Zoe Prime Mystery 01-Face of Death

by Pierce, Blake

  But that wasn’t what was making Zoe feel uncomfortable. It was the fact that she had been partnered with a new agent who was already making waves at the Bureau. Shelley Rose had an open, kind face and manner, and was rumored to be able to get a confession out of anyone with just a smile. When you had a secret to hide, getting paired up with someone like that was more than enough to send a tickle of paranoia down your spine.

  Not to mention the fact that Zoe, not considered the best at anything at the Bureau so far, was harboring a not-so-little amount of envy over the level of respect that her rookie partner already commanded.

  Shelley had an almost-symmetrical face, just 1.5 millimeters off from being perfect, a slight variance between her eyes. There was no wonder she elicited automatic trust and amiability from those around her. It was classic psychology. A tiny flaw that made her beauty more human.

  Even knowing that, Zoe couldn’t help but find herself liking her new partner, too.

  “What do we know so far?” Zoe asked.

  Shelley leafed through the pile of papers she held in her hands, tucked inside a folder. “Convict busted out of Tent City, in Phoenix,” she said. Outside the car, Arizona desert flashed by. “Fled on foot. Apparently, that hasn’t slowed him down. Three known homicides so far.”

  “Guards?” Zoe asked. Her mind was flashing ahead. Counting the miles a man could get on foot in this heat. Not far, without rest, shelter, and water. Calculate for the sucking surface of the sand, and it reduced even further.

  “No, randoms. Two hikers first.” Shelley paused, sucking a breath in through her teeth. “The murders were… vicious, by all indications. Latest vic was a tourist on their way to the Grand Canyon.”

  “That is where we are headed now,” Zoe assumed. The map of the area unfolded in her mind, carving out the roadways and paths each victim was likely to have taken in order to cross paths with their man.

  “Right. Looks like we should brace ourselves.”

  Zoe nodded silently. She had noticed that it was harder for people like Shelley to turn up at a crime scene and see the victim’s body. They felt the pain and suffering that had been inflicted. Zoe always just saw a body—meat. Meat that might hold clues that could help the investigation, and the numbers that circled around it.

  That was probably what had allowed her to pass all the entrance exams and become a Special Agent in the first place—staying calm and controlled, analyzing the facts instead of the emotions. But it was her quiet nature and tendency to fall back on a blank facial expression that had left her in need of a new partner. Apparently, her last one had felt Zoe was too quiet and aloof.

  She had attempted to remedy this on her first case with Shelley by purchasing two coffees in foam cups and supplying one to her partner when they met, in recognition of a seemingly ancient ritual between co-workers. It had seemed to go down well. Shelley was personable enough for the both of them, which was why Zoe was hopeful that this might actually work out.

  It wasn’t difficult to spot the site. Local cops milled around in uniform under the hot sun, a blazing ferocity that bore down heavily on her exposed arms as soon as Zoe stepped out of the air-conditioned car. Skin would burn in forty-five minutes if not protected. She would likely have some bronzing on her cheeks, nose, and hands by the time they got back into the car.

  Shelley introduced them, and they both flashed their badges at the officer in charge before heading closer to the scene. Zoe only listened with half an ear, happy to let Shelley take charge. Even though Zoe was the superior officer, she did not begrudge Shelley throwing her weight around. Zoe was already searching, looking for the keys that would unlock everything for her. Shelley gave her a nod, an unspoken agreement that she would deal with the locals while Zoe examined the surroundings.

  “I don’t know as you’ll find too much,” the chief was saying. “We’ve been over everything about as closely as you can get.”

  Zoe ignored him and carried on looking. There were things that she could see, things that others couldn’t. Things that might as well have been written in ten-foot-high letters, but were invisible to normal people.

  This was her secret; her superpower. She spotted his footprints in the sand and the calculations appeared next to them, telling her everything she needed to know. It was as easy as reading a book.

  She crouched slightly, getting a better look at the closest prints and how they stretched away from the victim’s body. The perp was six foot two inches, his stride told her. The depth of his footprints easily indicated a weight around two-ten. He had been running steadily, approaching the victim at three point eight miles per hour to the attack, according to their spacing.

  Zoe shifted over, examining the body next. The convict had used a seven-and-a-half-inch shiv, which he stabbed overhand into the body at a forty-nine-degree angle. Flight was in the northwest direction, at a faster jogging pace of five point nine miles per hour.

  The blood in the sand told her it happened less than four hours ago. The calculations were easy. Using an average rate of fatigue and allowing for the heat of the day, Zoe looked up and squinted into the distance, picturing exactly how far away they would find him. Her heart quickened as she pictured bringing him in. They would catch him easily. Already fatigued, no water, and no way of knowing they had already discovered his crimes. This would be over soon.

  Her attention strayed to the shrubs and small trees that grew across the distance, scattered growths that offered not enough shelter for a human. She saw the distances between them, numbers appearing before her eyes, telling her the story behind the pattern. Scattered far from each other, low natural resources. Clustered together, roots seeking out an underground water source and nutrient-rich ground. Even though they looked random to the unsuspecting eye, the placement of each was design. The design of the natural world.

