Face of Death

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Zoe leaned forward in her seat, wishing the car would move faster. She could see that Shelley already had her foot on the gas as far as it would go, but that did not seem to be fast enough. She held tight to her seatbelt, trying to ignore the motion sickness fighting its way up her gullet in favor of focusing on the task ahead.

Zoe shifted around to look into the back seat. The tall state trooper Max, the sheriff, and one of his deputies were along for the ride. Zoe and Shelley had raced from their motel to their base of operations, and from there straight out to the scene with barely a pause.

Dawn was only just breaking, and they were close by the Kansas Giant Dinosaur Fair, only a few minutes away along the highway. “Anything yet?”

The sheriff shook his head, glancing down at his phone. “Looks like we’ll be the first there.”

Their quick actions in waking and getting in the car had put them first on the scene. More officers had gone by the residences of the two women to take statements. Two families who had woken in the morning to find beds not slept in, loved ones not come home.

Out of the whole staff, only the two women were still missing. All of the others had left much earlier and were accounted for at home. That much had been ascertained by a simple phone-around.

There was a tension inside the car, each of them knowing that they were not likely to find the women alive. Either one or both of them would have to have been the killer’s latest victims. All that remained was to find out which of them it was, and whether he had been fully successful in his crime.

Shelley flipped on the turn signal, trying to turn across the traffic to get to the parking lot. She cursed as she watched her mirrors and the oncoming lane, waiting for a break in busy morning transit of large trucks taking loads across the state. It was only a few seconds’ delay before she could get through, but all of them felt it. Every single second counted in a case like this.

Zoe forced the car door open and jumped out before Shelley had even put it into park, her eyes already making out a smudge on the edge of the lot that looked like nothing more than a pile of rags on the ground. Zoe had been to enough crime scenes to know that it was not a pile of rags. It was clothing, and the clothing was on a woman.

From the road, the slight ten-degree slope of the lot hid the body perfectly. Closer up, it was impossible to miss. Zoe spread her arms out behind her as a warning to the others not to approach, and began to carefully and slowly examine the area.

As expected, there were no footprints. The ground was hard, except for the edge of the lot where grass was encroaching back across the surface, but the killer had not made the mistake of stepping in the mud. As Zoe crouched and then shuffled forward, examining everything carefully and tilting her head to get a different angle, she saw no sign that might provide evidence of the sequence of events. The sun was broaching the other side of the highway, rising above the flat land that stretched out a distance away from the trees. Golden light filtered down and over the body, picking out the glints of copper in the dead woman’s brown hair.

Golden light for the golden ratio, Zoe thought, inching her way closer as she assessed the victim’s measurements. There was blood pooled around the body, though in a tighter and neater circumference than they had seen at the last crime scene. Even so, Zoe calculated that it was as many pints as a body could spare, allowing for the soak into the soil. The woman had fallen here, without much of a fight. She had bled out without moving, perhaps already unconscious from the blood loss or the shock before her heart ran out of blood to pump. Zoe could see a deeper wound to the neck, longer by an inch and a half, though the angle of attack was consistent with the other bodies. The height target of five foot eleven for their killer remained intact.

There was no disturbance to the blood, everything preserved neatly. He would have liked that, Zoe thought. He would have been pleased. But for her, it meant there were no signs or clues indicating what might have happened to the other one.

“It’s the older woman,” Max said, thumbing his phone screen just behind Zoe. She turned to look at him. “Employee file photos just came through. The teenager is blonde.”

Zoe rose off her haunches, addressing Max and the two from the sheriff’s station. “Spread out,” she said. “Check the trees here, and through the fair. We need to know that she is not still here.”

They nodded and moved out, meeting Zoe’s curtness with their own silence. Zoe knew she was not going to stand out today, with her short manner that was often described as anti-social or aloof. There was a need to get a job done. Someone’s life might still hang in the balance.

Shelley squatted next to her, pointing at the body. “What can you see, Z?”

