Face of Murder

Weights, stacked up against the far wall. Zoe counted their number and value, noted the thicker layer of dust on the bottom weights—the heaviest—compared to the top. By the pyramid-like stand was a bar, the kind you thought of when you imagined old-fashioned weightlifters. There were several flat, circular weights stacked beside it, evidently used to increase or decrease the weight on the bar as you wished.

Zoe crouched, her attention suddenly caught by something. And yes—there it was. On the edge of one of the larger weights, concentrated much more in one area with almost nothing further along the circle. Blood and fragments of brain and skull.

“In here!” she shouted, sure now that she was looking at the murder weapon.

Shelley arrived fast, the forensics people hot on her heels. Zoe moved out of the way to allow them in, pointing out the incriminating evidence. She looked over the rest of the room more closely, seeking another sign of their killer’s presence. A footprint in undisturbed dust, a smudge from a finger, anything that would help.

“What are these here?”

Shelley’s voice snapped Zoe out of her concentration. The forensics team rushed over to where Shelley was pointing, on the floor just by the dropped weight.

“Strands of hair,” one of them muttered, taking out an evidence bag. “Very short. Well spotted.”

“It could be the victim’s,” another of them pointed out, his voice muffled by the mask he wore over his mouth.

“One dark and one gray,” Shelley said. “The victim looks to have been blond. From here, at least.”

The two hairs were lifted with fine tweezers, dropped into the waiting evidence bag, and marked. “We’ll have them analyzed. With any luck, there will be enough of the hair follicle on there to get us a match.”

“We might have our killer,” Shelley said, with such obvious glee that it sent a thrill up Zoe’s spine. She was right. That kind of break could crack the whole case wide open, give them a name. Once they had that, they could get him in for questioning, get him to tell them everything. Hairs weren’t always worth what they used to be in a courtroom, but a confession was.

And this was exactly the kind of evidence that Zoe knew Shelley could put to good use in extracting a confession.

All the tools they needed to close the case may already have been sitting in that evidence bag.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Zoe walked back into the interrogation room, holding a fresh set of color prints that were still warm from the machine that had spit them out.

“Oh, you’re back,” Wardenford said. “I thought you might have forgotten about me.”

Zoe eyed his hands and spotted the telltale shake. He was no doubt anxious to get out of FBI custody and go home for a drink. He’d been with them for hours now, and he was a serious alcoholic. The ratio in his bloodstream was decreasing, leaving behind the physical symptoms he would no doubt do anything to avoid.

Zoe had done anything but forget about Wardenford. During the drive back to HQ, she had formulated a plan. Shelley would go to the forensics lab and encourage a rush on the hair that they had found, using her natural charm to get it done quicker than Zoe could. Meanwhile, Zoe would talk to their former suspect.

Maybe it was obvious now that he was innocent of being the killer, but that didn’t mean they needed to let him go right away. He had been able to glean something, at least, from the equations—and he had spotted Zoe’s abilities right away. That meant that, for now at least, he was an asset.

An asset who could help them with this latest piece of the puzzle.

“Take a look at these,” Zoe said, dropping the photographs in front of him and taking her seat.

She was banking on the fact that Wardenford would be distracted enough by the allure of the mathematical puzzle to not notice that he had now been proven innocent. Just as she herself would not be able to resist attempting to work it out. True to form, he snatched up the pictures immediately, his lips moving silently as his eyes traced over the new equation.

Zoe watched him carefully as she had before. There was still no flicker of recognition, not that she could see; only eagerness to take on a challenge. She had harbored the small suspicion that Wardenford could still have been involved, with an accomplice taking down North, but now that was gone. His reaction coupled with the shaking of his hands, which were not steady enough to tackle a victim or write out a clear equation, told her everything that she needed to know.

Dr. Edwin North’s family and colleagues may hold more answers. Shelley would move on to talking with them after she had visited the lab, but Zoe wanted to be here. Working on this. She still felt that this was the most important part of it all—that putting the equations together might reveal a larger solution, something that required lengthy workings and complex enough math to stump even the experts.

Even Zoe, until, she hoped, enough was revealed to facilitate that breakthrough.