he saw. Those beautiful circles in the universe, which must and would take him somewhere, someday, to a place of understanding, crystal clear like the chime of a bell, like the surface of the water.
In order to make that happen, sacrifices had to be made. But in exchange for the ultimate truth, what sacrifice would be too great?
In order to get his answers, he had to do it again—and he had to do it tonight, before time ran out. Before something floating on the water, like a water spider with its legs outstretched and looking for food, sensed the ripples first, and cut him off from the answers that he sought.
CHAPTER TEN
Zoe looked around the trail, taking a deep breath of the fresh November air. She was wrapped in a coat, warm enough to keep out the sting of the cold from everywhere but her face, and it felt bracing rather than unpleasant.
Finally, she was alone. Only the sounds of birds in the distance, probably warning each other that a human was around judging by the rhythm and tone of their calls, interrupted the peace. And while she could still see plenty of numbers here—the circumference of trees, the depth of the river, the pattern of growth given by all of the greenery around the river’s banks—at least it was less intrusive than the numbers given off by another human.
Even as she felt the peace exuded by the natural beauty of the scene, Zoe also knew that this was the place where a body had been found. That of Olive Hanson, forty-one years old, five foot six, erstwhile hiker. The crook of the river seemed to embrace the bank where she had been found, placed just so, her shirt hiked up out of the way so that the killer could carve his symbol into her flesh.
The rookie was off chasing his lead about the potential connection between acquaintances. It was a small enough area here, and Zoe didn’t exactly doubt that he would find a link or two. It was whether or not they would be relevant that was the problem. She knew in her gut that he was on the wrong track. This was about the symbol, not the women. Maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She’d come across many motives for murder. Killers who needed to strike in specific locations. Killers who were all about the particular time of their attacks. Even killers who hunted down and killed their own wife, or mother, over and over again, recreating her likeness as closely as they could in strangers. There would be a key to this one. Zoe just had to figure out what it was.
Zoe stood behind the taped-off area, not wanting to add her own confusion to the mess beyond it. There were two pairs of footprints that matched, the same boot but in different sizes. The sheriff’s team, where they had come in to remove the body. These she could ignore, stripping them away from her impression of the crime scene.
That left two other sets of prints: one smaller yet than the others, which must have belonged to the victim with her size 7 feet. Zoe could see the weight of the imprint, the way that she had strolled along here slowly, simply walking for the enjoyment of it. Then someone followed her: a man’s size 11.5, moving along the bank behind her. The man who wore them weighed around a hundred fifty pounds, Zoe could see.
The victim had paused at the very apex of the river’s curve, looking out at it. The current was free-flowing, the leaves from a few trees around the banks falling to gather at the edges of the river or carried along by it, a mixture of brown and orange. It was beautiful, really. No wonder she had stopped to look. The imprints of her hiking boots were there, deeper than elsewhere, a slight variance as she stood with her weight shifted onto one side.
She was probably just enjoying the natural scene, thinking her own thoughts. Zoe listened to the rush of the river, particularly as it gathered those dead, rustling leaves, as well as the sigh of the wind through the branches that remained. Her hearing was impaired; Zoe was confident that the killer had snuck up behind her without her awareness. His steps were light, a slightly deeper impact toward the toe, as if he were literally tiptoeing toward her.
He had strangled her then. Zoe