Face of Fear (A Zoe Prime Mystery—Book 3)

by Blake Pierce

  “Come back for another round, Agent Rose?” Smith, the lawyer, asked imperiously. “Perhaps you have finally decided to let my client go before he starts building a lawsuit for harassment?”

  “Neither,” Shelley said, slipping gracefully down into a chair opposite Franks. Now that they were back in the room, on display, she was alert and fresh. She barely seemed tired, although Zoe had seen just how exhausted she felt back in the investigation room. She had put on her mask—a skill that Zoe wished she could conquer. “Actually, my partner has some new questions. You’ll like these, Mr. Franks. They’re all about establishing your innocence.”

  Franks perked up, lifting his head and leaning forward slightly. “My innocence?”

  “That is correct,” Zoe said. She placed the appointment book down in front of him, spinning it around so that he could read the entries. “We would like you to take a look through your appointments. You need to point out any that fit, in your recollection, with a certain criterion.”

  “What?”

  “Any of these tattoos that were done in the memory of a Holocaust survivor or victim, which contained the digits of their prisoner number in a symbolic fashion. Like John Dowling.”

  Jasper Franks blinked. “I don’t have to go through the book,” he said. “I can remember easily enough off the top of my head.”

  “Oh?” Zoe waited with her pen poised above her notebook, ready to write down the names he gave her.

  “No one,” Franks said. “No one ever asked for anything like that, except for him. If someone ever did want a tattoo like that, they didn’t say it out loud. And I design all my tattoos, so I would remember if someone requested a certain number of elements. I always made designs freehand from their vague ideas. It wasn’t precise like that. I would have remembered easily.”

  Zoe’s hand dropped, the pen wilting between her fingers until it fell onto the page. “No one at all?”

  “That’s what I said.” Franks stared back and forth between Zoe and Shelley with growing concern. “Wait, does that mean I’m not off the hook?”

  “Not yet, at least.” Shelley pushed her chair back, already ready to get up and leave. “That was short, but sweet.”

  “Wait.” Something was happening in Zoe’s mind, some kind of connection, and she need to give it a moment to germinate. Something about what Shelley had said—people changing their minds… “Does anyone ever come in to talk about getting a tattoo, but then change their minds without making the booking?”

  Franks shrugged. “Of course. All the time. I don’t charge for consultations, so people come in to talk about their ideas. A lot of the time they just chicken out. Or maybe they decide they don’t like my art and go somewhere else. It’s cool either way. Just part of the business.”

  Zoe looked at Shelley. Shelley looked back at her.

  “Naomi Karling did not even have her tattoo yet, and she was considered a viable target,” Zoe said.

  Recognition sparked in Shelley’s eyes. “Just a discussion about the tattoo would be enough,” she said.

  Shelley was right. The killer, whoever he was, did not go just by the appointment book. He clearly wasn’t checking back on it on any kind of a regular basis, because he hadn’t seen the correction that had appeared on Callie Everard’s page. That meant he must not have seen it for a whole week, at least, and had not needed to flip back at all since then.

  It would explain, too, why he was interested in John Dowling, despite there being such a long distance of time between his first tattoo and his death. If he came in to get the tiger, talked about the serial number and what it represented openly, the killer could have overheard.

  If someone had come in to talk about getting a memorial tattoo, and then changed their minds later, the killer might not know. He might not realize that they weren’t going to get the ink done. They would be a target, all the same.

  “Do you remember anyone coming in during the last few weeks—or months—who asked about one of these tattoos?” Zoe asked. “Someone who did not make a booking?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Franks nodded. “We get them all the time. People walk in off the street, normally because they saw my work in an article online or on social media. They get shared a lot.”

  “We need their names,” Zoe said, grabbing her pen up again.

  Franks’s mouth screwed up into a twisted knot. “I’m sorry,” he said, spreading his hands wide, stopping the gesture when he met the limit of his chains. “I don’t take down details during the consultation. I mean, I might jot some ideas down on a bit of scrap paper just in case they do book in, but sooner or later it gets thrown away. Otherwise I’d have mountains of records, you know?”

  Zoe’s pen hit the table for the second time in a very short span. Frustration roiled through her. “Then we have no way of finding them,” she said, feeling despair.

  “Yes, we do,” Shelley said, getting up and heading for the door. “Come on. We’re going to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  “What about my client?” Smith called after them, his words completely ignored as Zoe swept after her partner as quickly as her feet would take her.

  ***

  “What are we looking at?” Zoe asked, watching over Shelley’s shoulder as she opened up an internet browser.

  “Any local publication,” Shelley said. “Find their website, and then the obituaries section. We can check them all one by one, together. Go back over the last six months, maybe.”

  “Obituaries?”

  Shelley looked at Zoe. “Do you know what the number one reason is for someone getting a memorial tattoo?”

  Zoe thought the answer was obvious. “To remember someone.”

  “Right. And why remember someone when they’re still alive?”

