Zoe Prime Mystery 01-Face of Death

by Pierce, Blake

  The wheels slowed to a halt, bumping up and down on the rough, uneven surface of the dirt road as the car stopped. It was fully dark out now, the moon hidden somewhere behind a cloud. All they could see in front of them were the beams of the headlights, illuminating a pathway that trailed into the distance.

  The driver checked his GPS, tapping the screen a few times, zooming out and then back in on their position. “I don’t know what’s up with it, but I just lost power,” he explained, leaning forward over the dash again to examine the symbols lighting up. “Sorry about this. It’s a pretty old car.”

  “That’s fine,” Rubie said. After all, she could hardly complain. But this wasn’t ideal. She didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere because the one car that agreed to pick her up had broken down. She didn’t have much chance of getting another ride in the dark.

  The driver turned the ignition off and then on again, tilting his head to listen closely to the sound of the engine. “How much do you know about cars?” he asked.

  Rubie gave a short laugh. “I don’t even have my driver’s license,” she said.

  The driver gave her a wry grin, a look that seemed to acknowledge how awkward their situation was but also that there was nothing to be done about it. “I can’t hear the engine properly from inside here. Could you do me a favor? If you pop the hood, you should be able to listen out for a rattle. That might tell me what’s going on.”

  Rubie eyed the darkness warily. It looked cold out there, not to mention that they were in the middle of nowhere. She wasn’t an idiot. She had seen movies.

  But then again, movies weren’t reality. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice. If she didn’t help him out with getting the car going again, they would be stuck here for even longer. And this guy had helped her out, picked her up off the side of the road and listened to her story. He was sympathetic, pleasant to talk to.

  Rubie squared her shoulders and reached for the door handle. “Just a rattle, right?”

  “That’s it. I’ll rev the engine when you’ve got the hood up. Then just shout if you hear something.”

  Rubie nodded, getting out into the chill air. The whole area around them was quiet, only the small, subtle sounds of bugs going about their nightly business. There was no sound of another engine, except maybe so far away that it was hard to tell whether she was really hearing anything. The road was practically empty. Definitely no chance of getting another ride.

  The driver had already popped the hood, and Rubie lifted it, a little gingerly, trying not to get grease on her hands. It wasn’t as though she had enough clothes that she could afford to ruin the ones she was wearing.

  She realized, even as she did it, that from this angle she could no longer see the driver. In the silence she heard the noise of his door opening and pulled back a little, concerned.

  Maybe this had all been a trap. Maybe he looked at her and knew she was someone he could abuse, push around, take what he wanted from. He was going to get out of the car now and beat her, leave her lying on the ground with her shorts around her ankles when he was done.

  “Shout if you hear it,” he repeated, his voice coming from inside the car. The engine revved, making her jump and catch a scream in her throat.

  God, she was paranoid. Brent had left her jumping at shadows, suspicious of everyone and everything. It was going to take her a long time to get over this, to stop suspecting strangers of harboring ill intent. The driver was a good man. He’d shown that by picking her up, and by his anger at how Brent had treated her. She had to keep that in mind, and help him out with the engine so that she could get to Lucy sooner rather than later.

  Where else was she going to go, anyway? There was nowhere to run. He was the only car who bothered to stop for her, and there hadn’t been anyone else on the road for a long time. Like it or not—and she admitted to herself that maybe she didn’t like it, a shiver running down her spine—she was stuck with him.

  Better make the most of it.

  She peered down into the dim engine, trying to make something out. It was all darkly glistening metal, most of it greased up and black, not even reflecting a dull glint from the headlight beams still blasting out into the darkness. Rubie was almost blind from the light, the contrast so strong that it blotted everything else out.

  The engine stopped revving, the noise fading out into silence. As it did and the quiet of the night returned, her ears buzzed. The loud noise right next to her had blotted everything else out, and just how the headlights left her blind, she could barely hear a thing with the contrast.

