She was right this time. She could feelit. She just had to prove it.
She carried on working doggedly throughthe list. It was easy to cross off most of the names. A quick check of themath, and then a line through them. There were many combinations of threenumbers that could add up to thirteen—but there were many that didn’t, and withonly five or six digits to work with in total, most of the serial numbers couldbe ruled out right away.
By the end of the list, she had seven.Three of them were the clients that had already fallen victim to the pattern:John Dowling, Callie Everard, and Naomi Karling. The other four were new,people who had not yet been on their radar. Certainly fewer than the number of employeesshe would have to investigate, going about it from the other direction.
But it was still a bit of a problem,because Zoe was only one person. How was she supposed to keep track of four newpeople, all of whom no doubt lived in different areas of the city?
That was her first stop: research. Shelooked up each of the names one by one, finding out their current addresses andchecking that they were still alive. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been,given that Franks’s booking only took a name—there was no indication, for themost part, of identity in any other way. In the case of one individual whosename was common enough to cause confusion, she had to resort to sleuthingthrough social media profiles to find an image of a tattooed forearm that lether know she was onto the right person.
Then she had them: a list of names andaddresses, people who were at risk. All of them bore a tattooed serial number—thankfully,no more had been booked in for the next few weeks to complicate matters—whichhad a series of three digits adding up to the number thirteen. It sounded likesuch an innocuous connection. The kind of thing you might laugh about if youbumped into one another at the bar, because you had something in common, butnothing more than that.
But Zoe looked at that list, and sheknew. One of them was going to die, and probably soon, if she could not stopit.
She needed help. The LAPD were the bestresource that Shelley and Zoe had right now, and she was going to have to usethem.
“Shelley,” she said, her tone seriousand heavy.
Shelley looked up from the bundle ofpapers she was reading, almost all of them turned over onto the pile that shehad finished with. Any longer, and she would probably have gone back into theinterrogation already. Zoe had finished her work in the nick of time.
“I know who the next victims will be.”
Shelley blinked. “What do you mean?”
Zoe lifted up her notebook, showing herthe page where she had written it all down. “I worked it out. His methods—usingthe number thirteen, like I said. There are four people who fit therequirements, all of them listed in the appointments book. One of them will bethe next to die.”
Shelley frowned. “But they aren’t goingto die, are they? Because we’ve got the killer in custody.”
Zoe clenched her teeth togethermomentarily, trying to keep from losing her patience. What was it Dr. Monk hadsaid? Steady breath in, steady breath out… “Shelley, I am telling you thatthere is someone else. Why can you not trust me on this?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,”Shelley said. “It’s just that we already have a solution that makes sense. Theysay if you hear hoofbeats and neighing, you ought to assume it’s a horse, not azebra. We don’t need to be looking for a zebra right now when we’ve alreadymanaged to capture the horse.”
“A horse who vehemently denies he hasanything to do with the hoofbeats,” Zoe countered. “Anyway, what does it matterif we look into these extra people? Just to be safe?”
Shelley inclined her head slowly. “Isuppose, just to be safe. What are you thinking?”
“I need Captain Warburton to sendofficers to each of the potential victims. They will need to stay overnight, toensure there is no danger. We should set up a sting operation of some kind.Keep watch and catch him in the act of approaching them for the attack. If wedon’t have the killer, then we know for sure by looking at his pattern that hewill kill again. Right now, he thinks the investigation is centered on Franks.This would be his best chance.”
Shelley blinked again, then shook herhead, the wisps of her blonde hair that had come loose from her normal neatchignon flying around her face. “No, Z, that’s too much. Do you realize whatyou’re asking for? It would be a major operation. We’d need to mobilize now,and it would take up all of the precinct’s resources. We’d need to bring in andbrief the potential victims and make sure they’re fine with being bait, too.That’s too much.”
Zoe let out a frustrated breath throughher nostrils. “Too much even to save a life?”
Shelley gave her a look that she hadseen many a time before, though usually from others: disappointment. “Z, thinkit through. You would be asking Captain Warburton to put on a major operationthat will cost taxpayers a huge amount of money, and also take the risk ofallowing one of the victims to actually get hurt, all on the basis of a theoryrevolving around the number thirteen. You haven’t got any proof. As far aseveryone here is concerned, we have our man. Why would they go set something upon this scale based on a hunch?”
“It is not a hunch,” Zoe said,stubbornly.
Shelley rubbed two fingers over thefrown lines on her forehead with closed eyes, as if trying to smooth them away.“Zoe, I know you think you have something here. But you thought that last time,and—”
“No.” Zoe stated it flatly, cuttingacross Shelley’s words, making her open her eyes wider and stare at her. If shewas
