Face of Death

They didn’t have hours. Or, at least, Zoe didn’t have hours. She had to know, right now. She had to know that she had the right man. Because if she didn’t, then a serial killer was still out there, and still operating on a tight schedule.

The image of the dipstick kept flashing back into her mind, lying there on the grass. The man’s car really had been in need of some attention, and it had not been a deadly weapon he was holding. That didn’t sit right. Their killer wasn’t about to let car troubles get in his way. Their killer was meticulous, studied, precise.

Not only that, but there was nothing in the car that told them anything. No trace of a murder weapon of any kind, not even anything that could be used as a blunt instrument. It was littered with empty plastic bottles and food wrappers on the back footwells, and long blond hairs had been found easily on the passenger seat. If there was anything she knew about the killer, it was that he was clean and tidy. Neat. And he would not leave the evidence of a passenger sitting in his vehicle, easily traceable via DNA.

He would have been waiting with the garrote. Zoe knew that. She could feel it in her bones. Why would he play the innocent victim to such an extent that he was not even ready to attack if someone approached? The only answer she could think of was that this was not their man.

Which was problematic, because she had already been called by her superiors and warned that she was going to be in trouble for firing her weapon if it turned out that the man was an innocent victim.

She needed to get to the bottom of this, and fast. Zoe cast around the room, her gaze flying to the left and the right. Privacy curtain, monitoring equipment, drip, shelving with Bradshaw’s clothes…

There—a cabinet. She walked over and opened it, ignoring the conversation behind her as Shelley continued to question him.

“Were you at the fair alone, or were you meeting someone there?”

Zoe rifled through the drawers, looking for something that would work. There wasn’t much kept in the room—no syringes or bottles of pills, nothing that a patient could use to harm themselves. But there was a box of Band-Aids. Thinking, Zoe opened it up, pouring them out onto the top of the cabinet with her body blocking Bradshaw’s view.

“I was meeting my sister. She had her kids with her, so she went home early. I was going to go home too, but the car wouldn’t start.”

Zoe began tearing the strips of connected Band-Aids into singles, making quick and regular movements, two or three sets at a time. She dropped each single back into the box in a haphazard manner. She didn’t want them to be regular or uniform, not for this.

“Ivan, help me out here. I want to understand so we can let you rest. Just talk me through what was going through your mind, okay? You were at your car, checking the oil levels…”

“And next thing I know, there’s someone yelling crazy stuff about the FBI.”

“Did you think she was yelling at you at that point?”

“No, why would I? I was just minding my own business!”

Zoe walked back to the bed and yanked a wheeled food tray over Bradshaw’s lap. He was watching her with a kind of baffled panic.

“What’s she doing now?” he demanded, looking back between Shelley and Zoe as Zoe upended the box and allowed the Band-Aids to tumble out. “Is this a threat?”

The Band-Aids sailed down, scattering across the tray, some of them slipping over to land on the covers of the bed. There was no particular pattern or shape to them, but Zoe knew their guy. She knew he would see a pattern there. She stared down at it herself, starting to organize lines and vertices, checking for the links.

It took her thirteen seconds, but she saw it. Because of the way the box had tipped and the even distribution of the Band-Aids down onto the surface, it had created a more or less distinct sixteen-sided shape. Not an even one, but a shape all the same. The killer would see it—would know it for a sign in his deluded mind.

“What is she doing?” Bradshaw asked again, his voice hissing with fear and confusion, addressed only to Shelley. “I want someone in here with me. This isn’t safe.”

Zoe watched his face closely. “Do you not see it?”

“See what?” Bradshaw looked down at the Band-Aids again, before raising his head. “See what?”

It was tricky, but there was always the chance that he was faking it. Pretending not to see the pattern. Zoe knew she had to up the stakes, and show him that she knew what he was doing.

He wouldn’t be able to prevent his reaction if she drew the one pattern that meant more to him than any other.

She lifted her index finger and slowly, carefully, drew as near an approximation of a Fibonacci spiral as she could in the shifting mass of Band-Aids, clearing out a route like a path through a maze.

But when she looked up, with her task complete, Bradshaw was watching her with even more confusion than before.