Face of Death

The girl had not ruined everything. No, this was only a small deviation from the plan. He still committed the murder exactly where he had planned to. She had run on ahead, but she was already dead from the moment his wire slipped around her neck—like a chicken, the body still moving after the head was gone.

The pattern was still intact.

It was just like the old man, the one they hadn’t found yet, up at the farmhouse where no one had seen him for days. He had tried to run, too. In the end, it had not changed a thing. The pattern began there, and here, it was able to continue. Like divine providence, keeping him on track, allowing him to realize his work fully.

His moment of celebration was short-lived. Now that he knew everything was going to be fine, there were steps he had to take. The pattern would continue, and that meant he could not leave behind any evidence for them to find and stop him before he finished tomorrow’s kill—or the day after, or the day after that.

The first thing was the blood trail. If he could take care of that, he could drive away before the sun came up, and no one would be any the wiser.

He stood straight, cracking his shoulders back, rolling them toward his spine. There was physical labor to be done again, which he did not mind at all. It purified the scene, made the pattern the only thing that was left. Removing all traces of himself was like an artist stepping back and allowing a painting to speak for itself. It was an act removed of ego, a reiteration of his devotion to the pattern, his belief that it was bigger than himself.

He found a dead branch nearby, the twigs and leaves still barely hanging on, a recent break. Perfect for sweeping away the marks from a crime scene. He hefted it and began to sweep away some of his own footsteps around the body, careful to walk backward, following her trail.

He stiffened as the gentle swish-swish of the branch was interrupted by another sound. He froze, stilling his whole body to listen again, pressing a button to deaden the light from his cell. What was that? A bird call?

No—there it was again: a human voice, and no mistaking it.

He listened intently, turning his head to catch the right direction of the wind, tuning his senses as much as he could. He peered ahead, as if seeing the source of the sound might make it clearer. There were voices, all right. Two men. Moving closer, maybe. Slowly, but surely.

“This is it, here.” One of the men.

Something from the other, too quiet to hear.

“Oh, rest your grumbling. Any critter worth its pelt knows we’re here already. They hear our steps. Bit of talking won’t make a difference. When we’re in the stand, I’ll be quiet.”

He squinted, analyzing the words. Hunters, most likely. Setting themselves up in tree stands to wait for the woods to adjust to their presence, for small and defenseless things to forget they were there. A long waiting game.

He couldn’t outwait them.

He had to get out, and do it now.

His tracks were still intact, the blood trail leading right from his car to the body. But there was no doing anything about it. He had to go, before they heard a cracked twig or a swish of the makeshift broom and saw him. Or even worse, shot at him, thinking him to be some kind of beast. It was time to leave, and there was nothing else he could do.

He fled back to his car in quick, careful steps, minding where he stood, never close enough to the blood trail to risk stepping in it and leaving imprints behind. He strayed to the side to discard the branch away from the path she had left, hoping it would avoid notice. One fallen branch among all the other fallen branches. None of this was finished—but it would have to be, or else he would have to stop now, before he was done with the rest.

His work was far from done. There were three more who had to die—and he wasn’t going to stop until they were all bled out on the ground, and the pattern was complete.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Zoe emptied her first coffee of the day and threw the Styrofoam cup into the trash can. It bounced against the back edge with a satisfying finality, dropping out of sight to rest alongside many of its brothers and sisters.

“The coffee here is dreadful,” Shelley remarked, staring miserably into her own cup.

Zoe could not help but agree.

She rubbed at her eyes, willing them to open wider. Early morning starts were always rough after late night finishes, but she had grown used to them over the years. The routine was simple: pump your body full of enough caffeine to get you moving, and your brain will follow.

Still, watching the security camera footage they had pulled from everywhere within a five-mile radius of the gas station—which amounted to very few files, given its location—was a challenge of even her early bird mentality. Her eyes either picked up all kinds of numbers that were irrelevant and distracting, or wanted to droop shut at the sheer boredom of seeing nothing for minutes on end.

