Face of Murder

Just like the numbers had been mixed up in the equations.

And, oh god, there it was: Matthias had been a student of Henderson’s. He’d known Cole. God, there it all was.

It was him.

This benign-looking, innocuous student. This college dropout who had once had everything at his feet thanks to his supreme intelligence. This boy who Wardenford had spoken with and come to know, and hoped to lead to greatness.

He was a murderer.

Wardenford made sure to smile at him, willing himself to carry it right through to his eyes. Matthias had never been stupid, and he wasn’t now. If there was any way that he suspected that Wardenford knew who he really was—and, he realized with an extra thrill of fear—why he was really there, it would be over.

Because Matthias Kranz wasn’t there for a cup of coffee and a nice chat about old times.

He was there to murder James Wardenford.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Zoe hit the brake hard and quickly shifted into reverse. “Damn it! This one?”

“Yeah, down there,” Shelley said, doing her best to juggle her attention between the GPS and the phone in her hand. “No, not you, Fred. Right. And there’s no connection?”

Zoe didn’t like the way Shelley’s conversation sounded like it was going. They were flying blind at the moment, heading for Matthias Kranz’s student housing because it was the only logical lead that they had as to his location. A trace on his cell would make it a lot easier to track him down, but Shelley didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with setting that up.

“Okay. Keep an eye on it, please, Fred. Just let me know as soon as it pops up again. This is an active pursuit, okay? Thanks. You’re a star. Okay, talk later.”

Shelley ended the call, shifting in the passenger seat and looking around. “It should be one of these ones coming up, right? Fred says he can’t get a trace on the kid’s cell. We’ll just have to hope that he’s home.”

“Why do I feel like I already know he is not?” Zoe growled, slowing down as she peered through the side windows at numbers posted outside of houses.

“Because you’re an optimistic, happy-go-lucky kind of gal,” Shelley joked, without so much as cracking a smile. “Here. It’s this one.”

Shelley was out of the car and halfway across the sidewalk by the time Zoe had managed to get it into park, and she was a few steps behind still by the time Shelley was banging on the front door.

“I will go around the back,” she said, spotting a dilapidated wooden door in the poorly maintained fence between the house and the one next to it. Sure enough, the door flew open without much effort on her part, the wood too dry and old to fit snugly into the frame anymore. It wasn’t locked.

At the back of the house, a yard grown almost knee-high with weeds and grasses took up only fifteen feet by ten—enough for it to attract a higher price tag, but apparently not enough for the student residents to want to take care of it.

Zoe assessed the back of the house: two sets of windows on the ground floor, three sets of windows above, almost the same as the front. The difference was that the middle window was small and slotted—a bathroom window, not big enough for anyone to climb out of. Still, Zoe kept her eye on the others for a sign of movement.

It was the back door that opened instead, and her instinct to spring toward it and prevent anyone from leaving was met with owlish concern from a young man in spectacles. He was five foot four—short for a male, and certainly too short to be their killer.

“Your partner told me to let you in,” he said, leaning back away from her as if concerned that she would tackle him. “She headed upstairs to check the rooms, but I told her there’s no point. Matthias isn’t here. He went out early this morning.”

“How early?” Zoe asked, stepping inside. From here, she could see both the front and back exits. A good enough place to wait for Shelley to finish her checks, in case someone decided to make a break for it.

“I don’t know, man. Before I woke up. His shoes are gone, that’s how I know.”

“Do you have any idea where he went?”

“No.” The student seemed taken aback, confused even, by her questioning. “What’s this about?”

“This is about an FBI investigation, which you are obstructing if you do not answer all of our questions truthfully,” Zoe snapped. Perhaps Shelley wouldn’t have approved, but there was no time for the light touch here. Lives were at stake. “Think very carefully. Do you have any idea—even the smallest clue—about where Matthias is right now?”

The kid was still half-asleep, clearly, but that seemed to snap him awake. “Uh, okay, okay, just let me think! Uh… well, last night he said something.”

“What did he say?” Zoe asked, impatient and angry that she even had to ask the question to drag the information out of him.

“He talked about this guy who used to be his professor. He got, like, fired or something. Or quit, I don’t know. Anyway, Matthias was saying how he wanted to go check the guy was good or whatever. I don’t know. I thought it sounded kind of dumb, but Matthias actually likes his professors, you know? Like they’re people. Not like they’re professors or whatever.”

Zoe could barely contain her exasperation. As if professors were not people. This young man needed some sense put into him, but there was hardly any time to address that now. “Which professor? What was his name?”

“Oh, uh… I don’t think he gave me a name,” the student stuttered.

Shelley clattered down the stairs, the heels of her shoes striking each of the steps with a staccato cacophony. “Upper floor is clear,” she said.

“Did you check down here?”

“No. Watch the doors.” Shelley disappeared from view momentarily, first on one side of the hall and then on the other, as she checked the downstairs rooms. Then she was out again, shaking her head.

“This one says Matthias went to visit an old professor.”

“Mathematics?”

“I don’t know!” The student raised his hands, looking back and forth between both of them. “I swear, I have no idea. I don’t even like Matthias. This was just a cheap option so we could split the rent. We got matched up by this service at the college. Seriously, I don’t know where he spends his time.”

Shelley snapped her fingers, apparently struck by sudden inspiration. “Was it James Wardenford?”

“Oh, yeah,” the student replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Now that you said it, I remember. Yeah. Professor Wardenford.”

“You have been almost useless,” Zoe informed him, before nodding to Shelley and leading the way back out of the building.

“I’m calling him now,” Shelley said, hitting buttons on her cell and lifting it to her ear. “We’d better get over to his apartment. If Matthias is there right now, he’s in danger.”

“And probably stinking drunk,” Zoe remarked, getting back behind the wheel of the car.

Shelley slid into the passenger seat, then swore and took the cell from her ear. “No answer. I’ll try him again.”

Zoe paused only to search for the address in her GPS—easy enough to find, since she knew how many places she had been since then and could simply choose the right option in the history—before hitting the accelerator and pulling out. “How did you think of Wardenford?”

Shelley was playing with her pendant with the hand that wasn’t holding her cell. “He was dismissed before Matthias had his accident. If he’s been out of the loop, he might be the only person from Georgetown who Matthias had contact with that doesn’t know about it. Either that, or Matthias has already been to him for help before and Wardenford figured out what was wrong, and now Matthias wants revenge. I don’t know. Wardenford didn’t mention Matthias when we knew the equations were all tangled up. I’m guessing he would still be in the dark.”

“Why would he go there, if not to kill him?” Zoe frowned, hitting the gas to avoid colliding with a slow-moving car as she made a sharp turn.

“If he isn’t aware that Matthias has been having any difficulties, then he could represent the last person from Matthias’s old life who will act as though nothing has happened. Treat him as though he’s still as capable as he was. That could be huge for him.”

Zoe thought about it. She had something that was entirely the opposite: the relief of being around the very few people who did know her diagnosis, and no longer having to pretend that she was like everyone else. But if everyone knew, except from a select few? She could see how there might be comfort in that, too. If her cover was blown and people started treating her even more like an alien, then she would want to go back to the one person who still thought she was just rude and aloof.

“But Wardenford knows about the equations now,” Zoe realized. “If he connects the dots in any way—if Matthias somehow shows his hand—”