Blake Pierce - Face of Murder

The only reason she didn’t was that it was very clearly against the professional code of conduct. How could they have allowed something like this to happen?

“Who authorized the cleaning?” Shelley asked, her tone quiet and calm. She stepped forward, slightly in front of Zoe, as if shielding her.

The coroner fumbled for paperwork, still stuttering, her face gone pale. Zoe couldn’t take any more. She stalked out of the room with a growl in the back of her throat, slamming the door behind her for good measure. It being a swing door, the movement lost some of its effect, but it released some of the tension in her body all the same.

Shelley joined her a couple minutes later, finding her pacing up and down at the end of the corridor.

“We should have them written up for tampering with evidence,” Zoe said, as soon as Shelley was close enough to hear.

“They were within the scope of their instructions,” Shelley sighed, shrugging her shoulders. “The photographer felt they had captured everything. We’re just going to have to take their word for it.”

“They should be punished anyway. Do they not have common sense? It was clearly evidence. And the lead investigators not having even seen the body yet!”

“Well, in fairness, this was a local case when they did the autopsy, not a federal one. What’s done is done. We just have to work with what we have.”

Shelley was being rational; too rational. Zoe didn’t like it. She wanted a justification for the frustration she felt, dammit, a common feeling between the two of them. She hated being made to feel like she was the freak with the problem. Things being done incorrectly was a problem. People were supposed to do the jobs they were paid for. That was how society worked .

“Something like that should have been obviously important,” Zoe said, trying one last attempt at lulling Shelley into her own rage.

It was not to be. “We’ve got to keep moving anyway,” Shelley said, stepping outside and looking back to make sure Zoe was following her. “Should we go talk to the professor’s wife next?”

Zoe nodded, giving up. Maybe she was overreacting. She had been told that she could do that, on occasion.

There was more to this case than the physical evidence on the bodies. Of course, the math was tantalizing, as was the target of a respected university. But there was always another story to be heard from the family of the victims, the people who knew them.

Perhaps Mrs. Henderson would be able to shed some light on her husband’s death—and get this frustrating case wrapped up sooner rather than later.

Shelley took the driver’s seat, an uncommon occurrence when she was driving with her partner. Shelley knew that Zoe was normally carsick, but today she was so preoccupied with her equations that she hardly seemed to notice the roads flashing by. She wasn’t even clutching at her seatbelt, her usual tell for discomfort.

Shelley glanced over whenever she had a chance—waiting at intersections or paused in a line of traffic. What Zoe was scribbling down frantically across multiple pages of her notebook made no sense at all to her. They might as well have been hieroglyphics.

Zoe had a real gift when it came to numbers, but there were other sides to that too. A single-minded obsession could take over at times, like now. As much as Shelley wanted to help, she had no idea what was required—and Zoe wasn’t about to tell her. She was like that fairly often, too. Quiet, closed off. Shelley had heard the stories about her previous partners, and it wasn’t hard to extrapolate that she maybe had given up on trusting people with her thoughts a long time ago.

Zoe was used to working alone. If she had her way, Shelley was going to change that. It just might take her a long while to get there. In the meantime, she would have to keep prompting her and reminding her to share her thoughts.

Just maybe not about math. Shelley could trust her to work on the math alone.

The English professor lived across town, in one of the flashier suburbs, white-painted houses with wide lawns and matching white fences. Shelley pulled up outside, killing the engine, and waited for Zoe to notice.

She didn’t even look up.

There were times when Shelley felt that she needed to tread carefully around Zoe—to handle her with the utmost care. With kid gloves. Which was somewhat ironic, given that Shelley spent all of her time at home being a parent. There were more than a few times that she felt she was doing the same thing at work, even if Zoe was the older of the two of them.

“We’re here,” Shelley said, softly, not wanting to startle Zoe out of the middle of the calculations she was working on.

Zoe’s pen hesitated in midair, and she looked up at last. She seemed surprised to be anywhere other than the coroner’s office parking lot. “I just need to finish…”

Shelley raised an eyebrow. “Z, is it going to take less than two minutes to finish? Because if not, maybe we should go and talk to the professor’s wife, and come back to the equation later.”

Zoe sighed noisily, but seemed to agree. She stowed her notebook away in a pocket and got out of the car, which Shelley took as a signal to do the same. She revised her earlier thought: dealing with Zoe wasn’t exactly like dealing with a child. More like a surly teenager, at times.

Mrs. Henderson seemed to have been waiting for them, or at least for someone. She was dressed neatly in a dark floral dress, the muted colors conveying something of what she was going through. Her eyes were rimmed with red, but open and sharp, assessing Shelley and Zoe within moments of their meeting at the threshold.

“I’m Special Agent Shelley Rose, and this is Special Agent Zoe Prime. We’d like to come in and talk about your husband, Mrs. Henderson.”

The woman nodded, gesturing them inward, stepping out of the way so that she could close the door after they entered. The house was furnished in an understated classic style, all dark wood and comfortable cushions and throws. Mrs. Henderson led them through into a lounge area, where Shelley gratefully accepted the offer of coffee on both Zoe’s and her own behalf.

“She’s taking it very well,” Shelley murmured, casting an eye around their new setting. It was neat, not a single item out of place. No dust on the low, marble-topped coffee table or the dark sideboard weighed down with mementos and tchotchkes. Several pieces of fresh fruit rested in a burnished bowl in the center of the table. It looked more like a television set than a home that was actually lived in.

Maybe Mrs. Henderson’s way of dealing with her grief was to clean and tidy the home, ready for visitors. It wouldn’t be completely unusual. Shelley had seen it before. It was tied to denial—the thought that if she just made sure that everything was perfect, her husband might come back in through the door.

The busywork, too, put off the grief.

A framed photograph sat on the mantelpiece: the professor and his wife, in happier times. Shelley looked at it and tried not to see the horrific mess that the professor’s head had been turned into.

“Seventeen figurines,” Zoe muttered. Shelley followed her gaze to the sideboard and knew that Zoe was doing what she always did: looking for numbers. In this case, however, they had already taken on a new significance. She was looking for a clue that would lead to a breakthrough with the equations.

The mistress of the house returned after only a few minutes, carrying a tray laden with three hot cups of coffee. The dainty porcelain design of Mrs. Henderson’s cup was offset by the plain practicality of the other two. Two personalities, coming to bear on the contents of a home. Maybe a statement that the visitors she had received today were not worthy of the best china.