  “Anything?” Shelley asked. She had an expectant look, like she was waiting for her more experienced partner to solve everything.

  Zoe looked up, starting guiltily. She rose to her feet and quickly shook her head. “Guess he ran that way,” she said, pointing in the obvious direction of his receding footprints. There was an outcrop of rocks in the far distance, a good spot for a rest. The formation told her of wind patterns, of thousands of years of scooping and sculpting. “Maybe he will stop for shade over there. It is a hot day.”

  A secret was a secret. There was no way she could admit to what she knew. No way that she could say out loud that she was a freak who understood the world in a way that no one else did. Or admit the rest—that she didn’t get how they saw it, either. But she could give them this much. The kind of hint that a normal person might see.

  The chief cleared his throat, interrupting. “We already scouted in that direction and found nothing. The dogs lost the scent. There’s some rockier ground over there which doesn’t take footprints. We figure he would have carried on running straight ahead. Or even been picked up by a vehicle.”

  Zoe narrowed her eyes. She knew what she knew. This man was running in desperation, his stride long, body low to the ground as he pitched forward for speed. He wasn’t heading to a rescue, and he wasn’t so far away they wouldn’t be able to find him.

  “Humor us,” Zoe suggested. She tapped the FBI sigil on her badge, still held in her hand. There was one great thing about being a special agent: you weren’t always expected to explain yourself. In fact, you played into stereotypes if you didn’t.

  Shelley turned back from studying Zoe’s face to liaise with the chief again, an air of determination about her. “Send up the chopper. You have the dogs ready?”

  “Sure.” The chief nodded, though he looked none too pleased. “You’re the boss.”

  Shelley thanked him. “Let’s drive out,” she suggested to Zoe. “I have the pilot on the radio. He’ll keep us updated when they spot anything.”

  Zoe nodded and got back into the car obediently. Shelley had supported her, backed her up. That was a good sign. She was grateful, and
had no sense of ego at Shelley being the one to give the orders. It was all the same, so long as lives got saved.

  “Whew.” Shelley paused, resting in the passenger’s seat with a map open in her hands. “Doesn’t get any easier, does it? A woman on her own like that, no provocation. She didn’t deserve that.”

  Zoe nodded again. “Right,” she said, not sure of what else she could add to the conversation. She started the car and began driving, to fill the space.

  “You don’t talk a whole lot, do you?” Shelley asked. She paused before adding, “It’s all right. Just getting to know how you work.”

  The murder was undeserved, that was true. Zoe could see and understand that. But what was done, was done. They had a job to do now. Seconds ticked on, beyond the normal limitations of an expected reply. Zoe cast about but could find nothing to say. The time had passed. If she spoke up now, she would only sound stranger still.

  Zoe tried to focus on holding a sad expression while she drove, but it was too difficult to do both at once. She stopped struggling to do it, her face relaxing into her natural blank stare. It wasn’t that she wasn’t thinking, or that there were no emotions at all behind her eyes. It was just difficult to think about how her face looked and consciously control it, while her mind calculated the exact distance between each marker on the road and ensured she stayed at a speed which would prevent the car from flipping if she had to swerve on this type of tarmac.

  They took the road, following the smoother surface as it curved around through the flat landscape. Zoe could already see that it would move the right way, allowing them to catch up with him if he ran in a straight line. She put her foot down hard on the pedal, using the advantage of tarmac to speed onward.

  A voice crackled over the radio, breaking Zoe out of her inner thoughts.

  “We’ve got eyes on the suspect. Over.”

  “Roger that,” Shelley replied. She was precise and wasted no time, which Zoe appreciated. “Coordinates?”

  The helicopter pilot rattled off his position, and Shelley directed Zoe from her map. They didn’t have to adjust their course—they were right on target. Zoe clenched the wheel tighter, feeling that thrill of validation. She’d been correct with her assumptions.

  It was only a few moments more before they sighted the chopper hanging steadily in the air above a local patrol car, whose two occupants had apparently gotten out and tackled the convict to the ground. He lay in the sand, newly disturbed and shifting around him, and swore.

  Zoe pulled the car to a stop and Shelley hopped out immediately, relaying information over her handheld radio. A small group of men with dogs were already approaching from the southeast, the dogs barking in excitement at finding the source of the scent they had picked up.

  Zoe picked up the map that Shelley had discarded, checking it against the GPS. They were within an eighth of a mile of where she had guessed he would be, on a direct trajectory. He must have run from the outcropping when he heard the dogs.

  She allowed herself a victory smile, jumping out of the car to join them with renewed vigor. Out under the burning sun, Shelley flashed her a matching grin, obviously happy to be closing their first case together already.

  Later, back in the car, the quiet settled in again. Zoe didn’t know what to say—she never did. Small talk was an absolute mystery to her. What was the correct number of times to mention the weather before it became an obvious cliché? For how many drives could she engage in dry conversation about things that didn’t really matter before the silence became companionable, rather than awkward?

  “You didn’t say much out there,” Shelley said, breaking the silence at last.

  Zoe paused before answering. “No,” she agreed, trying to make it sound friendly. There wasn’t much more that she could do beyond agreeing.

