Face of Death

Shelley nodded, a thrill of excitement lighting up her cheeks with a faint blush. “Oh, god. Will you help me rehearse what to say? I’ve never even been on TV before, not even in the background.”

Zoe couldn’t help but smile. There was something about Shelley’s excitement that was contagious, even if it would never come close to making her think that a press conference was an enjoyable thing. “Of course. I will help you put a script together.”

***

Later, Zoe stood behind a small podium, just in the camera shot, as Shelley addressed the assembled reporters. Given the scale of the case, there were news crews from across multiple states, and even national press organizations. Given the far-flung location and the short notice they had provided, there were fewer than there might have been. Perhaps just the right balance between enough publicity for the case and a small enough crowd that Shelley would not be overwhelmed.

“… So, we are asking you all to be vigilant,” Shelley was saying. “Basic safety principles apply here, but it is more important now than ever to stick to them. Do not go into dark, isolated areas alone at night. Make sure that someone knows where you are at all times, and avoid going into a private area with strangers. Business owners, we ask you to repair and replace any CCTV systems which are not working. Be aware, be vigilant, and stay safe. We are working hard to catch the suspect behind these murders, but until he is found, we implore you to take all possible precautions.”

Shelley paused, surveying the crowd of reporters, before continuing. “I will now take questions from members of the press.”

A bespectacled man in an old-fashioned suit spoke up. “Kansas City Star,” he announced. “Do you have a suspect in mind? Or have you been unable to identify the perpetrator?”

Shelley’s confident demeanor faltered just a little. “We have not as yet identified a suspect. We are on his trail, however.”

“Missouri State News,” another reporter spoke up. “Where will he strike next?”

Shelley swallowed. “We can’t at this moment be precisely sure of his location. This is why we are issuing the warning across several states. The suspect has been traveling long distances between crime scenes.”

“You don’t even know which state he’s in?” the first reporter spoke again.

Shelley glanced uncertainly behind her, catching Zoe’s eye. “At this time, we are steering clear of any assumptions,” she said. “We believe we have some idea of his path, but it would be unwise to rule out a diversion or even a return to his previous sites.”

There was a lot of muttering in the crowd, people swaying their heads closer to one another to confer, frowns plastered across almost all of the faces that Zoe could see. Leave them much longer, and they would be ready to eat Shelley alive. Zoe stepped forward quickly, approaching the microphone.

“No more questions at this time, thank you. We will announce another press conference in due course when we have more information,” she said, taking Shelley by the elbow to gently steer her away.

Behind their retreating backs, the reporters exploded into a clamor, each of them shouting the questions they had not been given a chance to ask.

Zoe did not stop rushing forward, pulling Shelley with her, until they were back inside the doors of the station. They continued a short way along the corridor and ducked into their investigation room, where at last the hubbub was far enough away and behind enough doors that they could no longer hear it.

“Whew,” Shelley exhaled, sitting down heavily. “That was tough.”

“I wish I could tell you that it gets easier,” Zoe said. “It does not. The press can be relentless. I imagine that we will find it difficult to move around without running into reporters from this point on.”

Three killings was already a big news story. With this warning issued by the FBI, there was no doubt that more news crews would be flocking from miles around. They would trail Zoe and Shelley, trying to get to the next scene before anyone else, trying to find an exclusive angle.

It was perhaps the most exhausting, and Zoe’s least favorite, aspect of the job.

But even with the threat of journalists hanging over their head, they had no time to pause or allow the investigation to rest.

“It’s getting late. We should find a motel,” Zoe said. “He will kill again tonight. Tomorrow, we should be rested and ready to move.”

She could only hope that he would make a mistake tonight—the first one—that would allow them to draw nearer to catching him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rubie watched the small shrubs by the side of the highway flashing by the window. It was getting dark, the colors bleeding out of the world and reducing down to shades of gray. Fairly soon, she wouldn’t be able to see much at all beyond the headlights of the car.

“What are you doing out here at this time of night anyway?” the driver asked. “You know it’s not safe after dark.”

“I know,” Rubie sighed. “I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t get away until Brent left to go meet his friends.”

