Face of Murder (A Zoe Prime Mystery—Book 2)

by Blake Pierce

  Zoe’s shoulders slumped, and she couldn’t quite bear to face Shelley as she nodded assent.

  The three of them marched silently back through the corridors of the J. Edgar Hoover building, out of the labs and back toward the holding rooms, to a place where they could leave Dr. Applewhite for a few hours. They took the turns and chose the right floor in the lift without discussion. Zoe did not feel up to interrogating Dr. Applewhite about the equations, and she couldn’t imagine that Shelley wanted to at that moment either.

  Instead she counted their steps, listening to the rhythm and cadence of a pair of heels and two pairs of flats. The harder, heavier thud of her own boots, the slightly faster patter of Shelley’s dress shoes, her stride shorter than that of the other two women. The pattern that echoed against the walls as they fell more or less into step with one another, as humans who walk together are wont to do.

  Zoe stayed out in the hall when Shelley showed Dr. Applewhite into the questioning room where she would wait for them, and asked her about wanting a drink, and made sure that she was seated comfortably. She stared straight ahead down toward the next bend, and hated herself for flinching when Shelley closed the door and locked it.

  “I know you aren’t happy with me right now,” Shelley sighed. “But it’s only for a few hours. Like you said, she’s innocent. Once we have this done, we can move on to other things. Maybe someone’s targeting Dr. Applewhite by pointing to her equations. Who knows? Maybe they were there as a clue, and we just saved her life by keeping her in a secure building while the killer waits outside her apartment.”

  That was some consolation, but it did put a shiver down Zoe’s spine. “You think we should assign her a police escort when she leaves? Make sure that no one is stalking her?”

  “It’s worth thinking about.” Shelley cocked her head and smiled at Zoe in a way she didn’t totally understand. “You know, there’s one nice thing come out of all this. I feel like I’m getting to know you better. I didn’t know you had someone you felt so strongly about.”

  Zoe was taken aback by the observation. She looked toward the door, even as she knew that there was no way Dr. Applewhite could hear them through the reinforced material. “I… I suppose we are close. Dr. Applewhite was the first person to… diagnose me. She supported me.”

  “I know it can’t be easy seeing her in here.” Shelley sighed and gestured to the next door along the hall. “Come on. We can sit on the observation side and wait for the call. Keep her company, of a sorts.”

  ***

  After several hours of continued staring at the equations, Zoe was still no closer to figuring it all out than she had been the first moment they were handed the case. No matter how she looked at them, she couldn’t figure out how they worked or even why they were broken. And worse: the more she looked, the less convinced she was that it really was a coincidence. Those last lines made a perfect copy of Dr. Applewhite’s theory.

  That kind of thing didn’t happen by accident.

  Shelley’s cell rang, and the two of them snapped to attention. They looked at it for a second, buzzing on the ledge in front of them, before Shelley grabbed it and answered.

  “Hello, Anjali? Yes… Right. And you’re absolutely sure? Okay, thank you. Yes, I do owe you one. Well, all right, two. Thanks again.”

  Shelley finished the call and put her cell down, biting her lip. She hadn’t taken her eyes off it yet, or looked up any higher than Zoe’s knee since she had answered it.

  Zoe, who had observed that Shelley spent around seventy-five percent of her time looking at people’s faces, and perhaps thirty percent looking someone directly in the eye, considered this to be a very bad sign indeed.

  Shelley’s face was pale when she did look up, and then she had to glance away again before she spoke. “The DNA is a match.”

  Zoe waited for a moment for the punchline or an explanation. When Shelley didn’t say anything else, she had to follow up with a prompt. “A match for what?”

  “For Dr. Applewhite. The hairs are hers.”

  There was no response in Zoe’s head. Only silence. She sat there looking at Shelley, the words ringing hollow in the room around them, nothing but utter disbelief bouncing back.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Zoe could barely gather her wits to figure any of this out. What did it all mean? Not for a single second did she believe it, no matter what the evidence said. There had to be some kind of mistake—some kind of trick.

