“Special Agent Zoe Prime.”
“Hey, Z. Hope you’re not doing something nice right now.”
Zoe sighed, looking down at her half-finished plate of food. Not that she had even really noticed the taste, with her mind on other things. “I take it we have a case.”
“I’ll meet you at HQ in thirty minutes. The chief says this is a big one.”
Zoe offered Dr. Applewhite an apologetic smile, but the doctor was already waving her away. “Go do your duty, Agent. But there’s one more thing I have to tell you…” Dr. Applewhite hesitated, taking a breath. She seemed reluctant to speak, but forged on, looking down at Zoe’s half-empty plate as she did. “One of the others in my research group—another synesthete. We thought he was doing better, but… I’m sorry to say, he killed himself last week. Without a support network beyond myself, he was struggling. Humans need other humans around us, to help us emotionally. All of us do. Even those who think a bit differently.”
Zoe paused, staring down into her coffee cup and the several millimeters by which it had been underfilled, leaning back against the chair for support. She had never gone to meet any of Dr. Applewhite’s “research group”—test subjects, Zoe called them in her head when she was being unkind—but all the same, it was a blow to hear. Someone like her, who wanted to die for the sole reason that he was exactly like her. That was something to swallow, all right.
She picked up her bag mechanically, walking away without really seeing anything around herself. In her head she was reframing. Thinking back on Dr. Monk’s comments. Work towards your goals. One step at a time.
What did she have in her life, really? One mentor, who served as the closest thing to a mother figure she was ever going to find. A partner—Shelley—who was the closest thing she had to a friend. Two cats, Euler and Pythagoras—and though she loved them both, she knew that it was in the very nature of cats that they would be just fine if she was gone and they lived with someone else. A career that seemed to be on the rocks more than it was on the up and up, even if right now was one of the better times. A small apartment to call her own.
And a condition, or an ability, or whatever you wanted to call it, that made her so different it drove people like her to kill themselves.
It was a sobering thought to confront.
CHAPTER THREE
Zoe strode along the corridors of the vast FBI HQ building in Washington, DC, heading toward the particular briefing room where Shelley had said she would be waiting. Buildings like this were soothing for Zoe: built long enough ago but with enough planning and precision that each floor was easy to predict and navigate.
The J. Edgar Hoover building had been built with intent. Although from the outside it was square and gray, the kind of architecture people described as an eyesore, the blocky, geometric composition was exactly what Zoe loved about it. The corridors branched off in the exact same way no matter where you got off the elevator, and the rooms were numbered in a logical way. Room 406, quite naturally, was the sixth door that you would come to after getting off on the fourth floor. That was immeasurably pleasing. Not all buildings were created equal.
Sure enough, Shelley was already sitting in the briefing room, studying notes and color photographs placed at neat intervals along a boardroom table. She looked up and smiled as Zoe entered.
Zoe could not quite figure out how Shelley, with a young child at home and no particular advantage in distance from her home, could beat her to the HQ. Not only that, but how she could be neatly dressed in a suit that fit her curvy yet slim frame, accentuating the angles between her hips and waist and breasts, without a speck of the normal dirt one would expect to accumulate around an infant. Even how she could be perfectly made up, with a slight hint of pink lipstick on her lips, and her blonde hair tied just-so into a chic chignon. But there it was.
Their superior, Special Agent in Charge Leo Maitland, stood at the front of the room, waiting with the coiled impatience of a jaguar on the hunt. He was an Army vet with a soldier’s bearing, and after a successful career through the ranks he had come home to switch to law enforcement. That had all been fifteen years ago, but the graying hair at his temples gave no indication that he was any less the fighter he had once been. He stood at six foot three, with a forty-five-inch chest and fifteen-inch biceps that still strained at the hems of his uniform.
“Ah, Special Agent Prime,” he said. “Welcome. I’ve handed out the briefing notes to your partner. Please take a seat and go over them.”
Zoe sat as she was bidden, setting down a takeout coffee in front of Shelley. It had become a habit of theirs. Zoe provided the coffee, and Shelley would provide all the polite conversation that was needed during the case. Each of them taking care of something that they could actually manage.
“Special Agent Rose has all the information, but I’ll give you an overview. We have two bodies on our hands already, and this looks like a local case, so you won’t need to travel.” Maitland folded his arms over his chest, causing the material of his suit to visibly strain at the shoulders. “We’ll be under some pressure from the local press given that one of the victims was high-profile in the community. You are no doubt also familiar with the urgency of preventing a third death and having the term ‘serial killer’ attached by journalists.”
Zoe nodded. That kind of reporting could cause hysteria and end up impeding the case. It was also likely to spread the news further—and that meant more national or even international press to deal with. FBI agents were used to dealing with high-pressure situations, but that did not mean they were welcome. Particularly for Zoe, who would be counting microphones and analyzing the lengths of television camera cables rather than concentrating on her press conference speech.
“Given your lateness…” Maitland continued. Zoe felt her mouth beginning to open in protest, but she clamped it shut. She had arranged to take some time off this morning for her brunch, exchanging some of the many, many hours of unpaid overtime she had worked. She was hardly late. But one did not argue with the Special Agent in Charge of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. “I have already briefed your partner. I will leave her to dispense the details to you. Given your proclivity for math, we thought this would be an excellent fit for your skillset. Don’t let me down.”
Maitland swept out of the room without pausing to look back. Zoe noted his hand straying immediately to his pocket as he left the room, and figured the inch-thick bulge was likely a cell phone. He was a busy man, with calls to make and further briefings to give. It wasn’t likely that they would see him much until the case was done—unless they messed something up, in which case he was liable to come down like the figurative ton of bricks.
Given Maitland’s size, and that a ton was two thousand pounds, he wasn’t really like a ton of bricks at all. More like a tenth of that value.
“Two victims,” Shelley said, grabbing Zoe’s attention without so much as a polite triviality to start the conversation. She was starting to know Zoe better, and she must have realized by now that such comments would make no positive difference to their relationship. Zoe had noticed at least a seventy percent decrease in small talk since they had begun working together. “Both of them in our own backyard. DC metro area.”
“I hope not in either of our actual backyards. As federal agents, you would think we might notice.”
Shelley’s eyes flashed with a spark as she nudged Zoe in the ribs. “Was that an actual joke? What’s in this coffee?”
“I was with an old friend this morning. I suppose it put me in a good mood.”
“Then I’m sorry to break that.” Shelley pointed to the two victim files, spread out carefully and separated in a deliberate way. “This is the first victim, from about a week ago. He was a young grad student, found on the grounds of the Georgetown campus. His head was bashed in with a heavy object—forensics say that it was probably a bat.”