“Hey, cool down,” Flynn said,sounding alarmed. “I’ll just—I’ll get started now, all right? I’ll go ask the sheriffif she knows a good judge to go for right now. We’re coming up on lunchtime,maybe there’s someone who’s known for getting things rushed through so he cango back to eating.”
Zoe nodded, maybe a few too manytimes—she’d lost count. “I have to make a phone call,” she said, grabbing hercell phone out of her pocket and clutching it hard until Flynn was gone, onebackward glance behind him as he went, as if he was worried she wasn’t going tohold it together.
Maybe she wasn’t.
Zoe hadn’t exactly had a goodmother figure growing up—with her own mother determined to punish her for the “devilsickness” of the numbers, and no one else to turn to because of her reputationas a weird child. But she knew one thing, from TV and books and theconversations other people had.
She knew that when you were introuble, real trouble, you called your mother.
Not her real mother, of course.Zoe had had herself emancipated years ago and never looked back, and besides,the woman was dead now. No, the only real mother figure she’d ever had: the onewho had found her at college, told her what the numbers really were, helped herdevelop and grow, supported her every step of the way.
Dr. Applewhite.
She had little choice right now.Zoe had followed the case as far as she could, and now with the numbers buzzingaround her like flies everywhere, there was no way she could see to the end.But she needed to—people’s lives depended on it. And in the past, whenever she’dbeen stuck in this kind of situation, she had turned to her mentor. And Dr.Applewhite had always, always come through—even if just by lending an ear whileZoe talked her way to her own solution.
The line only rang twice before itconnected.
“Zoe?” Dr. Applewhite asked. “Areyou all right?”
Zoe bit her lip, hating the wayDr. Applewhite sounded. Her words tight and breathless. Worried. She must havebeen worrying about Zoe ever since their last conversation ended so badly. “Itis me,” Zoe confirmed, trying to keep her voice steady. “I… I need your help.”
“Of course,” Dr. Applewhite saidimmediately. Her support had always been like that. Unconditional. No matterwhat Zoe did or said, she was always still there at the other end of the phone.“What is it? Do you need me to come and get you? Where are you?”
“Not like that.” Zoe closed hereyes. “I am sorry. I made you worry. I should not have pushed you away.”
“That’s all right,” Dr. Applewhitesaid. “I know what you’ve been going through. I’m not about to be angry withyou for processing your grief.”
Grief. Yes, that was probably whatit was. Zoe hadn’t even thought about giving it a name. It was strange to hearit like that. Part of her wondered if she had any right to the word. She wasonly Shelley’s partner, not her family member or even her real friend, notoutside of the Bureau. They were colleagues. And Zoe was the one who had lether get murdered, right there on her watch. Did she even have the gall to callit grief?
“I hit a brick wall with the case,”Zoe said. It was better to push on. Dr. Applewhite always seemed to know whatshe meant without her having to say it, anyway. “I do not know where to go,what to do next. And the killer could strike again at any time. His timeline isescalating.”
“All right,” Dr. Applewhite saidsoothingly. There was a rustling sound, and Zoe had a vision of her mentorsetting out a fresh sheet of paper, grabbing a pencil, tucking her gray-streakeddark bob behind one ear. “Tell me all about it.”
“In brief,” Zoe said, because shecouldn’t go through the whole case in detail; not only because of the timelimitations, but also because she wasn’t allowed, and making this call at allwas a huge risk to her career. “The killer carves the symbol for pi onto hisvictims. In chronological order, the ages of the victims also spell out pi—thirty-one,forty-one, fifty-nine, and so on.”
“I see,” Dr. Applewhite said. “Andhave you figured out how he knows their ages?”
“They all enrolled or worked at alocal college,” Zoe explained. “But that is the problem. The next victim, allwe know is her age. It could be any of dozens of women. We do not have the timeto track them all down one by one and ascertain their safety. Not the manpower,either. By the time we get there she could be dead, and he could already be on tothe next one, and we will still be behind.”
There was a pause on the end ofthe line as Dr. Applewhite considered the facts. “What do you think Shelleywould say?”
Zoe was left speechless at thosewords, unexpected and unlooked for. When she had recovered enough to find herown tongue, she was resolute. “I cannot answer that,” she said, swallowingagainst a suddenly dry throat. “Not yet. I cannot go there. Put myself in herhead. I am not ready.”
“All right. I understand,” Dr.Applewhite said, and paused. “Let’s try it this way. Do you remember the casewhere I was a suspect?”
Zoe almost wanted to laugh.Remember? Not only had Dr. Applewhite cause enough to remember it clearly forthe rest of her life, but it had been tense and traumatic for Zoe as well.Having to put her own mentor into a questioning room during a murder case hadfelt like betrayal.
“Well, you remember how you gotback then?” Dr. Applewhite pressed on. “You twisted yourself up into a knotover those fragmentary equations. Trying to solve them. Trying to figure out ifit was a secret code or a message about the killer’s identity. You began to seethings that weren’t really there. You got too close. In the end, it wasn’t theequation itself that solved it at all. It was figuring out the one tic that setthe killer apart from anyone else, the one clue to his identity.”
Zoe nodded to herself. The missingpiece of the puzzle had been the cognitive dissonance causing the killer tomake mistakes in his equations. Matthias Kranz