  “I didn’t hear any rattle,” she called out, hoping it would help. If there was nothing wrong with the engine, maybe they would be able to get going again. It wasn’t a new car—maybe it just needed a moment to rest and it would be good to go again.

  Rubie shivered, rubbing her hands over her arms. The driver hadn’t said a thing, and he wasn’t revving the engine again either. She peered down into the darkness of the engine once more as if it could tell her something, and flinched when the reflected light on the engine was blocked by a deep shadow falling over her.

  She heard his step behind her, a loose stone moving away from his foot, and jumped upright. “I didn’t…” she began, meaning to say that she’d had no idea he was behind her, but her heart was racing with the shock of his presence and she lost the words.

  He was looking at her, just looking at her. His expression was almost blank, frighteningly so.

  “Wh-what’s that in your hand?” she asked, gesturing down to the wire that was illuminated fully in the headlights. “Will it… fix the…?”

  She trailed off, beyond shaken now. In a flash, she remembered something she had seen when he had picked her up off the side of the road. Something she had dismissed at the time when he spoke, friendly enough, and offered her a wide smile.

  Something like hunger, or a cruel kind of joy, like a wolf looking down at a trapped rabbit.

  Rubie turned on her heel, wanting to get back into the car now, wanting to get back where it was warm and safe. Where he had been a perfect gentleman and empathized with her story and shared his own past, something that made them equal and the same. If she could just get back inside—

  Rubie reached up instinctively as something connected with her neck—something light and thin but sharp, hurting her fingers as she grabbed at it. What was that? The wire? She pulled and tugged at it, feeling the source somewhere behind her, the heat coming from a body that was not her own.

  She hit out blindly, directing her elbows and feet backward, struggling to find him and catch him off-guard. He was hissing under his breath, cursing, telling her to stay still. She wouldn’t stay still. No. She forced her elbow back again, a desperate aim into the darkness, and felt it connect heavily with something.

  The driver grunted in pain, and the force around her neck relaxed for just a second. Rubie dropped down to her knees, then scrambled forward, finding her way clear. Whatever he had wrapped around her was gone. She kicked off from the ground and sprang forward, at a right angle to the beams of the headlights, avoiding the easily illuminated path they provided.

  Something was hot and heavy on her chest as she ran, gasping for breath already in the cold air that stung like ice in her lungs. What was that? Her hand flew up, feeling wetness all across her shirt, following it up as her feet stumbled on the uneven ground. She could not hear him coming after her, but she ran as fast as she could, as fast as she dared to trust her feet to manage. The wetness—it was coming from her neck—coming from where she had felt the pressure earlier—a wound that began to pulse with pain as soon as her fingers found it.

  There was blood—so much blood—right across her chest, dripping down over her stomach. She felt the hot rivulets running down to splash onto her legs as they pumped desperately for distance, putting as far between herself and the driver as she could.

  The blood wouldn’t stop, so much of it. Rubie grasped at her neck with both hands as she ran, sac
rificing the added balance and mobility of her arms, trying to hold it all in. There was a line that stretched from one side to the other, wrapping around, oozing and leaking more and more with each passing moment.

  Without her eyes or her balance, Rubie stumbled, one foot catching on something that felt like a rock or a hard tuft of ground. She fell heavily, unable to break her fall, the wind rushing out of her as her elbows hit the ground first. At the same time she felt a gush, a feeling like water from a tap bursting out beneath her fingers.

  She wasn’t going to give up. No. She had to get away—keep going—as far away from him as she could. She didn’t dare look around to see if he was still standing in the light from the car, or if he was only steps behind her, ready to grab her again. She couldn’t waste time. Rubie got her feet underneath her and pushed up again, only to fall, sagging, her legs refusing to work.

  Everything felt strange—loose—like she was made of jelly all of a sudden, her arms and legs flopping like dead fish when she tried to move them. The one thing she knew she could feel was the heat of the blood seeping out of her neck, staining the ground now, pouring in such quantities that she could not comprehend it.

