If the killer was suffering from anobsession with the number, with the so-called 23 enigma, then he would not beable to resist a place like that. It was too tempting, too tantalizing.
The connections were easy to make. The killerwould have to be a member of the staff, maybe a bartender. Maybe just acustomer who would stand habitually at the bar, where they could secretivelyread notes and screens by leaning forward whenever the staff weren’t payingattention. They would wait for customers to enter this fatefully named bar andtake payment for their drinks. They would then be able to check the credit carddetails, see the numbers, find the name of anyone who had a card that fit theirrequirements. After that, it wouldn’t take much sleuthing to find an address—oreven just to keep an eye on the victim and follow them home.
Their name would allow tracking of theirsocial media. Then the killer would see their images, the tattoos. Draw thesame conclusions that Zoe had drawn. Count the stripes on a tiger and decidethat it was fate, that this person with all their twenty-threes had to die.
It was easy to see it. Laid out likethat, Zoe was sure. She had found their method, their reason for choosingvictims. This had to be it.
Zoe navigated to the bar’s own socialmedia page, easily found via the location tag. Their feed was full of images ofpeople drinking, laughing, having a good time. Shots of artisan craft ales andsmall plates of bar food. The kind of thing you would expect.
They had made nine hundred andseventy-seven posts on their account. Take each part of the number as singledigits and add them up, and it made twenty-three.
Everything was matching up, aligned asif by fate. Every sign was telling her that she was on the right path. How thehell she was going to explain this to her superiors, and even to the localLAPD, without revealing her secret was a problem for another time. Right now,she had to go with her gut.
All of this stress, all the tension ofkeeping her secret, had to be worth something. There had to be a reason behindit, a reward that made it all justified. Catching and stopping killers was thatreward. She had to be right. There was no other choice.
Zoe read the opening hours listed forBar 23 West. It was open late most nights, and that included tonight. It wasstill open now, in fact, even as the hour ticked on further toward one a.m., nodoubt full of drunken revelers who didn’t want the night to end.
She could go there.
She could find him.
Zoe made a decision and got up, grabbingher coat from the back of her chair. There were plenty of officers still onduty, and plenty of cars in the parking lot. One of them could take her—undercover—maybedrop her off around the corner to avoid suspicion.
She wouldn’t tell them where she wasgoing yet. She didn’t want to have to explain it, or put up with demands thatshe take backup. She would tell them she needed to blow off a little steam,that was all, and would someone be so kind as to drop her off?
One way or another, she would get tothat bar. And she would find their killer—and make sure they didn’t have thechance to strike again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Zoe fumbled her way toward the wall,needing a minute to catch her breath and orient herself.
As soon as she had entered the doors ofBar 23 West, she had been plunged into chaos. Exactly the kind of chaos thatwas bad for her, with her mind being the way it was. Loud music was poundingthrough the space at double speed, sixteen different speakers in the main bararea alone driving it through her ears at different angles. It was all aroundher, suffocating and heavy, like a physical cloak pressing in on her from allsides.
It was dim inside, but not dim enoughthat she couldn’t see the writhing bodies dancing in the center of the room,count their limbs and calculate their relative heights, the angles at whichlegs and arms disjointed from bodies to hit marks on the beat. Neither did ithide the fourteen tables on this side of the room, with more booths against theback wall that she could not yet fully see, or the twenty-nine people sittingaround them.
The fifty-four bottles and glasses andassorted drinks containers on the tables, some of which were empty and had notyet been cleared away. The fifteen dollars someone was handing over the bar toa man with three facial piercings and a one-inch buzz cut on his head. Theposters grouped on the walls, five here, three there, six on the other side.The three payment machines attached to the bar. The—
Zoe tried to focus, tried to catch herbreath. It was too much. If she couldn’t find a way to focus in, pay attentiononly to what mattered, she wasn’t going to learn anything at all here.
The average age in the room was abouttwenty-three, she reasoned as she looked around. Plenty of young people here.Plenty who might be within the right kind of victim pool that their suspect waslooking for. They would love this place, love all the signs pointing toward itbeing right. Just about everything could be made to fit. Wait for the momentthat there were twenty-three people left sitting at the seats around the tablesand there—you’d have another sign.
The movement, the intersection of people—itwas constant. Changing and rearranging themselves, filling the space and then clearingit, over and over again. They moved to the beat of the music, that was clear;but they also moved to another set of rules, something unspoken that Zoe didnot pretend to understand. All of this was alien to her.
She had to move if she was going to makeany progress. Get to the bar. The person who was doing all of this would haveto be at the bar, if they were going to be able to see credit cards. Which sidewould they be on, though? Staff or customer?
Zoe took a breath of the heavy,unpleasant air, laced with the smells of alcohol and body sweat
