“No—the killer wouldn’t have been able to do that,” Dr. Applewhite pointed out. “He is going on the same data that you have. A publicly available map. Trust in what you see.”
“Then it is only part of the building. The front area, facing the street with the entrance doors, is not even included. The full boundary encompasses only the middle and back part of the diner.”
“You know where to find him. I suppose you had better hurry—didn’t you say that he always strikes after dark?”
Zoe checked her watch. In the isolated, windowless investigation room, she had not even noticed how far along the day had progressed. It was nearly time for the sun to start going down, and after that it would not take long for him to strike.
They needed to move—and now. She would have to travel along his route, figuring out the roads he would take, where he would be. There was still every chance that Aisha was dead, that he would only arrive to dump her body. Or that she was alive but would not be by the time he reached the diner. Zoe would have to keep her wits about her, and her eyes open.
Leaving the math behind, breaking away from the pattern, felt uncomfortable. Zoe thought it would be the same for the killer, but how could she really know? As much as she understood the numbers with an instinctive resonance, the human mind was something else altogether. That was what truly terrified her and made her heart jump into her throat: the idea that he might deviate now, at this late stage.
“Thank you,” Zoe said, breathlessly, into the phone.
“Don’t mention it,” Dr. Applewhite said. “You can show your gratitude by booking an appointment with that therapist I recommended.”
“I will talk to you soon.” Zoe signed off with a small smile, unwilling still to commit.
There was not much time to be wasted on pleasantries, after all. Zoe knew where the killer was going to be, and she knew when—and it was soon. She ended the call and dialed Shelley’s number instead. They would have to meet there—she could not wait for her partner to get back to their base of operations when someone’s life was going to be on the line.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Zoe sat at the counter, alone. She was nursing a cup of coffee, but barely drinking it. Instead, she occupied herself by looking around, checking every direction on a regular basis.
She could not stand the waiting. She had considered every angle, every option. That he would bring Aisha in alive, then kill her in the middle of a room full of people. No, that didn’t make sense. That he would bring her in dead—but how would he expect to leave there alive afterward?
Zoe had spent her time approaching the diner carefully, checking the roads, the parking lot, looking inside every car parked there. Not just Ford Taurus vehicles of any color. She was not going to make that mistake twice. No, she had looked over everything thoroughly, and there was no sign of him.
But there was a little light of hope remaining in her heart. This was the fact that there were two kills remaining, not just one. Two locations. And maybe, just maybe, the killer would keep Aisha for last, to make sure his final point would not be ruined.
That made more sense than trying to kill a girl, or bring one already dead, into a crowded diner. He must have known that this would be his ticket to the inside of a jail cell.
And then again, with a schizophrenic off his medication, how could you know that his mind would work logically?
But Zoe had to take a stab. She was only one person, and she could not be everywhere at once. She had alerted Shelley to move in carefully and cover a wider area with the state troopers, observe the parking lot, keep eyes everywhere they could. They were stretched thin with leads in so many different directions now, and the stakes were high. One little movement in the back of a car could indicate Aisha’s struggle. Something easy to miss before her life was over. But the troopers would be out there on the road, in the lot, waiting.
And Zoe was left watching the diner. It seemed unlikely that he would find a victim here, didn’t it? But there were private spaces—the kitchen, the bathrooms. Places a little more out of sight. She just had to watch for suspicious behavior somehow. If he came in, she would see him. She would stop him. She swore that to herself.
There were ten booths at the sides of the room, with a wider central area containing several tables that were easy to see in a glance. Then there was also the counter. That allowed twelve places where the killer could possibly be—fourteen, if she counted the bathrooms. She had already checked out the ladies’ room on entering, in case he would lurk for a victim there. A trooper she had never seen before had come in, looked around the men’s bathroom, and left again with a subtle nod to Zoe earlier. His job done, he had returned to watching cars. There was no killer here—not yet.
Zoe tried to keep her knee from jiggling up and down, to keep the numbers from overwhelming her. She knew the height and weight of every person in the whole place, from the waitresses who swirled around with pots of coffee and order pads to the twenty-seven others sitting in various positions around her. The diner was busy—almost full. He would not have to look hard for a victim, though the challenge would be in taking a life without being seen.
Zoe was determined that she should see him.
She tried not to let it bother her that there was one more sugar dispenser than there were salt, and that there were two more of each than there were tables—spares, taken at some point into circulation and then left to occupy odd spots rather than tidied back away. She tried also to ignore the seventeen burgers, twenty servings of fries, twenty-eight coffee cups (some not yet cleaned away after being abandoned by their previous owners) and four milkshakes on the tables. These things, she did not need to know.
She did not need to know that there were seven empty seats, but only one totally free table. There was no reason for her to know that there were thirteen light fixtures dotted around the room, or three air conditioning vents, or that the waitresses each wore their apron strings at a slightly different length.
What she did need to know was everything possible about the people already in the diner, and she applied herself to this with as much effort as she could. She turned her back to the counter and leaned, surveying the room in a way that she hoped seemed casual. She ordered a second cup of coffee and set it down next to her, as if she were waiting for a friend.
Over half of the occupants of the diner were female, the ratio weighted by the wait staff made exclusively of women. Several were also children. Zoe could dismiss those out of hand. Then there were the overweight men, a familiar sight in an establishment that served mostly sugary or fatty food. Two of them were far too old, of retirement age, lacking the necessary arm strength to do the deeds.
That left five men, one of them being too short to reach the necks of the tallest victims without difficulty, meaning that Zoe could rule him out. Down to four.
Groups sat in obvious structures, patterns dictated by social expectations. Man—woman—child, family unit. Girlfriend opposite boyfriend. Two girls facing two boys, sweethearts sitting together. Predictable and strong. But there were those she could not place—two men and a woman, she on her own while they faced her, no clear lines of family or love. Those were the most enigmatic, the ones that forced wonder the most.
A group of three—a man, woman, and child—got up from their seats and left. That gave her three. But another party was coming in, four young men, not much older than teenagers. That brought her back up to seven, and they were followed by a young couple. Eight, now. Another couple were getting up to leave, freeing up one of the booths, and—had she eliminated that one already? Was it seven or still eight?