Face of Murder

It clearly was not the answer that Shelley had been hoping for, as she made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat and turned away.

Her phone buzzed at almost precisely the same moment, and she looked down to read the incoming message. “I’ve just had an email from a secretary in the admissions department. She sent over Jones’s schedule.”

“Jones?” Zoe interrupted.

This time, Shelley did sigh and roll her eyes. “Jensen Jones, the student we’re here to see. I know you don’t think it’s much of a lead, but I thought you were at least paying attention.”

Zoe shrugged again, offering no apology. She had better, more important things to focus on. The equations. The fact that she still wasn’t any closer to solving them. Waiting around for Dr. Applewhite’s contacts to look at them and get back to her was like agony.

“Anyway, this is important. Jones was also taking a physics class. And guess who happened to be the student instructor for that class?”

Zoe stared back at her, unflinching. She wasn’t about to play this game.

Shelley pushed on, undeterred. “Cole Davidson. As in, victim number one. Jones has a personal connection to both of the victims.”

“But he does not take math.” Zoe couldn’t hold it back any longer. She refused to believe that there was any way the equations were random, just scrawling meant to distract them. They had a key part to play in this case. They had to.

Because if they didn’t, then Zoe wasn’t as useful to this case as she thought she was, and it was all just a boring, run of the mill murder. Why it bothered her so much that that might be the case, she couldn’t fully say. All she knew was that she needed to solve the equations, and for them to be the key.

“Look, I know you could pull rank if you wanted to. You’re the senior agent. But I don’t want to end up with an unsolved case and not be able to say that we left no stone unturned. I’m going in to question him,” Shelley said decisively, opening her door and getting out of the car.

Zoe sat for a moment, then sighed and opened her own door. At the end of the day, they were partners. They worked together. Even if Zoe had no belief at all that this was a viable need, she was still supposed to support her partner.

So, she would.

She caught up with Shelley, who was striding as fast as her legs could take her across the campus, some minutes later. There was a crackling energy coming from the other woman, an anger that bristled from her like the spines on a porcupine. Zoe was familiar with that kind of sensation. She was always provoking anger in others, often at times when she couldn’t work out what she had done wrong.

At least this time, she knew.

“I will take your lead,” Zoe said. “If you feel that this kid will give us something, I will back you up.”

Shelley’s steps faltered a little, before she resumed her course. “Thank you,” she said, a little too primly. Zoe gathered that she was still upset, but why? She had given Shelley what she wanted, hadn’t she?

Such questions would have to be left for later, or preferably never at all, because they had arrived outside an apartment building just off the side of the campus. Shelley had closed the map application on her phone, by which Zoe understood that they must have arrived. She also knew just standing there in the street that the music booming out of the windows, even though they were closed, was above city regulations for the volume of noise audible in public at night.

A college student, looking to be nineteen years old at most, was stumbling out of the doorway as they approached. He had a red cup in his hand, and his hands were fumbling with a cigarette. When he looked up and saw the two women coming toward him, his eyes widened to almost a comical degree. The one fluid ounce of liquid in the cup was thrown over his shoulder to land on some bushes, and he walked away quickly, clutching the now-empty plastic receptacle as if his life depended on keeping it out of their hands.

“Party,” Zoe said, recognizing enough of the signs.

Zoe pulled her phone out again and brought up a photograph of Jensen Jones from his college registration. He was young, fairly clean-cut. Brown hair, a wide nose, brown eyes. Nothing at all special.

Which was bad news, because of what Shelley said next. “We’ll have to keep an eye out for him. I guess most of them will scatter and run as soon as we get there. We kind of obviously look like FBI, or at least cops. Might have to catch him as he tries to get away.”

“Having a party right after murdering two people?” Zoe asked. “Is that really considered a normal reaction?”

“Not normal, no, but it has happened,” Shelley said. “I could cite a couple of cases, but it’s probably more efficient for us to grab him and find out for sure.”

“After you,” Zoe suggested, gesturing toward the door.

Shelley drew a deep breath as if she were steeling herself, then nodded. “Let’s go.”

