It was a body, that of a woman.She was pale and misshapen, already bloating and stinking. There were a numberof small marks visible all over her skin—cup-shaped red or white welts that Zoeunderstood as wounds revealing the insides of her flesh. It was not hard towork out, from the shape and size of the wounds, what had caused them. The fishwould have been going hungry without their owner to feed them.
“What’s going on?” Agent Flynndemanded.
Zoe turned to see him stridingtoward her. She turned away from the view, which included his walking speed, tofocus on the body. “Sheriff Petrovski called me,” she said, nodding toward it. “Theyhad a new report of a body. Female victim. It does not seem like a coincidence.”
“She was in the pond?” Flynnclarified. It wasn’t a hard guess to make. Not only was the woman stillstreaming with water as the two divers climbed onto the banks on separate sidesto rest, but she was also still tied to a couple of sandbags wrapped around herbody.
“They just brought her out,” Zoetold him. “The neighbor came by and spotted her, floating at the bottom of thepond, after she did not answer the door.”
Flynn made a sharp intake ofbreath, shaking his head. “Any word on time or cause of death?”
“Not yet,” Zoe said. She eyed himsideways; he hadn’t said anything yet about the fact that she wasn’t supposedto be there. Maybe he didn’t want to discuss it in front of the others. “Weshould take a look.”
The smell worsened considerably asthey moved closer to the body. Not just the usual smell of rotten meat, butsomething fishy, too. Flynn grabbed hold of his tie and held it over his noseand mouth, but Zoe simply refocused her mind on the numbers. As SheriffPetrovski joined them, Zoe snapped on a pair of gloves from inside her coatpocket, preparing to make a preliminary examination.
“There is an impact site on theback of the head,” Zoe said, pointing to a small lump visible through the woman’shair. It surrounded an open wound, which the fish had got into, their small mouthsbiting away the raw flesh from inside. It would have attracted them more thanthe rest of the body, but the evidence was still there. “It looks as though thekiller hit her over the head, then drowned her. Just like our victim in theplanetarium, though a much larger body of water.”
“Why do you think he had to weighther down? So we wouldn’t find her?” Flynn asked, his voice muffled by the tieand strained by the effort of not reacting to the smell.
“So she would not wake up andswim,” Zoe said. It helped to be matter-of-fact in these examinations. Tryingto simulate the kind of emotions others expected her to have was exhausting,and if accused of being callous, she could explain that compartmentalizationwas the only way to survive in this job. People usually expected that. “But Ido not think she did wake. Her wrists do not show any sign of having foughtagainst the ropes.”
Petrovski let out a low whistleand took a step back. “I wouldn’t have thought I’d say it, but I’m glad youagents are here,” she said. “I don’t even want to touch this one, and I meanthat both literally and figuratively. Is it him?”
Zoe knew what she was asking. “Onlyone way to be sure,” she said. She reached for the victim’s wet shirt, clingingto the bloated skin, and moved it up gradually, taking care not to damageanything. This was all evidence.
And there it was: the pi symbol,carved into the skin with the same precision and cold confidence as all theothers.
The same killer had struck again—or,at least, had struck; looking at the body and the signs that it could give her,Zoe could see this wasn’t exactly a fresh kill. The limbs were floppy when shetried to move them, with whiter areas of skin around pressure points and darkerareas pooling in the back, where the woman had lain on the bottom of the pond.There was no waxy texture to the skin yet, a tell-tale sign of an older body,and though the water may have changed the rate of breakdown somewhat, Zoe couldbe confident in her analysis.
“This is his first victim,” shesaid. “At least, that we know of.”
“Are you sure?” Flynn asked,looking slightly green behind his tie. Petrovski had taken a step away and waslooking resolutely up into the sky, as if she couldn’t bear to look at the bodyanymore.
“The coroner will be able toconfirm, but I believe this body is three or four days old,” Zoe said, steppingback and snapping her gloves back off. She rolled them inside out, careful notto touch the outer surface with her bare skin, and held them that way until shecould find somewhere to dispose of them. “Certainly not as old as a week, butshe still predates Olive Hanson. Do we know yet who she is?”
“Yes,” Petrovski said. Zoe hadn’tbeen sure she was paying attention. Even now, she kept her eyes roaming the cloudsas she spoke. “Lara Brownlee. She’s the homeowner here. Her neighbor was ableto provide a preliminary ID from the water, but we’ll get a family member in toconfirm that as soon as possible.”
Zoe squinted down at the corpse,calculations whizzing in front of her eyes. It was so much harder, after thewater. “She was in her early thirties? Late twenties?”
Petrovski snapped to action,rummaging in her pocket and drawing out a battered notebook. “She’s thirty-one,”she confirmed, leafing through a few pages back and forth, obviously reviewingwhat the neighbor had told her. “No immediate family in the area, which is whywe’re going to have to wait a little. Also why no one had yet raised the alarm.I guess she wasn’t in a regular enough habit of contacting family for anyone tonotice she wasn’t responding until now.”
“And this is her own property?”Flynn was clarifying, but Zoe’s mind was racing in another direction. Somethingwas sparking, she knew it. This newest piece of information—the age of thevictim—it was important, so important, and if she could
