Face of Murder

Matthias sighed, another flood of tears escaping from his eyes.

“There’s one thing I don’t yet understand,” Shelley said, flicking to another page of her notes. Here was a blown-up image of each of the equations, along with Dr. Applewhite’s theoretical calculations below. “You deliberately implicated Dr. Francesca Applewhite. You planted her hairs at Dr. North’s home, am I correct?”

He nodded.

“For the tape,” Zoe said, quietly, “the suspect nodded.” She wanted to make sure the records were absolutely clear on that part.

“You must have had to do some very creative work to get hold of those hairs, and to place them so carefully,” Shelley continued.

Matthias smiled faintly at the praise. “Got from her office chair. People’s head—head—hair falls out. They just leave it there. Easy to take.”

“What I don’t understand is why it had to be her. This was a focused decision, but as far as I can see, Dr. Applewhite has no involvement in your medical history. She hadn’t even met you.”

Matthias scoffed, his facing turning into a mask of disgust. “I didn’t need to meet her. She went and published that faulty equation for everyone to see, hasn’t she? She will ask for help from others. Couldn’t even get it right herself.”

Zoe’s head hurt. It was hard enough keeping up with the way normal people spoke. Matthias was a nightmare—tenses changing, words out of order, misused. She was thinking that she would probably have to ask Shelley for a full translation once this was over. Matthias clearly tried to talk as little as possible to hide his defects, but he could not help himself—he wasn’t yet used to staying quiet. He had to explain himself.

“So, this was about the equation—the one that you included in your own equations?” Shelley prompted.

“You figured it out, huh? Well, I’m impressed.” Matthias leaned back in his chair, looking off to the side as he thought. “Mind you, you did have Professor Wardenford’s help. But anyway, I solved it. I—found it. I had it all ready, just needed to write something up so that I could publish it. In a real journal. My first one.”

Zoe noticed that he seemed to be clearer when he talked about the things he cared about the most. It was as if the anger was driving his focus, allowing him to get closer to the issue, find the right words.

“That must have been disappointing.”

Zoe almost missed it—Shelley’s words came out of left field for her. Disappointing, how? But she looked at Mattias and how he seemed to agree in every line of his downcast posture and expression, and it dawned on her. Ah. He couldn’t publish a paper if he couldn’t write one. Not only that, but even if he managed it, his debut publication would be his last. His bright future, extinguished in a single crash.

“I wanted that—dog to know. I wanted her to know someone else had solved it. I wanted her to know that I was smarter than her. And then I wanted her to pay for publishing something like that without getting it right. I knew you’d let—Teacher Wardenford go if you thought it was her.”

“You included yourself in the equation too, didn’t you?”

He looked up, almost with shock. “You saw that?”

“The capital ‘M.’ It was hard to miss.”

He looked down at the table, his eyes moving over invisible patterns there. Trapped by his own hubris. His need to leave a signature. Perhaps he had never imagined that law enforcement would be smart enough to spot it.

They were almost done. All of the loose ends were tied up: they had his motivation, his method, and his confessions. There would be time later, after they’d all had a good sleep, to go back in exhaustive detail and find out how he committed each crime in the minutiae. It was unlikely that he would try to protest his innocence in court, and even if he did, the evidence they had against him was building. They had access to credit card records now, to his phone records, to his license plate that could be traced through surveillance footage to track his movements. They had him up against the wall, and he knew it.

But Zoe wanted to clear up one last thing, before she let him go and sit in a cell for a few hours.

“I have the report from your car accident here, Mr. Kranz,” she said.

That got his attention. He looked up at her, eyes narrowed slightly, waiting to see what she would say.

“The interesting thing,” Zoe continued, “is that there was an investigation into the accident, because at first it was not clear what had happened. You claimed no memory of the events, and it was important to find out whether the car was faulty and so on. Well, it says here that they figured out what had happened after looking into your cell phone records. You were in the middle of a text conversation at the moment of the accident. In fact, you had just fired off a message when you lost control of the car.”

