Face of Darkness (A Zoe Prime Mystery—Book 6)

by Blake Pierce

  “In what way?” Zoe demanded.

  “The dates. I guess because around this time of year is when the trials and stuff started,” Joe said. “Like I said, it’s probably nothing. People around here, they always want to link everything to the trials. Squeeze some more tourist dollars out of it. That’s all it will be.”

  “Was Frank Richards part of this group that you mentioned?” Flynn asked. “People with those long connections to Salem’s history? He’s the owner of the West Street Goods store.”

  Joe thought for a moment. Zoe’s eyes roamed over vintage advertisements printed on aluminum sheets on the back wall behind the counter, noticing how each one carried precisely the same dimensions down to the millimeter—like they were modern reprints, not the real deal. “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen him at their meetings or whatever.”

  “Then it shouldn’t be linked,” Flynn said, frowning.

  “That’s what I said,” Joe replied, with the air of someone who had been vindicated. “I mean, people get stupid about this stuff. They’re even saying it’s ghosts or something. Supernatural undead witches rising from beyond the whatever, come to seek vengeance or something. It’s all garbage. I don’t think anyone actually believes it. It’s just… town mythology, or whatever.”

  Zoe couldn’t help but agree. The notion of it being supernatural was, of course, ludicrous. She had been involved in enough cases to know that there was enough evil in living men already. They didn’t need help from beyond the veil. Whoever was doing this was as real and human as Zoe herself. That was what made them so dangerous. As always, the violence of man had no match.

  Her attention wandered as Flynn started to ask banal questions about the town’s heritage. It had no bearing on this case—it took place in the past. Zoe didn’t need to listen. She returned to examining the wall behind the counter, which was a sensory overload of various framed certificates, the vintage advertisements, magazine covers that had been ripped off and hung up, and other bits of bric-a-brac that added to the hectic feel of the place.

  Zoe’s focus zoomed into one particular certificate, however—kept proudly with sharp ninety-degree angles at the corners, in a frame that allowed an inch of colored board around it as a border, presented much more nicely than anything else on the wall. It was a Chamber of Commerce plaque, stating that Judge’s Hardware was a member of the local Salem chapter and naming Harry Stout as the owner who had registered it.

  That instantly triggered a connection in her brain: the fact that Frank Richards was so heavily involved with the Chamber of Commerce and had even helped to set it up. Could it have something to do with that?

  Was this the connection between the two men—the thing that had made them targets for murder?

  Zoe snapped her attention back to Joe, interrupting his recounting of the Salem Witch Trials and what had been going on at this time of the year back then. “What can you tell us about the Chamber of Commerce?” she asked. “Do you remember anything about the store’s membership? Any controversy that might have arisen?”

  Joe gave her a blank look. “I don’t really know anything about it,” he said. “Mr. Stout dealt with that kind of stuff. I didn’t have anything to do with it. To be honest, I’m not even sure what a Chamber of Commerce does.”

  Zoe nodded. “Right.” She took a breath, her mind already wanting to race away to the next port of call: the Chamber of Commerce offices, and whoever was in a position of authority that could be woken at this time of the morning to give them some answers. But there was one piece of information that they still needed from Joe. “Do you recall any customers who were difficult to deal with? Perhaps Mr. Stout kept some kind of list?”

  “Yeah…” Joe cast around beneath the counter again. “Here we are. This is his ban list. He made me memorize it when I first started working here, and then every time he added someone new. Look at this.” He chuckled, tapping a particular image on the printed page.

  It was a list of names with images beside them, printed on not particularly high-quality paper with some kind of old printer that didn’t do a great job. The images, additionally, were taken from CCTV: that much was obvious by how grainy they were. They looked like they had been taken in the eighties, though it was probably just that Judge’s Hardware hadn’t updated their software since then.

  “What am I looking at?” Zoe asked, examining the image that Joe had tapped with his finger. It was a blurry image like all of the others, next to the name “Jack,” and an all-caps warning that this was a local thief.

