by Blake Pierce
So much for getting some restful sleep. Zoe swung her legs out of the bed, the cold floor something of a comfort as her feet hit it; a reminder that she was back in the real world, not lost in a dream anymore. A nightmare, maybe. What was it that Shelley had been trying to tell her? Zoe had no idea. That was the thing about the subconscious—maybe it just didn’t mean anything at all.
She padded through to the kitchen after Euler, thinking she would get another glass of water and then shower. She looked over at the coffee table as she leaned back on the counter to drink, and saw the file. She ignored it. Now wasn’t the time, dream or no dream. She looked away pointedly, wishing Maitland hadn’t left it at all.
Zoe looked down at her body: mismatched sweatshirt and joggers, both from her university days, tired and faded. She hadn’t washed her hair for a few days. That, at least, was something she could do to fill in the time.
In the bathroom, she paused, hit with the image of her own face in the mirror. She had been avoiding looking at it for a long time, but something—probably the dream—had made her look up. Now she saw herself as Maitland must have seen her. Dark circles under her eyes, greasy and unkempt hair, pale skin. She looked a mess.
She deserved to look a mess. She’d let her partner die, hadn’t she? Zoe closed her eyes for a moment to ward off the pain, wishing it would stop.
Maitland’s words came back to her. The idea that throwing herself back into a case might make it easier for her to leave all of this in the past. To not feel the pain so harshly anymore.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to just take a look. At least then Maitland wouldn’t come around again, and maybe her dead partner would stop haunting her dreams. If nothing else, at least she would be able to tell herself that she had tried.
Zoe walked over to the table before her resolve could fail her and grabbed the file. There were four sheets of paper inside it, two each for the two victims. She felt sick just holding them in her hands, and nearly put them down again—but the image of Shelley’s face from her dream lingered in her mind’s eye, and Zoe started to read.
She scanned the information quickly, words and phrases jumping out at her. Bodies found in upstate New York. It would be cold up there at this time of year. It looked as though the methods were different for both women, as well as all of their particulars. Zoe saw no correlation in their ages, their weights and heights, their home addresses, the way that they had been killed.
But there was one thing that connected them, one reason why these two cases had been placed into the same folder and then left for her to see. Each of them had a symbol carved into their stomachs postmortem, with what looked to be the tip of a knife: a flat line that joined two perpendicular legs, coming down from it like supports. Zoe recognized it instantly as resembling the symbol for pi, if with a little stiffness compared to the customary curve.
That was interesting. She understood now why Maitland had left her the file. It was exactly the kind of case she would have worked on before. The kind of case that Shelley would have heard about and put their names in for, if Maitland hadn’t thought of it before. Signs and symbols, equations, strange clues that seemed to elude the understanding of the average agent. It was exactly her kind of thing.
And it was almost refreshing, in a way. Having the numbers work on something that actually mattered—the thing that she had made her life’s work. Looking for connections and clues, solving a murder. It felt good that they were crowding her with information about a case, not just the dimensions of her apartment and everything in it. A relief.
That didn’t mean she was going to work on it—but she was intrigued. Intrigued enough to want to know more, even if that meant going to see Maitland herself. Maybe she could stave off the numbers a little while longer, give them something else to focus on. Maybe just for five minutes she could feel like herself again.
First, there was something even more important she was going to have to do—otherwise she would not be able to make it to the J. Edgar Hoover Building at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Zoe kept her eyes straight ahead, focused on the back of the car in front of her. The drive had so far been difficult. It was hard to concentrate on keeping the vehicle on the road when you couldn’t stop analyzing license plates, exhaust fumes, keeping track of the number of cars you’d seen of each color, make, and model, getting glimpses of people in the seats with all their different measurements and calculations. Somehow, she’d made it this far, partly by focusing on obsessively maintaining the precise same speed for as much of the journey as possible.
The street she had ended up on was familiar enough. Zoe knew these buildings, knew which one was a floor higher than the others, which had developed a slight five-degree lean as its foundations subsided, and what time it was by the angle of the sun across the sidewalk. She had been here enough times to have made all of those calculations many times before, and as she looked around, seeing them floating in front of her eyes again, she was just about able to push through them to remember why she was here in the first place.
She found a parking space just outside, which was a miracle in itself. Zoe paused to look at herself in the car’s rearview mirror, leaning forward to examine her own face. She was still pale and her eyes were still ringed with black, but at least it was a slight improvement from earlier. A shower and smarter clothing had made a difference, even if it was only on the outside.
The inside was another thing altogether. It couldn’t be scrubbed clean in a shower.
She found the will somehow to push herself up out of her seat, opening the door and stepping out onto the sidewalk. Then she focused her gaze on the office building she was there for, keeping her eyes on the doorway and the dimensions that sprung out of nowhere into her sight, following them inside.
Dr. Lauren Monk’s office was on the third floor. She saw patients there, usually at set times, and though Zoe hadn’t booked an appointment for today, she had called ahead to make sure the doctor would be available.