“Lies,” Matthias hissed. He made to lunge at her, or perhaps at the report, but all he accomplished was to rattle the chains of his handcuffs against the desk.

“We will be seeing you later, Mr. Kranz,” Zoe promised, standing up. “For now, this interview is terminated.”

She exchanged a look with Shelley, and they left the room, walking away from the seething rage and indecipherable noises that were issuing from Matthias Kranz.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

“That is the last of it.” Zoe placed one more piece of paper on top of the pile they had worked through together. “Everything should be in place now.”

“I hope you’re right about this idea of doing all the paperwork first so you can relax later,” Shelley said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I could sleep for a week. I probably made a ton of mistakes.”

“You did not. I was checking,” Zoe said, gathering the neat pile and pushing it into a folder for easier filing. “I will get these over to SAIC Maitland. You can go home.”

“Are you sure?” Shelley asked. “Wait—Zoe, didn’t you get a lift here? Where’s your car?”

Zoe had to think about it for an embarrassingly long time, tracing back all of her steps across the morning, the night, and the evening before. “I left it at home. I got the subway to meet John, and he drove me here.”

“I’ll wait and drop you home first, then,” Shelley said.

“You do not have to do that. I am capable of getting home by myself.”

“I know you are. But as your partner, I’d like to make that easier for you.” Shelley paused and ran a hand back over her hair, checking whether it was still neatly fitted into her ponytail. It was. “Zoe, I… I wanted to apologize. I think sometimes I think of you as being this fragile person that needs protecting from the outside world, but that’s not it at all. You know what’s good for you. I just have to listen to what you’re telling me, and stop going all Mama Bear about making sure you eat and sleep and relax.”

Zoe paused, considering what her partner had said. It was true, she had noticed that mothering instinct in Shelley. It had caused problems, too. But there was more to it than that. “I appreciate that you care,” she admitted. “I know you mean well. I suppose I am trying to please you in my own way, too. It is just that I am not like other people. I cannot do all of the things that other people can.”

“I know that now. Forcing you into social situations—even if I don’t think of them as social, like my home—I won’t do that again.”

Zoe sighed. She sat back down in her chair, realizing that this was more than just a quick chat. “That was my fault. I wanted to have dinner with your family. In other circumstances, it might have been good.”

“So, what was it?” Shelley asked, sitting next to her again.

“With Dr. Applewhite… I felt that I had done a great wrong. I have no one else, just her. And when I saw your perfect, beautiful family—your life—everything that you have, I…” Zoe took a deep breath before admitting t out loud. “I got jealous.”

“You don’t need to be jealous of me,” Shelley half-laughed. “I mean, god, my life isn’t perfect. Amelia is a kid like any other. She pees the bed sometimes and drops food all over the floor and draws on the walls. And me and Harry, we argue. All the time, about silly little things.”

“At least you have a husband and a child,” Zoe pointed out. “But it does not matter. I know now. I do not need to be jealous of you anymore.”

“Because you know it’s not perfect?”

Zoe shook her head. “Because I can have that for myself. I can work hard and strive for the life that I want.” She took a breath again, realizing that what she was about to say was true. “The life I now finally know that I deserve.”

Shelley squeezed Zoe’s hand silently, a gesture of support and togetherness. There was peace for a moment, neither of them stirring or saying a word.

“Damn,” Zoe said then, getting up from her chair to resume where they had left off. “I guess that therapist I have been seeing is pretty good, after all.”

EPILOGUE

Zoe settled down opposite Dr. Monk. She had never really appreciated before how comfortable the chairs in her therapy room were. The leather armchair was perfectly worn and used, not yet to the point of losing the softness of its cushions and yet molded into the right shape for a human body.

Just like Dr. Monk itself, it had learned how to embrace each of the patients who came in and sat down, and make them feel right at home.