Face of Fear

Zoe just managed to refrain from rolling her eyes. It never failed to amaze her that people, even her esteemed partner, could put weight on such things. Young, old, pretty, ugly, thin, fat—dead was dead. Any life taken was something that should be investigated, any killer someone who should be punished. The particulars made little difference.

“The location?”

“This time it all took place in the same alley. Looks like the killer approached her, cut her throat, let her drop down dead, and then set her on fire. That’s one small mercy. She wouldn’t have been conscious for the burning.”

This, at least, was a sentiment that Zoe could agree with. There were very few pleasant ways to go, and burning to death was not one of them. “How about her? Could she have had a target on her somehow?”

“The local cops haven’t finished looking into it. She was just found yesterday, only managed to get the ID early this morning. They’ve managed to inform the next of kin, and that’s it.”

Zoe reached out for the photographs. This body was less burnt, even if only by degrees. It was still possible to make out that she was a woman, and there were shreds of flesh on the body that shone red and raw through the blackened mess.

“Are you getting anything from the images?” Shelley asked.

Zoe looked up to realize that she was being watched intently. “Not yet. I do not see anything that I can use. The fire, it corrupts things and distorts them. I could not even reliably tell their height and weight if we did not have their medical files.”

“Both healthy young people. Maybe this will just be a crime of passion. They have a mutual friend, or ex-friend, who lost it and decided to set the world on fire.”

“We can hope.” Zoe sighed and settled her head back against the chair. Why did airplanes always have to be so uncomfortable? She’d read that premier class passengers had beds. Not that the Bureau was ever going to swing for something like that.

“How are things, anyway?” Shelley asked. She tucked the files back away into her carry-on and settled back into her seat with a conspiratorial air. “Did you see John again yesterday?”

It was Friday night, and John had seemingly been happy with the habitual way that Zoe ran her life. The same things at the same time. The only difference was the venue. “Yes, I did.”

“Well?” Shelley asked impatiently. “Details, Z. It’s going well with you two, isn’t it?”

Zoe shrugged, turning her head toward the window again. “Well enough, I suppose.”

Shelley sighed with exasperation. “Well enough? What does that mean? Do you like him or not?”

“Of course I like him.” Zoe frowned. “Why else would I go on so many dates with him?”

Shelley hesitated, her reflection tipping its head to one side behind her. “I guess that’s fair. Although some people just carry right on even when something doesn’t really appeal to them. But you know what I mean. Are the dates getting serious?”

Zoe let her eyes slip shut. Maybe Shelley would take the hint and think she was trying to get some rest. “I do not know what that means, and I do not think I want to answer it anyway.”

Shelley paused, saying nothing for a long moment. Then, quietly: “You know, you don’t have to keep pushing me away. You know you can trust me. I’m not going to tell anyone about anything. I didn’t spill your secret, did I?”

There was the small matter of the time when Shelley had mentioned to their superior, Maitland, that Zoe was “good with math”; Zoe, however, didn’t see any use in bringing that up.

She didn’t answer, at least not at first. What could she say? It was true that she kept herself to herself, and that was the way she had always been. Did she even need to justify it? First Dr. Monk and now Shelley were talking like she had a problem. Like it was unreasonable to want to keep one’s private life private.

“I don’t even know why you still keep it a secret,” Shelley carried on. “You could do serious good.”

“How?”

“Putting your skills to use. Catching killers.”

“I already catch killers.”

Shelley sighed. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I really do not,” Zoe replied, more ready than ever to move on from this conversation. “How long is left on this flight?” She started jabbing at the screen in front of her, changing it to show their flight path and progress, even though she knew full well exactly where they would be and how much longer they would fly for.

“It’s something to think about, anyway,” Shelley said. “It feels like you’re happier when you’re around the people who know. You get tense, bottle things up, when you think it’s not safe. Maybe you would have a more comfortable life overall if everyone knew.”

“Fifty-six minutes,” Zoe said, as if she hadn’t heard her. “We should prepare. We will want to go straight to the most recent crime scene from the airport. Have you got the address?”

Shelley said nothing, only giving her a long and searching look before returning to the files and searching for the details that they needed.

