Face of Darkness (A Zoe Prime Mystery—Book 6)

by Blake Pierce

  They contemplated this grim reality together for a moment, the fact that the killer could be any number of people. Zoe would have to check that the first crime scene had the same usage of physics to make the load easier, but from this scene, she couldn’t get a lot of information about the strength, weight, or height of the killer. The force of the pull had left no marks, the killer standing on the sidewalk rather than soft ground. They were going to need to look elsewhere for clues.

  “We need to visit the coroner,” Zoe said, looking at Flynn. She wasn’t asking permission from the captain, or from Flynn. It was an instruction.

  “Right,” Flynn agreed. “Captain, is there anyone who can drive us over there? Detective Morrison…”

  “I’m right here,” Morrison said, over his shoulder. Zoe and Flynn both turned to look at him.

  Zoe felt a spark of annoyance. Wasn’t he supposed to be looking up financial records by now?

  “What are you still doing here?” Flynn asked, taking the words right out of Zoe’s mouth.

  “I needed to check if the captain wanted me to do what you said.” Morrison shrugged, talking around a cigarette as he rubbed chilled hands together.

  Captain Lee opened his mouth to reply, but it was Flynn who jumped ahead of him. “This is now officially an FBI case,” he said, icily. “Which means you work for us now. If we say jump, you better be in the air within the next thirty seconds. Got it?”

  “Fine, whatever,” Morrison said churlishly, but Zoe was looking at Flynn with a newfound sense of satisfaction. He wasn’t the easiest partner to work with, thanks to his arrogance and the undying self-confidence that seemed to suggest he was the most qualified person in the room—and he rarely was. But it seemed that having someone to fight these petty battles, which were often half the job when dealing with local cops, was going to be incredibly useful.

  “To the coroner, then,” Flynn said, jabbing a finger in Morrison’s direction. “And Captain, I trust you’ll be able to put someone else on the job. We want a thorough forensic financial report on both businesses.”

  “Understood.” The captain nodded smartly. He didn’t look pleased with the order, but he no doubt had the experience to know that it was better to do as he was told. “Morrison, behave yourself. You do whatever they ask of you. You’re representing the department on this, son, so you better act like it.”

  Morrison hung his head and stalked away, throwing his cigarette butt to the ground and stomping on it, but he was headed toward the car. Zoe took that as a small victory and strode after him. The coroner’s visit couldn’t wait.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Zoe followed Morrison down past flickering strip lights to a room at the end of the hall, fitted with swinging double doors that made it easy for carts bearing bodies to be moved inside. The coroner was working late. Zoe had no doubt that Captain Lee would have impressed upon him the importance of getting this case wrapped up as soon as possible, especially now that the FBI was involved. The lights were still on in a low, squat building adjacent to the police precinct, with white-tiled hallways that seemed eerie this late at night.

  The coroner was there, a balding man in his fifties with bright blue headphones over his ears. He took them off when he saw them entering, and Zoe caught four tinny beats of a heavy electronic sound before the music cut off.

  “This is Frank Richards?” Zoe asked, without preamble. She saw Flynn flashing his badge out of the corner of her eye; hers was already hung around her neck on a chain, the insignia visible enough that most law enforcement didn’t bother asking her to show the picture. She moved toward the body on the slab, already recognizing him enough to know that she was right. The dimensions were all there.

  “I’m still completing my examination,” the coroner said, half-apologetically. “I was working on Stout when this one came in.”

  “You have completed your preliminary report on Stout?” Zoe asked, glancing across the room to the closed metal doors of the morgue’s racks and then back to the more pressing view of Richards’s body.

  “They look fairly similar so far,” the coroner said, which was not exactly a confirmation, but Zoe let it slide. “I’m seeing the same patterns of MO. There’s a blow to the back of the head in both cases, which was done fairly shortly premortem. By my estimations, it would be enough to stun the victims, perhaps even to drop them unconscious for a moment or two, leaving them defenseless for long enough to get the rope around their necks. The blow to the head isn’t fatal; in the first case, Stout, it didn’t even draw blood or cause any internal fracturing. For Richards, it’s a little harder, but I believe he retained consciousness given the small amount of blood on his fingertips here.”

  Zoe moved closer to examine the hand that the coroner was lifting, showing a dark red smudge on Richards’s hand, now darkening closer to brown. “You are sure this is Richards’s blood?”

  “I’ve sent a sample to the lab for testing,” the coroner said mildly. Zoe was half-impressed; he wasn’t flustered by her questions, and didn’t seem annoyed at having to work late or report to the FBI. He was more professional than most of the officials she found in towns of this size. Then again, Salem was bigger than it seemed; with the constant influx of tourists, their police department had to see more action than in comparable locations. “The cause of death in both cases is asphyxiation, through hanging by the neck. The same rope in both cases with the same kind of knot. There aren’t any other signs of a struggle, so I’m surmising the blow to the head was a surprise attack and the rope was lifted before they managed to regain their balance enough to fight back.”

