But did that fit with what she was thinking? If he was focused on the pattern, would he really allow it to be so imperfect? That didn’t seem to sit right with Zoe.
The victims didn’t matter, and they never had. Their killer was just picking someone in the right place at the right time—for his purposes, at least—and making them into a pin on a map. If the victims didn’t matter, and the killer was so angry at his latest victim for running, then—
Zoe took the pin out of the woods, where the body had been found, and moved it back to the very entrance of the access road. The point where he had actually attacked.
“Shelley, was the victim found dead in the place where the attack happened?” she asked, urgency in her voice.
Shelley flipped through the other pages that the fax machine was still spitting out, frowning. “Hold on, let me… Um… No, it doesn’t seem like it. The man was found outside a farmhouse—wait, man? That breaks the pattern.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Zoe said impatiently. “Come on. Where was he attacked?”
“On the grounds of the farm.” Shelley stepped forward, placing her finger on the map. “Here. It looks like he ran.”
Zoe moved the red pin, just a small degree. But when she had done that, the spiral was neater, more composed, more aligned with what she might have expected. It turned out that they had been looking at it wrong from the very beginning. It was not the sites where bodies were recovered that mattered. It was where the attacks took place—the specific and precise locations where the killer wanted them to be.
The phone rang again, somewhere distantly at the range of Zoe’s attention. She ignored it, letting Shelley take care of it. That was not important right now. What was important was the pattern.
He had not waited for the gas station attendant to round a corner because he wanted to distract her, or give her false hope, or because it was all a game. It had been there because it had to be there, otherwise his spiral would not work.
In fact, looking at it now, Zoe would call it a perfect spiral. Nothing was a mistake, and there was no deviation. This was a perfect spiral of the kind that was seen everywhere in nature, a Fibonacci spiral, the spacing decreasing in precise ratios until it reached an end point.
That meant two things. The first was heartening: it was that there was going to be an end to the murders.
The second was less so.
It was that there were three more murders to come before the spiral was complete.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Zoe waited for Shelley to finish her call, tying up loose ends, discussing the latest body. All kinds of thoughts raced through Zoe’s mind, calculations and flashes of the prior crime scenes, things linking up and making so much more sense. She saw distances between scenes, diminishing in distance each time, painting the picture that she should have seen all along.
Shelley put the phone back in its cradle and moved back to the fax machine, seemingly unaware of the epiphany that had overwhelmed Zoe for the long minutes since she had seen it.
“I have it,” Zoe breathed at last to get her attention, staring at the map in a mixture of wonder and horror. “I know where he is going to strike next.”
“What?” Shelley looked up, abandoning her attempt to marshal all of the pieces of paper that had finally stopped coming through the fax machine. “But I didn’t even tell you the rest of the details yet. What if this isn’t one of his?”
“It is his,” Zoe said.
“But it’s a man—that breaks his profile. Most killers don’t break gender or race lines. They target one thing and one thing only.”
“Shelley.” Zoe turned, gestured to the chairs. “I know they tell you all of that stuff in training. The statistics, the general rules that killers move by. But believe me—this is his. I can see his pattern now. Let me explain it.”
Shelley sat, her eyes wide, her arms folded on the desk in front of her. She looked totally nonplussed, though whether at the fact that Zoe finally had the answers or at the way she had spoken to her, Zoe couldn’t tell.
“We are dealing with a schizophrenic,” Zoe began, standing in front of her, presentation-style. “I believe he will have a precise form of schizophrenia known as apophenia.”
Shelley opened her notebook and wrote that down. “What does apophenia mean?”
“An apophenic is someone who is obsessed with patterns. When they are suffering from a delusional episode, they may feel that the patterns are speaking to them or that they are a sign left by a higher power. They see two things and create a connection between them, when there really is nothing there to see.”
“So, for example…” Shelley chewed on the end of her pen, frowning as she thought. “If I was saying out loud that I didn’t know what to do with my life, and I saw an advertising billboard immediately afterward that said ‘Visit Nashville,’ I would think that God was telling me to go to Nashville.”
“Good example. Except that with schizophrenics, this can go much further. They latch onto signs and patterns, and they become truly obsessed. Their lives become dedicated to these patterns. They might stand on a train track and wait for an encroaching train because the pattern told them to.”
“Or they might kill someone.” Shelley’s voice was soft and quiet.
Zoe paused, giving Shelley a moment’s respectful silence as she had noted others doing in serious situations, then nodded. “We thought for all of this time that he was cleaning up his crime scenes to prevent us from tracing him, that he was an accomplished and educated killer, someone who had enough knowhow to stop us from catching him. If I am right, that may well have been simply a lucky side effect of his need to keep the pattern intact. He erases himself, any marks left behind that could distort the pattern. That is all.”
“So, you know what his pattern is?”
“I do.” Zoe moved over to the map, indicating the red pins. “Look. If you follow them around in chronological order, we clearly have the beginnings of a spiral. A perfect spiral, in fact, modeled on the Fibonacci spiral.”
Shelley furrowed her brow. “That’s… hold on, let me try and remember. Something to do with nature, ratios in nature?”
