Zoe’s jaw clenched. Exactly what she didn’t need to deal with. She hated doing media briefings, hated having to push her way through crowds of reporters to get to a crime scene. They only made it more likely that she was going to get picked up as being weird and off-kilter, because under stress she was even less able to mimic the socially acceptable behaviors she had spent her life trying to learn. Things like smiling in the right places. If you smile when describing a murder because you’re panicking and confused about how your face is supposed to look, the public doesn’t take kindly to it.
“Has the integrity of the crime scene been maintained?” Zoe asked, checking her watch. It was going on fifteen hours since the body had been found. Dealing with cops in different jurisdictions always introduced a lot of uncertainty about what kind of procedures they did or didn’t follow—and that was before human fallibility was brought into the equation.
“Yeah, we’ve got guys posted there,” Morrison said lazily, reaching for a cigarette from a slot in the car’s central console. He put it into his mouth and started reaching for the in-car lighter, making Zoe’s eyebrows shoot up.
“You are not going to smoke that, are you?” she asked pointedly.
Morrison shot her a sideways glance, his hand hesitating over the lighter. “No,” he said, tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure it was the right answer. A moment later, he took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it back in the packet.
Zoe glanced into the side mirror and caught a glimpse of Flynn in the seat directly behind her. He was looking out the window and grinning. That, she thought, was very odd behavior.
“We want details about the victims’ businesses,” she said. “Financial reports, things like that. Were they doing well, did they have any disputes lately, had they taken out loans—anything that might stand out.”
Morrison nodded. “I can leave you at the scene and go find out. Someone else can take you on to the motel. Should be plenty of guys with cars there.”
Zoe gritted her teeth to refrain from reminding him again that there was no rush to get to the motel, and stared out the window at the dark buildings flashing by. A hotel in black wooden architecture caught her eye, like something out of a gothic novel. Or, well, something out of Salem. They passed by a colonial brick house covered almost entirely in ivy, and an old stone church with a red, gothic door. A gray-boarded museum flashed by, and then stores that seemed to carry a certain theme throughout: the Witch’s Cauldron Diner, the Sand Witch Shoppe, a clothing store in which the mannequins wore witch’s hats.
They pulled up outside an alleyway that was thronged with vehicles already. Some were marked police cars, while others were white vans that clearly held news crews. For the moment, though, the scene was largely quiet. Zoe guessed that with it being so late, most of them assumed there wasn’t going to be any more movement in the case for a while. They were wrong. She had every intention of getting to the bottom of this tonight, if she could.
“Is your captain here?” Zoe asked, glancing around the assembled personnel who were variously guarding the alleyway or examining it.
Morrison finished parking the car and pointed. “There. Captain Lee.”
Zoe followed his gesture and spotted a short, balding Asian man wearing a dress uniform. She nodded and leapt out of the car, eager to hit the ground running and get this case sorted out.
Flynn was close behind her as Zoe ducked under the police tape at the entrance to the alley, flashing her badge as she went, and approached the captain. “Special Agents Zoe Prime and Aiden Flynn,” she said, wanting to get the introductions out of the way fast. “Anything you can tell us about the case?”
Captain Lee reached to shake both of their hands, giving them a regretful look. “Not a lot so far. Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to retrieve a lot of evidence. Couldn’t find any usable fingerprints and there doesn’t appear to be any DNA evidence—we’re surmising the killer wore gloves to prevent both DNA and print transfer to the rope.”
Zoe examined the scene as he spoke. The body was gone, just as Morrison had told them, but the rope was still there—hanging in the air, only the noose cut, a grisly reminder of what had taken place. It swayed softly in the breeze, standing out starkly against the yellow glow of the lights the police had set up. Without them, Zoe noted, there were no streetlights in range whose trajectory would serve to illuminate the alley.
“No sign of a struggle?” Flynn asked.
“Not that we can see,” Lee told him. “There was a blow to the back of the head, same for both victims. We think this might have subdued them enough to stop them from fighting the rope until it was too late.”
“He was conscious, or unconscious?” Zoe asked.
“Hard to say until the coroner releases the report.”
“What about the location?” Zoe glanced back and forth, not seeing anything special about the alleyway or the street on their side of it. “Why was the victim here?”
“This is a route that would take him directly from his store, on the other side, to his home, which is about a five-minute walk in that direction.” Lee pointed back the way that Zoe and Flynn had just come. “He had just locked up the store before being targeted last night. It’s not a heavily trafficked area after dark—stores are closed and the rest is residential. No one saw him until this morning.”
Zoe nodded, taking it all in. Her eyes were seeing trajectories, routes, probabilities. “The location was nothing special. So, this was probably a moment of opportunity for the killer—the one spot in the victim’s regular route home where he would be out of view, and fumbling in the dark.”
“The killer knew his route,” Flynn said, confirming what Zoe was already thinking. “Either he knew the victim personally, or he followed him on prior occasions to find out what his routine was.”
“He had to be lying in wait at the scene,” Zoe said, realizing she had picked up on Flynn’s habit of assuming male pronouns before she corrected herself. “Or she.”
“He,” Flynn argued. “He had to have the strength to string up an adult male. Richards was… what was it?”
“A hundred and sixty-three pounds,” Zoe supplied automatically, from her mental bank of information.
“Right. Had to have been a male perpetrator, to have that kind of arm strength. I mean, he probably looks like SAIC Maitland, too.”
Zoe almost wanted to smile at the image of their commander and his bulging muscles, but Flynn was wrong. She shook her head. “Look at the angle of the rope.”
“The angle?” Flynn looked confused, staring at the rope but clearly not seeing anything. It was strung in a very particular way, looped up over the pole and then hanging down on the other side again. It had been tied up to a bike rack set into the concrete, so the body wouldn’t drop back down to the ground.
Zoe pointed, illustrating the actions with her fingers in the air. “The killer used the height of the pole and length of the rope to their advantage. Look, over there. She could use the struts off the top of the telephone pole as a first pulley, and the bike rack itself as a second pulley, reducing the force needed to lift the body into the air by half.”
The captain and Flynn both turned, squinting, to where Zoe had pointed. Stepping closer to the bike rack—a simple yet sturdy metal hoop set into the ground at the entrance of the alley—they contemplated it in silence for a moment.