“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.
She had copied both equations onto large sheets of paper and tacked them to the walls, but it made no difference. She could still only get two-thirds of the way through the workings before she became hopelessly, utterly lost.
It was as if the last part of the equation just made no sense at all. It was so far above her head that it might as well have been written in a foreign alphabet.
“It’s late,” Shelley sighed.
She was right; it was. After waiting for the local cops to show up and handing Jensen Jones into their custody, then making their way back to HQ before settling in to work the slim leads they had, it was now past midnight. Pythagoras and Euler would be hungry, and Shelley’s daughter was no doubt already in bed since hours ago. They should have both been at home.
If this had been a normal, paperwork or testifying in court kind of day, they might have been. But this was a murder investigation kind of day, and that meant the work didn’t stop until someone was behind bars—or put into the morgue before they could take another life.
“You should go home.” Zoe nodded. She felt a little guilty, Shelley being away from home like this. A pair of grumpy cats were very much used to their owner not being home every day, and they had auto-feeders she could turn on whenever she was out of town for this very purpose. A small child would not understand why her mother was always late.
“You, too,” Shelley said. She had picked up her bag and coat, but stood in front of Zoe now without moving. Zoe caught the message loud and clear: Shelley wouldn’t go until she agreed to do so, as well.
She sighed and started to gather her things.
“Are you going to be okay?” Shelley asked. “You look tired. You’ll be fine for the drive home?”
“I am about as tired as you are,” Zoe pointed out. “I just want to crack this equation. Get somewhere with the case.”
“We are getting somewhere. There’s only so much we can do when we’re running low on sleep. A good night’s rest, and who knows? You might see something new when you approach it with fresh eyes.”
If Zoe had wanted advice from schoolroom posters, she could have looked it up herself. She shook her head brusquely, and did not reply.
“Seriously, Z. Take some time for yourself. If you don’t look after yourself, you won’t be any help to anyone. We need you sharp on this one,” Shelley said, obviously not reading Zoe’s irritation.
“I understand the importance of sleep,” Zoe snapped. “I do not intend to sit up until morning studying the equations. You do not have to worry.”
Shelley paused at the door, looking back at her with a softly trouble expression, a frown that only slightly creased her forehead. “I do worry, though. I see how hard you are on yourself.”
Not that Zoe had ever had that kind of mother—but Shelley sure as hell sounded like the stereotypical mother figure she had seen on TV. All nag, as if Zoe was just a child. Never mind that she was senior in her role, she was senior in age, too. She did not need a mother figure, and if she did, she wouldn’t choose a younger woman who was supposed to be taking her orders.
“I will be fine,” she said, her tone short and clipped, and brushed past Shelley to move quickly down the corridor. She opted to take the stairs, knowing Shelley would go down in the elevator, so that they did not have to share one another’s company all the way to the parking lot. The elevator moved at a much faster rate per floor than Zoe could manage on foot, particularly given the twists and turns of the stairwell, but she took them at a slow walking pace just to be sure.