Face of Death

“I do.” Zoe moved over to the map, indicating the red pins. “Look. If you follow them around in chronological order, we clearly have the beginnings of a spiral. A perfect spiral, in fact, modeled on the Fibonacci spiral.”

Shelley furrowed her brow. “That’s… hold on, let me try and remember. Something to do with nature, ratios in nature?”

“Correct. It is a series of numbers which define the ratios of many naturally occurring things. We see it in the shells of snails, the way petals grow on flowers, weather formations such as hurricanes. Almost everything, actually. To an apophenic, it might as well be catnip. The perfect obsession, because it really is everywhere.”

“But that means he has to keep killing, in order to finish the spiral.”

Zoe pulled out three new pins, pushing them into the precise points on the map where the spiral should be completed. “Three times. One of which will be tonight.”

“And those are the locations.” Shelley slipped her pen into her mouth, chewing the end of it. Her eyes were flicking backward and forward between Zoe and the map, as if she were trying to find some secret hidden message of her own.

“We need to put out alerts, and get a team together to stake out tonight’s location.”

“Wait,” Shelley said, shaking her head. “Are you… sure about this? I mean, you’ve moved some of the pins. And we’ve got no real clue about who the killer is, let alone whether or not he has any psychological problems. We’re going to mobilize half a state’s worth of law enforcement professionals on one location, based on the fact that there may be a spiral pattern? What if he’s just circling around his home, going out to a new location every night and getting closer because he’s getting cockier?”

Zoe had to admit, the way Shelley described it made sense. This wasn’t a television show, when the arrogant yet genius agent could pull all of the Bureau’s resources to track down a simple hunch. They needed proof, tangible evidence, and failing that, a strong sense of possibility. Much stronger than guesswork.

But it wasn’t guesswork. It was just hard to convince someone of that when you weren’t able to explain to them exactly how you knew what you knew.

“He would still move in the same direction.”

Shelley shrugged, her shoulders lifting up and down as if weighted by a heavy burden. “I’m sorry, Z. I know you have more experience than me. But I just don’t understand how you got from that map to being so sure about where he’ll strike next. Maybe you can explain it to me? It might help me get better at this. Next time, I might be able to spot the pattern.”

Zoe shook her head sharply. There was no point. Even if she explained every little thing that she could see, clear as day on the map, Shelley would never be able to get there on her own. Zoe couldn’t teach the kind of skill that she had. It wasn’t born of experience. It was something she could just do—had been able to do since she was able to think.

“I cannot explain it any clearer than I already have.”

A frown creased Shelley’s features, and Zoe braced herself. Here it came. The inevitable breaking point of any partnership she had ever had since joining the FBI. Shelley would get mad. She would argue and try to discourage Zoe from following the right path. When Zoe turned out to be right, she would accuse her of somehow colluding with the murderer. Of being involved in some way herself, or hiding evidence that would have allowed anyone else to come to the same conclusion.

She would shout and scream, call their boss and ask for a transfer. And just like that, Zoe would be given a new partner again.

It was a shame. She had been starting to really like Shelley. They had gotten along all right until now, hadn’t they? But no matter how Zoe tried to interact with her partners, give them what they seemed to want, it always turned out the same. She didn’t know how to calm their suspicions and stop the shouting. The truth wouldn’t cut it.

Might as well get it over with. Zoe picked up a ruler and pen and began to draw straight lines that intersected between all of the red pushpins on the map. One by one she connected them, laying ink over the lines that were already visible in her mind. Then she put down the ruler and drew a freehand spiral that connected line to line, as perfect a Fibonacci as she could do without mathematical drawing devices.

“Can you see it now?” she asked, pushing three red pins into the last remaining locations. “Look. I am right about this. You have to trust me.”

Zoe turned and met Shelley’s gaze. The other woman’s face was set not in the anger or frustration that she expected, but more of an awed confusion. She could see the pattern, that much was clear. But she still didn’t understand how Zoe had gotten there, and she never would.

“We have the same data, don’t we?” Shelley asked, softly. “I can’t see it in all of this. I can see it on the map now, but I don’t know how you got there. How did you know that those pins would form a perfect shape with those lines?”