With the others out of earshot, Zoe crouched again, reading the numbers from the scene before her like they were printed on a page. It was strangely refreshing to be able to share what she could see, instead of keeping it inside. “The victim is five foot six, which maintains our profile for the killer. She is also around one hundred and twenty-five pounds, so not too heavy or strong to cause problems for him. He slipped the garrote around her neck from behind, standing over there, and pulled so hard that she dropped almost immediately. The wound on her neck is an inch and a half longer on each side than with previous victims, indicating a greater force causing a deeper cut. He wanted to be sure this time, after the failure with Rubie.”

Zoe got up, circling around to get a better view. “She fell here and did not move after that. You can see this from the blood pool—an almost perfect circle, meaning equal distribution. I would guess that the slight variance on the left side is down to the uneven surface of the lot. It would have taken her around fifteen or sixteen seconds to shed this much blood, which leads me to believe she was either unconscious or in too much shock to move after the attack.”

“The teenager?” Shelley asked.

Zoe shook her head, frowning. “Nothing here that I can read. But there was a reason he wanted to get this kill over and done with, why he would have exerted so much force as to cut her neck open this fast. I think they were together. He needed to finish one and go for the other as soon as possible.”

Shelley nodded, moving the pendant of her necklace up between her lips and speaking around it. “He took her.”

It was not a question. With the facts that Zoe could see, there was no disputing it. Even if the two women had entered the parking lot separately, there was evidence that the killer wanted to move on fast, and the girl was no longer here.

“He came back around after we left last night. This body is less than five hours old. He must be desperate. Maybe he did not want to take a risk on not finding a victim tonight. If he takes a hostage with him, he can be sure that he will be able to carry it out.”

Shelley shuddered, getting back up to her feet. “She must be terrified. If she saw her coworker getting murdered…”

Zoe inclined her head in agreement, though she did not see what bearing it had on the investigation. It would not help them to find her and save her life. “Look at the woman’s arm. There is a slight indentation above the left elbow. Do you see it? She habitually carried something there, likely a handbag. The muscle is also marginally thicker on this side. No bag left here, however.”

“He took it with him to delay the identification process, probably,” Shelley said.

“Buying himself time to get further away. Yes, he definitely took her.” Zoe nodded, turning and looking into the distance for their local help. All three men had their backs to them, searching. The sheriff was almost completely out of sight in the trees.

“Should we call them back?”

“No, the search has to be done. We have to be thorough. Can you hear something?”

They both turned and looked through the woods again, to see the sheriff raising a radio to his face and speaking into it. Afterward, the crackle came again, the same sound that had filtered to them through the trees. Before another moment had passed, he was moving toward them, taking a determined stride between the tall, smooth trunks.

“Got a hit,” he shouted to them, not waiting until he was within hearing distance to pass the message on. “Trooper on patrol last night saw a man come in the parking lot on foot.”

“Why did he not stop him?” Zoe asked, bristling immediately. Had this killer once again slipped out from right underneath their noses? Twice in one night?

“Hold on,” the sheriff said, coming to a stop close by to them and slightly out of breath. “Trooper, repeat again what you just told me.”

“Yes, sir,” it came back over the crackle and hiss of the radio. “I saw a gentleman walking through the parking lot after midnight. I asked him what he was doing and he said he’d lost his wallet. I told him to come back in the morning and he began to walk back to his car, which was parked a short distance away.”

“Description of the vehicle?”

“A Ford Taurus.”

“Color?” Zoe asked.

There was a pause. “Uhh… It was parked on the side of the road, away from any lights. I’m not sure.”

“Green?”

“Yeah, could be.”

“What about the suspect?” Shelley interrupted.

“Slightly above medium height, maybe five foot ten or eleven, skinny guy. Dark hair, cut pretty close. I would put him mid-twenties.”

“Anything else?” the sheriff asked into the radio. “Anything that might identify him?”

