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

by Blake Pierce

  Zoe burst into the room with Flynn in tow, moving to sit in one of the two chairs that faced Willie Salter. The tour guide was sitting straight-backed in her chair next to a lawyer in a cheap suit, who had no doubt been provided free of charge to her. That was just another reminder that Willie Salter had lost everything.

  “I haven’t done anything,” Willie Salter said immediately, even as they were sitting down. Her lawyer gave her a stern look. Willie quieted down at that, although she still kept her fists clenched on the table, as if holding herself back with some effort. Her dark skin was stretched taut over her knuckles, telling the tale of the tension within.

  “Wilhelmina Salter,” Zoe said, slapping a folder down on the table in front of her. It was bursting by now with all of the material they had gathered in relation to the case: crime scene reports and photographs, Willie’s personal details and criminal record, screenshots from the viral video, the genealogy trees that Zoe had put together for the first two victims. “We have some questions for you about your whereabouts over the last few days.”

  When it came to the third victim, Ezekiel Sewall, they had still fallen short on a connection. There was no involvement that they could see in any online campaign against Willie, no link between him and the video. But it didn’t mean that nothing had happened between them in a physical setting. Their best hope now would be to pin Willie with so much evidence that she couldn’t avoid confessing to the first two—and then Sewall as well, simply because she didn’t realize they had nothing against her there.

  “I was at home,” Willie said immediately. “I’ve been at home. I just went out once to get some groceries, and that was today.”

  “You were not carrying any groceries when we apprehended you,” Zoe pointed out. She was eager to start on the right footing—to leave Willie off-balance as much as possible, so that she wouldn’t be able to gain confidence and begin strident denials. Every time they caught her in a lie, it would add weight to their attack. The recordings of this interview, and subsequent ones, could also be used against her in court to establish a pattern of lying.

  “They were in the trunk of my car,” Willie said. “I got out when I saw the door broken in and left them behind.”

  Zoe took that in stride; it was important not to show any weaknesses to the suspect. Luckily for her, that was just about one of the only things she was good at when it came to interviews. Staying emotionless was her default setting. “Where were you between the hours of eight in the evening and midnight last night?” she asked.

  “At home, like I said,” Willie replied. “I was just at home—all week. I haven’t been out. It doesn’t matter what day you ask me about.”

  “And can anyone confirm that?” Flynn asked, his tone pointed.

  Willie opened and closed her mouth a couple of times as if she wanted to protest. “No,” she admitted at last.

  “All right,” Flynn said, as if that settled the matter. He flipped open the file that Zoe had brought in and pulled out a photograph of Harry Stout—not dead, but alive. “Do you recognize this man?”

  “No,” Willie said immediately—too quickly. Zoe caught the mere split second between the photograph’s reveal and her answer and knew it was a lie.

  “If you are not being honest with us,” Zoe said mildly, “it will not look good in court.”

  Willie bit her lip for a moment and glanced at her lawyer, who gave her a small nod. “I saw him on the news over the past few days,” she said. “It said he’d been murdered. And before that, I found out he was a descendent of the magistrate from the Witch Trials, through doing my tours.”

  “Thank you,” Flynn said, as if graciously accepting an offering. “How about these two?”

  He laid out Sewall and Richards on the table, both of them alive and smiling.

  “Yes.” Willie nodded. “I saw reports on both of them as well. I’ve been home a lot. All I do is watch TV.”

  “That is not all you do, is it?” Zoe asked, seizing the opportunity. “You also spend a lot of time working on something in your home.”

  This time it was Zoe who laid out the photograph—taken and printed just before they came in for the interview. A full view of the corkboard in Willie’s home, the red string, the photographs and written notes, the map with its pushpins.

  Willie stared down at it for a long moment. “This was just my way of blowing off steam,” she said. “I was thinking about ways to get the business started again, but I couldn’t get anywhere with it.”