  “That’s my older brother. He forgot to pay for a box of nails once and Mr. Stout crucified him,” Joe said, chuckling with mirth as if he thought they would be able to recognize the shared family features in the unclear image. Zoe couldn’t make out much about the person in the shot at all. The pixelated effect made it so that his nose might have been one pixel wide or thirty—it was impossible to make out shades and differentiations as you would when looking at a better-quality photograph.

  “Thanks for that information, Joe,” Flynn said, holding out his hand to shake that of the store worker, while Zoe continued to stare at the photograph with a creased brow. Eventually she shook her head and looked away, joining Flynn and Joe as they walked toward the exit. She passed the list of customers over to Flynn, then made her way over to the car while he watched Joe lock up.

  She could do without all of the required pleasantries right now, the need to end a conversation in a certain way, to be polite. To shake hands. Flynn could take care of it for both of them. What Zoe needed was to think.

  The Chamber of Commerce link seemed to be the strongest lead yet, in her mind. It getting on for two in the morning already, and the clock wasn’t waiting. Their killer was out there, hiding in the shadows, maybe already stalking their next victim. The patrols organized by Captain Lee’s department hadn’t yet thrown anything up, so there was still time. How much time was unclear. They had to prioritize—to go after the most promising lead in the hopes of getting a quick idea of the killer’s identity.

  “What are you thinking?” Flynn asked, getting into the car and closing the door behind him, shutting out a blast of cold air. “We’ve got one list of customers now. We could talk to this Billy while we wait for Patience Richards to get us the other list, so we can cross-reference them.”

  Zoe shook her head. “Talking to Billy is a waste of time until we have the information. I say we try to track down someone from the Chamber of Commerce. This is the link we have been searching for between the two men. If they were both involved there, it could be some kind of internal dispute.”

  “It’s tenuous,” Flynn said. “I’m leaning toward a customer issue. Imagine being steadily banned from all of the stores in your own town—not able to even shop at home. It could get very frustrating. And if the person they were banning was already a criminal, it could be easy to see that behavior spilling over into violence.”

  Zoe couldn’t say she was convinced. Then again, they were dealing with two different fields. Human behavior wasn’t something that Zoe could ever say she was an expert in. Data—that was her field. And the Chamber of Commerce would have plenty of it.

  “We should split up,” she said. She’d already learned over the cases they’d worked on together that there was no point in arguing too much with Agent Flynn. When he had his own ideas, he needed to explore them—even if it was obvious to her that they would go nowhere. He was too headstrong to order him to let it drop. He would find a way to investigate the way he wanted to, no matter what she said. “I will call around the Chamber of Commerce personnel. You continue liaising with Morrison on any other locals or employees that might be able to help through interviews.”

  “All right.” Flynn hesitated, poking around on the GPS. “The Chamber of Commerce is a distance from here. You take the car. I’ll walk—and if I need to go further, I’ll get Morrison to send me a car. I’ll call you after I speak with Billy.”

  “Agreed.” Zoe clim
bed out of the passenger seat so that she could get behind the wheel, and gave Flynn a sharp nod as they passed by one another. “Do not forget, Agent Flynn. There is no time for idle conversation on this one. Every minute we delay, the killer is still out there.”

  “I’m not going to forget,” Flynn reassured her darkly. “This isn’t my first case, you know, and I’m not just idly gossiping. I’m trying to get reliable information. We’re going to catch this guy before he gets anyone else.”

  Firing up the GPS as she dialed a number on her cell phone, Zoe couldn’t help but hope he was right.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Zoe waited outside the Salem Town Hall, checking her watch and her phone alternately every few seconds. She had been waiting for only five minutes, but it felt like five hours. She could feel each tick of the second hand like it was a tick against someone’s life. The more the delay stretched on, the worse it got. She wanted to scream, to physically drag the road forward so the woman would get there quicker. Of course, there was nothing she could really do but stand and wait. It was almost half past two, and the killer’s window of opportunity was narrowing. If they hadn’t struck already, they would do it soon.