“Not that I can think of, sir. I checked my dash cam. There’s a glimpse of him, but only his body. He was wearing a gray sweater and dark pants. That’s it.”

The sheriff sighed and thanked the man, rubbing his tired eyes. “I’ll put out an APB.”

“It will not work,” Zoe said, chewing her lip and looking out toward the horizon. “He is too smart to get caught now. We would have gotten him last night. He knows we are onto him now. It will be that much harder.”

The sheriff gave her a hard look. “No offense, Agent, but I’ve got to protect the citizens of this county. I can’t keep running after your theories and missing him every time. You pulling the wrong man last night let this woman die.”

He had gone too far. That much was clear. A sheriff didn’t speak to a member of the FBI like that, no matter who had superiority. But by the time Zoe could get past the fact that he wasn’t wrong, he had turned his back on her to issue orders into the radio, getting his men moving.

Shelley reached over and placed a momentary hand on Zoe’s arm, as was becoming her habit. Zoe nodded sharply in response, listening in to the sheriff as he set up a dragnet.

“There’s always a chance, I suppose,” Shelley said, trying to find some comfort. “We should cover all angles.”

“We are still missing something,” Zoe said, knowing it with certainty now. “There was no green Ford Taurus in the parking lot at the fair. We would have seen it.”

Behind Zoe’s words was another nagging certainty. The killer struck every night—and only once every night. There was every likelihood that the teenage girl was still alive.

An alert buzzed on her cell phone, and she opened it to see the photograph of the missing teen, circulated to her number as well as any law enforcement in the area. A fact list named her as Aisha Sparks, seventeen years old. One younger brother. She was a dancer and loved children, wanted to go to college to become a social worker. A good kid.

Zoe stared down at Aisha’s sweet smile, in a photograph clearly taken at school for a yearbook, and knew that she had to save her. So many had died already. So many who should have been saved.

If she couldn’t save Aisha, Zoe knew, it would all be on her. All her fault. If she was going to redeem herself in any way for letting it get this far, letting him claim more lives, then she had to stop him from taking this one.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Shelley was tired of looking over the case files in the investigation room, going over all of the old clues that they had already seen before. The latest autopsy was nowhere near being complete, and they were still waiting for final reports from Rubie’s body. There was nothing new here, nothing that they had not already seen with their own eyes before.

It wasn’t that Shelley didn’t see the benefit of going back over the information—there were many ways that data could take on a new face when you had more clues to go on, when you had seen more victims. Insignificant details could suddenly become the key to unraveling a whole case.

What she objected to, however, was the fact that it was she who had to do it. They were only on their second case together, but already she could see how gifted Zoe was. Shelley was never going to be able to compete with that. She would be better off doing the legwork, physical stuff that didn’t require looking at the complex clues. Talking to people. That was what she was good at.

It wasn’t that she could really, fully understand what Zoe did. It might as well have been witchcraft, for all it made sense to her. But Shelley was beginning to grasp that just because she didn’t understand something, didn’t mean it was wrong. She would take anything that she could get to help save lives.

And there was something about Zoe, something that triggered her own mothering instinct, even though Zoe was older than her. Something a little broken, vulnerable. Shelley had known that Zoe had gone through a lot of partners before her. Been warned about it. Now she could see why, and she wasn’t going to be the latest in a long line to just abandon Zoe because she had something that set her apart from everyone else.

They had left the door to their room open, allowing in the bustle of the rest of the station from the corridor. A short distance away, the sheriff’s office had been the site of much activity all day long, as deputies and state troopers passed in and out regularly.

There was the sound of urgent ringing down the hall, and Shelley perked her ears up. The sheriff answered, barked something down the line, and only a few seconds later strode past the door. He was shrugging his coat on over his shoulders as he went.

“Sheriff?” Shelley got to her feet and rushed out into the hall, looking in the direction he had gone. “What is it?”

“Got a hit with the dragnet,” the sheriff called over his shoulder. “Green Ford Taurus. I’m heading out there now.”

