Face of Murder

“Not at all,” John said, and the fact that he didn’t even smile when he said it made her more inclined to believe that he wasn’t just being nice. “All of this has been… fascinating. I mean, your job is so much more high-stakes than mine. Not to mention everything that you’ve been through… I can’t imagine coming out of that as strong as you are.”

This time, Zoe knew that her cheeks were heating up. “I am just—average,” she said, even though she knew that was the one thing she really wasn’t. “I do not think I am special just for how I grew up. Everyone goes through some kind of adversity.”

“But you’re brilliant.” John reached out across the table and touched her hand, and there was a hint of laughter on his face—one that she could not interpret. “Wow. I mean, I wanted to see you again after the first date. But this… you were holding out on me. Seriously, I’m blown away by how brilliant you are.”

Zoe barely knew how to reply to that. Most men were not so complimentary, and when they were she would sense that it was not genuine. But John really seemed to mean what he was saying, at least according to her limited ability to tell.

There was another chord that his words struck, however, and it was not a pleasant one. “If I was so brilliant, I would have figured out what the equations mean already.” She sighed, toying with her empty glass. “But I have nothing. Just a jumbled mess.”

“Hey, you’ll get there,” John was saying, but Zoe’s concentration was drifting away from him. She sat up straighter, frowning a little. Jumbled mess… why did that sound so… right?

Jumbled mess… what was it that James Wardenford had told her, when she had him in for questioning?

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.

Imbalanced. Placed incorrectly.

There was something here…

“Zoe?”

Zoe frowned at the unwelcome interruption, shaking her head quickly and throwing her hand up in the air to indicate that silence was needed. Her brain was a little slow, still coping with the effects of the alcohol.

Everything was there. The equations had been written out in full, but they didn’t work. Nothing was missing—no extra parts hidden anywhere on the bodies, no missed signs. She had seen that for herself when they found Edwin North.

If there was nothing more to add, that meant that they already had all of the pieces of the puzzle. Zoe had tried to make sense of them by cutting bits out and putting them together, like some kind of mega-equation birthed from the incorrect parts. But that still left the lines she had not included, and the ones that were put together pointed in the wrong direction. Toward an innocent person.

Which meant that she still didn’t have them in the right order.

Edwin North had been able to afford his grand Georgian colonial because he was a neurologist. Not a professor or a student. He had no real connection with the college, but the cause of death seemed to tie him to the others—not to mention the equation scrawled across his chest. They had been mentioned in the papers, but not printed in full. The only person who would know enough about the other equations to finish off the clue pointing to Dr. Applewhite had to be the killer.

Ergo, there had to be a reason why the killer had stepped outside of the college in order to target a seemingly unrelated neurologist.

And what did neurologists deal with? The brain. The brain, which, when it went wrong—like hers did when she consumed alcohol—could mess things up. Jumble them around.

This was it. This was the breakthrough that Zoe had been waiting for.

She snatched her phone up from the table and dialed Shelley’s number from her call list, hoping she wasn’t asleep or screening her calls. Zoe wouldn’t blame her, after what had happened earlier, but Shelley answered after only a couple of rings.

“Z? Are you all right? I’ve been worried about you. I tried to call you, but—”

“I am sorry about earlier. But I need you to listen now.” Zoe tried to keep the distractions to a minimum, hoping that Shelley would be impressed with the importance of what she was saying enough to stop focusing on the past. “I have had a breakthrough. Meet me at the hospital where Edwin North worked as soon as you can. We need to check some patient records.”

“What? Zoe, what have you found?”

Zoe put the phone down without answering. They could talk as they walked through the hospital corridors to where they needed to be. Discussing it now wasn’t going to get them there any quicker.