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

by Blake Pierce

  Maden studied him with narrowed eyes for a moment, obviously deciding whether or not to take him seriously. Finally, he shrugged and threw his pen onto the desk with a clatter as he leaned back in his chair. “I’ve heard a few things. Nothing concrete.”

  “Tell me everything,” Flynn said, taking out his own notebook and pen and giving Maden a raised eyebrow when he didn’t immediately continue.

  Maden reluctantly nodded. “There was a dispute in the Chamber of Commerce about a new adult bookstore. The two victims—”

  “Already ruled it out. Next?” Flynn said, his pen still hovering above a blank page.

  “Group of women that fancies themselves a coven, hangs out over at—”

  “Angelina’s?” Flynn snorted. “Ruled it out. What else?”

  Maden gaped for a moment, obviously astonished that law enforcement was keeping up with his own investigative work. He gathered himself and seemed to cast around for a moment. “Well, there’s the tour operator.”

  “Tour operator?” Flynn asked.

  A crafty smile spread across Maden’s face. His smugness at finally having a bit of fresh information did not dampen Flynn’s flare of hope that this could be something useful. “Witch Salem Tours with Willie Salter,” he said. “As was. Went bust a little while back.”

  “How long?” Flynn asked, scrawling down the name.

  “About three months back. It wasn’t a huge earner at the best of times, but there was a bit of a scandal. Went viral on social media. You must have heard of it.”

  Flynn resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Maden was obviously enjoying this now. “What happened?”

  “Well, there was this kid from out of town, went along and filmed himself and his friends taking the tour. It started off benignly enough, but it got worse as the tour went on. See, Salter was into the whole witch thing. I mean, really into it. Like there really were witches who got stamped out because of the actions of the judges. Told it like it was a tour of monsters and heroes.”

  “And the kids played off that?” Flynn guessed.

  “Yup.” Maden grabbed his phone and started scrolling through it, spinning around so that Flynn could see the screen. “Salter ended up getting violent with them. Got a slew of bad reviews, and comedy ones as well, until it drowned the page. Salter was laughed out of the business. Couldn’t get a full tour after that. Last I heard, Salter closed down all the business’s online pages to get away from the mockery, but then couldn’t get the word out about the tours, so no one was signing up.”

  “He lost his business because of it,” Flynn mused. “I guess he might have a heavy grudge against anyone remaining as a real link to the truth of the trials.”

  “She,” Maden corrected, with a cunning smile. “Willie’s short for Wilhelmina.”

  A history of a violent temper, a connection to the Witch Trials, and a deep anger over the loss of a business: not only did Willie Salter fit the bill, but she fit it twice. The heritage of the first two victims and their connection with the Chamber of Commerce was a double whammy. And Ezekiel Sewall… well, Flynn didn’t know the connection there yet. But he was a younger man. Maybe he’d been involved with the initial recording—or with the campaign that came after it.

  Flynn’s phone rang in his pocket, and he lifted a business card in two fingers before putting it down on Maden’s desk. “Anything else comes up, you call me and tell me about it,” he said, with a warning look. “There might even be an exclusive quote in it for you, if it leads us anywhere. Got that?”

  “Got it, boss.” Maden smirked. Flynn would have liked to have stayed and made him think twice about the smirk, but he turned to go, answering the call as he did.

  “Agent Aiden Flynn, go ahead.”

  “This is Zoe. I have a lead.”

  “Me, too,” Flynn said, glancing to either side as he stepped out of the office. Zoe’s tone was as flat and emotionless as ever; it seemed she had forgotten about their earlier fight. Somehow, it didn’t surprise him. She wasn’t the type to notice those around her very much. He went along with it, for the sake of solving the case; his anger from earlier had cooled, and now he just wanted to get the job done. When they got back to D.C., he could put in for that partner transfer he’d thought about over their time together. He could find someone new to work with, someone who actually wanted to be partners. He wouldn’t have to care about what was wrong with her anymore. “Something about a tour operator.”

  “Willie Salter?”

  Flynn almost rolled his eyes. Of course, it would be too good to be true if he’d actually managed to come up with a lead that Zoe didn’t catch first. “Yeah. So, you know about her?”

  “She was arrested on assault charges last month,” Zoe said. “It looks as though the individual who debunked her tour came back once the business had shut down. He had a taste of fame from the clip and wanted to make another, to try to stir up interest again. Willie Salter knocked him out cold for his trouble.”

  Flynn whistled. “That’s promising.”

  “There is more,” Zoe said. There was a whooshing sound behind her down the line; Flynn guessed she’d stepped out of the precinct, near the street. “This was her second arrest for the same issue. Another local man had antagonized her about the clip, and they got into a fistfight in a local bar.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Flynn said, a grin wanting to spread across his face. He fought it, even though Zoe couldn’t see him. Somehow, he didn’t want to praise her or share his glee at the lead with her. He wanted to continue punishing her for earlier.

  “Angelina’s.”

  “We’ve got it,” Flynn said, half-laughing. This time, he couldn’t hold it back. The case was almost over. “That’s three connections to Stout. It has to be her!”

