Face of Death

She felt like a small child again, kneeling at her mother’s feet and being told to try again, because she must have been praying wrong so far. She had failed to move God to change her, to rid her of her demonic powers. Now she was failing again, unable to figure out just where they were going wrong in chasing this killer down.

It didn’t help that she was closer to solving it than she suspected anyone else could have been. No one else had the insight that she did—the ability to think the same way that the killer did.

That just meant that it was more on her shoulders. If she was the only one who could stop him, then she had to stop him. There was no other choice. The alternative was to just stand by and watch them all die, victim after victim, and there was no way she could do that.

This one had a name already. Aisha Sparks, the seventeen-year-old working at the fair in the evenings to earn enough money to get into college. She was still missing, and if it hadn’t been already, it was getting more obvious with each passing hour that he had taken her.

Zoe had watched from the sidelines as the state troopers led a press conference, asking for volunteers to search the local woods around the area of the fair. They were deep and thickly grown, and it would take them many hours to even be sure that they had checked everywhere.

But Zoe knew they would not find her there. There was no chance. He had taken her.

So many had died already. Zoe couldn’t let Aisha die as well.

The locations between his killings were getting closer together, the spiral getting tighter now at the end. But the problem was that she couldn’t be absolutely, mathematically sure about where he would strike next. Sure, it was a Fibonacci spiral, and that was great—but on the map, even plotting everything carefully, there was still a zone where he could attack next which was not so precise. With the fair, it had been easy—the only thing for miles around, and the scale of the fair itself had filled the whole of the box she had marked on the map.

The little town in the next zone had a number of different buildings. How could she be sure which one he would go for? Or which street? How could they manage to cover all of their bases with such a densely populated area?

And what if Aisha was already dead?

That thought made Zoe’s stomach churn, but it had to be considered. The locations in his spiral were for attacks, not deaths. What if he killed her some other way, just to plan to cut her throat after the fact when the time came?

No, that didn’t feel right. It would have been too much of a symbolic gesture, a throwaway act instead of the real thing. Somehow, the real thing mattered. It had to be the act of spilling blood at the right moment, the right spot. Zoe could see that. The more she tried to get inside his head and think like he did, the better she thought she could figure out the importance he attached to things. The choice of a new day for each kill, the deliberate action of using the garrote. That had to be followed to complete the pattern.

Yet he had broken his previous MO by abducting a girl instead of finding someone on the actual night, so it was all up in the air now. She could trust her gut, but there was nothing behind it. No real evidence or fact she could put her finger on to tell her that Aisha would still be safe.

Zoe couldn’t do this alone. It was too much—so much pressure to heap onto one person’s shoulders. She would not begrudge it, not if she could save Aisha’s life. But she couldn’t get there—couldn’t finish the job. Especially not with all the local police turning on her, thinking she didn’t know what she was doing.

Zoe picked up her cell and dialed a familiar number from her contact list, hoping that the call would connect.

“Hello?”

Zoe almost sighed with relief. Hearing the voice of her mentor, Dr. Francesca Applewhite, already made her feel better, and all she had said was hello. Talking to someone who understood her completely was a salve for all of the stress.

“Dr. Applewhite,” Zoe said. “Are you free to talk?”

“Francesca, as I’ve told you a million times,” she laughed. “Yes, I’m free. I’m always free for you, even in the middle of a session. But I don’t have any appointments today. It’s Saturday.”

Zoe glanced at her smartwatch reflexively, surprised to hear the date. Time had been slipping away from her, maybe faster than she had realized. “I am sorry to disturb your weekend.”

“You don’t have to be sorry with me, Zoe. You know I don’t mind. Now, what’s bothering you?”

Dr. Applewhite always understood when Zoe needed help. “It is regarding a case I am working on,” she started, and quickly told her everything. Or at least, everything that was relevant. With it being an ongoing case, she could not use names or even give away the locations precisely. But it was worth taking the risk of being sanctioned if it meant getting some help from the one person who always knew the right thing to say.