by Blake Pierce
“I already told the cops,” Nate said, his eyes wandering with a certain disassociation over the uniformed officers around the house, each of them painted with flashes of red and blue light in the darkness.
“We aren’t the cops, Mr. King,” Shelley said. “We’re the FBI. I’m Special Agent Shelley Rose, and this is my partner, Special Agent Zoe Prime. We just need to hear it from you so we can get our investigation started and catch whoever did this.”
“It was a man,” Nate said, his attention snapping back to Shelley like a whip. “I saw him.”
“We’ll get there, Mr. King. Please, just start from the beginning, if you would.”
“I told Naomi I’d give her a ride in my car,” Nate said, his head bobbing once in the direction of a small, battered vehicle sitting alongside the ambulance. An old rustbucket. Something a student could afford to buy secondhand on meager wages from a part-time job at a local neighborhood store.
“How did she normally get home?” Shelley asked.
Zoe fished her notebook out of her pocket so she could make notes while Shelley talked. The first thing she wrote was meet witness at their level, followed on the next line by sympathetic head tilt of ten degrees.
“She walked.” Nate sniffed, his eyes wandering across the sidewalk, remembering. “I thought it wasn’t safe in this area, this time of night. She said she did it every night and it was fine, but it’s cold tonight too, so I insisted.”
“Did you notice anything unusual while you were locking up the store?”
“No. Same as normal.”
“And what about during the day? Any customers that caught your attention in any particular way?”
Nate shook his head slowly, three times. “I don’t remember anything.”
“All right. Go on. What about when you got here?”
“I just dropped Naomi off right here, where my car is now. I got out and walked her to the door. I was gonna ask her…” Nate trailed off, his eyes unfocused as he stared at the front of the house, now a hive of activity as forensics professionals buzzed in and out.
“Were you going to ask her out on a date?” Shelley prompted gently, her voice low and soft.
“Yeah.” Nate swallowed, dropping his eyes again. “She was really… just really cool, you know?”
“All right.” The way Shelley said it was reassuring, like she understood everything Nate was going through. How did she do that? If it had been Zoe, she would have sounded like she was heartless. “Do you remember seeing anything out of place at that time?”
“Not at all. I just said bye at the door and got back in my car and drove off. Naomi closed the door behind her. I think I heard her lock it, even.”
Shelley nodded. “So, you initially left the scene?”
“Then I came back,” he said. “I looked down at the seat when I was at the lights and I saw Naomi’s keys. Her staff keys. For the store. She needed them to open up tomorrow. Oh, god—who do you think will open up?”
“I’m sure your boss will take care of that, Mr. King. You just focus on what we can do for Naomi right now. Is that when you turned around and came back?”
“Yeah, I came right back.”
“How long would you say you were away?”
Nate shrugged. “Not even five minutes.” His faced creased suddenly, a line deepening between his brows as his lips trembled. “How could someone do all this in five minutes?”
“Just a couple more questions, Mr. King. I know this is really hard.”
“I was knocking and knocking and she didn’t come to the door. I tried calling her and I heard her phone. Then I looked through the letterbox and I—I just saw her. First the blood, and then I leaned down more and I could see her—her face. Oh, god. She was just lying there…”
“That’s when you called nine-one-one?”
“Yeah. And while I was talking I heard this noise, someone running on the other side of the fence. Next thing I know this guy jumps over it and pushes right past me and runs down the street.”
“Did you get a good look at his face?”
Zoe leaned in, only half-conscious that she was doing it. This was it—the big moment. If he could give them a description…
“Not really,” Nate said, shrugging his shoulders up and down as his face crumpled again. “It was so fast. He had this long black coat. Down to, like, mid-thigh, I guess. He was white. I think his hair was dark, and cut short. That’s it. That’s all I could see.”
“You’ve done really well, Nate. Thank you.” Shelley fished a business card out of her pocket, ready to hand it over. Zoe was already beginning to turn away toward the house. “If you remember anything else, give us a call. We’re going to give you some space, let you go home. Do you have someone who can stay with you tonight? You’ve had a big shock.”
Shelley’s voice faded out behind her as Zoe moved forward, heading past the caution tape and the line of local LAPD cops keeping the street clear of bystanders, and into the house. The situation was immediately apparent, almost shockingly so. The house was small and the corridor even more so, and it ran straight through the house to the back door. There was no avoiding the body, or the blood soaked across the hardwood floors around it.
Zoe flashed her badge at the CSI techs working around the body and crouched next to it. She slipped a pair of gloves, official FBI issue, out of her pocket and onto her hands. The crime scene photographs had already been taken. She was free to reach out and inch up the victim’s sleeve, moving the loose material out of the way until she could see what she was looking for.
The tattoo, which she had seen poking out of the end of the sleeve. A floral vine that made its way from elbow to wrist. She couldn’t identify the flowers, but there it was. A sign. A sign that she was going in the right direction.
