Face of Murder

“Right.” Wardenford sighed heavily. “That’s the part of the job I miss the most, you know? Nurturing young minds, helping them come to their full potential. Like you—putting the skills and talents they have to good use. Helping them to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. I suppose all that is gone, now. No college anywhere near here is going to touch me, and I doubt I’ll have a good reference if I apply elsewhere.”

Maudlin self-pity. Zoe was just about to tell him to shut up and stop feeling sorry for himself, and go work on getting the things he wanted instead of drinking himself to death. Perhaps happily for her career, that was the moment that Shelley threw open the door and interrupted instead.

“Agent Rose,” Zoe remarked, surprised that she would break protocol by entering the interview room. Perhaps one of their superiors had arrived, and Shelley had come to warn her…?

“Agent Prime, a word, please,” Shelley said, moving back into the corridor to let Zoe out.

Once the door was firmly closed behind her and Wardenford was out of earshot, Shelley brandished her phone, indicating the source of the news that was spilling out of her. “They’ve found another body.”

Shelley’s words rolled over Zoe like a wave. There was another death. It had probably happened while Wardenford was in custody, which would mean that he was innocent.

But maybe it held another equation—another clue.

Zoe didn’t know whether to be pleased or dismayed. Their phantom math killer had struck again.

But that meant there was a whole wealth of more clues waiting, any of which might help them catch him and stop him in his tracks.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Zoe hit the brakes, almost sending the car into a skid. She had been driving so fast down the wide, leafy suburban streets that she had almost missed the police car parked up ahead and gone right into the back of it.

They had landed outside a huge Georgian colonial, not at all out of place in this expensive neighborhood. The one thing that did set it apart were the white-suited forensics experts and uniformed police bustling outside or rushing in and out of the door in a near-perpetual routine.

Shelley was already out of her seatbelt and the door by the time Zoe had turned the engine off, and she wasn’t far behind her. They both ran across the neatly kept lawn to the entrance, flashing their badges quickly at the policeman who tried to stop them approaching from the sidewalk.

The commanding officer at the scene met them at the door, knowing from a glance that they were the FBI agents he had been told to wait for.

“Agents, you’re going to want to come and see this. It’s a brutal one. Looks like another one of our math killer’s hits.”

They followed him hurriedly up a wide staircase to a master bedroom, dodging other personnel who were coming and going with fingerprint kits and DSLRs and spare evidence bags. Zoe had already counted thirteen pairs of boots on the ground. This was clearly a big deal to the locals—and of course it would be. When wealthy neighborhoods were home to violent and brutal murders, it was normally in the interest of the sheriff or chief of police to do something about it, and fast.

“Cleaner called us in when she reported for work and found the body. Thankfully she was in the habit of speaking to her employer first rather than getting right to it, so she didn’t wipe any evidence away. The vic is a neurologist from the local hospital, Dr. Edwin North. Pretty well-known around these parts. He and his wife used to take part in all the community events, you know? Real pillars. His late wife, that is. Cancer last year.”

This running commentary was given as they ascended the stairs, and the officer paused them outside the room itself. “I’ve got to tell you ladies, this is a real bad case. Maybe you shouldn’t go in there. We’ll have the crime scene photos along to you, but you might be better off not seeing it in person.”

“We’re not ladies,” Shelley said, brushing by him. “We’re federal agents, and I assure you we can handle it.”

Zoe held back a laugh at the man’s expression, and followed her. What she saw was not at all pretty. Shelley must have been fighting hard not to show any reaction, given how emotional she normally was at crime scenes.

The doctor’s head was crushed, visibly so. There was an odd shape to his head, newly formed after his skull gave way under the pressure. Oblong, distorted. His eyes had bulged out under the force, his eye sockets broken at their upper edge. Brain matter and blood, along with fragments of skull, decorated the headboard.

He was lying in bed, alone, still partially covered by a blanket. He was half-dressed, giving the impression that he had stolen into the bedroom for a quick nap and nothing more. It was a nap that he was never going to wake up from again.