  “Where are you now?” Zoe asked. He heard the sound of her closing the car door as she got inside. “I will pick you up and take you to her address.”

  “I’m outside the local paper’s office,” Flynn said, looking up and down the street for a sensible spot where he could wait for Zoe to pick him up. The afternoon was drawing to a close, but it didn’t matter. They had her now. She wouldn’t have the chance to strike under cover of darkness again. “See you in ten.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Zoe let the car sidle slowly along the curb, looking up at the house. “Is this it?” she asked, double-checking the GPS.

  “No car outside,” Flynn noted.

  “We should take a look anyway,” Zoe said. “If no one is home, we will have to do as we did before, and call Morrison or Reed to leave someone here.”

  “All right,” Flynn agreed, as she pulled the car to a stop. For some reason, he had been almost pleasant since she picked him up—quiet and obedient, rather than loud or vicious. She couldn’t figure out what she’d done to make him calm down. Perhaps it was just one of those things that happened on its own.

  She opened her mouth to say something about it, thinking it would be best to make sure that the tension really was gone, but Flynn turned his head away from her and opened the car door. A muscle near his jaw tensed. Zoe closed her mouth again, feeling shut down. Maybe the tension wasn’t gone at all—but so long as he was playing ball, there seemed to be no need to address it further.

  Zoe got out of the car and they headed up to the house together, both of them making subtle gestures to check their access to their guns before they reached the door. Zoe knocked loudly, feeling the vibration of the wood underneath her knuckles and seeing the spread of soundwaves as they trailed outward from the source, seeing them get quieter and weaker. There was no reply.

  “Just like we thought,” Flynn said, stepping back and looking up. “No one’s here.”

  Zoe knocked again, more because it seemed like a sensible protocol than out of any real hope for a result. As she did so, Flynn moved over to one side, peering in through the ground-floor window with his hand shading against the glass.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said. He shifted angl
e a couple of times, clearly trying to see something. “I think there’s…”

  “What?”

  “Hold on,” he said again, stepping back and chewing his lip. “Let’s see if there’s another window around the side. I think I see something weird.”

  “Like a body kind of weird, or homemade nooses, or…?” Zoe prompted, making him look back over his shoulder as he walked toward the side of the house.

  “I don’t know,” Flynn said. “Looks like a corkboard. Red string.”

  Zoe looked at the door, thinking. “How about you say it was like a body kind of weird, and we gain entry to the home in order to ascertain the safety of everyone inside?” she suggested.

  Flynn’s eyebrow quirked upward half an inch. “Isn’t that a very strong bending of the rules?”

  “Bending,” Zoe conceded. “Just so long as we do not entirely break them. We are running out of time. If we do not find a reason to arrest our suspect soon…”

  “All right,” Flynn said, motioning for her to step back. “But if we get in trouble with Maitland, I’m telling him it was your idea and you said it was okay as my superior officer.”

  Zoe watched him with astonishment. “That is the first time you have admitted that I am your superior officer,” she said.

  “Well,” Flynn said, taking a step back and then launching himself at the door heel-first. “It’ll probably be the last, so make the most of it.”

  He bounced back as the door rattled heavily, and then kicked it again. The third time was the charm. The lock exploded into a shower of splinters, most of the door reeling back into the hall beyond as the locking mechanism remained hanging sadly from the doorframe.

  “Hello?” Zoe shouted, leaning into the hallway with her hand on her weapon. “This is the FBI! Are you in need of assistance?”

  Flynn gave her a funny look. “No one’s here,” he said.

  Zoe shrugged. “That was for the report,” she said.

  They moved inside, Zoe leading and Flynn behind her. Even though she was almost certain the house was empty, she still had a prickling feeling on her spine. The feeling that this wasn’t right. It was always that way when you were in someone else’s house without their permission. A sense of a space that was not yours to explore.

  Zoe paused near the end of the hall to let Flynn pass, to lead her toward what he had spotted from outside. It only took a moment to step inside the last door on the left and see it. The large open-plan room, running from the front of the house with folding screens to separate the two living areas, was dominated in the back half by a large board that took up most of one wall.

  The board itself was covered in scraps of paper and photographs. Red string and matching red pushpins littered it, stretching between points on a map or between photographs, creating a map of interlocking lines that seemed almost random at first.

  But not to Zoe, not after she had looked at it for more than a second. There were clear patterns here: people linked to places, most likely where they lived or worked. Places where they could easily be found. And linked to the people were notations in some kind of shorthand code, though Zoe could make out a few of the meanings immediately: CC, for example, connected to black-and-white images of Harry Stout and Margaret, which could only mean Chamber of Commerce.

  “Look at this,” Zoe said, pointing to a central piece of paper which seemed to be the nexus of most of the lines. “Willie’s plans. She was trying to find a way to restart her tour business and create more interest in the witchcraft theory.”

  “If she wanted to rally up rumors of witches come back to life or casting curses down the ages to strike down leading members of Salem today, then she’s doing it,” Flynn said. “That’s exactly what people out there are talking about. And once this gets a bit wider media attention, I can imagine there’ll be a new market for tours. Not just of the historic sites, but of the more recent murders as well.”