Beyond the door of the apartment building, the noise was much louder. To complicate their search, there were three open doors on the ground floor alone—the residents of each of the apartments opening their own spaces up to be a new area of the party. It had spilled across the corridor, up the stairs, and—judging at least by the sheer number of teenagers moving in all directions—through every apartment in the building.

The appearance of Zoe and Shelley was not immediately noted. A couple of students saw them and ducked past them out the door, no doubt wanting to get themselves as far away from trouble as possible.

But then the worst possible thing happened: one of the kids, a jock standing at six feet with the build of a quarterback, yelled out in panic. “The cops are here!”

The call went through the building like wildfire, and panic started to set in. There was no use in trying to stay incognito. Zoe reached into her inner jacket pocket for her badge and brandished it in the air. “FBI. This party is breaking up. Now!”

The effect was immediate and palpable. Thirty students ran past her in quick succession, all of them from down in the lower apartment rooms. The word was spreading up the stairs, too, and people were clattering down, sloshing their beers onto the carpet as they tripped and stumbled.

Zoe waited in the downstairs lobby while Shelley went into all three of the ground floor rooms in turn, scattering more students out through them as she did so. Even from where she stood, making no attempt to catch any of the students who continued to run by her, Zoe could see that the place was a mess. Crumpled red cups, spilled food and drink, and no doubt the occasional patch of vomit covered every surface in sight. It had been a big one—the legendary kind of party that kids talk about for months. Too bad they had ended it.

Zoe couldn’t say she felt any kind of misplaced nostalgia for them. She had rarely been invited to parties of any kind, and it was even rarer that she attended them. Then, as now, this kind of party was too overwhelming. The noise, the people in all directions, the intoxication and temptation of forbidden alcohol—and, judging by the smells in the air, other substances, too.

With the benefit of extra years of experience, it was still all Zoe could do to concentrate on studying the faces of those who ran by her. She checked each of them for the youth in the photograph, but although there were plenty of near matches, none of them were the real Jensen Jones. She felt like a stone in the middle of a river, the current washing around her. There were plenty of interesting things that caught her eye, angles and figures and signs, but they went by so quickly that she was barely even able to register them before they were gone.

Shelley reemerged from the third room, shaking her head. Zoe tore her eyes back toward the stairs, just in time to see someone charging down them. A young woman wearing a collection of twelve bottle tops all strung together around her neck, clattering against one another as she ran—

“There!” Shelley shouted.

Zoe pulled her attention back from the girl too late, seeing only another blur passing by her. By the way Shelley was pointing, Zoe knew that it must have been their guy. She swore under her breath—he was through the door already.

She twisted on her feet and sprang after him, keeping him in her sights as he raced away. He was five foot ten, built athletically, muscles straining easily in his calves as his arms pumped up and down. Young, in shape, and clearly an experienced runner.

Zoe had barely gone five steps before she knew she didn’t have a hope in hell of catching him.

In her head, the campus spread out before her like a map, topography and angles of incline included. He was snaking away toward the left, making for a group of small buildings that dotted the edge of the campus. Behind them was a fence, built to maintain a barrier between the college and the surrounding town.

Zoe thought faster than she could run. His path would necessarily have to be curved, following the line of the fence, before he reached a gap and a gate for pedestrians to pass through. That was if he had even brought his student ID with him, which she knew already was needed for exiting at that point, right next to several college facilities.

“Keep on him!” she yelled over her shoulder, seeing Shelley from the corner of her eye as she herself peeled away to the right. At this speed, he would always outrun her. But she could cross a shorter distance in the same time, and calculating his miles per hour against hers, she knew that she could meet him at the gate.

But only if she cut a straight line across an open quad, through a narrow corridor between two buildings, and then directly across the parking lot behind it.

Only if someone didn’t get in her way.

Zoe pumped her arms and legs harder, speeding up even when she thought she was at her limit, straining against the cold night air streaming into her lungs. It was not often, these days, that she had a real athletic challenge to cope with. And she wasn’t as young as he was. But she pushed, intending to make damn sure that she would be there in time—even if there was a stumbling block in her way.

