by Blake Pierce
And what was that theory, exactly? The paper was titled “In Search of the Philosophical Pi,” which was intriguing. Reading on through the hypothesis, Zoe understood that this was the use of pi as a basis for the nature of the universe. A way to understand order and chaos. To understand everything through one mathematical function.
Zoe began reading, settling more comfortably in her chair. The more she understood, the stranger the paper seemed. It wasn’t written properly like an academic paper. There were very few examples of things to support the hypothesis, no proposal of an experiment that could be carried out to test it. In fact, there was very little in the way of proof at all, yet the paper was written as if describing a thing that was observably and unquestionably true. Pi, everywhere: the iris of an eye, the spiral sequence of the DNA helix. The rings of the sun. The concentric circles spreading out from a disturbance in the water of a pond.
It wasn’t an academic paper, not really. That was probably why no one had wanted to touch it. It was more of a love letter to pi, an explanation of how fantastic and wonderful it was. This wasn’t the writing of someone who was at the top of their field, someone who had grasped a new layer to something unseen by all until now. It was the writing of an obsessive. A person who thought they had the answers, even though there was nothing at all to back up this assumption.
Blind faith.
The name of the professor was signed at the bottom of the paper as well as the top of every page: Pierce Ford. Zoe ran a search for his name. He was still listed as a member of faculty in the school of philosophy. He was still working at the college.
He still had access to records, that meant.
Something was blooming, flourishing in Zoe’s mind, like the petals of a flower unfurling in response to light and water. She was beginning to see things. The way he had described natural instances of pi in the paper struck her, and she thought back to the murder scenes. A pond, where concentric ripples would have illustrated pi for the killer. The curve of a river, demonstrating the right shape as well as another source of water. The planetarium, where the ripples of the janitor’s bucket would have been set off by the circular spinning demonstration of the solar system itself. The state park, where the rings inside a tree stump were not only representations of pi but also of numbers in their own right: the age of the tree at the time of its death.
A natural illustration of pi that could only be seen as a result of a death. Zoe couldn’t ignore the symbolism. She now knew two things: one, that the killer had chosen his locations and his victims with far more care than they had ever guessed so far, and two, that the killer was Professor Pierce Ford.
Zoe surged up out of her seat, her hands shaking. She didn’t bother to log off; the professor’s home address was printed along with the paper. She knew where to find him.
She knew where she had to go, to bring him to justice and stop the killings once and for all.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Zoe pushed a few buttons on the screen in the central console of the rental car as she drove, eyes darting back and forth to the road as she sped along to the address. She managed to find Flynn’s number and called it, listening impatiently as the speakers blared out a dial tone.
It rang and rang until it rang out, hitting voicemail. Zoe lashed out impatiently and hit the screen, ending the call. There was no point in leaving him a voicemail. He was asleep, his phone probably on silent.
All the better, because if he wasn’t there when she confronted the killer, he couldn’t get caught in the crossfire. Couldn’t catch a club across the side of his head or have his life strangled out of him. He wouldn’t go the way Shelley did. She wasn’t going to lose another partner.
Besides, she was the senior agent on the case, and she was armed. Zoe could handle herself. No, this was much better. Zoe could go after him on her own.
She sped through Syracuse, the almost-empty streets perfect for driving at a speed that almost matched what Flynn was able to manage. Though this time, with far less risk of hitting someone innocent.
“Your destination is in five hundred yards, on the right.”
Zoe squinted ahead. A long hedge, nine feet tall, blocked her view until she was almost upon it—a driveway looming up out of nowhere on the road, as she slowed down to a stop and turned her head to look toward the gap.
Zoe instinctively reached out and turned off the headlights, plunging the way ahead into darkness. Her eyes were fixed on what she had seen, what had made her react so quickly: another vehicle.
It was a truck, backing out of the driveway and onto the road. Zoe strained her eyes forward while simultaneously trying to make herself as small as possible. There was a man behind the wheel; it made her breath catch as she took him in. From what little she could see of him, he looked the right weight, around one hundred fifty pounds. The kind of figure she had expected, with arms thick enough to hold another human down in water until they stopped struggling.
He was dressed all in black, looking around himself with caution. He glanced over at the car, but his gaze didn’t linger for longer than a millisecond; to him, Zoe’s car must have looked like it was simply parked, no one inside. Zoe breathed a gasp of relief for the darkness. He had looked right in her direction and not seen a thing.
Her engine was still running, and Zoe left the headlights off, ignoring the repeated warnings flashing up on her dashboard. He was dressed for the kill—the kind of uniform that would make it difficult to spot and identify him if there were any witnesses around. Without any real proof, Zoe still felt sure that he was going to his next victim. He must have taken the time to decide on who, and where, and how. He was ready. Zoe wasn’t going to let him slip out of her sight.