  Rubie lifted her head to look into the distance, the lights of the town where her sister lived still just a speck on the horizon. So far away that it might as well have been the stars. The wound on her neck opened like a mouth to pour out another gush of blood, and she felt her face hit the ground, no longer strong enough to hold it up.

  She only registered dimly that she could no longer feel the cold before there was nothing left to feel at all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Zoe was dismayed to find that the motel was even shabbier on the inside than it had looked from the outside.

  “Only the finest for the FBI,” Shelley joked. “That’s why they call us ‘special’ agents, right?”

  Zoe grunted, turning back from her examination of the threadbare sofa in the lobby just in time to see the receptionist returning. “Here’s your key,” he said, tossing one plastic card onto the surface of the counter. It slid over toward them, stopping just before it teetered off the edge.

  “Thanks,” Shelley said, picking it up and lifting her hand in a gesture of acknowledgment.

  Zoe didn’t think his customer service skills warranted even that.

  The man said nothing. He slumped back into his chair and grabbed up his cell from in front of him, resuming whatever activity he had been engaged in when they entered.

  “You know where we can get a decent bite to eat at this time of night?” Shelley asked.

  “Diner ’bout five miles down,” he said, lifting his chin in the approximate direction without looking up.

  Shelley thanked him again, to as little response as the first time. They left him where he was, Zoe leading her away before she could try to start another conversation with the world’s surliest clerk, heading back out into the cold night of the parking lot.

  “Should we go for dinner?” Shelley asked. “Or set up the room first?”

  “We should put our bags in, at least,” Zoe said, sighing. She rubbed the back of her neck, stiff and sore from the long day and the driving they had done. “Then food.”

  “So much for getting on a plane before the day was out,” Shelley remarked, hefting the key and examining it for the room number. She led them across the lot to a door much like all of the others in the long, low building, unlocking it with a swipe.

  “It looks like this was more of a complex case than expected,” Zoe agreed. The mild words hid the anger she was harboring toward herself. She should have been able to solve this one, read the numbers and taken him down. Not leave him the chance to kill again. If someone died tonight, it would be on her.

  The room was small, two single beds placed less than a foot apart with old-fashioned floral bedspreads. The kind that had probably been purchased in the eighties, or even earlier, and washed over and over again until they were thin and scratchy. At least, Zoe hoped they had been washed.

  She kicked one leg of the bedframe, eyeing it warily to see how much it shifted. It felt good, but not good enough. Zoe could probably have kicked the whole place until her leg hurt, and it still wouldn’t work out the frustration she felt. She should have been home by now, not sitting in a motel and waiting for a killer to claim another victim that she could do nothing to prevent.

  She thought of Euler and Pythagoras, and hoped they were all right. She had a delayed-release feeder set up for nights like these, but the cats were too clever for their own good. Once before, they had broken into it and eaten half a week’s supply in one night. She’d come home a few hours later to find them lying bloated and happy, so full they could only wave their tails in response to her voice.

  “Ready?” Shelley asked, her voice quiet. Perhaps feeling that Zoe was not in the mood for this, for any of this.

  Zoe nodded and allowed her partner to lead the way. It was with no great joy that she approached the diner, seeing the lights an oasis in the darkness of the rural area, already mostly shut down for the night. Only a few cars were parked outside in the small lot, and the large windows on all sides of the building allowed them to see just a few patrons sitting to eat or drink coffee. It made her catch her breath in her throat, memories flooding in unbidden of diner meals from her childhood.

  Zoe stifled a groan of complaint as they walked inside. It was your typical small-town diner. Wipe-clean tables and green-covered seats and booths, an attempt at kitsch 1950s stylings that contrasted against the modern appliances and images of local sports teams on a bulletin board. The two tired-looking waitresses, both middle-aged women, wore nondescript uniforms that were neither stylish nor well-fitting. Her eyes told her that one was wearing one size exactly too small, the other one size too large. She blinked, shooing the numbers away. She just wanted to eat and go to bed.