“Correct. It is a series of numbers which define the ratios of many naturally occurring things. We see it in the shells of snails, the way petals grow on flowers, weather formations such as hurricanes. Almost everything, actually. To an apophenic, it might as well be catnip. The perfect obsession, because it really is everywhere.”
“But that means he has to keep killing, in order to finish the spiral.”
Zoe pulled out three new pins, pushing them into the precise points on the map where the spiral should be completed. “Three times. One of which will be tonight.”
“And those are the locations.” Shelley slipped her pen into her mouth, chewing the end of it. Her eyes were flicking backward and forward between Zoe and the map, as if she were trying to find some secret hidden message of her own.
“We need to put out alerts, and get a team together to stake out tonight’s location.”
“Wait,” Shelley said, shaking her head. “Are you… sure about this? I mean, you’ve moved some of the pins. And we’ve got no real clue about who the killer is, let alone whether or not he has any psychological problems. We’re going to mobilize half a state’s worth of law enforcement professionals on one location, based on the fact that there may be a spiral pattern? What if he’s just circling around his home, going out to a new location every night and getting closer because he’s getting cockier?”
Zoe had to admit, the way Shelley described it made sense. This wasn’t a television show, when the arrogant yet genius agent could pull all of the Bureau’s resources to track down a simple hunch. They needed proof, tangible evidence, and failing that, a strong sense of possibility. Much stronger than guesswork.
But it wasn’t guesswork. It was just hard to convince someone of that when you weren’t able to explain to them exactly how you knew what you knew.
/> “He would still move in the same direction.”
Shelley shrugged, her shoulders lifting up and down as if weighted by a heavy burden. “I’m sorry, Z. I know you have more experience than me. But I just don’t understand how you got from that map to being so sure about where he’ll strike next. Maybe you can explain it to me? It might help me get better at this. Next time, I might be able to spot the pattern.”
Zoe shook her head sharply. There was no point. Even if she explained every little thing that she could see, clear as day on the map, Shelley would never be able to get there on her own. Zoe couldn’t teach the kind of skill that she had. It wasn’t born of experience. It was something she could just do—had been able to do since she was able to think.
“I cannot explain it any clearer than I already have.”
A frown creased Shelley’s features, and Zoe braced herself. Here it came. The inevitable breaking point of any partnership she had ever had since joining the FBI. Shelley would get mad. She would argue and try to discourage Zoe from following the right path. When Zoe turned out to be right, she would accuse her of somehow colluding with the murderer. Of being involved in some way herself, or hiding evidence that would have allowed anyone else to come to the same conclusion.
She would shout and scream, call their boss and ask for a transfer. And just like that, Zoe would be given a new partner again.
It was a shame. She had been starting to really like Shelley. They had gotten along all right until now, hadn’t they? But no matter how Zoe tried to interact with her partners, give them what they seemed to want, it always turned out the same. She didn’t know how to calm their suspicions and stop the shouting. The truth wouldn’t cut it.
Might as well get it over with. Zoe picked up a ruler and pen and began to draw straight lines that intersected between all of the red pushpins on the map. One by one she connected them, laying ink over the lines that were already visible in her mind. Then she put down the ruler and drew a freehand spiral that connected line to line, as perfect a Fibonacci as she could do without mathematical drawing devices.
“Can you see it now?” she asked, pushing three red pins into the last remaining locations. “Look. I am right about this. You have to trust me.”
Zoe turned and met Shelley’s gaze. The other woman’s face was set not in the anger or frustration that she expected, but more of an awed confusion. She could see the pattern, that much was clear. But she still didn’t understand how Zoe had gotten there, and she never would.
“We have the same data, don’t we?” Shelley asked, softly. “I can’t see it in all of this. I can see it on the map now, but I don’t know how you got there. How did you know that those pins would form a perfect shape with those lines?”
“I am not hiding any information from you,” Zoe snapped. She was tired of this already, wanted it over. Wanted Shelley to just shut up and let them alert the local authorities, get people in place for a stakeout. They were wasting valuable time. “We have to act now. Do not argue with me.”
Shelley stood, and Zoe almost flinched, ready for the confrontation to ramp up. She could not show weakness, not now. She had to maintain the confidence, use her position as the senior agent. It went against everything she told herself to do in normal situations, but lives were at stake. She clamped her lips together in a firm, straight line, determined not to bend.
Shelley moved in front of her, sat down on the edge of the table. “Z… it’s okay,” she said. “I’m not trying to fight with you. I just want to understand.”
Zoe said nothing. Inside, however, her resolve flickered. No one had ever reacted this way. Whenever she revealed any hint of her gift—or her curse, whichever it was—she was treated with suspicion and accusation. Not this. Not the open, soft expression Shelley was giving her, the quiet voice, the words of encouragement.
“You can see something I can’t, somehow, can’t you?” Shelley took a breath, then reached out to touch Zoe’s arm. “I was warned by the Chief that you’d had a lot of different partners before. That they called you things—made accusations. I’m not here to do that. You can tell me, and I’m not going to demand a transfer. I like working with you.”
