Face of Murder

For the whole time he had been in custody, his demeanor had not changed. Though she found it hard to understand why, he was still casual and cheery, as if he believed that this was all a comic misunderstanding and easily cleared up. The only thing that had changed over the hours they held him was the beginning of a shake in his right hand, a telltale sign of an alcoholic in need of their next drink.

Maybe that was a weakness that she could use, at least.

“I am going back in,” Zoe announced. She had grabbed up the files holding the crime scene photographs—specifically, the equations.

“Do you want me with you?” Shelley asked. She, too, had been watching for any kind of sign, while they chased surveillance footage from areas around his apartment over the phone. So far, nothing had shown him leaving his apartment. It didn’t mean that he hadn’t slipped by in an area not covered, but it did mean they had nothing to threaten him with.

“No.” Zoe made for the door, buoyed along by a new determination. “You watch him. Closely.”

“Call him professor,” Shelley called after her. “You’ll stroke his ego. False sense of security.”

They couldn’t keep him at the field office for long. A long time for him, surely, but in terms of their investigation, not long enough. If he didn’t crack soon, they would have to let him leave. So, she would have to make him crack.

Zoe entered the interrogation room and resumed her seat opposite Wardenford, who greeted her with a cheery smile.

“Time to let me out yet, Agent?”

“Not yet.” Zoe paused, opening the folder at such an angle that only she could see the contents. “How are you with math, Professor?”

Wardenford seemed to swell with ego as she gave him his former title. Shelley had been right. “It’s one of my specialties,” he said. “Of course, math goes hand in hand with physics. It’s been my life’s work.”

Zoe nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Then perhaps you can help us out with something? We have some equations that we are trying to figure out.”

She first reached for the printouts she had created: the equations alone, copied out on the computer, rather than the crime scene photographs. No blood, no sign that they had anything to do with the killings. She laid them down one by one in front of him, watching his face as he leaned forward to study them.

There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes, at least not that Zoe could see. She glanced up toward the black glass wall, as if she could see through and divine what Shelley was thinking. Of course, there was nothing to see there.

Back to Wardenford; he was lifting the printouts in his hands now, comparing them side by side, rubbing his mouth and resting with his fingers over it as he leaned on his elbow. He spent longer looking at the first than the second. He frowned deeply, then deeper, the furrows on his brows lengthening and sinking.

Minutes stretched on. Zoe kept count of them: four, six, ten. He was still staring at the equations, shifting in his seat sometimes, even mouthing things to himself as he worked through them. Zoe let the silence continue, not wanting to interrupt. What he said and did now was important.

“They’re unsolvable,” he declared at last, throwing the two pieces of paper down onto the desk. “This is some kind of trick, isn’t it?”

“Trick?” Zoe raised an eyebrow.

“You think if you can frustrate me with an equation I can’t solve, I will be vulnerable to questioning and end up admitting everything. Well, I can’t admit anything. I didn’t do it.”

“This is not a trick, Professor,” Zoe said, opening her folder on the desk and spinning it toward him so that he could see it. Inside, the images were piled haphazardly: the equations scrawled out on torsos, blood, close-ups of the injuries to the heads. “We really do need to figure out those equations.”

At last, there was a reaction on Wardenford’s face. Not the kind of reaction that Zoe had been hoping for—a microscopic twitch, a flinch, a tiny tell that would give him away. Patterns were easy to spot in human behavior. There should have been something that told her he knew what he was looking at, and he was lying.

But there was nothing there. Just revulsion. Wardenford paled, gasped, covered his mouth. Finally, he squeezed his eyes shut and moved his head away so that he no longer had to look at them. “That’s horrible,” he finally managed. “Cole and—and Ralph. God. Who could do something so violent?”

“The same person who wrote out those equations.” Zoe tapped the paper in front of him, drawing his attention back. “So tell me, Professor. Help us. What do they mean?”

Wardenford stole a glance at the crime scene shots and shuddered before looking down at the paper. Zoe had seen that before. People would look again and again at things they found disgusting or distressing. They couldn’t help themselves.

Of course, people also looked again and again at things they were proud of.