She darted her vision between the timestamp at the bottom of the screen and the main view incessantly, watching time creep on closer to the murder. No vehicles had yet entered or left the field of view of the truck stop. It was a more populated place than the gas station, even at night, but the trucks in the parking lot had mostly settled in for a sleep. Nothing moved.

A blue car flashed by, on the small portion of road that was visible to the side of the parking lot. It moved fast, and even with her finger on the pause button, Zoe only managed to hit it once it was gone.

She tracked back, frame by frame, until it was contained within the small section of the screen that held the road. She checked the timestamp. It was perfectly within the window. The driver would have had time to get to the gas station, commit the murder, and be gone in line with the timeframe they had narrowed it down to.

She played it forward again, watching the time flash by. Minutes turned into hours. Nothing else traveled the lane that she could see on the camera.

She went back, returned to the precise moment when the car could be fully seen. Zoe squinted, peering so closely that her nose almost bumped the screen, trying to take down the license plate. Was that an O or a D? She flicked back and forth between the frames, trying to make it out.

“I have got something,” she said, pulling Shelley’s attention. “There was a car caught on the security camera on the approach to the gas station. It works for the timing, and no other vehicles appear to pass by for at least an hour. I have the plate. I just need to run it through the database.”

Shelley’s face brightened with excitement, as she hurried around to look over Zoe’s shoulder at the frozen image. “That could be him, Z,” she breathed.

“I will bring up the details,” Zoe said, stopping the video playback file and opening up a program that would allow her to run the plates through the national database. Her first try, with the D, gave them nothing. The O turned up a hit.

“Jimmy Sikes,” Shelley read out loud. She returned to her own computer, where the FBI software was already waiting for input of names. “Got him. Let’s see… oh, wow, Z, he has a record. He just got released on probation a few months ago.”

“What for?” Zoe asked.

“Assault,” Shelley read, turning wide eyes to her. “Violent past. You think this could be the guy?”

Zoe raised her eyebrows, thinking about it. “Could be. He was in the area, and having a criminal record certainly makes it more likely. We need to talk to him immediately.”

“His probation address is listed as his sister’s residence. Should I call her?”

Zoe nodded her assent, watching how Shelley fumbled breathlessly for the desk phone and input the numbers before taking a calming breath. She was excited. She was still green, still exhilarated by the prospect of a solve. Zoe enjoyed closing a case as much as the next person, but she had also been in the game long enough to know that identifying a suspect was nowhere close at all to putting it to bed.

“Hello, am I speaking to Manda Sikes?” Shelley said into the receiver, her eyes darting away from Shelley and down to a blank page of her notebook in concentration. “Hello, Manda. My name is Special Agent Shelley Rose with the FBI. I’m calling in regards to your brother, Jimmy.”

There was a pause as Manda spoke. Shelley nodded, even though the other woman could not see her, opening and closing her mouth several times as she waited for a moment to cut in.

“No, I understand. This is not in regards to his assault conviction. We’re actually looking to speak with him about another case.”

Another pause. Longer, this time. Shelley glanced up at Zoe in alarm at whatever Manda was saying.

“So you haven’t seen him since then? And that was—right, five days ago. He hasn’t made contact of any kind? You’ve tried calling him? Okay. Right. Could you tell me his cell number?”

Shelley made notes on the pad, scratching out a number in quick strokes of her pen. She exchanged a few more words with Manda before hanging up, then gave Zoe a raised eyebrow.

“Jimmy Sikes has not returned home for a number of days?” Zoe asked.

“Not since before our first murder. Manda says that she’s tried calling him over and over again, but his cell is switched off. She thought we were his probation worker trying to track him down at first.”

“So, it is looking more and more likely that Jimmy may be involved with our case. I will liaise with the team back at HQ to get a trace on his cell, and search for flags for his license plate.”

Shelley nodded, putting her pen down. “I’ll finish going through the security footage we have. It might not show us anything else, but at least we’ll know for sure that that part is ticked off.”

Zoe moved quickly, placing the necessary calls and entering data into her computer, logged into the FBI’s databases. This was a high-priority case, and with a judge already on standby to sign off on search warrants, things were going to go fast for them. Still, it took a number of hours, impatient tapping of pens and jiggling of knees, before they had the information they needed.