Face of Murder

“Thank you, dear.” Dr. Applewhite squeezed Zoe’s upper arm. “Really. You don’t have to wait with me. I know you must be eager to get back to it.”

“I do not mind,” Zoe said, but then Dr. Applewhite was exclaiming and waving at someone through the door, and her husband was parking the car, and Zoe was no longer needed.

***

Zoe sat down next to Shelley, sipping at the fresh, hot coffee she had just retrieved from the machine out in the hall. It was so hot it burned, but she needed it. The energy boost would get her through this last little bit of what needed to be done.

According to Shelley, it wouldn’t be needed for long. Before they entered, they had observed Matthias through the one-way mirror, and Shelley was confident that he would talk. Zoe settled into her chair, uncomfortable as it was, looking forward to watching Shelley do what she did best.

“So, Mr. Kranz,” Shelley said, pretending to consult her notes. An old trick. As if she hadn’t already memorized everything on the pages. “Why don’t we start right at the beginning—with your accident?”

Matthias Kranz was surly, arms folded across his chest, gaze fixed firmly on the table. Even so, there was something curiously blank and detached about his expression as he spoke.

“Huh. Accident. Funny.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Matthias looked up, his eyes spitting venom as they fixed on Shelley. Even Zoe could see the hate radiating from them. “Hell of a coincidence. You ask me, not an accident at all. A—a—push.”

“A push?”

Matthias snarled. “Don’t jo—jo—mock me.”

Shelley raised her chin an inch, something clearing up in her eyes. Zoe watched her with amazement. She wasn’t quite sure about what was going on, but watching Shelley read everything she needed to know from tone and body language was like a master class.

Zoe wondered briefly if this was what it was like for Shelley, to watch Zoe work with numbers.

“You mean, you think it was a set-up?” Shelley said, with new understanding. “Someone made you crash your car.”

“Something was tampered with. The brakes or something. No way it was me that crashed like that. I’m better at driving my—my…”

“Your car.”

“Yes!”

Shelley nodded and made some quick notes in pen on the sheet that she was looking at. Zoe read over her shoulder: delusional.

“All right. And what was their motive, whoever did this?”

“They knew,” Matthias said, sneering and jabbing a finger toward his own head. “They knew.”

Shelley’s eyes narrowed momentarily before she spoke again. Watching her, Zoe understood intuitively that she was reading, interpreting. That she was waiting for the pattern to clear up in her head, the way that Zoe would stare at a complex equation or series of numbers and wait for them to make sense in the context of the case.

“You believe that someone targeted you because of your gift with mathematics?” Shelley asked.

Matthias nodded vigorously. Perhaps he did not trust himself to get the right words.

“Okay. And after the accident, what changed?” Shelley’s agreement was light, uncomplicated. Not exactly a statement that she believed him, but not a judgment either. Something that could be taken as reassurance for a person who needed to hear it.

“Everything. The, um. The, um. The—the snakes.”

“Snakes?”

Matthias gestured toward his head again, bowing his neck, his gaze back to the table. “The snakes. I can’t—get there.”

There was a pause while Shelley watched him. “There’s something wrong in your head now, isn’t there, Matthias?”

He slammed a hand down on the table with loud and sudden force, enough to make Zoe—in her tired state—jump. His voice was strained when he spoke, and she was more than a little surprised to see tears escaping down his cheeks. “Everything’s wrong. Everything I had—all I worked for—the snakes ate it all up.”

“Talk us through what happened, in your own words.”

“There was a—a—a paper. Physics with the new guy. Professor Wardenford was gone. Cole was the SI. I—didn’t—I f—I…”

“You failed the paper.” Shelley was leaning forward in her seat, paying close attention. There was some kind of synergy between them now, some kind of wavelength that was working. She was understanding him.

“Yes.” Matthias hung his head. “I got my words mixed up. Had to explain a—known theory and I got my words mixed up. Then the numbers. He told the other one. Professor Henderson.”

“So, Cole Davidson was the first person who noticed you were having difficulties. That was why you killed him?”

Matthias’s eyes had hardened like flint. “Henderson, he had me take these—exams. Not exams, but…”

“Tests,” Shelley supplied.

“Tests. He came back and said I probably had dyslexia. But the numbers were off too and he thought that was strange. Then he told—then he told Cole.”

“Did Cole bring it up in class?”

“He offered help. Said I might need more—hours for my work. Get extra time on my deadlines.”

“What happened next?” Shelley leaned her head on steepled fingers, listening carefully.

“Sent me to Dr. North.” Matthias’s anger flared up again, and he kicked the metal table legs to either side of him. “Snakes—saw the snakes. He found the snakes all knotted up and he showed me. Showed me how I was changed.”

The picture was emerging. Every single victim, someone who had simply known about Matthias’s problems. Someone who had been instrumental in diagnosing them. Even though the injury was not the fault of any one of them, Matthias had latched his anger—which had no other outlet—onto them. One by one.

“The doctor was one of the people who tried to help you. Why kill him?”

Matthias scoffed, his hands bunched into tight fists on the table. “Help me? He said the snakes were—were there to stay. No way to kill them. Just have to live with them. Take pill this or pill that, make it better. Happy snakes. But always still the snakes.”

Shelley moved down her notes, to the final line. “What about your Professor Wardenford? We’ve heard that you looked up to him, even considered him a mentor. Why did you go to kill him?”

“He didn’t know.” There was real regret in Matthias’s eyes, at least as far as Zoe knew what it looked like in order to diagnose it. Another tear slipped down his cheek. His emotions were swinging wildly out of control. “I just wanted to talk. He didn’t know about the snakes like everyone else did. But then he knew. I saw it. I told him the time and I knew the snakes spat it out all wrong.”

“So you attacked him as well.” There was a little reproach in Shelley’s voice, creeping in as if she couldn’t help it.

“Is he…?”

Shelley met his eyes directly, eschewing a smile. “James Wardenford is in the hospital being treated for a fractured skull. They say he will pull through just fine.”