Face of Murder

CHAPTER SIX

Zoe resented every moment of wasted time spent on the walk through the building, from the parking lot to the room they had taken over for their investigation. Nearly five hundred steps of distance that could have been spent on working. Nice as it was to be working on something that had happened, as Shelley put it, in their own backyard, Zoe was already getting irritable. The equations were refusing to give up their secrets to her, remaining obtuse and opaque.

As soon as she reached the table, Zoe sat down and resumed her notes, trying to work through every element of the professor’s equation, bit by bit. His was the one they had seen in person, after all, the one that they could be sure was whole.

“I’m going to go through his faculty email account,” Shelley announced, dumping her bag onto a chair and digging out her phone.

“Is that necessary?” Zoe asked, wrinkling her nose. There was no point in rushing around after some kind of clue like that. The answer was in the equations, not in the professor’s personal life. It had to be. There was no link between Cole Davidson and this English professor, not without the equations.

“I’m not good at math, so I can’t help you work through the numbers on this one,” Shelley pointed out. “Something Mrs. Henderson said made me think. It could always be something to do with a student. Someone who felt slighted in some way. It’s possible that there are many people who knew both Cole and Professor Henderson from campus.”

Zoe hesitated, her objections waiting on the tip of her tongue. She felt like it would be a waste of time, poking through a dead man’s emails. But what did it matter? Shelley was right—she couldn’t help with the equations. And maybe it was time that Zoe started trusting her to investigate things in her own way.

Maybe, also, it would be good for Zoe if this case was solved off the back of a disgruntled email, rather than through the numbers. After Shelley had pointed out to their superiors that Zoe was good with math, Zoe wasn’t exactly at pains to prove it. In fact, it would be better if she could pass that off as a partner’s misplaced confidence.

But not, of course, if it compromised the case. Stopping the killer was still the most important thing.

Zoe returned her attention to the equations while Shelley called the university to get the access she needed. The thing was, she had gone about as far as she could go—with both of them. It was true that there was still the possibility of something missed on the student’s body, but they had checked the professor for themselves.

So, what was she missing?

There was another possibility, of course: that she simply wasn’t advanced enough to solve it. There was a difference between being able to see numbers—distances, dimensions, angles—and being able to solve quantum math problems. There were other skills involved, skills that other people spent their whole lives developing. Zoe might have had a gift, but she had devoted it to the pursuit of killers, not to the study of math.

Which brought another idea to her mind.

She got up, leaving Shelley still chatting with a receptionist on her cell, and carried a sheaf of photographs down the hall to the elevator. Up two floors, and down an identical corridor to the one she had left—except that the rooms on this floor had rather more power exuding from each of them.

Zoe took a breath before knocking on her boss’s door. How many times had she been summoned here, to be chewed out for losing another partner or discharging her firearm?

But this was not like those times, and she entered when bidden, trying not to feel nervous.

With his imposing frame and larger than average musculature, it was easy to see how Special Agent in Charge Maitland would have been intimidating in the field. Criminals would have taken one look at him and then run.

Zoe was trying very hard not to feel the same.

“Sir,” she said, hesitating in the doorframe.

Maitland looked up from his paperwork, then continued scrawling his signature at the bottom of a request. “Go on, Special Agent Prime. Don’t wait out in the corridor all day.”

Zoe stepped forward, letting the door close behind her with a little reluctance. She squared her shoulders, however, and faced him with the straight back she always felt inspired to uphold in his presence. “Sir, it is regarding the case Special Agent Rose and I are working on. The college kid and the professor, found with equations written on their bodies.”

Despite the large caseload which must necessarily have gone through the DC field office, Maitland didn’t skip a beat. “I know it. What do you need?”

“The equations are extremely high-level,” Zoe said, feeling a little like a failure for even admitting they were too much for her. Still, it had to be done. Eyeing the neat ninety-degree angles of everything arranged on Maitland’s desk, instead of watching his expression, she pushed herself onward. “I believe we would do better if we brought in a subject matter expert. Someone who could work on the equations from a professional mathematics standpoint.”

Maitland nodded, then paused in his writing as he realized that she was done. “Do you have someone in mind? Special Agent Rose reminded us that you studied math once upon a time.”

“I do, sir.”

“Good.” Maitland’s attention returned to the paperwork, effectively dismissing her. “Permission granted. Have the paperwork turned in ASAP.”

