Face of Murder

And again, it was the same. The same frustrating nothing. No hint of ink on clothing, no trailing off of the numbers underneath fabric, nothing in the general vicinity. The parking garage spaces were not numbered, and nor were there numbers on the walls, on the concrete columns holding up the ceiling, on the grass near where the student was found.

Nothing.

Zoe gave up, shaking her head. “I need to see the professor’s body,” she said. “It is the only way we are going to spot something that the photographs do not already tell us.”

“Great,” Shelley said. It was possible that she was being sarcastic; Zoe had always had a hard time telling the difference. “Then let’s go take a close look at a dead guy.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Zoe tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as they drove over to the local coroner, glancing sideways at Shelley. There was something about this case that was already bothering her, and she had to voice the doubts that were creeping into her head before they became obsessive. “It’s funny that Maitland knew I would want to work on a math-based case. I have never discussed with him that I enjoy working with numbers.”

Shelley cleared her throat slightly, not turning to meet Zoe’s eyes. “Well, I volunteered us for this one. I just happened to hear it coming in, and, well, the chief agreed we could take it.”

Zoe digested this for a moment. She didn’t usually get things from her boss just because she asked for them. “Just like that? You did not need to persuade him?”

Shelley was twisting the pendant she wore, a gold arrow set with a diamond that she had inherited from her grandmother, around and around in her fingers. “I told him that since you were really good with math, we would be able to get a better start on it than anyone else.”

Zoe resisted the urge to slam on the brakes, keeping the car steady and smooth. She focused on the road until the rushing in her head had slowed down, and spoke deliberately and calmly. “You said I was ‘good with math’?”

“That’s all I said, I swear. I didn’t tell them the truth. Not about, you know, what you can do.”

Shelley sounded apologetic, but that was not quite enough to make the roaring in Zoe’s ears go away. Good with math. That was close to the truth, too close to be comfortable. It was almost an admission.

Maybe she had made a grave mistake, trusting Shelley to not give away her secret. But her partner had sworn, so many times over, that she would never reveal it to anyone without Zoe’s consent. While she technically had still not done that, it was close. Too close.

“Look, it’s fine, isn’t it?” Shelley asked. Her voice had risen in pitch now. “I’m really sorry if you didn’t want me to say that, but it’s just a little piece of the way things really are. Not the whole picture. And anyone can be good at math, you know? It doesn’t make you that much different.”

Zoe’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel, so tight the rubber grips made a quiet noise, and she worked her jaw stiffly. “It was not up to you to tell them that.”

“I just—I didn’t think it would be a big deal, to say that much.” Shelley sighed, slumping back against the passenger seat headrest. “I messed up, I can see that now. I’m sorry. But after you solved our big case in Kansas, surely they would have to figure that you’re good with numbers anyway. I know I can’t tell anyone, and I won’t, but I don’t know why you feel you need to hide it.”

Zoe gritted her teeth. Of course, Shelley didn’t understand. Shelley hadn’t been there. She hadn’t been forced to pray by her bed on the cold floor all night, her mother shrieking and sermonizing about the devil’s gift. She hadn’t been scolded at school for her distraction, or made fun of and ostracized by the other children for the uncanny things she could tell just by looking at them.

She hadn’t been there through every failed relationship Zoe had endured, misunderstood time and time again, left with nothing but the label “freak” and another broken heart.

“It is my secret to tell, or not, as I choose,” she said firmly, once her heart was beating slow enough again that she could say the words instead of spit them, and Shelley had the wisdom to forgo a reply.

They pulled up outside the coroner’s office and Zoe slammed the car door behind her, stalking over to the entrance. Then she stopped. It would do no good at all to go into the examination with this kind of energy hanging over her. She had to forget it, put it on a shelf inside her mind and come back to it later. For now, she had to be professional.

The coroner, a trim Asian woman in her mid-forties with sharp eyes and hair cut at a sharp ninety-degree bob in line with her chin, was obliging enough. She showed them the professor’s body, and stood back respectfully while they made their examination.