  Zoe slid into a booth and examined the menu. At times it could be soothing to see a familiar list of items and know what you wanted to order, but here it was grating. It was a standard, generic offering of diner fare, the kind of all-day pancakes and burgers you could get at any similar spot in the country. It could easily have been the precise menu offered by the diner in Zoe’s own hometown, where she had slunk sullenly after church, following her parents for their weekly celebratory meal.

  Not that it had ever been a real celebration, for her.

  She stared at the menu without reading it, feeling her mother’s hot gaze on the top of her head, the glare she would always look up to find. Silently, as she always did when faced with a menu, she let the numbers fill her head—telling her the predicted cost per weight of each meal, the number of calories to expect, which held more fat and which more sugar. A pointless exercise, because Zoe never used any of that to choose her meals. She had learned long ago just to pick something she liked and put the numbers away.

  “Can I get you some coffee?” their waitress asked, pausing at their table with a jug in hand. Zoe held out her cup wordlessly to have it filled, while Shelley assented and gave her thanks. With a promise to come back for their food order soon, the waitress was gone again, heavy footsteps slapping the linoleum in flat shoes.

  “What are you getting?” Shelley asked. “I can never choose. I’m so bad at picking what I want to eat. It all sounds good.”

  Zoe shrugged. “Burger, probably.”

  “With a side of fries?”

  “Comes with it.”

  Shelley scanned the menu again a few more times before nodding and closing it. “Sounds good enough.”

  Zoe lifted her gaze to momentarily analyze the alcoholic, the long-distance trucker, and the family man with no desire to go home before deciding the other patrons of the diner were not worth looking at. She turned her eyes to the salt shaker, measuring the precise amount of salt left within it and comparing it with the sugar, before tuning out even that.

  The numbers weren’t helping. The case was still unsolved, nothing left behind by the criminal t
hat she could use even with her unique abilities. Now she was stuck in this two-horse town for at least another day, looking at things that reminded her of her childhood and all the things that her mother had been at pains to point out were wrong with her. All the while, somewhere, some woman might be fighting for her life, losing it in an empty parking lot or by the side of the road.

  “If you don’t like it here, we’ll go somewhere else tomorrow,” Shelley said, offering Zoe an attempt at a bright smile. “Somewhere not so small-town. Maybe we can order takeout to the motel.”

  Zoe glanced up. Once again, Shelley had surprised her with just how insightful she could be.

  “This place is just fine. I apologize if I am being unpleasant. I was hoping we would solve this one quickly and go home. I do not want any more people to die.”

  “Me, too.” Shelley shrugged. “We’ll get there. It’s all right, though. You don’t have to put on a customer service face with me. I can tell you’re not comfortable here.”

  “I did not wish to distract us from the case by bringing up my own problems,” Zoe said, twisting her mouth. “I suppose I was not doing a great job of hiding it.”

  Shelley laughed. “I’ve only been working with you for a little while, Z, but I’m starting to see the signs. There’s a difference between you being quiet because you’re, well, you, and then you being quiet because you’re not comfortable.”

  Zoe looked down at her coffee, pouring exactly one teaspoon of sugar from the shaker without measurement and stirring it, careful not to clink her spoon against the side of the cup. “It’s too much like home here.”

  “I’m not trying to push you. I meant what I said—you don’t need to tell me about it,” Shelley said, taking a sip of hers black. “But you can. If you want.”

  Zoe shrugged. How much to tell? She had not changed her mind about reserving the details, except perhaps for the therapist. But her issues were affecting her work, and Shelley deserved to know why. At least a little bit of why. “My mother was manipulative,” she said, simply. Best to leave out the part where she accused her of being the devil’s spawn. “My father was a bystander, at best. I was legally emancipated as a teenager.”