CHAPTER FIVE

Zoe squinted, looking both ways up and down the alleyway, into the sky. It was a crisp, clear day. A small strip of pale blue ran above them, narrowing off into the distance, hemmed in by grimy bricks on apartment blocks and warehouse storage facilities on either side.

It was a far cry from the luxury and waving palm trees of Beverly Hills. The streets and sidewalks were cracked and faded, and the nearest building at the end of the alley was a homeless shelter. Still, the studio apartments rising tall on the other side probably cost more than her childhood home in rural Vermont.

There was still something lingering in the air, despite the removal of the body. Zoe could still smell it. It probably wouldn’t go away for a long time. The stench of burning human flesh and hair tended to stick around.

Zoe returned her attention to the ground, and the patch of scorched markings that ran across the tarmac of the street and littered bricks, garbage bags, and needles. Most of them were burned and twisted up themselves now, made into unrecognizable black plastic shapes that only added to the eyewatering aroma. The killer, it seemed, hadn’t cared so much about the presentation.

Or maybe they had, and they were making a statement about this young woman—this Callie Everard—being just another piece of trash.

Shelley was talking to a local police officer nearby, while the others were all but packing up. The forensics team had been over the site already, and the body had been taken for testing. All that remained was to pick up all of the little pieces of evidence left behind in the debris of the murder. A female officer with short-cropped hair and a small stature was gingerly placing them, one by one, into plastic evidence bags.

Zoe watched her with only vague interest. Her mind was working along its own paths, tracing what her eyes saw. The woman had been lying with her head next to the overturned trash bags, her feet pointing toward the middle of the alleyway, at a thirty-degree angle to what would have been the center line. She had fallen backward, most likely, after her throat was cut. There were still some traces of blood, beneath the scorching and the melted bodily fluids, that shored this theory up.

They knew a lot about her already, about Callie. The rest they would know when they interviewed her friends and family, found out who she was and what she did. Why someone might want to kill her.

But the killer himself, though: that was a different question. Where was he, or she? Zoe could see nothing on the ground of the alley, no particular sign that might give them away. There were no footprints, not on an alleyway that was no doubt traversed by tens if not hundreds of people a day. There was no discarded lighter or stub of a match, no empty gas can. Any evidence that might have betrayed their presence had been washed away when someone dumped water over the body in an attempt to put it out and save a life that had already ebbed away.

What had he used for fuel? For accelerant? Where had he stood? What kind of weapon had he used to cut the throat? Or she, Zoe tried to remind herself, in an effort to stay open-minded; the statistics were clear, however. This level of violence would usually point at a male suspect.

It was the “usually” that was the problem. Zoe liked to rely on her gut, but unless she was above ninety percent sure of something, she wasn’t willing to bet everything on it. And even when she’d been that sure in the past, she had occasionally been wrong. Right now, she had nothing at all to be sure about, not where this killer was concerned.

Perhaps she would know more when they took a look at the body. She walked back over to Shelley, who was just wrapping up her conversation.

“There is nothing here,” Zoe announced, as soon as Shelley was done.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Shelley replied. She was glancing up at the windows of the apartments above, blackened not by the rising smoke from a human corpse, but by years of dirt and neglect. “No one in the neighborhood saw anything. They said they smelled the smoke first. A few local residents rushed out with a bucket of water to try to help, but that was all. No suspects, no one standing and watching. No witnesses that saw anyone enter the alley around that time.”

“Is there any footage?” Zoe nodded upward to a security camera perched just at the entrance on the side they had walked in by.

Shelley shook her head. “The cops say it’s not even connected. Every time they tried to get it working, kids would come and spray-paint over the lens or cut the wires. They kept it up as a scare tactic, just in case, but it hasn’t worked properly for years.”

“Locals would know that,” Zoe pointed out.

“So would anyone who did a preliminary walk around the block and saw the state it’s in.”

Zoe glanced around one more time, satisfied that there was nothing more to read here. The only story the numbers were telling her was about the construction of the buildings and the alley itself. Since she doubted the height of the walls had any bearing on the crime, they were done here. “To the coroner, then,” she said with determination, striding away toward their rental car.