  “It looks as though you did get somewhere with it, to us,” Zoe said. “It looks as though you realized that a few modern murders would really stir up rumors about the Witch Trials again, make people think about the witches getting their revenge on the people of the town. That kind of rumor could make a witch-based Salem tour all the more popular, is that not so?”

  “Seems so to me,” Flynn agreed, falling easily into the united front role. “Can you explain that to us, Willie?”

  “I…” Willie hesitated, shook her head. “I guess I can see how it looks, but that’s not how it is. I was just marking off historical sites, people I might be able to ask for their help. Anyone who has a long-standing connection to the town might have been able to add some value to the tour. That’s why Harry Stout was on there. I thought I could bring people around to his store, offer him an uptick in business if he’d say something about the judge.”

  “Tell me something, Willie,” Flynn said, leaning back in his chair and looking at her with a cocked head. “If you’re innocent, then why did you run when we ordered you to freeze?”

  Willie looked between them with an incredulous expression. “You broke into my home. You said you were FBI, but I didn’t see any ID. And even if you weren’t lying—I’m a black woman. You think I’m going to stand still and let a cop point a gun at me, whether I’m innocent or not?”

  There was silence for a moment, her words hanging heavy. There wasn’t a lot that Flynn or Zoe could say to that; Willie had a point, and everyone in the room knew it. It would have been easy to protest, to say that she and Flynn were the good kind of law enforcement, that they didn’t target people based on race. But Willie had no way of knowing that. And, Zoe recalled, she had managed to shoot an innocent suspect before. She couldn’t even argue her own case.

  “Wilhelmina Salter, did you hang Harry Stout until he was dead?” Flynn asked, taking a hard tack.

  “No,” she said, her voice steady but rising in pitch.

  “Did you kill Frank Richards?”

  “No.”

  “Were you responsible for the death of Ezekiel Sewall?”

  “No, I was not.”

  Flynn eyed her for a moment, then broke contact to look at Zoe. Catching the movement in her peripheral vision, Zoe looked back and gave him a slight nod.

  “Interview suspended,” he said, getting up from his chair with lithe grace. “We will be back to continue this conversation shortly. I suggest you use the time to discuss things with your lawyer. I’m sure he would be happy to tell you all the benefits of confession—such as reduced sentencing and plea deals. I hope you see sense.”

  Zoe got up and followed him out into the corridor, leaving the interview room behind and allowing the door to close with a resounding snap.

  “Might take a while to break her, but we’ll get there,” Flynn said confidently, stretching his arms above his head. Like Zoe, he was probably still feeling the effects of their lack of sleep. Despite their quick catch-up nap earlier in the day, now that it was later, Zoe felt her bed at the motel calling. But there was still work to be done.

  Maybe more than they wanted to admit.

  “Good work, Agents,” Captain Lee said, approaching them and clapping Flynn on the shoulder. “You’ve done it.”

  “We just need to crack her now,” Flynn said. “Hopefully it won’t take too long before her lawyer advises her to confess, and we can get on out of your hair.”

  Zoe listened to them in silence. Eve
n as they congratulated one another, there was something stirring in the back of her mind: some little shred of doubt that seemed to be growing by the minute.

  All of the numbers made sense. From everything Zoe had seen, there was every mathematical possibility that Willie Salter was the killer.

  And yet.

  There was one thing that she still couldn’t shake. Ezekiel Sewall. Despite the way it all seemed to fit together, he was that one piece that couldn’t seem to match up to any of the other parts of the puzzle. His edges were the wrong shape. There was no link between him and Salter, at least that they could see yet. And while it was perhaps possible that that problem would be solved in the interview, Zoe wasn’t as confident as Flynn. Not yet. Whether it was doubt in her own interview abilities, or simply a need for everything to fit perfectly, she couldn’t tell—but she needed to solve this mystery about Sewall.

  “I do not get it,” Zoe said, quietly, only to Flynn, as Captain Lee walked away.

