fully visible, with tiny flies and moths wobbling around each of them, dancing forward and back under the irresistible pull. The reporter, who was trying to warm his hands as he bounced up and down on his feet, watched them go in but didn’t call out.
A receptionist in a fleece jacket looked up as they entered, taking the end of a pen out of her mouth. “Hi, can I help you?” she asked. Zoe noted that she was wearing three earrings in each of her ears, and that her fingernails were two-inch-long plastic painted with a complex mottled pattern.
She opened her mouth to answer, but found another voice seemingly coming out of it. “We’re from the FBI,” Flynn said, raising his badge to show it. “We’re supposed to meet with the sheriff.”
The receptionist nodded disinterestedly and picked up the phone on her desk. She spoke a few words into it; Zoe was too busy counting the spirals in the desk phone’s cord to hear them. After putting the phone down, the receptionist put the pen back into her mouth and proceeded to ignore them, poring over something that lay flat on her desk, just out of sight.
Zoe turned impatiently under the fluorescent strip lights at the sound of footsteps. A door up ahead in the corridor opened, and a woman stepped through. She wore a brown sheriff’s uniform, complete with radios and gun tucked into her belt. Around fifty years old, she had slightly graying hair that had been dyed over, though the roots were showing through at least an inch long.
Zoe clocked her height at five foot six, shorter than herself by four inches. She weighed about a hundred fifty pounds, and she walked with a determined gait—though slightly hunched over, her back a curve rather than a line.
“Sheriff Danielle Petrovski,” she said, in a broad New York City accent, sticking out a hand in front of her. She directed it toward Zoe first, which was a nice surprise; in the majority of cases, people tended to assume the male was the superior.
“Special Agent Zoe Prime,” Zoe said, taking the offered hand and showing her badge with the other. She shook firmly, calculating the sheriff’s grip strength as she did so. “This is Special Agent Adrian Flynn.”
“Aiden,” he corrected her, taking his turn to shake hands. Zoe kept her face blank. It wouldn’t do to let him know she’d made the slip on purpose, to try to knock him down a peg or two.
“You’ll be wanting to get stuck in right away, or find a motel for the night?” Petrovski asked, looking between them expectantly.
“We will get stuck in,” Zoe said, talking over whatever Flynn had been trying to say. He was a rookie. He probably wanted to go to sleep. “If we could start by seeing the crime scene?”
“Of course.” The sheriff nodded. She patted her pocket, indicating the presence of keys. “I’ll drive you over, if you’re comfortable. It’s about ten minutes away.”
Zoe nodded easily, then lapsed into silence as they turned and walked back toward the entrance and the parking lot. She allowed Flynn to begin talking, asking questions. Nothing that he said, or the answers that he gained, gave them any further information than what had already been presented in the briefing notes. He was still green enough not to begin investigating immediately. He wanted to verify the information he had already been given, like he had been told to. He didn’t yet know how to dig.
Not that Zoe had ever been particularly good at getting the deeper truth out of people, either, but she found her answers in other places.
She was content to climb into the back seat of the sheriff’s car, even though it was a space usually reserved for criminals. It was nice to be sectioned off away from the front seat, with the excuse of distance allowing her to continue failing to take part in the conversation. She instead looked out the window, watching the scenery pass by: the trees swelling with orange and brown leaves, now falling readily to the ground and leaving behind bare and withered branches. The decaying leaves lay in broad drifts where they had been gathered up by some erstwhile volunteer who somehow lacked the mind-numbing and deadening realization that more leaves would fall tomorrow, and a stiff breeze could undo all of their work.
The streets were mostly empty; the biting cold was enough to keep most people indoors unless they needed to be out. Between