Face of Death

Zoe had spent her time approaching the diner carefully, checking the roads, the parking lot, looking inside every car parked there. Not just Ford Taurus vehicles of any color. She was not going to make that mistake twice. No, she had looked over everything thoroughly, and there was no sign of him.

But there was a little light of hope remaining in her heart. This was the fact that there were two kills remaining, not just one. Two locations. And maybe, just maybe, the killer would keep Aisha for last, to make sure his final point would not be ruined.

That made more sense than trying to kill a girl, or bring one already dead, into a crowded diner. He must have known that this would be his ticket to the inside of a jail cell.

And then again, with a schizophrenic off his medication, how could you know that his mind would work logically?

But Zoe had to take a stab. She was only one person, and she could not be everywhere at once. She had alerted Shelley to move in carefully and cover a wider area with the state troopers, observe the parking lot, keep eyes everywhere they could. They were stretched thin with leads in so many different directions now, and the stakes were high. One little movement in the back of a car could indicate Aisha’s struggle. Something easy to miss before her life was over. But the troopers would be out there on the road, in the lot, waiting.

And Zoe was left watching the diner. It seemed unlikely that he would find a victim here, didn’t it? But there were private spaces—the kitchen, the bathrooms. Places a little more out of sight. She just had to watch for suspicious behavior somehow. If he came in, she would see him. She would stop him. She swore that to herself.

There were ten booths at the sides of the room, with a wider central area containing several tables that were easy to see in a glance. Then there was also the counter. That allowed twelve places where the killer could possibly be—fourteen, if she counted the bathrooms. She had already checked out the ladies’ room on entering, in case he would lurk for a victim there. A trooper she had never seen before had come in, looked around the men’s bathroom, and left again with a subtle nod to Zoe earlier. His job done, he had returned to watching cars. There was no killer here—not yet.

Zoe tried to keep her knee from jiggling up and down, to keep the numbers from overwhelming her. She knew the height and weight of every person in the whole place, from the waitresses who swirled around with pots of coffee and order pads to the twenty-seven others sitting in various positions around her. The diner was busy—almost full. He would not have to look hard for a victim, though the challenge would be in taking a life without being seen.

Zoe was determined that she should see him.

She tried not to let it bother her that there was one more sugar dispenser than there were salt, and that there were two more of each than there were tables—spares, taken at some point into circulation and then left to occupy odd spots rather than tidied back away. She tried also to ignore the seventeen burgers, twenty servings of fries, twenty-eight coffee cups (some not yet cleaned away after being abandoned by their previous owners) and four milkshakes on the tables. These things, she did not need to know.

She did not need to know that there were seven empty seats, but only one totally free table. There was no reason for her to know that there were thirteen light fixtures dotted around the room, or three air conditioning vents, or that the waitresses each wore their apron strings at a slightly different length.

What she did need to know was everything possible about the people already in the diner, and she applied herself to this with as much effort as she could. She turned her back to the counter and leaned, surveying the room in a way that she hoped seemed casual. She ordered a second cup of coffee and set it down next to her, as if she were waiting for a friend.

Over half of the occupants of the diner were female, the ratio weighted by the wait staff made exclusively of women. Several were also children. Zoe could dismiss those out of hand. Then there were the overweight men, a familiar sight in an establishment that served mostly sugary or fatty food. Two of them were far too old, of retirement age, lacking the necessary arm strength to do the deeds.

That left five men, one of them being too short to reach the necks of the tallest victims without difficulty, meaning that Zoe could rule him out. Down to four.

Groups sat in obvious structures, patterns dictated by social expectations. Man—woman—child, family unit. Girlfriend opposite boyfriend. Two girls facing two boys, sweethearts sitting together. Predictable and strong. But there were those she could not place—two men and a woman, she on her own while they faced her, no clear lines of family or love. Those were the most enigmatic, the ones that forced wonder the most.

A group of three—a man, woman, and child—got up from their seats and left. That gave her three. But another party was coming in, four young men, not much older than teenagers. That brought her back up to seven, and they were followed by a young couple. Eight, now. Another couple were getting up to leave, freeing up one of the booths, and—had she eliminated that one already? Was it seven or still eight?

Zoe furrowed her brow and concentrated. She had to get this right. It was not certain that the killer would be easily apparent, on the surface. He might be a local—might have planned to end up here, even despite their assumption that he came from out of state. That meant he could be with friends, even family members.

Zoe had felt he would be a loner, but maybe that was just her own bias. She was, so he should be. Maybe he wasn’t like her at all, and could maintain relationships and have friends easily in spite of his way of seeing things.

Maybe not.

The dinner rush was starting to cool down, the sun already set outside. Another group got up to leave, having finished their evening meal, taking the kids back home to sleep. That was one of her suspects. She was at seven now, for certain. She surveyed the group of four male friends, trying to take them in, to wonder if one of them was looking around too much or seemed nervous.