Dr. Monk was sitting at her desk with the door open on the waiting room, showing that she was free. Zoe stepped through the brightly lit space, decorated in primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, and straight into the therapy room, where a familiar well-worn leather armchair beckoned. Zoe ignored it and remained standing, managing to drag her eyes up to meet Dr. Monk’s face as the doctor looked back.
If she was regarding her with any kind of expression, Zoe could not tell. All she could see was the dimensions: the distance between her eyes, the angle of her brows, the length of each individual hair, crowded throughout her vision so tightly that there was no room for Zoe to see the human face underneath. All she knew was that Dr. Monk had not changed anything about herself in the couple of months since Zoe had seen her last, when she’d been released from her regular appointment because she no longer needed it. She was still the same, with her dark bobbed hair cut in a pleasingly straight edge and the same beauty mark half an inch above the right side of her mouth.
“It’s good to see you again, Zoe,” Dr. Monk said, rising from behind her desk. She habitually sat opposite the leather armchair during sessions, facing the patient with nothing in between them. “It’s been weeks.”
“I did not want to make another appointment,” Zoe said, crossing her arms tightly across her own chest. “You told me I was doing better.”
“You were,” Dr. Monk said softly. She crossed around in front of the desk to stand directly facing Zoe. “But grief can derail even the most successful of rehabilitations. It can make our coping strategies seem ineffective, or that there’s no point in following them anymore. After the death of someone close to you, it’s normal to need a bit more help.”
Zoe tried to see past the numbers to read Dr. Monk’s expression again, but couldn’t. “I thought I had it under control.”
Dr. Monk’s posture softened and relaxed, the angles of her shoulders decreasing and smoothing out. “I want you to make another appointment, Zoe. Sometime ve
ry soon. As soon as you’re able to, in fact.”
“Okay.” Zoe took a breath. “That is not why I am here.”
Dr. Monk nodded slowly. “I can see that you’re experiencing something very difficult. Can you tell me how you’ve been sleeping?”
“Not much.” Zoe shrugged. “Late nights, late mornings. Alcohol helps. But then I feel tired. Nap during the day sometimes.”
Dr. Monk nodded again, faster this time. Four times, as if to herself. “I suspect that you are going through a major depressive episode,” she said. Zoe could do nothing but agree with the assessment; Dr. Monk knew her well enough. She didn’t know about depression, about whether you could call it that when the sadness was justifiable, but she trusted her therapist. “We’ll need to get you a prescription for some medication that will help you feel better. I can write you a scrip now, and we’ll discuss it further in our session.”
Zoe nodded, repeating the same pattern she had seen the doctor perform. One, two, three, four, stop. “I will make an appointment this week.”
Dr. Monk hesitated, biting her bottom lip. She tapped a pen against the skin there, the scrip in her hand, not yet filled out. “How much are you drinking?” she asked.
Zoe shrugged again. “Until the numbers get quiet.”
Zoe watched the circumference of Dr. Monk’s eyes increase in size, the skin lifting up with her eyelids, the angles of the crow’s feet just visible at the corners of her eyes changing. “All right.” She filled out the scrip with a quick flourish of her pen, then walked around her desk to rummage in a drawer. “Now, I do want you to get this prescription filled, but in the meantime, I think it’s important that you start to manage this now. This will tide you over until then.”
She came up with a sheet of tabs in one hand, the silver foil across the top catching the light from the large windows. She stretched out her hand, holding it toward Zoe, and Zoe took it mechanically.
“Start taking them tonight,” Dr. Monk continued. “One with every mealtime—morning, afternoon, and night. Make sure you take them with food. And no more alcohol, okay? These should make the numbers quiet as well. Don’t mix alcohol with them. Is that all right?”
Zoe nodded. “I will start to take them tonight,” she said.
Dr. Monk took a hesitant breath. “What are you doing now? Do you have time for a session?”
“I am going to work,” Zoe said.
“You’re back on duty?” Dr. Monk sounded alarmed.
“No. My suspension ended yesterday but I did not go in.” Zoe took a breath. “I have to talk to the Special Agent in Charge.”
Dr. Monk nodded. “All right. Go do that. But I want to see you as soon as possible.”
“I understand.” Zoe headed for the door, the blister pack still firmly clutched in her hand. She didn’t dare look back at Dr. Monk as she left. The numbers were crawling over her face like ants, and Dr. Monk couldn’t even feel that they were there.
Zoe stopped in the car for a moment, grabbing a bottle of water from the side compartment and swigging one of the pills down. She couldn’t wait. She needed their help now, if she was going to make it through a conversation with Maitland.
***
The J. Edgar Hoover Building was reassuringly squat and geometric, all straight lines in dull gray concrete. Zoe enjoyed that, and the way that it was laid out: symmetrically, with repeated designs on each floor, so that you could always guess where you were going. That was a small comfort. While she waited for the pill to work on the numbers, at least she could deal with some that weren’t quite as distracting.
She expected to wait a while, but when she knocked three times on the door that was marked with SAIC Leo Maitland’s name, he called out the command to enter immediately.
