Not that Zoe had ever beenparticularly good at getting the deeper truth out of people, either, but shefound her answers in other places.
She was content to climb into theback seat of the sheriff’s car, even though it was a space usually reserved forcriminals. It was nice to be sectioned off away from the front seat, with theexcuse of distance allowing her to continue failing to take part in theconversation. She instead looked out the window, watching the scenery pass by:the trees swelling with orange and brown leaves, now falling readily to the groundand leaving behind bare and withered branches. The decaying leaves lay in broaddrifts where they had been gathered up by some erstwhile volunteer who somehowlacked the mind-numbing and deadening realization that more leaves would falltomorrow, and a stiff breeze could undo all of their work.
The streets were mostly empty; thebiting cold was enough to keep most people indoors unless they needed to beout. Between buildings, the landscape was gray and bare, devoid of life at thistime of year. Zoe rested her head on the glass, watching it all withdisinterest.
By the time they arrived, therookie’s words washing over her like so much white noise, she was almost on theverge of falling asleep herself—if it wasn’t for the numbers and their constantneed to keep count.
They emerged from the car into acold parking lot, this time in front of a dome-fronted building that stood on adramatic swell in the town’s land. It had a sense of the theater in theoversized architecture, grand columns tall on either side of the entrance.
Zoe and Flynn trailed behind the sheriffas she unlocked the doors, passing crime scene tape pasted across each side ofthe double entrance. Inside, the space was wholly dark, until the sherifffumbled alongside the door and found a switch that turned on the lights.
Zoe took a long inhale, the airrushing through her nose as she allowed herself to look around the auditoriumand take it all in. All of the numbers, flooding her senses, telling hereverything that she needed to know.
“All we did is take the body away,”Sheriff Petrovski was saying. “Everything else is untouched. We locked theplace up as soon as we arrived. We have photographs back at the station ofeverything.”
Zoe moved toward the marked-offarea in the middle of the room. With all of the chairs pointing toward itacross the staggered-height seating tiers, it looked like it had been set outfor an audience. The mop bucket, ominously still full of water, sat in front ofeverything, wheels locked into place.
“You said the death occurred latelast night?” Flynn asked. “What was the victim doing here so late? I understandshe worked here as an astronomer, but don’t they keep normal working hours?”
“No, it can vary here,” the sheriffsaid. “Ms. Vega was studying the path of a comet, monitoring it through thetelescopes and making notes. We know that she completed her observations forthe night—it was all written down in notebooks on her desk. One of hercolleagues confirmed that for us. It seems she was simply done for the nightand on her way home when it happened.”
Zoe stood just above the bucket,looking at everything. There wasn’t a whole lot of physical evidence to go on,but her keen eyes sought out the lens of a projector up in the air.Extrapolating from its position and the angle at which it was set, she couldsee that this whole area at the front of the room would have been caught in theprojection—light beaming down right at the victim’s face, as well as the loudsurround sound coming from the speakers at multiple points around the ceiling.
The angles made sense. Shepictured a woman crossing the floor—on a direct, straight line path from theentrance to the offices over to the main exit. She was going home. Theprojector turned on, deadening her senses, making her blind and deaf for amoment. The bucket entered the room on wheels, and the killer pushed her headdown into it until she was drowned. That wasn’t hard to interpret.
It didn’t tell her enough—not yet.She couldn’t see the height of the killer from this scene, because he only hadto knock the victim down and get her head into the bucket to carry out themurder. Strength came into it somewhat—the force required to hold down an adulthuman while they fought for their life, which wasn’t nothing. The killer had tobe sturdy enough to accomplish that.
Truthfully, although a violentcrime almost always indicated a male offender, Zoe couldn’t even see evidenceof whether this had been committed by a man or a woman. She tended to leantoward males, simply because that was the majority result—and statistics werealways helpful.
But the scene was giving hernothing else.
Zoe looked up from the bucket andwandered back over to the sheriff, letting Flynn make his own observations. “Haveyou been able to retrieve any physical evidence?” she asked.
“Other than the body?” SheriffPetrovski gave her an amused look. “No. No prints on anything, all looking tohave been wiped clean. Or maybe the killer wore gloves—it’s hard to say, giventhat actual cleaning equipment was used. No fibers, hairs, anything that wecould pick up. Actually, it was sparkling in here.”
“That is inconvenient.” Zoesighed. It was always better when there was cold, hard evidence. When you couldsimply find the right person, get their prints, and wrap up the case to be homein time for dinner. Not that that was happening today. Dinnertime was alreadylong since passed.
“Well,” Flynn said, rising from asquat that had allowed him to examine the bucket up close. “I think it’s clearwhat we have on our hands here.”
“Is it?” Zoe said, evenly.
Flynn dusted off his hands as he walkedback to join them by the door. “It’s some random lunatic looking for crimes ofopportunity. He must have had access to the planetarium in some way to get in,so that’s going to help us narrow down