“Yes, sir.” Zoe turned and almost fled for the door, happy to have such a positive outcome. She was not going to stick around and wait for him to change his mind, by any stretch of the imagination.

There was work to do—and someone very important to bring into the case.

Zoe waited expectantly, watching her mentor examine the images.

“These are… disturbing.” Dr. Applewhite shook her head, holding her lower lip between her teeth for three seconds as she slipped the photograph to the back of the pile in her hands and studied the next one. “I sometimes forget that you have to look at this kind of thing day in and day out. It must take a toll.”

Zoe shrugged. “Dead bodies are dead. It is the not solving them that bothers me.”

“And this is one that you haven’t yet been able to solve.” It was not a question. Zoe had already primed the doctor with the fact that she needed help. Dr. Applewhite knew that it was an open, ongoing case, and that permission had had to be sought for them to even be having this conversation. She understood also that time was of the essence. With every passing hour, it became less and less likely that they would find the person who did this.

The thing about homicides was that the first twenty-four hours were crucial. Everyone knew that. Forty-eight hours without an arrest, and you were starting to head into dangerous territory. The kind of cases that would become episodes of late-night TV shows.

The college kid had been dead for well over forty-eight hours.

“I need to know what it means,” Zoe explained. “Right now, this is the only lead that we have. There does not seem to be any connection between the professor and the student, beyond the fact of their locations. No witnesses, no coverage of surveillance cameras. We have to figure out what kind of message the killer is trying to send if we are going to stop him.”

Dr. Applewhite was frowning down at the images, and she placed them beside Zoe’s notes to run through the calculations Zoe had already made.

“Your working seems sound,” she said, after a while had passed. “I can’t see anywhere else to take it that you haven’t already gone. This is extremely advanced—beyond even the level that I work at.”

Zoe’s heart sunk in her chest. She had been sure, so sure, that Dr. Applewhite would have the answers. Now, it seemed, those hopes were dashed.

She was already thinking through alternatives, trying to figure out what she was going to say to Shelley, when Dr. Applewhite spoke up again.

“I know some people who might be able to help,” she said. “Professors. A couple of mathematicians who work in other fields. If I can show this to them, I might be able to get a bit further with it. This is the kind of challenge that they will all love, so at least we’re bound to get some skilled hands on deck.”

Zoe nodded her approval. “That would be helpful.”

Dr. Applewhite tucked her graying bob behind one ear and looked up, fixing Zoe with that same curious stare now. “How are you holding up on this one? It’s not often a math question comes up that has you stumped.”

Zoe considered lying for a brief moment, but then let her shoulders slump. “A little like a failure. This is my specialty. I should at least be able to work it out. If I cannot, who in the FBI is going to?”

In anyone else’s voice, it would have sounded like a brag. To Zoe, it was pure fact. Analysts and their like might spend all day working with numbers, but they didn’t have the instinctive grasp on them that she did. They couldn’t look at an equation on the page and see the answer as clearly as if it was written out beside it. At least, that was the case for her usually.

This one was something else.

“You can’t be expected to solve everything. No FBI agent in the history of the Bureau ever had a one hundred percent solve rate.”

Zoe smiled a wan smile. “I am sure that there have been examples. Agents who were killed or retired just after solving their first case, for example.”

Dr. Applewhite rolled her eyes. “Trust you to find the loophole. All right, I will make some calls and get these equations out in front of some of my colleagues. I won’t tell them what it’s for—just that it’s urgent and a big challenge. That should intrigue them enough to get them working on it. I will let you know the moment anyone makes a breakthrough.”

“Or anything else, too,” Zoe prompted. “If someone finds a mistake, or a sign that something is missing. We were not able to fully check the first body to see if anything was missed by the photographer. Bear in mind that we also do not know whether this is intended to be one equation or two separate problems.”

“Understood.” Dr. Applewhite placed the photographs down on the desk in front of her, two inches off to the right, closer to her laptop. A gesture that reassured Zoe of her intention to begin work as soon as she had the chance. “Now, what about Dr. Monk’s recommendations? Have you thought anymore about—”

Zoe’s ringtone blasted out from her pocket, accompanied by strong buzzing. Saved by the bell, she thought, as she made an apologetic face and answered the call.

“Special Agent Prime.”

“Z, it’s me. I got a hit in the professor’s emails.”

“I am on my way,” Zoe told her, ending the call and jumping out of her seat with a nod to her mentor. Whatever it was, it had to be more promising than the nothing that they had.