  When the car pulled up beside hers, she stepped forward to the edge of the sidewalk and peered intently into the car, only stepping back when the woman moved to get out. It was the one Zoe was waiting for, all right: she could see that by the curlers still in the prim old-fashioned hairstyle, the robe and coat thrown over what were clearly pajamas. The old woman, to her credit, had shown up without stopping to get dressed or do her hair. Zoe tried to hold onto that, the saving of precious minutes, to keep down her frustration over the speed of the administrator’s arrival.

  “You’re the FBI lady?” she asked, struggling out of the car with one hand fighting to keep her coat closed and the other juggling car keys and hall keys and a phone. “I came as soon as I could.”

  “I appreciate that,” Zoe said, trying to make herself sound like she meant it. “I need to see as much data as you can give me about the two businesses. Any records you have.”

  “Yes, of course,” the woman fussed, rushing to the door with small steps that took an age to traverse the small section of pavement and tall steps outside of the town hall. “We keep our offices in here. I have everything on paper and digitized as well. It’s so awful, what’s happened. Anything we can do to help, you know, we’ll be glad to.”

  “What does your position here entail?” Zoe asked. “Do you deal with members directly?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” the woman—Zoe had forgotten her name, since learning it in order to make the call that brought her out here—said. “I’m present at all of the meetings, and I deal with the paperwork for new businesses as well.”

  Zoe felt a surge of hope for the first time in her long wait. “Good. Is there anything out of the ordinary that you recall from the recent weeks or months?”

  “Yes, now that I think about it,” the woman said, leading Zoe inside. They crossed a creaky wooden floor, set out with folding chairs pointing toward a stage, and then up a set of stairs to the second floor. The woman, who Zoe figured was sixty-seven years old with a surprisingly high fitness level despite her petite frame, had to cling onto the railing as they went up, and Zoe resisted the urge to give her a push from behind to help her on her way. “There was a meeting—ah—last week, it was. It was very unorthodox. Not at all like the way we normally do things, no, no.”

  Zoe’s eyes could have popped out of her head. An “unorthodox” event at the Chamber of Commerce less than a week before the murders of its members began—that had to be something. “What do you mean by that?” she asked, impatient as the administrator caught her breath before leading her to a white-painted wooden door set into the hall.

  “Well, ordinarily, things are quite simple,” the woman explained. She pushed aside the door and headed immediately for an old-looking desk at the far side of the room, unlocking a drawer and pulling out a big ledger. “We invite any business to join the Chamber of Commerce. All they have to do is to pay their dues on an annual basis, and be operational within the official borders of Salem’s town limits.”

  “Go on,” Zoe urged, as the woman opened the book at a page marked with a black silk ribbon. The heavy pages thudded down on the desk as they fell flat.

  “Now, there was a new business that tried to join us recently,” the woman said primly. “I don’t make any decisions myself, you see, but I do put the names of the businesses before the members. So long as no one is opposed, the business joins. But for the first time in the modern Chamber’s history, someone was opposed.”

  “Someone?”

  “Several someones, I should say,” the woman corrected herself. “I was just going through the paperwork when I got a call from Frank. ‘Margaret’, he said, ‘We’ll not have it. Not in our Salem Chamber.’ Those were his exact words.”

  “Frank Richards?” Zoe said eagerly. They were getting somewhere now. Motive. This was what they needed.

  “That’s right,” Margaret said. “And not just him. Lots of them were. Mostly the old guard, businesses who were around when the Chamber was founded.”

  “Harry Stout?”

  “Yes, yes, he was one of them.” Margaret nodded. Her curls did not budge an inch with the motion of her head. “So, for the very first time, it was decided that we should put it to a vote, whether this business might or might not be allowed to join. We had this meeting last week, and the members voted against it. So, the upshot of it all—as you can see here—the business was denied.”