  Zoe nodded. It was all very interesting. She was already building up a picture of the killer in her mind. He, or she, was—

  “Quick and efficient,” Flynn said, almost admiringly. He’d taken the words right out of her thoughts. “He knew just where to attack them, so that there would be no witnesses to help or call the police. He attacks from behind to neutralize them, then gets them in the air quickly. I’m guessing the ropes were already set up and knotted, ready to be used.”

  “There must be some degree of scouting,” Zoe acknowledged, turning back to Flynn. The body had told her everything it could: the height, weight, age, just as in the report. The dimensions of the rope could be gained from the abrasions on the neck, but Zoe had already seen the rope herself. As for the blow to the back of the head, it gave her a good impression of the size and heft of the item used, and strength required, but that information was not yet enough to point the investigation in any particular direction. “I would guess that the killer observes the habitual routes of the victim first, and then sets up the rope at a position somewhere along the route where they can use existing features of the city to help in hoisting the weight of the body.”

  Flynn nodded quickly. She could see that his mind was working at the same rate as her own, that he had already reached the same conclusion. “There must be a lot of planning in this.”

  “I would like to see Stout,” Zoe said, following the coroner as he immediately turned and slid out one of the drawers on the far wall; the man lying inside it was just the same as she remembered from the crime scene photographs, if a little more gray and marked with the results of the coroner’s investigative tools.

  There was nothing new to learn here. Zoe nodded once to signal that she was done, and the coroner looked to Flynn for his confirmation before sliding the door closed. There would be tox screens and blood tests, but Zoe didn’t think it was necessary to wait for either. Unless there was some unlikely mistake from the killer that had left their blood on Richards’s fingers—which, given the placement of the blood smear and the corresponding angle of said fingers when placed on the back of one’s own head, seemed highly improbable—there would be no useful information in them.

  “We are not going to find any more answers here,” she said to Flynn, trying to fight the growing darkness that told her they weren’t going to be able to stop one more death tonight.

&
nbsp; “Agreed,” he said. “We should start talking to family members, see if they can shed some light.”

  He was right, so she didn’t argue.

  “There is only one thing I am sure of,” Zoe said grimly, leading the way back out of the morgue with Flynn and Morrison in tow. “The killer has already chosen their next victim. And they will strike tonight, so we had better get those interviews done fast—no matter who we have to wake up.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She didn’t need to fall asleep tonight in order to know what she was expected to do.

  The dreams had been coming for months now, so vivid and bright that she could swear she wasn’t really asleep at all. It was more like she was visiting somewhere real, being taken somewhere outside of her own mind, leaving her body unconscious in the bed as she traveled. Yes, that was exactly what it was like. It made a lot of sense. There was probably no limit to how far a witch could take you from within your own sleeping mind.

  The witch had been showing her things for a long time. At first, in the beginning, she hadn’t been able to understand. The dreams, though unsettling, had been written off as just that. Dreams. But as time had gone on, she had seen the pictures clearer and clearer, the same messages coming through again and again. They needed to be punished. Their souls needed to be released to the witch’s control. They needed to die.

  She studied the photographs she had taken of the next man, all from a distance over the past days and weeks. She knew him inside out now. She knew his routes, his habits, where he would be and when. And the witch had guided her in that, too. Showed her visions of her own sisters hanging from trees and gallows, shown her how the men hoisted them high until they were kicking and choking, until they stopped moving at all, curses dying on their last strangled breath.

  Just like how the men were dying now, kicking and fighting against the air, until they stopped moving at all.

  It had all been the witch’s idea, but she had to admit that she liked the poetry of it. The way the symmetry came down across the years, from the witches to the men, from the men to the witches. And she liked the way that she didn’t need to think about it much, didn’t need to consider those details herself. The witch supplied everything. Told her where to look. And whenever she was awake, and felt like she didn’t know what she was supposed to do next, something would happen; a sign from the witch, she always knew, designed to keep her on the right path.

  This one had been a little trickier than the first two. He wouldn’t do as she wanted him to; wouldn’t leave himself out and vulnerable in the dark, wouldn’t stray into alleyways or into shadows, wouldn’t separate himself from the crowd. It was irritating—she had to watch him for the longest, waiting for him to slip up, but he never did.

  So, she’d had to come up with another plan. She cast her eye over the windows of his home again now, examining them for any signs of life. There did not seem to be any, which was deliciously ironic, because soon there really would be none at all. It was deliciously easy to lie in wait now, to trace back his route home and find that quiet place she had scouted before, where no one would see her in the dark until he passed by.

  She made the walk because she enjoyed it. There were bus routes here, but he always walked home, and he did so past the monument that housed those fallen sisters (and one brother) who had lost their lives in the Trials. She could wait for him closer to his workplace, but this way, she had the chance to walk by it and honor them one more time.

  The small graveyard housed the town’s old bodies, the gravestones cracked and tumbled now, leaning as if drunk or reduced to nothing more than nubs sticking out from the spare grass. So many tourists trampled here, people with no respect for the dead. No disgust at what they had done. Nothing but ghoulish amusement at the spectacle. She passed by the worn slabs of the memorial jutting out from the stone wall, each carved with a name, placing a single red flower on each of them, an act of remembrance. That done, she stepped on out of the so-called witch village and toward the place she knew she could wait for him, where he would pass by in less than an hour, leaving her free to do her work.

