Face of Death

Not that there was any time for something like that, when you were a special agent tasked with tracking down a mass murderer.

That knowledge did not mean that she could turn the numbers off. She tried to focus on faces and bodies, not cards and bets. There was no point in knowing that there was going to be a payout on the next spin of the roulette wheel, or which of the poker players was a shark and which genuinely had no idea how to bet. None of that would save the killer’s next target.

Zoe followed the twists and turns of the path, alone now, her two shadows having slipped away—one to remain at the entrance and the other to her right, stalking through the maze of slots. She wound through the card tables, trying to look less like an agent and more like a seasoned gambler seeking the right game, though she hardly knew how to make the difference. So long as she looked at the faces, it was all right. But when she let her gaze dip to the tables to keep up appearances, the numbers flooded in, almost to the point of distracting her from her mission.

A movement caught her eye up ahead, and her gaze was drawn to another roulette table, this one served by an attractive blonde croupier. The woman was scraping chips toward winners, scooping the losing bets toward her, announcing the next game. A number of people were gathered around her, four—no, five—all with their attention on the betting grid.

And there, in the middle of them, with the side of his face toward her—Jimmy Sikes.

Zoe reached for her radio, lifting it to her face, but he was sharing a joke with another gambler and happened to look to the side and smile as Zoe moved toward him. He clocked the radio in her hand, her eyes fixed on him, and the laughter died in his throat. After a brief moment, perhaps half a second, he turned on his heel and pushed off at a dead run.

Zoe swore under her breath, pressing the call button. “Suspect identified. He is on foot, attempting escape from the card tables. Keep control of the exits.” She trusted her own men, and the casino’s own security staff, to handle that. So long as they were all in position, there was no chance he was getting away.

She dashed after him, seeing the cop out of the corner of her eye, moving out of the machines in her direction and beginning to speed up. Sikes was only a table ahead, but he had the advantage of the crowd, pushing through them and sending people scattering in surprise, resistant and forming new barriers when Zoe arrived a moment later.

He chanced a look behind him and saw how close she was, his eyes wide and wild. “Stop! FBI!” Zoe called out, giving him a chance to do the right thing.

They never did the right thing.

She was fumbling to unholster her gun while she ran, getting it into her hand, steadying it with the radio in the other. If he was armed, there was no telling what kind of move he might make. There was no way to know if he would resist them with violence.

“Stop and put your hands above your head!” she called out again, people scattering in front of her in response to her calls. Sikes zigged and zagged amongst the tables, looking over his shoulder with ragged gasps, panic written clear on his face.

He ran into a blackjack table, almost taking out the croupier as he body-slammed it, pushing with his arms until it flipped over and through the air, spending chips and cards flying. There was a crescendo so close in front of Zoe that she almost fell into it, and only the briefest pause before people were flooding forward, scrambling to pick up as many chips as they could hold, blocking her path.

“FBI! Get out of the way!” Zoe shouted desperately, but it had done the trick for Sikes. He was getting away, pulling out distance as she fought her way through the crowd. He had enough of an advantage now that she could see him getting away—and for good, if he managed to slip past their man at the door.

But he was running in a particular way, she could see now. He had been here for hours, most likely, making his way from station to station, playing different games, having a great time. He knew the layout of the room, at least better than she did. And there was a kind of method to his madness, a series of acute angles that jerked back and forth across the casino floor, ignoring the path entirely in favor of the fastest route toward the back of the room.

Zoe stopped moving and watched him. There was no sense in trying to shoot, not with this many civilians in the way. There was no way she could catch up with him now. But there were at least three other people in this casino who had a chance to stop him, and she could help with that.

She saw his path, traced like a line with a ruler in her mind’s eye, a zigzag which was anything but random. He struck out left and right and skirted every other table, finding the clearest path to the door, even if it didn’t seem to make sense to those who couldn’t see it. The lines continued clearly right the way to the back of the room, which Zoe could now see as they entered the farthest part of the casino. Laid out in front of her from left to right, Zoe saw the lines overlaid on her view of the room in a literal sense, pointing her in the right direction.

And she could see Shelley, making her way toward him.

“Shelley,” Zoe barked into the radio. “The end of the bar, to your left. Intercept him beside the third column.”

Zoe watched Shelley hear the message, her head snapping around toward the bar. She noticed the column and headed toward it at a run, even as Zoe herself started moving again, following with her feet as well as her eyes.

One last row of tables to clear—

Jimmy Sikes dashed to the side, away from the cop that was approaching him, and skewed toward the bar, his feet taking around the fourth column in a row of them and beyond.

