Face of Murder

That was some consolation, but it did put a shiver down Zoe’s spine. “You think we should assign her a police escort when she leaves? Make sure that no one is stalking her?”

“It’s worth thinking about.” Shelley cocked her head and smiled at Zoe in a way she didn’t totally understand. “You know, there’s one nice thing come out of all this. I feel like I’m getting to know you better. I didn’t know you had someone you felt so strongly about.”

Zoe was taken aback by the observation. She looked toward the door, even as she knew that there was no way Dr. Applewhite could hear them through the reinforced material. “I… I suppose we are close. Dr. Applewhite was the first person to… diagnose me. She supported me.”

“I know it can’t be easy seeing her in here.” Shelley sighed and gestured to the next door along the hall. “Come on. We can sit on the observation side and wait for the call. Keep her company, of a sorts.”

***

After several hours of continued staring at the equations, Zoe was still no closer to figuring it all out than she had been the first moment they were handed the case. No matter how she looked at them, she couldn’t figure out how they worked or even why they were broken. And worse: the more she looked, the less convinced she was that it really was a coincidence. Those last lines made a perfect copy of Dr. Applewhite’s theory.

That kind of thing didn’t happen by accident.

Shelley’s cell rang, and the two of them snapped to attention. They looked at it for a second, buzzing on the ledge in front of them, before Shelley grabbed it and answered.

“Hello, Anjali? Yes… Right. And you’re absolutely sure? Okay, thank you. Yes, I do owe you one. Well, all right, two. Thanks again.”

Shelley finished the call and put her cell down, biting her lip. She hadn’t taken her eyes off it yet, or looked up any higher than Zoe’s knee since she had answered it.

Zoe, who had observed that Shelley spent around seventy-five percent of her time looking at people’s faces, and perhaps thirty percent looking someone directly in the eye, considered this to be a very bad sign indeed.

Shelley’s face was pale when she did look up, and then she had to glance away again before she spoke. “The DNA is a match.”

Zoe waited for a moment for the punchline or an explanation. When Shelley didn’t say anything else, she had to follow up with a prompt. “A match for what?”

“For Dr. Applewhite. The hairs are hers.”

There was no response in Zoe’s head. Only silence. She sat there looking at Shelley, the words ringing hollow in the room around them, nothing but utter disbelief bouncing back.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Zoe could barely gather her wits to figure any of this out. What did it all mean? Not for a single second did she believe it, no matter what the evidence said. There had to be some kind of mistake—some kind of trick.

“I’ll go tell her the news, and give her a formal charge.” Shelley was already standing, making the move to go forward.

In movies and on TV, this was the moment where the protagonist bravely stepped forward. “No,” they would say, putting on a serious face. “I’ll do it.” Then they would stride forward and deliver the bad news to their loved one, or the bullet, depending on what kind of show it was.

But Zoe wasn’t particularly brave, and she knew she couldn’t bear to tell Dr. Applewhite that she was now under firm suspicion for the murders of three people. Worse, she couldn’t even trust herself not to leave the door open and encourage her mentor to make an exit. Even if Dr. Applewhite was too honorable to do such a thing, Zoe would make the offer. That was enough to get her into deep trouble.

So, she watched as Shelley entered the room on the other side of the black glass, and as Dr. Applewhite looked up in hope of being released. She heard Shelley deliver the news, and she watched the effect on her friend in real time: the confusion, the shock, and finally, the realization that she was not going home any time soon.

As if she knew that Zoe was watching, Dr. Applewhite turned to the one-way mirror and looked at what must have been her own reflection, her mouth opening and closing silently with questions of doubt and protests, and Zoe felt even more shame that she hadn’t been able to find it in herself to go in there.

“This is Ralph Henderson,” Shelley said, sliding a printed color photograph across the table to Dr. Applewhite. “Do you recognize him?”

“Well, yes,” Dr. Applewhite said, finally wrenching her attention away from the glass. “We’re colleagues. I’ve seen him at faculty events, and around campus. And—well—in the news, recently.”

Shelley slid another photograph towards her. “How about this man?”

“Cole Davidson.” Dr. Applewhite swallowed hard. “A grad student. I tutored him for a while.”

“And this one?”

“I co-authored a study with Dr. North last year,” Dr. Applewhite said, her face visibly pale. “Wait, Edwin is—is he dead? I—I hadn’t heard…”

“Dr. Francesca Applewhite, you are now under arrest for suspicion of murder.” Shelley was reciting the lines from long-learned rote, but Zoe saw that her hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to stop answering at any time. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Dr. Applewhite breathed, seemingly incapable of more.

“Do you wish to call a lawyer, or have us call one for you?”

Zoe barely heard what they were saying. Her mind was racing, so fast that everything else around her was disappearing. She paid no attention to what her eyes saw or her ears heard, or her body felt. She was thinking about the case.

Thinking about how it could be that an innocent woman’s hair ended up at a crime scene, right next to a dead body.

It had to be wrong somehow, didn’t it? It had to be a red herring. There was no way that Dr. Applewhite had done anything. Zoe’s opinion on that had not changed. No matter what, she wouldn’t allow herself to doubt her.

And again, it circled around in her mind that this was all her fault. If she hadn’t taken the equation apart and put it back together—right in front of a local mathematician, one of few people who would actually recognize the shape she had made—then Dr. Applewhite would never even have been a person of interest. They wouldn’t have needed to take her DNA.

Maybe Zoe should have stood up to Shelley a little more, too. Made it clear to her that there was no way they were going to even slightly suspect Dr. Applewhite, insist on putting off the DNA swabs. Surely, she should have done something.

“You got a handle on this, Z?”

Zoe looked up to realize that Shelley was back in the observation area with her. On the other side of the glass, Dr. Applewhite was sitting alone in a locked room.

“It is not her,” she said, immediately.

Shelley sighed, her fingers searching for and twisting the small silver arrow she wore on a chain around her neck. “I know you’re sure, Z, but I don’t know her,” she said. “I have to go with the evidence. How would her hairs get into that room, if she’s not the killer?”

“I do not know, yet. But she has no motive. You have to see that.”

“No motive, but we have connections to each one of the victims. That means a motive might be lurking just beneath the surface. Don’t… don’t get mad at me, Zoe. I’m just trying to look at this objectively. In any other case, we’d be sure we had our perp.”

“No, we would not.” Zoe was hit by a sudden realization, a lightbulb moment of inspiration that was as dazzling as it was relief-granting. “I would have dismissed her as a suspect immediately. The numbers do not add up.”

“The equation?” A deep crease appeared across three inches of Shelley’s forehead. “But I thought—”

“Not the equation. The crime scenes.” Zoe stood, feeling adrenaline rush through her. She had figured it out. “My calculations at each of the scenes indicate a killer with a height of five foot nine. Dr. Applewhite is only five foot six. What is more, she weighs one hundred and twenty-nine pounds, while the killer must be over one hundred and thirty-five. There is also the consideration of the weights at Dr. North’s home. I do not believe that Dr. Applewhite would be able to lift them.”

As each fact hit home, Shelley’s expression became less and less sure, until she finally sank down into a chair next to Zoe. “All right, I believe you,” she said. “But there’s still a problem. We can’t just let her go.”

“Why not? I have just proven that she is not—”

“Yes, I know. And I do believe you. But how are we going to explain that to anyone else? You won’t let me tell anyone about your numbers thing, and that’s even before the issue of convincing people that it works every time. There’s evidence here. Cops don’t just ignore evidence. FBI agents can’t just let people go without questioning on a hunch. Even if I was fully behind letting her out—Z, we can’t. We’d have to explain it to SAIC Maitland. Probably in a court of law one day, too.”

Zoe thought this over, another idea forming in her head already. “All right,” she agreed, nodding slowly. “So, then we will question her.”

She smiled, and though Shelley met her with a baffled look, Zoe was starting to feel more confident by the second.