She eased forward, slow and cautious at first, but picking up speed as he did. With her lights off, if she just stayed a good distance behind, she could keep an eye on his glow and follow him without being spotted. She just had to play it cool—which wasn’t easy, with her heart hammering at a hundred miles an hour in her chest and her breath going ragged. She had him in her sights—a killer who had targeted women, just like herself, and dispatched all of them with what seemed like easy physical prowess so far.
Ford was pushing on, taking turns here and there, sticking to quiet streets here on the outskirts of the town that were not well-lit with streetlights. Even so, every time she passed under the glow of one of them, Zoe held her breath, backing off as far as she dared so that he would not see her in that circle of light.
It was sheer luck that they had been issued a dark green car by the rental agency. They had not requested or specified anything particular, but now it was making all the difference. Zoe needed stealth on her side, and for now, she had it. She put her foot on the accelerator to catch up after one streetlight, only to have to slow down again as another approached. Ford took a corner up ahead, and Zoe fixed her eyes on it, zooming ahead through the light and then taking the turn behind him.
And slowing to a stop, because he was no longer there.
Zoe cursed loudly. The road carried on ahead, but there were also further turns on both sides of it, two on the left and three on the right. Which one had he taken? She crept forward, staring down each turn for the glow of headlights, but she reached the final option without seeing a thing.
Zoe let the car idle for a moment, slamming her hands on the steering wheel in frustration, narrowly avoiding blaring the horn. She’d lost him. How had she allowed herself to lose him?
Zoe gripped her head in her hands for a moment, trying to think, trying not to let utter rage at this new loss overwhelm her. She had to stay focused. There was hardly any time to lose—he was pulling away from her second by second, getting more and more impossible to trace.
There was no need for caution now—only speed. Zoe switched her headlights back on and swung the car around. She would take each of the side roads in turn, following them as far as she dared before concluding that he must have gone another way. She would race down every
road in the area if she had to. She studied the GPS. All of the roads went on somewhere else, which was unfortunate, but two of them ended in residential cul-de-sacs and only one led further out of town. She had to take her chance.
Forcing the car to take the turns as quickly as it could manage, Zoe sped down the first road on the right, putting her foot on the accelerator and desperately hoping that she would be able to catch him up.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
He parked the truck and looked up at the house, contemplating it for a moment. Nights like these seemed too perfect to be true. The moments when everything aligned just the way that he needed them to.
No one had caught him. He had taken so many of them already, but the police were no closer to catching up with him. No rap at the door, no questioning at work. As far as he knew, he wasn’t even on their radar. If he didn’t get caught, he could go on like this forever; it was so easy.
Just like the ever-expanding universe, pi went on forever. It did not come to an end—just mutated and continued, changing as it went, never repeating the same thing twice. He could do that. There were so many possibilities that there never needed to be an end.
He could go on forever, just like pi. The thought was pleasing to him. He took a moment to look up at the sky above the house, admiring the stars, pinpricks of light which also followed their own patterns. The whole of the universe, laid out according to pi. It was amazing what you could see when you knew where and how to look.
There were no lights on inside the house, not visible from here, parked outside it. That probably meant that she was asleep. So he hoped. There were heavy curtains drawn across the upstairs windows, so he remained cautious. People had a habit of staying up late on their phones these days, only a small glow in the room, enough to illuminate their face and no more. He wasn’t taking any risks. She could still be awake, so caution was needed.
He went around the back of the property, enjoying the spacious drive. Out here, away from the busier, more compact parts of town, there was more room for everyone. There was more room for things like driveways and back patios and yards. He walked carefully across the trimmed grass, over the cement tiles placed around the back door, and stepped up close to it.
He had spent a lot of time training on this. There were videos all over YouTube, so it was easy enough to learn, and the kits were available online too. You just took this piece of metal and that piece, inserted them into the lock at exactly the right angle, gave them a little twist, and—
There. He slowly and carefully eased the door open, then pulled it almost closed behind him, taking time to make sure that even the subtle click of the catch returning to its place was absent. When he was satisfied that it would not blow open on its own—the night was still—he let it go, just ajar enough to afford him a way out if he needed to take one quickly.
He stopped, then, and looked around, waiting for his eyes to adjust to see more clearly in the dim interior. There was no sense in rushing around. He was here, now, and he had her, and there was nothing to be gained from being too hasty. This was a time for enjoyment. A holy ritual of his own devising, one that would give him another small part of the enlightenment that he sought.
Satisfied that he could see well enough, he stepped forward, feeling as though he was gliding rather than walking over the soft carpeted floors. He avoided all obstacles, anything that could make a noise, and paused at the bottom of the stairs, tilting his head up.
