Face of Death

Shelley shrugged, her shoulders lifting up and down as if weighted by a heavy burden. “I’m sorry, Z. I know you have more experience than me. But I just don’t understand how you got from that map to being so sure about where he’ll strike next. Maybe you can explain it to me? It might help me get better at this. Next time, I might be able to spot the pattern.”

Zoe shook her head sharply. There was no point. Even if she explained every little thing that she could see, clear as day on the map, Shelley would never be able to get there on her own. Zoe couldn’t teach the kind of skill that she had. It wasn’t born of experience. It was something she could just do—had been able to do since she was able to think.

“I cannot explain it any clearer than I already have.”

A frown creased Shelley’s features, and Zoe braced herself. Here it came. The inevitable breaking point of any partnership she had ever had since joining the FBI. Shelley would get mad. She would argue and try to discourage Zoe from following the right path. When Zoe turned out to be right, she would accuse her of somehow colluding with the murderer. Of being involved in some way herself, or hiding evidence that would have allowed anyone else to come to the same conclusion.

She would shout and scream, call their boss and ask for a transfer. And just like that, Zoe would be given a new partner again.

It was a shame. She had been starting to really like Shelley. They had gotten along all right until now, hadn’t they? But no matter how Zoe tried to interact with her partners, give them what they seemed to want, it always turned out the same. She didn’t know how to calm their suspicions and stop the shouting. The truth wouldn’t cut it.

Might as well get it over with. Zoe picked up a ruler and pen and began to draw straight lines that intersected between all of the red pushpins on the map. One by one she connected them, laying ink over the lines that were already visible in her mind. Then she put down the ruler and drew a freehand spiral that connected line to line, as perfect a Fibonacci as she could do without mathematical drawing devices.

“Can you see it now?” she asked, pushing three red pins into the last remaining locations. “Look. I am right about this. You have to trust me.”

Zoe turned and met Shelley’s gaze. The other woman’s face was set not in the anger or frustration that she expected, but more of an awed confusion. She could see the pattern, that much was clear. But she still didn’t understand how Zoe had gotten there, and she never would.

“We have the same data, don’t we?” Shelley asked, softly. “I can’t see it in all of this. I can see it on the map now, but I don’t know how you got there. How did you know that those pins would form a perfect shape with those lines?”

“I am not hiding any information from you,” Zoe snapped. She was tired of this already, wanted it over. Wanted Shelley to just shut up and let them alert the local authorities, get people in place for a stakeout. They were wasting valuable time. “We have to act now. Do not argue with me.”

Shelley stood, and Zoe almost flinched, ready for the confrontation to ramp up. She could not show weakness, not now. She had to maintain the confidence, use her position as the senior agent. It went against everything she told herself to do in normal situations, but lives were at stake. She clamped her lips together in a firm, straight line, determined not to bend.

Shelley moved in front of her, sat down on the edge of the table. “Z… it’s okay,” she said. “I’m not trying to fight with you. I just want to understand.”

Zoe said nothing. Inside, however, her resolve flickered. No one had ever reacted this way. Whenever she revealed any hint of her gift—or her curse, whichever it was—she was treated with suspicion and accusation. Not this. Not the open, soft expression Shelley was giving her, the quiet voice, the words of encouragement.

“You can see something I can’t, somehow, can’t you?” Shelley took a breath, then reached out to touch Zoe’s arm. “I was warned by the Chief that you’d had a lot of different partners before. That they called you things—made accusations. I’m not here to do that. You can tell me, and I’m not going to demand a transfer. I like working with you.”

Zoe hesitated, looking down at where Shelley’s warm hand rested on her arm. A gesture of comfort. There was something motherly about it. Not that Zoe had real experience of how a mother was supposed to act, but she could guess that this would be it. Like the mothers on television in old sitcoms, reaching out an olive branch to their confused and frustrated teenagers.

Maybe it was the comparison, making her feel young and defenseless again. Maybe it was just the fact that Shelley sounded genuine, as if she really would accept Zoe, warts and all. Or maybe it was simply the almost-symmetrical lines on her face, the reassuring angles and axes that Zoe saw in numbers all over her skin. But whatever it was, something made Zoe open her mouth and speak.

“I have a condition,” she began. “It means that I see things… differently.”

“Differently, how? Like… apophenia?” From any other person, it might have sounded like an accusation. Zoe would have expected them to want to send her away to a psych ward, get her taken out of the Bureau. But Shelley was only seeking to understand, without judgment.

“Not quite. The patterns I see are—real. It is not just patterns, though they are a part of it. I see the world in numbers. I can tell you the distance between markers on the map without measuring it, the degree of angles between them. From there, the pattern follows.”