  She took one last glance around and slipped into the shadows, the rope light in her hands even though it should have been heavy—light with the knowledge of the life it was about to take, and the justice that would be served to the man who deserved it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Zoe checked her watch, not at all surprised to see that it was already midnight. She felt it, in every line of her body. Looking at Flynn, she could also see the way his eyes were starting to droop, how his reactions were getting fractions of seconds slower. But they weren’t going to get any rest tonight unless they found out the information they needed to catch the killer. Exhausted or not, they couldn’t go to sleep and dream easy when there was a potential third victim at risk tonight.

  Morrison ended his call and shifted in his seat, looking around at Flynn and Zoe, twisting so he could see to the back of the car and take them both in at once. “So, I have good news and bad news.”

  Irritated at the delay of his needless melodrama, Zoe nodded sharply. “Go on.”

  “The bad news is that Mrs. Richards, bless her soul, is totally distraught. After Frank’s body was found this morning, she had a bit of a turn. The guys who were sent to inform her said that she just went totally into shock. They had to call paramedics, get her over to the hospital, where she was sedated. So, asking her any questions about her husband tonight is out. It’s tomorrow at least before they bring her out.”

  “And the good news?” Flynn prompted.

  “The good news is that they have an adult daughter,” Morrison said, grinning. “She’s at the family home. I can take you there now.”

  Zoe shook her head. “Just give us the address,” she said. She was getting tired of dealing with Morrison and his laissez-faire attitude. They needed speed, and they needed professionalism. “You go back into the precinct and make arrangements for us to meet with any relevant family members or witnesses for the first victim. People who knew him well. I will call you when we are done. Agent Flynn can drive.”

  Morrison made a face, which she took to mean he was probably insulted by her decision to remove him from the car, but she didn’t care. Nor did she particularly pay any attention to him as he programmed the address into the GPS and got out, allowing Flynn to duck in and take his place. It only took them a couple of moments to be on the road again, traveling at Flynn’s usual breakneck speeds past witch-themed tour operators and public stocks left now for the amusement of tourists.

  As much as Zoe hated the feeling of nausea that his driving style always induced, at least they would get to where they needed to be quickly—and tonight, time was absolutely of the essence.

  “I’m glad to see the back of him,” Flynn commented, earning a brief nod from Zoe. She was thinking about the case, trying to turn things over in her mind. Running all the numbers again, attempting to get closer to a guess on the killer’s physical attributes. Unfortunately, there was very little data to go on. She knew that she was going to need more.

  “I don’t know how you did that,” Flynn said, shaking his head. “At the crime scene. You did those calculations in your head.”

  “Calculations?” Zoe repeated, lost for a moment. She had been following her own pathways, far away from the conversation, and now felt left behind.

  “When we arrived and looked at the rope—we weren’t there more than a minute, and you’d already worked out the force needed to lift the body, and who would be able to do it, and even an equivalent weight for comparison.” Flynn made a self-deprecating snort. “I would have needed a pen and paper to work that out. Or at least more than half a minute. How do you do that?”

  Zoe shook her head, looking out at the road ahead but no longer seeing the historic buildings flashing by them. A flare of panic rose up inside her, even though she remained outwardly cool. “Do what? It was just basic math. I am good with crunching numbers, that is all. I
took math as my major.”

  “Really?” Flynn paused. “I can’t imagine you as a student. You look like one of those people who’s always been an adult, you know?”

  Zoe wondered if he meant that to be an insult. It felt like one. For her whole life, people had been picking up on the ways in which she was different. They told her she was too quiet, too anti-social. Too serious, mostly because she found it difficult to pick up on the social cues and cultural references that meant someone was joking. And she had been too gifted, too, the numbers making her stand out from the moment she entered school, even when she tried to hide them.

  “I emancipated myself from my parents as a teenager,” she said, instead of telling him the rest of the truth, not even knowing really why she was giving him this much. Flynn didn’t need to know about the mental torture her mother had put her through, the long nights of enforced praying to be different. The way she had told her daughter she was cursed by the devil, all because of the numbers in her head. She had told Shelley everything, but Flynn was nothing at all like Shelley. He didn’t make Zoe want to open up to him, to tell him the truth because she knew he would be accepting. But here she was anyway, telling him a little piece of herself, something she almost always kept private. “I suppose I had to grow up fast.”

  “Oh.” There was a beat, during which Flynn was perhaps figuring out what to say to that. “Well, uh, sorry. That was probably hard.”

  Zoe shrugged. “I have no other upbringing to compare it to.”

  “Yeah,” Flynn said, slowly. “I guess you wouldn’t.”

  Silence grew between them again, comforting and familiar. Without his attention, Zoe could relax a little and let her mind run over the case. She didn’t need to control her expression, since he was looking at the road, so she could let it go blank. She didn’t need to say anything—or, if she did, she had missed the cue, so it didn’t matter.