It had to be about the tattoos.
The deceased girl was lying on her back, and it wasn’t hard for Zoe to lift up her other arm and push up the sleeve—then both of her legs, moving the fabric of loose sweatpants out of the way to look for a serial number. After checking the torso, she felt relatively certain that there was no serial number tattoo. Why would there be one on her back, or in a place that couldn’t be seen? Callie had hers displayed prominently, right there on her arm.
There was one more tattoo, on the lower leg. No numbers there, either. Zoe stood back for a moment, taking in the scene. The victim’s hair had fanned out behind her as she fell, her arms going out to either side, where Zoe had carefully replaced them after her inspection. She looked like a depiction of a fallen angel.
More interesting than that was what the lines told her. She had been slashed from behind, just like the others, a diagonal line that spoke of a guessed strike. He had been unsure, rushed. The girl had fought back, perhaps tried to get away. Yes—away: the mark on the wall at the left side where her elbow had scuffed the paint slightly, corresponding with the bruise that had formed there in the moments just before and after her death.
But those numbers barely mattered anymore. Aside from guessing height, weight, all the other factors that a crime scene could tell her about a perpetrator, Zoe was uninterested in it all. She registered them as if from far away, putting them out of her mind for now. What she was looking for was nothing to do with the killer.
She wanted to know why this victim. Why this girl, and why now. What did she have that marked her out as a target?
If she could understand that, she could understand the motive behind it all. And maybe, just maybe, that would allow her to stop the next one.
The victim, she remembered hearing on the radio, was a twenty-three-year-old. That number again. Could it be…?
She reached out and rolled the sleeve back up, took in the flowering vine once more. There were five flowers on the vine, each of them with a different number of petals, which seemed strange. If it was based on a real plant, it was likely that the same number of petals would be found on each blossom. There were patterns in nature, not random happenstance.
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And if the tattoo was an imagined drawing, the natural human tendency was toward symmetry and balance, too. An artist would be expected to create flowers with the same number of petals, whether out of knowledge for how the natural world worked or out of a desire for a pattern that made sense, that looked pleasing.
Zoe counted the petals. Four, six, five, three, then five again. You didn’t need to have synesthesia to do the math.
They all added up to twenty-three.
She had it.
But what did it mean?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Zoe walked back into their temporary investigation room and grabbed the nearest file, ready to get to work.
“Z, are you sure you don’t want to go and get some sleep before we look at this?” Shelley asked, trailing after her with a reluctant air. “It’s really late. It was late enough before we got the call.”
“Well, the killer certainly is not resting just because it is late.” Zoe took her notebook out of her pocket and flipped to a blank page. “You can go to the motel if you would like. I will stay here until I have worked through the files.”
There was a pause. “… All of them?” Shelley asked.
Zoe briefly glanced up, then around. The files for Callie and John Dowling, thick with additional information and witness statements that continued to come in as the local LAPD cops did the footwork. The newer one, for Naomi Karling—just an initial profile for now, information about Naomi herself and nothing else. The crime scene reports would come in as time went by. Then interviews.
The quicker Zoe got started, the further she would get before her workload grew. She started down the first page of John Dowling’s file, his basic personal information. Height, weight, age. She turned them over in her head. No connection to twenty-three.
But his birthday—the third of February.
Another one.
Zoe scribbled it down in her notebook, and carried on reading.
After all, the 23 enigma was an observable phenomenon. People found out that the number twenty-three was seemingly everywhere, and after that, confirmation bias meant they saw it everywhere too. Zoe had fallen prey to it herself enough times, noticing those twenty-threes all around her. Twenty-sevens, too, for the 27 Club. There were certain numbers that stuck around in your head. That must be what was happening to their killer.
“Seriously. Zoe,” Shelley said, standing right in front of the desk Zoe had chosen and bending down so that she could not be ignored. “Listen to me. I’m worried about you. You need some sleep.”
Zoe looked up impatiently. “I am not a child, Shelley. I can get through a single night of working late. Please do not project your own inabilities onto me. If you are tired, you can go.”
Shelley rolled her eyes. “It’s not childish to admit that you function better when your brain is well rested. In fact, it’s the more mature approach. Come on. Let’s go.”
Zoe thought about it, for a brief second. But it was only a brief second, because that was all it took for her to know.
There was no way she was going to be able to sleep tonight. No matter where she was or what she was doing, her mind was going to be on one thing only. She had already counted that there were twenty slats on the blinds at the window in their dingy office, and that there were three bulbs in the ceiling, which added up to the total she was looking for. Here, at least, she could channel that into looking at the case and finding the numbers that actually mattered.
In the motel? She would be counting chintz roses and suspicious stains, right until her alarm blared out and she let it ring twenty-three times before turning it off.
“I will join you later,” she said, turning her eyes resolutely back to the papers in front of her.
“I can’t just leave you here,” Shelley protested. “I’ve got the rental car. How are you going to get to the motel? You don’t even know where I’ve booked us in.”