“What else can you see?” Shelley’s tone was one of wonder and excitement. Positive emotions, Zoe felt sure. Not the negativity she usually heard. Even still, she braced herself for a sudden switch, a smile transformed into anger and resentment. Even as she carried on.

“Everything,” she said, gesturing around helplessly. It was difficult to explain it all fully to someone who had never experienced it. Like trying to explain what it was like to see in color to someone who only saw black and white. “I know the number of millimeters that prevent your face from being exactly symmetrical. I count the chairs and desks in the briefing room the moment I enter, instantly. I can read footprints in the sand and know the height, weight, and running pace of the suspect. A knife wound tells me the dimensions of the blade. I see the numbers in everything.”

Shelley was silent for a moment, digesting it all. Zoe wanted to close her eyes. This was it—the moment when Shelley turned on her. It was coming now, the calm before the storm.

“Wow,” Shelley breathed. “Z, that’s amazing. You have a serious gift.”

Zoe blinked.

“I mean, this is amazing. No wonder you’re so good at catching people. With such a good solve rate, I wondered how you couldn’t keep partners. I thought you had to be arrogant or something, but this?” Shelley shook her head, a smile bursting and lighting up her face. “With a gift like this, you can do so much. Save so many people.”

Zoe reached for a chair and sat down, winded. “You are not angry with me?”

Shelley half-laughed, reaching to touch her arm again. “No, Z. Why would I be angry?” A moment passed, and there was a flicker across Shelley’s expression, something that Zoe could not read. “Oh. Because—because you’ve been made to feel like you’re… different? In a bad way?”

Zoe studied her own hands, lowering her head. “My mother said it was a gift from the devil.”

“That isn’t true,” Shelley said. “I know it isn’t. Jesus, no wonder you don’t like Christians. I mean—excuse my word choice.”

Zoe had to laugh, even if it was a small and quiet one.

The tension in the room was gone, and Shelley was looking up at the map with a renewed understanding. “We have to get on this right away,” she said. “You’re the only person who can possibly understand how the killer thinks. Once we explain it at the briefing, everyone will be on board.”

Zoe’s head snapped up sharply. “You cannot tell anyone,” she said. “Not about me. It is between us, as partners. No one else can know.”

Shelley hesitated, but caught Zoe’s eye and nodded.

“Promise me,” Zoe said.

Shelley wet her lips before answering. “I promise. It will take some thought to present this in a way that makes sense without people knowing what you can see, but I won’t say anything. So long as you promise me something, too.”

“What is it?”

“Not to keep anything from me. If you can see something, tell me,” Shelley said. She shook her head, although there was still a smile on her face. “I just thought about the guy we caught the other day, in the desert. How you knew where he was going to be, and everyone thought you were wrong. You could see it, couldn’t you?”

“Plain as day.” Zoe took a deep breath. “All right. I promise that I will tell you everything from now on, in relation to our investigations.”

The clarification was necessary. Zoe didn’t want to promise to tell Shelley literally everything. That would have been too much.

“Shake on it, partner?” Shelley held out her hand with a twinkle in her eyes.

Zoe shook, and the deal was done.

“Now, let’s get some more precise maps, and we can start figuring out the exact coordinates where we need to keep watch,” Shelley said, getting up and moving toward the computer already.

***

Zoe finished the last line over an hour later, taking her ruler away and examining her handiwork. It was clean and precise, just the way she needed it to be. Not a single mistake. Zoe had always been good at precision. It wasn’t so hard, when you could already see the lines and angles and calculations laid out on the page for you, before you put them down in ink.

“Right,” Shelley said, standing back. “They’re all lined up exactly.”

They stood for a moment to take in the maps of the three Midwest states that the killer had already targeted, placed in precise relation to one another across all of the tables they had been able to find and push together. These maps were much clearer. They were able to differentiate more clearly the precise locations of each kill, rather than a wider point that took in other buildings and roads.

Zoe lifted the sheets of tracing paper she had managed to find in the desk of one of the sheriff’s deputies, who was apparently a bit of a craft enthusiast. Over it, Zoe had been drawing a perfect grid of squares with her trusty ruler, while Shelley printed and stuck the map pages together. Now, she laid the grid over the top of the map, making sure that the points each lined up with the murder locations.

She took a pen in a different color and drew the spiral again, connecting the kill sites in chronological order. She did not really need the grid to know where the line had to flow, but it was there for Shelley’s benefit.

“Here, we can see that our killer is operating in a reverse Fibonacci spiral, starting from the furthest point and working his way down,” Zoe said as she drew. “Now, watch. The spiral moves across the grid in a predictable manner, so we can work out precisely where it will finish. It passes through these points—here, here, and here.”