Blake Pierce - Face of Murder

Which was bad news, because of what Shelley said next. “We’ll have to keep an eye out for him. I guess most of them will scatter and run as soon as we get there. We kind of obviously look like FBI, or at least cops. Might have to catch him as he tries to get away.”

“Having a party right after murdering two people?” Zoe asked. “Is that really considered a normal reaction?”

“Not normal, no, but it has happened,” Shelley said. “I could cite a couple of cases, but it’s probably more efficient for us to grab him and find out for sure.”

“After you,” Zoe suggested, gesturing toward the door.

Shelley drew a deep breath as if she were steeling herself, then nodded. “Let’s go.”

Beyond the door of the apartment building, the noise was much louder. To complicate their search, there were three open doors on the ground floor alone—the residents of each of the apartments opening their own spaces up to be a new area of the party. It had spilled across the corridor, up the stairs, and—judging at least by the sheer number of teenagers moving in all directions—through every apartment in the building.

The appearance of Zoe and Shelley was not immediately noted. A couple of students saw them and ducked past them out the door, no doubt wanting to get themselves as far away from trouble as possible.

But then the worst possible thing happened: one of the kids, a jock standing at six feet with the build of a quarterback, yelled out in panic. “The cops are here!”

The call went through the building like wildfire, and panic started to set in. There was no use in trying to stay incognito. Zoe reached into her inner jacket pocket for her badge and brandished it in the air. “FBI. This party is breaking up. Now!”

The effect was immediate and palpable. Thirty students ran past her in quick succession, all of them from down in the lower apartment rooms. The word was spreading up the stairs, too, and people were clattering down, sloshing their beers onto the carpet as they tripped and stumbled.

Zoe waited in the downstairs lobby while Shelley went into all three of the ground floor rooms in turn, scattering more students out through them as she did so. Even from where she stood, making no attempt to catch any of the students who continued to run by her, Zoe could see that the place was a mess. Crumpled red cups, spilled food and drink, and no doubt the occasional patch of vomit covered every surface in sight. It had been a big one—the legendary kind of party that kids talk about for months. Too bad they had ended it.

Zoe couldn’t say she felt any kind of misplaced nostalgia for them. She had rarely been invited to parties of any kind, and it was even rarer that she attended them. Then, as now, this kind of party was too overwhelming. The noise, the people in all directions, the intoxication and temptation of forbidden alcohol—and, judging by the smells in the air, other substances, too.

With the benefit of extra years of experience, it was still all Zoe could do to concentrate on studying the faces of those who ran by her. She checked each of them for the youth in the photograph, but although there were plenty of near matches, none of them were the real Jensen Jones. She felt like a stone in the middle of a river, the current washing around her. There were plenty of interesting things that caught her eye, angles and figures and signs, but they went by so quickly that she was barely even able to register them before they were gone.

Shelley reemerged from the third room, shaking her head. Zoe tore her eyes back toward the stairs, just in time to see someone charging down them. A young woman wearing a collection of twelve bottle tops all strung together around her neck, clattering against one another as she ran—

“There!” Shelley shouted.

Zoe pulled her attention back from the girl too late, seeing only another blur passing by her. By the way Shelley was pointing, Zoe knew that it must have been their guy. She swore under her breath—he was through the door already.

She twisted on her feet and sprang after him, keeping him in her sights as he raced away. He was five foot ten, built athletically, muscles straining easily in his calves as his arms pumped up and down. Young, in shape, and clearly an experienced runner.

Zoe had barely gone five steps before she knew she didn’t have a hope in hell of catching him.

In her head, the campus spread out before her like a map, topography and angles of incline included. He was snaking away toward the left, making for a group of small buildings that dotted the edge of the campus. Behind them was a fence, built to maintain a barrier between the college and the surrounding town.

Zoe thought faster than she could run. His path would necessarily have to be curved, following the line of the fence, before he reached a gap and a gate for pedestrians to pass through. That was if he had even brought his student ID with him, which she knew already was needed for exiting at that point, right next to several college facilities.

“Keep on him!” she yelled over her shoulder, seeing Shelley from the corner of her eye as she herself peeled away to the right. At this speed, he would always outrun her. But she could cross a shorter distance in the same time, and calculating his miles per hour against hers, she knew that she could meet him at the gate.

But only if she cut a straight line across an open quad, through a narrow corridor between two buildings, and then directly across the parking lot behind it.

Only if someone didn’t get in her way.

Zoe pumped her arms and legs harder, speeding up even when she thought she was at her limit, straining against the cold night air streaming into her lungs. It was not often, these days, that she had a real athletic challenge to cope with. And she wasn’t as young as he was. But she pushed, intending to make damn sure that she would be there in time—even if there was a stumbling block in her way.

The quad passed by in a blur, then it was a shot through the corridor, the thin gap thankfully empty of any other bodies to stumble into her path. The ground underfoot changed to the harsh, jarring feel of tarmac, punishing her feet for choosing to be clothed in plain dress shoes instead of trainers.

Zoe could still not see the fence on the other side of the buildings, but she could see the gate. She rushed forward with another surge of adrenaline. If she didn’t get there in time…

There was no time to lose. Zoe gave a final, hard push, forcing her body beyond its natural breaking point.

Zoe’s heart pounded in time with her feet across the parking lot, and she crashed to a halt as her body collided with another. She thrust out her arms instinctively to keep hold of him, and pushed Jensen Jones up against the ten-foot fence so that he could not use his superior build to get away.

Shelley was only a few moments behind. She was heavily out of breath and red in the face with strands of hair flying out of her chignon, but she was there. She assisted Zoe in slapping a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, behind his back, as they panted out warnings about running from law enforcement and the right to question him. He only hung his head, trying to catch his own breath as well.

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