  “Get what?” Flynn asked, looking at her in surprise. For a moment, she resented the fact that he seemed only just to have remembered that she was there. He had been taking all of the congratulations himself. But then, she reminded herself, that was not such a bad thing. It got her out of small talk, which she did not in the least enjoy or understand.

  “The third victim,” Zoe explained. “Stout and Richards—they were both crimes of opportunity. Men linked to the town’s history who left themselves out in the open. All the killer had to do was lie in wait. But to reach Sewall, she took a chance. She went to his home and lured him out. But why change?”

  “Because he went home earlier than usual, and she wasn’t prepared.” Flynn shrugged. “It makes perfect sense.”

  “No, it does not,” Zoe said. “Think about it. If the idea was just to raise the idea of witches, then any death would do. Sewall does not have any link back to the history of the town. He should not have been such a necessary target. It would have been fine for Salter to choose someone else, anyone who wandered by her path that night. But she chose to go after him, to take the risk of being seen, even to change her MO. Why?”

  Flynn shrugged. “I guess we can hope she’ll tell us.”

  “It has to mean that Sewall was important,” Zoe insisted. “It must mean he was the intended target, not just an opportunity. She wanted him dead, him specifically. And if he has no link to the Witch Trials, no link to the video that went viral, no link to the death of her business—then why him?”

  “Maybe we missed something,” Flynn suggested. “We were tired when we got to that crime scene. We might have overlooked something that proved the connection.”

  Zoe thought back, her mind rushing through the events at that night at double speed, recalling all of the observations that she had made. Bringing back the numbers, the thoughts that had occupied her. There was nothing. And then the interview with his mother the next day—

  “Flynn,” Zoe said. “Do you remember that Mrs. Sewall said, ‘We were so lucky to be able to be Zeke’s parents’?”

  “Yes,” Flynn said, frowning. “It was something along those lines.”

  “It was exactly that,” Zoe told him. “I remember it precisely. Does it sound odd to you?”

  “A little bit,” Flynn said. He frowned, shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I just passed it off at the time as her being tired and stricken by grief. People don’t speak perfectly at the best of times.”

  “But there’s something odd about it,” Zoe said. “I was right. Yes?”

  “I suppose so,” Flynn said. He was shifting from foot to foot, as if he didn’t want to pursue this any further.

  “We have to go and talk to her,” Zoe said. “We have to interview her again.”

  “Zoe…”

  “Flynn.” Zoe looked him in the eye, drawing herself up to her full height—still five inches lower than his—and trying to infuse as much as she could into her own gaze, though it was difficult to know if she had achieved the desire result. “You spoke earlier about trusting one another. I have a feeling—I cannot explain it exactly. But something is not right here. Will you trust me?”

  Flynn looked for a moment as if he would argue again, but then he caved with a sigh. “All right,” he said. “Might as well leave Willie Salter to stew while we talk to Mrs. Sewall again. I don’t see the harm in it.”

  It wasn’t a completely ringing endorsement, but it was enough—so long as he was on her side, and wanted to chase down this lead with her, Zoe could do the investigation that she needed to. “Then we go now,” she said, setting off toward the entrance of the precinct. “It is dark again. If we are wrong about Salter—then I do not want to waste a single moment.”

  ***

  “We do apologize for having to bring all this up again, especially while it’s still so fresh,” Flynn said sympathetically, taking a seat on the sofa as he had last time they visited. Zoe sank down onto the armchair which was already becoming “hers,” her usual seat. Funny how quickly the human mind and body adapted to habit and pattern. Repetition was the norm.

  “If I can say something that helps you catch this man, I’ll talk to you a hundred times,” Mrs. Sewall said. The dark circles under her eyes seemed even deeper than their last conversation, and she was still dressed in black. She barely seemed to have moved at all since they spoke.

  Flynn glanced at Zoe, which she took as a warning not to say anything; she hadn’t been planning to, but it seemed Flynn was of the opinion that it was better Mrs. Sewall not know they already had someone in custody.