  “I’ll go tell her the news, and give her a formal charge.” Shelley was already standing, making the move to go forward.

  In movies and on TV, this was the moment where the protagonist bravely stepped forward. “No,” they would say, putting on a serious face. “I’ll do it.” Then they would stride forward and deliver the bad news to their loved one, or the bullet, depending on what kind of show it was.

  But Zoe wasn’t particularly brave, and she knew she couldn’t bear to tell Dr. Applewhite that she was now under firm suspicion for the murders of three people. Worse, she couldn’t even trust herself not to leave the door open and encourage her mentor to make an exit. Even if Dr. Applewhite was too honorable to do such a thing, Zoe would make the offer. That was enough to get her into deep trouble.

  So, she watched as Shelley entered the room on the other side of the black glass, and as Dr. Applewhite looked up in hope of being released. She heard Shelley deliver the news, and she watched the effect on her friend in real time: the confusion, the shock, and finally, the realization that she was not going home any time soon.

  As if she knew that Zoe was watching, Dr. Applewhite turned to the one-way mirror and looked at what must have been her own reflection, her mouth opening and closing silently with questions of doubt and protests, and Zoe felt even more shame that she hadn’t been able to find it in herself to go in there.

  “This is Ralph Henderson,” Shelley said, sliding a printed color photograph across the table to Dr. Applewhite. “Do you recognize him?”

  “Well, yes,” Dr. Applewhite said, finally wrenching her attention away from the glass. “We’re colleagues. I’ve seen him at faculty events, and around campus. And—well—in the news, recently.”

  Shelley slid another photograph towards her. “How about this man?”

  “Cole Davidson.” Dr. Applewhite swallowed hard. “A grad student. I tutored him for a while.”

  “And this one?”

  “I co-authored a study with Dr. North last year,” Dr. Applewhite said, her face visibly pale. “Wait, Edwin is—is he dead? I—I hadn’t heard…”

  “Dr. Francesca Applewhite, you are now under arrest for suspicion of murder.” Shelley was reciting the lines from long-learned rote, but Zoe saw that her hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to stop answering at any time. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Applewhite breathed, seemingly incapable of more.

  “Do you wish to call a lawyer, or have us call one for you?”

  Zoe barely heard what they were saying. Her mind was racing, so fast that everything else around her was disappearing. She paid no attention to what her eyes saw or her ears heard, or her body felt. She was thinking about the case.

  Thinking about how it could be that an innocent woman’s hair ended up at a crime scene, right next to a dead body.

  It had to be wrong somehow, didn’t it? It had to be a red herring. There was no way that Dr. Applewhite had done anything. Zoe’s opinion on that had not changed. No matter what, she wouldn’t allow herself to doubt her.

  And again, it circled around in her mind that this was all her fault. If she hadn’t taken
the equation apart and put it back together—right in front of a local mathematician, one of few people who would actually recognize the shape she had made—then Dr. Applewhite would never even have been a person of interest. They wouldn’t have needed to take her DNA.

  Maybe Zoe should have stood up to Shelley a little more, too. Made it clear to her that there was no way they were going to even slightly suspect Dr. Applewhite, insist on putting off the DNA swabs. Surely, she should have done something.

  “You got a handle on this, Z?”

  Zoe looked up to realize that Shelley was back in the observation area with her. On the other side of the glass, Dr. Applewhite was sitting alone in a locked room.

  “It is not her,” she said, immediately.

  Shelley sighed, her fingers searching for and twisting the small silver arrow she wore on a chain around her neck. “I know you’re sure, Z, but I don’t know her,” she said. “I have to go with the evidence. How would her hairs get into that room, if she’s not the killer?”

  “I do not know, yet. But she has no motive. You have to see that.”