The quad passed by in a blur, then it was a shot through the corridor, the thin gap thankfully empty of any other bodies to stumble into her path. The ground underfoot changed to the harsh, jarring feel of tarmac, punishing her feet for choosing to be clothed in plain dress shoes instead of trainers.

Zoe could still not see the fence on the other side of the buildings, but she could see the gate. She rushed forward with another surge of adrenaline. If she didn’t get there in time…

CHAPTER EIGHT

There was no time to lose. Zoe gave a final, hard push, forcing her body beyond its natural breaking point.

Zoe’s heart pounded in time with her feet across the parking lot, and she crashed to a halt as her body collided with another. She thrust out her arms instinctively to keep hold of him, and pushed Jensen Jones up against the ten-foot fence so that he could not use his superior build to get away.

Shelley was only a few moments behind. She was heavily out of breath and red in the face with strands of hair flying out of her chignon, but she was there. She assisted Zoe in slapping a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, behind his back, as they panted out warnings about running from law enforcement and the right to question him. He only hung his head, trying to catch his own breath as well.

Zoe’s whole body felt like it had woken up. Air and light had supplanted the spaces in between her joints, the stretching out of long-dormant muscles feeling wonderful. Of course, there was also pain; particularly in her ankles, which had not at all enjoyed the jolting across the parking lot. Overall, she felt great. There was something about the rush of wind in your hair as you raced someone else—and won.

***

The apartment building felt different to Zoe, now that it was empty of everyone except for herself, Shelley, and Jensen. The guests had scattered to the four winds, and the residents along with them. No doubt they were going for plausible deniability.

Zoe poked around the apartment that housed Jensen Jones, sniffing at thirteen cups still full of a liquid that was definitely not water and checking four ashtrays. Shelley had sat the kid down on the sofa in the open-plan room, dragging a dining chair over to sit opposite him. There were not many clean seating options left, so Zoe opted to stand and wander.

Despite his apparent inebriation, the kid was not far gone enough to misunderstand what was happening to him. In fact, he appeared to have sobered up quite nicely with the joint impact of his run and the revelation that they were FBI, not local cops.

“It was just a party,” he muttered, his eyes sweeping the floor as if looking for a traitor sign of something more serious. “Since when does the FBI get called to parties?”

“We don’t, Mr. Jones,” Shelley said, with an air of conspiracy. “Actually, we were looking for you specifically. In connection with another matter.”

Zoe was already up to twenty-two cups. Just how many people had been squeezed into this party? Given that they were still running when Zoe and Shelley left the building, she had to guess at more than a hundred.

There was nothing but confusion on Jones’s face. “What other matter?” he asked.

“There was a professor who tragically lost his life here yesterday,” Shelley said. Zoe watched her face, watching her watch him for a sign. She was getting to know Shelley better. It was easier for her to read Shelley than a stranger. “Professor Henderson was your former professor, was he not?”

“Yeah,” Jones said, then sat up straighter with a look of alarm. “Hey, but listen, I wasn’t involved in all that!”

“How did you feel about Professor Henderson?” Shelley pressed.

“Uh, he was okay. I mean. It’s super sad that he died. Everyone’s in shock.”

There were seven stubs of cigarettes in the ashtrays. They looked hand-rolled. Probably not tobacco. Zoe lowered her nose slightly and sniffed, her suspicion confirmed by the scent coming off them. And in Jones’s apartment, too. He wasn’t going to be able to put up much of an argument that it wasn’t him, or that he didn’t know the party was going on.

“I’d like to read you something,” Shelley said, taking out her phone. “Let’s see… it starts like this: ‘Professor, I can’t believe you flunked me. Like, are you serious? I tried really goddamn hard on his paper and you just decided to kick me off the course!’”

“Okay, okay.” Jones held his hands up. He obviously recognized his own words. “Yes, I sent it. But it—it doesn’t mean I did anything! I was just super angry when he flunked me. After I sent the email I felt kinda bad. I should have been nicer. Maybe he would’ve let me back into class.”

