Face of Murder

There were seven stubs of cigarettes in the ashtrays. They looked hand-rolled. Probably not tobacco. Zoe lowered her nose slightly and sniffed, her suspicion confirmed by the scent coming off them. And in Jones’s apartment, too. He wasn’t going to be able to put up much of an argument that it wasn’t him, or that he didn’t know the party was going on.

“I’d like to read you something,” Shelley said, taking out her phone. “Let’s see… it starts like this: ‘Professor, I can’t believe you flunked me. Like, are you serious? I tried really goddamn hard on his paper and you just decided to kick me off the course!’”

“Okay, okay.” Jones held his hands up. He obviously recognized his own words. “Yes, I sent it. But it—it doesn’t mean I did anything! I was just super angry when he flunked me. After I sent the email I felt kinda bad. I should have been nicer. Maybe he would’ve let me back into class.”

“So you’re saying that you sent this angry, threatening email to Professor Henderson, coincidentally right before he was brutally murdered in a manner that smacks of personal anger, but you have nothing to do with that?”

Jones swallowed and looked down. “I get how it looks. I do. But I wasn’t that angry. I’ll just take a different course next semester. Try something different. I haven’t decided my major yet anyway.”

Shelley switched tacks with a cool and effortless manner, something that Zoe was beginning more and more to admire. “Cole Davidson was the SI in your physics class, wasn’t he?”

Jones blinked: once, then twice. “I… yes, I guess he was. I mean, I never really spoke to him all that much.”

“You attended class, did you not?”

“Yes, but, I, I mean, I didn’t know him or anything, I—I mean—are you really suggesting that I…?”

“You tell us, Mr. Jones. Did you have anything to do with this? Or do you know who did?”

Jones shook his head five times in long sweeps side to side, his mouth working soundlessly as the reality of his situation washed over him. Zoe counted beads of sweat on his forehead. He was nervous, but it was hard to tell if that was because he had been caught or because he was being falsely accused.

“No, wait, this isn’t right,” he said, at last. “I wasn’t—when Cole went missing. I wasn’t in that area. I had class—a night class—you can check the records. And when the professor was killed last night—it was in the night, wasn’t it?”

“Around eleven p.m.,” Zoe spoke up, examining a sideboard behind him. He flinched at the sound of her voice.

“Right, so, then, I couldn’t have done that either,” Jones babbled, holding his hands in front of him in a gesture of appeal. “I was working. I work in a bar. Extra money, to get me through college. My boss will tell you. And I’ll be on the cameras there, too.”

There was a moment of silence that met this proclamation. Zoe and Shelley met eyes, both thinking the same thing. He had an alibi, one that would be exceptionally easy to check. And they would check it—of course they would. But for now, he was looking increasingly unlikely as a suspect, and they would have to let him go.

Or, at least, let him go to a different kind of law enforcement.

“You’re twenty years old, isn’t that right, Mr. Jones?” Shelley asked.

He nodded mutely.

“Well, I can smell the alcohol on your breath from here. Special Agent Prime?”

“There are smoked joints in the ashtray.”

“That’s two counts.” Shelley smiled, as if she and Jones were sharing a friendly discussion. “Not your best week for decisions, is it?”

Jones groaned. “Oh, come on, I didn’t do anything. You can let it go just this once, right?”

“Wrong.” Zoe loomed behind him. “We will wait here with you until the local police can come and pick you up. We would not want you to go and dispose of any evidence.”

Jones buried his head in his hands as Shelley got up to make the call, and Zoe watched him carefully for signs of running again. The tension in his muscles remained slack, and the angle of his feet to the floor remained the same; he was not priming to leap.

Even the satisfaction of knowing that she had been right was not enough to make her feel better. There was still the not at all small matter of two murders to solve, and this night had not taken them any closer to doing that. If anything, it had put them further away.

Zoe checked her watch. Twenty-four hours since Professor Henderson had been murdered. They only had another twenty-four to really get it right.

Beyond that, their chances of solving this case dropped dramatically, and there was a murder-crazed mathematician out there who would get away with it.

CHAPTER NINE

Back at the FBI field office, Zoe felt like tearing her hair out. That would at least allow her to feel something other than this screaming frustration, the numbers seeming to dance on the page and taunt her the more she looked at them.