Zoe hesitated, looking down at where Shelley’s warm hand rested on her arm. A gesture of comfort. There was something motherly about it. Not that Zoe had real experience of how a mother was supposed to act, but she could guess that this would be it. Like the mothers on television in old sitcoms, reaching out an olive branch to their confused and frustrated teenagers.
Maybe it was the comparison, making her feel young and defenseless again. Maybe it was just the fact that Shelley sounded genuine, as if she really would accept Zoe, warts and all. Or maybe it was simply the almost-symmetrical lines on her face, the reassuring angles and axes that Zoe saw in numbers all over her skin. But whatever it was, something made Zoe open her mouth and speak.
“I have a condition,” she began. “It means that I see things… differently.”
“Differently, how? Like… apophenia?” From any other person, it might have sounded like an accusation. Zoe would have expected them to want to send her away to a psych ward, get her taken out of the Bureau. But Shelley was only seeking to understand, without judgment.
“Not quite. The patterns I see are—real. It is not just patterns, though they are a part of it. I see the world in numbers. I can tell you the distance between markers on the map without measuring it, the degree of angles between them. From there, the pattern follows.”
“What else can you see?” Shelley’s tone was one of wonder and excitement. Positive emotions, Zoe felt sure. Not the negativity she usually heard. Even still, she braced herself for a sudden switch, a smile transformed into anger and resentment. Even as she carried on.
“Everything,” she said, gesturing around helplessly. It was difficult to explain it all fully to someone who had never experienced it. Like trying to explain what it was like to see in color to someone who only saw black and white. “I know the number of millimeters that prevent your face from being exactly symmetrical. I count the chairs and desks in the briefing room the moment I enter, instantly. I can read footprints in the sand and know the height, weight, and running pace of the suspect. A knife wound tells me the dimensions of the blade. I see the numbers in everything.”
Shelley was silent for a moment, digesting it all. Zoe wanted to close her eyes. This was it—the moment when Shelley turned on her. It was coming now, the calm before the storm.
“Wow,” Shelley breathed. “Z, that’s amazing. You have a serious gift.”
Zoe blinked.
“I mean, this is amazing. No wonder you’re so good at catching people. With such a good solve rate, I wondered how you couldn’t keep partners. I thought you had to be arrogant or something, but this?” Shelley shook her head, a smile bursting and lighting up her face. “With a gift like this, you can do so much. Save so many people.”
Zoe reached for a chair and sat down, winded. “You are not angry with me?”
Shelley half-laughed, reaching to touch her arm again. “No, Z. Why would I be angry?” A moment passed, and there was a flicker across Shelley’s expression, something that Zoe could not read. “Oh. Because—because you’ve been made to feel like you’re… different? In a bad way?”
Zoe studied her own hands, lowering her head. “My mother said it was a gift from the devil.”
“That isn’t true,” Shelley said. “I know it isn’t. Jesus, no wonder you don’t like Christians. I mean—excuse my word choice.”
Zoe had to laugh, even if it was a small and quiet one.
The tension in the room was gone, and Shelley was looking up at the map with a renewed understanding. “We have to get on this right away,” she said. “You’re the only person who can possibly understand how the killer thinks. Once we explain it at the briefing, everyone will be on board.”
Zoe’s head snapped up sharply. “You cannot tell anyone,” she said. “Not about me. It is betwe
en us, as partners. No one else can know.”
Shelley hesitated, but caught Zoe’s eye and nodded.
“Promise me,” Zoe said.
Shelley wet her lips before answering. “I promise. It will take some thought to present this in a way that makes sense without people knowing what you can see, but I won’t say anything. So long as you promise me something, too.”
“What is it?”
“Not to keep anything from me. If you can see something, tell me,” Shelley said. She shook her head, although there was still a smile on her face. “I just thought about the guy we caught the other day, in the desert. How you knew where he was going to be, and everyone thought you were wrong. You could see it, couldn’t you?”
“Plain as day.” Zoe took a deep breath. “All right. I promise that I will tell you everything from now on, in relation to our investigations.”
The clarification was necessary. Zoe didn’t want to promise to tell Shelley literally everything. That would have been too much.
“Shake on it, partner?” Shelley held out her hand with a twinkle in her eyes.
Zoe shook, and the deal was done.
“Now, let’s get some more precise maps, and we can start figuring out the exact coordinates where we need to keep watch,” Shelley said, getting up and moving toward the computer already.
***
Zoe finished the last line over an hour later, taking her ruler away and examining her handiwork. It was clean and precise, just the way she needed it to be. Not a single mistake. Zoe had always been good at precision. It wasn’t so hard, when you could already see the lines and angles and calculations laid out on the page for you, before you put them down in ink.
“Right,” Shelley said, standing back. “They’re all lined up exactly.”
They stood for a moment to take in the maps of the three Midwest states that the killer had already targeted, placed in precise relation to one another across all of the tables they had been able to find and push together. These maps were much clearer. They were able to differentiate more clearly the precise locations of each kill, rather than a wider point that took in other buildings and roads.
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