  “So you think the most likely reason for someone to have been seeking a tattoo, but not to book one, is because they were reacting to the death of an elderly relative?”

  Shelly nodded, her eyes fixed on her screen as she clicked through multiple pages. “And the obvious reason for deciding not to get it after all. The first flush of grief, followed by a flash of realism. The desire to avoid pain, or a realization that they don’t want this mark on their bodies for the rest of their lives. Grief starts to fade and you realize that you won’t feel the same way forever.”

  Zoe thought she understood. She was already sitting in front of the second computer monitor in the room, typing away at her own search. “Los Angeles Daily,” she said.

  “I’m on the LA Star,” Shelley replied. “Shout if you find something.”

  They searched frantically through the reports. Zoe felt an itching feeling on her skin as she looked over lists upon lists of dead people. Those who had passed away with their lives summarized into one neat little box, paid for by the word, some of them abbreviated to an almost inhumane level. Others waxing lyrical with sentiments which only described the grief of their children, not the person who was gone.

  She couldn’t help but wonder what someone would write about her own life. Notwithstanding the obvious truth that no one would; maybe only the FBI themselves, and then in the form of a press release. She would probably be a news story, not an obituary. Somehow, Zoe didn’t see herself dying old and surrounded by loved ones. More like on the job.

  And even if she made it to the end of a long life, what would be written about her? Would she have loved ones left to write it? Would it talk about her life, her personality, or just her career?

  If she died tomorrow?

  John was lovely, but he didn’t know her well enough, not yet. Their relationship was in its early stages, and even though she was trying hard, she had been in short relationships before. She had ruined them, one way or another. Shelley was a friend, but a friend enough to really say something about her? Out of everyone she knew, Zoe figured there would be two people who knew her enough to stand up at her funeral. Shelley and Dr. Applewhite. And neither of them could really say what they thought of her, because she had sworn th
em to secrecy about the one thing that defined her more than any other.

  “Here,” Shelley said, breaking the silence and pulling Zoe out of her spiraling thoughts. “I have something.”

  Zoe got up, and if she wiped her hands across her eyes as she went over to Shelley’s chair, surely it was just to rid herself of a speck of dust or the strain of looking at a computer screen. “What is it?”

  “Just over a month ago. There was an old man, ninety years old. He was a Holocaust survivor. It says so right here, in his obituary.”

  Zoe leaned in, peering at the screen. There was a photograph accompanying the obituary, which declared in capital letters that it was for a man named Zeke Rosenhart. He was old already in the image, white-haired, but standing tall and proud. On his arm, Zoe could just make out the serial number tattoo, though the picture was far too small and low-quality to be able to read what it said.

  “Zeke is remembered by his daughter, Olivia, his son-in-law, Mike, and his granddaughter, Chrissie,” Shelley read aloud. “It could be her, couldn’t it? Chrissie. She’s the right age group to be interested in the trend. She has that close relationship. It could be her.”

  Zoe bit her lip. There was no way to tell. Not for certain. It could be her, but it could be that this was just the first red herring in a long line of many. There was no telling how many other Holocaust survivors just happened to have lived and died in LA in the last few months—never mind about those who died out of state but whose grandchildren were studying or working here.

  It was the very definition of a long shot.

  “I will look up his name and see if I can find out his prisoner number, see if it fits the pattern,” Zoe said. “You look up Chrissie Rosenhart. If you can find her picture, you can show it to Franks. See if he recognizes her.”

  “We’re going to have to let Franks go soon,” Shelley said. “I think you and I are both in agreement now that he didn’t do this, and you’re right about the lack of evidence. We’re going to have to let him go.”

  “Then we had better hope that this is the right girl,” Zoe said. “Or that we manage to find someone who is before it is too late.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  He had been waiting in the dark for so long. The only thing he dared to do was to change his position, stealing silently across the room until he could stand behind the door. It was the idle hiding point, even if it was a terrible cliché.

  He could just see through the crack between the door and the frame, make out the slice of light that spilled out of the front room and into the hall. It was lucky that he had chosen to hide in the office room, which seemed to be more or less abandoned. In the chip of light that illuminated his surroundings, he could make out textbooks on shelves, volumes on nursing and medical practices. It was just pure irony that someone about to put an evil, cursed mark on themselves should be a nurse. He was about to do her a favor. If she really wanted to help others, then she wouldn’t want to infect them with the burden that she carried.

  He had been waiting for such a long time, and his legs were stiff and sore from the lack of movement. Standing upright in the same position for so long was tiring, even if it seemed to require little energy. He had managed to move to a position where he could lean his back against the wall, under the cover of a loud burst of laughter from a studio audience on the show she was watching with her friends, but the painted surface was cold and hard against his skin.

  He now regretted getting into position before she came home. He should have learned from the last one. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The one thing that could always mess up even the most perfect of plans was the randomness of humanity, the way they could follow a set routine every day of their lives for years without deviation and then throw it all down the drain on a whim. He had been listening to their inane talk as they laughed and watched show after show, some ridiculous reality concept that they were all heavily emotionally invested in. Flinching every time one of them walked by in the hall, on the way to the kitchen or the bathroom. Wishing they would all leave.

