Blake Pierce - Face of Fear

Things were beginning to stack up. Callie and her boyfriend were in the drugs underworld. Hanging about with the wrong type of people. Even though she was clean when she died, she had the kind of past that attracted murder. Just because Dowling had a clean lifestyle now, didn’t mean he hadn’t been involved in something before.

“Thank you, Javier,” Zoe said briskly. “That will help us a lot.”

“Wait,” Shelley interrupted. “I just have a couple more questions.”

Zoe motioned for her to go on, stepping back toward the door where she could wait out of the way. As far as she was concerned, they were done, and she wanted to be in a position to leave soon. She didn’t want to waste any more time looking at these pointless tattoo drawings and talking to Javier, who had already given them the most interesting thing they needed to know.

“Are you aware of anyone who would have wanted to harm Callie?”

Javier shook his head no. “I already told the cops earlier. She was a sweet girl. These days. I mean, she really changed. No one wanted any harm to come to her.”

Had she really changed, though? Zoe wondered. Could a leopard change its spots? Callie certainly couldn’t change hers—not the ones etched forever onto her body. Forever, that was, until her killer had burned them off.

Maybe all of this was connected. Maybe she had gang tattoos that needed to be burned off. Maybe someone saw her as the last link in a murderous game that had been running for a long time. The last bit of revenge for a drug-runner released from prison, or a biker gang looking to purge themselves of someone who had broken their rules.

“What about this morning, last night, yesterday? Have you noticed anyone unusual hanging around?” Shelley was asking.

“No, not at all,” Javier said. His weight left him and he collapsed onto a low bench slung against a table, burying his head in his hands. “I wish I knew more. I wish I could say something that would find whoever did this to her. She didn’t deserve this.”

But maybe someone thought she did. That was for Zoe and Shelley to work out, and they weren’t going to get anywhere closer to doing that here.

“We will leave you with your thoughts,” Zoe said, a phrase she had heard before that she thought sounded at least mildly sympathetic. “If you think of anything that might be useful, please do get in touch.”

Ignoring the reproachful look that Shelley was giving her for not being friendly enough, she walked out of Javier’s tattoo den, pleased to be breathing free air and no longer surrounded by all of the distraction of his garish designs.

He watched her from across the street.

She didn’t know him, and he didn’t know her. Not personally. But he knew enough.

He watched her, and he knew things about her that others didn’t. He knew where she lived, alone on the ground floor of an apartment building downtown. He knew that she worked part-time at a store three blocks away, to support herself while she studied. He knew that she’d taken a while to find herself and what she wanted to do with her life.

He knew that she had a tattoo on her inner right forearm, and that she dyed her hair. He had seen her collection of costume jewelry trotted out one day after another, and knew that she liked to mix up her look every time she went out. He knew that she left the house at precisely 8:32 a.m. on the days when she needed to work, because she had her journey down to an exact science. He knew that she would pick up a coffee on the way which she pre-ordered from an app to avoid the lines, and that she would go to the back room in order to change into her uniform before emerging to serve customers.

He knew when her shift ended, and the route she took to walk home.

He knew that she needed to die.

He could barely stand to look at her, but he knew that he needed to watch. He needed to observe. He tapped absently on the screen of his cell phone, as if he was engrossed in its contents, watching her through sunglasses that hid his eyes. He had been scoping out her routine for a few days now, and he knew she would pass by here before she did. This bench, placed perfectly to watch her go.

The world was going to be a much safer place when she was gone. That much was clear to him.

He watched her walk by, exactly on schedule, and pass out of his field of vision. Not that it mattered. He knew exactly where she was going. Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, he got up from his bench and began to stroll along the sidewalk in the same direction she had gone.

On Saturdays, she pulled a double shift. She was paying for her own tuition, and she needed the money. With no lectures to attend on a Sunday morning, it made sense. Her co-workers were all too happy not to have to work Saturdays themselves, at least not as often as they would if she didn’t take both shifts. It was an arrangement that suited everyone.

It suited him especially, because when she finally left and locked up to go home, it would be dark. He would be hidden. She would never see him coming.

He followed her at a long distance until he reached the store, glancing inside to see her just emerging from the staffroom. Good. He didn’t linger. There was no point. She was where he needed her to be, and that meant everything was going to plan.

He seethed as he thought of her, of the very fact that she existed. She had no right. She shouldn’t dare to put everyone else in danger the way that she did. How could she not see, not know?

She was training to be a teacher. That was the biggest joke of it all. Imagine someone like her, being allowed to be around children. To be entrusted with their education, with looking after them. A position of trust like that for someone like her.

The world was going to be much better off without her in it.

For now, there was nothing that he could do but wait. He had his research, and he liked to spend his spare time looking people up, rooting out the evil that threatened everything if he did nothing about it. He had plenty to occupy his time.

And tonight, when it was time for her to end her shift, he would be there. Watching. Waiting. Ready to cleanse the world of her sins.

Zoe waited for the search operation to run, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms over her chest.

“Got anything yet?” Shelley asked.

“Give the system a minute,” Zoe said. She was still feeling a little grouchy from earlier, and she was too comfortable around Shelley to bother to hide it. “This is not a movie. Things actually take time to process here.”

“All right, all right,” Shelley said. “I’m just excited. This could be a big lead.”

Zoe eyed her darkly, wondering how someone could swing from emotion to emotion so powerfully. How Shelley could be distraught and brought to the verge of tears when viewing a body or interviewing a loved one, then as excited as a schoolchild at the prospect of getting the case solved.

The screen in front of her blinked, drawing her attention back as a list of results flooded back onto it. It seemed that their second victim, Callie Everard, had been a busy girl for a few years. There were multiple records of her in the local police precinct’s system, including a couple of arrests for possession of illicit substances.

“Here we are,” Zoe said. “She was interviewed a few times about the death of one Clay Jackson. That must be him.”

“Clay Jackson? All right,” Shelley repeated, typing in her own search on the computer that had been brought into their temporary investigation room.

It was exhausting sometimes, working like this. Always on the move from city to city. Just managing to get settled in and then going off somewhere else. Coming back only for the court dates, which were always unwanted and inevitably inconvenient.