Zoe had no time to be nervous as she reached for the door handle and turned it, stepping forward. That was better, she thought. She was used to standing in the corridor outside with a twitchy anxiety, wondering what she was going to get disciplined for this time, but now she could simply walk in and let the conversation begin.
“Agent Prime.” Maitland sat up with some surprise, laying the paperwork he had been looking over down on his desk and peering at her. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
Zoe nodded, since she didn’t know what else to say to that. “I looked over the case file.”
“And?” Maitland placed his hands on the desk in front of himself, one folded neatly over the other, expectant. Zoe looked down at them for a moment and saw all the intersecting angles, and wrenched her gaze away.
“I was curious,” she said. “It is not that I am accepting the case. I just wanted to know why you gave me this file.”
Maitland stared at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable beneath the angles of his nose and cheekbones, and how they intersected with the lines of his skull against the line of his brow. “You’ve… always been the best, with this particular type of case,” he began, his voice gruff yet quiet. “Don’t think that I haven’t noticed your ability to deal with cases that aren’t the usual run of the mill serial killer. You’re good when things get strange. When we need to see things in a way that doesn’t conform to the box. Intelligent killers. People who think in different ways.”
Zoe thought that over. It was true, what he said. She just couldn’t decide whether she liked it. whether he was calling her odd. “I have worked on a number of cases like this,” she conceded, which wasn’t the same as admitting to anything or saying that she would take the case.
“I don’t want to push you, Agent,” Maitland said. “If you return to work and you’re not ready, things could go bad. For both of us. But I also think I know you well enough to see that you’re best when you have a puzzle in front of you to work on. I’ll be frank. I want you on this case. In fact, I don’t trust anyone else to get it done the same way that you will.”
Zoe waited, her thoughts tumbling over one another. It was hard enough to hear them under the numbers telling her the decibels and word length and syllables and the dimensions of the desk and everything on it, and when she did hear them, she wasn’t sure. It would be good to sink her teeth into something new, something that stopped the same old things from rattling around inside her skull. The numbers could be put to use for a change, like she did before, putting them to work on suspects and entry points and all of the rest.
It would be good to make a difference. Maybe save a life or two.
So long as she didn’t have to drag anyone else into danger with her.
“I will take it,” she said slowly. Maitland’s face lit up, if not into a smile then certainly into something more lively than his usual stone-faced expression. She plowed on, not wanting him to miss the most important part. “Alone. I do not want to be assigned another partner. I will go solo on this one.”
Maitland tilted his head at a further ten-degree angle than previously, and his eyes narrowed by fifteen percent. “You know I can’t do that, Agent.”
“I have worked alone before,” Zoe pointed out. It was true. Before Shelley, when she had been between partners because they couldn’t handle her oddness, she had seen plenty of cases where she’d been forced to go into the field alone. There wasn’t anyone who would partner up with her, until a new rookie came along. Then the cycle would repeat itself.
“Not on a case of this magnitude,” Maitland said. “Only on simpler crimes. And not right after the death of your former partner. I’m sorry, Zoe. I am not suggesting that Shelley is going to be replaced. That she ever could be. But you will need to work alongside another agent on this one.”
Zoe lowered her eyes to the floor, where there were fewer numbers. “I would really rather not work with someone new.”
“Well, I’m afraid I already have someone lined up. He’ll be perfect, I promise.” Maitland raised his voice to bellow in the direction of the door. “If you’re out there, Agent Flynn, come on in. It’s time for you two to meet.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Zoe’s
head swiveled to the side in time to see the door open, as a younger man in a dark suit stepped through. He was six three, slim but with the suit tailored well to show that he had muscles underneath, dark hair swept up off his forehead, a clean Hollywood grin full of straight white teeth. Twenty-three or twenty-four years old. Zoe instantly disliked him.
“Agent Aiden Flynn,” he said, sticking out his hand in front of him, that grin still eating at his face.
Zoe took his hand and shook it dispassionately, taking in the measurements of his face and the angles of his high cheekbones. He looked like trouble, from head to toe. That suit was well fitted, outside of standard sizing; not off the rack, but custom tailored. He came from money. His hand was soft, and Zoe didn’t need the numbers to tell her that his shoes looked brand new.
Zoe swept an accusing eye to Maitland. “This is his first assignment,” she said.
“Fresh out of the Academy,” Maitland replied. He stretched, putting his arms behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. His back remained perfectly straight, only the degree of the angle at his hips changing.
“I do not want to babysit,” Zoe snapped, perhaps more harshly than she had meant to. Maitland could still decide not to give her the case. “This is a serious killer. He needs to be caught quickly.”
“I can keep up,” Agent Flynn cut in quickly. “I was top of my class. I can hit the ground running, easy.”
“How old are you?” Zoe asked. “Twenty-three?”
“Yeah,” Agent Flynn replied, his voice quizzical. “How did you—”
“He is a baby,” Zoe said, turning back to Maitland.
The corners of Maitland’s mouth had twisted up, raising by half a centimeter and changing the angles of his face. “Agent Prime, I’m giving you two options,” he said. “You either work with Agent Flynn on this case, or you don’t work on this case. What’s it going to be?”