  Either the friends would all go and he could finally strike, or she would go with them, and at least then he could slip out. Live to fight another day. This waiting, this long, dry waiting, was interminable. He thought of his car, parked down the street, maybe attracting suspicion. Maybe in front of the wrong house, causing a problem for others who wanted to park their own vehicles.

  He couldn’t be caught here. He couldn’t.

  Hours had passed; he knew it because of how many episodes they had watched. But at last he heard the closing credit music again, now familiar to him, and there was an abrupt change in the noise as the television set went dead.

  Now there was conversation only, voices overlapping in sweet entreaties to have a safe journey home and to come over again soon. Through the crack in the doorframe, he caught a glimpse of female bodies embracing, pulling apart, moving to embrace again in a new configuration.

  He could hear them so clearly. He pulled away from the crack, not wanting them to be able to glance over and see his eyes shining back. His heart pounded in his chest in rapid time as he listened to their words and movements, and even felt the blow as one of them bumped into the other side of the wall he was leaning on. He held his breath, knowing that the ragged noise of his exhalations might give him away, so close here.

  He closed his eyes and waited for them to leave.

  The door to the outside world opened, and he heard them step through. There was a long moment when he could hear her shuffling on the step, waving them off, even calling out a muted “Bye!” pitched low so as not to disturb the neighbors. Then she stepped back and swung the door shut, the thud of the lock connecting with the frame like music to his ears.

  She was alone now.

  It was just the two of them, and she didn’t even know it.

  He held his breath still as she walked past his hiding place, down the hall and back into the front room. He heard her shuffling things around, no doubt tidying up, the clink of empty glasses and plates being stacked together. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake as last time. He waited, waited, waited. He counted the time in his head, ticking off seconds. Five minutes.

  Ten minutes. She finished the tidying but stayed in the room. Doing what? He heard a slightly exaggerated exhalation of breath and a clink, putting the noises together into a visual image: a sip from her wine glass before placing it back down on the coffee table. She was finishing it off.

  Time was slipping away from him. It was always going to be a compromise between staying safe and using his position to mount the attack before she was gone, up the stairs to bed. The risks increased up there. She might wake after hearing him on the stairs. She might roll out of the way and scream the house down, and he would be caught after all.

  No, his old way was the best: wait until you can get behind them, slip out, pull the knife across the throat before they have time to react. No scream, no fight, no trying to run.

  He moved slowly and carefully, taking his time. It was all going to go to waste if she heard him before he was ready. He retraced his steps, back to his original position, beside the empty doorframe, ready. And he waited.

  She finished the wine with one more clink and a happy sigh, and then he heard her moving again. Subtle movements, but once you knew what you were listening for, it was easy to put it together. She got up off the couch. She moved toward the door.

  This was his chance. She just had to step past him, toward the stairs, and he could spring out…

  She passed by, and he made his move, stepping out into the corridor. There she was, right in front of him. In touching distance. She didn’t hear him step. He lifted the knife, reached out his hand. One more step forward and then she would be—

  There was a knock at the door, rapid and ragged, a closed fist banging as hard as it could.

  It was like it happened in slow motion. She turned, so slowly he felt like he could reach out and stop her, although he couldn’t beca
use he was moving slowly too. He was reaching, but it wasn’t happening. He was commanding his hands to take hold of her, but she was spinning around and somehow out of his grip, and her eyes were lighting up with surprise and realization.

  And she screamed, the sound like a shattering hammer on the spell he had been under, sending time back into normal motion again as he lunged for her and she stumbled back.

  ***

  Zoe hammered on the door, her closed fist against the dull wood, opening her mouth ready to shout. People usually responded faster when they knew it was the FBI at their door, not some random pizza delivery with the wrong house number written on the form.

  But she never got a chance to say the words, because as soon as she hammered on the door, there was a scream from inside the house.

  Zoe looked over at Shelley, her head snapping around, head kicking into overdrive. “Open it,” she said, thinking that Shelley would break out the case she had brought with her last time and insert the metal picks into the lock until it clicked open.

  But Shelley motioned her out of the way, stepped back, and then aimed a well-placed kick at the wood of the door, sending splinters flying through the air as the metal fixings around the lock gave way under pressure.

  Through a shower of wood scraps and in a torrent of confusion, Shelley and Zoe both stepped forward. The impact of the kick had slowed Shelley down, and Zoe was the first one in the corridor, taking in what had happened.

  There was a momentary thrill: the fact that she had been right. But that soon died out in the face of what she had been confronted with.

  “Don’t move,” he said, and Zoe instantly froze, obeying what he asked.

  And how could she not? Because he was there, their killer, and he had his trademark knife in his hand. Not only that, but the knife was pressed against the throat of a young woman whom Zoe recognized as the owner of the house: Chrissie Rosenhart.