“We’ll still hand him over for the probation violation,” the sheriff reminded her. “I’ll go make some calls. They’ll want to transfer him back to his home county.”
He left Shelley and Zoe alone in their investigation room, the others having each filed out after checking their respective tapes. They were the only ones left, facing down once again the same position they had been in before tracking down Jimmy Sikes.
“We’ll get him,” Shelley said, wearily. “We will. This is just a little setback.”
Zoe nodded. “I know we will. I wanted it to be before he took another victim. We have wasted precious hours with Sikes.”
“How did you know where he was going to be?”
Zoe lifted her head at the abrupt question, ducking her eyes immediately when she saw that Shelley was watching her closely. “What do you mean?”
“You and I had the same data,” Shelley said. “You knew as much as I did. But you managed to track him down to the casino, even though there was no way you could have known he would definitely be there. Then, when he tried to run—you knew where he would go. You directed me to the exact position where I could stop him.”
Zoe said nothing. Technically, there had been no question. She could continue looking at the files in front of her in silence, her eyes roaming over words and pictures without seeing a thing.
“How did you know?” Shelley repeated.
Zoe felt something in her throat, a lump that threatened to swallow the easy, rehearsed words. Maybe she could admit it. Maybe Shelley would understand. She had been fairly understanding so far, and kind, and nice. Maybe this was the person that Zoe could confide in.
But the number of people in the world who knew about her synesthesia, the numbers and patterns that flew in front of her eyes wherever she looked, could be counted without needing all the fingers of one hand. And a secret that had been so closely guarded—the ability since childhood, and the diagnosis since she received it as a young adult—could not be so easily given away.
“It’s just a combination of luck and experience,” Zoe said, turning the page, still without reading a word. “Once you’ve been going for as long as I have, you’ll be able to spot things a bit easier. Then you make your best guess, and hope you get it right.”
There was something in the air now, something that hung so heavily over Zoe’s neck that she was sure it must have gained visible physical manifestation. That Shelley was looking at her and seeing it, and knowing that she was not telling the whole truth.
“Just luck? That’s how you knew he would dodge to the side, instead of staying on course to where the others were waiting?”
There was hard disbelief in Shelley’s voice, a sternness and inflexibility that Zoe had heard many a time before. It was her mother’s voice, her teacher’s voice, the voices of the few friends she had had before they inevitably got weirded out and stopped calling her. It was the voice of everyone, eventually, when they stopped believing that she wasn’t a freak.
You’ve got the devil in you, child.
The moments ticked away, Zoe’s skin crawling beneath her shirt, sweat prickling from her pores. Shelley didn’t believe her. Was this the moment where she had to confess? If she continued to pretend, would it be worse? Shelley could move on, find a new partner, and that would be bad enough. Zoe was getting used to her. Or she could bring it to their superiors.
Was now the time to tell her?
The landline phone rang, startling both of them with the abrupt way it cut into the stillness, slicing through their tension like a cheese wire. Shelley scrambled to answer it, dropping her papers on the desk and rolling her chair back toward the phone.
“Hello?… Yes?”
Zoe knew from Shelley’s expression alone that it wasn’t good news.
She hung up, her face blanching pale. “There’s another body,” she said. “Sheriff will take us there. It’s not far. He’s sending a team in with us.”
Zoe felt her stomach sinking. They hadn’t gotten away with missing him last night, after all. Even though she had expected it, it hit her like a ton of bricks. Another person had lost their life, because Zoe wasn’t quick enough to save them.
“We wasted that time on Sikes,” Shelley said, her tone hollow. She looked shell-shocked, like she was going to stand there for a long time without moving.
They couldn’t afford that right now. They needed action. They needed to find the clues, stop it from happening yet again. Zoe grabbed her notepad, Styrofoam coffee cup, and bag and headed for the door. “Any details?”
“Just the location right now,” Shelley said, shaking her head, seeming to pull herself out of her daze. Then she tossed her head to the side sharply, her tone changing. “Wait a second.”
Shelley moved over to the map on the wall, grabbing a red pin and hunting the place names for a moment before pushing the pin into place.
“There?” Zoe asked, feeling confusion wash over her. “Are you sure?”
“That’s what the sheriff said,” Shelley confirmed.
Zoe took another look at the map, then turned to go, rushing out to the parking lot. This was wrong, all wrong. It was not far from their location, but still off from where she had predicted. How had she managed to mess it up?
The straight line was no longer intact—this pin swooping to the left and below the last pin, where the previous one had been to the right and below the original murder.
It wasn’t a straight line.
Was it possible that it was a curve?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Zoe let Shelley take the driver’s seat, as she sat by her side, thinking. Numbers and figures and curves. Could it really be true? Could she have been reading the signs wrong all this time?
The car threaded through back roads and along dirt trails, taking the shortest possible route at the sheriff’s directions. He led the way in a battered police vehicle which had clearly seen better days, and he had no qualms about preserving the suspension or the tires. Being a rental, their car could not quite take the same level of punishment.
Zoe watched the scenery flash by the windows, clutching her seatbelt where it lay across her chest. She was always a little carsick as a passenger. Holding the belt away from her neck a touch helped.
They turned onto a highway. A large space of dirt and rocky ground ran alongside it, with trees growing beyond. It was evident that the work of human hands and machinery had cleared the space. No trees grew in straight, even lines in nature. Nature’s patterns were circles, spirals. Could it be that their killer was taking inspiration there?
The presence of two marked police cars from the sheriff’s station indicated their destination before the sheriff turned off, bringing his own vehicle to a stop beside them. Shelley audibly sighed in relief, loosening her grip on the steering wheel.
“Remind me never to get into a car with that man,” she said, shaking her head as she pulled up to a gentle stop on the shoulder of the road, far out of the way of traffic.
Zoe jumped out of the car, anxious to get to the body. She wanted to see how this one had been left. It was their first opportunity to find a real body still in position, before the crime scene had been recorded and the victim taken away to the coroner’s table. There were sure to be more clues here. Things that the investigators wouldn’t have seen. Things that only Zoe could pick out.
A pair of white-faced middle-aged men, both dressed in the drab browns and greens of hunting gear, were leaning on the hood of one of the police cars. The sheriff made a beeline for them, and Zoe followed suit, glancing behind to check that Shelley was with her.
“Sheriff, these are the two hunters who found the body,” the young deputy was saying. “They’re a little shaken, but they didn’t see much.”