  “We’re looking for any kind of link that can help us understand why Ezekiel was targeted,” Flynn said. “As it happens, we remembered you saying something about being lucky to have him. Could you elaborate on what you meant by that?”

  Mrs. Sewall nodded, looking off into a spot in front of the coffee table as if she was seeing something else there. “We wanted a child for so long,” she said. “When he came along, we felt quite blessed.”

  Flynn nodded, glancing at Zoe again with a knowing look. But she didn’t share his opinion that there was no mystery here. There was still something to dig at. If she could just get a little further below the surface…

  “Do you have any photographs of the three of you?” Zoe asked. She was looking at the old, framed photograph of Ezekiel’s father—or at least, the man she assumed was his father. And something was off.

  “Yes, let me…” Mrs. Sewall trailed off, getting up and wandering out of the room into the hall. Zoe met Flynn’s raised eyebrow with a wave of her hand. He would see soon enough. If she was right, he would see it too.

  Mrs. Sewall returned with another framed picture, from more than a few years ago. Ezekiel was just a teenager, and his parents were smiling on either side of them. It looked as though it had been taken at a wedding, probably of some family member. Zoe took it from the woman’s shaking hands and examined it closely, making sure of what she had seen. The realization was like a slap in the face. She had missed something for all of this time—but now she was sure of it.

  “Ezekiel has a widow’s peak,” she announced, looking up at Mrs. Sewall again.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Sewall said, vaguely, as if she didn’t see the point in the question.

  “You and your husband do not,” Zoe said, spinning around the picture and holding it up so that both Mrs. Sewall and Flynn could see the evidence. “So, you are not his parents.”

  “What?” Flynn burst out. Zoe could see how it might sound like a strange accusation, if you didn’t know about these kinds of things. But she did know.

  “A widow’s peak is a dominant gene,” Zoe said. “If you have a dominant and a recessive allele, that means you will have a widow’s peak more often than not. But if both of you have recessive alleles, then the genetic trait will not show up in your offspring. In other words, at least one of you is not the true parent of Ezekiel Sewall. One of his parents, whoever they are, has a widow’s peak.”

  Mrs. Sewa
ll bit her lip, staring at the photograph as if willing it to tell a different story. But then she hung her head. “We didn’t even tell him,” she said.

  “Tell him what?” Zoe prompted.

  “Our Zeke… he really was a miracle to us. You see, I couldn’t have children. I couldn’t at all. They did all kinds of tests. So the only option we had, really, was to adopt.”

  “Your son was adopted,” Zoe said, just to be sure. Beside her, Flynn made a small noise of surprise. He had doubted this lead, but now here they were—and Zoe had to feel a moment of victory about that.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Sewall said, pressing her hand to her mouth as fresh tears sprung into her eyes.

  Zoe didn’t have time to be sympathetic to her pain. “Then we have more work to do,” she said, standing up. “Do you have the information on his birth parents?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Sewall said, gesturing toward the door. “Locked away, in my husband’s study. We never wanted him to see it, so we sealed it away.”

  “Then I need to see that paperwork,” Zoe said fiercely. “And we do not have a moment to lose. This could be the key that unlocks everything.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Zoe practically raced across the room to their makeshift desk, almost tripping over chair wheels and sending a detective with a paper coffee cup flying. There was no time for courtesy or moving out of the way—she had to get in front of that computer right now and start entering the information.

  “What are you expecting to find?” Flynn asked, just barely managing to keep up with her. “Even if there’s a link to the other two, surely this just reinforces our theory? That Willie Salter is the killer?”

  “Maybe,” Zoe muttered. “Maybe not. I just have a feeling…”

  “A feeling?” Flynn sat down beside her, his chair sticking out into the aisle as he craned to see what she was doing. She turned on the monitor and clicked hurriedly on the browser, mentally begging it to take longer than the average ten seconds this old machine normally required to load.