“So you’re saying that you sent this angry, threatening email to Professor Henderson, coincidentally right before he was brutally murdered in a manner that smacks of personal anger, but you have nothing to do with that?”

Jones swallowed and looked down. “I get how it looks. I do. But I wasn’t that angry. I’ll just take a different course next semester. Try something different. I haven’t decided my major yet anyway.”

Shelley switched tacks with a cool and effortless manner, something that Zoe was beginning more and more to admire. “Cole Davidson was the SI in your physics class, wasn’t he?”

Jones blinked: once, then twice. “I… yes, I guess he was. I mean, I never really spoke to him all that much.”

“You attended class, did you not?”

“Yes, but, I, I mean, I didn’t know him or anything, I—I mean—are you really suggesting that I…?”

“You tell us, Mr. Jones. Did you have anything to do with this? Or do you know who did?”

Jones shook his head five times in long sweeps side to side, his mouth working soundlessly as the reality of his situation washed over him. Zoe counted beads of sweat on his forehead. He was nervous, but it was hard to tell if that was because he had been caught or because he was being falsely accused.

“No, wait, this isn’t right,” he said, at last. “I wasn’t—when Cole went missing. I wasn’t in that area. I had class—a night class—you can check the records. And when the professor was killed last night—it was in the night, wasn’t it?”

“Around eleven p.m.,” Zoe spoke up, examining a sideboard behind him. He flinched at the sound of her voice.

“Right, so, then, I couldn’t have done that either,” Jones babbled, holding his hands in front of him in a gesture of appeal. “I was working. I work in a bar. Extra money, to get me through college. My boss will tell you. And I’ll be on the cameras there, too.”

There was a moment of silence that met this proclamation. Zoe and Shelley met eyes, both thinking the same thing. He had an alibi, one that would be exceptionally easy to check. And they would check it—of course they would. But for now, he was looking increasingly unlikely as a suspect, and they would have to let him go.

Or, at least, let him go to a different kind of law enforcement.

“You’re twenty years old, isn’t that right, Mr. Jones?” Shelley asked.

He nodded mutely.

“Well, I can smell the alcohol on your breath from here. Special Agent Prime?”

“There are smoked joints in the ashtray.”

“That’s two counts.” Shelley smiled, as if she and Jones were sharing a friendly discussion. “Not your best week for decisions, is it?”

Jones groaned. “Oh, come on, I didn’t do anything. You can let it go just this once, right?”

“Wrong.” Zoe loomed behind him. “We will wait here with you until the local police can come and pick you up. We would not want you to go and dispose of any evidence.”

Jones buried his head in his hands as Shelley got up to make the call, and Zoe watched him carefully for signs of running again. The tension in his muscles remained slack, and the angle of his feet to the floor remained the same; he was not priming to leap.

Even the satisfaction of knowing that she had been right was not enough to make her feel better. There was still the not at all small matter of two murders to solve, and this night had not taken them any closer to doing that. If anything, it had put them further away.

Zoe checked her watch. Twenty-four hours since Professor Henderson had been murdered. They only had another twenty-four to really get it right.

Beyond that, their chances of solving this case dropped dramatically, and there was a murder-crazed mathematician out there who would get away with it.

CHAPTER NINE

Back at the FBI field office, Zoe felt like tearing her hair out. That would at least allow her to feel something other than this screaming frustration, the numbers seeming to dance on the page and taunt her the more she looked at them.

She had copied both equations onto large sheets of paper and tacked them to the walls, but it made no difference. She could still only get two-thirds of the way through the workings before she became hopelessly, utterly lost.

It was as if the last part of the equation just made no sense at all. It was so far above her head that it might as well have been written in a foreign alphabet.

“It’s late,” Shelley sighed.

She was right; it was. After waiting for the local cops to show up and handing Jensen Jones into their custody, then making their way back to HQ before settling in to work the slim leads they had, it was now past midnight. Pythagoras and Euler would be hungry, and Shelley’s daughter was no doubt already in bed since hours ago. They should have both been at home.

