space usually reserved for criminals. It was nice to be sectioned off away from the front seat, with the excuse of distance allowing her to continue failing to take part in the conversation. She instead looked out the window, watching the scenery pass by: the trees swelling with orange and brown leaves, now falling readily to the ground and leaving behind bare and withered branches. The decaying leaves lay in broad drifts where they had been gathered up by some erstwhile volunteer who somehow lacked the mind-numbing and deadening realization that more leaves would fall tomorrow, and a stiff breeze could undo all of their work.
The streets were mostly empty; the biting cold was enough to keep most people indoors unless they needed to be out. Between buildings, the landscape was gray and bare, devoid of life at this time of year. Zoe rested her head on the glass, watching it all with disinterest.
By the time they arrived, the rookie’s words washing over her like so much white noise, she was almost on the verge of falling asleep herself—if it wasn’t for the numbers and their constant need to keep count.
They emerged from the car into a cold parking lot, this time in front of a dome-fronted building that stood on a dramatic swell in the town’s land. It had a sense of the theater in the oversized architecture, grand columns tall on either side of the entrance.
Zoe and Flynn trailed behind the sheriff as she unlocked the doors, passing crime scene tape pasted across each side of the doubl
e entrance. Inside, the space was wholly dark, until the sheriff fumbled alongside the door and found a switch that turned on the lights.
Zoe took a long inhale, the air rushing through her nose as she allowed herself to look around the auditorium and take it all in. All of the numbers, flooding her senses, telling her everything that she needed to know.
“All we did is take the body away,” Sheriff Petrovski was saying. “Everything else is untouched. We locked the place up as soon as we arrived. We have photographs back at the station of everything.”
Zoe moved toward the marked-off area in the middle of the room. With all of the chairs pointing toward it across the staggered-height seating tiers, it looked like it had been set out for an audience. The mop bucket, ominously still full of water, sat in front of everything, wheels locked into place.
“You said the death occurred late last night?” Flynn asked. “What was the victim doing here so late? I understand she worked here as an astronomer, but don’t they keep normal working hours?”
“No, it can vary here,” the sheriff said. “Ms. Vega was studying the path of a comet, monitoring it through the telescopes and making notes. We know that she completed her observations for the night—it was all written down in notebooks on her desk. One of her colleagues confirmed that for us. It seems she was simply done for the night and on her way home when it happened.”
Zoe stood just above the bucket, looking at everything. There wasn’t a whole lot of physical evidence to go on, but her keen eyes sought out the lens of a projector up in the air. Extrapolating from its position and the angle at which it was set, she could see that this whole area at the front of the room would have been caught in the projection—light beaming down right at the victim’s face, as well as the loud surround sound coming from the speakers at multiple points around the ceiling.