The door opened again to allow in a young man on his own. He looked unremarkable: plain but respectable clothing, five foot eleven, slim. He sat a few stools down from Zoe, past an overweight trucker and a woman who had checked her phone eighteen times in the last ten minutes.

The young man ordered a tea, and Zoe watched him from the corner of her eye, as best as she could past those in between them. It was possible. He could be the one. Zoe added him to her mental tally and did another sweep of the room, watching the other tables, eliminating one man for his messy eating habits.

The woman sighed and got up, leaving quickly with her head ducked down. Zoe glanced to the side. She could see the young man a little better now. He, too, seemed to be surveying the room.

Another family group got up and walked out, a single mother with three children in tow. Zoe watched the door, but no one else came in. Where was Shelley? Surely she would arrive soon?

The trucker threw some cash down on the table to pay his bill and got up, letting out a belch as he did so. Zoe looked at him, unable to stop herself. As he moved away, her eyes met those of the young man, who looked similarly disgusted.

For a second, they held one another’s gaze. There was a flicker in his eyes, something that she could not quite pinpoint, before he looked away.

Zoe continued to watch him. He was studiously not looking toward her now. There was no doubt about that.

That glimmer. Could it have been… recognition?

Zoe’s mind raced. Height, weight, age. All of it added up. The timing of his entrance to the diner, after the sun had completely gone down. The fact that he was alone, while the other single men in the diner looked to be there for a purpose—truckers stopping on a long journey, dates anxiously waiting for their partners, and one man in a rumpled suit who Zoe had pegged as an alcoholic trying to sober up before going home.

This young man—he was there for a reason as well.

He was there to kill.

She knew it in her bones. It was him.

There was only going to be one shot at this. If she messed up, he could get away. Showing her cards as an FBI agent would force the real killer to run, if it wasn’t who she thought it was. But she felt sure. It had to be him.

Zoe stood, about to go over and question him, just at the same moment that he also got up from his seat. She hesitated, pretending to adjust her jacket, as he walked over to the back of the diner and entered the bathroom. Thwarted, Zoe sat again, thinking that she would have to wait until he returned.

She grabbed her phone and fired off a quick text to Shelley. A warning, but not yet an order for backup. Suspect sighted. Gone into bathroom. Waiting to approach for questioning and arrest when he emerges.

Zoe waited, keeping the bathroom door in her peripheral vision so that she would see it as soon as it opened. Another man went into the bathroom, Zoe’s skin prickling as she tried to catch a glimpse of anything beyond the door as it swung shut.

A quick glance around the room at her other suspects, none of whom seemed to be anywhere near as interesting.

The bathroom door opened again, and Zoe looked around, her body tensing—but it was only the other man coming out.

Her blood rushed in her veins. It had been long enough for the second man to go in and come out—why not her suspect?

What was he doing in there? Was he trying to escape?

Had he already climbed out the bathroom window and run out of sight, to where she would have no clue about where to track him down?

There was only one thing to do. Zoe took a sip of her coffee for fortitude and got up from the stool. Checking her gun in its holster with a light tap, she headed resolutely for the bathroom, avoiding eye contact with anyone around her as she deliberately entered the men’s door.

Zoe drew her gun as she stepped through, letting it shut behind her. The last thing she needed was a civilian coming in at the worst possible moment. She considered locking the door, but that would only trap herself as well as the killer.

She gave a quick glance around, moving with the gun pointed ahead of her as she had been trained. The urinals were abandoned, the sinks empty. One by one, she moved past the stalls. Each of them were open, doors hanging in such a way that she could see there was no one inside.

The bathroom was empty.

The window was open, a predictable conclusion to the lack of any occupants. Zoe looked up; the aperture was wide enough, she calculated, for a man of his slim bulk to fit through. The shoulders may have been tight. She approached and touched the glass, finding that the pane opened further upward, going flat in such a way that it would have allowed him one more inch. Just enough, leaving a spare centimeter and a half of wiggle room. He would have made it.

Zoe moved closer and stood on her tiptoes, relaxing her posture with the gun as she peered out of the window. There was nothing to be seen outside, no mark that he was nearby, no footsteps on the ground that she could make out. Not even from the impact. He was not a heavy man, but surely he should have made an impact…?

Too late, Zoe realized the truth. He had not leaped out the window at all; that was why there was no evidence of it. She heard the creak of a door behind her and dimly remembered seeing a janitor’s closet, and one footstep on the tiled floor, and she knew that she had made a mistake in turning her back on him.

Instinctively, Zoe’s arm shot up, holding the gun. She wanted to turn and point it at him, but there was no time.

All she succeeded in doing was catching her arm in the wire that was intended for her neck, her hand and wrist knocking into her own face as he pulled tightly, drawing it into a loop. She managed only to articulate a strangled gasp as she dropped the gun, flinching as it hit the floor with a loud clatter.