Face of Murder

“We’ll take a break from this interview,” Shelley said, checking her watch and starting to stand. She rattled quickly through the formalities required for the tape, before Zoe followed her out of the room and into the hidden divide behind the blacked-out glass.

Once out of sight, the two women watched their suspect, both sagging a little as they let down the pretense of not being tired and overworked.

“What do you think?” Shelley asked.

Zoe chewed on her lip for a moment before answering. “I do not trust him.”

“I don’t trust him either, but I do believe him.”

Zoe turned, looking up to meet Shelley’s eyes in surprise.

Shelley sighed. “He’s a pompous ass who has seen one too many episodes of CSI, yes. But I think he’s telling the truth. His body language, his manner—he’s turning this whole thing into a joke because he feels it’s below him. He sees himself as being part of a different world from ours. For him to commit a crime like that and be arrested for it would be, well, funny to him.”

“Funny?” Zoe repeated, shooting a distasteful look at their suspect. “I do not think that murder is a joke.”

“Poor word choice, perhaps. It’s just so far from being on his radar that he could ever seriously be suspected of something like this. I really don’t think he did it, Z.”

Zoe hesitated, struggling to know what to believe. She didn’t buy the act that Wardenford had put on—and it had been an act. That ten-degree head tilt, the orator at work. She wanted it to be him, wanted to have a solution that would put all this to bed. She wouldn’t have to wrestle with those equations anymore.

But Shelley knew people, and therein lay the rub.

Who could Zoe trust—her own disbelief in his words of innocence and the lack of an alibi, or Shelley’s instinct?

And what if she trusted Shelley and let him go—and he killed again?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He watched and moved slowly, careful not to be seen. He had left his refuge and hunkered down amongst the people at the bus stop, hiding in plain sight.

The doctor still owed him blood snakes, and he was going to get it, all right. He was going to get it, and how.

There was not much more time to wait. The doctor would be coming off shift. That was the best time to strike, oh yes. Follow him home in his refuge and strike when he was alone, get the snakes, the brains, make him pay.

The doctor came out of the building and he could barely contain his happy dance, his happy smile. He walked swiftly now, hood up against the rain, blessed rain. To his refuge and opened the door and got inside and started the engine.

He crept then, slowly on the—pathway, keeping a distance. He let the doctor go home all safe and secure, thinking he was free. Thinking he would not see his own blood snakes before the day was out. Yes, let him think that.

Let him think that, the sniveling fool, the bitter, hated enemy! How he could not wait to punish him, make him pay! How he longed for blood snakes and crushed bits of—headbox everywhere, for the doctor’s last breath!

He pulled up a few doors down from the doctor’s home, parking quick and ready to strike before the doctor got safe, when his—talk—walkie—buzzer rang. The display told the name of a friend.

Curses. But he had to take it.

“Hello?”

“Hey, did you hear about Wardenford?”

Alert, alarm bells, instant. The name of his mentor. Panic through his veins like an ice bolt; he knew, just knew something was wrong. “No?”

“He’s been arrested. They’re saying the FBI took him. For those murders, you know—Cole and that professor.”

He could not speak. N—he could not believe it.

The friend prattled on, not realizing what he had done. “He’s been on a freefall ever since Henderson got him fired. Honestly, I’m not surprised. He was always a bit of a loose cannon, wasn’t he? All those outbursts?”

“It wasn’t him.” It came blurted out, an accident. He was desperate. How could the world think such a thing? How could the beloved professor be in the frame? No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

“You reckon? FBI wouldn’t have nabbed him if they didn’t think there was a good chance.”

“It wasn’t him.”

He ended the call; couldn’t stand to listen anymore. Couldn’t stand the—snakes, ear snakes, untrue, all of them. All of them. The professor! No this, this was all wrong, all wrong.

What could he do? Let the professor be blamed? No, not that, anything but that; the professor was his favorite. He could not let the ear snakes bring down the mentor who brought him everything before this.

At least one thing was safe: he never told Wardenford about the things in his head. The accident. The cra—the cre—the crash. He never told him about the snakes in his own brain. The ones that wouldn’t come out, no matter how hard he smashed. The reason why everyone else had to lose theirs.

The doctor had gone inside, out of reach. He sat and thought, in his refuge, rain drumming on the—mirror. Too late now. Doctor had to live.

Doctor living, maybe useful.

Maybe something he could do for the professor. A gift. To release him.

Clarity came for a moment, as it sometimes did. A flash of his old brilliance. A plan formed. He saw the steps that he needed to take and how he would execute them. First of all, finding a piece of evidence that should be kept protected, in a plastic bag, a thing that could be used later. Then he could continue with his original idea, make sure that the doctor paid for everything.

God, was this all a mistake? The things he had done, the way he had left them. This wasn’t him. He didn’t act like this. He wasn’t a violent man. He was a scholar—none of this should ever have happened!

If it wasn’t for the crash—the accident. Was it even really an accident? Everything had been destroyed at that moment, but he saw now that this was not the way to react. What had come over him? This violence, where did it come from?

But now—now Professor Wardenford was on the hook. He owed it to the professor, the person who had really believed in him, to make sure that everyone knew he was innocent. That was the right thing to do. Irrefutable proof, worse than a confession. And afterward, he could go to the police and—no—he felt it slipping. Always too soon, always destroying him again. The clarity came and then it—

He wouldn’t give in. Even without the—focus, he could continue. He knew what he had to do now. It wasn’t over.

Doctor dead, blood snakes released. Soon. But first the planning. First the gift to his professor. The only one who saw—future in him. The only one who thought he could be something. He would escape. But only with his help.

Doctor, doctor. Twice you slipped away.

Third time, he thought, was the—hook.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Zoe stood looking through the glass, studying Wardenford as closely as she could.

For the whole time he had been in custody, his demeanor had not changed. Though she found it hard to understand why, he was still casual and cheery, as if he believed that this was all a comic misunderstanding and easily cleared up. The only thing that had changed over the hours they held him was the beginning of a shake in his right hand, a telltale sign of an alcoholic in need of their next drink.

Maybe that was a weakness that she could use, at least.

“I am going back in,” Zoe announced. She had grabbed up the files holding the crime scene photographs—specifically, the equations.