  Zoe studied the entry that Margaret was pointing out. It was a record of an application, and there, in the final column: denied, marked with a red stamp. It was the last entry in the book, the ink practically still fresh. Zoe checked the name and address: My Sweet Prince, located downtown. What was that all about? Zoe couldn’t formulate a guess.

  “What kind of store is it?” she asked.

  Margaret looked a little embarrassed. “Well, it’s…” She hesitated. “You see, they didn’t want to have any kind of filth in the organization. Filth—that’s what they called it. Harry and Frank. Not me, of course, no. I’m more on the side of minding my own business.”

  “What does it sell?” Zoe pressed. All kinds of things were flashing through her imagination now. Was it a brothel? A brothel masquerading as a massage parlor? Some new type of brothel that Zoe had never even heard of before, catering to a more depraved kind of clientele?

  “Books,” Margaret supplied, looking even more embarrassed now.

  “Books?” Zoe repeated, sure she must have heard wrong. What could be so terrible about books?

  “Adult books,” Margaret stressed, going pink in the face.

  “Oh,” Zoe said. Pornography. That explained it. There were often some funny reactions out there to something as simple as the display of a body. Given that she saw them all the time—and often in multiple pieces—perhaps Zoe was immune to the shock. “So, of all the members of the Chamber of Commerce, was there anyone who was particularly vocal against it? Perhaps said something to the owner, something they would have known about?”

  “Well, Frank and Harry led the charge, as I said,” Margaret replied. “They pushed for it to go to a vote. And their names were on the letter announcing the decision. You don’t think…?”

  “I am afraid that I do,” Zoe said grimly.

  “Well,” Margaret said, after a moment of consideration. “She never has been the type to take rejection well. She’s held grudges longer than some folks in this town have been alive.”

  “A grudge is a different thing from actually committing murder,” Zoe said. “Do you think she could go that far?”

  Margaret nodded slowly. “All it takes is to snap once, that’s what they say. If she was angry enough, I reckon she could do it. She’s known for her temper around here. I’m sure she could.”

  “Then this could be her,” Zoe said, convinced enough already. She
reached for her phone. They had a lead—and it was going to take them right to the killer.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Aiden Flynn knocked on the door and stood back, looking up. It was a small family home, and he had the feeling he was probably going to be waking up more than one resident with his visit. Still, it couldn’t be helped.

  His thoughts strayed distractedly to his partner as he waited, sensing small thumping sounds from inside the house which perhaps indicated someone just waking up and groggily trying to get out of bed. Zoe had been distant on this case, even more so than normal. Back when they’d first met, only a couple of months ago, she had been so distant that she was barely there—but they had broken through that barrier. Flynn had learned about the death of her last partner and how Zoe was barely dealing with it; Zoe had agreed not to mix anxiety pills and alcohol. They’d made an attempt to get along.

  If it wasn’t perfect, it also wasn’t too bad. But all that time spent together working on barely significant cases, most of which Flynn could have solved with his eyes closed and one hand behind his back, had at least allowed him to get to know her a bit better. And there was something going on with her, for absolute certain. Whatever it was, she didn’t seem willing to tell him; she wasn’t willing to talk much at the best of times.

  “Hello?” It was a middle-aged woman who answered the door and tore him out of his thoughts, gone plump with age and bleary-eyed with sleep. She squinted at Flynn dubiously, clutching a bright pink bathrobe around herself and holding the door open only a crack, ready to shut it if he turned out to be some kind of menace.

  “Hello, ma’am. I’m Special Agent Aiden Flynn with the FBI.” Flynn flipped open his badge demonstratively. “I’m looking for a young man who I’ve been told lives here. William Pertree?”

  “Oh!” the woman exclaimed. “That’s my son. Is this about the murder? Is he in trouble?”