Face of Murder

“You waited for me,” she said as she approached him, feeling dumb for stating the obvious but unable to resist making the statement.

“I figured, since I’m the one who brought you here, you’d need me to take you back as well,” John said, smiling as he got up. “I wasn’t going to just abandon you here, even if your partner was coming. I wanted to make sure you had a way to get home.”

“Thank you,” Zoe said, floored by the generosity with his time. Not to mention the fact that it was cold out, and he had sat outside to wait for her. He hadn’t needed to do any of that. She hadn’t asked him to. In fact, she now realized with a faint embarrassment, she had probably been fairly rude to walk away from him without saying goodbye.

“So, where do you want to go?” John asked, his hands in his pockets as he rocked gently on the balls of his feet. “Consider me your taxi driver. Home? Back to the bar? Somewhere else?”

Zoe thought about it. She didn’t want to go home. She could barely face the thought. Going back to the bar was a bad idea, and a waste of time. Getting drunk wasn’t going to help her solve this case. Any more alcohol and she would probably be crying in John’s lap about how badly she had messed up. A mental image which did not at all fit with the way she wanted others to see her.

“I need to go see my friend,” she decided. “The one I told you about, who got arrested because of me. She is at the local precinct. Will you take me there?”

“Of course.” John smiled warmly, making a short bow and gesturing in the direction of the car. “The lady’s wish is my command. Let’s go.”

Zoe couldn’t quite tell whether he was mocking her or being nice, but since he was taking her where she needed to go, she decided that it didn’t matter.

Zoe’s travel sickness was worse than ever as they drove the quiet and near-deserted roads, even though the ride was slower and smoother than the previous journey. The alcohol in her bloodstream was already working its way out of her system, wearing off. Now it was the nausea that came after a drink, as well as the existing reaction to the motion of the car. Just exactly what she needed on a night when everything else seemed to be going so badly wrong around her.

“You didn’t get what you wanted in there, did you?” John asked, not taking his eyes off the road. Zoe appreciated that. It made him seem a more responsible driver.

“No.” Zoe paused, wondering. “How could you tell?”

“You were so fired up on the way here, thinking you’d figured it all out. Now, not so much. I expected you’d be happy if things had worked out the way you thought.”

Zoe took this in, watching the road ahead just as he was. It was a strange sensation, both of them observing this sight together, talking without turning to one another. More comfortable than other conversations, where Zoe had to try and give some kind of facial expression to avoid appearing like a robot, had to try and decipher the meaningless expressions and gestures she saw from others.

“I was wrong,” she admitted, at last. “I do not know how. It still seems like it would all fit perfectly. But the answer was not there.”

“I guess life’s a little like that,” John said, pausing to concentrate as he turned right onto a new road. “Even when we want things to fit perfectly, they have a way of breaking the pattern.”

He was right. Zoe lived her life through patterns, saw them everywhere, understood them intimately. But when it came to real life—human behavior, interactions, feelings—the patterns were often defied.

“It would be a lot neater if it was not this way.”

John gave a short laugh. “It sure would. Easier, too.”

At least they could agree on that. Zoe was still turning this over in her mind when the car stopped, pulling her out of her thoughts to the extent that she looked around in confusion.

“We’re here,” John explained, turning in his seat now to face her. “Anything else I can do for you, before I go?”

Zoe disengaged her seatbelt, taking a deep breath of air. Still air. A blessing. “You have done more than enough,” she said. She felt there should be something in it for him—some kind of reward. Dr. Monk had been telling her to make an effort. Perhaps now was the most appropriate time to put that into practice. “Thank you for everything tonight. We should meet again, sometime when I am not in the middle of a case.”

John beamed, not bothering to hide his delight. Zoe appreciated that. Too many men still acted like children. Hiding their emotions and expecting her to guess. She was never going to be able to guess. “I’ll take you up on that,” he said. “Call me when you’re done with this one. We can go for another meal, maybe.”

“I will. I would like that.” Zoe hesitated, unsure if she had done a proper job of ticking off all the niceties that were expected of her. “Well, then I will see you soon.”

“Goodnight, Zoe,” John said, giving her a look that she felt perhaps indicated the conversation was over and she was free to depart.