Face of Death

“Not much to see here,” Zoe replied. There was no sense in both of them walking the scene, if there were other leads to be followed. Besides, she got the feeling that Shelley very much did not want to see the place where a woman had lost her life. She was still a little green in many ways. “I will be with you in twenty minutes.”

***

“So, where were you last night?” Shelley pressed, leaning in to make the guy feel as though it was their little secret.

“I was at a bar,” he grunted. “Lucky’s, over on the east side of town.”

Zoe was listening, but only just. She had known from the moment they walked in that this was not their murderer. The ex-husband might have liked to throw his weight around when they were married, but that was exactly the problem: his weight. He was at least a hundred pounds too heavy to have left those imprints, and too short, besides. He had the height to take out his wife—a smaller woman who had no doubt been subjected to his fists many times over—but not the tallest victim. He was five foot seven, six and three-quarters at a better guess. It would have been too much of a reach.

“Can anyone verify you were there?” Shelley asked.

Zoe wanted to stop her, prevent any more wasted time. But she didn’t say a thing. She didn’t want to try to explain something that was as obvious to her as the sky being blue.

“I was passed out,” he said, throwing his hand in the air in a gesture of frustration. “Check the cameras. Ask the bartender. He kicked me out well after midnight.”

“The bartender has a name?” Zoe asked, flipping out a pad to make a note. At least it would be something they could easily verify. She noted down what he told her.

“When did you last see your ex-wife?” Shelley asked.

He shrugged, his eyes moving sideways as he thought. “I don’t know. Bitch was always getting in my way. Guess a few months ago. She was getting all het up about alimony. I missed a few payments.”

Shelley visibly bristled at the way he spoke. There were some emotions that Zoe found hard to read, elusive things that didn’t quite have names or that came from sources she couldn’t identify with. But anger was easy. Anger might as well have been a red flashing sign, and it was going off over Shelley’s head at that moment.

“Do you consider all women to be inconveniences, or just the ones who divorced you after a violent assault?”

The man’s eyes practically bulged out of his head. “Hey, look, you can’t—”

Shelley interrupted him before he could finish. “You have a history of harming Linda, don’t you? We have several arrests for various domestic violence complaints on your record. Seems you made a habit of beating her black and blue.”

“I…” The man shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “I never hurt her like that. Like, bad. I wouldn’t kill her.”

“Why not? Surely you’d want to be rid of those alimony payments?” Shelley pressed.

Zoe tensed, her hands making fists. Any longer, and she was going to have to intervene. Shelley was getting carried away, her voice rising in pitch and volume at the same time.

“I ain’t been paying them anyway,” he pointed out. His arms were crossed defensively over his chest.

“So, maybe you just saw red one last time, is that it? You wanted to hurt her, and it went further than ever before?”

“Stop it!” he yelled out, his composure breaking. He put his hands over his face unexpectedly, then dropped them to reveal moisture smeared from his eyes down his cheeks. “I stopped paying the alimony so she would come see me. I missed her, all right? Stupid bitch had a hold on me. I go out and get drunk every night ’cause I’m all alone. Is that what you want to hear? Is it?”

They were done—that much was clear. Still, Shelley thanked the man stiffly and handed over a card, asking him to give them a call if anything else came to mind. The things that Zoe might have done, if she had thought it would do any good. Most people didn’t call Zoe back.

On this occasion, she very much doubted that Shelley would get a call either.

Shelley blew out a heavy breath as they were walking away. “Dead end. Sorry, no pun intended. I buy his story. What are you thinking we should do next?”

“I would like to see the body,” Zoe replied. “If there are any more clues to be found, they are with the victim.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The coroner’s office was a squat building beside the precinct, along with just about everything else in this tiny town. There was just one road that swept right through, stores and a small elementary school and everything a town needed to survive placed either to the left or the right.

It made Zoe uncomfortable. Too much like home.

The coroner was waiting for them downstairs, the victim already laid out on the table for them like a grisly presentation. The man, an older fellow just a few years from retirement with a certain amount of waffle and bumble about him, began a long and winding explanation of his findings, but Zoe filtered him out.