The driver glanced her way. His eyes flicked over the purple and green bruises on the left side of her face, then down to the yellowing marks still visible on her arm, before going back to the road. “Brent’s the one who used you as a punching bag, I’m guessing.”

Rubie flinched. To hear it said like that was so—so harsh. Like freezing cold water flung in her face. But it was true, after all.

“Sorry,” the driver said, his voice softening. “I didn’t mean that to be hurtful. The guy must be a complete douchebag if he’s treating you like that.”

Rubie looked out the window again, catching her own reflection. The swelling around her eye had gone down, but it still wasn’t pretty. “No, you’re right. He is. That’s why I had to get away.”

“What was his excuse?”

Rubie snorted, a laugh that couldn’t quite make it past the pain. “Brent didn’t need an excuse. He just got mad. I guess something happened at work. He always takes it out on me.”

The driver shook his head, his fingers flexing on the steering wheel. “Asshole. He’s lucky you were alone when I picked you up. If he was trying to get somewhere, I would have left him in the dirt for doing that.”

Rubie couldn’t say that she was dismayed by the mental image. Brent deserved it. He deserved more than that. It made her feel just a touch safer. This driver seemed like the decent type—the type who didn’t think that men should hit women.

“Sorry,” he muttered after a moment. “I know I come on a bit strong. My mom was beaten by my stepdad. I grew up watching it. Best thing she ever did was grab me and get us away from him.”

“I’m sorry,” Rubie replied softly in return. No wonder he had been so eager to help her. He knew exactly what she was going through. “No kid should have to go through that.”

“No woman either,” he pointed out, glancing over at her.

Rubie found she was able to smile at him. It was such a little thing, but even to hear that from someone else meant the world. It meant she wasn’t alone.

“So, you know where you’re heading?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m going to stay with family.” Rubie clutched a little tighter at the duffel bag on her lap. It contained everything she had been able to carry: a few changes of clothes, some jewelry, and some mementos that she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving behind. She guessed that these were her only possessions now. There was no chance that Brent would allow her to collect the rest of her things, not without trapping her and making her stay.

“They couldn’t come and get you?”

“They don’t know. I didn’t have a way to get in touch with anyone. Brent wouldn’t let me use my phone unsupervised.”

Rubie put a finger to her face and probed her bruised skin gently, assessing the damage. She winced and drew in a sharp breath as she prodded a particularly painful spot. The pain was good. It reminded her why she had to get away. Why she couldn’t give in and go back, for Brent to tell her how sorry he was and how it would never happen again.

It always happened again.

“Still, would have been safer to get a bus,” the driver said. “I don’t mean to go on about it, but hitchhiking isn’t usually safe. Sure, it was me that picked you up this time. But it could have been anybody.”

“I don’t have enough money for a bus,” Rubie said, resting her head against the cool glass. “Brent took it all. I just have a bit of change. Enough to get a couple of meals. That’s all.”

The driver hummed under his breath, a concerned noise. Rubie glanced at him sideways, wondering for a moment if he had been expecting payment for the ride. But that wasn’t what was on his face. He looked genuinely upset for her. She was surprised, and her heart clenched in her chest for a moment at the thought that someone out there might actually care that she had been treated so badly.

“I’m sorry all this happened to you,” he said. “You must have been terrified.”

“I was,” Rubie replied. “Thank you. For picking me up and being so kind.”

He flashed her a quick smile. “Don’t worry about it. Next time we see a diner, I’ll stop off and get us some food. It’ll be over an hour before we get to the next town. Might as well fuel up.”

Rubie smiled back, resting against the window again and closing her eyes for a brief moment. Maybe this was it—the moment when her luck changed. Brent was miles behind her now, and he was never going to catch up. Not if she got to her sister. Lucy would keep her safe, and that would be the end of it. And here she was, with a guardian angel who would get her there, no matter what.

“Oh, damn,” the driver said suddenly, hunching over the steering wheel with a frown. He turned on his indicators and drifted to the side of the road, where an exit led off the highway.

“What is it?” Rubie sat up straight, his voice putting her on alert.

