Face of Death

Jimmy Sikes nearly fell out of his chair. “What? I never!”

Shelley tutted and shook her head. “Now, now. Don’t lie to me, Jimmy. Not to me. I’m your best shot at getting a good deal with the judge, you know? I can help you figure something out—but only if you tell me the truth.”

“I ain’t killed nobody!” Jimmy shouted, shaking his head wildly. “I don’t know what you think you got me on, but I just been having some fun. That’s all. No killings.”

And Zoe believed him completely. This was all a waste of time. Jimmy Sikes wasn’t their man, and never had been. That was written in every slumped and careless angle of his body, the screwed-up lack of intelligence spread across his face, his word choices, his actions. Even the weight of his body.

She waited. Shelley would clear this up. They needed to be by the book, after all. If they weren’t, people would wonder why Zoe had not followed up every lead available to her.

Shelley folded her arms on the table top, retaining her smile. “Well, Jimmy, why don’t you tell me about the last few days, then? In your own words. Then we can sort out this silly misunderstanding.”

Jimmy gasped for air, then shook his head just as wildly again. “I know what you cops are up to. No way. No. I ain’t telling you a thing. You’re gonna pin this on me, make me look stupid. I know cops.”

Shelley sighed, resting her head on one hand. “I’m not a cop, Jimmy. I’m FBI. And all of this is being recorded. I’m not trying to trick you. I promise.”

“I been here before.” Jimmy shook his head. “No. Nope. I know this. You gonna try to pin it on me like that psycho ex of mine and her buddy the cop. I ain’t speaking to you.”

Shelley regarded him quietly, letting him cool down. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you may as well tell me, Jimmy. If you have alibis, we can go check them out. See if you’re on the cameras. There’s always cameras. Even in here.”

Jimmy looked up, frantically searching in the area that Shelley had pointed, until his eyes locked onto the lens. He stared right into it. Zoe shivered a little, feeling like their eyes were meeting even though of course he couldn’t see her through it, the way that she could see him.

“So, you see, Jimmy, no one can make out like you said something you didn’t say. It’s all being recorded. And if I tried to trick you, I would lose my job.”

Jimmy looked back at Shelley, sweating. “You’re not gonna frame me?”

“You tell me what happened, and I’ll tell you if you can go,” Shelley said, layering meaning on the last words to make sure he got the point. “That’s the only way you’re getting out of here. And trust me, I don’t want an innocent man sitting in here any more than you do.”

Jimmy leaned back against his seat, his chain clinking and almost pulling him back when he tried to pull his arms too far. He sucked in a deep breath, then looked up at Shelley. “I was in the casino in Potawatomi. I hit a heater, you know? Got sat down opposite this green kid and took him for everything he brought with him, and his friend some besides.”

“And when was this?”

“I guess like… four. Five days ago? Maybe four. I don’t know exactly.”

“You went to the casino from Manda’s house?”

“Yeah.”

Shelley checked the notes she’d written down from her call with Manda. “That was six days ago, Jimmy.”

“Well, shit,” he said, and laughed.

“So, you get this big win, right? A lot of money?” Shelley shifted her weight forward, giving him all of her attention.

“More’n I ever had.” Jimmy nodded. “So I go out to the bar, and then I think, nah, I shouldn’t be staying around here. The kid and his pals, the bouncers, maybe they got a thing against an ex-con winning big.”

“So where did you go?”

“Got in my car and drove to the next bar. Just off the highway. Stayed there ’til closing time, then I slept a few hours in my back seat and drove to the next bar.”

Shelley had been lifting her notes, checking through them, lining up his sightings with his story, but at this she paused and laid them down. “Are you telling me, Jimmy, that you’ve been drinking for the last five days straight?”

Jimmy shrugged. “Spent some of it at a couple of casinos, too. I got superstitious. Any time I had a good win, I moved on.”

Shelley clicked the top of her pen, drawing out the nib. “I’m going to need you to give me the names and locations of these casinos and bars, Jimmy. You’re doing great. We’ll have you out of here in no time.”

Zoe was already entering the name of the first bar into her phone, bringing up a search for the location—and the phone number. She walked out of the room and started to dial, watching from a window in the closed door as Shelley finished making notes and got up to leave the room.

“Hello? Yes, I would like to speak to your manager. My name is Special Agent Zoe Prime with the FBI,” she said into the phone, catching Shelley’s eye as she entered the corridor. “I am calling to request that you send over your surveillance footage from a few nights ago to help us in an investigation.”

Between Shelley, Zoe, the sheriff, and his team, they tracked down all of the locations Jimmy said he had been. Though his times were a little off—no doubt distorted by the alcohol and the way time seemed to move differently inside casinos—several hours of trawling through emailed footage slowly ticked off his alibis.

He was visible in security camera reels during the estimated times of all of the murders.

Every single one.

Shelley slammed her notebook onto the desk in frustration. “We have to let him go. He’s not the guy,” she said.

“We’ll still hand him over for the probation violation,” the sheriff reminded her. “I’ll go make some calls. They’ll want to transfer him back to his home county.”

He left Shelley and Zoe alone in their investigation room, the others having each filed out after checking their respective tapes. They were the only ones left, facing down once again the same position they had been in before tracking down Jimmy Sikes.

“We’ll get him,” Shelley said, wearily. “We will. This is just a little setback.”

Zoe nodded. “I know we will. I wanted it to be before he took another victim. We have wasted precious hours with Sikes.”

“How did you know where he was going to be?”

Zoe lifted her head at the abrupt question, ducking her eyes immediately when she saw that Shelley was watching her closely. “What do you mean?”

“You and I had the same data,” Shelley said. “You knew as much as I did. But you managed to track him down to the casino, even though there was no way you could have known he would definitely be there. Then, when he tried to run—you knew where he would go. You directed me to the exact position where I could stop him.”

Zoe said nothing. Technically, there had been no question. She could continue looking at the files in front of her in silence, her eyes roaming over words and pictures without seeing a thing.

“How did you know?” Shelley repeated.

Zoe felt something in her throat, a lump that threatened to swallow the easy, rehearsed words. Maybe she could admit it. Maybe Shelley would understand. She had been fairly understanding so far, and kind, and nice. Maybe this was the person that Zoe could confide in.

But the number of people in the world who knew about her synesthesia, the numbers and patterns that flew in front of her eyes wherever she looked, could be counted without needing all the fingers of one hand. And a secret that had been so closely guarded—the ability since childhood, and the diagnosis since she received it as a young adult—could not be so easily given away.

“It’s just a combination of luck and experience,” Zoe said, turning the page, still without reading a word. “Once you’ve been going for as long as I have, you’ll be able to spot things a bit easier. Then you make your best guess, and hope you get it right.”

There was something in the air now, something that hung so heavily over Zoe’s neck that she was sure it must have gained visible physical manifestation. That Shelley was looking at her and seeing it, and knowing that she was not telling the whole truth.

“Just luck? That’s how you knew he would dodge to the side, instead of staying on course to where the others were waiting?”

There was hard disbelief in Shelley’s voice, a sternness and inflexibility that Zoe had heard many a time before. It was her mother’s voice, her teacher’s voice, the voices of the few friends she had had before they inevitably got weirded out and stopped calling her. It was the voice of everyone, eventually, when they stopped believing that she wasn’t a freak.

You’ve got the devil in you, child.