  “No motive, but we have connections to each one of the victims. That means a motive might be lurking just beneath the surface. Don’t… don’t get mad at me, Zoe. I’m just trying to look at this objectively. In any other case, we’d be sure we had our perp.”

  “No, we would not.” Zoe was hit by a sudden realization, a lightbulb moment of inspiration that was as dazzling as it was relief-granting. “I would have dismissed her as a suspect immediately. The numbers do not add up.”

  “The equation?” A deep crease appeared across three inches of Shelley’s forehead. “But I thought—”

  “Not the equation. The crime scenes.” Zoe stood, feeling adrenaline rush through her. She had figured it out. “My calculations at each of the scenes indicate a killer with a height of five foot nine. Dr. Applewhite is only five foot six. What is more, she weighs one hundred and twenty-nine pounds, while the killer must be over one hundred and thirty-five. There is also the consideration of the weights at Dr. North’s home. I do not believe that Dr. Applewhite would be able to lift them.”

  As each fact hit home, Shelley’s expression became less and less sure, until she finally sank down into a chair next to Zoe. “All right, I believe you,” she said. “But there’s still a problem. We can’t just let her go.”

  “Why not? I have just proven that she is not—”

  “Yes, I know. And I do believe you. But how are we going to explain that to anyone else? You won’t let me tell anyone about your numbers thing, and that’s even before the issue of convincing people that it works every time. There’s evidence here. Cops don’t just ignore evidence. FBI agents can’t just let people go without questioning on a hunch. Even if I was fully behind letting her out—Z, we can’t. We’d have to explain it to SAIC Maitland. Probably in a court of law one day, too.”

  Zoe thought this over, another idea forming in her head already. “All right,” she agreed, nodding slowly. “So, then we will question her.”

  She smiled, and though Shelley met her with a baffled look, Zoe was starting to feel more confident by the second.

  ***

  Zoe took a steadying breath and tried to ignore their surroundings. She still felt awful that Dr. Applewhite was having to sit in this bare, uncomfortable room for any longer than she already had. She still had not forgiven herself for putting her mentor there in the first place. But at least this way, she could try to make it all worthwhile.

  “So, Dr. Applewhite,” she began, her eyes seeking out the red light that indicated the recorder was rolling, “you have indicated to us that you are happy to answer a few questions without a lawyer present.”

  “I don’t need legal representation. I haven’t done anything wrong.” Dr. Applewhite, too, seemed to have gained some strength from knowing that Zoe would be the one to question her. She had raised her chin a couple of inches higher, and the valleys and hills around her forehead and eyes had cleared. There was only the faintest hint of a tremble in her hands as she raised one to touch her hair.

  That, too, was something that Zoe had decided she was not going to forgive herself for.

  “We should talk about your whereabouts during the past week. I have some specific dates and times.”

  “I keep a set schedule,” Dr. Applewhite replied. “Home in the evenings, after a day of classes or patients or research groups. My receptionist has a record of everything.”

  “Your husband was at home?”

  A shadow passed over Dr. Applewhite’s face, her eyes searching for something on the tabletop for a brief second. “He’s often home late. Sometimes he stays at an apartment on the other side of the city. When he’s working so late there’s no sense in driving back.”

  Silence rested between them for a moment. It wasn’t good. If Dr. Applewhite had had a strong alibi, Zoe could have released her almost immediately. That wasn’t going to happen.

  “I didn’t do it,” Dr. Applewhite said suddenly, leaning forward over the table at an acute angle. “Any of it. I’m not that kind of person, Zoe. I’m not a killer. I couldn’t.” There was emotion in her voice, but she seemed calm. Clear and direct.

  “I know,” Zoe said, her eyes flicking unbidden to that red light. She shouldn’t have said that. It could be brought up in court—the prosecution might allege that other suspects weren’t treated seriously, once they did bring the real killer to justice. Zoe sat up a little straighter, thinking that a change of subject might help. “Tell me about the equation.”