“Something’s wrong with the car,” he said. He reached forward and tapped one of the dials on his dashboard, as if willing it to work. “I’m just going to pull over. Looks like an access road, so we should be fine at this time of night.”

The wheels slowed to a halt, bumping up and down on the rough, uneven surface of the dirt road as the car stopped. It was fully dark out now, the moon hidden somewhere behind a cloud. All they could see in front of them were the beams of the headlights, illuminating a pathway that trailed into the distance.

The driver checked his GPS, tapping the screen a few times, zooming out and then back in on their position. “I don’t know what’s up with it, but I just lost power,” he explained, leaning forward over the dash again to examine the symbols lighting up. “Sorry about this. It’s a pretty old car.”

“That’s fine,” Rubie said. After all, she could hardly complain. But this wasn’t ideal. She didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere because the one car that agreed to pick her up had broken down. She didn’t have much chance of getting another ride in the dark.

The driver turned the ignition off and then on again, tilting his head to listen closely to the sound of the engine. “How much do you know about cars?” he asked.

Rubie gave a short laugh. “I don’t even have my driver’s license,” she said.

The driver gave her a wry grin, a look that seemed to acknowledge how awkward their situation was but also that there was nothing to be done about it. “I can’t hear the engine properly from inside here. Could you do me a favor? If you pop the hood, you should be able to listen out for a rattle. That might tell me what’s going on.”

Rubie eyed the darkness warily. It looked cold out there, not to mention that they were in the middle of nowhere. She wasn’t an idiot. She had seen movies.

But then again, movies weren’t reality. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice. If she didn’t help him out with getting the car going again, they would be stuck here for even longer. And this guy had helped her out, picked her up off the side of the road and listened to her story. He was sympathetic, pleasant to talk to.

Rubie squared her shoulders and reached for the door handle. “Just a rattle, right?”

“That’s it. I’ll rev the engine when you’ve got the hood up. Then just shout if you hear something.”

Rubie nodded, getting out into the chill air. The whole area around them was quiet, only the small, subtle sounds of bugs going about their nightly business. There was no sound of another engine, except maybe so far away that it was hard to tell whether she was really hearing anything. The road was practically empty. Definitely no chance of getting another ride.

The driver had already popped the hood, and Rubie lifted it, a little gingerly, trying not to get grease on her hands. It wasn’t as though she had enough clothes that she could afford to ruin the ones she was wearing.

She realized, even as she did it, that from this angle she could no longer see the driver. In the silence she heard the noise of his door opening and pulled back a little, concerned.

Maybe this had all been a trap. Maybe he looked at her and knew she was someone he could abuse, push around, take what he wanted from. He was going to get out of the car now and beat her, leave her lying on the ground with her shorts around her ankles when he was done.

“Shout if you hear it,” he repeated, his voice coming from inside the car. The engine revved, making her jump and catch a scream in her throat.

God, she was paranoid. Brent had left her jumping at shadows, suspicious of everyone and everything. It was going to take her a long time to get over this, to stop suspecting strangers of harboring ill intent. The driver was a good man. He’d shown that by picking her up, and by his anger at how Brent had treated her. She had to keep that in mind, and help him out with the engine so that she could get to Lucy sooner rather than later.

Where else was she going to go, anyway? There was nowhere to run. He was the only car who bothered to stop for her, and there hadn’t been anyone else on the road for a long time. Like it or not—and she admitted to herself that maybe she didn’t like it, a shiver running down her spine—she was stuck with him.

Better make the most of it.

She peered down into the dim engine, trying to make something out. It was all darkly glistening metal, most of it greased up and black, not even reflecting a dull glint from the headlight beams still blasting out into the darkness. Rubie was almost blind from the light, the contrast so strong that it blotted everything else out.

The engine stopped revving, the noise fading out into silence. As it did and the quiet of the night returned, her ears buzzed. The loud noise right next to her had blotted everything else out, and just how the headlights left her blind, she could barely hear a thing with the contrast.

