“As for the professor, looks like there were only cameras at the entrance to the parking lot. So many people come in and out of there all day, and we don’t have eyes on one of the pedestrian exits at all. Nothing suspicious caught on camera.”
“No leads at all,” Zoe noted, propping her chin on one hand as she went over the equation for the seventeenth time already. Slower, faster, it wasn’t making much difference. This was like nothing she had ever come across. Far beyond the level that she had studied during her own time in college.
She switched to the other one, the professor. It seemed just the same. What was this?
“What do you want to do first?” Shelley asked, completing her own study of the files.
“Just a second.” Zoe had not even taken the time to check the second victim’s particulars yet, but there was time for that. She took out her notebook and pen and started writing, making quick and sharp indentations on the page as she began to sketch out an initial working. Greek letters, lines, brackets, downward-pointing triangles—all symbols in quantum math had an equivalent meaning that would reveal a number. M divided by t” minus t’, one divided by s’ then added to one divided by s”, and so on and so forth, all to find the value of B1 which could later be inserted back into another line of the equation to work out the value of another figure.
The workings started easily enough. If the value of M was equal to the value of r’, then the first two lines made perfect sense; but then the third line disrupted it all, and appeared to give a totally different value for M. Fine; she worked it through another way. Perhaps M was, in fact, double the value of r’, which still made enough sense there, and made the third line work—but by the sixth line, the value of M had to be shown to reach zero, and there again it all made no sense.
When Zoe looked up again, she had no idea how much time had passed. At some point, Shelley had sat down opposite her, and was thumbing through something on the screen of her cell.
“This does not make any sense,” Zoe announced.
Shelley looked up, lifting a carefully shaped eyebrow. “You can’t work them out?”
Zoe’s lips flattened into a thin line before she could make herself admit it. “I cannot work them out yet,” she said. “Maybe we are missing some kind of clue. This is definitely all of it? There was not something written on their backs, or arms, or elsewhere?”
“I know as much as you know,” Shelley said. “I’ve been reading up on the professor. Nothing stands out from his academic history, or from what I can see of his personal life that has made it online.”
“Check the photos again,” Zoe suggested, handing her a bundle and picking up some for herself. She pored over the shots, her eyes taking in the angles of bones, the degree at which a leg had bent in death, the length of the rips in their shirts versus the visible strength of the material and its stitching. Nowhere could she see any connection. Not in their heights, weight, their ages—and no hint of any other ink slashed across their skin.
The worrying thing, of course, was that mathematical patterns became easier to predict the more data you had. Two numbers could seem unconnected, any number of possibilities between them, too many to decide on a definite course. Three numbers, well, that would allow one to make more of a case, begin a formula. But that would require another death.
And they certainly didn’t want another death.
“I’ve got nothing,” Shelley said, shaking her head.
“Swap,” Zoe suggested, handing her bundle over and taking Shelley’s in return. “The only thing of note is the angle of the impact on the first victim’s head. The attacker was a little shorter, probably five nine.”
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.