  Dr. Applewhite nodded, taking the changed tack with focus. “It’s a theoretical equation I came up with a little while ago. I spend a lot of time working with colleagues in mathematics circles, not to mention certain—gifted individuals.” Her eyes conveyed what her tone did not; that Zoe was one such. “It helps me keep in shape, so to speak, to work on these kinds of projects in my spare time. Anyway, I published it, and I suppose it generated a bit of buzz in local circles. It wouldn’t be much known outside of this area, but at the college, we discussed it in depth.”

  That caught Zoe’s attention. It narrowed their suspect pool significantly. The killer had to be a local. Not only to get access to the victims and know who they were, but to recognize the equation—if, indeed, it had not appeared by coincidence.

  But the hairs, too—it was beginning to look more and more like an attempt to frame Dr. Applewhite. Which meant it had to be someone who knew her, and knew her now—not some random from her past who would never have heard of the equation.

  “Do you have any enemies, Dr. Applewhite? Anyone who might hold a grudge against you?”

  Dr. Applewhite blinked at the change in her line of questioning. “I don’t believe so. I don’t particularly do any kind of controversial work. I had a research subject pass away recently, unfortunately, after taking his own life. I haven’t felt any indication of blame from their family, however.”

  “And in the world of math?”

  Dr. Applewhite shook her head slowly, side to side, three times. “No. I’ve never… done anything. The equation was a bit of fun, really, nothing more. I wasn’t going after someone else’s project or stepping on any toes. Besides, it wasn’t exactly a success. I could never quite get it finished off.”

  That sparked Zoe’s attention. “Your equation is not complete?”

  “That’s why I published it in the first place.” Despite the circumstances, Dr. Applewhite managed a small and thin-lipped smile as she tucked a strand of bobbed dark hair behind her ears. “I am not a genius at these things. I have studied, but I am not as gifted as others. I thought that if I shared it, someone else might be able to make the necessary corrections and get it finished off.”

  All of this was extremely interesting, and more so by the minute. Zoe looked off to the side of the room thoughtfully, turning it over in her mind. Dr. Applewhite writes an equation that she knows is flawed; it turns up on the dead bodies of men all connected to
her, with evidence seemingly linked to the scene. More than that, it shows up in equations which are themselves seemingly flawed.

  What did it all mean?

  Zoe looked into her mentor’s eyes and threw caution to the wind. Tape be damned. She wasn’t going to let Dr. Applewhite sit here, afraid for her future and her freedom, without a word of reassurance. “I am going to do everything that I can to get you out of here,” she said, firmly and without hesitation. “You can bet on that. I will find the real killer.”

  Zoe got up and headed for the door. The interview was over. She had work to do—and she was going to clear Dr. Applewhite’s name sooner rather than later. She wasn’t about to sit around wasting time.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Shelley watched their exchange with bated breath, twisting her pendant around in her fingers and anxiously listening as Zoe said things she shouldn’t have been saying on tape. It was only when she tasted cold metal in her mouth that she realized she had retreated to a habit she thought she had kicked back in high school—chewing her fingernails.

  Shelley pulled her hand away from her mouth, and tutted at herself to see smears of pink lipstick on her skin. She would ask herself what she had been thinking, but the answer was clearly not very much.

  Grabbing a tissue out of her pocket to wipe the marks away, Shelley caught sight of the time as her smartwatch lit up. It was getting late. Far too late, now, to really get things cleared up and dealt with before they had to stop for the night.

  It looked like Dr. Applewhite wasn’t going to be going home to her own bed.

  Shelley was just thinking about going in and interrupting when Zoe finished the interview, in that abrupt way of hers, and strode out of the room. Despite the show of confidence, Shelley wasn’t sure that Zoe was dealing with all of this well. It was hard to tell, given that Zoe almost always wore the same mask of dispassionate concentration, but Shelley knew how to read people. She was even, after spending more and more time working with her, starting to be able to read Zoe.