“I didn’t hear any rattle,” she called out, hoping it would help. If there was nothing wrong with the engine, maybe they would be able to get going again. It wasn’t a new car—maybe it just needed a moment to rest and it would be good to go again.

Rubie shivered, rubbing her hands over her arms. The driver hadn’t said a thing, and he wasn’t revving the engine again either. She peered down into the darkness of the engine once more as if it could tell her something, and flinched when the reflected light on the engine was blocked by a deep shadow falling over her.

She heard his step behind her, a loose stone moving away from his foot, and jumped upright. “I didn’t…” she began, meaning to say that she’d had no idea he was behind her, but her heart was racing with the shock of his presence and she lost the words.

He was looking at her, just looking at her. His expression was almost blank, frighteningly so.

“Wh-what’s that in your hand?” she asked, gesturing down to the wire that was illuminated fully in the headlights. “Will it… fix the…?”

She trailed off, beyond shaken now. In a flash, she remembered something she had seen when he had picked her up off the side of the road. Something she had dismissed at the time when he spoke, friendly enough, and offered her a wide smile.

Something like hunger, or a cruel kind of joy, like a wolf looking down at a trapped rabbit.

Rubie turned on her heel, wanting to get back into the car now, wanting to get back where it was warm and safe. Where he had been a perfect gentleman and empathized with her story and shared his own past, something that made them equal and the same. If she could just get back inside—

Rubie reached up instinctively as something connected with her neck—something light and thin but sharp, hurting her fingers as she grabbed at it. What was that? The wire? She pulled and tugged at it, feeling the source somewhere behind her, the heat coming from a body that was not her own.

She hit out blindly, directing her elbows and feet backward, struggling to find him and catch him off-guard. He was hissing under his breath, cursing, telling her to stay still. She wouldn’t stay still. No. She forced her elbow back again, a desperate aim into the darkness, and felt it connect heavily with something.

The driver grunted in pain, and the force around her neck relaxed for just a second. Rubie dropped down to her knees, then scrambled forward, finding her way clear. Whatever he had wrapped around her was gone. She kicked off from the ground and sprang forward, at a right angle to the beams of the headlights, avoiding the easily illuminated path they provided.

Something was hot and heavy on her chest as she ran, gasping for breath already in the cold air that stung like ice in her lungs. What was that? Her hand flew up, feeling wetness all across her shirt, following it up as her feet stumbled on the uneven ground. She could not hear him coming after her, but she ran as fast as she could, as fast as she dared to trust her feet to manage. The wetness—it was coming from her neck—coming from where she had felt the pressure earlier—a wound that began to pulse with pain as soon as her fingers found it.

There was blood—so much blood—right across her chest, dripping down over her stomach. She felt the hot rivulets running down to splash onto her legs as they pumped desperately for distance, putting as far between herself and the driver as she could.

The blood wouldn’t stop, so much of it. Rubie grasped at her neck with both hands as she ran, sacrificing the added balance and mobility of her arms, trying to hold it all in. There was a line that stretched from one side to the other, wrapping around, oozing and leaking more and more with each passing moment.

Without her eyes or her balance, Rubie stumbled, one foot catching on something that felt like a rock or a hard tuft of ground. She fell heavily, unable to break her fall, the wind rushing out of her as her elbows hit the ground first. At the same time she felt a gush, a feeling like water from a tap bursting out beneath her fingers.

She wasn’t going to give up. No. She had to get away—keep going—as far away from him as she could. She didn’t dare look around to see if he was still standing in the light from the car, or if he was only steps behind her, ready to grab her again. She couldn’t waste time. Rubie got her feet underneath her and pushed up again, only to fall, sagging, her legs refusing to work.

Everything felt strange—loose—like she was made of jelly all of a sudden, her arms and legs flopping like dead fish when she tried to move them. The one thing she knew she could feel was the heat of the blood seeping out of her neck, staining the ground now, pouring in such quantities that she could not comprehend it.

Rubie lifted her head to look into the distance, the lights of the town where her sister lived still just a speck on the horizon. So far away that it might as well have been the stars. The wound on her neck opened like a mouth to pour out another gush of blood, and she felt her face hit the ground, no longer strong enough to hold it up.