No lights, still. No sign of life. She must be asleep up there, like he had originally thought. But this was the trickiest part, now—stairs were always tricky to navigate when you didn’t know them. It was hard to say which would creak and which would be solid. He placed one foot close to the wall and leaned his weight on it; when it didn’t make a sound, he did the same with the other foot, one step up, close to the wall at the other side.
He made his way up slowly and carefully, testing each step before he put his weight on it. It was going well. It seemed as though he was going to get all the way up without making a sound—
And then, as if the universe had heard his hubris and was punishing him for it, the next step gave an audible creak, making him freeze in place.
He hung his head. Yes, he had been arrogant. That response was right. He deserved it. He remained still and silent for a short time, listening carefully. There was no sound. If she had been woken by the creak, she had not come out to investigate.
He breathed again and began to move, skipping the creaking stair and going for the next one. This time he made it to the top without further incident, and then glanced around, looking for a clue as to where he should go next.
There were several doors, all of them but one hanging open. In fact, now that he looked closely, the last was slightly open as well, the door pushed until it was just ajar. Perfect: the sign he had been looking for. The resident here lived alone, he had known that already. Why close the door all the way if there was no one else in the house? She had closed out the cold air enough to satisfy her and then retired—making his job all the easier.
If he wasn’t supposed to be doing this, then why was it all so easy? He smiled to himself, imagining the difficulty a non-believer would have had in answering that. The formless chaos of the universe had form after all, just not one that we could see. Except we could if we looked closely: in the sun’s disk, the buds of a flower, the shape of the very life-sustaining planet that we all relied on. It was there, but no one else seemed to be able to see the wood for the trees.
He eased open the door, holding it tightly and moving it with control just in case the hinges might squeak, and looked into the bedroom. She was there, turned on her side away from him, her back and the soft fall of her hair across the pillow all he could see. He could hear her gentle breathing, slow and steady, not at all interrupted by his presence in the room.
She had no idea he was there. It was almost too easy. He lifted his weapon, his club that had served him so well so far, and paused, feeling almost cartoonish. It was like a scene from something. He wanted to cackle, or give some other kind of sign that he was there. In the movies, this would be the moment when the victim’s eyes sprang open and she rolled just in the nick of time, away from the villain.
But he wasn’t the villain, and so nothing happened at all when he brought the club down over the back of her head; she just carried on lying there as if she was sleeping, and when he checked her by rolling her toward him, he saw that she was not sleeping at all now but unconscious. Even though the crack that had echoed through the room as the heavy club met the crunching bone of her skull had been loud, he no longer feared the noise. It was only the two of them, and now she wasn’t going to be able to lift a finger in her own defense.
See? he told himself. The transcendental number of pi helped him out again. Now he just had to complete the ritual—by killing her, but also by honoring pi in the best way he could in this house. He already had a plan. Now all he had to do was carry it out. And with no one to disturb him in his work, he was counting this one as a definite win already.
***
Zoe craned her neck frantically, searching in all directions. There wasn’t a single headlight anywhere she looked, no sign of life. No clues to tell her which way he had gone. The killer had been in her grasp, and she had let him escape—go on to take another life. This blood was going to be on her hands.
She could no longer control her breathing for the count. As much as she tried to keep it steady and keep going up to ten over and over again, she kept finding it catching, coming quicker, choking, feeling as though she couldn’t get enough air. Then she would lose the count and have to start over again, and there was nothing the numbers could do to help her, because angles and trajectories and calculations meant nothing when you had no idea where the target was going.
What could she do? Zoe was almost ready to give up, to call Flynn again, to call the sheriff and report the license plate number. Maybe they could put out an APB, get the patrols
out looking, stop the car wherever he was next seen—even if he was only coming back from the murder. At least then there might be forensic evidence, things they could use to put him away for a long time.
Zoe pulled up on the curb, rubbing her hands over her face as she killed the engine. How could she have been so stupid? So obsessed with not being seen that she had failed to keep up—some spy she would have made. It was all her fault.
Zoe looked up, hitting the screen of the car to bring up the call menu again. Might as well do it this way rather than grappling with her cell phone. She looked up through the windshield, blinking back tears of frustration with stubborn stoicism.
And blinked again.
That was it, wasn’t it?
The truck?
Zoe stared, checking the license plate against her memory. Same registration, same model of truck. It had to be. She’d managed, somehow, to end up right outside the place where he had stopped.
It took her a shocked moment before she scrambled into action again, climbing out of the car, carefully and quietly closing the door as she crept forward toward the driveway. The truck was just sitting there, making small noises as the engine rapidly cooled in the fall weather, alone and dark. No lights were on, not in the car and not in the house.
Zoe looked up, mystified. Where had he gone? Inside? Was it possible that he knew this resident, had come to visit? But if so, why in the middle of the night? And there were no lights on inside—not like you would expect if he was seeing a friend.