Zoe looked up one more time, feigning a patience that she did not feel. “So, please leave the address with the sergeant on duty. When I am ready to leave, I will have them take me there in a patrol car. It is sensible that one of us gets some rest. You can take over when I have followed this trail to the end. If there is not another murder by then, I will sleep.”
Shelley opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, and then left, the low hubbub of the corridors and bullpen outside coming in for just a moment before the door shut behind her.
The door shut, and Zoe could really focus.
She flipped through page after page of files and, when they were done, she turned to the victims’ social media profiles and any other information she could dig up on them, insatiable in her search for the numbers. They came up time and time again, each of the entries filling neatly down the page of her notepad.
Addition of serial number—CE
Tiger strips—JD
Flower petals—NK
Birth date—JD
Weight in pounds, minus 100—NK
Letters in full name, including middle—JD
Age at death—NK
Number of posts to feed in February—CE
Images of tattoos on feed—JD
Zip code of birthplace—CE
House number—JD
Last two digits of credit card—CE
Number of hashtags on last post—NK
Blood spatter droplets on wall at crime scene—NK
Percentage of flesh left on body after burning—CE
It was when she started to include notes from the crime scenes themselves that Zoe had to admit to herself that she had maybe gone too far. The killer couldn’t have planned for that. Not so precisely. Maybe if he had had time to wipe away any extra droplets before he was disturbed, but he did not have that spare time with Naomi. He would have burned her, and the blood spatter, if he had.
How long had she been sitting here? Long enough for the crime scene photos from Naomi’s house to come through. Long enough that her back ached. But there was still no clear path here, nothing she could jump onto. Nothing that told her who the next victim would be.
If it was just about the number twenty-three, well, an obsessive could see that number anywhere. Be triggered by it at any time.
Not only could, but would: they would see it everywhere, uncontrollably. It would be with them at all times. There had to be something more that would trigger them.
Which absolutely wasn’t at all what was happening to Zoe, she thought, as she looked over her list again. No, there was something here—not just obsession. At least, not just hers.
She was onto something. If she could only grasp hold of it and take it to the conclusion, she knew that she would find him. The killer.
But how long was that going to take—and how long did he need before he killed again?
***
Shelley rolled onto her back again on the motel’s stone-like mattress, staring up at the ceiling. She wished she was asleep, but it didn’t seem as though it was going to happen any time soon.
Zoe was right: one of them needed to get some rest, because Zoe sure wasn’t. And Shelley knew that she would need to be fresh and sharp if she was going to stop her partner going off the deep end. It was the worry, that maybe it was too late and Zoe had already dived in with both feet, that was keeping her awake.
Shelley had been tossing and turning from the moment she got into bed. She couldn’t get the sight of Zoe’s face out of her mind. That look in her eyes, determined yet somehow manic. Too wide, too bright. Shelley was good at reading people, and she felt like she’d seen that look with Zoe before. It was the kind of look she had in her eyes before she accidentally shot an innocent man, because she was so convinced that the killer they were hunting down would be in a particular place at a particular time.
Of course, she had been right back then. That was what stopped Shelley from doing something drastic, like reporting in to SAIC Maitland back in DC and asking him to reassign them. The idea that Zoe might actually be onto something.<
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But this time, Shelley wasn’t so sure. She trusted Zoe, trusted her deeply—the past had proven time and time again that Zoe had a gift, and she knew how to use it. Almost always, she was right about whatever it was she was convinced about.
Almost always—and that was the problem.
Shelley worried that Zoe had latched onto an obsession, a piece of meaning taken out of nothing. A red herring that was leading her further away from the killer, not closer toward them. Not only that, but she was going to extremes in order to prove it. Staying up without sleep. Poring through fact after fact. Analyzing everything closely. It was the kind of behavior that could drive a good agent to distraction, and even if Zoe had one of the brightest minds Shelley had ever witnessed in action, she wasn’t immune.
Still, what could Shelley do? One of them needed to get some rest. Zoe was right about that. And so she went around and around in her head, trying to think of some form of intervention that would allow her to keep Zoe on the right path without damaging their investigation in some way.
This new thing about the number twenty-three was disturbing. Even Shelley knew, in her own limited knowledge of this sphere, that it was a bit of a magic number as far as numerology was concerned. That people did get obsessed with it for no good reason. She’d even seen a film about it years before which she dimly remembered, though she couldn’t recall whether the main character’s obsession had been justified or not.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? If Zoe was right, she was gifted and brilliant. If she was wrong, she was obsessive, distracted, chaotic. Pushed under by the stress.
How was Shelley supposed to tell?
She rolled back to the other side and checked the time on her cell, her gaze lingering on the photograph of her daughter on the background of the device.
Shelley knew what she had to do. She had probably always known. She rubbed at her eyes to clear them and sat up, unplugging her cell from her charger and picking up her wedding ring from beside it.