If this had been a normal, paperwork or testifying in court kind of day, they might have been. But this was a murder investigation kind of day, and that meant the work didn’t stop until someone was behind bars—or put into the morgue before they could take another life.

“You should go home.” Zoe nodded. She felt a little guilty, Shelley being away from home like this. A pair of grumpy cats were very much used to their owner not being home every day, and they had auto-feeders she could turn on whenever she was out of town for this very purpose. A small child would not understand why her mother was always late.

“You, too,” Shelley said. She had picked up her bag and coat, but stood in front of Zoe now without moving. Zoe caught the message loud and clear: Shelley wouldn’t go until she agreed to do so, as well.

She sighed and started to gather her things.

“Are you going to be okay?” Shelley asked. “You look tired. You’ll be fine for the drive home?”

“I am about as tired as you are,” Zoe pointed out. “I just want to crack this equation. Get somewhere with the case.”

“We are getting somewhere. There’s only so much we can do when we’re running low on sleep. A good night’s rest, and who knows? You might see something new when you approach it with fresh eyes.”

If Zoe had wanted advice from schoolroom posters, she could have looked it up herself. She shook her head brusquely, and did not reply.

“Seriously, Z. Take some time for yourself. If you don’t look after yourself, you won’t be any help to anyone. We need you sharp on this one,” Shelley said, obviously not reading Zoe’s irritation.

“I understand the importance of sleep,” Zoe snapped. “I do not intend to sit up until morning studying the equations. You do not have to worry.”

Shelley paused at the door, looking back at her with a softly trouble expression, a frown that only slightly creased her forehead. “I do worry, though. I see how hard you are on yourself.”

Not that Zoe had ever had that kind of mother—but Shelley sure as hell sounded like the stereotypical mother figure she had seen on TV. All nag, as if Zoe was just a child. Never mind that she was senior in her role, she was senior in age, too. She did not need a mother figure, and if she did, she wouldn’t choose a younger woman who was supposed to be taking her orders.

“I will be fine,” she said, her tone short and clipped, and brushed past Shelley to move quickly down the corridor. She opted to take the stairs, knowing Shelley would go down in the elevator, so that they did not have to share one another’s company all the way to the parking lot. The elevator moved at a much faster rate per floor than Zoe could manage on foot, particularly given the twists and turns of the stairwell, but she took them at a slow walking pace just to be sure.

As she walked down the fifteen steps in each block, and counted off the blocks before she would be underground with her car, Zoe’s mind was still on the equations. For all that she had said to Shelley, she probably wouldn’t be able to sleep well with the unsolvable numbers whirling around and around in her head.

They dominated her mind all through the drive home. Maybe Shelley had a little bit of a point about the state of mental distraction she was in, but she wasn’t about to admit that anytime soon. The equations just didn’t seem to make sense.

Whatever happened tomorrow, Zoe could only hope that she would hear something from one of Dr. Applewhite’s colleagues. They needed a break. No, she needed a break. Zoe desperately needed to know the answer to these puzzles—before they drove her mad.

***

As Zoe lay awake, staring up at her dark ceiling and listening to the soothing rainforest sounds that she played at night to shut out the calculations, a different scene entirely came into her head. Instead of the numbers, she thought about Dr. Applewhite. About a time, long ago, when she had been a young woman—and just beginning to trust Dr. Applewhite more than she had trusted anyone. Maybe more than she had ever even trusted herself.

She had been so young back then. So young it was almost painful to think of it now. Like all people of that age, she had thought she was so mature. After being emancipated from her parents and striking out on her own, Zoe had felt like there was nothing she could not do. She was strong, independent, fierce.

And on the other side of the coin, utterly vulnerable and alone.

No one knew, back then, what she could do. There had never been anyone she had felt she could trust enough. Throughout her whole childhood and her early teenage years, Zoe’s mother had pounded the message into her brain: Don’t tell anyone. Keep quiet. Don’t let them notice.

It was her mother’s claim that Zoe’s skills came from the devil that had tortured her the most. Always, whenever she thought about living life more openly, it came back to that. The fear of rejection, of social isolation, of people looking at her like she was evil.