Face of Murder

“They don’t mean anything,” Wardenford said. His face was ashen now, and the cheeriness was gone entirely. In that, at least, Zoe had achieved her goal. “They ought to, but something’s wrong. It’s like all of the elements are there, but they’ve been placed incorrectly. Imbalanced. Too much on one side, not enough on the other. You won’t be able to solve them or find out what they mean. They’re wrong.”

Zoe sighed, slumping back into her chair. It was the same as the others had said. Dr. Applewhite and her colleagues had been right, and she hadn’t wanted to admit that. But it was getting harder and harder to deny that these equations weren’t solvable.

At least, not yet.

“Imbalanced,” she repeated, her brain starting to work.

“Yes,” Wardenford confirmed. “See, here? This one should really have something there, but there’s nothing. It doesn’t make sense this way.”

Imbalanced… what if that was the whole point? What if these were not individual equations to be taken separately, but part of a larger puzzle?

Zoe thought back to their last major case, to the Golden Ratio killer. His plans had seemed different at the beginning. It was only as he filled in more points on the map, took more victims, that the spiral shape became clear.

That was a terrible thought—that she might need more information. Need another death. But it did make a lot more sense than what they had already—which was nothing.

Zoe spun the two printouts toward herself and grabbed a pen from her pocket. She started to balance the equations out—adding them together. It was easy to see the spaces, now she understood to look for that kind of pattern. And it was easy to see the things on the second equation that stood out, begged to be put somewhere else.

She worked in a frenzy, forgetting that Wardenford was even in the room. This was more important than the interrogation. If he was right, this could change everything. Maybe they could work something out from this, some kind of formula, or a prediction of what the next equation would be. Any little clue along the way could help them figure out who the killer was.

That was, of course, assuming that it wasn’t Wardenford and he wasn’t stringing her along like a puppet, watching her dance.

Zoe paused then, looking up to see that Wardenford was watching her. Closely. She stopped writing. Perhaps that thought was right. Perhaps she was playing right into his hands, taking the bait.

“You don’t see things like others do, do you?” he asked, unexpectedly.

“What?”

“I’ve met people like you before. You’ve got a way with numbers and patterns, am I right? You’re a synesthete.”

Zoe instinctively looked toward the darkened glass, hoping the tech had left the room. If Shelley was the only one hearing this, it wouldn’t be so bad. But this was on record. Taped. Anyone could see it. She fought a rising sense of panic, her hand flying up to just below her collarbone, her neck. She felt that same stifling feeling that came when she sat in the passenger seat and the seatbelt seemed to choke her, but there was nothing there to pull away.

“I knew it. You remind me exactly of someone I mentored years ago.”

Zoe was torn between anxiety over her secret being outed, and the shock that he could tell just by looking at her. “What are you talking about?” she asked, hoping it would sound like a deflection but also prompt him to explain how he had known.

“I know brilliance when I see it. You have an instinctive way of working with the numbers, and it’s not just that. You’re constantly assessing things, sizing them up. I can recognize it because I’ve seen it before.”

“With your student,” Zoe replied, which was not an admission, but still encouraged him to go on all the same. She was walking a dangerous line. If anyone saw this, she would have to flat-out deny it—or come clean. At least not having the admission on tape was a slim comfort.

“Yes. She was gifted—just gifted. I noticed her skills in class, and invited her for some extra sessions to see if we could coax out that genius. Lo and behold, she had capabilities I had never dreamed of. To look at a math equation and know the answer, just like that.”

“What happened to her?” Zoe was desperate to know. After the news Dr. Applewhite had told her, of the student committing suicide, it was of the utmost interest to her. Had she been successful in life? Started a family, maybe?

“Ah, well, I don’t really know.” Wardenford coughed quietly, wearing an embarrassed expression. “I ended up quitting, you see. Coming over here to work instead. That was after my divorce; I had to get away. All my problems started there.”

“That is when you began drinking.”