“Stop!” Shelley’s voice, calling out, and then a crunching noise, like a body colliding with the floor.

Zoe’s view was blocked by the third column—she could not see Shelley or Jimmy—but he had not emerged, and neither had Shelley. Zoe rounded the corner, opening up her view, and breathed a deep gasp of air in relief to see Shelley snapping handcuffs onto Jimmy’s wrists with trained precision.

She arrived, a little out of breath and feeling the effects of the adrenaline that had flooded her system during the chase, as Shelley finished reading Jimmy his rights. The other cops converged upon them, taking Jimmy by the shoulders to march him back to the parking lot. Zoe breathed again, exchanging a grin and a secret fist-bump of success with Shelley.

“We got him, Z,” Shelley said, laughing.

And Zoe wondered why she didn’t quite feel so confident as she had a short while ago that they really did have their man.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Zoe slouched into a chair in the sheriff’s office, her full attention on the screen of his computer. He had swiveled it around on his desk so that she could watch the video feed as, next door, Shelley sat down with Jimmy Sikes.

“It’s probably not what you’re used to,” the sheriff said, by way of both gruff apology and defense of his precinct. “We don’t quite have the budget that you all do up at the Bureau. No two-way mirrors and high-tech surveillance here. We don’t have the space.”

“That is fine,” Zoe told him, nodding toward the screen. “I can see everything here.”

“You sure she’s fine in there on her own? I only mean, I gathered you were the senior agent.”

“Special Agent Rose will handle it just fine,” Zoe said, smiling. It was not for his reassurance or encouragement, but simply because she found his doubt amusing. “She has a reputation for interrogation. Just watch.”

The man settled back into his own desk chair, the old leather creaking with his weight as they both watched in silence.

Shelley was already on the screen, sitting opposite Jimmy Sikes, whose handcuffs were threaded through a bar on the table to keep him in check. He had been watching her, chewing on one of his rough, dirty fingernails, for a good five minutes as she read through her files without saying a word. She calmly flicked through page after page, never so much as looking up to acknowledge him.

Zoe worried; not about Shelley, but about Sikes. He was heavier than she had wanted. The crime scenes had, she felt, indicated a lighter man. Sikes had put some weight on since his details were last updated. Not only that but the way he chewed on his nails was—wrong, somehow. At odds with the careful fastidiousness told by the marks the killer never left behind.

Sikes was growing more fidgety, shifting his weight from side to side, spitting a chewed-up fingernail out on the floor. Shelley’s technique was working, putting him off guard. He would have expected a fired-up shouting match, a grizzled old cop trying to intimidate him. The silence was not what he was used to—nor was the light and easy smile that Shelley flashed him from time to time as she continued reading.

Shelley finished looking through her files and glanced up, settling into a more comfortable and open posture. “Mr. Sikes,” she said warmly. “Jimmy, if I may.”

He stared at her, saying nothing, eyeing her out of one side of his head like a cornered dog.

“You’ve got quite the record, haven’t you?” It was said with a smile, as if encouraging him to brag about his exploits rather than judging him.

“Served my time.”

“What was that, Jimmy?”

“I said, I served my time. I’m out. You can’t punish me for those no more.”

“Well, we can, actually, Jimmy. Because you were released on probation, weren’t you?” Shelley made a show of consulting her records, though Zoe knew she had already memorized them. “For aggravated assault, it says here. A violent crime.”

Jimmy said nothing into the silence she left between them, only turning to spit another of his fingernails onto the floor. It hit the ground with a thud that was only audible to Zoe. The thud of truth. Their killer would never do that. Never leave DNA evidence behind.

“And because you were on probation, Jimmy, you weren’t supposed to leave the state. Were you? And yet we have records that show you and your car moving all the way from your sister’s home—Manda’s home—down through Missouri and over here to Kansas. That’s quite a journey, isn’t it?”

Jimmy shifted, his eyes hitting the surface of the table between them. He was thinking something over, his gaze distant and unfocused. Zoe shook her head tightly. This was all wrong. Their killer was smart, calm, careful. He would have spoken, had some kind of cover already prepared. He would never have allowed Shelley to railroad him like this.

“You also failed to check in with your probation officer, and all in all, that means you’re looking at going back inside for a violation. What a real shame. I’d like to see you rehabilitated, rather than facing more time behind bars.” Shelley made a show of checking all the details in the file, then closed it and set it to one side. “Of course, I might be able to help you out there. Because that’s not why we arrested you, is it?”

Jimmy’s head swiveled up, his eyes squinting. “… Ain’t it?”

Shelley smiled at him like they were best friends. “No, Jimmy. We arrested you because of the murders you committed this week.”