Face of Death

“Sit down, Z,” Shelley suggested, patting the empty plastic seat beside her. “We might be in for a long night.”

Zoe was just about to give in and sit when the door to the private room in which their suspect was being treated opened.

“You can talk to him now,” the doctor said, pausing to lift a finger in warning. “But nothing too strenuous. If his heart rate monitor goes off, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Understood,” Zoe said, eager to get inside. She had heard it all before. The gunshot was only to his leg—it wasn’t like the guy was in too much danger of further damage. The doctor was just covering his bases.

Which meant she had no qualms at all about pulling out all of the stops to get a confession.

“Stick to the plan?” Shelley asked. They had been going over their strategy for the whole time they waited for the doctors to be finished.

Zoe gave her a quick nod and allowed Shelley to enter ahead of her, getting their suspect’s attention first.

“Hello, Mr. Bradshaw,” Shelley said, warmly as always. “How is your leg? Did they give you enough pain medication?”

“It’s got a hole in it, that’s how my leg is,” Bradshaw snapped, obviously not taking immediately to Shelley’s friendly manner. Zoe could not yet see him properly, still waiting on the other side of the half-open door. “This is ridiculous. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Well, hopefully we can get to the bottom of that now, and you’ll be able to recuperate in peace,” Shelley told him, dragging a chair over to sit beside his bed. “Let’s start from the beginning, Mr. Bradshaw. What were you doing at the Kansas Giant Dinosaur Fair?”

“It’s a fair. What do you think I was there for?” Bradshaw snapped.

Zoe had heard enough. Shelley’s nice approach wasn’t making any headway, and they needed another ingredient. The intimidation that the presence of his shooter would provide might just make him a little more cooperative. She pushed the door open and entered, walking to stand at the foot of the bed.

Zoe assessed him as she leaned on the metal tray holding his charts, resting her elbows on the uncomfortable edges and pretending they did not affect her. His height, weight, and other measurements flashed before her eyes as she gave him the once-over. He was five foot eleven, skinny, a little extra sinew on the arms to equip him well for pulling a garrote.

All seemed to fit what they were looking for, but she still had this bad feeling about him. That the way he acted wasn’t at all what she had suspected. He had been unsubtle in his waiting, standing obviously, easily seen. She knew how cautious their man was, how he erased all evidence of his movements as long as he was able to. How would this one have been able to erase his footsteps, after abducting someone in plain view? He had parked on the grass, his feet sinking in, the tires of his car leaving deep impressions. It didn’t make sense.

His reaction now was one of wide eyes and a drawing up of his body, shrinking physically away from her. “What’s she doing here?” he demanded.

“Special Agent Prime is my partner,” Shelley said. “She will be here while I question you. Like I said, Mr. Bradshaw, let’s get this over with as quickly as possible so that we can all move on, shall we?”

“Move on?” Bradshaw still watched Zoe, even though he turned his head toward Shelley as he addressed her. “How am I supposed to move on? I’ve got a bullet stuck in my leg.”

“No, you have not,” Zoe told him, calmly.

“What?”

“The doctor removed it from your leg.”

Bradshaw stared at her, not saying a thing. He looked about fit to explode, a mixture of fear and righteous anger building up inside of him, with no safe target to expend it on.

“Mr. Bradshaw,” Shelley began again, then hesitated. “May I call you Ivan? You can call me Shelley.”

There was a pause before Bradshaw tore his eyes away from Zoe long enough to mutter, “Fine.”

“Let’s skip ahead a bit, shall we? When you were asked to turn and drop what you were holding, why did you run?” Shelley’s tone was soft and calm. She sounded like she was really curious to know the answer. Zoe knew she would have sounded accusatory with a question like that, and wondered briefly how Shelley managed it.

“Someone was pointing a gun at me,” Bradshaw said, his eyes darting sharply back to Zoe on the first word. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Was there no other reason for your attempt to escape? Maybe something you thought you might get into trouble for? Look, we’re really here for a murderer, Ivan, so if you’ve done something else then you can just tell us. We’ll get out of your hair.”

“I haven’t done anything. I was just an innocent bystander. This—this madwoman shot me with no provocation!”

Zoe fought down a growl in the back of her throat. They were getting nowhere. She trusted Shelley enough by now to know that she would get through to him, eventually. They might spend hours in here, just talking, before she managed it—but Shelley would break through this anger and fear and get him to really talk.