  There was more silence. Zoe calculated the seconds inside her head, realizing it had gone beyond what would be considered a normal break in conversation.

  Shelley cleared her throat. “The partners I had in training, we practiced talking through the case,” she said. “Work together to solve it. Not alone.”

  Zoe nodded, keeping her eyes fixed ahead on the road. “I understand,” she said, even though she felt a rising sense of panic. She didn’t understand—not fully. On some level she understood the way people felt around her, because they were always telling her. But she didn’t know what she was supposed to do about it. She was already trying, trying as hard as she could.

  “Talk to me next time,” Shelley said, settling deeper into her seat as if it was all resolved. “We’re supposed to be partners. I want to really work together.”

  This didn’t bode well for the future. Zoe’s last partner had taken at least a few weeks to work himself up to complaining about how quiet and aloof she was.

  She had thought she was doing better this time. Hadn’t she bought the coffees? And Shelley had smiled at her before. Was she supposed to buy more drinks, to tip the balance? Was there a certain number she should aim for in order to make their relationship more comfortable?

  Zoe watched the road flash in front of the windshield, under a sky that was starting to darken. She felt like she should say something else, though she couldn’t imagine what. This was all her fault, and she knew it.

  It always seemed so easy for other people. They talked, and talked, and talked, and became friends overnight. She had observed it happening so many times, but there didn’t seem to be any rules to follow. It wasn’t defined by a set period of time or number of interactions, or the amount of things people needed to have in common.

  They were just magically good at getting on with other people, like Shelley was. Or they weren’t. Like Zoe.

  Not that she knew what she was doing wrong. People told her to be warmer and more friendly, but what did that mean, exactly? No one had ever given her a manual explaining all of the things she was supposed to know. Zoe gripped the steering wheel tighter, trying not to betray how upset she felt. That was the last thing she needed Shelley to see.

  Zoe realized that it was she herself who was the problem. She wasn’t delusional about that. She just didn’t know how to be any way other than what she was, and other people did, and she was embarrassed that she had never learned. To admit that would be, somehow, even worse.

  ***

  The plane journey home was even more awkward.

  Shelley flipped casually through the pages of a women’s magazine that had been on sale in the airport, giving each page no more than a cursory glance before she gave up and moved on. After finishing it cover to cover, she glanced at Zoe; then, seeming to think better of starting up a conversation, she opened the magazine again, spending more time on the articles.

  Zoe hated reading things like that. The pictures, the words, everything jumping out at her from the page. Clashing font sizes and faces, contradictory articles. Images purporting to prove a celebrity had plastic surgery, showing only the normal variance for changes in the face over time and with age, calculable easily to anyone with a basic grasp of human biology.

  Multiple times, Zoe tried to force herself to think of something to say to her new partner. She couldn’t talk about the magazine. What else might they have in common? The words wouldn’t come.

  “Good solve on our first case,” she said at last, murmuring it, almost not brave enough to say even that.

  Shelley looked up in surprise, her eyes wide and blank for a moment before she lapsed into a grin. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “We did good.”

  “Hopefully the next one will be just as smooth.” Zoe felt her insides shriveling. Why was she so bad at small talk? It was taking every ounce of concentration to find the next line to say.

  “Maybe we can make it quicker next time,” Shelley suggested. “You know, when we’re really in tune with each other, we’ll be working much faster.”

  Zoe felt that like a blow. They could have caught the guy quicker, gotten the helicopter above his precise location from the moment they arrived, i
f Zoe had just shared what she knew. If she hadn’t been so cautious about how she knew it that she kept it hidden.

  “Maybe,” she said, noncommittal. She tried to direct a smile Shelley’s way that might be reassuring, from a more experienced agent to a rookie. Shelley returned it with a little hesitation, and went back to her magazine.

  They didn’t speak again until they landed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Zoe pushed open the door to her apartment with a sigh of relief. Here was her haven, the place where she could relax and stop trying to be the person that everyone else accepted.

  There was a soft mewling from the direction of the kitchen as she switched on the lights, and Zoe headed straight over there after depositing her keys on the side table.

  “Hi, Euler,” she said, bending down to scratch one of her cats behind the ears. “Where is Pythagoras?”

  Euler, a gray tabby, only mewled again in response, looking across to the cupboard where Zoe kept the bags and cans of cat food.

  Zoe didn’t need a translator to understand that. Cats were simple enough. The only interaction they really craved was food and the occasional scratch.

  She took a new can out of the cupboard and opened it, spooning it into a food bowl. Her Burmese, Pythagoras, soon caught the scent and padded over from some other part of their home.

  Zoe watched them eat for a moment, wondering if they wished they had another human to look after them. Living alone meant that they were fed when she got home, no matter what time that might turn out to be. Doubtless, they would have appreciated a more regular schedule—but there were always the neighborhood mice to track down if they got hungry. And looking at them now, Pythagoras had put on a couple of pounds lately. He could do to diet.

  It wasn’t as if Zoe was about to get married anyway—for the cats or for any other reason. She’d never even had a properly serious relationship. After the upbringing she’d had, she had almost resigned herself to the fact that she was destined to die alone.