Shelley glanced back into the room at Zoe, who was still poring over the pages and maps in front of her.

On the one hand, she believed in Zoe. The abilities she had demonstrated were undeniable. The way she had explained everything, Shelley knew she was right. But she wasn’t helping here, and every lead had to be followed.

Even if the sheriff was acting in direct opposition to what Zoe thought was the right course of action, at least it was something. And Shelley’s time would be better spent dismissing it as nothing than sitting here and wasting her time.

“I should go with him,” Shelley said, leaning in to whisper the rest. “I can’t tell them why you’re so sure they won’t find him, can I? So I’d better go.”

Zoe looked up and met her eyes, and nodded once with an almost serenely blank expression. “I will stay.”

It was exactly what she had expected. There was no reason for it to be any different. Shelley flashed her a quick and reassuring grin, then ran full pelt after the sheriff, catching up with him just as he got to his car.

“Coming along?” he grunted. It was clear from his surly manner and the way all courtesy had been dropped that he resented Zoe’s orders. He thought they had taken him on a wild goose chase and allowed someone else to die. So be it. Shelley knew how to turn around an opinion, and the only way to do that was to sit and talk with him.

She dropped into the passenger’s seat, waiting eagerly for him to set off. Their car flashed along the roads quickly, moving with the kind of speed and surety that could only come from local knowledge.

“What’s the report?” Shelley asked.

The sheriff’s eyes flicked toward her momentarily before he focused back on the road. “Green Ford Taurus with a single male driver. The trooper said it looks like he might have been living in the back of his car. Fast food cartons, dirty clothes, that sort of thing. It would make sense, for our guy.”

Shelley had to give him that. “No motel bookings for us to track him down with. Have they got his ID yet?”

“Tells us nothing. Out of state, no prior record. They tell me his height fits your profile, though.”

Shelley nodded. “Then there’s a good chance we have him.”

“We?” the sheriff snorted. It wasn’t quite an outright denial, and he did not follow it up, but it was clear what he meant. He wasn’t putting any stock in the FBI’s help on this one.

Shelley kept quiet. There were times when you could change someone’s mind, and there were times when it was better to wait out their anger and be ready to make your point only when they had calmed down.

They pulled up at a roadblock perhaps twenty minutes into their journey, where several cars blocked all but one lane, forcing traffic to pass through them. They had a green sedan parked up against the far lane, the driver standing and leaning against his car.

Shelley looked at him with a sinking sensation. The man was overweight, obviously so. He might have been the right height, but he was also older than Zoe had suggested. Either her partner was wrong, or this was yet another wild goose chase.

“I’m telling you, check the records,” he was saying as they drew closer.

One of the troopers was talking on his phone, glancing at the sheriff somewhat sheepishly as they approached. Shelley knew what that look had to mean. She felt a groan gathering force inside her, threatening to break out audibly.

The trooper came off the phone and addressed the group at large. “Alibi checks out,” he said. “The hospital confirmed he was recuperating in the ward for the last two weeks.”

Another dead end. Shelley met the sheriff’s eyes, raising one of her eyebrows slightly, hoping that he would get her meaning. They were 0 for 2. And the killer was still out there with an abducted young woman.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

With Shelley gone, the investigation room was a lonely place. Zoe was used to working alone—liked it, even—but she needed some kind of reassurance with all of the mistakes that she had been making. Shelley had been able to provide that.

Hours had passed now without her, as Shelley bounced from one part of the dragnet to another, following useless lead after useless lead. It was incredible just how many green Ford Tauruses there were on the roads, but none of them had turned out to be their killer. There was always something—an alibi, the fact that the driver was a petite single mother without the strength to kill taller women, an incorrect flag with the wrong make of car.

It wasn’t that she cared about the cold shoulder she was being given by the local cops. The threat to her job was neither here nor there. Either she would solve it, or she wouldn’t. She didn’t base her investigative decisions on what would save her job—she was trying to save lives.