  Zoe stared at the photograph of Stout. He was alive, caught smiling as if for a portrait. Nothing at all similar to how he had looked in the morgue. “She even has one of the victims up here,” she said.

  “What about the other two?” Flynn said, casting around. “I don’t see their pictures.”

  Zoe reached out to touch two pins, each of them pushed into points on the map of Salem. “No pictures,” she said. “She only marked them with the pins.”

  Flynn audibly caught his breath. “This is really it,” he said. “That’s where both of them died?”

  Zoe checked again. The map was too small to be completely precise, but she was almost certain. “Yes.”

  “Then we should call—”

  Flynn never finished telling her who they should call. Both of them froze and swung their heads around in silence at a distinctly recognizable sound, something that neither of them could mistake.

  The sound of footsteps at the front of the house.

  Zoe signaled to Flynn to keep quiet as she drew her gun, quickly moving into a stance that supported its weight and kept it steadily trained ahead of her, ready to fire if necessary. The footsteps had paused, and Zoe started to move with catlike stealth toward the door, crossing one leg over the other so that she could keep the gun trained forward as she traveled diagonally.

  “Hello?”

  The voice was female, older, and definitely nervous. Zoe heard the tremor in it, almost but not quite disguised by the confidence of a practiced speaker. Willie Salter: she was sure of it. The disgraced tour operator had come home to find her front door broken down, and it was no surprise that she was hesitant. But this was Zoe’s chance to use the element of surprise, and get her in custody before she could flee.

  Zoe took one quick glance over her shoulder at Flynn, to let him know she was about to move, and then she did it. She sprang the final distance across the threshold and into the hall, where she had a direct line of sight to the doorway. Keeping her gun up in front of her, she trained it immediately on the woman who was standing there.

  “Freeze! FBI!” Zoe shouted, seeing Flynn in her peripheral vision as he moved silently away, through the front of the room. He would cover Willie from a different angle. That was perfect—the right strategy just in case their suspect should get violent.

  But the suspect did not look, at that moment, particularly violent. Instead, she looked utterly shocked, her house keys still clutched in her hand and hanging uselessly, her eyes wider than the usual dilation and her jaw dropped open. Her black hair, worn in a natural short Afro, seemed to give her even more of an aura of surprise, like a halo of shock.

  It was always hard for Zoe to know what a suspect was thinking. She couldn’t read expressions as well as others could; all she could do was to read angles of gaze and try to infer something from that. Willie Salter’s gaze was firmly on the gun, her body frozen as if in the act of stepping forward, now jerked back.

  Zoe’s own mind was racing through calculations: Willie was tall for a woman, five-nine, and well-built enough that she would have had some strength. Despite her gender, it was easily possible for her to have hefted each of the victims, even the heavier ones, so long as she used the two-pulley method they had seen evidenced at the crime scenes. She was the one. She had to be.

  Zoe had no idea what she was going to do. Surrender, pull her own gun, throw something, cry. There were a lot of possibilities. But of all of them, Willie Salter took the one Zoe always hoped they wouldn’t. She turned in an instant, her heel spinning as she kicked off from the ground, and she ran.

  Zoe swore and darted forward, almost colliding with Flynn as he also gave chase. She was out the front door first, past the shattered remnants, leaping down over the driveway toward the sidewalk outside, watching Willie go.

  She was sprinting down the street already, but even as Zoe watched, she darted sideways into an alley. Even worse: now she was out there, in the warren of streets of a neighborhood she knew, and their chances of catching her were getting smaller by the minute.

  They weren’t yet
at zero, though. Zoe had seen the GPS as they arrived, the pattern of the grid-like streets and the interlaced irregularities of the older parts of the town easily transferred to her memory. She thought hard and fast. There was a way—a diagonally placed street, heading in the same direction as the side alley, with one joint destination. If Zoe was fast—

  “Stay on her!” she yelled to Flynn, kicking herself forward even faster. She let her gun drop down as she sprinted, dropping safety in favor of speed. She didn’t pay enough attention to know whether he had followed her orders; she just had to trust that he had. She could see neither of them—not Willie, hidden now behind buildings, buildings that Zoe saw in her mind’s eye getting progressively thinner as the two streets converged—

  Zoe launched herself forward for the final moment, spinning around as she did so, looking in the direction where she knew the alleyway would be. Something hit her hard, colliding with her midsection and knocking her to the ground, and she threw out her hands to break her own fall by slapping the sidewalk. As the force of the impact left her she threw herself left, toward the thing that had hit her—the thing that was their suspect, Willie Salter, now trying to roll and get back to her feet, to recover, to escape.

  Zoe made a desperate lunge toward her but hit only concrete, Willie already having rolled out of range. She needed to move again—to grab her before—

  And Agent Flynn came down on Willie Salter like a ton of bricks, pinning her to the floor briefly while he deftly snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists, then stepping back as he breathed hard.

  “Wilhelmina Salter,” he said, in between pants. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder.”

  Zoe let her head rest back on the sidewalk for a moment in relief. It was over. They had her now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY