Face of Death

Not only that, but there was nothing in the car that told them anything. No trace of a murder weapon of any kind, not even anything that could be used as a blunt instrument. It was littered with empty plastic bottles and food wrappers on the back footwells, and long blond hairs had been found easily on the passenger seat. If there was anything she knew about the killer, it was that he was clean and tidy. Neat. And he would not leave the evidence of a passenger sitting in his vehicle, easily traceable via DNA.

He would have been waiting with the garrote. Zoe knew that. She could feel it in her bones. Why would he play the innocent victim to such an extent that he was not even ready to attack if someone approached? The only answer she could think of was that this was not their man.

Which was problematic, because she had already been called by her superiors and warned that she was going to be in trouble for firing her weapon if it turned out that the man was an innocent victim.

She needed to get to the bottom of this, and fast. Zoe cast around the room, her gaze flying to the left and the right. Privacy curtain, monitoring equipment, drip, shelving with Bradshaw’s clothes…

There—a cabinet. She walked over and opened it, ignoring the conversation behind her as Shelley continued to question him.

“Were you at the fair alone, or were you meeting someone there?”

Zoe rifled through the drawers, looking for something that would work. There wasn’t much kept in the room—no syringes or bottles of pills, nothing that a patient could use to harm themselves. But there was a box of Band-Aids. Thinking, Zoe opened it up, pouring them out onto the top of the cabinet with her body blocking Bradshaw’s view.

“I was meeting my sister. She had her kids with her, so she went home early. I was going to go home too, but the car wouldn’t start.”

Zoe began tearing the strips of connected Band-Aids into singles, making quick and regular movements, two or three sets at a time. She dropped each single back into the box in a haphazard manner. She didn’t want them to be regular or uniform, not for this.

“Ivan, help me out here. I want to understand so we can let you rest. Just talk me through what was going through your mind, okay? You were at your car, checking the oil levels…”

“And next thing I know, there’s someone yelling crazy stuff about the FBI.”

“Did you think she was yelling at you at that point?”

“No, why would I? I was just minding my own business!”

Zoe walked back to the bed and yanked a wheeled food tray over Bradshaw’s lap. He was watching her with a kind of baffled panic.

“What’s she doing now?” he demanded, looking back between Shelley and Zoe as Zoe upended the box and allowed the Band-Aids to tumble out. “Is this a threat?”

The Band-Aids sailed down, scattering across the tray, some of them slipping over to land on the covers of the bed. There was no particular pattern or shape to them, but Zoe knew their guy. She knew he would see a pattern there. She stared down at it herself, starting to organize lines and vertices, checking for the links.

It took her thirteen seconds, but she saw it. Because of the way the box had tipped and the even distribution of the Band-Aids down onto the surface, it had created a more or less distinct sixteen-sided shape. Not an even one, but a shape all the same. The killer would see it—would know it for a sign in his deluded mind.

“What is she doing?” Bradshaw asked again, his voice hissing with fear and confusion, addressed only to Shelley. “I want someone in here with me. This isn’t safe.”

Zoe watched his face closely. “Do you not see it?”

“See what?” Bradshaw looked down at the Band-Aids again, before raising his head. “See what?”

It was tricky, but there was always the chance that he was faking it. Pretending not to see the pattern. Zoe knew she had to up the stakes, and show him that she knew what he was doing.

He wouldn’t be able to prevent his reaction if she drew the one pattern that meant more to him than any other.

She lifted her index finger and slowly, carefully, drew as near an approximation of a Fibonacci spiral as she could in the shifting mass of Band-Aids, clearing out a route like a path through a maze.

But when she looked up, with her task complete, Bradshaw was watching her with even more confusion than before.

“I want a lawyer or something,” he said. “You can’t do this. This is intimidation, this freaky stuff. She shouldn’t be anywhere near me.”

“Shelley?” Zoe cut across him, looking over at her partner.

Shelley shook her head. “I was watching his face the whole time, Z. He doesn’t recognize the shape. I don’t think he has any clue what’s going on here.”

Zoe slammed her hand down onto the tray, pushing the Band-Aids over onto the floor as she shoved the tray back away from the bed. Another dead end. Another waste of time.

She strode out into the corridor, not waiting for Shelley to follow her, and marched until she found a vending machine. Punching the buttons with more force than was necessary, she waited for the machine to pour out a weak cup of burnt coffee and threw it into her mouth without waiting to check whether it was cool enough.

“Z?”

Zoe turned to see Shelley approaching her cautiously, her steps light and careful. Zoe counted them. One, two, three, four, five. Counted anything, to try to get her heart rate back under control and stop the boiling in her blood at making yet another mistake.

“I told him that we’ll send the state troopers to talk to him later. Debrief, get some particulars, see if he really does have anything to hide or not.”

“I do not care about Bradshaw,” Zoe bit out. “He is not the man we were looking for.”

“I know.” Shelley sighed, placing a hand lightly on Zoe’s upper arm. “Don’t blame yourself. We all made the same mistake. We thought it was him.”

“It was my idea.” Zoe shook her head bitterly. “I was the one who suggested that we go after him. I took the shot.”

“Do you…” Shelley paused, biting her lip. “Do you think we got the wrong place?”

“No.” Zoe felt the conviction still strong in her chest, in her forehead. The pattern did not lie. “Right place, wrong man. I do not know how, but he slipped away from us. Now he knows that we are after him, we may not get the chance again.”

“Ma’am?”

It was Max, hesitating a good few feet away. He had, perhaps, seen Zoe’s violent attack on the coffee machine, and was unwilling to move closer. “We’ve just had word from the station. The story about his sister checks out. She had gone home with her children just a short while before we approached him. It sounds like he was just there for a day out with his family.”

Zoe did not trust her own voice to answer him. It was a relief when Shelley did it for her, simply thanking Max and dismissing him.

“We missed it,” Zoe said, as soon as he was out of earshot. She crumpled the paper coffee cup in her hand, a few last drops of the brown liquid dropping to the floor. “We had the best chance to catch him, and we missed it. He will kill again, if he has not already.”

Shelley said nothing, but moved closer and rested that light touch on Zoe’s arm again. Though it was hardly anything, almost not even there, somehow it was reassuring. A mother’s touch, Zoe thought. Something so alien to her that she had not ever understood it.

The moment was broken by the sound of buzzing at her hip, her cell phone vibrating with a call.

Zoe checked the caller ID, cursed inwardly, and then answered. “Special Agent Prime speaking.”

“I’ve received a report that you have shot a suspect while taking him into custody.” It was not her direct boss, but the man above him. A serious kind of phone call.

Zoe sighed. “Yes, sir.”

“And you’ve since ascertained that this man was innocent, is that correct?”

There was no point in denying it, or attempting to provide reasoning. “Yes, sir.”

“Why do I not have your report on my desk? Why am I hearing this from someone else?”

“We have just left the suspect after interrogation, sir. I am heading back to begin my report now.”