She only registered dimly that she could no longer feel the cold before there was nothing left to feel at all.

CHAPTER NINE

Zoe was dismayed to find that the motel was even shabbier on the inside than it had looked from the outside.

“Only the finest for the FBI,” Shelley joked. “That’s why they call us ‘special’ agents, right?”

Zoe grunted, turning back from her examination of the threadbare sofa in the lobby just in time to see the receptionist returning. “Here’s your key,” he said, tossing one plastic card onto the surface of the counter. It slid over toward them, stopping just before it teetered off the edge.

“Thanks,” Shelley said, picking it up and lifting her hand in a gesture of acknowledgment.

Zoe didn’t think his customer service skills warranted even that.

The man said nothing. He slumped back into his chair and grabbed up his cell from in front of him, resuming whatever activity he had been engaged in when they entered.

“You know where we can get a decent bite to eat at this time of night?” Shelley asked.

“Diner ’bout five miles down,” he said, lifting his chin in the approximate direction without looking up.

Shelley thanked him again, to as little response as the first time. They left him where he was, Zoe leading her away before she could try to start another conversation with the world’s surliest clerk, heading back out into the cold night of the parking lot.

“Should we go for dinner?” Shelley asked. “Or set up the room first?”

“We should put our bags in, at least,” Zoe said, sighing. She rubbed the back of her neck, stiff and sore from the long day and the driving they had done. “Then food.”

“So much for getting on a plane before the day was out,” Shelley remarked, hefting the key and examining it for the room number. She led them across the lot to a door much like all of the others in the long, low building, unlocking it with a swipe.

“It looks like this was more of a complex case than expected,” Zoe agreed. The mild words hid the anger she was harboring toward herself. She should have been able to solve this one, read the numbers and taken him down. Not leave him the chance to kill again. If someone died tonight, it would be on her.

The room was small, two single beds placed less than a foot apart with old-fashioned floral bedspreads. The kind that had probably been purchased in the eighties, or even earlier, and washed over and over again until they were thin and scratchy. At least, Zoe hoped they had been washed.

She kicked one leg of the bedframe, eyeing it warily to see how much it shifted. It felt good, but not good enough. Zoe could probably have kicked the whole place until her leg hurt, and it still wouldn’t work out the frustration she felt. She should have been home by now, not sitting in a motel and waiting for a killer to claim another victim that she could do nothing to prevent.

She thought of Euler and Pythagoras, and hoped they were all right. She had a delayed-release feeder set up for nights like these, but the cats were too clever for their own good. Once before, they had broken into it and eaten half a week’s supply in one night. She’d come home a few hours later to find them lying bloated and happy, so full they could only wave their tails in response to her voice.

“Ready?” Shelley asked, her voice quiet. Perhaps feeling that Zoe was not in the mood for this, for any of this.

Zoe nodded and allowed her partner to lead the way. It was with no great joy that she approached the diner, seeing the lights an oasis in the darkness of the rural area, already mostly shut down for the night. Only a few cars were parked outside in the small lot, and the large windows on all sides of the building allowed them to see just a few patrons sitting to eat or drink coffee. It made her catch her breath in her throat, memories flooding in unbidden of diner meals from her childhood.

Zoe stifled a groan of complaint as they walked inside. It was your typical small-town diner. Wipe-clean tables and green-covered seats and booths, an attempt at kitsch 1950s stylings that contrasted against the modern appliances and images of local sports teams on a bulletin board. The two tired-looking waitresses, both middle-aged women, wore nondescript uniforms that were neither stylish nor well-fitting. Her eyes told her that one was wearing one size exactly too small, the other one size too large. She blinked, shooing the numbers away. She just wanted to eat and go to bed.

Zoe slid into a booth and examined the menu. At times it could be soothing to see a familiar list of items and know what you wanted to order, but here it was grating. It was a standard, generic offering of diner fare, the kind of all-day pancakes and burgers you could get at any similar spot in the country. It could easily have been the precise menu offered by the diner in Zoe’s own hometown, where she had slunk sullenly after church, following her parents for their weekly celebratory meal.